In the Dark (3)
Ian sometimes really seemed like an idiot.
Especially when animals were involved. Just thinking back a few days was enough proof.
He had insisted on feeding a wild cat infamous for its foul temper up on the back mountain, and come home with his clothes completely caked in mud. His hand was covered in scratches that had even drawn blood, yet instead of getting angry he just grinned happily that the cat had finished every last bite.
And that wasn’t all. The nuns never gave them much to eat, yet he would carefully save his own bread just to share it with the stray puppies.
He was kind… truly kind. But sometimes he was a strange person whose thoughts I simply couldn’t follow. He made me keep watching him, made me worry he would get into some kind of trouble, so I ended up trailing after him wherever he went.
Which was exactly why I had spent so long searching for him today after he vanished again, only to finally find him like this.
“……Ian, what are you doing there right now?”
At the sheer disbelief in my voice, the boy crouching in front of the fire lifted a face smeared black with soot.
“Hm? Oh. Trying to open this.”
“Ian. Have you completely lost your mind?!”
Above the crackling firewood, inside a pot of water boiling furiously, the pitch-black metal box that the terrifying-looking beastkin woman had handed over yesterday was being thoroughly stewed.
“Hmm. No luck after all.”
“How was that ever going to work?! Seriously, Ian… what if they drag you off for breaking it? Last time you—”
I let Lucy’s fretting and foot-stomping wash over one ear while I fished the boiling box out of the pot with a pair of tongs.
I had tried every ridiculous method I could think of over the past day. I had smashed it with rocks, hurled it against walls, even rounded up every orphan with a bit of muscle and had them haul on ropes together. When it still showed no sign of opening, I wondered if mana might be the answer and sat cross-legged in meditation like the protagonists of every novel I’d ever read.
Mana, my foot. Not so much as a speck of power stirred inside me.
So in the end, half in resignation, I had simply dumped the thing into a pot and boiled it. Hmm… as expected, even a metal box wasn’t going to expand from nothing more than the temperature of boiling water.
“Honestly… Ian, you always—”
“Lucy, any progress on your end?”
I smoothly redirected the conversation. The girl who had been scolding nonstop quietly averted her eyes. The Testing Box she fidgeted with and finally held out was, just like mine, completely unmarred—not a single scratch.
“…That’s because I haven’t really tried properly yet.”
“What? So you’re in the same boat.”
“No! Unlike you, I’m at least—”
Twelve children had been selected from the yard for conscription, and Lucy was one of them. The officer had even praised her outstanding talent in both magic and physique, hadn’t he? Outwardly he had only offered a curt “Excellent,” of course. Yet even someone as gifted as Lucy seemed to have no clever solution.
“Lucy, can you see mana?”
“Mana? Um… I’m not really sure.”
She wriggled her fingers in the empty air. A faint ripple rose. My eyes couldn’t catch any clear light or shape, yet a strange sensation washed over me, as though the world itself were gently undulating outward from the point her fingers touched.
Then something invisible brushed softly against my cheek with a light tap.
“…Ian, how was that?”
“…? How was what?”
“…Never mind. You can’t see it.”
Lucy’s lips pouted in disappointment as she withdrew her hand. Well, from the standpoint of someone who couldn’t even see the mana that had just touched his cheek, opening this box the proper way was already hopeless.
Which left only one option.
“…You’re about to try something weird again.”
“When have I ever done anything weird?”
“Every single time you make that face you cause an accident.”
Leaving Lucy’s flat-eyed glare behind me, I picked up the now-cooled box while she was still talking. If strength and mana wouldn’t work, then I would simply have to find the key.
Unlike the leisurely capital of the Empire, mornings at this rural nunnery where I had been dispatched began rather early.
I was woken not by the soft knock of a careful maid from the main house or the officers’ quarters in the imperial palace, but by the noisy crowing of a rooster. The crude wooden ceiling—lacking any luxurious canopy or glittering chandelier—had grown surprisingly familiar after only a few days.
I sat up on the old bed. The mattress had so little spring left that it creaked and sank under any real pressure, yet for what this shabby, impoverished monastery could offer it was practically a luxury.
I had insisted that since I was overseeing the tests I could sleep on straw like the children, but the abbess had nearly fainted and shoved me straight into the guest room. Even when I repeated that my subordinates were comfortably billeted in the village below and that I was alone, her concern never lessened.
“Ugh…”
I stretched my spine long and slow, lengthening muscles that had stiffened overnight. Without quite meaning to, I dropped onto all fours atop the bed, hips raised and shoulders pressed to the mattress in an animal stretch. Anyone watching would have sneered at the lack of dignity, but there was no one to see, and if I didn’t work every joint like this I never felt properly awake.
After tidying the bedding neatly, I opened the door to head for the well and wash my face.
Splash.
Something was waiting in front of the door again today.
“…Again.”
A basin of water—boiled at some unknown hour and now only lukewarm from the dawn air—sat neatly before the threshold. That cheeky boy had almost certainly sneaked it there in the early hours once more.
I let out a short sigh and picked up the basin. If I ignored the kindness and went to the well anyway, the boy would trail after me the entire day, chattering nonstop. It might keep boredom at bay, but one careless slip of the tongue could become a serious problem.
I finished washing inside the room and stood before the old mirror whose edge was already cracked. Both ears hung limp and unflattering, flattened by the pillow during sleep. I drew a small comb from my breast pocket. A touch of mana made the red magic stone at its center glow with gentle heat.
In earlier generations our ancestors had maintained stiff ears by cutting away part of them in childhood—an ugly custom that had, thankfully, died out before my time. Now a heated magical tool was enough to groom and set them properly.
Once the all-important ears stood sharp and neat, I pulled on the stiffly starched uniform and straightened the collar of my shirt. I wiped the dust from my military boots until they shone, then tucked the silver key necklace that kept swinging annoyingly deep inside my shirt front. Only after a final full-body check in the mirror did I head for the dining hall.
The abbess—and a certain boy—had offered to bring meals to my room, but I refused firmly. Conscription was only one duty; inspecting the condition of the facility itself was equally important for a dispatched soldier. And now… the days I would remain here were already few.
“You’re awake?”
I accepted a tray of breakfast from the warmly smiling elderly nun. On the wooden tray sat a lump of black bread hard as stone, a soup that was barely more than water, and… two steaming boiled potatoes. That was everything.
“…My thanks.”
Two days earlier I had secretly pressed a few silver coins into the abbess’s hand. Partly because I simply could not adapt to such meals, and partly because the sight of those scrawny children had weighed on me. I had expected at least a few thick slices of meat to appear on the table for that sum.
Yet the only addition to the tray was two boiled potatoes.
She probably chose food the children could eat for a long time rather than meat for a single meal.
I could hardly even be angry. Clicking my tongue inwardly, I carried the tray to a corner seat a little apart from the children. Just as I prepared to tear into bread tougher than most leather—
Screeech.
The empty chair opposite scraped across the floor and someone plopped down.
“Excuse me?”
Dark brown hair slightly mussed. A boy in old, frayed clothes who nevertheless carried none of the usual downtrodden air of an orphan; his eyes shone clear and steady. He looked straight at me with a bright, unreadable smile.
“I don’t recall inviting you to sit.”
“Ah. Then may I sit?”
The boy offered a sly little smile and half-rose in a deliberately awkward crouch, as if ready to leave or stay at a word.
“Haa… Do as you like.”
Ian.
That was the name of the boy who had attached himself to me from the day after the test and refused to peel away.