I was six years old now! Round of applause!
Not much had changed about me, except that I’d gotten a bit taller—I was as plain as ever. Well, as long as I was healthy!
I felt like everything had changed since I met Lou...yet I also felt like nothing had changed at all.
First, the things that had changed:
1) My brother had started to spoil me rotten.
His personality did a total one-eighty after that one day. For the past three years, he’d started teaching me martial arts himself despite being busy. He let me sit on his lap during snack time, he read to me before bed, and he gave me goodnight kisses on the cheek. Now that he was thirteen, he’d grown from a child into a gorgeous young man. Getting a kiss from a pretty boy excited me so much I couldn’t sleep! Just kidding, I did sleep. Zzz...
Maybe he stopped trying to be the perfect son after the thing with Lou? Maybe he loosened up after being able to cry a lot? It was a good thing either way. He was enrolled in the aforementioned magic academy, but the heroine and other main characters weren’t there yet, so there was nothing in particular to worry about! Play well and study well!
2) My father had also started to spoil me rotten.
Our single father watched my and my brother’s interactions with a smile and spent his little free time with his children. His face had lost its touch of grief, perhaps because he had recovered from the shock of our mother’s death.
When we were at home, he usually let me sit on his lap, and when we went out, he would either carry me or hold my hand. I couldn’t tell if he was deliberately trying to parent me using a lot of praise or if it was just because of my age, but he got excessively happy when I improved in magic or martial arts.
3) Lou had gotten a bit bigger.
He was puppy-sized before, but now he was about the size of a Shiba Inu—and his ego had inflated to match. He was supposed to have only needed to absorb my magic, but he always ate the quality fruits papa bought and the good dishes the cooks made before we could get to them. What a gluttonous beast... For some reason, he didn’t feel heavy when he got on my head or shoulder, though. He’d completely become a part of the household.
Meanwhile, the things that hadn’t changed were:
1) My magic was way overpowered, just like in the book.
Any magic words I brought over from my past life, such as “pain, pain, go away,” worked as long as they had a clear intention. Just the other day, a cold wave hit our estate, so I did the Japanese fortune-telling custom of flipping my shoes to see if they would land upright for sunny weather or upside down for rain. With Lou’s help, I got my shoes to land upright, and a sunny spot immediately appeared in the sky. I got the sense I shouldn’t say “cross my heart and hope to die.” If I broke that kind of promise, I could only imagine...
Apart from that, I came up with a lot of new magic based on my memories from my past life. In this world, magic was divided into just the four main categories of water, fire, earth, and air, and people never considered otherwise. However, I was able to casually combine fire and air based on a hair dryer, picture vaccines and antibiotics to heal wounds, and even reference a certain robot cat’s pocket from my past life to make magic that could manipulate space. As long as I had a clear image in mind, I could make all sorts of new magic. From there, I would have Lou train me to add and subtract things from the magic, judge whether it was useful, and put on the finishing touches. If we decided a certain type of magic suited me personally, we would think of ways to develop it.
“You’re really fun, Sere. I never get bored with you around, and I can get stronger too—not to mention how tasty your magic is. It’s nothing but good having you around. Sere, my shoulders are stiff, so do that massage magic thing!”
“The one combining supersonic waves and heat?”
“Yes, yes, heal your teacher.”
“But teacher, all you did today was eat and sleep...”
If I continued to grow at this rate, I would gain the power to rival the heroine without question. Then I’d be blamed for plunging the kingdom into chaos, and they’d do everything they could to get rid of me...
2) I’d ended up making a contract with Lou like in the book.
Although the book had called him my “servant,” Lou and my father were saying Lou and I shared a “contract.” I guess the difference was that the former is forced and the latter is consensual? Maybe it would change if my relationship with Lou soured? I wouldn’t know for another ten years.
In the end, although my relationship with my family and Lou had changed—along with my goals in life—nothing had happened that deviated significantly from the book. I was still on track to become the villainess.
So, that was my situation when it came time for my magic exam.
Ever since I’d set my sights on going to knight school, my family was focused not only on my magic and martial arts training, but also on thinking about how I could get Magicless on my magic exam. If the exam established that I had magic, they would force me to go to the magic academy.