Caution: Addiction
After receiving the smartphone, Luke spent a stretch of days poring over its mana circuitry, using it as a reference to revise the magical equations he already knew.
These days, rather than burying himself in books, he found himself absorbed in designing mana arrays in his notebook—sketches of every idea that floated up.
Honestly, he could say without exaggeration that the past few days had been pure happiness.
Perspectives he had never even considered. An extreme precision premised on a delicacy he had once dismissed as physically impossible.
The shorter the distance mana travels through a circuit, the more overwhelming the response speed becomes… In theory I always knew that shrinking a spell formula improved its performance, but…
This was not a borrowed phone. It was his own. Which meant that even if he took it apart to his heart's content, there was no one left to scold him for it.
In truth, the urge to dismantle it right then and there was very real. But Luke had no intention of actually doing so—not yet. He knew perfectly well that impulsively tearing into a magical device without proper disassembly tools was, for all practical purposes, the same as destroying it.
To smash the phone the moment he finally got one would be a waste he would regret forever. So the best he could do was operate it carefully, analyzing every hybrid spell formula that bloomed across its workings and the way each one ran.
"Hmm…"
Day after day, Luke repeated the same work. Wherever he went, the phone, a notebook, and a pen went with him. Every glance at the device sparked some new inspiration—and how was a mage supposed to suppress curiosity like that?
The truth was, he had never intended to suppress it in the first place. He had reached the point of scrawling mana arrays even while lying in bed, scribbling annotations in the margins.
At first Yerna had been glad he was enjoying himself. As the days wore on, though, her gladness began to curdle into worry.
Is he going to end up addicted to that phone?
From where she stood, Luke's behavior already looked like textbook phone addiction. And she was not far off the mark. Luke truly had fallen head over heels for the thing's charms. All day long he beamed at it, so delighted that he had started drawing the phone itself into his notebook.
Being happy about getting a phone was one thing—but happy enough to sketch it? And in rather meticulous detail, at that. On top of everything, from the moment he woke to the moment he fell asleep he never once let it leave his hands. When, exactly, was he even charging it?
How could she not worry? Back when he had been reading books, she could at least tell herself he was studying. Now he spent the entire day staring into a screen.
Lu's changed.
Even now—look. He would not put the phone down even while eating.
"Lu, no phones at the table."
"Mm…"
Yerna called to him, but Luke only kept fiddling with the device, chewing absently. He was so focused he simply had not heard her.
"Lu. Lu!"
Only after she called several more times did he finally turn his head her way.
"Mm—ah. Yerna. Did you call me?"
The expression on his face was pure innocence. The guileless look of someone who had no idea what he had done wrong.
"Hand over the phone. Confiscated."
"W-what…?"
For a heartbeat that look of pure shock nearly softened her resolve—but she steeled herself. This was for his own good. Her face and voice stayed firm.
"You've been completely glued to that phone lately."
"Th-that is… But I have not been keeping it out of sight, have I…?"
He knew perfectly well how feeble the excuse sounded. The problem was that he had nothing better to offer.
"Even so, you've been on it far too long."
He was not entirely without self-awareness. But what choice did he have? Every time he looked at it, something new revealed itself, and he had not even finished analyzing twenty percent of its functions. How was a mage supposed to spare any attention for a meal under those conditions?
Naturally, he did not want to give it up. This was the distilled essence of modern magical engineering, something he had finally managed to claim for himself. He did not want it out of his hands for even a moment. Any mage would have felt the same. If it meant elevating the boundaries of their knowledge, mages were the sort who would happily pick dirt up off the street and eat it.
But Yerna was his benefactor—someone he would one day have to repay. And if he had been showing her an unsightly side of himself, that was entirely his own responsibility. Rationally, he understood that handing the phone over was the right thing to do.
And yet the curiosity and hunger for discovery that lived in a mage's bones refused, to the last, to surrender it.
He had to give it up. He did not want to give it up. Those two opposing impulses showed themselves in the way Luke clutched the phone in both hands, fidgeting restlessly. He looked so much like a squirrel desperately gripping its acorn that Yerna had to fight to keep the corners of her mouth from lifting.
Luke, for his part, saw only the furious tremble of her lips and assumed she was truly angry. He hung his head deeply.
"I am ashamed… H-however…! I will do whatever you ask—only, please, spare me the confiscation…"
"…Fine, Lu. We'll talk after you finish eating. For now, put the phone down while you eat."
"…Understood. I shall do so."
Luke stared at the sheet of paper Yerna had written out—labeled Rules—and let out a long sigh.
"Limiting phone use to three hours a day… is that not rather harsh, all of a sudden…?"
Three hours was, admittedly, a generous amount of time. But he had been putting a full twenty-four hours into research and still only made this much progress. To slash that suddenly down to three hours felt painfully insufficient.
Luke's hunger for new knowledge burned hotter now than it ever had. It had never been weak before, either—but back then, ten circles had sat in his heart. The reason the Luke who had reached the tenth circle in his twilight years had lost that hunger was simply that nothing new remained for him to see; there had been nowhere left for the craving to go.
No matter how he turned it over, three hours still felt too short.
Nothing for it, then. For now I'll set understanding the mana formulas aside and devote the three hours purely to copying the spell arrays.
Annotations and analysis could wait until he had a copy to work from.
Luke opened the sketchbook Lua Erast had left behind on her last visit and began carefully, meticulously copying the phone onto the page. Details too fine for a freehand replica he scrawled into the empty margins around the main drawing. He would not be able to observe the actual operating principles this way—but if he at least captured the rough form, he could still make educated guesses from the arrays.
Even that simple act of replicating the mana circuitry turned up several things he had previously overlooked. All in all, a rather productive use of the time.
I cannot claim there are no gaps left, but at least this way I can keep the research going even when I am not allowed to use the phone.
The moment the promised three hours ended, the phone's screen locked. Whatever magic Yerna had used, the lock was designed so that no one but her could unlock it—and until she did, the device could not be operated at all.
Luke had already analyzed most of the outer layers of its spell formulas, so a phone in this state no longer held the same value for him as before. At first he had tried to crack the lock, but the mana array looked refined enough that no immediate method of dismantling it presented itself. Given enough time and a thorough investigation of the phone, he might eventually break it. By the day that happened, though, he might no longer find the phone interesting at all.
At last Yerna returned from her forest patrol.
"Lu, you behaved yourself, right? Only three hours on the phone?"
"Of course. You set a locking spell on it yourself, did you not?"
"Right, I did."
Yerna picked up the phone Luke had left on the table and checked it. Locked, just as expected.
Even so… burning through all three hours that fast?
Still—because he was not on the phone, there he sat drawing and reading. The time limit really had been the right call. She nodded to herself and ruffled the hair of the Luke sitting on the sofa.
"So what exactly are you drawi—"
Her gaze dropped to the sketchbook. What she found was a full schematic of the phone: front, side, back, multi-angle views of the device and its operating screens, and around them a scatter of spell formulas that, at a glance, looked uncannily like those of a real magical device.
"W-what is this?"
"Ah. I drew it so I would have something to look at when I cannot use the phone. Nothing you need concern yourself with."
"…"
Compared to the rough doodles he had once scrawled in his notebook, this was incomparably precise, detailed, and fine. He had drawn all of this just so he could look at it when the phone was off-limits?
Maybe Luke was already past the point of addiction…
"Lu. Are you sure I really don't need to confiscate the phone?"
"D-do not say such dreadful things! Why would you even suggest that? I have kept every promise I made to you!"
Luke shot up from the sofa in alarm and caught hold of Yerna's hands.
"Okay, okay, I get it."
The reaction was a little too intense for comfort, but…
"Except you're not keeping the second promise."
"…Y-Yerna, that is… Could you not perhaps look the other way?"
"No."
If Sorbi got to hear it, there was no reason she should not. Yerna's expression went firm, and Luke forced out the word big sister, head bowed, trembling faintly.
A mischievous spark lit in Yerna at the sight. She met his eyes.
"Lu. Do you like calling me big sister that much?"
"O-of course I do…!"
The smile Luke managed was so strained it reminded Yerna of Deana's face after a bite of mint chocolate. She could not help smiling herself.
If I'm his guardian, 'Mom' would probably be more accurate… but I'm not even married yet. Mom is a bit much.