Episode One
This should have been a happy walk home, and yet my feet feel heavy. Has the road from the main street to the house always been this long? The front door has never felt this hard to push open.
The moment she closed it behind us, Selene moved toward her room without giving me a chance to say a word. The sound of her door closing made my body flinch, just slightly.
In the end we didn’t exchange a single word the whole way home. She doesn’t look angry — but perhaps I did something to get on her nerves.
We’ve argued plenty of times before. But when she’s angry there’s always a reason for it, and usually I’m the one in the wrong.
I was slumped on the sofa turning that over vaguely, when the sound of a door opening pulled my attention back.
“Unpack your things and sit down. I’ll make tea.”
Selene, robe off, said it without looking at me, flat and matter-of-fact.
“…Okay.”
I don’t feel like it, but I know we have to talk.
I went quickly to my room, put down my things, and changed. I stood in front of the door and took one deep breath, then went back to the living room where Selene was waiting.
“I’ve changed. You can talk now, can’t you?”
I asked it toward the back turned to the kitchen, settling into the living room chair. Only the sound of water coming to a boil was swallowed by the quiet, and the inside of the house felt uncomfortable in a way it never usually did.
I sat with my eyes on the table, waiting, and finally a cup was set in front of me and Selene took the seat across. The scent I loved drifted softly past my nose, but right now I couldn’t feel anything from it.
“Your body… is it all right? If you need mana, we can do that first.”
I shook my head slightly at Selene, her eyes on her cup.
“I’m fine for now, so later please. What did you want to say?”
I tried to talk the way I always did, not letting the heavy atmosphere drag me down. Even as I did, the hands resting on my knees were growing damp with sweat.
Selene gave a small nod at my words, kept her eyes down, and opened her mouth slowly.
“Sion.”
“…Let’s put an end to the witch business.”
It felt as though time stopped at her words.
“…What?”
“What do you mean, end?”
End. ending. End…?
I turned her words over and over in my head.
“The White Witch and the Black Witch — it’s over.”
The cup Selene was holding in both hands trembled faintly.
“Sion, you don’t have to use magic anymore.”
The moment those words fell, every sound in the room seemed to recede. I couldn’t even hear myself breathing clearly.
What kind of face am I making right now.
“…Sorry, I don’t quite understand. Why all of a sudden…?”
With a head gone entirely white, I forced the words out somehow.
“…Sion, you’ve been saying all along you hated it. I knew you hated it, and I made you push through anyway, because of my selfishness.”
“…I’m sorry. Belatedly. It’s too late, I know… I’m sorry.”
Watching her apologise again and again with tears gathering at the corners of her eyes, my breath caught. I don’t think I’ve seen her cry since that day.
“I don’t understand at all. Why are you saying this now?”
“…Today was supposed to be a happy day. I wanted to celebrate and be glad with you…”
Without realising, I pressed my fist closed.
“…Telling me it’s over out of nowhere, I can’t just accept that.”
I couldn’t accept what Selene was saying, and my voice grew sharp at the end. I didn’t understand what she was saying, or why I was this irritated.
In the first place, if she was going to say it was over, she could just tell me curtly in one sentence like she always does and be done with it.
I’m fed up with Selene’s selfishness — not being gentle when I want gentleness, not being cold when it would be fine to be cold.
The tea I took a sip of to fill the silence — my favourite blend, it should have been — tasted like nothing today.
“…Because I couldn’t protect Sion.”
The voice that murmured it with eyes lowered and tears in it looked smaller and more fragile than usual.
“At the old Association and at the abandoned settlement. I said I would protect Sion, and I… couldn’t.”
“Seeing Sion in that state in front of Kiaran, I thought… this is too much…”
“…If I can’t protect you, I can’t put Sion through any more frightening things.”
“That’s why… the witch business ends.”
With that she looked away and fell silent.
“It’s not like… you have to stop. I don’t think Selene failed to protect me.”
“I’ll work on getting stronger too. So—”
“No. If I can’t protect Sion, I have no right to fight alongside her—”
“…Will you actually listen to me!! We’ve been doing this together all along!”
I slammed the table hard and cut across her words. I’d meant to talk like I always did, but my voice was rougher than even I expected.
“That side of Selene—”
The words I hate stopped in my throat. The Selene who won’t listen to me — I hate her. The Selene who’s always selfish — I hate her. I’d always been able to say things like that without hesitating. But now.
Unable to catch the words I’d lost, only a muffled sound came from my throat. The fist I’d brought down on the table ached, but the pain pressing like an alarm inside my chest was stronger.
Selene, who had been looking down, slowly raised her face, and relaxed her swollen, tear-reddened eyes in an unnatural way.
“Sion, you don’t like using magic, do you? It’s painful, and there’s the supply too.”
My heart gave a large, startled lurch.
That’s right. I’ve hated it all along. There’s nothing more welcome than not having to use magic. And yet something has me in a vice, deep in my chest.
“So you don’t have to use magic anymore. I’m sorry for making you push through all this time.”
Selene’s gentle face looks strangely painful to look at. At the sight of that smile like something manufactured, an unnameable unease spread through me.
“But — stay in this house, going forward. I can properly protect you here.”
She said it, took my hand, and smiled at me. This isn’t the smile I wanted to see.
“…Selene, is that… all right with you?”
The voice that scraped out of me was hoarser than I expected even from myself. A voice like this probably won’t reach her.
“…Yes. If Sion is here.”
I clenched my back teeth and held down the trembling in my body.
I don’t want this.
Why I feel that, I don’t know. But I don’t want it. Absolutely not.
I wanted to say that to her face, but I couldn’t say it to the Selene in front of me right now.
“…I haven’t accepted this.”
I said it and fell silent. Will these tangled emotions ever find their way back to something I can recognise?
“Rest for a while starting tomorrow. You don’t have to worry about money.”
I hate the familiar smile, and the manufactured voice, all of it.
“…So stay here every day. Don’t go anywhere.”
In a soft voice, as though coaxing me gently, she said it quietly.
“…!”
I’m so frustrated. I want to say so many things. She’s always getting her own way, so she could stand to hear what I want for once. Words like that were knotting together inside me.
“If your mana gets low, tell me. I’ll do this for you.”
My small hand was wrapped in Selene’s warm one.
This isn’t what I wanted.
Having this done to me… doesn’t make me happy.
After that, for a while, we didn’t exchange a word, and I sat there with my hand held. Whether the tightness deep in my chest was mana entering my body, or something else entirely, I couldn’t tell.
I couldn’t even watch her go as she said she didn’t want dinner and went back to her room, and I sat alone in the living room staring into empty space.
About three years since we graduated from the academy. It had been nothing but difficult things, and yet we had lived through them together as the witch ladies.
And yet I can’t accept an ending this one-sided.
I let out a long breath and slumped forward, collapsing onto the table.
I’d wanted to eat something delicious to celebrate, laugh off everything that had been hard. I wanted today to be a day we’d both remember.
I was the one who said I didn’t want to use magic. I was supposed to have hated Selene for making me use it anyway.
But suddenly having the collar removed — having never lived alone, I had no idea how I was supposed to live from here.