Episode Two

I looked up at the enormous building, its white walls trimmed with bright aquamarine at the eaves and roofline. Even craning my neck as far as it would go, the uppermost floors were out of sight, as though it reached all the way to the sky.

Perhaps this, rather than Edelcia Castle rising at the heart of the royal capital, was the truer face of this country.

Standing before an entrance larger than the two-storey guild, I felt my spine go rigid.

“Are you both ready?”

Rizett walked ahead and turned back to ask us.

I had visited once before as part of an academy outing, but this was a different kind of tension entirely as I passed through the great doors.

A Research Director was not the kind of person an ordinary mage could simply request an audience with. The thought of speaking to someone like that made my chest feel heavy before I had even arrived.

And this was the place where my life’s direction might be decided. That thought had not left me since the day the letter arrived, and my mood had been poor for the two days between.

“Clovis’s room is on the fifty-seventh floor, but the transfer circle gets us there straight away, so if you’re going to steel yourself, now’s the time.”

Rizett walked ahead with a smile, as though encouraging my reluctant feet.

The corridor was wide enough to be mistaken for a main street, and the sound of three pairs of boots rang through it. A building this enormous, and yet barely a trace of other people — the emptiness made me uneasy.

The lighting too was sparse, little more than the minimum, and the interior was dim. Only the warmth of sunlight coming through the windows kept the churning inside me from getting worse.

I was walking with my eyes down when a soft voice from beside me made me look up.

“It’s all right. The Research Director is an important person, but she didn’t summon you here to be cruel to you. She’ll help, I think.”

“…Yes.”

I murmured back to Selene as she spoke, as if reassuring herself as much as me, and turned my eyes forward again.

There had been plenty of transfer circles near the entrance, but the one where Rizett finally stopped was in the furthest corner of the vast building. Without her to guide us, we would certainly have gotten lost. It was the kind of place you could overlook without meaning to.

“Once you step in there, you’ll be right in the Research Director’s room. If you want to turn back, now’s your last chance. Are you all right?”

The blue-glowing transfer circle cast a soft light across Rizett’s face.

She must be nervous too — and yet she was worried about us right up to the end. For Rizett, who had made this possible. For Selene, who had come all this way with us. I couldn’t turn back now.

“I’m all right. Let’s go.”

I stepped into the glow of the transfer circle and the scene before me dissolved into brilliant light.

I almost never had occasion to use transfer magic, and like carriages, it was something I seemed unable to overcome no matter how many times I experienced it. Working through the sensation not unlike motion sickness, I opened my eyes quietly.

What met my sight was a room considerably smaller than I had imagined. Bookshelves lined every wall, packed without a gap, and books were piled across the floor in stacks.

At the far end of the room stood a large desk, with two figures visible behind it. The woman seated in the chair was Research Director Clovis. The other, a woman in a hood standing quietly beside her, was probably an assistant or secretary of some kind.

“Hey. Right on time. Good.”

A low, rough voice hit me before I was ready for it. The black hair, long only at the nape and flicking out in careless points at the ends, gave her the sharpness of something feral.

“Th — thank you for seeing us, Research Director Clovis. You received the letter from—”

“Yeah, introductions can wait. I’ve heard it all from her already and I don’t have time.”

She jerked her chin toward the hooded woman and cut across Rizett without ceremony.

“Redhead is the one who wrote the letter, and black-and-white here are today’s main event.”

“Y-yes. Thank you for your time.”

Holding my voice steady against the nerves, I bowed my head quickly. I had assumed that someone who had risen to Research Director would be more measured, older. She was older than us, but far too young for someone at the top of the Magic Association. Her eye-catching red shirt was half-unbuttoned, making no effort whatsoever to conceal the generous figure beneath.

“I don’t have time to spare, so I’ll keep this short.”

Whether she was trying to intimidate or simply testing us, I couldn’t tell. Those murky jade eyes, dark as stirred water, fixed steadily on me.

“I’ll give you the conclusion first.”

She spoke briefly and pointed at me. The nails, the same red as her shirt, made the pressure of her gaze sharper still.

“Your condition — right now, I don’t know. I’ve never seen or heard of anything like it.”

The answer was close to what I had anticipated, and yet my breath still caught.

I was gripping my trembling hands together hard when a soft warmth enclosed them. Selene, taking my hand. In a place like this, holding hands was probably the wrong thing to do — but right now I wanted to stay just like this.

“But,” she said, pausing to tip her glass and drink.

“I might be able to do something about it.”

The hand holding mine pressed tighter.

“Don’t get the wrong idea. I said right now I don’t know. Which means I’m about to look into something nobody’s looked into before. I can’t believe the answer won’t be in there somewhere.”

“Research Director Clovis.”

Selene’s clear voice entered the brief pause. Even now, in this situation, there was no sign of nerves in it.

“Verna’s fine. And drop the title.”

Clovis — now Verna — said it with something like irritation, recrossed her long legs and turned her gaze to Selene.

“Verna. Why did you take an interest in this girl’s case?”

Selene asked it without flinching from that pressing stare.

“Because I thought it was interesting. That’s all researchers are, in the end. Sorry for that girl over there, but whether she lives or dies doesn’t matter to me as long as it advances mana research.”

She said it like something she was spitting out, eyes moving to the cluttered desk.

I’d had a feeling it would be something like that. I couldn’t imagine someone who had climbed all the way to Research Director giving up valuable time just to help one mage.

I tightened my grip on Selene’s hand and opened my mouth.

“Um. Could you tell me the conditions?”

“Oh?”

Verna narrowed her eyes and moistened her lips with a sip of water. The gaze she turned on me wasn’t comfortable to receive, but she hadn’t lost interest in me yet.

“I don’t imagine you’re doing this for nothing. There are conditions, aren’t there?”

“I thought you were just trailing behind the white one, but you’ve got more nerve than you look. I’ll give you that.”

She brought a hand to her mouth and gave a small laugh.

“Like the black one says, there’s an exchange. The title Research Director and all the rest of it means I’m busy enough, as much as I couldn’t care less about the title itself. So I can’t take this on for nothing.”

“Do what I ask of you properly, and I’ll see it through to the end.”

She raised one corner of her mouth as she said it, and the hooded woman by her side stepped forward and handed me a single sheet of paper.

“I want you to take a commission from me.”