Butterfly Dream
During lunch, Emma stopped mid-stride at the sound of a slow, steady melody drifting from somewhere nearby.
The resonance of a bow drawn across strings — she didn't even need to look. That was Luke's cello.
Club activities hadn't properly begun yet, and the Music Club still had only one member: Luke.
Ah. If I'd known Luke would be here, I should've come this way sooner.
She'd had music classes straight through first to fourth period today, and between periods she'd been buried in miscellaneous paperwork, never once making it near the clubroom. Only now, at lunch, had she finally found a free moment.
And yet — that child who had hated coming to school so much had actually shown up just to play an instrument?
Choosing music really had been the right call. Emma clenched a small, triumphant fist.
She's improved a lot. Overnight, even.
Yesterday the cello had screeched and scraped with that awful, grating noise. Now it had transformed into a soft, lyrical resonance of strings. Had she practiced diligently at home, just as Emma had taught her?
To improve this much, talent alone wouldn't cut it — effort was essential. That was simply how instruments worked. Even a genius couldn't produce a proper sound without putting in the work. The human body never moved perfectly on the first try.
Still, advancing this far in a single day was talent by any measure.
Heh. I'm almost jealous of how fast she learns.
For a ten-year-old who'd only started the cello yesterday, the tone was remarkably good. Objectively speaking it was still rudimentary, of course — but Luke really had only begun music yesterday. There was no need to be strict about it.
Emma opened the door to the Music Club room.
"Luke, how long have you been here?"
Luke's hands stilled at the sight of Emma entering, and the pleasant trembling of the strings fell silent. The room went quiet with a soft thud.
Luke lifted her head slightly, looked at Emma, and grinned.
"Ah, Emma. I've been practicing since early this morning. Well? Does it sound proper?"
"It's wonderful. I never imagined you'd improve this much in a single day."
"Haha. Your praise leaves me quite at a loss."
Luke wiped away the sweat that half a day of unbroken playing had worked up, then let out a long breath. A thin wisp of white vapor formed and vanished.
Her expression was steeped in satisfaction. The satisfaction of having practiced hard enough to break a sweat, perhaps?
…Wait. Breath vapor?
A foreboding thought struck Emma all at once.
Come to think of it, the clubroom is rather chilly…
The rain had dropped the temperature considerably. After several days of mild weather, today felt unusually cold. But every room at Teag Academy had heating installed. It shouldn't have been this cold.
Emma's eyes snapped to the wall panel that controlled the heater.
Of course. It's off.
Either Luke hadn't known how to turn it on, or it had shut off midway and she'd been too absorbed in practice to notice. What mattered was this: Luke had been left in this freezing room for hours, sweating the whole time.
Emma went straight to Luke and pressed a hand to her forehead. Luke flinched in mild alarm.
"W-what is it all of a sudden?"
The excessive heat under Emma's palm made her jump.
"Luke, your forehead is burning up!"
"Ah. That."
It was probably the heavily modified Fire spell — a single-target buff she'd cast on herself. Wrapping her body in gentle heat would naturally raise her temperature above normal.
"I have a spell wrapped around my body, you see."
"Oh, is that it? I thought… so you had a hand warmer, then."
A magic tool that radiated heat around the body — if she had a hand warmer, a temperature like this wouldn't be so strange. Emma exhaled in relief.
She could have gone on feeling relieved, if only Luke hadn't spoken again a moment later.
"A hand warmer? Fascinating. What does one look li— ah."
There was no hand warmer.
The nurse's office.
Luke lay on a bed, changed out of her sweat-soaked uniform. The school nurse checked the thermometer against her forehead and stuck out her tongue.
"Wow, your temperature really is high."
"No, I'm telling you I'm not sick…"
She'd already dismissed the Fire spell, but residual heat lingered, keeping her body temperature elevated. On top of that, being treated like a patient when she wasn't actually ill had left her faintly embarrassed — her face was slightly flushed.
"With a fever this high? No arguing. Get some proper rest. I'll contact your guardian separately."
Luke sat up with a start.
"Yerna is busy — don't trouble her over nothing!"
It was hunting week; Yerna was surely swamped. And Luke wasn't actually sick, so any worry would be wasted. Contacting her would do no good at all — it would only break Yerna's concentration on her work.
But to the nurse, Luke's protest looked like nothing more than a sick child throwing a tantrum to hide how bad she felt. Why go so far to conceal it?
"Haa… Fine. I won't say anything. But rest properly, all right? And if you feel worse, you tell me."
"…Very well."
Luke watched the nurse draw the curtain and walk away, then let out a deep sigh.
"How inconvenient…"
She glanced at Pai bouncing around the room and sighed again.
"You look rather cheerful about all this."
She had ended up faking an illness entirely against her will. Luke stared up at the ceiling.
Illness, is it… Come to think of it, it's been a very long time since I last fell sick.
Even at three Circles, one developed immunity to most ordinary diseases. And Luke? In his life, he had almost never been laid low by illness. Poison or old age, perhaps — but not disease.
Luke closed his eyes with another sigh.
Lying here like this… it brings back old memories.
Back when he was still young. Around seven, was it? He had overworked himself forcing a second Circle into his heart and come down with a fever. A serious one, as he recalled. He might well have died.
The one who had stayed by his side then was Cale.
"Haa…"
Longing filled Luke's sigh.
Cale and Luke had been friends for a very long time. From the earliest days of childhood. Luke a noble, Cale a commoner — master and squire, formally speaking — yet they had truly respected and trusted each other.
"I miss him. Specimens like you were rare."
A sturdy fellow. Sturdy enough that Luke had occasionally used him as a test subject for magic experiments — though Cale had used Luke as a sparring partner for swordsmanship in return, so it evened out.
"Haa… If only I could go back to those days."
Luke remembered the moment Cale had given his life. The back of the man driving the Holy Spear into the Demon King's heart. The substitute hero who had taken up the duty the Holy Spear's true Hero had abandoned. The great deed of a hero.
"If I had been more perfect then… you wouldn't have had to die that way…"
Unbearable regret forced the words out like a lament.
The oracle had said three Heroes would defeat the Demon King… Yet two of them, Renie excepted, had forsaken their duty. They didn't want to die as playthings of the gods, or some such.
Ridiculous. Once a Hero abandoned their obligation, all that remained for them was a dog's death.
Haa. I'd like nothing more than to get up right now, but…
They would only put her back to bed. Better to sleep a while and rise later.
Luke closed her eyes.
"Hey, Luke. What are you thinking so hard about?"
Scars coiling around the wrists. Hard calluses. A thin, long ponytail of horsehair. Sharp eyes and a solid frame, scars carved across his face and body.
A face Luke knew all too well. Sickeningly well.
"Ah, Cale. Why do you call?"
Cale shrugged. This guy's weird today.
"What are you doing? You're supposed to be brewing the herbs. You really okay zoning out like that while you make it?"
Of course this bastard wouldn't actually be worried about me, Luke thought, and smirked. He answered with easy nonchalance.
"My apologies… I've been a touch tired of late."
"That's what you get for never exercising, you soft noble."
Watching from the side, Renie spoke up.
"Heh. Don't tease him too hard. Lord Irushi is bound to be the most exhausted of all of us."
"Well, true enough."
"It can't be helped, Renie. You are undying, and need no sleep at all… and you, Cale, are already halfway a Hero, so fatigue barely touches you. But I am an ordinary human. Merely one with eight Circles carved into his heart."
"Oi. You call that ordinary?"
Cale's jab didn't so much as twitch Luke's eyebrow. He answered with perfect calm.
"Among the three of us, I am the most ordinary."
"Well, that's true enough. There isn't only one eight-Circle mage in this world."
"Indeed, though…"
Cale clicked his tongue and scratched his head.
Just then, a puff of steam rose from the pot of simmering herbs — the signal of completion. With a gesture, Luke lifted the liquid into the air and mixed it thoroughly. The floating liquid swirled several times, shifting gradually from blue to green. He flicked his fingers with a sharp snap, and the green liquid poured back into the pot, bubbling as it reduced.
Renie plucked a single strand of her hair and steeped it in the liquid. Luke beckoned to Cale. Cale held out a cup with practiced ease, and Luke filled it to the brim with liquid that had, at some point, turned red.
The moment the cup was full, Cale put it to his lips and downed it in one long gulp.
"Khh… Filthy bitter. Can't you make it taste any better?"
"This is the best I can do, as you well know."
"Fuck that. It's seriously goddamn bitter. You try drinking it."
"I must decline. Best to avoid unnecessary expenditure."
"Bullshit."
Luke swept every alchemical tool into his subspace storage and cleaned up the traces — all with a single gesture.
Renie watched him tidy the campsite, then murmured in a voice heavy with sorrow.
"…I'm always sorry, Cale."
"Drop it. I didn't start this expedition to hear that kind of talk."
"Indeed. More importantly, we should move on. If we fail to find another resting place within three days, this expedition is finished."
"…Cale. Your body really is all right, isn't it?"
"Me, Cale Propson — take away the body and there's nothing left. Of course I'm fine."
Cale rose from the rectangular wooden case he'd been sitting on and slung it across his back. Inside, of course, was the Holy Spear — a weapon forged by the gods themselves, capable of felling the Demon King. A weapon saturated with such overwhelming divine power that none but the Hero of the Holy Spear could ever wield it.
It ought to have looked sacred… and yet he looked for all the world like an undertaker.
The death he carried — was it his own, or the Demon King's?
They hadn't known it then, but he was carrying both.
The nurse approached the bed once the restless shifting had stopped, and gently drew back the curtain. She needed to check on the patient.
"…"
Fortunately, the child was sleeping soundly, breathing soft and even. Her expression was quite peaceful — though the things she'd been murmuring earlier still nagged at the nurse.
Had she thought no one could hear?
But the nurse's mother was a bat beastkin with exceptionally keen hearing. Thanks to that inheritance, the nurse could listen to a heartbeat without a stethoscope — though the downside was that she also overheard every useless scrap of sound. She usually filtered it out with earplugs, but today she'd left them out just in case.
They say birds hear daytime words and rats hear nighttime ones…
Bats heard both, didn't they? Optimized for eavesdropping, one might say.
In any case, she drew the curtain again and returned to her seat, turning Luke's mutterings over in her mind.
The talk of "specimens" had been confusing enough. But blaming herself for someone else's death? That wasn't the kind of thing that should come out of a ten-year-old's mouth. It was far too unsettling to brush off.
…I really should contact the guardian after all.
The child had asked her not to… but better to call the guardian than to take a child's word for it and stay silent.