I had no idea what this so-called tournament was actually like, but—
『Shizuku, you and I are way too different in height and build.』
『That’s where your magic comes in, Master. You can just use it to disguise yourself somehow…』
『I could probably manage the disguise part, but something like a mock battle would be a little difficult.』
『Hmm, that’s a problem… Ee-wait, ah!? S-Sorry, I—』
The telepathic connection suddenly went dead.
『What happened, Shizuku? Shizuku!?』
I sent my voice back to her, but there was no response.
Had something happened?
The pendant we used as a medium for telepathy also had a function that let us know each other’s location. When I checked, Shizuku was somewhere around Matsuki Station. I was worried about leaving her alone, so I decided to go check on her.
Being careful not to wake Mia, I quietly slipped out through the window. It had been a while since I’d gone out in the middle of the night like this. The last time had been a year ago, when Ayano was kidnapped.
I enhanced my body with magic and leaped from rooftop to rooftop in a kind of eight-boat leap. Still, “Go undercover and compete in the tournament for me.” That was a strange request coming from Shizuku.
Shizuku Aitori. A girl who had become head of the Aitori family at the tender age of fourteen. She was always dressed in a pitch-black long coat, with her right eye concealed beneath a bandage. It was easy to get distracted by her textbook chūnibyō fashion, but I thought there was something genuinely strong at her core.
When an exorcist named Yujiro Kijima went on a rampage, she had put herself in harm’s way to try to stop him. After the kidnapping incident, she had come under even greater hostility from the other families, yet she endured it all without ever complaining.
Would someone like her really ask for a stand-in for a tournament without some serious reason?
I could understand if she were asking me to help with training, but maybe she was carrying some pretty heavy circumstances on her shoulders.
Lost in thought, I eventually arrived where Shizuku’s location was pinged at. It was north of Matsuki Station, in a rather seedy part of town lined with questionable-looking establishments. It was hardly what you’d call a respectable neighborhood.
And there, in one of the back alleys—
“What the hell? You bump into someone’s shoulder and think you can just get away with saying sorry?”
“Heh heh. You’d better not resist. Michiru-san might have a girly name, but he knows this guy named Masaru, who used to go to a boxing gym and even took the pro test. Though, well, Masaru failed the test, and these days he works at a bar in Shinjuku Ni-chōme with his underling Saburou.”
“Don’t go blabbing about irrelevant crap, Shirou!”
The scene unfolding before me looked strangely familiar.
Shizuku was being hassled by two rough-looking men. From what I could gather, they were arguing over whether or not she had bumped into one of their shoulders. The two men were wearing ugly, sleazy grins.
I should probably step in.
Then again, if a five-year-old suddenly wandered into the middle of this, it would probably just make things more complicated.
Wait.
I had an idea.
I decided to try an idea that had suddenly occurred to me.
“—《Time Spell》: 《Pitch-Black Transformation Pose—The First Kam○n Rider to Grin Was Actually the Second One Returning from the Other Side, Not the First One on This Side》!”
As usual, the chant and the pronunciation had absolutely nothing to do with each other. Oh well, you just had to ignore that.
A dull ache throbbed in my right flank. The conceptual information stored within the “Mud” unfolded, and my five-year-old body transformed into the form of the Black Knight.
And now for the actual experiment.
Had the body beneath the armor reverted to the form I had in my previous life?
“《Armor Removal—Take It Off and You’ll Be Amazed》.”
I’d said it before, but magic was all about imagination. Basically, if you could imagine something, you could make it happen.
Yep. The jet-black armor smoothly vanished, leaving only my bare body behind. To anyone looking from the outside, it should have looked exactly like me at eighteen. That was around the time I’d been trained by my female knight master and had developed a decent amount of muscle.
As for the strength I could bring out…
Somewhere above that of a child, but below the Black Knight. On the other hand, the fact that I was still stuck being mentally fulfilled was incredibly annoying, so the progression of the contamination—“I should just die already”—was slower.
This was only a prediction, but I figured I could maintain the transformation for about thirty minutes.
Let’s organize things for a moment.
Child form: Low combat power — No time limit
18-year-old human form: Moderate combat power — Thirty-minute time limit
Black Knight: Extreme combat power — Three-minute time limit
I stepped out from the shadows and ran over to where Shizuku and the others were.
“Um, excuse me.”
I called out to the man who had been addressed as Michiru. He had a dark complexion and multiple piercings in his lips.
I felt a sudden urge to give them a tug, but I held myself back.
“Who the hell are you? We’re in the middle of an important conversation here—get lost.”
“Oh, man… I’m really sorry, it looks like my little sister was rude to you.”
(Bow, bow, bow) I kept bowing profusely.
“So, anyway, I’d like to pay some compensation…”
“Heh, now that’s a good attitude.”
“The amount is…—Ah! B-b-behind you! A… a beautiful headless ghost!”
“Heeeh!?” “Really!?”
It was a terribly lame lie, even by my standards, but the two men fell for it hook, line, and sinker.
Taking advantage of the opening,
“Uh… w-who are you…?”
I scooped up Shizuku—who still hadn’t realized who I was—and bolted from the scene. Shaking off the men turned out to be surprisingly easy.
Well, my stats were still at their peak, after all. Even carrying a girl in my arms like a princess, it wasn’t exactly much of a handicap.
I reached a park near the river and gently set Shizuku down on the ground.
“Thank you very much. I’m terribly sorry for causing you any trouble.”
Shizuku bowed her head.
Her manner was impeccably polite, but I could practically feel the aura radiating from her, as if saying, “Please don’t get any more involved than this.”
Well, I couldn’t really blame her. This was the first time Shizuku had ever seen me in this form. As far as she was concerned, I was just some complete stranger.
And being suddenly swept up into that stranger’s arms and carried off like a princess? If you looked at it realistically, being wary was the perfectly normal reaction.
I could practically read Shizuku’s thoughts. Maybe something like, “I’m grateful you rescued me and all, but… isn’t this guy kind of dangerous too…?”
Hmm. This was actually kind of refreshing. I was used to the Shizuku who went around acting all, “Yaaay, Master!” So getting this cold, distant version of her was strangely fun. Still, it would be cruel to frighten her any more than necessary.
“Shizuku. It’s me. Yoshito.”
I decided to reveal the joke, using telepathy along with my words.
＊ ＊ ＊
“Oh, honestly, you really scared me… If it’s you, Master, then just say so! I was genuinely terrified.”
Shizuku looked like she was on the verge of tears as she said it.
“I don’t mind being mistreated by you or the Young Madam, but when it’s some complete stranger… that’s a little much…”
Her words suddenly dredged up a bitter memory from my past.
Yeah… just because someone’s an M doesn’t mean they’ll take it from absolutely anybody. That’s how virgins get themselves hated. They see some girl casually say, “I’m an M, you know~,” and, without understanding the distinction, start teasing her until she wants nothing to do with them.
Ah.
I’m talking about myself.
I want to die.
“Master, why did you suddenly slump over like that?”
“It’s nothing.”
Once, I took an arrow to the heart. And the wound still hurts terribly.
Ugh.
“B-By the way…”
Shizuku spoke hesitantly.
“About what we were talking about earlier—the stand-in thing… Is it really no good?”
“…You mean the tournament?”
Shizuku nodded.
“Yes. Its proper name is the ‘Gathering for the exchange of arts’, but everyone just calls it the Shohyakka. It’s basically a mock-combat tournament where exorcists aged eighteen and under gather to compete.”
“So ‘children’ because everyone’s eighteen or younger, and ‘arts exchange’ is a fancy way of saying mock combat. …What exactly does [Shohyakka] mean?”
“It’s a collective term for all the various exorcist families.”
“That sounds pretty cool.”
“Right!?”
Shizuku answered with surprising enthusiasm.
I knew exactly how she felt. There’s just something about phrases that sound like they came straight out of Classical Chinese that makes your soul tremble.
“So, why do you have to win?”
“Well, you see… there are some complicated circumstances…”
Shizuku mumbled, hesitating to speak clearly.
“A secret rendezvous at an hour like this? The Aitori family seems to be a rather unrestrained lot.”
A voice cut in.
It was a hawk. Circling through the night sky, the hawk swooped down and landed right in front of us. Its feathers, bathed in moonlight, were a dazzling, pure white.
“Forgive me for appearing as a familiar. I am Fumitaka Takasu, the eldest son of the Takasu family.”
A deep, heavy male voice resonated from the hawk’s beak whenever it moved. He was likely using magic—or something similar—to turn the bird into a speaker.
“And you there… I don’t recognize your face. Oh well—no matter. You’re probably just some insignificant, small-time exorcist. Don’t bother giving me your name, I’ll forget it instantly anyway.”
The hawk fixed its gaze on me as it spoke. Its tone dripped with open scorn. It wasn’t just a cheap provocation. This man, Takasu, seemed to genuinely look down on me.
“Personally, I don’t care how promiscuous the daughter of the Aitori family may be. That is what it means to possess the makings of a king.”
Personally?
That was one hell of a first-person pronoun, too.
Shizuku, Kijima, Hatoba…
Seriously, why were there nothing but eccentrics in the exorcist world?
“Shizuku. As I told you this morning, if you fail to win the next exchange, you will become engaged to my younger brother. Your connections to the Matsuki family and Phyllis Iris are far too valuable for a woman like you to possess. Hand them all over to the Takasu family willingly. Do you understand?”
Having said his piece, the white hawk flapped its wings and flew away. Or, at least, that was what it looked like. In reality, it slipped into a nearby grove and concealed itself among the trees.
I could feel someone watching us. Come to think of it, hadn’t that hawk been circling overhead when those two men were harassing Shizuku, too?
Maybe it had been keeping an eye on her the entire time.
I had no idea whether it was stalking her or simply acting as a scout, but either way, I wasn’t particularly fond of the whole invasion-of-privacy thing.
All right, here goes. At this distance, my magic could reach it easily enough. I put the hawk to sleep. And while I was at it, I might as well give it a dream starring Shizuku.
While I was busy tampering with the bird’s dreams, Shizuku stood there in complete silence. Her brows were furrowed, her expression unusually severe.
“Shizuku, is that the reason you have to win?”
“…Yes.”
Even her voice sounded strangely stiff.
“That man has been incredibly persistent about forcing this engagement on me. I’ve been refusing him all this time, but…”
Apparently, a man named Fumitaka Takasu was quite the forceful type. Once he decided that Shizuku wasn’t interested in him, he started pulling strings everywhere he could.
And the result was—If Aitori Shizuku fails to win the next exchange, she will become engaged to the second son of the Takasu family.
That was how the whole thing had been arranged. It didn’t seem like a decision made without the head of the family’s approval would have any legal standing, but apparently the main branch had issued an order, and that was that.
So the whole main-branch / branch-family relationship thing actually existed in modern Japan. The exorcist world really was scary.
“Ideally, I’d win the tournament through my own ability, but… there isn’t much time left.”
“When is the exchange?”
“The weekend after next. It’s already Friday since midnight has passed, so…”
“Eight days, counting today.”
The deadline was practically staring us in the face.
“First, why don’t you show me your magic? I should at least be able to give you some training.”
“R-Really? You’ll do that? …I’m sorry. When you put it that way, asking you to be my stand-in really was a ridiculous idea.”
“Don’t worry about it. Anyone would be thrown into a panic if someone suddenly started talking about marriage and engagements.”
Besides, I was more surprised that things like arranged marriages and betrothals even existed in modern society. The exorcist world was seriously complicated.
“Anyway, enough about that. Magic. Let’s see what you’ve got. Ready?”
“W-Wait just a moment!”
Shizuku answered nervously, then reached into the right pocket of her coat and pulled out a small gemstone.
“《Wake Up》”
That must have been the keyword.
The gemstone rose into the air with a low “vrrrrm”, and several metal components materialized around it. One by one, they were drawn toward each other like magnets, gradually assembling themselves into a single shape.
It looked just like the combining sequence from a robot anime.
When it was finally complete, what appeared was a magical staff crowned with a “cracked cross” at its tip. The design was exactly the same as the one embroidered onto her long coat. Incidentally, Shizuku’s outfit itself hadn’t changed.
Changing clothes after stripping completely naked first was a classic bit of magical-girl romance, but I supposed reality was simply too cruel for that.
What a shame.
“Um… what kind of magic should I use?”
“For now, just something like a fireball.”
“Understood!”
With an energetic reply, Shizuku spread her left hand wide. She held it up in front of her bandage-covered right eye and began her incantation. At this point, I couldn’t sense any movement in her magical power.
It was probably just a pose to get herself into the mood.
“—When the Brightness falls from the heavens of Air, I shall journey to the Stars of My Destination…”
An incantation.
And it sounded incredibly familiar.
Actually, wasn’t this just a bunch of sci-fi titles randomly strung together?
“—O Fire upon the Deep, O Harsh Mistress, O star of Fomalhaut—”
Fomalhaut?
Seriously?
Judging from the context, I was pretty sure she was referring not to the actual star, but to “that” Fomalhaut from the Cthulhu Mythos. What is she going to do if something indescribable actually showed up?
Putting the finer points of my commentary aside, magical power began to swirl around Shizuku.
I only remembered this from a year ago, but Kijima, who was actively fighting on the front lines as an exorcist, had a magic-power stat somewhere in the seventies.
Now, let’s take a look at Shizuku’s current stats.
| [Name] Shizuku Aitori [Gender] Female [Race] Chuunibyou [Age] 15 [Title] 8th Head of the Aitori Family [Stats] ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙Level: 56 ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙Attack Power: 56 ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙Defense: 52 ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙Vitality: 45 ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙Magic Power: 92 ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙Mental Strength: 44 ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙Agility: 57 [Abilities] Unknown [Skills] Western Magic III; others unknown |
Last year, she had been level 52 with a magic-power stat in the eighties, but apparently, she’d grown quite a bit without me realizing it.
A magic-power stat in the nineties was pretty impressive. In the other world, that was enough to aim for a position as a court mage. And yet, the magical wavelength I could actually sense from her was strangely weak.
If her true potential were a spectacular fireworks display, then her current output was a little handheld sparkler.
What the hell was with that gap anyway?
“May it be completed within my hands—《Purgatory Flame: Cannon》!”
When Shizuku shouted the spell in a voice more dignified than usual—
….Pop.
A palm-sized ball of flame appeared with a strangely underwhelming sound. It drifted forward at a snail’s pace before vanishing as though it had run out of strength.
“H-How was that? Actually, I’m kind of at the bottom of the pack among the younger exorcists…”
Shizuku asked anxiously.
Her magic-power stat was in the nineties, yet she couldn’t bring any of it to bear. In terms of actual output, was she getting less than a third of what she should have?
I’d seen cases like this several times in the other world. The first thing to consider was compatibility. Maybe her natural aptitude simply didn’t mesh with the magic system she was using.
Hmm…. now, what should I do?
This was a pretty serious problem. I began to ponder the situation with a low, thoughtful groan, but then my time ran out.
My magical energy was depleted, and I could no longer maintain the form I’d held in my previous life. My body began to shrink rapidly, and at the same time, my consciousness started to drift away.
This is bad.
If I fall asleep now, I won’t be able to… go home…
“M-Master!?”
Hearing Shizuku’s bewildered voice, I lost consciousness.
The next morning.
Although I had somehow made it back to my bed at home…
“…Oniisan, you were out late last night, weren’t you? What were you doing with Shizuku?”
…I found myself facing some unexpected questioning from Mia.
This is translated by Yume Neiji. Kindly read at yumeneijiworks.com
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