When I needed to search for practically unknown spellbooks, I’d head off to large secondhand bookstores open to the public. It was something of a secret.
Spellbooks made use of a particular ancient script called Catagmark. In this day and age, the only ones who could read it were conjurers and summoners, so there were a lot of cases where the family members of recently deceased mages would sell entire collections of books to public secondhand stores like this.
Since spellbooks tended to go for a high price, the shops rarely sent them off to specialty shops, instead setting up their own sections for grimoires. But that also meant they wouldn’t particularly push to sell the minor tomes, which would end up collecting dust.
At the end of a three-year search, I’d been shocked once to find a book being sold in a secondhand place like this as though it were any other merchandise.
And then there was the Torrenoxion.
As soon as the high-order magic professor had told me about the tome, I’d rushed off to the specialty spellbook shop right away but hadn’t been able to find it. Even the owner I was pals with told me he’d never seen a book like that before, so I was going around the larger used bookstores in Raddermark just to test something. If that turned up nothing, I’d try privately owned shops next.
“Can’t find it…,” I murmured to myself absentmindedly as I searched the spellbook corner from one side to the other with no luck.
According to the professor’s memory, it had a black cover, but that was a pretty popular one for tomes. In the end, I’d had to read every spine. I started again, scouring the giant bookshelf that towered over me all the way up to the ceiling.
As I read each title, I scratched my head.
“Um—may I ask you something?” someone suddenly asked me in a quiet voice.
I took a look and saw a girl in a white hooded cloak. I couldn’t see her face since her hood was pulled low over her eyes, and she seemed to be shrinking in on herself.
“Sure, what is it?” I asked, trying to cover up my drawl.
Why had she talked to me? As I thought that, I scanned the shop and couldn’t find any employees around—not even at the counter I could just catch a glimpse of from here.
Since I’d already said yes, I looked down at the reserved girl’s head and waited for her question.
Then she said, as though she’d resolved herself, “Do you happen to know where the manga artist Rifris’s autograph event is? I heard it’s today at Tabitha Books.” When she asked that, I genuinely was confused.
“You’re lookin’ for a what now?”
Shoot. I’d been so caught off guard that I’d reverted to my normal way of talking, which was guaranteed to spook a timid girl like her.
I covered my mouth with my hand as I set my mind on figuring out how to fix this.
I felt sorry for the girl since her shoulders were quivering from the shock. She’d probably screwed up her courage to ask me, considering she genuinely needed the help. Then I thought of what to do right away.
“That would probably be in the shop that handles new releases. Tabitha Books has a secondhand location and a new books location, but they’re separate buildings.”
The hood covering the girl’s head shifted slightly. I realized it wasn’t because she’d nodded or anything like that. Seemed she’d recognized my voice.
“Feil Fonaf?”
“Oh, it’s you, Sasha.”
I was the one taken by surprise when her pretty face appeared in front of me.
I couldn’t mistake that for anybody else’s. Nobody had a face like hers—with her platinum hair and amethyst eyes that even bards from other lands called the second coming of the goddess Pearla.
She’d hidden her long, full hair under her hood. When she looked up at me with wide doe eyes, instead of her usual majestic and dignified self, she seemed more like the young girl she truly was.
“What are you doing here…?” she said.
“I’m searchin’ for a book like anybody else. Actually, shouldn’t I be askin’ you that? Had no idea it was you.”
“I—I couldn’t see in front of me very well because of the hood—”
“Uh-huh. Well, anyway, glad it worked out this way. If you’d asked anyone other than an Academy student, they would’ve swooned soon as they realized they were talkin’ to the Sasha.”
“How silly. I can’t avoid excursions to town simply because I’m royalty.”
“…You’re incognito, then?”
“…Yes,” she whispered and seemed to scan her surroundings. I naturally dropped down to a whisper, too.
“You sure were askin’ weird things. What’s this about a manga artist and autographin’?”
“That’s—”
I wasn’t trying to be malicious in the slightest, but Sasha’s face clouded over when I asked out of curiosity. “Sorry. Shouldn’t be pokin’ round your hobbies,” I apologized immediately. Then I asked, “Did ya look up the location where the new books are sold before comin’ here?”
She shook her head weakly. When she did, her sweet fragrance wafted from the hair under her hood.
She was acting so meek today, it was almost giving me the creeps. Where had the third princess of the land of Shidoh, the strongest summoner in our school who dealt with us effortlessly and had a hand in managing the Academy, gone?
As a way of apologizing for earlier, I said, “Would it be okay if I took you? Better than gettin’ lost somewhere.”
She seemed to perk up after that.
“Are you sure? What about your spellbook? You used one of your valuable Sunday breaks to come all the way out here.”