Chapter 13

Fragment 2 I was about a year old when I learned how to read—not picture books but the tricky tomes in my father’s personal library. I didn’t understand them, of course. I was just copying my father, who always had his nose in a book. Although my father had a valuable collection, he was the kind of person who took joy in reading to a baby. I think I enjoyed being with my father more than the act of reading in and of itself. It was thanks to him that I eventually learned what was in the books. This is probably why I was able to read magic texts by the time I was three. My father stopped me from learning magic immediately—that would have been too dangerous for a young child. But when I turned five, he let me use magic, and I cast a fire spell to burn my teddy bear into cinders. My mother was beside herself in anger. She was generally a tolerant woman, but she was the one with the most common sense in our house. The fact that I wielded magic at such a young age instantly attracted attention, and I was told to show off my magic all over the place. I was like a doll being paraded around, but at the time, I felt proud of myself. Yet for all the people who said, “Wow, it’s so amazing that a child can use magic,” I had others who said, “Oh dear, it’s so dangerous for a child to use magic.” It was obvious that I was being treated differently than other children my age. The parents who thought I was great put their kids in my proximity, expecting that I would make a name for myself in the future. The ones who thought I was dangerous avoided having their children around me out of fear of what I could do. Even as a child, I could tell there was something warped about the whole situation, and it affected my relationships with other children. A rift steadily grew between us, and before I knew it, I spent all my days reading books by myself. I liked books, and it was fun learning new spells. But I wasn’t so philosophical that I could take it in stride when other people let me down. Maria was the only person I could have a proper conversation with, but unlike me, she was fairly good at navigating relationships because she had given up on others. Ironic how that was. By the time I turned fifteen, I still wasn’t good at handling the people around me. It was all the more reason to focus on my studies and practice magic. I ended up becoming quite skilled as a mage; my father was delighted when I surpassed him, and I could count the number of people who could teach me further on one hand. For obvious reasons, I didn’t need to go to school, and I thought I’d be just fine researching magic by myself. But that never ended up happening. The chairman of Falm Academy, a high-ranking noble, pressured my lower-ranking father into sending me to the academy, all so that he could brag about how “Solon Barclay studied there.” My father tried to put up a fight, but I decided to accept the invitation. I didn’t want to cause trouble for my old man. Life at the academy was about what I expected. I was way ahead of the classes, and I finished reading all the books in the library in a month. The other students kept a wide berth of me. Although I basically had nothing to do, I had to attend the academy for as long as I was enrolled. We ended up settling on a compromise: I would physically attend just once a week. This meant that I was more isolated from my peers than ever, but even from going one day a week, I could get a feel for what things were like inside the academy. There was one person who caught my eye: Ares Schmidt. He was a guy of common birth who was earnest about becoming a Hero. Although the academy existed to train prospective Heroes, that was merely lip service. Hardly anyone was actually serious about this aspiration. The one exception to this was Leon Müller, Sword Saint and son of Count Müller, but it was less like he was actively aiming for the goal and more like everyone else assumed he’d be the one. Then again, I had no idea how Leon himself felt. So when Ares brazenly declared that he was striving to be the Hero and took up Leon as his rival in swordplay, he caught my attention. He was probably getting Maria to teach him healing magic as well. Although, it was debatable how seriously she was taking it. What a fool, I thought. It was dumb for a commoner to attend an academy swarming with nobles, and it was pretty embarrassing of him to cling to ideals that were out of fashion in this day and age. For him to waltz in here without any self-awareness, he had to be the biggest of fools. Around half a year later, the fool in question stood in my way. “Solon Barclay, could you teach me magic?” I turned him down flat—because it was pointless. Magical aptitude was almost entirely determined at birth. This guy didn’t have a sliver of talent. There was zero point in me engaging with him. Plus, he ticked me off by saying I didn’t have friends. I felt downright ready to murder him—so much so that I almost unleashed my magic right there on the school grounds. What the hell did he know about me? Like he was one to talk, barging into people’s personal space without a thought in the world. One week later when I went back to school, Ares talked to me again. His tune hadn’t changed—he still wanted me to teach him magic. I drove him off, hurling all the insults I could think of. Yet Ares insisted on speaking to me whenever I came to the academy. He was a persistent wretch. It was the first time in my life anyone had ever stuck with me so stubbornly. Most people would get fed up with my bad attitude and keep their distance. After about a month of this, I took five academy-issued textbooks with me to school. I knew everything in them, so they weren’t valuable to me. When I arrived, Ares came over to me like he always did. And just like usual, he hung around me no matter how much I tried to swat him away. He was so cheerful about it, too, like a dog wagging its tail. At this point, I couldn’t be bothered putting up a fight anymore. There was nothing calculating in this guy’s mentality. He really was trying to learn magic out of the simpleminded desire to become the Hero. This was probably a bit rich coming from me, but this guy had a clumsy approach to life. That’s why I gave him the five books. I promised him I would teach him magic if he learned everything in them in one week. It was an entire year’s worth of classes—quite a tall order for an amateur mage. Practically impossible. Yet somehow, I knew that if anyone could do it, it was Ares. If he failed, then it would simply mean that my faint sense of anticipation was off the mark. After handing over the books, I thought about how I would teach magic to a talentless student. It was probably pointless to speculate, and yet it was surprisingly fun to imagine. Looking back, that might have been the first time I thought of doing something for someone other than my family. Ares ran up to me a week later, when I was back at school. “I memorized everything!” I knew just from looking at his face that he was telling the truth. Huh. So he managed it. Surprisingly, I wasn’t shocked. Objectively speaking, I’d given him quite a difficult task, but I must have been expecting more from him than I’d realized. I couldn’t explain this feeling in a logical way. It was like a hope, a wish for something ideal. The fact that Ares had lived up to this wish made me…happy, I suppose. I wasted no time getting us into an empty classroom that I’d picked out beforehand. When I got Ares to try using magic, predictably nothing happened. Not everyone could be a mage just because they could chant a spell. It all came down to what methods you took and the individual differences between people. There were a lot of things you had to check: whether you chanted the incantation correctly, whether there were any discrepancies between the spell and what you pictured in your mind, what part of the caster the mana was reacting to, and so on. Those factors were always bundled into a single word: talent. Some people could do it, while others couldn’t—and that was the end of it. I’d always thought the same way. Then again, if you could solve that fundamental issue, then maybe the art of magic would take a huge leap forward. On the days I went to the academy, I met up with Ares to teach him spells. When I stayed at home, I buried myself in research about the fundamentals of magic. One day, my father said to me, “You seem to be having fun going to school lately.” I was about to contradict him as a matter of course, but for some reason, the words got stuck in my throat. Instead, I said, “Eh, it’s not bad.” “Glad to hear it. There are some things you can only learn at school. Good to see you’re having a nice experience.” He seemed happy. He’d been apologetic about sending me to Falm Academy—he must have been worried about whether I would get along with the people there. Ares kept practicing magic for over a year and a half to absolutely no result. Eventually, we entered our third year at the academy. All the while, I kept analyzing the foundations of magic and improved my efficiency at casting spells. From what I observed through my studies, anyone could use magic, but everyone was born with a different compatibility for it. People without the aptitude had to extend that part of themselves, but I didn’t know how exactly one should go about training them. What I was doing with Ares was my first attempt at testing out the theory. It was possible that he’d never learn magic throughout his entire life. I said as much to Ares, but he just answered with a smile, “I’ll take a chance on it, even if it’s slim.” This guy sure liked fruitless endeavors. I hated doing things that seemed pointless. At least, that was how I felt in the past. It was easy to sneer at something as “pointless,” but that was born out of the fear that your efforts would amount to nothing. It occurred to me that the right thing to do was to keep pressing forward, battling that fear. Then one day, Ares produced a faint light at his fingertip. It was so weak that it felt as if it would go out if you blew at it. For the first time in my life, I saw the beauty in such a flimsy flame. To me, it looked like a person’s beacon of hope.