The Black Mage Hungers for Mana (3)
'What a conundrum.'
While investigating this world—more precisely, Hikarius City—Raban had zeroed in on three major points. Magical girls. Na Ju Pharma. And finally, culture. That last one was the biggest source of dissonance between this place and his own Earth.
There was culture here, sure, but no cultural barriers. The idea of a transfer student from a "distant city" might exist, but "foreigner" was nowhere to be found. It was downright bizarre. Earth seemed to be some kind of unified nation-state, and no one batted an eye at it. A world with Norse myths like the Siegfried legend but no Scandinavia. That was the conclusion he'd reached while staring at the Encyclopedia of Magical Girls' Signature Moves, with its weird names like "Ballmung Slash" and "Tyrfing Breaker," feeling the uncanny valley creep in.
This world retained legends and myths strikingly similar to Earth's, but it sure as hell wasn't his Earth.
If I had to pin it down, it'd be like parallel worlds that split off at some point.
Raban suspected the root cause lay with the magical girls—or more accurately, the mascots that created them. Once those things, which monopolized magical power, started meddling in human history, they probably unified the nations for easier management.
Or, to put it more precisely, they might've outright purged the very concept of nations.
It was the kind of setup you saw in anime all the time. Characters who looked foreign, but everyone spoke the same language. Raban shuddered again at the mascots' terrifying influence.
And in his research into this cultural mindset, he'd noticed one other thing. Human malice here was exceptionally low. Could you believe a civilization at modern levels with no records of large-scale wars?
But there was one glaring exception bucking the trend: the malice directed at Na Ju Pharma.
Most folks in Hikarius City harbored some resentment toward Na Ju Pharma, great or small. The company had vanished after leaving behind the Black Forest, and any attempts to uncover the full story were taboo. All that remained was the fact that countless Na Ju Pharma employees had simply... disappeared.
That girl must have been the one forced to bear the brunt of all that malice.
His desires whispered: How much mana could I harvest if I dragged out the negative emotions festering inside her?
His reason countered: No matter how you slice it, the mascots have gotta be marking her. Even the military kept tabs on anyone flagged in their files. With the mascots slapping surveillance on him the second he infiltrated the school, did anyone really think they weren't watching Nai Hyun?
He had zero interest in recklessly poking her and ending up vaporized by a magical girl's mana blast.
After some deliberation, Raban reached a rational conclusion.
Don't poke recklessly—poke methodically!
Not with crude tools like suggestion spells, but by building rapport gradually, eroding her psychological barriers. No one would sense anything off about that.
So his answer to Nai Hyun's question went like this:
"Aigoo. Shouldn't you be the one getting counseling?"
Nai Hyun was taken aback. An adult—no, even including her friends—this was the first time anyone had openly questioned her mental health.
"What?"
Her tone sharpened instinctively. The janitor uncle, looking more put-together than when they'd first met, continued in a calm voice.
"Nai Hyun-ah. My social experience is pretty limited 'cause of my memory issues and all."
Was even he saying her personality seemed problematic? Nai Hyun glanced at the keychain on her phone. Silver knuckles. Shiny and cool, but no one else got the appeal—
"You're a good person."
"...Huh?"
The unexpected response caught her off guard.
"Just look at how you took in a shady guy munching grass in front of your house and fed him."
"Anyone would've done that."
"I disagree, but let's say that's true. Then it means you've got at least the average level of decency in Hikarius City, right?"
Nai Hyun nodded hesitantly, wondering where this conversation was leading—to the conclusion that she needed counseling, apparently.
"But even though you're at least as kind as everyone else, your friends don't trust you. They're kinda scared of you, I'd say."
It was a fact straight from Nai Hyun's own mouth. Her counseling records stood out sharply from the other peer counselors'.
"Well, yeah, I carry these knuckles around..."
"'Yeah' implies there are other reasons you're guessing at, huh."
Her lips wouldn't move. Na Ju Pharma. Being blood kin to the Na family was a yoke that had choked her ever since the incident.
"Honestly? I was shocked you turned out to be from the owner family. I figured they'd be sneakier, scarier."
But you're not. Raban plainly described the kindness he'd felt from her.
"You've probably shown that kindness steadily at school. But people subtly keep you at arm's length, and it's still going on. Even I can tell."
Raban shared his experiences from the past few days without his memories. The feeling of being treated like an outsider, or worse, an impurity by society.
Wariness toward strangers was natural. There might be no malice in it. But the wounds it left on the wary one were no small thing.
Offering kindness without expectation, only to get suspicion and fear in return.
How many years have you endured that hurt, exactly?
Raban's story culminated in concern. For a kid even her closest friends hesitated to approach.
Nai Hyun chewed her lip. No one—not even her uncle, the sole survivor of the disappearance incident—had ever said anything like this to her.
Words wouldn't come properly. Something hot bubbled up just below her solar plexus. Resentment she hadn't even realized was building, a pouty what do you know, and a transparent sense of relief, all tangled together.
She couldn't spit it out honestly. It was too heavy to unload on some uncle she'd only met a few times.
Instead, she brushed off the awkwardness with playful banter.
"Pfft, whatever, Uncle. I have friends, y'know?"
The uncle smiled faintly in reply.
"Oh dear. And here I thought I was your only friend. Betrayed!"
"This is peak high schooler social skills versus a washed-up old guy's gap!"
Raban confirmed his diagnosis was spot-on.
In a situation like this, people usually claim 'I have friends'—not just 'I have friends.'
Nai Hyun was bad at lying and preferred telling the truth whenever possible. That's why she'd given such a vague answer.
No need to dig deeper now. Securing the "friendly adult" position was enough.
Her loneliness—either unacknowledged or ignored despite awareness—was now bubbling to the surface.
Someday, when that emotional rift deepened, she'd think of him. That would suffice.
Like a rusted bolt. Once seized up solid, brute force won't budge it. But introduce the first crack, and it unravels smoothly after that.
Someday, when Nai Hyun opened up her true feelings again, the payoff would exceed expectations.
Raban flashed a genial smile and got back to cleaning.
Patrols in Hikarius City had gotten even tighter since the shadow sorcerer's appearance. Magi Black stretched after a quick sweep of her sector.
"Haven't heard a peep since that one run-in with that monster freak."
Even the Ivory Tower was on alert for the shadow sorcerer these days. Instead of churning out villains, they were stockpiling mana for a potential assault.
Which meant...
"This is gettin' boring as hell."
Magi Black had nothing to do as a magical girl. She'd split patrol routes with White for efficiency, so no one to chat with either.
Shoulda tailed Salamandine to that cafe...
Thud, thud. Kicking at the concrete idly, she recalled their counseling room chat.
"That uncle..."
He'd seemed pretty good at counseling, in his own way. Stepping right into someone's personal baggage without being asked flew in the face of peer counseling ethics training, but it was probably well-intentioned.
"No clue what he did before losing his memory."
[Losing memory? Whose story is that, mohu?]
"Oh, Papirun. Where's White?"
[She said she'd circle the park where we first met the shadow sorcerer one more time before heading home, mohu.]
"Class pres doing her diligent thing, as expected."
Magi Black nodded along, then explained: "It's about that new janitor uncle at our school who lost his memory."
"I'm probably the first student at school who met him. He was munching grass in front of my house."
[...Say that again, mohu?]
"Yup, you heard right. He was so hungry he was eating grass, so I told him to go to city hall or something. Looks like he got tangled in the Na Ju Pharma incident and lost his memories."
Papirun's head throbbed as she listened to Magi Black. Raban was highly suspicious. Today's reports from the school fairies even suggested he might be an Ivory Tower villain.
A magical girl had met him face-to-face and felt no threat, so he probably wasn't malicious... but look at Salamandine. She had no malice—went beyond that into some fondness—and still clashed with magical girls out of duty alone.
So the possibility that this "villain" was using the Na Ju Pharma incident as cover for his backstory couldn't be ignored. Especially if the Ivory Tower figured it out and used it to approach Nai Hyun.
[I hope he's just a normal guy who lost his memory, like Nai Hyun said, mohu.]
If not, what then? Was there a way to uncover Raban's true nature?
An old Earth proverb floated through Papirun's mind: "If you want to know a man's true character, give him power."
If Raban was a villain, there was bait he couldn't resist.