Duality
People are fond of calling humankind the lord of all creation.
A being that knows it exists, that thinks, that brings value into the world—a creative form of life never before found upon this blue earth. That is the reason they give.
And yet even those who cry the title most stoutly are, now and then, reduced to something no better than a primitive beast. In most cases it happens the moment the opposite sex becomes entangled in the matter.
It is not always a bad thing.
Where the fondness runs both ways, whatever one does will look dashing or lovely, and who would bother to object? There are times, too, when turning beast is simply the more effective course.
The trouble begins when only one side is sincere.
Absent any premise of mutual regard, a beast is nothing but a beast. Reckless wildness is meant to be governed by cold reason; presume too hastily that the other party is already your lover, and the air turns murderous. That much was a law of nature.
And now—
"That's enough. You're unsightly."
"Wh-what?!"
There he stood before my eyes: a man who had meant, by way of a duel, to flaunt a mature allure in which wildness and intellect were perfectly joined—only to be called unsightly by the very person he fancied.
That single word must have cut deep. He had frozen exactly as he was, spellbook in hand, still holding that coquettish pose.
"......"
No pity stirred in me. He really was unsightly.
We had not known one another for even thirty minutes, and still I could make it out well enough. The man, Evarist, was straining with everything he had to look good before the girl, and was laboring under the delusion that he had very nearly won her. The girl, for her part, had not a speck of interest in him.
I took a proper look at the impression I had, until then, only glanced at.
Modest ornaments, judiciously combined, gave her clothing an antique elegance, and that was what struck me first. She seemed younger than I was; a trace of girlhood still lingered in her face. The air she wore, however, was a long way from a girl's.
Lucidity, and decisiveness.
Not the stuff of a joke. A genuine fragment of a true woman of business was there.
"L-Lena."
"Please don't address me so familiarly."
Had she been enduring it for a long while? Words began to burst from those prim lips like grapeshot.
"You spoke to me because you meant to form a discussion circle for young intellectuals, did you not? I accepted because you said you intended to pursue it as a business as well... but why me, to begin with? I am still a minor, and a student besides."
"That's—because you're famous as a genius of business."
"Empty rumor. Exaggeration."
"Lena. Youngest advisor the telegraph office has ever had, a prodigy of investment—I consider you indispensable to our circle."
"Stop. You've left the point."
The girl, Lena, shook her head.
What those large eyes held was thorough calculation, and disillusionment.
"Be honest with me. It was never for so grand a reason, was it?"
"Wh-what did you say?"
"I kept hoping something might change over the course of three meetings. Nothing has—except that the number of lackeys on hand to sing your praises has gradually grown. I am not so idle a person as to indulge a farce like this."
"......"
"And a duel? What is that supposed to be? If you wanted to look good in front of me, showing me that you were giving your best would have been quite enough. There was no need to seize some blameless stranger and torment him."
Her gaze sank, cold as it could go.
"You did the opposite. A man with no ability and nothing but bluster. The sort of person I despise most."
"...Heh. Lena. Are you taking this gray-haired bastard's side?"
"I am taking the side of the person who was wronged. Not the side of the unsightly one."
Cold.
Along the fringe of the clamorous square, a pocket of absolute silence came into being.
Lena had not troubled to pack her words with intricate logic. Merely setting out the facts was enough to convey, and convincingly, how paltry a human being this Evarist was—to herself, to him, to his six lackeys, and even to me, standing off to the side scratching my cheek.
I was just weighing whether a word of comfort might be in order, watching him tremble from head to toe.
"Gray hair—!"
"It's Eugene."
"You dared insult me... The duel continues! Raise your spellbook!"
Around then, I flicked a glance at Lena.
We had never once exchanged a word, and yet somehow a conversation passed between us on looks alone. Its contents ran roughly thus.
—This man seems to have lost his mind.
—He does, doesn't he.
—What should we do?
—I'm sorry, but could you deal with him? Just enough.
—All right.
A nod closed the exchange. I drew the spellbook from my bag and took it in my left hand.
I did not, of course, strike any peculiar pose.
"How does this duel work?"
"Simple. The one who goes first presents a spell, and the one who follows copies that same spell. You trade the right to attack, and whoever can no longer copy the other's magic loses!"
So that was the rule.
For an instant I thought I might be at a disadvantage. If Evarist truly was an undergraduate at a magic university, he would have learned both Type 1 Magic and Type 2 Magic, and the number of spells at his disposal would far exceed mine. All I had was Type 1 Magic, picked up on my own.
In that case the strategy I ought to take was obvious.
Difficulty.
I would contest him on the difficulty of the magic itself, until copying it was utterly impossible.
Just then Evarist beckoned me, arrogance drawn to its fullest.
"I'll yield the first move."
"......"
I gave no answer. Magic would speak for me.
I recited the activation phrase of a spell that had become as familiar as my own hands and feet.
⟨ Disc ⟩
A single droplet welled up from my outstretched right hand.
Perhaps he had caught the activation word. Arms folded, Evarist let out a harsh sneer.
"Pfft. A mere Type 1 spell, Disc? Bringing a beginner trick like that into a duel—you're worse than a child passing in the street."
"Quiet."
"...?"
I needed to concentrate. Even for me, this was magic of a very high order.
The droplet, no larger than two joints of a finger, began to spin, and in the blink of an eye it had become a broad disc. Its speed climbed higher still—perhaps a second in all. Evarist, who had been swaggering to the full, flinched; even Lena, who had looked entirely unversed in magic, opened her eyes wide at a casting speed that radical.
But the spell was not finished.
I bent my brows and drew them together.
A trance.
And I imagined.
"...Fold."
The disc began to warp.
Folding. Rolling in on itself. Tearing. Spreading flat again.
"Ngh."
A spell I had practiced over and over in a cramped little room. Since that day, how many hours had I poured into reproducing it?
I had not yet properly learned the scholarship of magic. I was lending the thing necessity through the foundational sciences, and still more than half of it ran on instinct, so that my head felt ready to split.
Even so.
Even then.
Because I had yearned for it, and yearned again. Because I had practiced, and practiced again.
At a certain moment, it bore fruit.
"Hah—!"
When I let out the breath I had been holding, a single blue rose hung before my eyes, swaying at its leisure on the wind.
⟨ Flowering ⟩
My first Innate Magic.
The original belonged to Benjamin, yes. But the sweat and labor that had gone into reverse-engineering this spell were not things anyone could lightly dismiss.
Concealing the tremor in my hand as best I could, I grinned.
"Go on. Copy it. You're second."
There was no answer.
The spellbook Evarist Dumas had been gripping tumbled across the ground.
"It seems the match is settled."
"Ah—Lena!"
Evarist, as if his soul had left him, reached out a hand. Lena did not so much as look at him.
She came toward me instead and seized my wrist, firm.
"Come with me."
"Uh—uhh."
Seen from a distance, Fraussen gave a strong impression of a planned city, cut and measured to the last.
Leave the great avenues and the squares, though, and enter the districts where people actually lived, and that impression began to come apart. The vigor of people packed into every narrow alley—I could feel it.
"A livelier city than I expected."
"What was that?"
"Nothing. Talking to myself."
Lena, who had tilted her head, presently let go of my wrist.
And then she bowed her head.
"Thank you."
"Hm?"
I could not recall having done anything that called for thanks.
While I stood bewildered, Lena straightened, drew a deep sigh, and shot a glare into empty air.
"Thanks to you, I was able to shake that man off."
"Aha."
"He summoned me on a matter of practical business, so I told him any number of times that I had not the slightest interest in relations between men and women, and he refused to hear a word of it. Eugene, was it? Allow me to thank you once more."
"Being thanked for a thing like this, I'm not sure what reaction I'm supposed to have..."
At that, Lena let out a small "ah" and performed a perfectly dry little pantomime of surprise.
"I suppose that would be the case."
She considered a moment, then looked up at me as if something had occurred to her.
"You aren't from Fraussen, are you?"
"No. The travel bag gave it away? I arrived today."
"Then you won't know your way around Fraussen. Tell me the address you're bound for, and I'll show you the road. I'll walk with you as far as our directions coincide."
My destination.
I could hardly admit that I had ducked into a restaurant while fretting over precisely that problem. There was far too much tangled history to explain it simply.
After a brief deliberation, I decided.
"Then I'll take you up on it."
Benjamin's family home.
Waiting until my life was on a steadier footing before I called would not, I suspected, make them any less startled. Lately I had even begun to wonder whether I had no sense of direction at all. Better, while I had the chance, to accept the help and visit the Oslo family at once.
I called up the address I had memorized.
"I want to go to Kram Street."
"Oh. Fortunate. I'm bound for Kram Street myself."
Lena's brows curved.
If Dorothy was the sort whose feelings ran rich while her way of showing them was clumsy, Lena seemed nearer the sort whose feelings ran rich and who simply declined to show them. Did she treat people in a businesslike manner as a rule?
For me, that was a good thing. At the very least, I sensed not the slightest aversion toward gray hair.
We crossed several alleys, came out onto a boulevard, and walked for a while. Finding the way looked harder than I had expected; I was glad I had asked for help.
Lena's steps halted before a long, straight thoroughfare.
"This is Kram Street. If you know the number, you can find it at once. Which is it?"
"Number fifteen."
"...The number matching as well is a little strange."
Another coincidence, it seemed.
Lena tilted her head, but I was content to be getting proper directions, and I followed her.
"This is number fifteen."
"Thanks. Now I only have to find which house the number 20178 points to."
"...!"
The next instant she rose onto her toes and seized me by the collar.
Those great eyes brimming with suspicion, Lena pressed me.
"What are you? A stalker?"
"Uh—huh?"
"What business do you have at our house?"
Setting aside the change in her manner of speech, a phrase I could not let pass had come out of Lena's mouth.
Our house?
Feeling a cold sweat break out, I asked.
"...Your name, by any chance."
"Lena Oslo. Third daughter of the Oslo family."
Ah.
"This time I'll be the one asking. You. What are you?"