When I arrived at the room where my family was meeting, everyone else was already seated around a large marble-topped table. They were sitting on those big evil sofas that were terribly hard to get up from once you sat down.
“Sorry I’m late.”
When Brad and Rex entered behind me, the room’s occupants all narrowed their eyes; everyone else had only one valet with them. My family tended to spoil me, though, so they wouldn’t say anything about it out loud.
My parents were happily sitting together on the same sofa while my brothers were sitting on a sofa opposite them. I sat at neither, instead going to the special one-person birthday seat. The moment I stood in front of it, Brad swiftly stepped up and lifted me onto it.
Even if I sat with good posture, the chair was so big that my feet didn’t touch the ground. I couldn’t help but want to swing my legs. The size also meant that even if I leaned back as far as I could go, only my head and shoulders touched the back. That was why Rex quickly grabbed some cushions and filled in the gap between me and the backrest.
Brad then prepared some tea, and Rex grabbed the treats. My family must have realized at that moment why I required two people to attend to me, and their narrowed eyes soon turned to looks of pleased admiration.
See, the thing with these two was that they were actually having their own bit of fun here. They’d been planning in advance how to split up their duties and look cool as they did it, so I ended up having to try and stop myself from laughing when I was handed my cup with extreme reverence.
“May we start the discussion? There is much I wish to ask you, Deirdre.”
“Me, father?”
I took a sip of my tea and passed the cup to Brad—the table was too far away for me to reach it myself. I’d much rather they just let me sit on the floor at this point. The carpet was so thick my feet almost sank in up to my ankles, so I imagined it’d serve as a comfortable seat.
“You were able to see Alan’s sword spirit while no one else could, yes? Does that mean you can see free spirits that don’t belong to anyone?”
“No, I can’t.”
“Hmm, so you can’t find new spirits to contract with?” Father sounded a little disappointed.
“When you say ‘contract,’ do you mean feeding them?”
“Yes, I suppose so. I mean giving them mana in exchange for them protecting us. The Knight Commander asked you to give the knights’ spirits a look, didn’t he? And you said you could see spirits next to most of the knights.”
“Yes, but some of those spirits will disappear soon.”
“What?!” father cried.
“They’ll die if you don’t feed them, you know? So if you don’t feed them, they’ll leave you.”
I picked up one of the madeleines that Rex had served.
Thank god. I’m so hungry after all that exercise. I had been starting to worry that my stomach would rumble during the meeting.
“But our spirits have always remained with us even though we haven’t consciously fed them mana.”
“Are they the same spirits?” I asked, tilting my head. Everyone’s eyes went wide at that question.
“Is it possible for spirits to suddenly swap places, or for a spirit to die and a new one take its place?” father asked.
“Maybe?”
“I never realized... We must deal with this without delay. Tell all the knights and those attending the birthday gathering in four days to feed their spirits mana immediately,” he ordered.
“You can tell them, but I think we should have them sign a magic contract so they don’t go around telling everyone else,” Chris interrupted.
“Need we go so far?” father asked.
“Why not make it a contract that remains effective for a set amount of time? We should also make it clear that we were the ones to discover this fact when sharing it with others in order to give more power to our name and to stop strange rumors from spreading and causing misinformation.”
“Quite right.”
I listened to my father and Chris’s exchange while I nibbled away at my madeleines; the cookie was soft and moist, and I could smell the butter as I ate—our chefs knew what they were doing.
Head of his own house and nearly thirty now, my father had gained a great deal of confidence, giving him a manly sort of allure. There was also something captivating yet dangerous about Chris, with the undeniable maturity behind his childlike gaze and expressions. The cakes only tasted sweeter when enjoyed alongside the view I had of them both from my birthday seat. Nothing beats gazing at those who are beautiful, after all.
I needed beautiful people above twenty-five to stay away from me, though—they’d cut my lifespan in half with how fast my heart would start beating.
“I may have to speak with the empress and inform her of what we have discovered,” father said, brow creased.
“I agree,” Chris replied. “Though the imperial family’s biggest crisis right now is the princes still not receiving their first spirits, right?”
What? They were princes and yet they didn’t have spirits? Didn’t all nobles have spirits? Hey, Little Wiki, you’re spreading fake news.
I could give the Wikipe**a in my world a pass for having misinformation since it was all user-sourced information, but what good was my Wiki skill if it was wrong?
“Deirdre.”
I had been in the middle of biting into a madeleine when Chris called my name, so I tilted my head in response. When I did, Chris gave me a very kind look. Beside him, Alan looked like he was trying to hold back his laughter.
Laugh if you want. It’s fine with me.
“You’re able to see weak spirits that people ordinarily can’t see, and that means you may be able to determine whether the imperial family have spirits nearby that just aren’t visible to them, right?” Chris asked.
“If you give mana to spirits you can see, the ones that want to become your friends will grab some of it for themselves and then they’ll appear,” I explained.
“And if they don’t have even one spirit with them?”
“Then they should go bwaaah with their mana.”
“Go...bwah?” Chris repeated.
“You get stronger if you use it, so you should go bwaaaah.” I emphasized each of my sounds by spreading my arms wide, but then Chris glanced at Brad with a frown. Did he think I hadn’t understood him properly? I had. I had, but I was trying really hard to seem like a four-year-old. It took way more mental power than you might think. It was embarrassing enough that I kind of wanted to cry.
“What you’re trying to say is that they should expel their mana,” Chris said.
“Ex...pell...” I repeated slowly.
Come on, Deirdre, you can do it. Don’t look as if this was the word you expected. Wait a couple years first. Then you can go, “Expel!” while you’re grabbing a hose and shooting water everywhere.
Still, I realized that I had misunderstood. I’d thought the reason my family were trying to figure out how to have the imperial family visit in summer was to increase tourism to the area, but it seemed the reason was much more serious than that. Wasn’t it pretty dire for a prince of the imperial family to not have a spirit of his own?
“Does the empress have a spirit?” I asked.
“Fire and wind spirits, I believe,” Chris said.
“And the general?”
“He’s mastered using a fire sword spirit.”
“But the prince doesn’t have one,” I confirmed.
“Exactly. It’s quite a troublesome situation.”
Here was where the real hassle began. There were a lot of things written in Little Wiki that no one here knew. Have you ever been talking to someone from overseas and they told you something and you were like, “Whoa, that’s what that was for?!” So many facts like that had existed in my previous life that we’d ended up with quiz shows on TV. And then there was knowledge that used to be commonplace but had ended up fading away, like things written in old pieces of literature that no one realized the importance of until much later.
My idea of common sense was still very rooted in my previous life. I was basically in the same position as that person arriving from overseas for the first time, so a lot of things stimulated my curiosity, and I ended up challenging myself like it was all a game. If I hadn’t been approaching it all with that mindset, I doubted I would’ve tried expending my mana until I passed out simply to make myself stronger.
There were a lot of things I looked up in Little Wiki because I viewed them as strange, yet no one else here questioned those things because to them, they were common sense. I was sure there must have been more people in the past who’d lived closely with spirits, and yet people here in the present day had no idea how to even communicate with them. How was I supposed to express that idea to them, though?