Prologue: The Sound That Woke Him
What woke him from his long sleep was a sound.
Sound. Sound, of all things. How long had it been since he had felt even that?
Within the sensations slowly returning to him, he began to recall himself.
The first thing that rose was his name.
I am… Luke Irushi.
Next came the fact that he was a mage.
One who defined and harnessed phenomena, who pursued and refined knowledge, who at last held the world itself within his mind.
Sorting the sensations and memories as they drifted back, he repeated his own name without cease.
The great Luke Irushi.
Son of Rion Irushi, and head of the Irushi house.
Valedictorian of Tyusgel Academy, and its revered Headmaster.
Hero who halted the Demon King, champion of the crusade wars.
And in the twilight of that brilliant life, the place he finally reached was that of a mere general-store proprietor, the village chief of a quiet little town.
He thought on, and on.
He sifted through his memories, tracing back to the very last of them.
Images rose in his mind only to vanish again.
He had entered the Academy at the top of his class and graduated the same way.
He had stopped the Demon King's war of conquest and returned to become Headmaster.
He had attained the highest station of the Irushi house and become its head—yet left only his name upon the register and withdrew to a quiet village.
He had opened a general store in the countryside, seeking an ordinary life, and in the end…
And after that? What became of me?
He did not know.
His final memories were hazy.
A head full of nothing but confusion throbbed painfully.
Had he, perhaps, died?
"Th…is… …ra!"
Trying to gather his wits, Luke focused his hearing, straining to analyze the sounds reaching his ears.
It was a sharp, resolute voice, pitched high and edged with steel.
The voice of someone on full alert, wary of something.
Wary of what, exactly?
The moment he became aware of his senses, he moved to grasp the situation at once.
A mage was a being who spent a lifetime tuning their senses, by force of will, between the world and the flesh.
And he had stood at the very pinnacle of that craft.
So he was certain he could revive his senses this time as well, and he concentrated on the feeling of his body.
But…
My Circles are gone.
Trying to stir the mana within himself, he reeled with shock.
That the Circles should vanish—he had never heard of any magic or curse of this kind.
If they had been destroyed, fragments would remain.
If they had been extinguished, traces would linger.
If they had been depleted, they could be replenished.
Yet now, the Circles had vanished completely, as though they had never existed at all.
He tried to rise, but strength would not come to his limbs.
A strange sensation.
It was so utterly divorced from the body he had known through all those long years.
It was almost as if…
At last, as the cold touch of metal registered against his throat, he realized he was locked inside an iron cage.
"Ngh…?"
An iron cage. Then—a slave trader?
The chill at his neck was surely a collar.
They had abducted him, erased his Circles, and shut him away in a place like this.
Me? An Archmage? Who, and how?
And then, as his hearing finally cleared, a stretch of conversation began to reach him.
"I'm telling you the truth! I only caught a curious creature, nothing more!"
A man's voice.
"They're all endangered species! And this forest is off-limits—don't tell me you didn't know that."
A woman's voice.
"I—I didn't know! I just got lost over in Rienne Forest, that's all…"
"Then submit to inspection! What's inside that cage back there?"
"Well, about that…"
At his stammering, the woman seemed to lose what patience she had left. She yanked aside the cloth covering the cage.
And what she saw within was, astonishingly…
"A little girl?"
A small girl, no more than ten years old at a generous estimate.
Long platinum-blonde hair, hornlike growths like a cow's rising from either side of her head, and pointed ears that resembled a cat's.
Bruises mottled her body in livid blues, and that small form, without so much as a scrap of cloth upon it, wore only a cold metal collar at the throat as she huddled inside the cramped cage.
"What?"
The man, staring at the scene, made a stupid sound.
"So you were a vile human trafficker after all—and this child is a beastman, isn't she? Did you think a beastman would make it all right? Trafficking beastmen has been illegal for a hundred years already!"
As the woman pressed him, the man waved his hands frantically and cried out.
"No! That's not it! Impossible! All I caught was a curious—"
"Silence! Human trafficking can be punished by summary execution! And I have the authority to carry it out!"
"Eek!"
With a roar, an iron staff was leveled at the man's throat, and his face went white.
But Luke felt something was wrong.
From the sound of it, they had clearly been speaking toward the cage that held him.
And yet—a little girl? Did that mean there was another victim in this cage besides himself?
Puzzled, he opened his eyes.
A flash—!
The light was so fierce that his face twisted of its own accord.
Sight. How long had it been since he had known this sense, too?
It was more than dazzling—it hurt.
It hurts?
Pain. That, too, was an ancient sensation.
"Ghk…!"
A groan of agony slipped out unbidden.
The act of making a voice was unfamiliar as well.
No—perhaps it was the voice itself that was unfamiliar. Not a single sensation felt like his own.
"Ah—ugh…! It hurts!"
Once he recognized the sensation as pain, he groaned under the ache that flooded his entire body.
At that, the woman turned on the man in a voice thick with fury.
"Good heavens! What in the world did you do to that child!"
"I absolutely did no such thing!"
"Spare me the excuses! You're a criminal caught in the act!"
"Th-that's—!"
Some time later, Luke opened his eyes.
I must have fainted.
The moment he came to, he realized he was seated somewhere.
He rolled his eyes at once, taking in his surroundings.
A plush seat. A worn blanket draped over him.
Beyond that, he could make out nothing.
What was this belt fixed across his body?
"Feeling a little better? That must have been hard. You're safe now. It's all right."
From within it all, words he could understand reached him.
A kind woman's voice.
A voice he had heard before.
It was the woman's voice from the exchange between the man and the woman, just before he had lost consciousness.
He turned his eyes sideways, toward the direction of the voice.
An elven woman of striking beauty, with violet eyes and golden hair.
Luke tried somehow to move his body, but it was no easy task.
The bruises covering him refused to allow it.
"Ugh…!"
"Don't push yourself. You're hurt right now."
"Nngh… Is that so. And you are?"
With an unfamiliar sensation, he set his throat vibrating and shaped language.
Nothing served better than conversation for grasping one's situation with clear eyes.
"I'm Yerna Risphind, Forest Keeper of Luke Forest. And you?"
He answered her question at once.
"Luke. Irushi."
"Luke? Wow. Same as the forest's name."
"…"
She offered him a soft smile and turned her gaze forward again.
In the interval, Luke looked about, trying to determine where he was, and found himself puzzled.
A seat this soft, and scenery racing backward past glass windows on every side—this was clearly some kind of conveyance.
And yet, if it were a conveyance, there ought to have been horses drawing it ahead—and he could see no horses at all.
"Is this a carriage? And yet there are no horses. Have you, perchance, cast invisibility upon them?"
"Huh? A carriage, all of a sudden? This is a car."
"A car?"
At the unfamiliar word, his voice rose at the end.
"Don't tell me you've never seen a car before? Hmm… maybe you lost your memory?"
He nodded in agreement with her words.
It was true that his memories were unclear.
"…It would seem so."
A faintly melancholy look crossed her face as she turned forward once more.
"I see."
"…"
When the conversation lapsed, he gripped the blanket covering him and cleared his throat.
At the very least, he ought to offer his thanks.
He arranged the words in his mind, then moved tongue and lips.
He did not forget to set his vocal cords vibrating, either.
"My thanks come late, Yerna, but I am truly grateful. I very nearly found myself abducted. Upon my name, Luke Irushi, I shall remember this kindness well."
The sensation of speaking seemed fully restored at last.
Able to talk fluently again, he felt a private lift of spirits—though, mindful of his years, he did not let the feeling show.
From Yerna, who had received his thanks, came a reply laced with laughter.
"Haha! Think nothing of it, Lord Luke Irushi!"
Looking up at Yerna's bright, exaggerated smile, Luke suddenly felt something was off.
Had elves always been so large a people?
No—it was not only that. This seat, too, was far too big for him.
As though everything had swollen while he slept.
"Incidentally, Yerna, you are remarkably tall for an elf. One might almost compare you to a giant."
It was pure admiration, but her reply was cool.
"You shouldn't tease grown-ups like that, Luke. Even my colleagues make fun of me for being short."
"Is that so? Then I apologize for my error. Will you accept it?"
"Of course… Pfft. Still. For a little kid, the way you talk is pretty funny."
"The way I talk… you say?"
Never once in his life had anyone commented on his manner of speech, so he could not help but find it strange.
And besides—a little kid?
If he were to be called anything, it would be an old man. He was nowhere near an age that warranted "little kid."
"Yeah, that way of talking. What book are you copying it from? It's pretty natural."
"Well, this is simply the way this body speaks…"
"Is that right?"
Still puzzled, he turned his head toward the window beside him.
And the reflection of himself in the glass was staggering.
Long platinum-blonde hair. Animal ears rising pointed atop his head. Where human ears ought to have been, horns jutted sharply.
His eyes, too, were far from ordinary.
The left was gold, the right a teal emerald—heterochromia.
And the most striking change of all was that he had become the likeness of a young girl.
Luke, stunned, began to feel at his own face.
"What in the world is this…"
Forcing his uncooperative arms to move, he lifted the blanket—and the truth became all the more certain.
Soft little limbs, mottled blue with bruises here and there—but it was, without question, the body of a young girl.
"Sorry. There wasn't anything over there that would fit you. Just bear with it a little, even if it's embarrassing."
Yerna, seeing Luke's state, assumed the problem was shame and spoke accordingly.
"This is…"
He was bewildered.
Was this a dream?
Luke had lived more than a hundred years as a human man, and the self he remembered was a white-haired, full-bearded old man with lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth—never anything like this little girl.
"Ah, we're almost there. Shall we get ready to get out, little Luke?"
"…Little, is it…"
He did not wish to admit it, but his outward appearance was, beyond any doubt, that of a young girl.
Luke stood with both arms spread inside the examination apparatus. A short while later, a woman who appeared to be the examiner told him he could step down, and he lowered his arms at once and left the machine.
There seemed to be nothing particularly wrong with his body—yet the pain that flared with every movement was more than enough to draw a frown across his face.
However long it had been since he last experienced the five senses, the unfamiliar feeling of moving a body that was not his own was unmistakably an unpleasant one.
But the examiner, seeing a little girl frowning even after results that showed nothing amiss, took it for the usual sulking and fussing of children made to do tiresome things by adults. Smiling, she produced something of the sort children that age tended to like and held it out.
"Well done. Here—have a piece of candy."
"…"
Luke accepted it and looked down with a complicated feeling.
The wrapper, printed with the words Strawberry Flavor, Contains Fresh Fruit, was a material he had never seen—but he was not so dull as to fail to understand that tearing it open would reveal candy within.
When Luke peeled the wrapper and put the candy in his mouth, a tart-sweet sensation spread across his tongue.
This, too, was unfamiliar to him, and his expression softened just a little.
Seeing Luke look pleased, the examiner smiled along with him and asked,
"Is it good?"
"Mm… Indeed. More flavorful than I expected."
"Right?"
Grinning at the answer, the examiner settled Luke into a chair, then took the examination records and approached Yerna.
Reading the results of the scan of Luke's body, the examiner spoke to Yerna in a puzzled voice.
"This is strange, Yerna. This kid is coming up as human."
"What? Not a beastman?"
Yerna was stunned by the examiner's words.
"Yeah. Human, not beastman. But then what about those horns and ears…"
If the examination apparatus returned a result of "human," then those horns and ears must have been "attached" later—by surgery or magic or some such means.
In the old days, it had not been uncommon for people to buy a slave for their own use and, calling it a "handle," affix well-gripped horns to the head, or replace the ears with animal ears that linked to the emotions.
Surprisingly, that had been a popular procedure back when beastman slavery was still legal—a fashion for skirting the law.
Once you attached horns or ears, passing a human off as a beastman was no great difficulty.
But now that slavery was banned outright, even performing such procedures left the buying and selling of slaves illegal all the same.
Which left the question of who had attached such things to this little girl, and for what reason.
Yerna walked over to the small girl sitting quietly in the chair, rolling the candy around in her mouth, and crouched down to meet her eyes.
"Luke, what is your race?"
"I was most certainly human. But now… I am not certain myself."
It seemed the examination results had been free of error after all.
The ears and horns had clearly been attached by someone.
And if they were going to do it, why not just one? To attach both horns and ears at once?
Yerna decided that whoever had purchased the girl, whatever else they might be, was a considerable pervert.
In an age when all human trafficking was forbidden, such "beastmanization" procedures ought to have died out—which meant this was simply a matter of that pervert's personal tastes.
"What happened? Do you remember anything from before you were taken?"
"I cannot say. The memories will not come."
"Not even how long you were locked up?"
"I do not know. All I remember is that iron cage."
No memories…
Well—if it meant she could forget the memories of abuse, perhaps that was for the better.
"Your mother or father's names? Do you remember where they are?"
"My father is Rion Irushi. My mother is Vina Irushi. Both passed away long ago."
…She had more or less expected as much.
Children with parents were rarely the targets of human trafficking.
Still, she had hoped…
"…I see. Thank you for telling me, Luke."
An orphan. A trafficking victim. Memories unclear, and so young.
Was it truly coincidence that her name matched the forest where she had been found?
Perhaps even the name was only a delusion of hers.
The criminal who had tried to abduct her, no matter how hard Yerna pressed him, only repeated that he had "just caught a curious cat," and she had extracted no information about any slave-distribution routes.
Well—once a proper interrogation began, that might change…
"We'll have to leave her with a facility, won't we?"
"For now, I suppose so…"
They looked down at Luke Irushi with complicated expressions and sighed.
Luke's feelings were no less complicated—but the reason he did not sigh was simply that there was still a candy in his mouth.