The next morning I woke up well rested and happy that I knew how much longer the game’s plot was going to last. I managed to withstand Keith’s newfound sexiness that had given me so much trouble the day before and smoothly headed to the Magical Ministry.
Once I got off the carriage, as I was on my way to the Magical Tool Laboratory, I saw someone from behind—someone who I hadn’t spoken to in a while.
“Good morning, Dewey!” I called him.
Dewey Percy, being only thirteen years old, was younger than me, but we had joined the Ministry at the same time. He had done so through an incredibly difficult admission test, since he didn’t have any magic powers but made up for it by being a grade-skipping genius.
“Good Morning, Lady Claes,” he replied with a somewhat gloomy voice.
“Is anything the matter? Are you okay?” I asked, worried.
“Yes… I am fine.” So he said, yet he looked anything but. He didn’t seem sick or anything, just very concerned about something.
“You can talk to me if you want, you know? What’s wrong?” I asked, and he looked up at me.
“B-But…”
Before he could come up with a response, he seemed to notice something behind me that worsened his dejected look even further.
I followed his gaze and saw Maria and Cyrus, having fun chatting as they walked together.
I see, his troubles must have to do with Maria, I instantly realized thanks to my renowned powers of deduction.
“Did anything happen between you and Maria?” I asked him, and his face went from gloomy to outright sad.
“Not at all… That is the issue.”
I had no idea what he meant, so I kept listening.
“She is such a charming girl. Everyone loves her,” Dewey elaborated.
She sure is.
“I heard that she was recently summoned by the prince,” he continued.
Well, actually it was the king who summoned her, but that’s a secret.
“And it dawned on me that she is completely out of my league,” he murmured, staring down at the floor.
Poor Dewey! He’s all out of confidence!
“Awww, Dewey, don’t say that. You’re amazing yourself! You passed the Ministry’s admission test at your age!”
That test was hard even for smart adults, let alone thirteen-year-olds. As if that wasn’t enough, Dewey worked in the Magic Powers Department, where all the most skilled Ministry employees gathered. Despite being so young, everyone already had huge expectations for this child prodigy.
“That was probably just luck. I do not have any magic powers, and the family I come from is…not good enough to give me the right to long for Maria. Any comparison with her would put me to shame.” Looking at his crush as she walked together with their superior, he concluded, “I wish I could be as wonderful a man as Sir Lanchester is. Unlike me, he is fit to walk beside her.”
“That’s not true!” I objected, leaving Dewey surprised.
Cyrus may be hiding it well, but he can barely even speak to girls outside of work. Maria is smiling, but just look at how stiff his face looks. He’s probably talking to her about martial arts. Actually, he’s definitely talking about that. No way could he talk about anything else with her.
Cyrus was too shy to even sit in the same carriage as Maria or go out for groceries with her, but since she had asked him to teach her self-defense, he had found a topic that he could manage a conversation about. Dewey was probably closer to her than Cyrus was, since at least he could easily talk to her during meals at the cafeteria.
I wished I could explain that to my very concerned friend, but I had promised to keep Cyrus’s real personality secret. I knew that he was terribly scared of girls from our time together in the fields, but most people, including Dewey, mistook him for an extremely cool, fearless guy.
“You’re just as wonderful as he is,” I finally managed to tell him.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned that to you,” he replied.
I got this totally wrong…
Unfortunately, since we worked in different departments, I had to part ways with Dewey before I could comfort him in any way. Still worried about my friend, I entered the Magical Tool Laboratory.
“Good morning,” I told Sora, who was already cleaning the office, before joining him in that activity.
I considered asking Sora for advice regarding Dewey’s troubles, but then I remembered just how grown-up his response was when I last asked him about romance. He probably wouldn’t be able to sympathize with the childishly complex romantic struggles of a thirteen-year-old.
“What’s with that look of pity you got on your face?” he asked me, noticing the way I was looking at him. “You’re thinking something rude about me, aren’t you?”
“Nope, not at all,” I replied to my extremely sharp colleague.
“Yeah, sure. I bet you are. Just spit it out.”
“It’s nothing rude! I was just thinking that you wouldn’t understand the delicate romantic issues of a person’s first love.”
“That’s definitely rude! You can’t just go and decide what I can and can’t understand!”
“So you do understand them?!” I gasped, and he started rubbing his knuckles against my head like he always did. “H-Hey! Stop it! You’re going to mess my hair up!” I cried, trying to resist, but to no avail.
Hah! He’s just trying to distract me because he doesn’t understand the first thing about that! I thought, but rather than voicing my doubts, I decided to rub my knuckles against his head too.
Once Sora’s hair was slightly ruffled and mine completely ruffled, our little fight was interrupted by the arrival of our colleagues. I’d gotten no useful advice from that interaction, but I knew just the guy to go to for help. While we were heading to the room where he would teach me about Dark Magic, I told Raphael about Dewey’s problem.
“And so he’s lost all confidence. I want to help him, but I don’t know what to do,” I concluded.
Raphael had a thing for understanding people’s feelings, as he had proven with his wonderful advice on how to deal with a kid whom he had never even met before. I’d always admired him as a talented schoolmate and colleague, but now I looked up to him as a wise teacher that I could always rely on. I was sure that he could help me out with the Dewey situation.
“I believe that you…” he started after thinking for a while.
“Yes?! What should I do?”
“Well, nothing.”
“Huh?!” I cried, surprised by this completely unexpected suggestion. I had figured that Raphael would give me some practical advice on what to say or do for Dewey.
“But he’s so sad! I can’t just let him be!” I desperately explained, and Raphael smiled at me.
“You should be there to listen to him when he wants to talk, yes, but you should probably limit yourself to that.”
“But why? You gave me those perfect lines when I had to deal with Liam…”
“That is because I felt that Liam wanted someone’s help.”
“And Dewey doesn’t?”
“Yes. He probably doesn’t want anyone to solve this issue for him. This is something that he has to deal with himself.”
“With no help?”
“Exactly,” he confirmed, nodding his head. “I have spoken with him on a few occasions, and I think that he has a self-esteem problem.”
“That being…?”
“He underestimates himself because he doesn’t have enough confidence. I don’t know the details that well, but I’ve heard that he comes from a poor family. Maybe that is the reason why he thinks so harshly of himself.”
This sounded right—I knew about his family thanks to the note about the game and by having heard about it directly from Dewey. His folks were so poor that he had to work as a kid, while he was still going to school. That was probably why, despite being so smart, he never made a big deal out of it. I used to think that he was just being humble, but maybe that wasn’t the case.
“Or maybe someone close to him kept pushing him down…” Raphael muttered with the sad look of one who understood how that felt. “When you lack confidence, what the people around you do barely matters. You must make the change yourself.”
“So… I can’t help him in any way?”
“That’s not entirely true. You can be there for him and listen to his troubles. And if he does end up asking for your help, then of course you can lend it to him,” he replied with a smile.
Raphael’s words hit me like a truck.
Of course! I was always thinking I should do this or do that…but I can just hear him out! Sometimes, when I’m feeling down, I also just want someone to listen to me.
“Also, remember that Dewey is a man, with all the pride that comes with that. He probably doesn’t want a woman to worry for him,” Raphael explained with a slightly mocking grin.
“Hehehe, Raphael, I knew I could count on you, and I’m glad I did. Thank you.” I smiled at my wise teacher.
“O-Oh, don’t mention it. N-Now, let’s go,” he replied, hurrying toward the room where we had our Dark Magic classes.
Huh, that reaction was a bit weird. Is it me or is he blushing? Strange. Guess he’s back to normal now though…
Once we reached our “classroom,” we started with the follow-up to last time’s lesson: shaping Darkness. Two days before I’d done that without any issue, but this time, for some reason, I could only make the Darkness wobble around a bit without taking on any precise shape.
“Don’t worry, you’re just starting out,” Raphael comforted me with his usual smile.
I do worry about whether I’ll get this right in the six or so months I’ve got left…
★★★★★★
After I was done teaching Katarina her Dark Magic lesson, I told her to go back to the department office before me, and remained in the room, sitting down by myself. I would normally never do something like that, but my throbbing heart needed some respite.
These lessons of ours, I felt, had brought me and Katarina closer together, but the distance between us had become much shorter and had closed so much faster since I had advised her about that one runaway orphan. It seemed that she was now willing to open up her heart to me.
Of course, I was happy to see her rely on me, but I knew of Katarina’s bad habit of completely lowering her guard when it came to people that she trusted. That presented a problem. We spent time together, alone, literally only divided by an arm’s length, and there she was flattering me, looking at me with twinkling eyes. I tried to hide just how much this affected me, but after she left, I always found my heart racing.
For years, that dreadful woman’s words of spite for Raphael had poisoned my mind: “You’re such a lovely young man, Sirius, unlike that disgusting harlot’s son.”
Now, however, I was finally free from that poison. Instead, Katarina’s words gave me the strength to go forward.
“You’re amazing, Raphael!”
I stood up from my chair, feeling as if I had all the energy I needed for the long day of work before me.
★★★★★★
In the afternoon, as usual, I was supposed to read the covenant together with Maria. Shut into a small room with a dictionary in front of me, just staying awake was a feat in itself. As always, I wasn’t making much progress either. I’d finally managed to read past the initial warnings, and I’d reached the part that taught how to summon Darkness out of thin air, like I’d recently learned with Raphael.
That’s still so basic…
After struggling not to fall asleep for quite a while, it was finally time for our break. On most days, I took this as a chance to stop struggling and just take a nap, but today I couldn’t stop thinking of how Dewey was doing.
In particular, I remembered what Raphael had said about having someone who was always pushing him down. I tried thinking back over all I knew about Dewey, but I realized that it wasn’t much. He came from a poor family, studied by himself, went to school while working, and then managed to pass the Ministry’s admission test. That was pretty much it.
It wasn’t easy to talk to him, since we worked in different departments. That was also true for Cyrus, but at least we always met in the fields, where I’d already learned about how good he was with farming, how bad he was with girls, and so on. In other words, out of all the game’s romanceable characters in the Ministry, Dewey was the one I knew the least about.
What kind of guy is he…? I thought to myself, staring at nothing, until a beautiful blonde girl stepped into the aforementioned nothing.
Oh, right. Maria probably knows a lot more about him than I do. They work in the same department and they even come from the same town.
“Hey, Maria, can you tell me a bit about Dewey?”
“Dewey Percy? From my department?”
“Yeah, that one.”
“Is anything the matter?” she asked, probably curious as to why I’d ask about him out of the blue.
“I ran into him earlier, and he kind of looked distressed, but I don’t know why,” I replied. I actually knew the reason why, but I definitely couldn’t tell Maria.
“I see… He did make that same impression on me today.”
So she noticed too. I guess they spend a lot of time together while working, after all.
“I hope that he has not overworked himself,” she said, sounding extremely worried.
“You mentioned that he tends to go overboard with work, didn’t you?” I asked.
Right after joining the Ministry, Maria, Dewey, and I, among others, were all sent on a mission together. It was then that Maria had commented on how much of a workaholic Dewey was.
“Yes. He had nobody that he could rely on in his family, so he has always been doing what he could by himself. I believe that this has become a habit for him.”
She must be so worried about him because she’s the same… She’s always trying to do things by herself without relying on anyone.
“By the way, you say that he had nobody that he could rely on, but what kind of family did he have?” I knew that his family was very poor, but that was about it.
Why would a kid even have to struggle to go to school? What happened to his parents?
Maria seemed to think deeply about her answer—I imagined it was no easy topic to discuss. She looked straight at me, and I returned her gaze, silently telling her that I would keep everything she was going to tell me confidential. Understanding this, she nodded and started speaking.
“He has several siblings, but all of them have to work to support the family.”
“And what about his parents?”
“They do not work…”
“Are they ill or something?”
“I have heard that they are more than healthy, especially when they go out to drink and have fun.”
They make their children work so they can have fun?! She didn’t say that outright, but the look of pure disgust on her face must mean just that…
“And when did those siblings start working? How did they go to school?” I asked. I knew that Dewey had barely managed to attend school, so depending on her answer, my opinion of his parents could potentially get much worse.
“I remember that some of them were made to work at home from before they were old enough to even speak properly. It seems that Dewey is the only one who was able to go to school.”
As it turned out, they were terrible parents. In my old world, child welfare would have probably taken all of those children away from them.
“Don’t other people step in?”
I had been to Maria and Dewey’s hometown once, and I remembered that, despite not being as advanced as the capital, it wasn’t that run-down either. I assumed that the neighbors or somebody else would speak up against this kind of child abuse.
“Some have tried, but his parents are rather…difficult people. Whenever they hear someone complaining, they respond by treating their children even worse. So eventually, everyone just stopped trying.”
Wow, Dewey had it even worse than I thought…
“I wonder,” Maria spoke softly, “if Dewey is upset because of something his parents told him.”
“N-No, I don’t think that’s it,” I rushed to say, since I knew that his issue was thinking that he wasn’t fit for Maria.
I remembered what Raphael had told me about someone close to Dewey pushing him down—he was only guessing, but after hearing about those terrible parents, Raphael’s guess started sounding pretty spot-on.
They are the kind of people who would send their children to work while they laze around… I can’t even imagine what they could have told their son. Surely it’s nothing good.
“You know, when you think about it this way, Dewey’s making it into the Ministry is even more impressive than I’d realized.”
The Ministry’s admission test, which was already extremely difficult, could only have been made worse by the fact that he had to work while attending school. I couldn’t even begin to understand how much effort he had put into it.
“I agree. He really is,” Maria concurred, and as she did so, her worried expression changed into a smile.
“Listen, Maria, I think that…you should look over Dewey from afar like you always do, but without helping him out unless he asks you to. You know, he’s got like, his pride as a man, right? So maybe it’s awkward for him when a girl helps him out,” I told my friend, basically parroting what Raphael had told me just earlier.
“Pride as a man? I see… I will follow your suggestion,” she assented with a giggle.
I know, I know. He’s only thirteen, and he looks even younger. Not really what you think of when you say the word “man.” I also kind of giggled when Raphael said that… But boys of that age must be going through a lot. I remember that Keith was moody all the time back then, and father explained that I should just let him be. Raphael’s advice makes even more sense when I think about it that way.
After we agreed that the best course of action in regard to Dewey would be…taking no action, we went back to reading our respective covenants.
“Whew, I’m done for today. I even managed to stay awake the whole time, albeit barely,” I announced once our workday was over.
“I have recently seen a tea for sale that purportedly helps with excessive sleepiness,” Maria declared.
“Oh, I need that. Where do they sell it?”
“In a shop near the center of the capital…” Maria explained where the shop was supposed to be located.
“I kind of get it, but I’m not confident I could get there… Oh! I know! Would you go shopping there with me?” I asked her. That way, I would be sure to find it and I would also be able to shop with my friend.
“Of course, I would love to,” she replied, and we decided that we would go there as soon as our days off coincided, which, thankfully, was going to be very soon.
I parted ways with Maria, already looking forward to going out with her in a few days, and went back to the Magical Tool Laboratory to get my stuff. When I walked into the office, I found my colleagues inside having a tea break.
“Oh, if it isn’t Lady Katarina. Would you care for some tea?” the incredibly muscular Laura, in her perfect makeup and gothic lolita outfit, asked me.
She could look kind of flashy, but, as I knew from going on a mission with her shortly after joining the Ministry, Laura (officially “Guy Handerson”) was a very kind and talented individual. Sometimes we had lunch together, and she would teach me about cosmetics and whatnot.
I checked the time, and, since it wasn’t that late yet, I accepted her offer. “Thank you. With pleasure.” I sat down beside her.
She even poured my tea for me—sweet, kind Laura.
Along with her were the perpetually lost Nathan Hart, the incurable narcissist Nix Cornish, and the ventriloquism-loving Lisa Norman. Not a normal person to be seen.
Not like there’s any normal person in this whole department anyway.
“Oh oh oh, I’m so glad that we’ve been able to finish work on time lately.”
“Why, yes, being able to sleep properly has made my skin shine even brighter than usual.”
“Having Miss Larna in the office makes a lot of difference.”
“It sure does. This is probably the first time she has ever been this present since she became department head.”
I listened in surprise to my chatting colleagues. Sora and I usually went home as soon as the workday was over, mainly because we were still newcomers, but apparently all the more experienced people had to stay overtime.
“Was it always that busy around here?” I asked.
“Hah!” Nix exclaimed, suddenly jumping out of his seat. “It sure was! So much so that we would often have to work through the night, leaving me sleepless and my skin depleted of its natural brilliance. It was such a tragedy!”
He was pretending to sigh and cry, and I couldn’t do anything but stare, waiting for him to finish.
“He makes it sound made up, but that’s how it really was,” Laura added, tiredly resting her chin on one hand.
Lisa, or rather the plushie that she used to interact with the world, nodded in agreement.
“That must have been tough, especially if you say Miss Larna has never been this present before…” I mused.
“Yes, but she is still a good superior, mind you. She never complains about how I dress, for example,” Laura replied.
“And she also understands the beauty of my wonderful outfits,” Nix added, puffing up his chest as he flaunted his sparkling clothes.
“They wouldn’t know how to deal with a guy this weird in the other departments,” Lisa(’s plushie) commented.
“Oh, Lisa! Need I remind you that I was accepted into the Magical Ministry because of my incredible magical skills?”
“I thought you got accepted because a relative of yours put in a good word for you.”
“H-Hey! As if you’re one to speak! You didn’t take the admission test either! You got in on a recommendation!”
“Yes, a recommendation I got because of my good grades and magical prowess. Unlike someone.”
“Wh-What are you trying to say?!”
“Back at the academy you always were one of the runners-up for worst-performing student, weren’t you?”
“I just wasn’t trying hard enough back then!”
Seeing Lisa and Nix bicker like that, I thought it was a good opportunity to ask them about something that had been on my mind for a while.
“Have you two known each other for long?”
“Yes, very long indeed,” Nix replied.
“Yes, unfortunately,” Lisa answered at almost the same time.
These two different replies made them start bickering again, and Laura had to step in to provide me with an explanation: “They’re the same age, you see, and they’re childhood friends. They even attended the academy together.”
The way they were at each other’s throats really made it feel like they’d been friends for a very long time.
“They mentioned they were both recommended to enter the Ministry. Was it the same for you too?” I asked Laura.
Some people joined through the same admission test that Dewey had taken, and on top of their test score, they needed someone to vouch for them. However, particularly promising academy students were often recruited on a recommendation basis and could skip the test. Since I knew that Laura had quite strong magic powers, I assumed that the latter was the case for her too.
“Oh, not at all. I just took the standard admission test,” she unexpectedly replied.
Everything about her seemed to imply that she came from a noble family and could have taken the easy way in, so learning the truth shocked me.
“Hehe. I’m not only beautiful, but smart too,” she declared, noticing my surprise. I thought it was best not to pry any further, in case that was an unpleasant topic for her. “Nathan got in in the same way too,” she continued.
“Yes, because I don’t have any magic powers,” Nathan explained.
“But he’s incredible, you know? He passed that test studying all by himself.”
Just like Dewey! That’s amazing.
“That’s very difficult to do, isn’t it?” I asked.
“I would say so,” he replied after thinking for a while, “as the test isn’t only about magic, but a variety of other fields of study as well. However, even though I never formally attended any school, I had several highly skilled tutors teaching me. Saying that I studied by myself would be a bit disingenuous.”
“Several tutors? How so?”
“My family is part of a group of traveling merchants. When I was young, the other merchants shared their vast knowledge with me.”
“I see. A group of traveling merchants sounds really cool though. Why did you end up leaving them?” I asked him, and Nathan fell silent.
“He was smart,” Laura replied for him as she laughed, “but he’d always get lost while they were traveling, so they kicked him out.”
“They didn’t kick me out. They just…very strongly suggested that I find a job that doesn’t involve any traveling,” he corrected her.
I’d seen him get lost just walking inside the Ministry, so being part of a group of traveling merchants must have been very hard—for the rest of the group, that is.
“That being said, even with so many talented teachers, passing that test was no small feat. Doing so with no outside help would require an enormous amount of effort,” Nathan said, possibly trying to swerve the discussion away from that embarrassing story.
An enormous amount of effort… The environment that Dewey was in made it difficult to study at all, let alone pass a test that even adults have trouble with. It must have been so hard for him. Even harder than I thought before.
After listening to the argument between Nix and Lisa for a while longer, I left the department and headed toward the gate—by myself for once, since Sora wasn’t working in the office that day.
On my way there, I saw Maria and Dewey walking together. The overly respectful distance that they kept between each other made me kind of sad, but, more than that, I felt that I couldn’t look at Dewey the same way I used to before. It was as if I could see the weight of all that he’d been through lying on his shoulders. Sprinting for a while would’ve been enough to reach them, but I decided to leave them alone and rode on my carriage home.
Back at the Claes mansion, I found Keith busy being so obnoxiously sexy that all the maids were having trouble focusing on their work. Thanks to all the other stuff going through my head and the resistance I had built up from years of living with him, I was able to resist his charm. For the sake of the maids around me, I tried to ruffle up his hair and his clothes in an attempt to make him less attractive, but unfortunately this seemed to have the opposite effect.
I need to remember to ask the Ascart maids how they’re able to cope with having Nicol in the house. Keith changed so suddenly though…and Jeord too. They got a hundred times more charming just because I told them that I would think about my feelings once I was done surviving doom, but at this rate, I’m scared I won’t be able to survive them. I’m probably going to go crazy from the sexiness to the point I won’t be able to think about anything at all… I thought to myself right before falling asleep.
The next day, I went to the Ministry and did my usual work. It felt like I was running into Dewey more often now that I was worrying about him, but even though he still looked kind of depressed, I followed Raphael’s advice and refrained from doing anything about it.
Maria, who was spending the afternoon with me deciphering her covenant, seemed to be worrying and waiting just like me. We actually spent a few days like this, until it was finally time for us to go shopping together.
I prepared myself and rode on the carriage to the Ministry dormitories, where Maria was already outside waiting for me…with Dewey by her side.
“Good morning, Maria. And Dewey too!”
“Good morning, Lady Katarina,” they both replied.
“I will be on my way then,” Dewey then declared, ready to go back inside.
“Wait, Dewey. Are you working today?” I quickly asked him.
“No, today is my day off.”
“Do you have any plans?”
“Nothing in particular. I was thinking of going to the library.” He explained that he just so happened to pass by here and stopped when he saw Maria.
Hey, this looks like a good opportunity. I can’t just let him leave like that.
I had decided I’d do as Raphael had told me and just be there for Dewey when he wanted to talk with somebody, but we never had enough chances to talk to begin with.
“Say, Dewey, why don’t you come to the city with us?” I suggested.
I took a quick glance at Maria, just to be sure that she was okay with this, and she immediately started nodding her head while looking at me with sparkling eyes. She obviously had no problem with it.
However, Dewey shook his head. “I wouldn’t want to be a nuisance while you two are trying to enjoy yourselves.”
The way he thought that his presence would be a nuisance made me think that Raphael’s theory about Dewey’s lack of self-confidence was spot-on. He looked pretty sad, and I knew that I couldn’t give up so easily.
“Don’t be silly! We’d have even more fun if you came with us. Am I right, Maria?”
“Yes!” she agreed, nodding her head once again. “Come with us, Dewey.”
Our friend started looking as if he couldn’t decide what to do.
I bet it’s different now that the girl he loves so much invited him too. Convincing him won’t be so ha—
“Everyone seems to be here today, huh?” a familiar voice suddenly interjected.
“Er… Miss Larna?” I asked.
“Good morning, Miss Katarina,” the owner of the voice replied, waving her hand at me.
The reason I couldn’t be so sure of who she was at first was that she looked nothing like she did at work—she wasn’t wearing her uniform and had either dyed her hair or was wearing a wig. She was a master of disguise, and while she always looked the same in the office—probably just another disguise too—outside of it she changed her appearance so much that you couldn’t even recognize her. Today’s disguise was probably in the middle of these two extremes.
“Why are you here?” I asked, remembering how I’d heard that she didn’t live in the dormitories as she had a house—or rather a mansion, since she was probably a noble—of her own.
“See, I so much as show my face in this place on a day off and they immediately have me running errands,” she replied, taking out a piece of paper from her pocket, “Dewey Percy, there’s a letter for you here. It’s from your family. It was delivered to the department by mistake, and I’ve been asked to bring it back to you.”
Dewey, just like Maria, lived in the Ministry’s dormitories. Receiving a letter from one’s family sounded like something perfectly normal, but his reaction seemed to imply otherwise.
“What?!” he shrieked with a look of horror on his face.
I guess reacting like this makes sense, considering what Maria told me about his family.
“I came to deliver it immediately because it said ‘urgent’ on it. If there’s any problem that needs to be taken care of, just let me know and I’ll try to help out,” Larna said, handing him the letter.
She could sometimes forget about everything because of her obsessive love for magic, but, in general, Larna was a good, caring superior. After hearing her say something like that, putting the letter away and reading it later wasn’t really an option.
After hesitating for a bit, Dewey opened the envelope and started reading the letter. As he went through it, the expression on his face turned darker and darker.
Maria and I, concerned for him, just looked on and waited for him to say something. Larna, however, made sure we wouldn’t have to wait too long.
“What’s wrong? Did something happen?” she asked.
“Th-The letter says that one of my younger sisters is terribly ill, and that I should go back home as soon as possible…” he nervously explained.
That’s terrible!
“Dewey! My carriage is parked nearby, so let’s get aboard and go to your home in that!” I suggested.
“B-But…”
“I will come too. Let’s hurry, Dewey,” Maria joined in, grabbing his arm.
He still looked befuddled, but he nodded at her. And so, my shopping trip with Maria was canceled and it was decided that we would go to Dewey’s house instead.
“Uhm, excuse me,” I spoke up once we were on the carriage, “not that it’s a problem or anything, but…why are you coming with us, Miss Larna?”
“I’m curious about Maria and Dewey’s hometown,” she nonchalantly replied.
It’s like curiosity dictates anything she ever does… Oh well, it’s not like I have any reason to stop her from coming.
★★★★★
“Sarah, you are free to spend today however you like,” my master told me.
It was not the first time that he had granted me that freedom on a whim. When it happened, I would usually go back to my room and wait for the day to pass by without doing anything, as I didn’t know what to do with my free time.
However, today I felt restless. That had actually been the case for a while now. Having something to do would have distracted me, but sitting by myself with nothing to do kept me thinking. I thought back to Katarina Claes, and how she had hugged that boy and told him to reach out his hand. That memory deeply agitated me.
I had heard that she was going to be in town for leisure on this day. That woman was the whole reason behind the turmoil I felt in my heart, and I wanted to do something about it—something about her. I had been told not to kill her, but anything short of that would have probably been fine. Compelled by an unfamiliar emotion, I left my room.
The people around town will probably know where she’s gone. I just need to use Dark Magic to make them tell me.
For the first time, I had acted out of my own free will.
★★★★★★
Riding along the familiar road to Maria’s town was doing nothing to make the atmosphere inside the carriage less gloomy. Dewey was still clenching the letter in his hands, reading it over and over again.
I’d heard that he and his siblings were very supportive of each other, and something like “come back as soon as possible” meant that his sister’s situation was quite scary. I could imagine how anxious he was, and I promised myself to introduce him to a good doctor.
The carriage, which wasn’t the fancy Claes family one but an unassuming one I’d had prepared so we could go shopping, took us all the way to Dewey’s house. His was even further away from the town’s center than Maria’s house was.
“My house is not a place fit for people of your class,” Dewey told me and Larna as soon as we were there, “so you can wait outside if you want.”
“That doesn’t matter at all. I’m also worried, so I’d like to go in if you don’t mind,” I replied, and he agreed to let us in.
“Yeah, doesn’t matter to me either,” Larna concurred, casually coming after us.
Once we got out of the carriage, I understood why Dewey had said that. Rather than a house, it was a shack, and a flimsy one at that. It looked like a gust of wind would have been enough to take it apart. That was worse than I had expected, but I had seen people living in buildings like those when visiting other poorer towns, so I didn’t have any problem going inside one. The confusing part was how such a run-down house was located in this relatively wealthy town not so far from the capital.
When we got closer, the door opened and a young man, probably slightly younger than I was, peered out from behind it. His face was somewhat similar to Dewey’s, who confirmed my suspicions by whispering, “He’s my brother.”
The young man, even though he couldn’t possibly have heard a whisper that quiet, noticed Dewey, and seemed to be extremely surprised by his presence. “What are you doing here?!” Dewey’s brother yelled, making it clear enough that he wasn’t welcome there.
Even though I knew his parents were terrible people, I had been under the assumption that the siblings were on good terms with each other.
“I received a letter. That is why I’m here,” Dewey, who looked hurt by his brother’s reaction, answered laconically.
“What letter?”
“Here.” He handed the letter to his brother, who gave him a spiteful glance.
“Are you trying to make fun of me? You know I can’t read!”
“Oh… Right. I’m sorry,” he replied sadly.
Maria had told me that Dewey was the only one in his family who had managed to attend school, so it made sense that his siblings wouldn’t be able to read and write. In a country such as Sorcié, where education was free and most of the population was literate as a result, lacking that skill sounded like a disgrace.
“So? What’s it say?” Dewey’s brother asked without changing his unwelcoming facial expression one bit.
“Well… It says that Bell is very ill, and that I should come back immediately.”
“Huh? What are you talking about? Bell’s fine.”
“What?!”
The two Percy brothers were looking at each other in confusion when an inappropriately happy voice rang from inside the house.
“Oh, is that Dewey?! You came?! I’ve been waiting for you, my boy!” The voice belonged to a huge guy, who stumbled out of the door making his round belly flop up and down. Judging from his gait and from his red face, he was obviously drunk.
“Dad,” Dewey murmured under his breath.
That huge, drunk guy is his dad?! No way! He doesn’t look anything like him! Or…maybe he would if he lost a lot of weight?
When thinking about the father of such a prim and proper boy as Dewey, I certainly wouldn’t have imagined such a dirty, untidy man.
“What do you mean you were waiting for him? Did you send that letter to him?” Dewey’s brother asked his father. His voice was clearly angry, but his father didn’t seem to notice.
“Oh, yeah, I sure did. My tab at the pub’s got so long they won’t give me one drop of booze. That’s why I called my boy prodigy back home. He’s at least got enough saved up to buy his old dad some liquor, ain’t that right? And I knew he’d come back running if I told him that Bell was ill or something like that. He’s a sweet one, my Dewey boy,” the drunken dad replied, walking toward his young son and giving him a couple of pats on the back, strong enough to make him sway. “So, you see, I need some coin. You send me some every month from that nice salary of yours, don’t you? But I need more. Not that much, don’t you worry.”
There was silence. “The money I send is not meant for you. It’s for my siblings,” Dewey finally replied, glaring hatefully at the man.
Dewey’s brother looked as surprised as I was to learn that he had been sending money back home from his Ministry salary. That unforgivable old man was probably taking all of it for himself, leaving none to those it was actually meant for.
Once again, the man was left unfazed by his sons’ anger.
“Whatcha talking about? My children’s stuff is my stuff. That’s not the problem. The problem’s that it’s not enough. You should start sending a bit more from n—”
Before the man could finish his sentence, Dewey’s brother had grabbed him by the arm, dragging him away.
“Watch it, Ronnie! Can’t you see I’m having an important discussion with your little brother?”
Ronnie, as I now knew he was called, didn’t reply to his father’s complaints. He simply shoved him back into the house and slammed the door closed, standing in front of it so that he couldn’t come back outside.
“What’s the big idea?! You’re gonna treat your own father like this?!” the old man shouted from inside the house while banging on the door. This time it was Ronnie’s turn to ignore his father’s anger.
“It’s just as you heard. Bell is fine. Now leave,” he coldly said to his younger brother.
“But…” Dewey, shook by receiving this cold treatment, replied as he looked at the door behind which his father was still shouting, but Ronnie left him no time to say more.
“You left this home, so whatever happens here is none of your business. Now get out of my sight and don’t you ever come back again!”
Dewey flinched at his brother’s sudden yelling, then he gave up and started walking back to the carriage.
“I am very sorry that you had to see this. I have nothing else to do here, so…we can go back now,” he told us.
“Wai—” I started objecting, but Larna put a hand on my shoulder and shook her head.
Catching her drift, I nodded and silently followed Dewey.
We kept walking like that, without talking, until we reached the carriage. Once we did, Dewey turned around and said, “I’ve just remembered something that I must do. Please go back without me. I will ride a public carriage later on.”
He started running in a direction different than the one we had come from, and before we knew it, he had already gotten quite far.
“I cannot let him go by himself like that,” Maria declared.
She was right. He looked like he could burst into tears at any moment. We couldn’t just leave him alone and go back by ourselves.
“Got it. We have other things to do, so we can’t go with you, but you go and make sure that nothing bad happens to Dewey, all right?” Larna replied.
After nodding in agreement, Maria quickly ran after Dewey, leaving me and Larna alone in the carriage.
“Excuse me… What other things do we have to do?” I asked her.
“Oh, I just thought this might be the perfect opportunity to introduce ourselves to the Percy family,” she replied with a creepy grin.
It was painfully clear from her face that whatever she was planning wasn’t a simple friendly introduction. Still, after seeing the trouble that Dewey was going through and the way his father just laughed it all off, I found myself thinking that letting Larna loose on the guy wouldn’t be so bad.
I’m really mad at him right now…
“Okay. Off we go,” she said, heading toward Dewey’s house, and I followed her.
As we got closer, we heard angry screams coming from inside the shack. We started running, and my fears were confirmed as soon as we were close enough to see what was going on.
The screams were coming from Dewey’s father, who was beating up Dewey’s brother. He pushed his son down to the ground with that huge body of his and kept kicking poor Ronnie.
“Stop!” I shouted, making the man stop for a moment. Immediately after, Larna used her Wind Magic to blow him away and against the shack’s wall. The man only let out a brief groan before passing out.
She’s not kidding around…
Larna went to check on the dad, so I rushed to see how Ronnie, who was still on the ground, was doing. I noticed some kids, probably Dewey’s younger siblings, standing to the side with tears in their eyes. I crouched down near Ronnie and saw that his face was swollen from the beating.
“What happened to the old man?” he asked me.
If he’s asking that, he hasn’t seen Larna using her magic. Good… Pretty much all the people that can use magic are nobles, and they aren’t supposed to use it willy-nilly anyway. Of course, this called for it, but it’s even better if he didn’t notice at all.
“There was a sudden gust of wind, and he stumbled, slammed against the wall, and passed out,” I explained.
“Oh,” Ronnie replied without questioning my story in the slightest. Maybe it was easy to believe because his dad was constantly drunkenly crashing into things.
Blood started flowing out of Ronnie’s mouth, probably from a cut he had gotten while he was being beaten.
“Are you okay? Here, use this.” I offered him my handkerchief, but he took one look at it and shook his head.
“I’m good. Wouldn’t wanna get it dirty.”
“Isn’t that the point of handkerchiefs?” I asked, taken aback, and he gave me a sad look in return.
“That’s too fine of a luxury for people like me. This is what I get to do,” he said, wiping off his mouth with his already dirty sleeve.
“People like me…” He sounds just like Dewey. Maybe it’s growing up in this environment that makes them think those things.
“Well-off people like you shouldn’t hang around a place like this. And also, please tell Dewey to stop sending that money,” he continued before I could reply.
After taking a look at his still unconscious father, he addressed his younger siblings, telling them, “go back to hiding in case he wakes up and gets violent again. I’m off to work now.”
He tried to wipe off some of the mud that had gotten on his clothes and then started walking off, still bleeding, dirty, and even limping as if he had just hurt his leg.
“You’re hurt! You need care!” I cried, but he ignored me and kept walking. I understood that going after him would be pointless, and trying to fix someone’s wounds while he was resisting would have been too difficult.
As I was thinking about what to do, I heard a groan from behind—his father had woken up.
“Sheesh… What was that…?” he said, rubbing his head with his hand and trying to stand up.
“Oh, so the sluggard at last woke up.” Larna stood close by.
The man replied with an affirmative grunt. He was probably still drunk, and his face was as red as ever, but seeing a man that big with his eyes full of anger was a scary sight. What made it worse was that not only was he big, but he also had no qualms about beating his own son until he started bleeding.
You could tell that he ate more than enough from his round belly and healthy-looking skin, and the stench of alcohol left no doubts about the drinking either. His kids, on the other hand, all looked pale and overly thin, starting with Ronnie. The more I thought about it, the more I felt the rage building up inside of me.
Unable to control myself, I scowled at the man, angrily addressing him.
“How can you do something like this?! Violence toward children is unforgivable!”
“Huh? What’s your deal? They’re my children and I do what I want with them. Get out of my face,” he told me before starting to yell, “Kids! Where are you?! Can’t you see your father is hurt?! Come and fix me up! And bring some money! I need to buy my booze!”
The children seemed to have hidden themselves just as Ronnie had told them, and they were nowhere to be seen. Realizing that his yelling wasn’t going to do him any good, the man clicked his tongue in annoyance and slammed his fist against the wall of his house.
“I told you to come out, you brats! If you don’t show up right now, you’re gonna get double the beating!”
I heard a muffled crying voice come from a tree near the house. A girl who looked like she was around ten years old came out from behind it, carefully trying to protect another child who looked much younger still. The look of surrender on her face was simply devastating.
“What took you so long?! When your father calls you, you gotta hurry up!” the man blustered, raising his hand and getting ready to lower it forcefully into the girl’s face.
I was so shocked that I couldn’t even react, but…his arm halted on the way down, blocked by a gust of wind.
“Stop it,” Larna coldly ordered the man.
The fear I felt toward the man was nothing compared to the aura of enraged contempt that was emanating from Larna right now. This was probably the first time that I’d ever seen her get mad.
“Let me tell you something, scum,” she continued, face completely expressionless. “Kids are not tools. They’re people, and they’re not yours to use as you please.”
Once she was done reprimanding the drunkard, Larna sent another gust of wind toward him, flinging him face-first to the ground. He let out a groan and stopped moving.
The children were observing the scene with their eyes wide and their mouths shut. That also went for me, of course. I’d never seen Larna use her magic on someone to that extent, not even when fighting thugs. I didn’t know what had caused her to snap like she had, but the drunkard wasn’t going to get up for a very long while.
“I-Is it okay to use magic like this?” I asked her as soon as I recovered from the shock. He was going to beat a child, sure, but he was still just a civilian, so this seemed like overkill.
Larna, whose rage had now subsided, thought about it for a while.
“Well, I need to make sure that what happened here stays here. Don’t worry about that guy—he’ll be unconscious for the whole day at the very least. Be right back,” she promised before quickly disappearing.
What am I supposed to do now? At least I don’t have to worry about that man, but…
“Are you okay?” I asked the girl who was still standing as if to shield her younger sibling.
Her little shoulders twitched in surprise before she feebly told me, “Yes…”
The fear on her face made me sad. These kids were probably subjected to violence like that on a daily basis.
“Don’t worry. That woman who just ran off is going to take care of things,” I tried to comfort her, smiling warmly, knowing that Larna would never leave these kids to themselves. She was definitely going to do something about it, and if she didn’t, I would.
The girl’s terrified frown mellowed out a little bit. She seemed to ponder for a while before nervously asking me a question.
“Are you friends of my brother Dewey?”
Oh, so she really is Dewey’s sister. She does kind of look like him too.
“Yes. We’re friends and also work colleagues. Were you here when we all came here together earlier?”
“Mm-hmm. I was looking from inside the house.”
“I see. You should’ve come out though. I bet Dewey would have loved to see you. He still hasn’t come back by the way. Maybe I should go and tell him to come here,” I suggested, but the girl shook her head.
“No… Ronnie’s gonna get mad at us.”
“Ronnie…is your brother, right? The one who was being beaten before. Why would he get mad at you?” I asked, surprised.
“He said that Dewey is different from us,” she explained with a sad face, “so we can’t meet him or talk to him anymore.”
So not only did he tell Dewey not to come back, but he’s telling his other siblings to avoid him as well.
“Forget about Ronnie for a second. What about you? Would you like to see Dewey?” I asked, trying my very best to sound gentle and reassuring.
“I-I want to see him. I want to talk to him. He’s so kind and he knows so many interesting things. I love my brother!” she exclaimed, and as she did so, tears started welling up in her eyes.
I reached out my hand and patted her head. This girl was probably just doing as Ronnie had told her, and she couldn’t talk to anybody about how she really felt. Maybe she opened up with me because I told her I was a friend of Dewey’s.
The girl started sobbing, shaking as she did so, and I softly hugged her. She seemed surprised at first, but then she let herself go and rested her little body against mine as she kept wailing.
While I waited for the poor girl to calm down, I thought about Ronnie and Dewey. The former said that he didn’t want anything to do with the latter, but looking at how he actually interacted with him gave a somewhat different impression.
“Thank you…” The girl seemed a little embarrassed once her tears had stopped.
“Don’t worry.” I patted her head once more. It was then that I noticed several pairs of envious eyes looking in my direction.
More of Dewey’s siblings, all even younger than the girl I had just spoken to, had come out from hiding and were now staring at me.
“Do you all want me to pat your head?” I asked, and they all nodded.
“Dewey always did that for us, but Ronnie never does, so…” the girl shyly explained.
“Well, then it’s head pat bonanza time!” I announced, stroking all of the children’s hair in turn, until they were all smiling.
“Hey,” I told the girl after I was done, “I guess I want to have a proper talk with Ronnie. Can you tell me where he works?”
“A…proper talk with him?”
“Yes. About Dewey.”
“But he doesn’t…” she started saying, leaving her sentence unfinished. He doesn’t like Dewey, is what she probably wanted to say.
“I have to talk to him to be sure,” I replied, trying to put some confidence into my voice.
You could never guess other people’s feelings, no matter how close they were to you. The only way to know the truth was to ask them directly. The girl, persuaded, told me where her older brother worked. Leaving the children’s fate in Larna’s capable hands, I headed toward Ronnie’s workplace.