“OH no, the sun is setting!”
It was still too early for dusk, but the sun had descended quite a distance since Nichika had started. In less than a few hours, the flower festival eve celebration would commence.
Yet, the only flower that had sprouted around her was Oswald’s. The village adults forced smiles, disappointed. Cynicism hung in the air as they reconciled themselves with the fact that nothing was going to happen. “We knew it,” they said to each other.
“Nichika! How goes it?” Wolfie ambled up to her.
Nichika looked at him with tears in her eyes. “Wol…fie…! It’s not going well at all…”
“Why?”
About to cry, she explained her predicament. After she finished, the brown wolf’s ears perked up as if he’d hit on a great idea.
“Hmm, why don’t you try giving the fire mana an order? Try telling it to go away for a while or something?”
According to Wolfie, wizards typically chased away the unnecessary elemental mana before activating their spells with the mana they needed. But Nichika didn’t want to do that.
“How could I do that when these cuties are just trying to protect me? Driving them away is too cruel…”
“In that case, why not try asking them to get along with each other? Just like you did when you introduced me to the village kids yesterday!”
“Tell them to get along?”
With that in mind, she stared hard at the mana. Despite having been consistently chased away for the past few hours, the earth mana were still trying to approach her. The fire mana flared up threateningly in response, but they weren’t trying to attack the earth mana.
“Um, listen guys,” Nichika spoke softly to the red butterflies, “you don’t have to be so heavily guarded against the other mana.” The red mana stopped flying around and hovered, confused about what she wanted from them. “You see, I want to borrow the other mana’s power. I’d be really happy if you guys could help me out too.”
She shifted her attention from calming the fire mana to reach out to the earth mana. “I’m sorry we scared you. It’s okay now. Will you come here?”
Orange lights timidly approached her, reminding Nichika of how the village children had reacted the prior day. People and mana weren’t all that different; her voice had reached them.
“Okay! With that settled, won’t you please both listen to what I have to say?” she asked both the orange and red lights. “A flower festival is supposed to begin in a few hours. A ton of flowers are necessary for it, but the flowers that were originally growing here all died.”
Now that she mentioned it, she wondered if Oswald had ever ended up figuring out the cause. She quickly brushed the thought away for the moment.
Thinking of all the kindness the villagers had treated her with and the children she had befriended, Nichika poured her heart into her request. “So please! Help me revive the flower field for all the villagers!”
The mana that had been swaying in the air during her plea—abruptly turned to move as one. The quarreling red and orange lights mingled with each other and spread out together across the entire flower field.
“Wow…!”
New green leaves immediately sprouted from the ground, absorbing the orange butterflies and red butterflies as they flew around the new buds to adjust the temperature. The earth mana seemed to have summoned its friends, because soon aqua butterflies appeared to provide the flowers water from the atmosphere. Green butterflies were stirring the air to blow a gentle breeze, weaving the colors throughout the field.
A miracle was taking place.
“Holy moly! What’s going on?!”
“They’re blooming! Flowers are blooming!”
Below the startled villagers’ feet, countless flowers were blossoming. A rainbow-colored flower field unfurled before their very eyes; an almost mirror image of the different elements tinged every flower.
“Now that’s a surprise,” Oswald said to himself, watching Nichika from a distance, “I didn’t think you’d be able to get the earth mana on your side, much less all the other elements.” Without noticing him, Nichika twirled and rejoiced with the children in the middle of all the beautiful flowers.
Even controlling just two elements of mana at the same time usually required substantial training, but Nichika had unconsciously mastered the rarest of skills.
“Spirit Priestess, huh…?” Oswald didn’t believe in mythical existences, but what he had just witnessed that evening was at least enough to make him consider it.
Now the flower festival could safely go on without issue, and he had also pinned down the culprit who’d been killing the flowers. Nevertheless, he was going to leave the decision to Nichika; he didn’t have the right to tell her whether to stay behind or not.
Out of the blue, Oswald was struck with the realization that he’d taken actions very unlike himself. If he had truly wanted to rid himself of the flea he’d picked up, otherwise known as his apprentice, shouldn’t he have simply forfeited the bet on purpose instead of bothering to resolve the case?
Sure, that four-eyed little punk’s challenge had more or less taunted his pride as a man. But that fact aside, all that effort didn’t really seem worth it. Why had he not only deliberately gone out of his way to find a solution that would satisfy all parties, but also given Nichika the final choice?
If he had wanted to get rid of her, he could’ve made that happen. If he had wanted to keep her, he could’ve made that happen. But what did he want?
I… An unshakeable feeling warning him not to think about it too deeply came over Oswald. If he thought about it too seriously, he’d have no choice but to accept the full ridiculousness of the situation. I can’t believe I hoped that she might actually choose me.
“GYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”
A sudden shrill scream brought Oswald’s thoughts to a skidding halt. The villagers, who had been dancing with joy around the flowers, turned toward the sound as well.
“Violette! What’s wrong?!” Makina cried.
“Aaaah….aghh…gaaaaaaaah!”
The villagers scanned the area for the source of the terrifying cries and found Violette, who should have been resting at the base of a nearby tree, wildly throwing her head back so far that it looked like it would snap right off. Children fearfully retreated from the tree where Violette was madly grabbing at her head and writhing around.
“Get a hold of yourself!” Makina ran to her side and held her upright.
Turning her bloodshot eyes on Makina, she wrung out, “P-Please run away…I’m—”
“What?! What in the world is happening?!”
In the final moments of her struggle, Violette shed a single tear. Her head lifelessly lolled to the side, like her neck had broken. Nobody moved. A creepy, humid gust swept through the area, lifting the colorful flower petals up with its current.
Violette, who had ceased to move like a marionette that had its strings cut in one go, abruptly began to cackle, hard enough to jolt her shoulders unnaturally. From her mouth, an utterly foreign voice rang out.
“What the hell?” it snarled, “Who went and laid this nasty little trap?”
“What?” Makina said.
Then it happened entirely in a single second. Violette slammed a sharp whirlwind kick right into Makina’s stomach. The force blew him away, sending him flying through the air in a wide arc. He crashed into the ground before he could even prepare for the blow.
“Makina!” Nichika took off in a run, but Oswald stopped her.
“Don’t go near him!” he barked. Then his lips turned up in a nervous, tense smile. “I figured the mastermind would show up if the area was filled with excess magic, but I never thought they’d expose themselves so soon.”
“Excess magic? What do you mean? What’s going on?” Nichika asked all at once, without taking her eyes off the back that was turned to them—the back that supposedly belonged to the maid Violette.
“That maid’s no homunculus or anything of the kind. She’s a living, breathing human being. She’s likely being controlled by the Witch’s Item embedded in her chest.”
“Whaaaat?!”
“The culprit behind the deaths of the flowers is the one controlling her. They’re keeping the magic item active by having her regularly absorb magic from the flowers that grow here.”
“So what? You mean by having all the flowers blooming at once, it overloaded the item with magic?” Nichika demanded in a louder voice than she meant to.
At the sound of her voice, the person in the maid outfit mechanically turned toward them.
“…!”
Nervous, Nichika braced herself, but the person controlling Violette let out a jovial whoop upon noticing them. “Oooh, why isn’t that you, my upperclassman Oswald?! Long time no see!”
“…?!”
The puppet master undid Violette’s bun, letting her hair fall free as they saluted Oswald. Violette’s face was wearing a radiant smile filled with intimacy as she gazed at him.
Nichika looked to her master beside her. “Uh, know them?”
“……”
“It’s me! Lambert!”
“I don’t know any frivolous man like you.”
“So you do remember me! You haven’t changed one bit!” Lambert’s voice sputtered from Violette’s lips. He moved her hands to her hips to reflect his exasperation. “Anyway, what’re ya doing here? Prexy’s been lookin’ for you in a mad frenzy, y’know.”
“Zip it. I’ve got my own circumstances to deal with.”
Still not following what was going on, Nichika ventured, “Your friend?”
His guard firmly up, Oswald kept his eyes trained on the body Lambert was using and quietly answered, “Not in a million years. More importantly, this is someone worse than what I was expecting.”
“Worse than you were expecting…?”
“He’s dangerous.”
Lambert twirled Violette’s fingers through her hair as he hummed and prodded Makina’s unmoving body with the tip of her shoe. “Oh, is this the Prof’s son? They don’t look much alike. Not that it matters much, anyway.”
Then, making Violette thud her hand against her chest, he dramatically rambled on, “Now look what you’ve made me do. It was all fine n’ dandy that I stuck an observer with him, but this kiddo has got zero magic, so I’d no choice but t’have her replenish the item’s energy with flowers. But keepin’ that up for years n’ the equipment went n’ started to deteriorate n’ have higher energy consumption, so I was just discussing with the Prof about g’tting rid of her soon. And then what happens? Magic jammed into the item past capacity, short-circuiting it! Ahahaha! Then when I came to check out what’d happened, my upperclassman’s here!”
A nasty smile twisted Violette’s lips as Lambert’s voice cruelly concluded, “Repairing the core’s a major pain. Meh, it was a good run. Fastest way to get rid o’ the problem is to have her throw herself off the cliff like Prof instructed, I guess.”
Violette’s body made a mad dash through the thunderstruck villagers. “Sorry for the ruckus, boys and girls! You guys can tend to lil’ master Makina after this is over!”
“Wai—”
Her body ran away faster than they could stop her.
Oswald was the first to move. “We’re going after her! That guy lacks any kind of ethics! He’s seriously going to have that maid throw herself off a cliff!”