The next day.
As was her habit, Alice came down to the living room after rising, meaning to read for a bit before breakfast was ready.
By custom, breakfast was supposed to be made by her and Aoko in turns.
But the new apprentice she’d taken in was simply too skilled in this department, and had, of his own accord, shouldered every task connected with the kitchen.
So all that remained for her and Aoko to do was help clean up the used cookware after each meal.
Put that way, just who was looking after whom—the teacher caring for her apprentice, or the apprentice for his teacher—became a rather delicate question.
Seated on the soft green leather sofa, Alice could clearly hear the sounds of cooking drifting over from the kitchen just one wall away.
After turning a few pages, she felt a twinge of guilt, and—wondering whether she might lend a hand in the kitchen—simply got to her feet.
She arrived at the kitchen doorway, but before she could so much as speak, the boy, perched on a stool and now and then rising onto his toes, sharply sensed the movement behind him and turned, looking faintly puzzled.
“Sensei?
Is there something you need?
Breakfast will take a little longer to be ready.”
“I only came to see whether there was anything I could help with.”
The boy had, after all, paid both tuition and rent, and helped them so much with the matters of daily life besides.
Even for a witch as aloof by nature as she was, his almost innate goodwill was beginning to weigh on her.
“It’s all right.
All that’s left is to wait for the rice to finish cooking.
But—do you have a moment now?
There’s a question about magecraft I’d like to ask you.”
So saying, the apron-clad boy stepped down from the stool and walked over to stand before Alice.
“Mm.
Go ahead.”
Such a studious apprentice warmed Alice’s heart.
She thought that if only Aoko approached her magecraft studies as earnestly as the boy did, her own load would surely be a good deal lighter.
“Actually, I noticed this when I got up this morning…”
As if to illustrate it better, Ryōgi Minato turned and fetched an eggshell from the stove that hadn’t yet been thrown out.
Then, under the girl’s puzzled gaze, the boy pinched the shell between two fingers and “stuffed” it into the empty air before him.
The next instant, the eggshell—which by rights should have dropped to the floor under its own weight—vanished outright, as if something had swallowed it whole.
Yet on close inspection, one could make out that at the spot where the shell had disappeared, a tiny rift in the air was soundlessly, slowly drawing shut.
Like a pocket into another world, being quietly closed.
This is… an application of Imaginary Number magecraft?
When the boy had “stuffed” the shell into the air, Alice had indeed felt the magical energy stir within him.
But it wasn’t the shell’s disappearance that startled her—it was that, before she had taught him a single thing, the child before her had already figured out an application of his attribute magecraft on his own.
“Sensei?”
Seeing Alice stand there without answering, Ryōgi Minato couldn’t help asking again, curious.
“There’s no need to worry.
This is simply an application of your magecraft attribute—you must have picked it up without realizing.
“The ‘pocket’ you just opened should connect to the Imaginary Number world.
If you can’t grasp what that is, just think of it as a place that is utterly vast and empty, where neither the concept of time nor of space exists.”
Quietly revising, once more, the teaching plan she’d worked out the night before, Alice went on:
“In the days ahead, you need only keep strengthening your training in this direction, and the Imaginary Number Pocket’s opening should gradually widen.
For now, its use amounts to something like a time capsule you can carry on you.”
Unable, for the moment, to think what else such an application might be good for, Alice knit her brow slightly.
Listening to the girl, Ryōgi Minato opened that so-called “Imaginary Number Pocket” once more, and “tipped” the eggshell he’d stowed away back out onto his palm.
I can carry it on me?
Then I could keep my luggage in here from now on…
The boy, who not long ago had been through the business of “moving house,” couldn’t help thinking of this convenient use.
And not just luggage—loose change and other things awkward to carry about could apparently be tucked into this “pocket” too, which made him feel magecraft was rather wondrous.
“I understand, Sensei.
I’ll practice diligently.”
Thanking the girl for clearing up his confusion, Ryōgi Minato trotted back to the stool and resumed his cooking, his movements seeming a touch lighter than before.
For all that he came across as overly polite and mature in other matters, it was clear now that he hadn’t lost a child’s curiosity and enthusiasm.
A single magecraft phenomenon was enough to get him a little excited.
The corners of Alice’s lips softened of their own accord, and she turned back toward the living room.
In truth, last night she had fretted somewhat over just how to teach the boy to use that rare attribute, but now she felt that one possessed of talent ought not to be fenced in.
Since he’d learned the basic application on his own without trying, then for now, best to simply let things take their natural course.
Besides, recalling that the boy might possess some master-level swordsmanship, she’d already settled on which magecraft characteristic he ought to attempt first.
—Reinforcement.
Without question, it was the most fundamental and broadly applicable direction of training, and for a magus the highest of priorities, too.
The body had always been a magus’s weakest part.
If one could hone Reinforcement to a certain degree, one could at least steer clear of a great many dangers.
Her mind made up, Alice acted at once.
She left the living room again and climbed the stairs toward the second floor, intending to prepare some materials—just as Aoko, who had only just gotten up and finished getting ready, came down.
“Hm?
Alice?”
Getting no response to her greeting from her housemate, Aoko blinked in confusion.
She had, however, seen quite clearly that before Alice went upstairs, those eyes—always so coolly surveying their surroundings—had kindled with a spark of fighting spirit, as though her instincts as a teacher had been stirred awake.
Aoko smiled.
She really hadn’t expected Alice to take this so seriously.
But the aroma wafting from the kitchen soon made her abandon any thought of teasing her housemate, and she breezed off to the living room.
Compared with the so-called duties and inheritance of the Aozaki family, a life like this one might suit her ideals far better.
And so the girl’s ever-energetic voice soon rang out.
“Thanks for the hard work, Minato!
What’s for breakfast today?”
…
Swordsmanship, the Imaginary Number Pocket, the Reinforcement characteristic, magecraft theory… ever since that day, Ryōgi Minato’s life had filled right up, and he threw himself wholeheartedly into his training.
The boy never found it dull, though.
On the contrary, he relished these days that broadened both his knowledge and his horizons while letting him master new skills.
Thanks to that, his pace of learning was unusually swift.
The Imaginary Number Pocket, which at first could hold only a single eggshell, had gradually come to fit a whole umeboshi rice ball, and his understanding of magecraft had begun to deepen as well.
And so, amid the daily round of training, a week slipped by without a sound.
The date, too, slowly crept on to the start of December.