Thank You
Mariella looked at the thing in front of her—something that only barely counted as human—with eyes that had gone cold.
What line of thought did a person have to follow before they could hold out a dog collar and call it a gift?
"……."
She wanted to fire off a few choice words right then and there, but she drew a slow breath and steadied herself. The other party was Emily. There was every chance she had offered this absurd thing as a present without a thought in her head. Yes. Better to hear the details first, and shout afterward.
Having reached that conclusion on her own, Mariella opened her mouth with care.
"...Th-this collar— no. This choker. You're saying it's a gift?"
"Yes... Um, you like it... right?"
As if.
The retort surged up, and she swallowed it back down.
"Would it be all right if I asked what you were thinking, giving me this as a present...?"
"...Huh? Thinking?"
"There has to be an intention."
"An intention..."
Emily murmured it. Mariella stayed seated and waited, perfectly still, until she spoke—along with the thought that if the reason wasn't a proper one, she would melt the girl down on the spot, just like the ice cream dissolving before her eyes.
And then, after who knew how long, Emily's mouth finally opened.
"Uh... where should I start?"
"Just tell me however you like."
"Um, if you have this, Mariella can use magic too."
"...What?"
Magic?
It came out of nowhere. What frame of mind, in a moment like this, produced an answer like that? So that's the sort of brain it takes to write papers like hers, she was thinking, when the voice in front of her came again.
"It's just, I heard it from Ria..."
"Ah..."
So she had heard it from her sister.
A faintly bitter feeling settled over her. She hadn't especially meant to hide it... and yet, for it to come out like this. In front of the person she admired, of all people.
"That you were born with a problem in your circle... so you can't use magic for long..."
She nodded. It was the truth.
She loved magic. Not because of her sister. Her sister might have been the spark, but coming to love magic had been wholly her own will—or so Mariella believed. Liking a thing and being able to do it, though, were different. She had learned that after casting the first spell of her life, on the day she opened her eyes atop a pure white bed three days later.
Circulatory Mana Circuit Dysfunction Syndrome. Put simply, it meant there was a defect in the circle.
A congenital malformation: use mana for too long, and the heart took the strain. Because of it, the spells she could cast were few, and the time she could sustain them was short. A cure was impossible. They had summoned every specialist of note, and all that ever came back was the same reply—the symptoms could be eased, but treating the thing at its root was beyond them.
She had buried herself in theory so she could look away from that flaw. The chance that even a circle like hers might still be able to cast some kind of magic. For the sake of that chance she had read paper after paper, treatise after treatise, and widened everything she knew. What all that research had taught her, in the end, was a cold truth: no such thing was possible.
And then, with a soft clack, something was set down in front of her.
"But it's all right...!"
The choker lay on the table. Odds and ends were stuck all over it, and it looked terribly heavy.
"With this, you can use magic no matter what your circle is like...! So..."
"No. Wait."
Mariella clutched at her head, which had begun to throb.
"That can't possibly work. I appreciate the sentiment, but..."
"It's real."
"I've already looked into all of it. It's my body. I know it better than anyone. What would you even—"
Her tone had sharpened, just a little. Emily opened her mouth as if that were of no concern at all.
"...Does Mariella know better than I do?"
Mariella's mouth stopped.
She lifted her head a fraction, and eyes of a blue too deep for words came into view—bluer than the floor of any lake, deep as a vast sea. Meeting that light, she remembered. The person sitting in front of her now was someone who knew nothing of the world and went around saying strange, tactless things... and she was also the pinnacle of magical theory: Emily Staria, the Great Witch of the End.
Where had the usual stammering gone? Arrogant. Rude. And yet what Mariella felt, hearing it, was... not unpleasant.
"...Is it true? Can you really fix it...?"
She was trembling. As if she had forgotten her usual manner, forgotten how to speak while hiding what she felt, the joy showed naked in her voice—
"Huh? No...? That's impossible... I'm not a doctor..."
"...What?"
Her head went cold.
A violent phase change of feeling. The temperature gap left behind by that sublimated emotion wrote itself, unsoftened, across her face.
"What... are you saying?"
Her neck tilted with a creak. At the sight of it, a small hiccup of breath escaped Emily.
If she did not explain this properly, right now, she might actually be killed. Emily's mind might run on a different circuit from other people's, but that much she knew for certain.
"I-it's fine! Even without a circle!!"
Emily shouted, and heads turned all through the restaurant. Beneath the weight of those stares, Mariella let out a deep sigh.
"...We've finished eating anyway. Let's talk outside."
"Ah... um, yes..."
The ice cream had melted completely, reduced to a drink.
"Haa..."
I let out a long breath. It caught the wind, mingled with it, and dissolved into the night street.
"...Tomorrow's the entrance ceremony, I suppose. There are so many people, even at night."
At those words from beside me, the thing I had wiped from my mind came back.
I have to go to the Academy tomorrow...? For real...?
Maybe I should just say I'm sick and can't make it....
"You aren't thinking something strange, are you?"
I nodded.
The Mariella from a moment ago had been genuinely terrifying. No exaggeration—well, a little exaggeration—and she had been scarier than the Demon King.
But where were we going? This wasn't the way back to the dorms.... Why were we turning down an alley....
D-don't tell me....
"We're here."
"This is...?"
Fortunately, it was an ordinary empty lot. The one odd thing was the wooden post at the center, from which a faint thread of mana seemed to be leaking.
"It's land owned by my family."
"...What?"
"Well, strictly speaking, it's landlocked..."
Leaving me standing there in a daze, Mariella strode on ahead.
"So. What was it you were saying earlier? Answer me properly. Out here, you don't have to shorten anything or talk around it for fear of being overheard."
Mariella's violet eyes fixed on me. What kind of answer was she even looking for?
"...What I said earlier is all of it, though...?"
"...I put that badly. I meant for you to explain it in a little more detail."
"Oh."
So that was it.
"Uh, um... so, Mariella, you were born with a problem in your circle, right?"
"...Yes."
"But when I checked, roughly, it wasn't that the circle was severed, or blocked, or anything like that."
"...That's true, but did my sister tell you even that?"
"No? I could tell just from touching it a little."
"......"
A brief silence passed before Mariella spoke.
"The circle is deformed, and fused to part of the heart. They say that if I use it for too long, it can strain the heart."
"Which is exactly why you need this!"
I held the gift out again. Mariella stared at it, sighed, took it, and began turning it over in her hands.
"So if I have this, I can use my circle with less strain on my heart?"
"No? If that were possible, you'd already have been treated, right...?"
Mariella's eyes narrowed to slits. A vein looked ready to stand out; her forehead twitched. My excellent instincts told me she might be about to get angry, so I rushed to add the rest.
"If you wear that necklace, you can use magic even without a circle."
"...What?"
A stupid sound came out of her. Which meant she was that surprised.
"To explain the principle properly, I'd have to start with the fundamentals of Chantless Magic from my first paper, A New Mechanism of Magical Manifestation and the Changes That Follow—"
"Just the conclusion, please. I am curious, but I don't think we have the time right now..."
What. And here I was, ready to explain it properly.
Fair enough. With a tool, what matters is how you use it, not how it works. Same as not having the faintest idea how a smartphone functions and using one just fine anyway.
"...The conclusion is that the necklace takes the place of a circle. So even someone without a circle can cast magic if they wear it."
"...Did you make this, Emily...?"
"Yes."
Mariella closed her mouth. ...No. She hadn't. I could hear her muttering. Something along the lines of—
"This can't be real."
"My sister, what on earth..."
"Does someone else... already know..."
I couldn't make it out. Well, that wasn't the important part right now.
I stepped toward Mariella.
"Better to try it than just hear about it, right?"
I took the necklace from her hands and fastened it around her neck instead. A click. I could feel mana turning along the circuit.
"Huh? H-hey?"
"Calm down. And feel it. That flow."
"...The flow."
"Yeah. Don't fight it. Just give yourself over to it."
I took Mariella's hand and sent mana through. I was starting it up without having properly taught her how to use it, so I had to help from beside her.
"Is there a spell you want to cast?"
"...Lots."
"Then picture one of them."
"...All right."
Mana flowed. From me into Mariella, and from Mariella back into me. I cast that turning, circulating current onto the world just as it was.
And then—
Crack... crick...
Shoots of crystal rose around us, as if drawing a circle. In no time the shoots had taken the shape of flowers. The empty lot, where there had been nothing, was a field of crystal in full bloom.
"...Th-this is..."
"Third-circle... magic."
"...Yes. A spell I saw in a book, a long time ago. I don't even remember the name..."
Tears spilled from Mariella's eyes.
"Really... I did this...?"
"Yes. You cast it, Mariella."
The moment I finished speaking, she pulled me into her arms. It was a little hard to breathe....
"Thank you. Truly... thank you..."
...I could endure it a little longer. It wasn't going to kill me.