” Future Sight?
Is that some slang going around among elementary schoolers lately?
Aoko arched a brow, somewhat baffled, unable to make out what kind of explanation that was supposed to be.
But Alice, sitting beside her, gave off an unmistakable air of wariness the moment she heard the term, her already cool voice turning colder still.
“You’re a magus?”
If the boy were merely an ordinary child, then letting him in out of the rain was, just barely, acceptable.
But if he were a magus, then entering Misaki City’s leyline domain without permission already qualified him as an enemy.
The air grew heavy all at once—yet Aoko still hadn’t grasped what on earth was happening.
She was, after all, only a beginner who’d just started learning magecraft.
The term Future Sight meant nothing to her; she had no idea why her housemate’s hostility had welled up so suddenly, nor why she’d spoken that word one ought never raise in front of ordinary people.
“Wait, Alice, what are you even talking about…”
“Aoko, a magus is not a being you can judge by appearance.
The Future Sight this child just mentioned counts as a kind of Mystic Eyes.
If one weren’t part of ‘the world on this side,’ it’s hardly possible they’d know the term.”
A stifling pressure radiated from the girl’s slender frame.
Alice had closed the grimoire in her hands at some unnoticed point, and she fixed her eyes on the boy across from her as she spoke.
“Coming all this way to find Aoko… just what is your purpose, magus?”
The girl’s words were as sharp as a blade poised to strike at any instant—and they finally jolted Aoko to her senses.
But even having grasped the situation, a feeling of disbelief rose in her chest all the same.
By rights, as the city’s leyline manager, when faced with an outside magus she was duty-bound to drive the other away—and, if need be, even to kill them.
Yet this person her housemate called a “magus” looked, by any measure, like nothing more than an ordinary boy, and it made her knit her brows in doubt.
“Alice, are you sure you haven’t gotten something wrong?
This kid doesn’t look anything like one…”
“Aoko, it’s about time you cast off that naïveté—otherwise you’ll never grow accustomed to ‘the world on this side.'”
The girl’s words made Aoko bite her lip in some agitation.
Back then she’d become the heir of “that monster of an old man” while utterly clueless, the whole thing out of nowhere.
In the life she’d planned for herself, she had never once imagined becoming a “magus”—because that was supposed to be the path the other “Aozaki” had chosen.
But everything had changed one day, forcing her into “the world on this side” and piling the Aozaki family’s responsibilities onto her shoulders.
Day after day she not only worked herself half to death over magecraft knowledge she could scarcely comprehend—now she even had to set common sense aside to deal with a child…
Just as the two girls sat tangled in worry and wariness, though, the boy at the center of it all—Ryōgi Minato—only blinked in bewilderment and asked, with a touch of curiosity:
“What’s a magus?”
The unforeseen answer made Alice’s gathered momentum stall slightly, and even Aoko, who’d been pressing her lips in worry, wore a look of astonishment.
A few seconds later, Alice’s expression frosted over, carrying a chill that cut to the bone.
“Still planning to keep up the act, magus?”
Seeing her housemate apparently about to make a move, Aoko hurriedly stood to block her, speaking in a rush.
“Hold on, Alice—if this kid really isn’t a magus, then doing that would be a crime!”
“In a magus’s world, certain common-sense rules don’t apply, Aoko.”
At the girl’s still-clinging, naïve hope, Alice—being, at present, Aoko’s teacher in matters of magecraft—couldn’t help frowning.
But clearly, lecturing now would accomplish little in the short term.
And that boy, the suspected magus, did carry about him something genuinely incomprehensible.
Even when she’d been on the verge of striking just now, the other had shown no reaction at all, sitting blankly on the sofa.
This was either the confidence of one certain of his own strength—or he truly harbored no hostility.
The two together led Alice to press down the impulse in her chest for the time being, and decide to hear out just what it was the other wanted.
Paying no mind to the girl still standing before her, Alice addressed the boy once more.
“If you don’t know what a magus is, then where did you hear the term Future Sight?”
“Someone—well, some people told me…”
He didn’t come out and speak of the danmaku, for Ryōgi Minato felt it was far too outlandish; without experiencing it firsthand, no one else could understand.
But the young witch wasn’t much satisfied with that explanation, and instead steered the topic back to the root of the matter.
“Suppose that’s so.
Then—you came to find Aoko because you saw something?”
Sensing the atmosphere had eased a little from before, Aoko knew Alice had reined in the urge to act, and sat back down with a relieved breath—then asked, curious:
“Wait—before that, could you tell me first what Future Sight even is, Alice?”
“For now you can just take it as a superpower that lets you foresee the future, Aoko.”
Realizing her student’s grasp of magecraft knowledge was still rather lacking, Alice resolved to pile on more coursework in this area starting tomorrow.
But at the mention of “superpower,” Alice suddenly recalled the boy’s surname, and a familiar sense surfaced in her mind—as if she’d heard it somewhere before.
“Foreseeing the future?
Does such a convenient thing really exist…”
Aoko murmured to herself, then immediately pressed the boy further.
“Was it because you saw a future involving me that you came running here, Minato?”
“Actually, the part involving you, Aoko, isn’t much.
The one I’m looking for is someone you know.”
“Someone I know?
Who?”
Ryōgi Minato straightened up a little, and spoke in a polite tone.
“Aoko, it’s your older sister—Aozaki Touko.
Could you tell me how to contact her?”
“Huh?”
Hearing that name again after so long, Aoko froze for a moment.
After a good while, her expression turned awkward, unnatural.
“I have no clue how to contact that woman.
She up and left on her own back then—didn’t leave anything like that behind.”
Picking up on the strangeness in the girl’s mood, Ryōgi Minato blinked, then turned to Alice beside her.
Touko, of all people?
Feeling the questioning gaze, Alice gave a slight shake of her head in reply.
“Touko hasn’t contacted me since she left for the Clock Tower, so I’ve no idea where she is now either.”
“I see.
In that case, I’ll just have to wait a while longer…”
He’d assumed that as family, Aoko would at least have Aozaki Touko’s contact information—but the peculiar feelings and way of relating between these two sisters were clearly something Ryōgi Minato hadn’t anticipated.
“What did you mean just now by ‘wait a while longer,’ Minato?”
Agitated as she was, Aoko still caught that crucial line with keen ears.
“In about another month, Aozaki Touko-san should be coming back.”
“You’re saying she’ll come back?
Come back to do what?”
“It seems… to fight over the Aozaki family’s leyline, and the Fifth Magic?”
What’s that?
Having once again glimpsed an incomprehensible term in the danmaku’s prompts, Ryōgi Minato’s tone carried a faint uncertainty.
Why phrase it as a question?
Aoko frowned and couldn’t help glancing at Alice beside her.
The two of them met each other’s eyes, exchanging a wordless communication—each able to read plainly in the other’s gaze the sense of trouble this matter stirred up.
Because they knew: this “Aozaki Touko” the boy was searching for really might be capable of doing exactly such things.