Misunderstanding
Luke sat on the floor, brow furrowed, working her way through a magic tome.
"……."
The book she had chosen was an exceedingly difficult and abstruse magical text — far beyond anything a child ought to be reading.
Yerna came over and spoke.
"Why don't you take that to a desk? Why are you reading on the floor?"
"There are no free seats, are there? Nor do I wish to disturb those already reading. The floor is quite sufficient for me."
As a fellow lover of books, Luke was not particularly fond of being spoken to mid-read. Yerna, however, had been far too kind to her, so she endured it. Her own desire not to interrupt others at their reading was equally strong — even that man dozing over his book in the corner was, technically, still reading.
"But what on earth are you reading that…"
Yerna peeked at the cover. It read: The History of Magic and Linguistics.
She picked that?
Yerna was taken aback.
Luke was a child who dreamed of becoming a mage. Of course she would have wanted a book like that. It was, after all, essential reading for any mage. But it was a thick, difficult volume that even adults clutched their heads over. Far too advanced for Luke, she thought.
Watching a few customers pass by with curious looks at the child only confirmed she was not the only one who thought so. By any measure, this was not a book a child could understand.
"Th-that book. Did you really pick it because you can understand it?"
Luke closed the volume and answered.
"I had expected as much, yet reading the text is more difficult than I anticipated."
"Well, of course it is. You're a child."
"……."
Yerna took it for a child's sulking. That was not what Luke meant at all.
In a former life, Luke had been the headmaster of an academy. She had read countless dictionaries and papers, and had been better positioned than anyone to understand them. How dense a sentence's meaning might be had never been the problem.
The problem was something far simpler: the gulf between eras.
Five thousand years of separation did not merely mean advances in technology. While overall grammar and the writing system itself had not changed drastically, many characters had been simplified and abbreviated over the centuries, leaving Luke with unfamiliar words. And the magical language unique to Class Magic was utterly different.
The primary material of Circle Magic was will. The caster's will was paramount; magic was a phenomenon that followed upon that will. Thus it had developed toward imagination and the concretization of intent. Class Magic, however, was fundamentally different in concept.
Class Magic took as its primary material a cleanly calibrated incantation — the principle of a thoroughly analyzed phenomenon — and manifested magic through it. Where Circle Magic would answer a firm will to some degree even without an incantation, Class Magic produced entirely different effects from the slightest error in wording or a reversed sequence.
In simple terms, it was the difference between a phonetic script and an ideographic one.
The magical system had changed at its very roots, and the language of an age so deeply shaped by that magic had shifted with it — little by little, and in some places drastically — leaving quite a few sentences Luke simply could not parse.
Of course she was not without archaeological and linguistic knowledge. But interpreting and translating every single sentence as she read was exhausting work.
"If only there were a book written in simpler language…"
"Ah, Luke. Then how about this?"
"Well? Do you like it?"
"I like it very much indeed. The annotations are clean, and it is written in language easy to understand. You have my sincere thanks."
"Really? Well, that's a relief, but…"
Yerna smiled at the way Luke's ears fluttered — clearly in excellent spirits — then looked at the book the child was cradling so carefully and thought:
A workbook…? In all my life, I've never seen a child who actually likes those…
What Luke had ultimately chosen was a workbook titled Catching Up Step by Step: Magic from Class 1 to Class 4.
And she had spent hours in the workbook section comparing volumes before finding this one.
Even the bookstore clerk who had been helping them had looked a little flustered.
"Oh my, this is for upper grades. It might be a bit much for a young child… There aren't many pictures, and the application problems are so dry and difficult that it doesn't sell very well."
"This level suits me perfectly. It is rather interesting."
"Is that so…? You must enjoy studying. Work hard, then."
The clerk had kept glancing back at Luke even as she returned to her post.
In truth, the workbook Luke was holding was not the only one. Quite a few more were weighing down both of Yerna's arms. Most of them were not age-appropriate for Luke, of course. Among them, only one — Finish Your Child's Language Studies in One Volume! — seemed roughly suitable.
But can she really read all of these…?
Somewhere out there, surely, there were children who studied well and enjoyed it. But a child who loved workbooks this much? Probably not.
Still, she felt uneasy. It would be a problem if they bought this many and then never read them. Had she fallen for a bulk-purchase study-materials promotion? Yerna knew all too well how bulk-bought workbooks ended up as dirt-cheap secondhand goods. It had happened to her more than a few times. So of course she was anxious.
"…Are you really going to read all of these?"
"Of course. I would not have purchased them if I did not intend to read them. And I would feel rather sorry toward you, Yerna."
"Right, right…"
Yerna had been thinking of fairy tales at best, but looking at how happy Luke was, she decided it didn't matter. She would let herself be fooled just one more time.
Yerna set out tea for her colleague Siena Porfind, who had come to visit her at the station, and sat down. Siena worked there as an inspector.
"Is tomorrow already your day off?"
"Yeah. Was there something you needed?"
"No, I just forgot. I've been a bit out of it lately."
Yerna laughed lightly and scratched her cheek.
Siena Porfind was a dark elf she had been close with since childhood. They had kept up the friendship steadily into adulthood, meeting like this from time to time.
Moreover, elves were a race born of mana and living with mana. However abundant the mana of a magic city might be, it was artificially arranged mana — different from the mana of nature. Elves had originally made the forest their home. Under the pretext of needing to periodically take in the rich mana of the woods, Siena would drop by whenever Yerna was on duty and freeload a little. It was one of the routines of her workday.
In truth, even natural mana was not all that different. The supposed benefits for skin and sleep were little more than superstition — but when it came to seeing a friend, that kind of excuse was more than enough.
"So what has you so out of it? Don't tell me… you're dating?"
"Are you crazy? Me, dating?"
"Fair enough. Home, forest, home, forest — there's no way you'd be meeting any men. I was just kidding."
"You know that just makes me feel worse, right?"
Feigning anger, Yerna lifted her teacup to her lips and took a sip. The tea was properly steeped, its subtle fragrance quite pleasant. A cup of tea amid the mana of nature truly was something special.
"Then what has been keeping you so busy?"
"That little kid I found last time. Remember?"
"Yeah, I remember. What about her?"
Siena pulled free the hair tie that had been holding her hair back. It looked like the conversation would run long, and she wanted to settle comfortably against the sofa. Her pure white silver hair cascaded down with a soft rustle. Yerna waited for her to finish, gathered her thoughts, and finally spoke.
"Well, I still haven't found a facility that will take her, so I've been looking after her myself. But…"
Gazing up at the night sky, she poured out everything that had happened.
"There was a Circle in her heart?"
"Yeah. You didn't notice during the last examination? Doesn't the scanner pick that up?"
"That was just a basic identity check… It only shows species, sex, height, weight — that sort of thing. Still, good that you found it early. How did it turn out?"
Yerna's expression darkened a little as she answered.
"The Circle has assimilated so perfectly that they say it can't be removed. And her mana sensitivity is extraordinarily high…"
"My. How unusual."
Being unable to erase a Circle meant living the rest of one's life with a bomb in one's heart. Given the nature of Circle Magic — manifested through will — controlling or judging the resulting phenomena was not easy. For someone unaccustomed to handling mana, a Circle could run wild, constrict the heart, cause severe pain, or even kill. In the modern age it was treated as a frightening "disability" or "disease."
Fortunately, Circles forming in the heart were truly rare, and if removed in time everything was fine — so it was generally regarded as a minor ailment of adolescence.
"How did she end up with one, anyway?"
"I don't know. Whether it's an effect of the Circle being inscribed or something else, she doesn't remember."
For a Circle to form naturally required a fairly significant catalyst. A great emotional upheaval in adolescence, a desperate desire, perhaps an intense memory. What had triggered the one in Luke's heart was something only Luke herself could know.
"That… you don't think it might be that?"
Siena spoke with a rather serious expression.
"What?"
Seeing her face, Yerna tensed slightly and waited for what came next.
"This is just my guess, okay? That slave trader you arrested last time… apparently he really was making money selling 'rare animals' illegally to the wealthy. Seems he used to deal in slaves too, back in the day… And hanging around there — he was probably trying to capture and sell rare creatures."
"Is that true?"
Hearing confirmation of what she had already half-suspected, Yerna's brow furrowed. But Siena was not finished.
"Maybe Luke was being severely abused by some noble. And to escape, she had no choice but to awaken her mana even without a wand. Just like the heroes in the fairy tales. Like the Archmage 'Luke Irushi' from the stories. Maybe she thinks she is the Archmage Luke Irushi. And maybe that's why she wants to become a 'mage'…"
"What?"
Siena's hypothesis was plausible. It lined up to some degree with the past Yerna had vaguely imagined for Luke, and sharing a name with a figure from fairy tales was hardly common.
Luke had remembered her parents' names, so the surname Irushi might be correct — but the given name was almost certainly not Luke. After all, Luke was a man's name.
Perhaps she had read the fairy tales of the hero who shared her surname, Irushi, and dreamed of escaping a nightmare of slavery. Those bruises when they first found her… And the examination results saying human, yet that appearance with ears and horns attached… Taking showers with the water still running cold, knowing nothing of cocoa or canned tuna… Those eyes that took in everything as new, and behavior that, even for a child, seemed to lack a girl's most basic common sense…
Things Luke herself did not remember. Perhaps she really had been "raised" like an animal.
"Then the unusual way she talks…"
"Because she thinks she's Luke Irushi, so she speaks the way he would, right? She's just a kid."
"……."
Perhaps Luke really did need to see a psychiatrist.