The Senior's Desperate Search
“Looking for a water spirit master with blonde hair and blue eyes. Calling out your name. Jeanie, the ‘Jeanie’ from Dmitry.”
With this many people around, it wasn’t surprising that someone knew me. A few candidates came to mind.
The men who’d run away from home looking for me.
Anyway, my popularity had always been sky-high. Three of them were my real brothers.
“Who could it be…… Should I go check?”
“What? Where are you suddenly going?”
“Let’s head over there. I think I know the person.”
Chad looked reluctant.
“Akia’s waiting alone at the restaurant. Without the group, some guys might harass her.”
“Ah, right. You guys go ahead. I’ll…… No, I’ll take Ash with me.”
If I wandered off alone, he’d hover like an overprotective mother bird, so I had to bring him along.
I finally understood why Ash’s nickname was the Imperial Mother Bird.
“You’re really going?”
“Yeah. Let’s go, Ash.”
“Yes!”
The rest of the group looked bewildered at being left behind, but Ash followed right behind me as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Like a loyal, well-trained attendant—or a faithful hound. He would’ve been disappointed if I hadn’t asked him to come.
[Master, what about me!]
[You’re obviously coming too.]
[Ahem!]
Two hounds now? One of them was a bit strange, though.
***
We had to push through the dense crowd for quite a while. The unknown person calling my name just had to be right in the middle of the busiest intersection where the crowds overlapped the most.
Before long, the voice reached my ears as well.
“I’m looking for someone! Her name is Jeanie, nineteen years old. She travels with a snake. A white snake…… Could you take a look at this portrait? She looks like this. Excuse me, this……”
By the way, it had only been about two minutes since we split from the group, yet Ash had heard this voice from that far away? Even with the slow movement through the crowd, how had he caught it?
Anyway, this guy wasn’t ordinary either.
While lost in thought, I found myself struggling to stay upright amid the throng.
The voice was audible beyond the passing people, but I couldn’t see the speaker, so I forced my way forward and ended up wedged between bodies.
Half-dragged along, Ash quickly grabbed me.
“You’re late!”
“I’m sorry.”
“You should’ve rescued me before I got stuck!”
“I’m sorry. Truly sorry. I didn’t know you’d suddenly head that way…… Are you all right?”
Jeanie Crowell could bolt in any direction without warning!
I kept pushing through the roughest spots. It seemed like the shortest path.
“Please! Just look once! Has anyone seen someone who looks like this? Blonde hair, blue eyes…… Her name is Jeanie. She has a violent temper and will hit you if you bother her. She hits really hard. Have you seen her?”
Good grief. Anyone listening would think he was searching for a lost vicious dog.
I’d already guessed his identity from the voice, but seeing his face in person stirred different feelings.
It was nice to see him after so long. Watching him search so earnestly made me feel a bit sorry for him, too.
[Bright looks like he’s lost some weight. Is that what they call haggard?]
[Yeah. He’s lost quite a bit.]
[Why did he end up like that? The only thing worth looking at was his face, and now he’s gotten ugly.]
[Because he thought I was dead? And it’s because of the information he gave me that I went to Elan and things turned out that way.]
The man holding up a portrait that looked nothing like me and shouting at the top of his lungs had curly brown hair, rare luminous purple eyes, and noticeably good skin—an objectively handsome young mage, Bright Keniyan.
The weight loss gave him a somewhat fragile beauty, but he hadn’t lost his original intellectual pretty-boy charm.
I’d always taught him that a man’s face was everything, yet the dark circles under his eyes made it clear he’d been neglecting self-care.
“I’m looking for someone! Please help me!”
Bright even used firework magic to draw attention, but despite his efforts, very few people showed interest.
The portrait was a complete mess to begin with.
The statue last time had been the same. The artistic standards for portraits in this world were far too low. To capture my beauty, they’d need at least high-definition video.
“Hey, hey! Did you see that guy just now? He was using magic while talking.”
“Whoa…… There really are skilled people in big cities.”
“I saw a spirit master yesterday too? It was really fascinating.”
The passersby were more impressed by Bright’s magic skills than the inaccurate portrait. When someone mentioned “spirit master,” Bright dropped everything and frantically chased after them.
“Did you just say spirit master? Where did you see one!”
“What’s wrong with you, mister!”
“Please tell me!”
I’d never used spirit magic outside the inn room, so the passerby definitely hadn’t seen me.
But Bright was so desperate that he clung to the man’s legs and begged. Unable to watch any longer, I clicked my tongue and approached from behind.
Standing with a crooked posture, I called out to him after a long time.
“Hey. Idiot senior.”
The Bright inside me was nothing more than a good-looking idiot or a handsome fool. Was that the same thing?
Anyway, at my indifferent call, Bright froze for a moment before slowly turning around.
Still sitting on the ground clutching the passerby’s legs, he panted with an incredulous expression, then crawled toward me in the blink of an eye.
I hadn’t wanted to witness how quickly a person could crawl across the floor, but there it was right in front of me.
“Jeanie! Is it really you?”
Bright was already clinging to my legs.
“It’s real, right? Not an illusion. Hwaaaah! I found you! Jeanie!”
“Ugh, my ears.”
“Do you know how sad I was, thinking you were dead—sniff, sob!”
“All right, stop crying and talk.”
“I…… I was going to die with you…… Hic!”
“Stop!”
It was festival season, just like now.
When I’d been kidnapped by slave traders and dramatically rescued, he’d cried like this too. Bright sobbed pitifully as if he were the one at fault, then swallowed his tears at my disgusted look and forced the words out.
“Hic, sniff……! But then I thought…… If I’m going to die anyway, it’d be better to die while looking for you. If you commit suicide, you can’t go to heaven……? So…… Hic, I was going to let the dragon kill me……”
“Don’t say such ominous things!”
I smacked Bright’s mouth with a loud slap as he wiped his tears with a pitiful face, yet he laughed while crying, saying it felt good.
“It really is you, Jeanie. You’re alive.”
“……Good grief. You idiot.”
“Want to hit me one more time?”
“Pervert!”
Right. This was the kind of man he was.
I should just leave him behind since we didn’t match. As I roughly brushed him off and turned away, Bright stubbornly clung to me. He could cry his melodrama alone!
“I won’t cry! Jeanie! I won’t cry!”
When I glanced back suspiciously, his face was still streaming with tears.
A grown man well past marriageable age—why was he acting like this? People could get kidnapped by dragons sometimes.
“I’m leaving behind anyone who cries.”
[Stop that right now.]
“Look, I stopped. Please just take me with you……”
An adult man sprawled on the ground crying like a tragic protagonist was such a rare sight that it drew plenty of stares. Good grief. And this guy was the top student in the magic department. A disgrace to Drike Academy.
Even the polite Ash seemed to be seeing something like this for the first time, his eyes wider than ever.
Don’t be surprised. That’s your rival. Feeling tense yet?
***
Once Bright calmed down and stopped crying, he finally looked like a normal person again.
At least on the outside, he looked perfectly fine.
“Jeanie, I’m so glad you’re alive. I can’t tell you how happy I am. I prayed every single day.”
His eyes were swollen, yet he grinned like an idiot and followed closely, gripping my collar. I couldn’t bring myself to chase him away like before—there was something pitiful about him.
He resembled a poor little boy who’d traveled “30,000 miles in search of his mother.”
Even while finding him annoying, I couldn’t be harsh because I knew too well that his “I’ll die without you” act wasn’t an exaggeration—it was genuine.
Bright had cared for me consistently for nine years.
At first, I thought it was just guilt from losing me at the festival when I was little, so I’d planned to use him as much as possible.
I made him steal forbidden books only adults could read, forced him to make magic tools without paying, had him cast shields and attacked until he coughed up blood.
I figured he’d give up eventually, but before I knew it, nine years had passed.
[Good grief, I really can’t be cruel.]
[……That was you not being cruel? I thought you had no blood or tears and were made of stone.]
[Shut it, you.]
[You do know what ‘not being cruel’ means, right?]
[That’s exactly why you’re still alive, Rai.]
[Oh, right!]
Don’t forget! I’m the Saint of this district.
The symbol of sacrifice, the hero of all people, the owner of a noble soul. Most of the praise was nauseating, but the fact that I deserved it remained unchanged.
“By the way, senior, how did you figure out I was here? How did you find me?”
Since he was six years older and my senior at the academy, using formal speech with Bright had become second nature.
That didn’t mean he was treated better than Ash. Both were younger men in appearance.
“I kept searching for you. At first, I wandered around following the dragon’s traces. I mainly checked the Magic Tower’s newsletters…… and learned about an unsolved mass murder case involving water magic. All the victims were slave traders?”
“……Ahem.”
“Knowing how much you hate slave traders, I went to a city called Mielta in Moran just in case. Not many mages can use such wide-range killing magic.”
“Hohoho, that incident has nothing to do with me?”
Damn it, he’d figured it out perfectly.
This was why people who knew you were dangerous. Bright was one of the rare people who knew me far too well.
“But when I got there, they said it was the dark elves’ doing. It was definitely too cruel for something a human would do…… And dark elves occasionally tear apart slave traders, so I was quite disappointed. But then I heard a rumor that you were alive!”
[Guess we didn’t get caught.]
“That you’d escaped from the dragon’s clutches! I rushed back to the academy! But you weren’t there……”
Bright’s grand adventure.
His face showed a mix of joy and sorrow as he recounted his past hardships.
“If you weren’t at the academy, I thought you’d be at home, so I went to the Crowell territory too, but I couldn’t find any trace of you there either. The headmaster refused to tell me your whereabouts…… and no one knew where you were.”
“Somehow I’ve become someone who needs quite a bit of security, haven’t I?”
“Yeah, so I used my head.”
“While you were at it, did it ever occur to you to just wait quietly at the academy?”
“Come to think of it, you hate warping, don’t you, Jeanie? I figured you’d definitely be traveling by land. Then I heard about Tumdra. Robenin was going to have a public duel with Count Trenfe…… I thought you’d definitely detour here instead of going straight!”
Well, if I heard that news and didn’t go watch, I wouldn’t be Jeanie Crowell.
“Oh…… Not bad, senior.”
“Right? I thought I’d be able to find you if I came here! So I took a warp straight to this place! I waited for you in that spot for a whole week!”
Should I call this smart or stupid? It was pitiful, really.
Using such a good brain just to find me at full capacity.
“At least your dedication…… Should I praise you for that?”
“Yeah!”
“You’re lucky, too. These days they say the warp lines are so crowded you have to wait a week just to use one.”
“I’m in the same field, Jeanie. I work at the royal palace communication room and I’m a noble.”
“Ah, I see…… I. Ohoho?”
A good idea just came to me.