~3 Years Later, Soutarou Takashina POV~
Three years passed…
Not exactly quickly, but not slowly either.
If he had to explain it they simply…
passed.
Days became weeks, weeks became months, and before Soutarou truly noticed, the strange house he’d awakened with…
Had just ceased feeling like a home he barely remembered…
It became his home…
No…
Their home.
The walls gradually filled with photographs…
Pictures of Mamako holding him too tightly during his first day of preschool…
Mamako asleep at the kitchen table surrounded by her college textbooks and books on childcare with Soutarou posing with a V sign and a bright smile over her in a selfie position…
Soutarou wearing an oversized festival mask while Mamako happily carried enough prizes to stock a small store…
There were even several pictures Mamako had taken after Soutarou fell asleep on the couch, her bed, the floor…
All of which she’d framed…
Every single one…
Even the embarrassing ones with the drool spilling out his mouth, or the strange smiles on his sleeping face…
By the time Soutarou turned six, Mamako had become the center of his new life…
Not because he’d forgotten his old one…
If anything that was the problem, really.
There wasn’t enough left to forget…
The fog surrounding his former memories had never completely disappeared…
Sure…
Occasionally, a fragment would surface without warning…
A road beneath the wide American sky…
A grocery store aisle…
The sensation of gripping a steering wheel…
A voice laughing at something he could no longer remember…
Yet the moment he attempted to examine those very memories… they dissolved.
Names remained absent…
Faces remained blurred…
Even the circumstances of his death refused to return.
But fictional stories?
Those remained strangely intact…
Not perfectly…
Hell he couldn’t recite every line of every episode he’d ever watched, nor could he claim to remember every minor character from every series…
But the larger pieces remained…
Settings…
Important characters…
Major conflicts.
Even bits and pieces of information he had once read from wikis, forums, and arguments between people who’d taken fictional power levels far too seriously.
‘Which even though I did then…
I absolutely won’t judge them for it now…
Considering that information may be the only damn reason I survive this place.’
Yes…
By now, Soutarou was almost completely certain that Kuoh was ‘The Kuoh’.
The Kuoh that would eventually house Rias Gremory and Sona Sitri…
The Kuoh Academy that would become the center of enough supernatural incidents to make any sensible person flee the city altogether.
Fortunately, canon was still years awa..y.
Unfortunately, Soutarou had recently discovered that waiting quietly for canon might not be an option.
First he had confirmed the existence of a one Cleria Belial…
But more importantly…
Because there was something inside him.
He’d first noticed it several months earlier while lying awake beside Mamako staring at the ceiling while the two joked about something random…
The feeling was weird…
It wasn’t exactly a heartbeat, nor was it warmth from the blankets.
If he had to put it into words…
It was almost something deeper…
Like a strange pressure resting behind his ribs and flowing throughout his body in thin, barely perceptible streams.
At first, he assumed it was simply his imagination…
Then he noticed that it grew clearer whenever he became emotional.
Fear caused it to tighten.
Anger caused it to churn.
And when Mamako-nee hugged him, it settled into a gentle rhythm that moved through his limbs like warm water.
Soutarou had spent weeks experimenting in secret.
Breathing exercises…
Meditation…
Sitting perfectly still inside his bedroom until Mamako-nee opened the door, discovered him sitting cross-legged on the floor, and nearly cried because she thought her six-year-old little Soutarou was “trying so hard to become spiritually enlightened.”
After which, she bought several meditation cushions for him…
And incense…
And a small indoor fountain.
You see…
Mamako-nee tended to be extremely aggressively supportive of anything she thought was good for him.
Like extremely…
Not that he really minded…
But the key bit was…
The exercises actually worked.
Little by little, Soutarou became capable of sensing the energy within himself…
It was immensely vast compared to the size of his body…
Deep enough that whenever he focused too intensely, he felt as though he were standing beside a lake at night, unable to see where the water ended, but he couldn’t control it.
He couldn’t even make it leave his body, forget performing magic, creating fire, summoning a circle, or really do anything remotely impressive with it.
But it was there…
Undeniably there.
‘Magic power?
Mana?
Demonic power?
Touki?
Holy Power?
Divine Power?
Honestly I have no clue…’
The fact that it existed narrowed down several possibilities.
Either he was a human with an unusually large magical reserve…
Or he wasn’t human at all.
The second possibility was concerning and extremely likely based on how deep this reserve felt…
It wasn’t necessarily concerning because Soutarou disliked the idea of being something other than human in the grand scheme of things…
But rather because he’d spent three years with Mamako without detecting anything unusual about her…
She didn’t possess the same reservoir…
At least not one he could sense.
She was simply Mamako-nee.
Warm…
Overprotective…
Disturbingly capable of noticing whenever he tried to leave vegetables on his plate…
But seemingly very human.
Which made him honestly a bit fearful…
What if she abandons me after finding out that I’m not human…
What if she hates me…
What if…
The thought however small despite his belief in her remained… Gnawing at the back of his mind like a devil’s whisper…
But the most concerning point for him was…
What Soutarou’s father had been.
And perhaps more importantly…
What his mother had been.
Soutarou had searched the house for information, but his father’s belongings contained nothing beyond an ordinary life.
Employment documents…
Old photographs…
Receipts…
An old bank book…
A driver’s license…
Nothing that screamed, “Hey I secretly belonged to a race of supernatural monsters,” or “Hey I was a member of some secret cabal…”
As for Soutarou’s mother, there were remarkably few records…
She’d died giving birth to him…
Her name existed on several documents…
But there were almost no photographs of her.
No nearby relatives.
No personal belongings.
It was as though she’d entered Haruto’s life, given birth to Soutarou, and disappeared from the world…
‘Suspicious.
Super duper, suspicious…
The problem is I’m six…
There’s only so much investigating a six-year-old can do before someone starts questioning why hell a six year old is asking for such deep records.’
And so with a sigh, Soutarou just continued training his senses.
Quietly.
Carefully.
And most importantly, without doing anything that might worry Mamako-nee…
That was his life…
and that was what he’d been doing during his walk home from school that afternoon.
A small backpack rested against his shoulders as he moved through one of Kuoh’s public parks, focusing on the faint pressure beneath his ribs.
The weather was warm…
The paths were crowded with parents, children, elderly couples, and students making their way home.
Completely ordinary…
Soutarou breathed in…
Held it…
Then breathed out.
The energy inside him shifted.
Only slightly…
But just enough for him to feel it.
‘There…
It moved again.’
His eyes sharpened.
‘I can definitely influence it…
Not exactly control it…
But influence it…
Maybe breathing isn’t the important part?
Maybe it’s intent?’
Soutarou was so focused on the sensation that he nearly walked past the small taiyaki stand near the park entrance.
Nearly.
The warm smell of freshly cooked batter and sweet filling struck with enough force to immediately overpower his magical enlightenment.
Soutarou stopped, he looked at the stand, then toward the path home and then back at the stand.
Mamako-nee had given him enough money for a small after-school snack.
Technically, she’d told him to buy something if he became hungry.
And…
Right now Soutarou was extremely hungry.
‘Meditation consumes calories or something like that…
Probably.
Maybe.
Perhaps.
Perchance.’
‘Oops… Right… One does not simply say perchance… Apologies to my internal twitch chat…’
Several minutes later, Soutarou walked farther into the park holding a paper sleeve containing two warm taiyaki…
One was filled with red bean paste…
The other contained custard.
He’d intended to eat both, but…
That was before he noticed the girl on the park bench.
She sat slumped forward with her elbows resting against her knees and her face buried inside her hands.
Long blonde hair fell around her like a curtain, nearly obscuring the hat resting crookedly atop her head.
A large suitcase sat beside the bench with another smaller bag had fallen onto the ground near her shoes.
All the while everything about her posture communicated complete and utter defeat.
Not sadness exactly…
You see, even sadness still required some level of energy… but this girl looked as though life had personally beaten her with a stick and then forced her for an apology for damaging the stick…
Soutarou slowed.
‘Foreign…
Defo european features…’
That was the first obvious detail, the second was her age.
Probably sixteen.
Possibly seventeen.
Young enough that seeing her alone with luggage and nowhere apparent to go felt strange…
Soutarou glanced around…
No parents, no travel companions, and no one searching for her.
The real responsible decision would be to find an adult…
Or a police officer…
Or even at worst call Mamako-nee.
Instead, Soutarou approached the bench.
‘Ah man…
Eh whatever I’ve never really been the responsible type anyways~…’
He thought to himself perhaps it was because he remembered how it felt to stand alone in an unfamiliar place…
Perhaps it was because Mamako-nee had thoroughly destroyed whatever ability he once possessed to ignore someone who looked miserable.
Or perhaps it was because he had two taiyaki…
And so he stopped in front of her…
The girl didn’t notice him, but Soutarou waited several seconds before going out of his way to hold out the custard-filled taiyaki as he offered, “Do you want one?”
The girl’s shoulders twitched and slowly, she raised her head.
Her face was dazzling and strikingly beautiful despite her exhaustion…
Soft features…
Clear sapphire blue eyes…
A buxom figure…
Rather tall too by his guess about 5’7″…
And an expression so lost that made Soutarou briefly wonder if she even understood Japanese…
‘Ah wait that should be uh…
170cm?
Man getting used to this new system is so hard…
Well let’s see what I can do about our not so hidden magical girl here…’
Her gaze moved from him…
To the taiyaki…
Then back to him.
As she softly questioned, “For me?”
Her Japanese carried a noticeable foreign accent before Soutarou nodded and shrugged saying, “You look like you need it more.”
The girl stared…
Then stared a little longer…
Before carefully accepting the taiyaki with both hands.
Their fingers briefly touched…
For Soutarou, nothing happened beyond the ordinary warmth of another person’s hand.