“There’s something… I want you to hear about my magic.”
For some reason, tears glimmered in the corners of Resina’s eyes as she held my hand and stared at me.
“Your magic?”
“Yes. My magic—”
Resina tightened her grip.
“—I want to tell you about my mind-reading magic.”
We sat side by side on a sofa.
Then, little by little, she began to speak with a pained expression, as though making a confession.
◆ ◆ ◆
—I was born with powerful mana.
My father was a yakuza underboss, and my mother came from a noble family. It was only natural for the child of those two… My mana grade was Special. My mana was powerful to begin with, and its nature was terribly violent. Simply existing in an ordinary way frightened everyone around me.
I became aware of the feelings people directed toward me very early in childhood.
“Mother, why does everyone turn green when I’m here?”
“Green… You mean the color?”
“Yes. The color they turn when they’re afraid.”
My magic was a kind of mystic eye.
It allowed me to perceive the emotions displayed by others as colors.
There were people who turned bright red with anger, people who became a cheerful yellow, and people who looked a sorrowful blue. But if I stirred my mana even slightly, every one of them became the green of fear. Everyone. Everyone turned green.
Mind-reading magic. It sounded useful at first glance, but in truth, it rarely helped me.
Magic generally had difficulty affecting people with more mana than its user. Mine was no exception. I couldn’t read the emotions of people with noble blood or people who had trained their mana very well. Meanwhile, the only emotion I could read from those with feeble mana was “fear.” Everyone turned the green of fear in my presence. Other colors occasionally mixed in, but they were no more than tiny variations.
When Mother died from illness when I was five, people stopped coming near me almost entirely. Grandfather and Father were both busy, so I rarely had the opportunity to see them.
—Someone, please look at me without fear.
I never wanted obedience. If someone only did everything I said, it was no different from playing with dolls. I wanted them to tell me when they were dissatisfied. I wanted them to scold me when I did something wrong.
—Someone, please stay by my side.
When I summoned people, they appeared before me in fear. Then they hurriedly finished whatever business had brought them and fled… It was only natural. No one wanted to remain in front of a ferocious beast.
—Someone, please hold my hand.
It had been a very long time since I had touched anyone. No one even came close enough for our hands to brush. Hehehe… Until Crow became my personal attendant, I dressed and ate alone. That was how completely everyone avoided approaching me.
Perhaps to fill that loneliness… Yes. For a time, I even plotted to marry into the Azukai imperial family.
Members of the imperial family tended to possess stronger mana than ordinary nobles. Surely they wouldn’t fear my mana, and my mind-reading magic wouldn’t work on them either. I thought that would be best.
“Grandfather, I want to attend the Imperial Central Academy.”
“I see. Then you’ll need to pass the entrance examination. I’ll buy whatever reference books you require.”
From the age of fifteen, every child of an imperial or noble family had to spend three years attending the Imperial Central Academy in the capital. If I enrolled through the commoner quota, I might have an opportunity to meet someone from the imperial family.
That thought drove me to study. And while I sat at my desk, I could forget my loneliness.
Then, one day, while I was living that way…
I was eating as usual when my chest abruptly tightened. I realized too late that I had been poisoned. Then men carrying dangerous weapons poured into the room. I defeated several, but I was hopelessly outnumbered. Once they cornered me, I had few options.
Allowing the poison to weaken my mana and a shot to pierce my left shoulder was a disgraceful failure. I entered the magic-tool evacuation pod hidden in a corner of the estate and escaped into the river. Then, when I regained awareness—I found an unfamiliar boy nursing me.
“I’m sorry. I still can’t sit up…”
“Then I’ll feed you. Your digestive system is probably weakened too, so we’ll take it slowly, a little at a time.”
The boy nursed and treated me without showing the slightest fear. Even more strangely, although I could sense only feeble mana from him, my mind-reading magic didn’t work.
At first, I assumed my poor health was preventing me from using my magic properly… But even after I recovered completely, I couldn’t read his emotions at all.
So I decided to ask him directly.
Wasn’t he afraid of me?
“Take my hand. Just do it. Try sensing how much mana I have.”
As he spoke, he took my hand without hesitation.
Many forms of magic became more powerful when their user touched the target directly. My mind-reading magic was one of them. Feeling slightly guilty, I took the opportunity to probe his emotions. And… I read the many feelings inside him.
Beneath that enormous mana lay a kindness so vast it made me want to cry. Selfless devotion and heartwarming affection. And something that made my loneliness seem like the spoiled whining of a child… a deep, dark, bottomless emptiness.
Crow, why is there such a vast chasm of emptiness in the deepest part of your heart? And despite it, why are the emotions you direct toward me so warm, so gentle, and so radiant?
Simply touching your emotions made me feel as though everything I had endured until then had been redeemed.
The imperial family I’d clung to so desperately no longer held even the smallest attraction. I wanted to live with this person… I wanted to remain beside Crow and somehow fill that hollowness in his emotions. I felt that desire with all my heart.
“…When should we hold the wedding? I’d like our honeymoon to be at a seaside resort. We should have at least ten children. Oh, I’m not so narrow-minded as to forbid you from taking concubines, but I refuse to compromise on the hierarchy among your wives.”
—I don’t yet know what you need or how much of it will be necessary to fill you. But for your sake, I’ll do anything. I’ll overcome every difficulty. I’ll claim the place beside you forever, give you everything I am, and whisper that I love you. From now until the end.
It was a blazing first love that scorched my heart… powerful enough to repaint my entire life.
◆ ◆ ◆
“But I’m sorry… While claiming I did everything for you, before I realized it, I was forcing nothing but my own desires on you. I was far too hasty about the purification barriers… I panicked. I wanted somehow to make everyone acknowledge you.”
I see. She was holding my hand because she wanted to know my honest feelings. Perhaps she’d resolved to step aside if I genuinely disliked her in the depths of my heart. But this was a problem.
Honestly, as someone who had reincarnated, feeling happy about affection from a ten-year-old Resina seemed much too close to being a lolicon… Admittedly, the mind was heavily influenced by the body’s age, and simply adding the twenty years before my reincarnation didn’t seem right. Still, it was an issue I had deliberately avoided examining too deeply.
I wanted to realize my frontier slow life, but I didn’t dislike Resina. Those feelings competed violently, yet both existed as genuine parts of me. I’d desperately looked away from them until now, so having them exposed this nakedly… was incredibly embarrassing.
“Having all my emotions stripped bare is troublesome.”
“Hehehe, I’m sorry. For now, learning that you didn’t dislike my advances quite as much as you pretended is achievement enough. So, at what age will you finally be honest with me?”
“…Isn’t that magic rather unfair?”
Resina finally released my hand, grinning all the while. Honestly, what an awful experience.
Still, the emptiness in my heart… What she’d read was probably the result of some part of me still dragging along my previous life. I’d tried not to think about it very much.
To be honest, I thought that absence in me was also why my relationship with my new parents had become slightly strained after my reincarnation. I was deeply sorry that such kind people had been made to give birth to a son like me… but yes. If I thought any further, I might sink too deeply, so perhaps I should stop for now.
“All right, Resina. Now that we’ve come this far, I’ll commit myself too. We’ll put everything into the purification barriers and destroy one of the temple’s sources of income. Could you ask headquarters for more personnel?”
“I can, but if we gather too many people, the entire operation will collapse the moment someone betrays us. Some may be temple spies, and others may pocket the magical silver.”
“Hmm. Doesn’t that depend on our approach? Your mind-reading magic seems almost made for situations like this.”
She tilted her head.
Mind-reading magic actually seemed to hold enormous potential. Instead of using the basic magic as it was, she could combine it with skills to develop derivative magic or integrate it into magic tools. I thought it could become genuinely useful.
“Depending on the derivative magic we create, we might even identify the traitors who poisoned you and the boss. It could expose any spies who infiltrated the Cineraria Family too.”
“Will it work so conveniently? I truly can’t read anything but fear from everyone.”
“Let’s experiment with different approaches. Restricting an ability can sometimes make it more useful instead. That’s how I expanded my subspace magic.”
If we could make it work, Resina would become much safer. And that, in turn, would bring my frontier slow life much closer.
“Crow, would you train me?”
“Train you? I don’t mind, but why?”
“Until now, I hated having people direct their fear at me… so I pushed away the mind-reading magic I was born with. I don’t think I ever faced it properly. But from now on, I want to change that part of myself. I want to stand proudly as Crow’s wife.”
I see… All right. In that case, I would give her my full cooperation as her friend. Yes, as her friend. She had casually slipped in something about being my wife, but all of that remained on hold.
The two of us became so absorbed in discussing her future training and the possibilities of derivative magic that we continued until the first light of dawn appeared.
And then—apparently, at some point, we fell asleep leaning against each other. When I woke, we were already being rocked by the carriage, and Penne was patting my shoulder with faintly moist eyes.
“I’m counting on you to take care of the young miss, Crow… Don’t you ever make her cry.”
Hm? Hmm?
Wait… Had a seriously inaccurate understanding of my relationship with Resina already spread far and wide? We were friends. We hadn’t promised each other a future or anything like that. It was true. Really.