Three years old.
Three years had passed without me noticing.
Three years since I came to this world.
This year, I finally learned my parents’ full names.
Paul Greyrat.
Zenith Greyrat.
Lilia…
I wasn’t sure about hers.
Maybe it had something to do with her status.
Either way, her full name had never come up.
Very medieval nobility of them.
…
One afternoon, I was running through my magic practice as usual.
After a year of drilling low-level spells, I’d come to a realization.
Maybe my technique wasn’t the problem.
Maybe a low-level Water Ball was simply that weak.
It was low-level, after all.
So I decided to try intermediate magic.
“First time — better chant it through.”
The moment I finished the incantation, an enormous water sphere materialized in front of me.
I’d expected it to be a little bigger than the low-level version.
Not like this.
This was something else entirely.
If I fired this thing…
no, it wasn’t even in the same category as those little Water Balls.
I tried to hold it in check.
The sphere didn’t care.
It kept pulling mana out of me, steady and relentless.
“Damn…”
Okay.
Think.
I’d never made a serious mistake before, and I wasn’t about to start now.
A few seconds of hard thinking.
Then I pressed my left hand flat against the wooden floor and cast.
The floorboards twisted and surged upward, wrapping around the water sphere like a fist closing shut.
“Almost…”
The sphere burst without any warning.
A solid column of water punched straight through the window.
My floorboard magic went with it, and so did the wall.
The water pillar tore clean through the side of the house.
Thank goodness it went skyward.
“So this is…
intermediate magic…”
Droplets fell from the jagged edges of the hole in the wall, one by one, pattering down to the floor.
Calm down.
Focus.
Step one: repair the wall with magic.
It wasn’t complicated.
Wooden house, wood-aligned spell, slow and steady.
Manageable.
I pressed my fingers to the splintered edges and began coaxing the wood back into shape.
Thank goodness it’s a wooden house, I thought, with feeling.
“What happened?!
Wh — whoa—”
Paul was first through the door.
He saw the hole and his jaw dropped.
His 3-year-old son was standing in front of it, running a repair spell.
Slowly, but running it.
“Huh…
this…
how did…
Rudy, are you okay…?”
Paul really is a good person.
I was obviously fine.
One look was all it took to see that.
And yet there he was, worried anyway.
He drifted to my side, muttering under his breath, “Was it a monster…?
No, there shouldn’t be anything around here…”, eyes scanning the room like he was expecting a second attack.
Good man.
Absolute idiot.
“My, my.”
Zenith stepped in behind him.
She was considerably calmer.
She took in the damaged wall, the water pooled across the floor, the slow progress of my repair spell, all of it, in order, without a word.
Then she walked straight over, crouched down in front of me, and looked me in the eyes.
Her expression was gentle.
Her eyes were not.
A little scary, honestly.
And I couldn’t help thinking: your son is working very hard to fix your house right now.
A little help wouldn’t go unappreciated, Mother.
I kept that thought to myself.
I’d made the mistake.
Mine to fix.
So I stopped meeting Zenith’s gaze and put everything I had back into the spell.
“Rudy~ you can use magic already?”
“Yes.”
I nodded.
In this world, magic probably wasn’t all that rare.
There were textbooks for it, after all.
Paul scratched the back of his head.
“No, but, I mean…
this is intermediate magic…”
“Wow!
Dear, did you hear that?!
Our child really is a genius!”
Zenith’s shout swallowed Paul’s entire sentence.
She clasped both hands together and bounced on her heels, practically glowing.
Energetic.
While she celebrated, I finished the last of the repairs.
The wall was back.
I sat down where I was, mana tapped out, listening to my mother’s voice fill the room.
“Dear, tomorrow we go to Roa Town and post a recruitment notice!
We have to nurture this talent properly!”
“But you promised…
boys were going to learn swordsmanship.”
“Dear!
A tutor!
There must be an excellent magic teacher somewhere in Roa!” Zenith talked right over him.
“But, ”
“Our child is using intermediate magic at 3 years old.
Are we really going to let that go to waste?”
“But, ”
“And magic and swordsmanship aren’t mutually exclusive, are they.” Zenith turned to me.
“Rudy, what do you think?”
I nodded.
“I want to learn both.”
No matter how many times I start over, that never changes.
When it comes to my mother’s expectations, I always want to meet them.
Every single time.
Some things just don’t change.
Zenith scooped me up off the floor.
“Dear, see?!
Rudy agrees~”
“…Fine.” Paul gave in.
And just like that, the two of them set out to find me a magic tutor.
➤ Next: Roxy — Words Unspoken