Not Quite as Clever as I Thought
Not quite as clever as I thought, are you…?
"So, if this is about magic… where should I start…?"
Mariella blinked at that. Was I imagining it? Her eyes seemed to be shining.
"Just a moment."
A small notebook came out of her arms, pages fluttering as she turned them. I knew something that size couldn't hold much, and yet the writing was packed until there was hardly a gap left—the very look of the scrap sheets I used to blacken from edge to edge. Could she even read that? It looked less like script than a page someone had colored solid black.
"Um, there are a few things I'd like to ask. Would that be all right?"
I nodded.
"Yes… that's fine."
Mariella closed her mouth and simply looked at me. An answer ought to have come back by now. Why was she staring without a word? Had I put my foot in my mouth again?
"…In public, perhaps. But you don't need to stay formal even in private like this. You're older than I am, and your standing is higher, too. You could just call me Mari, if that's easier—"
"Ah, n-no. I'm more comfortable with polite speech…."
"Is that so…?"
Mariella's face fell a little, but no meant no. What lay between us was business, and that was exactly the right amount of it. I had no desire to drift closer, take wounds I never asked for, and end up as someone else's emotional trash bin.
"There are parts of the papers you wrote that I couldn't quite follow. Here—this section…."
She held the notebook out, and a slender finger indicated a spot in the dense thicket of writing. The hand and the size of the letters kept me from recognizing it at a glance, but I knew the material. It was a piece of the last paper I had written under the name Emily Staria.
She had actually read my paper.
I began to explain, my voice lifting despite myself.
"Ah, this part—"
"So if you derive the formula the way I described earlier, you can transform some of the terms on the left-hand side, and the transformed pieces that match terms on the right cancel out. Tidy the expression from there, and the factor that fixes this alpha turns out to be the nontrivial root of the Etmauler equation closest to the absolute origin of the spatial coordinates, doesn't it? Then, by the Shantus–Crowley theorem, alpha itself becomes the root of yet another equation whose coefficients are real—which contradicts the very definition of alpha we assumed going in. So the premise was wrong."
"……?"
Maybe I had a knack for teaching people. The thought came to me while I weathered Mariella's barrage of questions. Laying things out as simply as I could, down at the listener's eye level, was unexpectedly fun—the sort of view you only got by deliberately lowering your gaze. Proving theorems over again with easy ideas instead of difficult ones was far more interesting than I had expected.
And Maria had not been lying when she said the girl had taken part in writing papers. Mariella had the fundamentals, which made the explaining pleasantly easy.
"I think I… mostly understand. So this is how it was."
Mariella's lips parted, then closed. Somewhere along the way, midnight had come and gone. I could do without sleep. Mariella could not. It was about time she went to bed.
"Shall we stop here for tonight and sleep?"
"Now that you mention it, we ought to be arriving."
Mariella tapped the window. A forest soaked pitch-black opened before us.
"…Huh?"
"What's wrong?"
"We're still in the woods… wait."
Her head turned. I felt her eyes on me, and when I gave a small flinch under that heavy gaze, her voice followed.
"How long have we been stopped?"
"Since two hours ago."
"…Did you run short of mana?"
"No?"
As if a trifle like this could drain me dry.
"Then why did you stop?"
"We can't go in like this, can we?"
Horse and coachman were both illusions. There was no chance of slipping past the guards unseen. I had meant to wake in the morning, send the carriage back to Maria by remote control, and walk the rest of the way ourselves.
I had been feeling it for a while: Mariella's grasp of things was a little lacking. A little. Only a very little. Lacking, that is, beside an ordinary person. She kept asking, again and again, about points anyone ought to have taken in at a single pass, and that was what made me think it.
Of course, asking each time—however embarrassing—was better than sitting quiet on what you didn't know until it came out later. On that count, Mariella made an excellent student. Comprehension would grow if you hammered at it hard enough. Attitude was not something you could force into changing.
Admitting what you don't know, and never stopping the search. I liked that.
"So we're sleeping here?"
"Yes. Ah—but don't worry."
I drew a mattress and bedding out of subspace. It was a ducal carriage; even laid in the space between the seats, the mattress fit with room to spare.
"This should do for a temporary bed, shouldn't it?"
"…Isn't it a little narrow for two?"
"……Why would the two of us be sleeping?"
"Then where is the one left over supposed to sleep?"
"I wasn't going to sleep."
"What?"
"Yes."
A few things had occurred to me while we talked, and I had meant to sort them out.
"You're going to stay up all night?"
"Ah, it's fine. I'm used to all-nighters."
"…So this is what my sister meant."
I heard her mutter something under her breath. Leaving that behind, I set about preparing to work outside. A board for the ground, a desk, a notebook—that would be enough. The light I could make with magic.
"Come here."
"Huh?"
Warmth pressed against my back. By the time I came to my senses there was a soft thump, and Mariella's face was already there above me, the two of us down on the mattress.
"We'll sleep together. It's a little tight, but not so bad that we can't manage."
"Huh? W-wait??"
Her scent rushed in all at once. Too much information, too suddenly, and my brain declared an immediate strike.
You're far too close, aren't you?
What was this distance? Hadn't we gotten much too close, all of a sudden?
"…Hm? From this close, your face is a little—"
"Nyaang."
A little? What had she been about to say after that? The cat had drowned it out—a cat?
"Nero?"
I sat up, and there he was, already curled into a ball on the seat.
"A cat?"
Mariella reacted.
"When did you get in?"
An instant before her hand could reach his fur, Nero's eyes flew wide and he launched himself at my face.
"Eek?!"
Nero had been modeled on an average adult cat. Which meant roughly five kilograms had just flown into my face. There was a thud.
"Ghk!?"
I couldn't take the weight, and my body went over backward. The space was narrow enough that it ended with my hip knocking the edge of the seat, which was a mercy.
"Are you all right?"
"Y-yes…."
I set Nero on my thigh and stroked him. The agile creature of a moment ago was gone; he purred, meek as if none of it had happened.
"…Is he a cat you keep?"
"Yes. I was going to take him to the Academy."
There was Kuro as well as Nero, but I hardly needed to introduce that one. More to the point, where had he come from all of a sudden? I had put him in the luggage hold…. Had he crawled out because he was bored?
"Pets aren't allowed at the Academy."
"What?"
What?
"Well, of course they aren't. Everyone lives in the dormitories through third year…."
"Uh…."
"I almost don't want to ask, but have you read the admissions guide? Or the dormitory rules?"
I shook my head. I hadn't wanted to know any of that. I was busy enough reading sources and writing papers; I saw no reason to stuff useless knowledge into my head.
"What do we do? It's a little late to turn back now."
Mariella fussed as if it were her own affair. The concern was nice, but wouldn't a life spent fretting over every little thing that belonged to someone else be exhausting?
"Um, Mariella. I was curious. Taking a pet to the Academy is forbidden, correct?"
She nodded. I asked again.
"Then an animal that lives outside, quietly coming and going from a room… that isn't specifically against the rules, is it…?"
"That's true, but—wait. Don't tell me."
"You heard her? Take Kuro and stay outside. We'll meet in the room later."
I opened the door, and the shrill drone of forest insects poured in. Nero gave a short cry and melted into the darkness of the woods. It was over in an instant.
"…Did you abandon him?"
"No."
I explained the situation. Not all of it, of course. I only said that Nero was an extremely clever cat, that he could play nearby and find his way to whatever room I was in later. Fortunately, Mariella believed me. Or rather, she simply accepted it. That was probably the more accurate word.
It didn't matter. Either way, I had no need to explain any further.
"Then the problem's settled, so let's just sleep."
Still holding me, Mariella toppled sideways. We hit with a soft thump. The mattress cradled my body, and a warm heat followed close behind. I put out the light I had been keeping with magic, and the inside of the carriage sank into the same darkness as the world outside.
Tomorrow, I'll really be going to the Academy.
I hated it. I really did.