Living hell? Misaki furrowed his brows, at which Mia only cackled and intently stared at the yellow fruit. Then, she grabbed the wand she had left lying on the table, and lightly flicked it.
“Let this taste be transposed!”
It seemed as though she had just cast a spell, but nothing much appeared to happen: there was no sound or any visible effect. However, a triumphant grin spread across her face.
“Now, taste your coffee!”
“…I have a really bad feeling about this…” However, possessed by morbid curiosity, Misaki gingerly took a sip from the cup before him. The very instant it hit his tongue, he spit it back out with disgust.
“What’s wrong?” Shou asked Misaki, who was violently coughing, trying to get rid of the taste.
As Shou rubbed soothing circles on Misaki’s back, the latter barked at Mia, “The heck did you do to my drink?! It’s so sour it burns! It doesn’t even taste like coffee anymore—AT ALL!”
“He-he-he, I left the color and the drink’s other properties untouched, except for the taste, which is now turned to lemon! It took me quite some effort!” Mia puffed out her chest with a self-satisfied smirk, ignoring Misaki’s indignant squawks.
Meanwhile, Shou also took a swig from Misaki’s cup, conveniently placed next to him, and raised his eyebrows in amazement. “…Wow, it really does taste like lemon!”
“Seriously? Mmh, whoa. Yep, that’s lemon all right,” Ren was also surprised when he took a sip of the coffee passed to him by Shou.
With not even a hint of coffee left, the liquid in the cup was unmistakably pure lemon juice to taste.
“So you can do clever tricks like that too?”
“It isn’t exactly my area of expertise, but I had to try it, since I was so lucky as to discover Misaki’s weakness the other day. Night after night, I did image training. Hours of biting into lemons, etching their taste in my memory, and then creating an image of transferring that sourness into my enemy’s drink… It caused me so much trouble! I ended up needing two whole weeks to perfect it!”
“Don’t waste two weeks of your time to come up with such stupid pranks!” Misaki yelled at her, the sour taste having apparently faded from his mouth.
Mia was undaunted, crossing her arms and grinning with a devil-may-care attitude.
“I can’t afford to spare effort on anything that will hurt my enemies! Hee-hee, now, every time you put a drink to your lips, you shall cower in fear! For it is up to me whether or not it will turn into lemon juice inside your mouth! Bwa-ha-ha-ha!”
“Wa-a-ah! It’s a stupid prank, but it’s damn scary!” Misaki clutched his head in horror.
It was a far more terrifying prospect than a physical fight with all the kicking and the punching that came with it.
Aya, sipping on her coffee, turned to ask Mia, who displayed such surprising aptitude for pranking, “Wow, that was amazing! Can you shift any taste you want with this trick?”
“I wonder if I can… It’s my first attempt at such a spell. I need to concentrate on the image in my head in order for my magic to work. It took me days of chewing on lemons to just be able to maintain an exact image of sour taste, so I probably can’t turn drinks into anything other than lemon juice at the moment.”
Satisfied by the explanation, Aya folded her arms and hummed, deep in thought.
Ren also had his arms folded, similarly pondering something. He was the first one to speak out. “So, you can basically do anything as long as you’ve got the right image for it?”
“Father said so, and I have no reason to doubt his words. However, I need to expend magical power in order to create a spell out of an image. And the bigger the image, or the more large-scale it is, the more power it requires. Also, he told me materializing things that are commonly believed to be valuable requires spending a tremendous amount of power, so I should refrain from even trying it.”
With the right image, she could do anything. It was something any grown-up could easily come up with; if she could only produce an image of a gold nugget or a precious gem, she’d be able to live like a queen. However, making things that were universally regarded as valuable used up a lot of energy. In other words, if she tried creating an ingot of a precious metal—it would probably require spending a monumental amount of magical power. And using that depleted Mia’s physical energy reserves.
Mia had used her ‘great magical art of darkness’ on them before, making a beautiful rain of light fall down with the spell. And it had caused her to run out of magical power, so she had fled. She felt physically drained at the time too.
Everyone wondered how much it would take out of her to materialize something commonly recognized as valuable. They didn’t want to find out by trying, though.
I have no need for such things, and I’d hate to see Mia used as a tool to satisfy someone’s greed. That was the thought running through the minds of everyone present, which they communicated with each other through their eyes.
Mia was unsafe, and not in the sense that she herself was dangerous. What if some shady sort found out about her sorceress powers? They would kidnap the girl, gag her so that she couldn’t harm them with her spells, force images serving their selfish desires on her and make her fulfill them with her magic. It wasn’t that farfetched of an idea to suppose there were lowlifes out there capable of doing that. Not to mention, why would the values of the world make an item more difficult to create or summon? Either way, Mia’s powers were quite mysterious and powerful.
“Mia, you can’t tell this to anyone, okay?”
“To anyone? Hah! You lot are the first ones… Huh? Why in the world did I divulge this top-secret information to the likes of you?! Despite Father having told me it was something only sorcerers must be privy to… Damnation!” Mia clutched her head, apparently having remembered all of that too late.
The question came so easily during small talk, the answer ended up slipping her tongue just as casually.
Suddenly, a glimmer of a smile played out across Ren’s lips, and he lightly stroked Mia’s head. At the sight of her confused face rising to meet his gaze, the glimmer widened into a full-blown grin.
“Don’t sweat it. Yeah, why don’t you do image training to play some more pranks on us instead? Seems like the one you played on Misaki was effective, if not stupid.”
“More like, stupidly effective! Ugh, after hearing a story like that it seems like I ain’t got much choice but to grin an’ bear it. Dammit! You guys, tell her some of your weaknesses too!” As Misaki argued that it wasn’t fair he was in this alone, Shou touched a finger to his chin, mulling it over.
“O-kay, soo, I hate the taste of mango juice! Orange juice, too.”
“Ah, I’ll go with cocoa, then! Whatever I drink will turn to cocoa, right? Oh, that would be the end of the world for me!” Aya exaggerated, hiding her grin behind her hand.
“I can’t stand green tea… No, wait, make that black tea,” Subaru tossed out.
“Those’re your favorite drinks, you backstabbing…” Misaki started fuming that everyone was betraying him.
Mia, who was conscientiously taking notes, let out a surprised, “So you actually like those?!”
Ren seemed content to just watch the exchange, hiding his amused smile behind the coffee cup, when Aya inquired, “Ren, don’t you have anything you dislike?”
“Yeah, come on, spit it out!” Misaki joined in, pressing him for an answer.
He must really be pissed to be the only one whose weakness was uncovered. Ren snickered and murmured, looking up at the ceiling, “Hmm, what should I go for? Ah, I think I’ll pass on the drinks.”
“Huh? Food, then?”
“Food… Well, it’s sort of close,” Ren drawled, casting a suggestive glance at Mia.
She sulkily stared back at him, a grim foreboding filling her at his gaze.
Ah, those defiant eyes of hers are just irresistible! Ren thought, smirking, and purred, “I hate kisses. So, if you really wanna tick me off, just put your lips on mine and you’re golden! You don’t even have to do image training for this one! Super easy, right?”
Mia looked gobsmacked. It seemed like she needed some time to process what had just been said to her. When she finally comprehended it, all the blood in her body rushed to her cheeks, her face growing as red as a ripe tomato.
“Th-That can’t be true! Did you really think I would believe you, after you repeatedly kissed me and nipped me on the ears?!”
“Well, I like kissing people, but being kissed, yuck!”
“You liar!” Mia went ballistic at Ren’s blatant lie.
Exasperated, Aya muttered, “Oh my, even a kindergartner could come up with a better pickup line…”