Direction
When a person is startled badly enough, the body locks rigid. I first learned that in a collapsing mine tunnel.
I had not expected to learn it again quite like this.
“Ah—”
I froze in the very posture in which I had flung the front door open, and blinked.
For an instant I wondered whether I had come to the wrong house. But no matter how I turned it over, this was unmistakably the Oslo household at 15 Kram Street.
Which meant the present situation could be summed up in a single line.
There is a stranger in the living room.
No. Not a stranger, strictly speaking.
That red hair, that passionate gaze, that solid frame of muscle and bone—it could only belong to Professor Luise of the Federal Magic University.
The description needed correcting.
Professor Luise Ehrlich is in the living room.
Why is there a professor in the living room?
And more to the point—why is she half-naked?
I had forgotten even to breathe, driving my brain as hard as it would go in an attempt to make sense of the scene, when—
“Who’s there?”
Luise looked my way.
She did not so much as think of covering herself. The robe she had thrown on had already abandoned any pretense of being clothing.
I shut my eyes at once, and, judging even that insufficient, clapped a hand over them as well. Only after I had managed to pull the front door shut did I speak, almost pleading.
“Could you… please put some clothes on properly…?”
But she did not.
“What? Why’s some boy got a key to our house?”
Far from screaming or fleeing, Luise started toward me in long, unhurried strides. I recoiled in a panic and tried to bolt, only to find the door at my back.
“E-excuse me?”
“Huh. I’ve seen that face somewhere… oh.”
She cried out as if the memory had just struck her.
“Fifty points?”
And at the same moment—
“Unnieee! What on earth are you doing?!”
Lena’s shriek rang through the whole house.
“Eugene, cover your eyes properly!”
A moment later came the thud of Lena hauling Luise bodily up to the second floor.
The strength went out of my legs. I sank into a crouch in the entryway as if my knees had given way, and opened the eyes I had kept shut—because keeping them closed only summoned that bare, generous figure into my mind of its own accord.
I will admit it. My imagination is far better than it has any right to be.
It is the spring of my twentieth year.
A man can be forgiven, can’t he?
In the end, Luise Ehrlich and Luise, eldest daughter of the Oslo family, were one and the same.
“Pfft—sorry. So you’re Eugene. Gave you a sight you shouldn’t have seen.”
Dinnertime. Only now properly dressed, Luise laughed with open, booming cheer from her place at the table.
One of her arms had come down across my shoulders with a solid thump.
That told me two things: that Luise stood close to five foot ten, and that, for all my desperate resistance, she had claimed the seat beside me anyway.
“Haha…”
I laughed awkwardly and looked away.
I could not face straight ahead. Lena was seated opposite me, eyes blazing.
Whether or not she noticed my predicament, Luise went on, patting my shoulder.
“House of five women, you see. I’d heard a boy had moved in, but it’s been so long since I actually came home that I clean forgot and went about things the usual way. After a wash, wandering the living room without a stitch on—that was my routine.”
“Unnie… what exactly are you saying?”
“Lena. Don’t look at me like that. If you want to get close to someone quickly, you’ve got to offer up an intimate story or two. That’s how it works.”
So saying, Luise turned to me.
“Right?”
Her expression might have been struck from the very phrase staring a hole through someone. Give the wrong answer, though, and I had a feeling tomorrow morning’s teacup would contain something other than tea leaves, so I mumbled my way past the question.
Awkward as it was, I hardly needed to keep the conversation going myself. She looked more than ready to unburden herself to the rest of the family.
Susan was the first to speak.
“Luise. Have you moved out of the faculty dormitory?”
“No. Term’s started, so I thought I’d drop by and see everyone’s faces. I only meant to stay the night.”
“Even so, come home at least once every two weeks. I’ll forget what my own daughter looks like.”
“Haha, I will. The research that had me buried is more or less finished, so I’ll visit more often.”
Eldest daughter, after all, whatever else one might say. Seen like this, she made a thoroughly dependable one.
Even if she was still using me as an armrest.
A warm supper carried on around us.
Nearly ten years separated Luise, the eldest, from Lena, the third. Harsh words aside, Lena must have relied on her more than she let on; partway through the meal she stopped glaring and began asking about work, and letting slip the small worries she usually kept to herself.
Listening to the two of them, I leaned toward Susan and whispered. The twins were not at the table.
“What about Ellie and Sally?”
“I put them to bed early. Those two adore Luise.”
“Then wouldn’t it be better to let them see her?”
“They don’t adore her in any ordinary way. Sally might manage, but Ellie would chatter at Luise’s side all night.”
So the affection ran that deep.
Well. I stole a glance at Luise and felt the certainty settle again.
The imposing presence I had felt from her in the lecture hall was nowhere to be found. What remained was a woman who laughed easily, the air of a familiar older sister. Yes—I had forgotten, but if one stopped to think about it, I was sharing a table with my professor.
Better to be used as an armrest than to sit so rigid I could not tell whether the food was going into my mouth or my nose.
“Hahaha!”
Each time Luise laughed, bright and unguarded, a faint smile tugged at my own mouth.
Something in it resembled Benjamin’s laugh. Contrary to that first impression, a rough, unpolished warmth clung to her.
Yes. The first impression was the problem. Because of it, my head was still in a muddle.
“Ah.”
Speaking of Benjamin—that reminded me. There was something I wanted to ask her.
“Professor.”
“Call me unnie.”
“…Luise-unnie. There’s something I’ve been wondering.”
Luise’s face shaped itself into a silent what is it? The look was so comical that I found myself asking, far too lightly—
“Are you married?”
“Huh?”
“What?”
“I’m sorry?”
Only after a hush had fallen over that cheerful supper did I realize how severely I had abbreviated the question.
“Oh—my name?”
Once the meal was over and Luise had grasped what I had actually meant, she burst out laughing.
“Ahahaha! You could have just asked it straight!”
She laughed until a tear squeezed out, and my face burned hot enough to kill me. When the fit finally passed she spoke again, still flushed.
“All right. Eugene. Shall we talk in my room?”
“Sorry?”
“My room. Second floor.”
She gestured toward the stairs as if it were nothing.
The second floor. Since I had taken the storage room for a bedroom I had scarcely gone up there, and even when I had, I had never set foot in anyone’s room. Lena hated anyone—especially me—entering hers, and so the second floor had become, of its own accord, forbidden ground.
Before I nodded, I glanced at Lena. She sat at the table with her arms folded, looking as sullen as ever, but the moment our eyes met she jerked her head aside.
“You don’t exactly need my permission, do you?”
“Well. Even so.”
“…Don’t come into my room.”
Having secured that not-quite-permission, I followed Luise up the stairs.
“Come in. It’s a bit of a mess.”
Her room stood just at the head of the stairs, and the scene inside was, to put it bluntly, thoroughly chaotic. Meticulous Susan would never have left a room in such a state. Which meant Luise had reduced it to this in a matter of hours.
I stepped inside, did my best to ignore the underwear lying on the floor, and shut the door. Luise dropped into the room’s single chair and crossed her legs as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I hunted for somewhere to sit and, in the end, perched on the edge of the bed.
She swept her hair back and spoke slowly.
“You’re wondering why I’m Luise Ehrlich, and not Luise Oslo.”
“Yes.”
“Hmm. Where do I start…”
She rubbed her chin.
“Eugene. You crossed over from the Empire to learn magic, so it’s safe to call you a magic scholar in the making. No question about it, right?”
I answered with rather more gravity than the moment seemed to call for.
“You must never say that anywhere.”
“Obviously. Anyway—do you remember what I said in the first lecture?”
The first lecture. I did.
“That magic is a vector, and that direction matters. Something like that?”
“Right. That’s exactly why I’m Luise Ehrlich. And for the record, I’m not married. A very young twenty-nine.”
The aside aside, I thought it through slowly. What did direction have to do with a name?
Fortunately, Luise picked the explanation back up.
“The truth is, I could have become Luise Oslo whenever I liked. I just decided to keep my old surname. Ehrlich.”
Her old surname.
“Don’t ask for the details. You know how it is—what happened before we became a family is something we don’t ask about, if we can help it. That’s our unspoken rule.”
I nodded carefully.
Her smile returned. She waved a hand, a short breath of a laugh escaping her.
“Well, I set the mood for nothing. The reason’s simple, really. I wanted to make my name as a magic scholar, but the field already had an ‘Oslo.’”
“Ah.”
The moment she said it, an old man’s face rose in my mind. Benjamin Oslo. A self-proclaimed has-been of a theoretical magic scholar.
Even so, I could not quite accept it. Was there a formula, an effect, something that bore the name Oslo? He was the sort who would die before boasting of himself, and so, though I had been Benjamin’s pupil, I had not the faintest idea what research he had done.
When I said as much, it was Luise who looked startled.
“Eugene. You don’t know what Benjamin accomplished?”
“I’m ashamed to say I don’t.”
“That foolish old man… You’ll find out on your own even if I don’t tell you. Anyway, if I were Luise Oslo, I could leave some tremendous achievement behind and people still wouldn’t be able to tell whether it was Benjamin’s or mine, would they?”
Luise grinned.
What lived in her eyes was, without question, passion and ambition.
“I’m going to leave my own mark on history.”
“…”
“You might think me ungrateful. But this is my desire. This is the direction I’m going to walk.”
She looked straight at me.
“Eugene. I said it in class, but I’ll say it again. If you’re going to live as a magic scholar, you’d do well to set your own direction firmly.”
“Direction, you mean.”
“Yes. This is a world where it’s easy to lose your way.”
Direction.
My thoughts were deepening when Luise let out a short laugh. She had no wish, it seemed, to let the mood sink. Both hands came down on my shoulders.
“Take your time thinking it over. I’ll be putting out a paper before long. This time I’m carving my name into history for certain, so watch closely.”
“…Haha. I’ll be looking forward to it.”
“Good!”
Luise laughed, bright and unburdened.
A few weeks later, a paper was completed under Luise’s name.
It had not yet been formally published, so whether the paper would leave her mark upon the history of magic remained uncertain.
One thing, however, was certain.
The number of auditors in the Type 2 Magic practicum I was taking had grown sharply. To exaggerate only a little, there was scarcely room to set a foot down.
Before a blackboard dense with writing, red hair tossed and scattered.
Watch a sight like that, and one begins to predict without permission. Perhaps, in the not-so-distant future, Luise’s direction will bear fruit.
“All right. If you turn to the next page—”
I let myself imagine it.