I never knew the names of my birth parents.
Tracing my oldest memories back through my mind, I arrived at some ruins standing by the seaside, where the smell of salt air assailed my nose. Broken timbers, beds covered in sand, pieces of clothing plastered to the ground, dolls buried in the sand, and only the skeleton of the house remaining. Everything I could see was wrecked and covered in sand. In the middle of this incoherent landscape, where everything was broken into little pieces and scattered around like a puzzle, I lay collapsed on the ground.
When I asked about it, I was told this was the scene after everything humans had built was washed away by water and the place had fallen into ruin.
And it was my birthplace, which no longer existed. I was the sole survivor, somehow discovered among all that wreckage. That was what my caretaker at the orphanage told me, casting her eyes down sadly. When I asked why she made such a sad face, my caretaker looked even sadder as she embraced me. I knew then that I had asked something I wasn’t supposed to ask, and I never raised the same question again.
My days at the orphanage seemed like endless tedium.
We got up at a set time, ate breakfast, and played until the afternoon. Then we ate again, and then took a little afternoon nap before playing some more. If we were lucky, we did some reading and writing or studied the world outside, then in the evening we ate dinner, had a bath, and everyone went peacefully to sleep.
Day after day, we repeated the same activities.
I don’t recall how many years and months passed at the orphanage.
Before I knew it, I was eight years old.
While I lived out my boring days confined in this little terrarium, the teachers at the orphanage stood at their lecterns and told us every day about what a broad and beautiful place the world was.
“—Certain people, known as mages, are capable of commanding a mysterious power called magic. They can use magic to make amusing things like this happen, right in their hands.”
Our teacher waved her wand, and the next thing she showed us was a dazzlingly beautiful burst of glittering stars. As the sparkling beads of light flickered around us, the teacher told us that this was an example of the sort of magical power that mages could wield.
At the sight of this beautiful spectacle that filled the room, all the children erupted into delighted applause.
I realized that applause was the appropriate reaction and, a moment later than the others, clapped my hands together quietly.
Before long, the teacher explained that there might be a mage among us and handed out wands to each and every child. Those who directed their energy into the wand and got bluish-white light to come out were mages, the teacher told us.
I was the only one to produce any light. I was showered with a sparse round of applause, half surprise and half confusion.
The teachers at the orphanage taught me the bare minimum of how to use my magic, telling me that it might help me in the future. How to channel magical energy. How to fly on a broom.
“When will this help me?” I asked them.
One teacher answered me with a broad smile. “I’m sure it will come in handy once you leave here.”
Once I leave here.
I didn’t know when that might be, but at the time, I couldn’t help but feel like my teacher was talking about some impossibly distant future.
From time to time, an unfamiliar adult would visit the orphanage. Whenever someone came, I would be instructed by a teacher to go greet them, so every time someone visited, I gave them a polite bow.
When the adults saw me do that, they were pleased. “What excellent manners you have,” they would say. Apparently, I could expect praise for proper greetings. Without fail, every time one of the adults visited, one of the children was no longer there.
It wasn’t like I was especially close to any of the other children there, so I never felt a sense of loss when they left, but it did make me curious whenever someone suddenly disappeared.
One time I asked, “Where did those other kids go?”
When I did, the caretaker averted her eyes from me as if she felt guilty about something and answered, “We got those grown-ups to take them with them into the outside world.”
“The outside world?”
“Yes.” The caretaker frowned and patted me on the head. “Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll be taken away someday, too. You’re such a good girl.”
“If you’re a good girl, you get to go to the outside world?”
I fixed my eyes on the door of the orphanage.
The big door the adults always opened and came through. The dazzling sunlight of the outdoors streamed through the round cut-out window.
It doesn’t seem like anyone’s coming today either.
“Yes… If you keep being good and wait long enough, someone will find you.”
The caretaker patted my head.
I don’t know the names of the people who gave birth to me.
I don’t know where my own hometown is.
I don’t know the world outside that door, not a thing about it.
I don’t know anything.
I don’t even know what it means to be a good girl.
I have nothing.
The only thing I do have is this heavy feeling.
I was certain there was no way I was a normal child, since I was having these kinds of thoughts.
Locked away in this limited world, I had lived my life knowing nothing. The only thing I had was the heavy, stifling feeling of being swept away and submerged by flowing water.
The more time passed, the more distant the light beyond the door seemed to grow.
“…Boring.”
The boredom I suffered through every day gnawed at my mind.
“Boring, boring, boring…”
If I was a good girl and waited long enough, someday a grown-up would come and take me away. Those words my caretaker had spoken to me kept me confined to the orphanage.
“Every day, I’m always bored—”
I was convinced that I must actually be a bad girl.
“I’ve had enough—”
When I was around ten years old—
—I snuck away from the orphanage, alone.