“It looks like everyone’s all prepared. Okay—ready, set, go!” the witch running the event called out.
Just like that, all the assembled witches charged into the forest en masse. Some of them took to the skies, but the majority proceeded on foot. Some witches were very specialized in pharmaceuticals and could barely use any magic at all, and plenty of others were quite fit thanks to long hours spent foraging in depths of forests and on mountains, so the whole event felt more like an athletic festival than anything else.
I, however, was strolling along slowly and deliberately. We’d only just begun, and it already felt like I was lagging behind. Eno, who had charged along ahead, quickly realized something was wrong and came running back to me.
“Hey! What’re you dragging your feet for?! We have to hurry into the forest!” she shouted. “Don’t tell me you can’t deal with getting a little exercise right now?”
“No, that’s not it. My legs work just as well as ever,” I said.
My body hadn’t been turned to stone, or anything like that. I could move around as much as I wanted to with no issues.
✦ ✦ ✦
“I can move…but the thing is, I don’t want to move!”
✦ ✦ ✦
Not only did I not want to be running around right now, but I also would’ve stayed stock-still if I’d had my way. I’d explained that to my family again and again over the past few days, but Eno had yet to get the picture.
“Well please, just get into the forest, at the absolute least! We won’t stand a chance otherwise!” Eno begged.
“…Yeah, okay,” I sighed. “I’ll go, I’ll go. Just give me a minute, and I’ll be there before you know it.”
“It sounds an awful lot like you’re not planning on going at all, to me!”
Whoops—busted. I just really, really don’t want to run around right now!
“It’s fine. I’m pretty sure I’ll reach the forest before the time limit ends,” I said.
“And how’s that supposed to help?! You need to get in there as quickly as possible and whack some crocs! I’ll take you there myself if I have to!”
Eno made good on her threat, dragging me by the arm as she set off at a run. “This is more than I bargained for… I didn’t think it would turn out like this,” she muttered.
“Ugh, too fast! Too faaast…”
“You’re still young at heart, aren’t you?! Stop talking like some old fogey!”
✦ ✦ ✦
In the end, Eno pulled me all the way into the woods, where I soon spotted a number of crocodiles.
So I’m just supposed to give them a whack, right?
“Hup! Hup! Hup! Hyup! Hiyup!”
I nailed one croc after another with my hammer. It felt like muscle memory—or something like it, anyway—took over before I knew it, and my reactions were quick enough to rack up some decent numbers in short order. I’d played a game that was awfully close to this in my previous life, after all. The fact that the rules were so simple—the more you hit, the better—made the game fun, even when I was just a kid.
“You’re doing incredibly, Miss Azusa! Your hammer’s moving so quickly, I can’t even keep up with it! They don’t call you the Great Witch of the Highlands for nothing!”
“Ha-ha-ha! I hope you weren’t starting to underestimate me—these old bones have some life in them yet!”
I was starting to use more and more old lady phrases as time went by. I’d always acted like a relatively young woman, since that matched up with my seventeen-year-old appearance, but it seemed when I looked like an elderly lady, my behavior naturally started to shift to match that appearance as well.
I am three hundred years old inside, after all… If anything, the way I look right now is probably more appropriate than my usual appearance. Or maybe that doesn’t really apply so much, considering an ordinary person would never live to three hundred in the first place…
“Hup! Hiyup! Hyup! Hup! Hup!”
I battered away at one forest croc after the next. It was sort of a chore, but the more I got into it, the more fun it started to feel.
“Um, Miss Azusa? I appreciate that you’ve gotten a lot faster about this, but, well…” Eno awkwardly muttered.
“Yeah? But what?” I asked. I didn’t see anything wrong with me doing a good job, but the way she’d trailed off made me think she did.
“You’ve only been hitting the crocodiles on the ground. Please go for the ones sitting up in the trees, too! You’re acting like some sort of dedicated ground combat specialist!”
“Ah! When did I stop looking up? I didn’t even notice!”
Now that she mentions it, I started hunching over! That must be why I was so focused on my feet. There were no smartphones in this world, so I usually never had any reason to look down or hunch. I generally had quite good posture, but somehow, I’d started hunching over anyway.
“I don’t really feel like standing up straight, though, so I’ll just keep doing it like this, if you don’t mind,” I continued.
“What?! But these crocodiles are illusions, which means they can turn up anywhere—even in the air! If you keep focusing on the ground, you’ll let tons of them get away!”
“Well, that’s the crocodiles’ fault for appearing in places that don’t make sense.”
“It’s a game! They’re flying crocodiles! There, see?! There’s one flying right now!”
“Those are all yours. I’ll hit the ones on the ground. Isn’t that convenient, since there’s two of us? We’re splitting our efforts. It’s teamwork.”
“I have a feeling you’re not really doing it that way for efficiency’s sake…”
Eno still didn’t seem convinced, but I wasn’t budging, and she seemed to give up on convincing me otherwise. It was no surprise I’d won, in a sense—the older you get, the more stubborn you become. Or, well, maybe less stubborn, and more unwilling to go to the trouble of changing your lifestyle and giving up deep-seated habits. That’s something I’d come to understand very well since I ended up in this body.
Your body has a lot more of an influence on your personality than I would’ve imagined.