Circles Are Not a Disease
"Shirud. How wonderful to see you again."
Luke smiled brightly and held out a hand toward the thoroughly frozen Shirud.
Shirud did not take it.
Why is this kid acting so familiar?
If he thought about it, they had only met for a single day — and it had hardly been a pleasant encounter. And what if the Circle ran wild again, the way it had last time?
He had medicine now, so even if his mana went haywire it might not turn out the same… but if it did…
She might use that as an excuse to grab my chest again.
He had turned it over carefully in his mind, and he still could not figure out what on earth was so appealing about a chest that she kept trying to touch it. What was so great about a boy's chest, anyway?
"Suit yourself."
Keeping Luke at a wary distance, Shirud walked into the playroom and claimed a corner for himself.
Luke watched him go, then shrugged and muttered,
"It would seem I've managed to make myself rather thoroughly disliked."
-…….
Pai met Luke's eyes and shrugged as well — or at least gave the impression of shrugging, whether or not she actually had shoulders.
-Luke,…….
Was it only his imagination that the unreadable nuance in Pai's sound waves seemed faintly accusatory?
Looking back on it, though, he could see how a child might have come to resent him.
"You're right. I was too hasty then."
Had it been the sheer joy of finding a Circle? Or had the sight of a high elf's descendant simply drowned him in nostalgia?
Either way, the thought struck him that he had pressed far too warmly on someone he had only just met.
"Hmm. In that case, becoming friends should come first."
Luke stroked his chin the way he always did and sank into thought.
How, exactly, did one go about becoming friends?
In the past, the simple impression of "the neighborhood wizard grandpa" had been more than enough to make him a hit with children. His current appearance was nowhere near sufficient to project that image. And in an age when magic itself was nothing particularly special, there was little left that could truly astonish anyone.
He could always use composite illusion magic the way he had for Deana — but whether that would be enough to open Shirud's heart was another question entirely.
Deana loved spirits, so that worked on her…
Turning these thoughts over, he started after Shirud a little late, intending to step into the playroom — only for a woman who looked like a staff member to approach and block his path with one outstretched hand.
"Hold on. You can't go in like that."
"Wh-what is the matter?"
Barred at the entrance, Luke was thoroughly flustered.
Why had he been turned away?
Had she somehow discovered that he was actually a hundred-year-old grandfather?
No — that was impossible. No one looking at this exterior could possibly guess his true self. Not unless they possessed that rare form of Mana Sight said to let one see souls directly: Soul Sight.
Surely this woman did not have that vanishingly rare mystic eye?
And if she did — if she had seen his true form — she might well have decided that an old man had no business entering a room full of playing children, and barred him for that reason alone.
If that were truly the case, it would be mortifying beyond words. If someone asked what a decrepit old man thought he was doing in the body of a tiny little girl, Luke would have no answer at all.
"Um… why…?"
"Just a second. Wait right there."
While Luke stood there flushing with those thoughts, the staff woman moved quickly — before the child could grow any more embarrassed — and pulled something from a drawer behind the counter.
"This is…?"
What Luke received was a soft yet firm object, almost like a stopper of some unusual material, along with a cloth cover that felt rather like a sock.
"What is this?"
He was still staring at the baffling items, curiosity mounting, when she spoke again.
"Beastkin kids with horns like yours have to put these on the tips before they can go in. Don't know how? Then big sister will help you."
Smiling kindly, she took the protective gear back from Luke and carefully fitted it over the horns growing at the sides of his head.
The sensation of something covering the tips of the horns connected to his skull was distinctly alien, and a little stifling.
"Hmm. Rather stuffy."
"You still absolutely must not take them off. If your horns poke one of the other kids, someone could get badly hurt. Keep them on, okay? If they come off while you're playing, bring them back and big sister will put them on again."
Only after hearing the unspoken addendum — You keep those on, or you're getting kicked out! — was Luke finally allowed into the playroom.
Shirud had nothing in particular he needed to do on his phone, and yet he could not tear his eyes away from it.
"……."
It was entirely because of the girl sitting right beside him, staring at his phone with wide, unblinking eyes.
Having someone peer at him that intently made it hard to do much of anything. He watched a video for a little while, then — fed up with the feeling that his privacy was being invaded — shielded the phone with his body and said,
"Hey. Why are you staring at mine like that?"
At Shirud's reaction, Luke suddenly realized his own rudeness. He scratched his cheek and looked away.
"Ah. Forgive me, Shirud. That phone of yours was rather… fascinating."
A brief inspection with Mana Sight had revealed that Shirud's device employed a superior form of magical formula — improved in nearly every respect compared to Luke's own phone. Coming across something like that in such an unexpected place, Luke had simply been unable to look away.
"You don't have a phone?"
"I do. I simply cannot use it."
"Why not?"
"Because I have already exceeded today's allotted usage. I lack the authority to remove the lock."
"……."
Did this kid just say her phone got locked because she used it too much?
He wasn't entirely sure, but that seemed to be it. The wording was oddly formal, yet the content itself felt thoroughly childlike.
Come to think of it, a lot of my friends have parents who set time locks so they won't stay on too long.
In Shirud's mind, a layer of mystery surrounding Luke peeled away.
She's just a kid too.
A little — no…
A lot of a weird kid, but a kid all the same.
Not that his own mother had ever put a lock on his phone.
"How long were you even on it?"
"Before it was limited to three hours a day, I poured every waking moment into it."
Luke said it with an awkward little laugh. Honestly, even for him, confessing that was embarrassing. It was information he would never have volunteered if he hadn't felt the need to get closer to Shirud.
As a mage, of course, he had been unable to restrain his scholarly curiosity — but still. Anyone looking at him from the outside would have every right to call him childish, and he would have no defense.
Even so, hearing that story, Shirud found Luke's childlike side somehow endearing. Getting any closer still felt like too much, though, so he kept his tone sharp.
"Yeah, well. You deserved the lock."
"Haha. Is that so?"
Shirud figured that if he spent all day on his phone, his mother would absolutely have done the same thing.
A dry laugh, then a brief, awkward silence.
Luke was the one who broke it.
"I'm sorry, Shirud."
The sudden apology caught him off guard.
"Huh?"
"I've been thinking I was far too abrupt that day. I ought to have given you a proper explanation."
A proper explanation. Yes. That had been missing. At the time the conversation had moved very suddenly, and it had ended in an emergency — forcibly stabilizing Shirud's mana overflow. There had been no time for a full explanation.
"W-what are you talking about?"
Shirud was thrown by the unexpected apology. Was this an apology for the… molestation?
Luke continued.
"What do you believe a Circle is?"
Shirud's prediction missed the mark once again, spectacularly.
Yep. Still a completely unreadable girl.
What was a Circle? Obviously…
"It's a kind of heart condition."
"Hah."
A Circle, a disease? Preposterous.
Luke had vaguely suspected as much from his earlier conversation with Dighton, but hearing it stated so plainly still felt deeply wrong.
"A heart condition…"
Class magic was the safe mainstream of the present age, but Circle magic was still a legitimate method of using mana and the world itself. After months of steady study, Luke had come to understand that Class magic, too, had its roots in Circle magic.
"A Circle is not a heart condition. It is the authority to use magic."
"The authority to use magic…?"
Circle patients could control mana by force of will. But the method always required staking one's life, which made it dangerous — and it was not the proper way at all. That, however, was a problem of the modern age, in which the correct methods had been lost. It did not mean Circle magic itself was inferior.
Luke found it deeply uncomfortable that every achievement of his entire life was being dismissed under the single phrase "heart condition."
A Circle was absolutely not that.
Magic is originally the process by which a person's will defines, calculates, and tunes the world. A Circle is the vessel that holds that will.
If a Circle was a brush, then the world was the canvas. When a person took up the brush and poured will into it, the world changed.
But few people in the world could take up that brush — and fewer still wished to.
So then… why had Shirud taken it up?
"Shirud. How did your Circle come to be?"
"That's…"
Shirud cast back through his memory — to the moment he had realized a Circle had been carved into his heart.
That guy, you know? He acts way too big just because of his connections.
Right? It's not like he's even that special himself.
Exactly. And his pride is ridiculous.
Doesn't he look weird too? White hair? Like some old man.
The things they said about him when he wasn't there. It had made him furious.
Hey. What did you just say?
S-Shirud? H-how long have you been there?
Shameless. They were the sort who only ever said things they would never dare repeat to his face — and that only stoked the rage in Shirud's chest further.
I said, what did you just say!
After that, he didn't remember well. Had he hit one of them? Or had he been the one who got hit?
What he knew for certain was that he had woken up in the nurse's office. A faint pain had lingered in his chest, but at the time he hadn't known it was a Circle.
The kids who had been talking behind his back transferred away after that, or at least stopped showing up — but after the incident, he hadn't particularly wanted to make friends anyway.
"I don't want to talk about it."
"I see."
Luke read the emotion carried in Shirud's words. Along with that uneasy feeling, he sensed Shirud's Circle trembling faintly.
"Then you need not speak of it. Forgive me for dredging up an unpleasant memory."
"…It's not like it has anything to do with you anyway."
Emotional turbulence. For Shirud, with his incomplete First Circle, that alone might be dangerous. But the mana Luke had left behind was still doing its job — helped, no doubt, by the rather dry, emotionally uneventful life Shirud had been living in the meantime.
"Shirud. Do you know how to handle a Circle?"
"…No. What, do you have one too?"
"I do."
Shirud's voice was still low and subdued. Luke answered over that mood with a deliberately light, cheerful tone, as if to blanket it.
"In that case, I shall tell you at once what you ought to aim for."
"What I ought to aim for…?"
The instability of a First Circle was ordinarily resolved by advancing to the Second. Unlike Luke's own body, which demanded an absurd quantity of mana, Shirud should be able to reach it fairly quickly once he grasped the knack.
"Would you give me your hand?"
Shirud felt a little uneasy, and yet somehow he could not refuse. Hesitantly, he held out his hand — and a soft sensation closed around it at once.
Just as expected. His hand had been taken.
S-soft…
Whatever Shirud was thinking, Luke was thinking something along the lines of a child looking embarrassed really is adorable, and began circulating mana.
"Can you feel the flow of mana?"
"Th-the flow of mana?"
Shirud barely managed to pull his wits together. Now that he mentioned it, there was something like a current running through his hand…
"I think I can feel it a little…"
"Good. Then…"
Luke spun the mana in Shirud's hand into a circle.
"What shape is this?"
"…A circle."
"And now?"
"A triangle… Wait. How are you even doing that?"
Shirud was thoroughly astonished by the almost magical feat Luke had just performed.
No — it actually is magic! Moving mana without a wand? That's impossible!
Shock — and then a rising thrill. Seizing the opening, Luke decided he ought to show a little magic and breathe some real will into Shirud.
After confirming that no one nearby was watching them, Luke said,
"With a Circle, things like this become possible as well."
He lightly worked his mana and pictured the phenomenon he meant to produce.
Boys… always did like fire.
A Circle meant the authority to project magic outside one's own body. And what a Second Circle represented was authority over phenomena.
Wind was a phenomenon born of the flow of air. Fire, likewise, was a combustion phenomenon — and therefore fully realizable.
At Luke's fingertip, a tiny flame took shape. It did not merely burn. It shifted form — caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly — and at last left Luke's hand and vanished with a soft pop.
"Whoa…"
It was like something out of a dream.
"Does it interest you?"
"Th-that's amazing! How did you do that? Can I — can I do it too?"
"Impossible. You are still only First Circle. Did I not say this was a goal?"
Luke smiled at the sight of Shirud looking just a little more like a mage.
"Then what can I do?"
Magic safe enough for a child to use… Light, I suppose.
Luke immediately raised a sphere of light on his palm, its brightness carefully regulated. Watching the soft glow wash over Luke's hand, Shirud could not help but marvel.
It's just like a mage out of a comic or a movie!
"How do you do that?"
"First, you must learn how to use a Circle. Fortunately, you can already sense the flow of mana, so simply feeling for the sensation will be the fastest path."
Luke drew Shirud's hand along and brought it to the place where his own Circle rested.
Shirud, on the other hand, nearly jumped out of his skin.
H-her chest…!
Touching a girl's chest — it was mortifying. In that embarrassment Shirud thrashed and tried to pull his hand free, but he could not.
How is a girl this strong…
She was strong.
"Stop thrashing and feel the flow of mana. There — can you feel the Circle turning?"
Luke spun his Circle and raised a Light on his palm. Shirud, however, had no attention to spare for any of that.
"Urgh…"
He had no idea about the mana. He did know it was soft.
-Luke! Luke!!! ……!!
Pai, who had been watching from the side, called out to Luke with an expression of utter shock, letting out a string of warped, unintelligible noise.
"What on earth…"
Looking at Shirud's face, which had gone bright red, Luke suddenly realized what he was doing.
Five thousand years ago, this had been a perfectly ordinary instructional gesture. In a modern age that classified Circles as a medical condition, of course it was not.
The moment Luke let go, Shirud shot backward and put distance between them. He could not even meet Luke's eyes anymore.
"Shirud, this is a misunderstanding. I…"
"D-don't come near me! Kh…!"
Suddenly Shirud clutched at his heart. The precursor to a mana overflow. The mana Luke had left behind must have been fully spent.
"…Shirud. Stay calm for now. You must suppress that emotion."
"This is — this is your fault!"
"Kids~. Friends shouldn't fight, you know."