Episode 36: “My First Friend”
“Fiine! Let’s walk home together!”
Once classes let out, Yuria came running over with a bright smile.
But the other classmates, as always, kept watching Fiine with looks full of quiet hostility.
“If it’s alright, want to grab a meal together before heading home? I heard there’s a good place nearby.”
“Ah, um, that’s… I really am happy you asked, but…”
“You have plans or something?”
Lately, Yuria had become somewhat isolated herself, simply for the crime of talking to Fiine.
Bright, cute, and a noble’s daughter besides — if she’d never gotten involved with Fiine at all, she’d surely have been popular with everyone by now.
“…I-if you’re seen with someone like me, people probably won’t, um… think very well of you…”
“I don’t care about that. I choose my own friends, thank you very much. So, you don’t have plans, right? Then let’s go!!”
Grabbed firmly by the hand, Fiine hurried out of the classroom before she could protest.
Utterly indifferent to the stares around them, Yuria kept smiling that same dazzling smile as always.
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“Here we are. It’s cheap, but the portions are big and it’s supposed to be delicious.”
The place Yuria led her to was a restaurant a short walk from the academy.
Not the kind of tidy, refined establishment nobility frequented — more the kind of place where laborers drank and made noise.
“Welcome, Yuria-chan!”
“I brought a friend today. Take good care of her!”
Yuria beamed adorably, and the owner’s face softened into a helpless sort of grin. Well, if it’s you…
(H-has she really been to a place like this before…?)
They were shown to a table in the very back. At the table beside them, a group of four men, apparently just off work, were making noise over their beer.
Glancing restlessly around the shop’s interior, Fiine caught Yuria tilting her head at her.
“First time in a place like this?”
“Y-yes, well, sort of…”
There’d been no restaurants at all back in her hometown, and after Burkhardt had taken her in, she’d mostly eaten at home.
She’d occasionally been taken out to restaurants, but only ever the kind of refined places catering to nobility, where table manners were expected — never anywhere like this, aimed at ordinary people.
(Isn’t Yuria-san from a noble family? Why is she so used to a place like this…?)
Her question must have shown on her face, because Yuria answered without being asked, flipping open the menu.
“I’m not the legal wife’s daughter, you know.”
“Eh?”
“My mother was a maid working for the Cornelius household.”
Keeping a mistress wasn’t especially unusual in noble society.
Even so, Fiine had no idea how to respond, and simply gulped down her water in one go instead.
“At the time, the wife — well, I guess she’s technically my mother too — was struggling with infertility. She flew into a rage when I was born and had my mother thrown out of the estate. My father apparently gave her some money out of pity, so at least she didn’t struggle to get by.”
“…D-did you not go with her? Yuria-san?”
“I was my father’s first child. At the time, if his wife never had a child of her own, he was thinking of making me the legitimate heir instead. Well — five years after I was born, my brother came along, and he ended up the heir instead.”
“…I see.”
“Right. But by then, it had already become clear my own magic capacity was well above average. So he decided to keep raising me anyway, specifically to work in the Magic Corps someday.”
Most nobles who joined the Magic Corps were second sons or younger, those with no house to inherit.
Joining the military carried social prestige, and in the Magic Corps specifically, it doubled as a way to demonstrate magical talent.
Even disliking her, he’d apparently judged it more advantageous to the family to raise her properly as a daughter and put her into the Corps.
“So, no, I’ve never been especially cherished. And yeah, I’m plenty used to places like this.”
“I see…”
“But honestly, I wanted to join the Magic Corps myself anyway. So it worked out well, in the end.”
Having gotten that much out, Yuria flipped through the menu. Anyway, let’s order she said.
Too young to drink yet, they ordered juice along with a few dishes at random.
“You know, I go to the orphanage a lot. There are so many kids there who lost their parents to monsters. My dream’s to work hard enough that fewer kids end up like that!”
Yuria downed the apple juice that had just arrived in one enthusiastic gulp and grinned.
That smile was so dazzling that Fiine had no idea what expression to make in return.
(A dream… I’ve never even thought about something like that…)
She’d never once stopped to consider what she herself wanted to do.
Even deciding to enroll at the magic academy had only been because she wanted to repay Burkhardt for what he’d done for her.
“Why’d you enroll at the magic academy, Fiine?”
“I just, um…”
Yuria was watching her with eyes full of expectation.
She was probably hoping for some answer with a dream behind it too, just like her own.
Fiine didn’t want to betray that expectation. But more than that, she found she didn’t want to lie to her, either.
“…W-when I was little, my parents were killed by monsters. Afterward, someone from the Magic Corps took me in, so… it’s more like, I guess, repaying that person…”
It might have been the first time she’d ever explained herself to another person at all.
She drank her juice, trying to calm her suddenly racing heart.
Saying her parents had been killed by monsters wasn’t exactly an easy thing to respond to.
(Did I make things awkward?)
She glanced carefully at Yuria’s expression. The moment their eyes met, Yuria suddenly burst into tears.
“Eh?!”
“I-I’m sorry, uu… making you say something so hard to say… but thank you, for telling me…!!”
Tears like pearls kept spilling, one after another, from her clear blue eyes.
“Um, that’s, uh…”
What was the right thing to do, in a moment like this?
She’d never had a friend before, so Fiine had no idea.
(What do I do. There’s no spell for stopping tears…!!)
Standing up in confusion, she reached her hand out as far as it would go and wiped at Yuria’s tears from across the table.
“U-um! Please — please don’t cry. It’s, um…”
She should have learned more about how to deal with people. It was frustrating, the way the words wouldn’t come smoothly.
“Please don’t cry…”
Yuria blinked rapidly, over and over.
Reaching out and touching her so suddenly had probably been rude.
Fiine hurried to sit back down, but this time it was Yuria who caught her hand instead.
“Yuria-san…?”
“Just call me Yuria.”
“…Yuria.”
It was a strange feeling. She’d only said her name, and yet something warm settled deep in her chest.
“And drop the polite speech too. We’re friends, right?”
“…Okay.”
“Come on, come on, smile a little, Fiine? Let’s really eat our fill today!”
“…Okay!”
I should go back to Burkhardt’s house this coming break, she thought.
She had no confidence she’d manage to explain it well, but she wanted to tell him about Yuria all the same.