James’ Past (2)
A man rolled restlessly in a soft bed, then groped across the nightstand for something to hold onto.
Click.
What his hand closed around was a watch.
[AM 11:12]
The broad-shouldered man, eyes only half open as he checked the time, was James Kane.
“Haaam... now that’s a proper morning.”
Rustle.
James had woken late. It might have been because he’d been drinking beer into the small hours and only fallen asleep near dawn, but in truth it was just an ordinary morning for him. Colt, who lived in the same house, used the first floor, so the bedroom on the second floor belonged entirely to James. Once, he had lived there with his parents, but adulthood had carried him somewhere else.
“Mmnh.”
He sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, blinking sleep from his eyes, then washed his face with dry hands and shook off the last of the drowsiness.
“All right. Time to start the day.”
His day was a chain of routines. As soon as he got up, he stretched beside the bed to loosen his body, and after thirty minutes of yoga, he moved on to meditation.
“Eugh-gya.”
After that, his breathing flowed into a half hour of yoga and then into a time of meditation.
“Hhh... whooo...”
His breaths gradually slowed, until at last they were so measured they were almost impossible to notice at all.
“......”
To anyone else, it would have seemed dull and bothersome, but James especially liked this part of the day.
The mana of this world is mine. Mana, come to me...
Swish, swish.
James knew that no one else possessed magic. He was the only magician in the world. That was the truth of James Kane.
You can’t speak with anyone but me...
He was happy beyond measure that he could manipulate mana and use magic. The meditation he did the moment he woke made every day feel fresh, and he could not help enjoying it.
The sea of mana, as always. I’m happy...
James loved mana and meditation because he was the world’s only magician, but there had been a time when meditation itself had been hard for him.
In the old days, it was so boring...
A single stray thought from training brought back the past he would have preferred not to remember.
“......”
Those were the days he had lived utterly alone after losing the father and mother he loved in a gun accident.
James, who had drifted back into old memories for a moment, scratched the back of his head and sprang up from where he had been meditating.
“No point just sitting here moping.”
He yanked off the T-shirt damp with sweat from stretching and began looking for something else to wear.
“Let’s see...”
James’s bare torso was sharply cut, the muscles clean and defined.
But along his left side were two large scars, remnants of the gunshot incident from his past.
Scratch, scratch.
They were healed now, enough that he only needed to scratch them when they itched.
“...You remember it too, huh?”
If he had the magic he had now back then, he could have healed without leaving a mark at all.
“Leaving the scars behind is kind of...”
To heal without leaving a scar, he would have needed to use magic the instant he was wounded. By now, it was far too late.
“...hard, but not impossible.”
James chose his words carefully. It was not impossible to erase them even now.
Dad. Mom...
Those gunshot wounds were also scars he had kept as a way to remember his dead parents, which was why he had left them alone until now.
“......”
Before the past could rise up again, James quickly found another shirt and pulled it on.
“Did Colt go out for a jog?”
No matter how late he stayed up, Colt always started the morning with a run. Just as James began his day with yoga and meditation, Colt opened his with exercise. He had probably gotten up and headed to the park nearby by now.
“Maybe I should go with him today.”
James was a magician, but he never neglected physical training. Warming up with yoga before meditation was part of keeping both body and mind healthy. Besides, the magic he practiced did not rely on mental power alone.
“My stamina’s been slipping lately. And my abs are practically gone...”
He checked his stomach in the mirror before putting on his shirt. The lines of his abs were still there, but nowhere near what they had been before.
“Lately I’ve been doing nothing but sitting around meditating. Haven’t done any digging at all.”
Digging was essential to learning magic.
“...No, that was just me misunderstanding things.”
As James put on his running shoes by the front door, he remembered the days when he had dug in the yard while learning magic.
* * *
He had taken the words at the beginning of the book at face value.
[I am the Great Mage Mercia Lynchberg. Magic is the process of digging the earth with a needle to make a cave.]
Taking that literally, James had started digging in the backyard with an actual needle.
Thup.
But digging with a needle was not easy.
“...It’s supposed to be hard.”
At the time, James was mentally cornered by the guilt of having caused his parents’ deaths, so he chose work that was harsh and brutal. A year passed, and he had managed to dig the ground deep enough to call it a pit.
If I get found out like this... the police might come...
Fearing nosy neighbors, he hurriedly fetched an old tent from the shed to hide the work and kept tunneling downward with the needle.
[Finding mana begins with your small needle. Soon, you will begin to feel the power of the needle.]
James could not understand what digging with a needle was supposed to mean, but even after a year, he was still at it.
[Your small needle will have become a shovel...]
“Oh. So this means I should change tools. The needle was just too small.”
James had never thought what he was doing was meaningless. But neither had he understood it as something meaningful. He did not care who this Mercia person was. He was simply repeating the same act over and over: prodding the ground with a tiny needle and pushing aside the specks of dirt it managed to lift. Only when the needle became a shovel did he understand how happy he had been to dig with a needle in the first place.
“......”
James’s days were unbearably dull. After school, he would return home and breathe as instructed, then spend day after day digging the earth. His small, wiry body grew steadily harder as he wrestled with the ground holding a shovel. Beads of sweat rolled down the angles of his back muscles.
Clang. Thunk.
James pressed on with blind, stubborn devotion. It no longer mattered what mana was or what shape magic was supposed to take. When he dug, he did not think of his dead parents, and he could escape his guilt. He also did not think of Andrew, who had already been tried as an adult and sentenced to life in prison.
“Huff.”
For James, digging was the only rest that let him punish his body and keep his mind clean.
“Huhh.”
Thunk.
“Hmph.”
As James dug endlessly, change began to come. It was around the time he graduated from the school he had been going to without purpose.
Hummm.
Thunk...
Vmmmm.
Mana answered James’s digging, producing a strange, low vibration. By then he had been digging for so long that he had recently reached a bedrock layer. Even the sound he always heard changed.
Shkk.
At the odd sound, James stopped the shovel that had been moving almost on its own.
Stiff.
“?”
He had driven the shovel into what should have been solid rock, but the response that came back to his hand felt light, as though he had thrust it into soft sand.
“What the hell?”
He pushed again, this time with more force.
Shkk.
Once again, it slid into the ground with the sound of shoveling sand.
Shkk. Shkk. Shkk.
No matter how wildly he swung it, the same sound came back.
Did the bedrock already end? If so, won’t digging get way too easy...
But he had tunneled so deep that he could not see what was inside the earth anymore. If the bedrock had ended and a sandy layer had begun, more work would be needed. There was a chance the tunnel might collapse. Yet with nothing visible in the darkness, he had no idea where he was now.
I need something to see...
Need was the mother of creation.
If there were light, that would be nice...
Before James had even finished the thought, a bright flash burst forth.
Fwoosh!
“!”
The shovel in his hands was burning like a torch.
Thanks to the shovel shining so brightly, he could see the hard bedrock, neatly cut and left with smooth edges.
Did I just cut through stone with a shovel all this time?
The place he had mistaken for soft sand was still bedrock.
Whoosh.
Where he was now no longer mattered. James’s gaze went to the shovel, the source of the light. Then he began examining why the shovel was shining.
It’s not burning...
The bright light flickering over the shovel was not ordinary fire consuming matter as it blazed.
It’s simply radiating light.
The shovel was illuminating everything around it like a bright lamp.
“......”
The problem was that James had no idea why.
Why?
As he recalled the opening pages of the book he had read over and over until the paper wore thin during the hours when he was too exhausted to dig, he remembered the words.
[Mana can change its form according to the will carried by your needle and your shovel, and there is no limit to what shape mana may take. Who in the world can limit your will?]
“......”
James began to realize that the shovel in his hands was a result of mana that had no limit.
Mana will become the medium between matter and immatter, and at the same time the medium between mind and body...
Remembering the words, James lifted his left hand, the one not holding the shovel. Then he called the text back to mind once more.
[There is nothing in this world you cannot achieve. You are my true heir. Believe. Believe in your will and in your mana.]
I believe in myself. My needle, my shovel, and the mana I have trained through them...
James brushed the dirt from his hair and concentrated. Then, taking the will written in Genesis as his own, he opened his mouth.
“Let there be light.”
Flash.
The light of mana that had been confined to the shovel flared into existence in his hand as well.
“......”
James was entranced by the beauty of the light he had created.
This is my light. My mana. My path, and your path.
Then, without thinking, he stretched his hand downward.
“Show me your path.”
Shrrraaaaaak!
The bright light resting in James’s hand shot straight downward, erasing everything in its way.
“......”
...This is the true power of mana.
James stared blankly at the result of the mana he had awakened, then toppled over onto his side.
Thud.
After that, he fell into a deep sleep. He did not know why he had fallen asleep at the time, but later he would understand. James had not merely gone to sleep; he had fainted from severe mana depletion.
“Huhh... hhh...”
Even unconscious, the breathing method he had been using for years continued without a break. It took a long time before James came to his senses again. At the time it had seemed wondrous, but later he would come to regard that first manifestation of mana with a kind of dizzying awe.
Rustle.
“......”
Waking from sleep atop the dirt pit, James wondered whether he had dreamed it. The cave he had made was still so dark he could not see a thing.
“......”
But there was a way to find out. James carefully raised a hand and called up his will.
“Let there be light.”
That was the will unique to James, the one he used to awaken mana.
Flash.
The light blooming again from his hand illuminated the deep pit, and he could see that the straight path carved by mana led endlessly down into the earth.
It wasn’t a dream.
From that point on, James’s real magic training began. He moved beyond the opening chapter he had been reading over and over and turned to the next.
“My heir, through foundational training and meditation you will have learned to use mana as easily as scooping with a shovel... huh?”
Only after moving past the opening pages did James realize how foolish it had been to dig the earth with a needle and a shovel.
“That shovel wasn’t this shovel?”
It had been such a simple metaphor, but James, who had been in a terrible mental state at the time, had taken it literally. The needle and the shovel were simply metaphors for the level of a magician handling mana and for the strength of will required. It had not meant to use them as actual tools. It had not meant to literally dig the earth, either. It meant to begin with mana as thin as a thread, like a needle, and then widen its scope like a shovel; digging the earth was meant to deepen his will until he forged his own mana.
Clang!
The shovel flying from James’s hand rolled across the floor.
“You should have explained that more clearly so there wouldn’t be any misunderstanding! Honestly, I can’t even...”
Still, he had gained a great deal from the misunderstanding. While he had spent all that time doing nothing but digging, the wounds buried deep in his heart had begun to heal. The dirt he had heaped and gouged out had come back to fill the emptiness and loss inside him.
“Tch!”
James was full of complaints, but by then he was already utterly absorbed in mana training, addicted to the exhilaration that came with new power. The option of giving up without learning mana was no longer something he could even consider.
“...So what’s the next training step?”
As James read the first line of the intermediate mana training section...
[If your body has grown weak from being absorbed in meditation and mana training, you cannot move on to the next training. Only after building the minimum stamina needed to learn intermediate magic may you begin intermediate mana training...]
There had been something else James gained thanks to misunderstanding Mercia’s teachings all this time.
“What kind of bullshit is this...”
Thunk.
James closed the book and went to the mirror, where he lifted his shirt in a flash.
“......”
The abs and chest reflected in the mirror looked thoroughly offended. That was the effect of having already done the stamina training needed for mana practice in advance, not only through the middle section but into the later sections as well.
“Weak? I don’t know that word.”
Right now, even if Andrew were standing in front of him, James was confident he could drop him with one punch. The muscles shaped by brutal digging were not the same as the vacation muscles built in a gym. His body had been trained year after year in a way no one else could ever duplicate.
Click.
He picked up the shovel he had thrown to the floor and tightened his grip on the handle, his hand braced against the blade at the opposite end.
Crack.
The sturdy wooden shaft broke apart with an ugly snap.
The mana that had dissolved into him through his breathing now flowed proudly through James’s body, and his strength had long since gone beyond the range of an ordinary person. That too was the result of combining mana breathing with physical training.
“...So what’s next, then? Mr. Mercia.”
James had overcome the loss of his parents and grown into a man with iron resolve, and physically, too, he was a magician fully prepared for what lay ahead.
“All right! Let’s keep this going!”
From that day on, James stopped digging the backyard. Magic was not something you learned by digging alone.
* * *
Freed from old memories, James was running through the fresh morning air.
Tap, tap, tap.
With light, easy strides, he spotted Colt in the distance, drenched in sweat.
He’s already been at it for a while, huh?
The only place around the house good enough for running was Clark Park, and James was sure he would find Colt there.
“Hey, Colt. Nice weather.”
“Huff. Don’t talk to me. Huff.”
“Then I’ll go on ahead.”
James pushed off lightly and surged ahead.
“Hey! Wait for me!”
Tap. Tap-tap.
James slowed down at once, smiled, and came back alongside Colt before running again.
“This is a good day for a run, isn’t it? The weather’s perfect.”
“Huff. Haaah.”
James frowned at Colt’s ragged breathing.
“Did you forget how to breathe? I taught you, remember.”
James had once taught Colt the breathing method after sharing his secret with him. It was the special technique he had reserved for Colt alone, and for no one else.
“Huff. I’m out of breath. Huff. Can’t do that. Huff. You do it. Huff.”
“Honestly.”
But Colt, even when told, never managed to use it properly. Right now he had the excuse of being winded from running, but even on ordinary days he made a hundred excuses and never tried mana breathing at all.
“Everyone has their own fate, I guess.”
That was why only James had remained connected to mana all this time.
“Hey, pretty thing.”
“......”
Still gasping for breath, Colt was holding it in long enough to flirt with a woman who came running past with a gorgeous figure.
“You never change.”
Another unchanging day had begun.