Majo no Tabitabi - Volume 7 - Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10

Many Years’ Journey: Dear Friends

A little more than an hour after Linaria and Alte traveled to the past to get rid of the golem, the two of them returned together to the present.

“……”

“……”

They were covered in dust, but neither of them said a word. They remained silent. However, they didn’t seem to be upset with each other. The silence between them seemed comfortable.

Both of their expressions were so bright, it was hard to imagine that they had just completed an extraordinary mission.

“Did something good happen to you back there?”

It was only natural that I would tilt my head and question them, don’t you think?

“Nothing in particular. Why?” Alte immediately shook her head.

“Let’s see…nothing to speak of, really.” Beside Alte, Linaria nodded affirmatively.

Seems there was something good…

And that both of them are terrible liars.

Though I don’t really feel like prying further.

Anyway…

“Looks like you finished your mission without too much trouble, eh? Thank goodness.”

Even I thought saying that myself was quite shameless. After all, I was the one who had defeated the golem seven years ago.

Well, I suppose it doesn’t really matter as long as it ended well.

I had defeated the golem and returned peace to the city.

Though it did mean that all of the university’s magical conveniences became useless. That included the automatically returning library books and the perpetual incinerator.

It seems that from now on, this school is going to be a little more inconvenient.

“Teacher?”

Since almost everyone had used up all of their magical energy during the attack, campus was still a mountain of rubble. As I was looking up at the pile, Linaria suddenly spoke up behind me.

When I turned around, she was standing next to Alte.

They were holding hands.

In their joined hands was one time-reversing watch.

Linaria held it up for me to see and said, “Teacher, you said that our last journey should be our final one, but…could you let us go back in time just once more? One last time?”

Everything had started when I’d gotten a hold of Linaria’s time-reversing watch. Its power had been too tempting, and in my greed, I had gone back in time again and again and caused the present state of affairs.

It was a terrible disaster.

Without meaning to, I had torn the country to pieces.

I needed to do some introspection. I had to.

At the same time, I knew that I must not repeat the same mistake over again.

Ultimately, so long as I had the power, I was sure to abuse it—and the more I messed with the timeline, the more Linaria and I would lose our ability to connect to the present.

So we had to go back.

“Alte?” Staring at the collapsed school building, fiddling with the knobs on the watch, Linaria asked, “Are you ready?”

Neither of us knew when our final trip would take us. We would choose a time at random and get rid of the watch then. That’s what we had decided.

“I wonder what era we’ll jump to?” I said as I gripped the time-reversing watch along with Linaria.

“Who knows?” She smiled. “I turned the knob without looking, so we might fly off into the distant past for all I know.”

And then she entwined her fingers with mine. The metal of the watch warmed between our palms.

Then Linaria and I looked at each other.

She pressed the side button once.

We had no idea what awaited us.

But that was okay.

We were happier not knowing the future.

We were standing by the window of a dark classroom.

Outside the window, we could see the city, with tall buildings standing silently side by side. Looking down, I could see the flames of the incinerator, eternally flickering.

The scenery that met my eyes had something nostalgic about it.

The only thing that seemed different was that the school building where we were standing—in our time—was nothing but a big pile of rubble.

That meant we couldn’t have gone that far back into the past.

We had gone back only a few days, a totally unremarkable length of time.

“…But it would have been so interesting if it took us back four hundred years or something.” Beside me, the history geek had her cheeks puffed out in displeasure. “…I wanted to see the former library again…” She sulked.

“…Well, do you want to use it just once more?”

Though if we do that, we’ll have to act like we never got all sentimental and promised that this would be the last time. And then we’ll have to crawl back to our teacher and beg her to let us use the watch again. And then she’ll probably scold us, and she’ll definitely make fun of us, too, and…

“…Let’s give up on that idea.”

Apparently, Linaria had been picturing roughly the same scenario. She shook her head, looking queasy. “Yeah…”

I nodded. “Because this is the last time, right?”

And then, I squeezed the time-reversing watch between our palms. Linaria squeezed back.

Without looking at each other, hiding the fact that we were reluctant to part with the watch, we reached out and opened the window.

Autumn’s cool breeze flowed in.

The chilly air brushed my throat and chilled my body. Only my fingers still had warmth to spare.

“…All right, let’s do it.” I looked at Linaria.

“…Yeah.” She responded simply and smiled.

And then, we both nodded, and together, we flung the time-reversing watch into the air.

We watched the gentle silver arc as it fell away into the darkness.

I was hoping it might fall directly into the incinerator.

If it doesn’t, well, I guess we can go down there and pick it up and toss it in, I told myself as I looked to see where it fell. We obviously hadn’t put much thought into this whole thing.

Finally, the time-reversing watch landed with a clunk, giving off an awful noise.

“Owwwwwwwww!”

It landed right on the head of a country bumpkin working in front of the incinerator.

After the golem incident was finished, I went back with the other teachers to the crumbling campus.

Since all of us were totally exhausted, reconstruction would require some time, but we got the main school building cleaned up and back to normal in about three days.

After a short break, we began to conduct classes on campus again. And on that day, I quit being a teacher.

As a matter of fact…

I had only infiltrated this university in the first place so that I could deal with this one incident. Because seven years ago, just as I was leaving this city, I had encountered a girl who couldn’t tell a lie, and I had been moved by her earnest words.

She had called me her teacher and told me that I was the one who, seven years later, would instruct her to send the golem into the past.

I continued my travels, and after seven years, I returned here to close the time loop. I had been the one to defeat the golem, after all, so I thought it was important for my past self that I stick around and make sure everything happened the way it was supposed to.

So now here I was, seven years older, and it was time for me to close the book on my time at the university. After all, I had accomplished everything I needed to, and at the end of the day, I was a traveler at heart.

However, even though I’d only been at the school a short while, I had apparently played the part of teacher pretty well, because when word of my resignation got out, my students decided to throw me a good-bye party.

They rented out my usual bakery (the one with the dining room attached), and the students sang songs for me and gave me letters and presents.

Laughing and crying, the girls gave me their best wishes for my departure.

“But Miiiiiiiiiss…why are you leeeaaaviiing…?” One of my students, a sweet country bumpkin named Alte, even clung to me, weeping.

“…………Sniffle.” Surprisingly, even the cool and collected Linaria had tears in her eyes. She was probably caught up in the moment by her good friend’s crying.

I had almost felt the tears coming on several times as well, but I managed to hold them back, telling myself over and over that it wouldn’t be proper for a teacher to cry, and I didn’t want to set a bad example. I knew that if I started crying, too, it would spoil the mood of the farewell party.

In the end, we partied it up, so that the only thing anyone would remember was how much fun they had, right down to the very end.

By the time it got late, however, the bakery had once again fallen quiet. Most of the students had gone home by midnight, and in the early hours of the morning, the rest of them trickled out, bit by bit.

Eventually, there were only two students left with me, whining and complaining to the very last.

Maybe because she had partied too hard, one of them was fast asleep, using my lap as a pillow.

“…Heh-heh…what’re ya doin’? Sheesh…heh-heh…,” she mumbled in her country accent.

“Oh-hoh-hoh…so this is a four-hundred-year-old rock, huh? …I love it…” As for the other student, she was leaning against my shoulder, also happily dreaming away.

“……”

I put a hand on each of the sleeping girls’ heads and caressed them. These two were doing their best at school, and I knew that they had an exciting road to adulthood ahead.

Their lives would be more difficult than before now that they’d lost the ability to go back in time. They’d probably suffer some hardships, go through some setbacks, face trials and tribulations.

However…

As long as these two were together, I knew they would be all right.

They would work hard and grow up together.

“You know, if, one day, I get the chance to meet you two again, I think that would make me very happy,” I whispered to the sleeping girls.

So let’s hold off on the tears till then.

* * *

The following day.

I gathered my things and walked off campus.

I proceeded down the main avenue, lined as always with tall buildings, until the city gate came into view.

“Good day, Madam Witch. Taking a trip?”

The gate guard bowed once.

I shook my head.

“Departing permanently.”

The guard nodded. “Certainly.” He quickly and efficiently filled out the departure paperwork and stepped away from the gate. “Well then, we wish you safe travels.”

Then the gate opened slowly, almost suspensefully.

An unknown future lay in wait for me on the other side.

And then, once again, I began a new journey.