Majo no Tabitabi - Volume 8 - Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

The Night It Rained Stardust

Let me tell you a story from when I was young.

A story I’ve never told anyone before, a memory from my childhood.

The place where I was born, Bielawald, was an old-fashioned place where we respected tradition and convention.

Most of the land was covered by dense forest, and the city that stood where the land had been cleared was full of white brick houses. Even at the time I was born, the place already had a long history, and most of the houses were old, full of cracks or covered in ivy. The aging buildings looked like they might be swallowed up by the forest at any time.

I loved it.

I loved the scenery anyway.

But the place itself, not so much.

“Ah, it’s twelve already.”

I was enjoying some light recreational reading on a day off, when the gong, gong of the bell reverberated through town. In this city, the bell rang every night at twelve o’clock.

The chime not only signaled the end of the day, but had an even more important purpose.

In this city, when the clock struck twelve, there was an important ritual, something that every resident must do.

“……”

I opened the window and closed my eyes, and with both hands clasped together, I lifted my prayers up to the star-filled sky.

I closed my eyes for precisely thirty seconds. Praying for thirty seconds like this was one of the customs here.

Children began to pray from the date of their fifth birthday. Starting on that day, I was taught by the lady at the orphanage to look up at the night sky and pray when the bell chimed.

At the time I was a carefree child, so I nodded and told her that I understood, without really understanding at all, and started staying up until twelve o’clock to look up at the night sky and pray together with the other children at the orphanage.

I wasn’t very good at staying up late and was always dozing off, so I often prayed while half asleep, rubbing my eyes. I was frequently asleep on my feet. And sometimes I would fall asleep without waiting for twelve, and the lady at the orphanage would get terribly angry.

In Bielawald, this nightly ritual was apparently more important than anything else.

I always wondered what the meaning behind the tradition was, but I seemed to be the only one in this city who had such questions.

I asked my schoolmates, and I asked the lady who raised me at the orphanage, but no one knew the reason for it. Instead…

“I’ve never given it any thought.”

…they were all puzzled by my question.

When it came to the lady at the orphanage, she took me into a back room the moment I voiced the question and gave me a very stern warning. “Are you listening? You absolutely must not ever ask that question outside these walls.”

She told me:

“This custom began long before any of us were born. I moved here from another place, so I don’t know all the details, but it seems like it’s prohibited to ask about those sorts of things around here. So you mustn’t ask anyone else.”

She placed a finger to my lips and shushed me as she said that.

“So it’s like a taboo?”

“Yes. And if you don’t want to be selected for the ritual, it’s even more important not to do anything to stand out.”

She said this to five-year-old me and patted my head.

About nine years passed. Ever since that conversation, I’d performed the prayer every night, but I’d also always wondered about the origin of this tradition.

In our city, every year in the spring, a ceremony was conducted that we called “the ritual.”

In order to pray for an abundant harvest that year, the girl selected for this ritual was shut inside a shrine in the middle of town and required to pray the whole night through. Usually, one girl was selected for the ritual, but depending on the year, it could be two or even three girls. I didn’t know what criteria they used to select them, though.

So why on earth did they do it?

I thought that if I spoke with someone who had actually experienced the ritual, I would probably understand the situation, but unfortunately, now that I was thirteen years old, there was hardly anyone with whom I had the kind of relationship where I could casually ask such a thing.

When I was ten, the lady from the orphanage had been selected for the ritual, and at the end of it, she had disappeared. She was nowhere to be found.

I remembered that day well.

Clad in a plain white gown and wearing beautiful makeup on her face, she disappeared into the shrine without making eye contact with anyone, staring at the ground with vacant eyes under a night sky twinkling with stars, surrounded by a crowd of people.

“The nameless maiden, our chosen one, has now entered the shrine.”

As he said this, the chieftain, who was also leading the ritual, closed the door to the shrine.

And then, supposedly, she continuously prayed inside the shrine all night long.

Supposedly, she prayed fervently all night, asking for a bountiful harvest in the coming year. The bell rang, and we all prayed, too, and then she continued praying even as everyone else had fallen asleep.

The following morning, I woke up early and headed for the shrine, but by the time I got there, it had already been opened back up, and people were going in and out.

She was not inside.

The people of the city said:

“That girl has already left us.”

“Apparently, she got tired of our customs.”

“I doubt she will ever come back again.”

And so without even saying good-bye, she had suddenly disappeared.

After that, I investigated things the best I could.

I spent my days going to school, returning home to the orphanage, then walking over to the great library that housed all of our city’s books.

At school, there wasn’t a single person whom I could call a friend, both because I was raised in an orphanage and also because I wasn’t inclined to get involved with people in the first place.

Perhaps it was my isolation that had led me to get completely absorbed in my research at the great library.

“…How strange.”

But there were surprisingly few books about my homeland’s history, and they didn’t have much information to offer. I was surprised to find that they were mostly full of dubious tales that were more like legends or stories from folklore. Many claimed that the city had a history of supernatural phenomena, or even that the land itself was possessed by some dire spirit.

When it came to reference books, a number of volumes were moth-eaten, and any page that contained information about any other place had been redacted anyway. The city’s greatest library had next to no information concerning anything outside its walls. Nothing was written there that wasn’t common knowledge, stuff that even I, a child, already knew. There was nothing I could learn from what was on offer at the great library.

So then, where on earth could they be keeping all the real knowledge?

“Um, excuse me? Do you have the next volume of this book?”

Carrying several moth-eaten tomes with me, I went to ask a librarian.

After casting a sharp glance my way, the librarian asked, “…Why do you want to read it?”

I dodged the question. “…Just out of curiosity.”

But the librarian shook her head. “…Unfortunately, it’s not here.”

I realized that relying on books wasn’t going to get me anywhere.

Since I’d come this far, my curiosity couldn’t be so easily deterred, so in the end, I gave up on finding things in the library and decided to try another tactic.

“Huh? Information about foreign lands?”

Merchants and travelers often came to visit Bielawald. I kept an eye out for new arrivals and went around interviewing them about the state of the world outside our small city.

“Yes. Please tell me.” I leaned in close to a merchant without hesitation and told him, “I have an interest in other places.”

“…Hmm.” The merchant smiled awkwardly and averted his eyes. “…I’m sorry, miss. I was told in no uncertain terms when I arrived that I mustn’t speak of places outside this country, so I couldn’t tell you even if I wanted to. Apparently, that’s the rule here.”

That’s when I knew that something was up. Even outsiders were being forced to follow this rule. Finding out that information was being concealed made me all the more interested. What could they be trying to hide? More importantly, did the people here even know that anything was being hidden?

In any case, the fires of my curiosity were fanned, and after that, I spent even more time asking around to hear what the travelers and merchants had to say. Now then, allow me to recount here the total outcome of my efforts.

“Hmm. So you want to know about other lands, huh? Sure thing, sweetheart, just come with me.”

I do want to make it outside the country, but not in the company of a merchant. I decline.

“Look at this, miss! This butterfly is a really rare species, and it sells for a high price. Apparently, it lives in the forest surrounding this country. Do you know anything about it?”

I’ve never even been outside the country, but I guess I would try to catch a butterfly if I found one. I wouldn’t hand it over to a merchant, though.

“Uh-huh, you want to know about the outside world, huh…? All right, I’ll tell you something good.” Oh, I have a hunch this might be some useful information! “By the way, before I tell you, do you have a boyfriend? If you like, we could go to that café—” And good-bye.

“Instead of learning about the outside world, don’t you want to know more about me? Oh, you don’t…? I see…”

Anyway…

To sum up what I learned from my thorough investigation.

“I got absolutely no real information!”

It was evening, and I shouted to myself as I returned once more to the great library.

“What was that? I guess that merchants and travelers are nothing but a bunch of disgusting jerks with their minds in the gutter? Each and every one of them just kept saying, ‘Oh, you’re cute,’ or ‘Wanna get a drink?’ They just whispered sweet words and that’s all. I just wanted to hear their stories, but none of them cared. And anyway, what does it say about our country that all the adults who visit would seriously make a pass at a thirteen-year-old?”

I pouted sullenly as I opened up a book.

“Be quiet in the library.” A clear command resounded out of nowhere. “Don’t you have any common sense?”

I looked around for the owner of the voice and saw the figure of a young woman.

She was a beautiful mage.

Her hair was a nearly white ash-gray color. Her eyes were lapis-colored. She was dressed simply, in a black robe and triangular hat. On her breast, she wore a star-shaped brooch.

I guess she thinks she’s fashionable?

She looked like she was about twenty years old, although I couldn’t tell her exact age, because her grace and composure made her seem older than her years.

Where on earth did she come from? Well, she was probably there the whole time, but—

Then the woman who had been watching me approached and tilted her head inquisitively. Her gaze fell on the reference book in my hands.

“You have some interest in other countries?”

“……!”

To think that she could tell that much just from seeing me reading one reference book…! Mages are amazing…!

Secretly, I was elated.

It was embarrassing, but I had yet to leave Bielawald, even once, which meant that I had never happened to meet a mage, and I had absolutely no knowledge of what magic or the mages who wielded it were like.

For that reason, I was even more excited than I was amazed by the fact that the woman in front of my eyes had guessed my desire in an instant.

How did she know that?

“C-can mages peer inside people’s minds…?” I asked her with amazement and anticipation.

Maybe people with psychic powers all go on to become mages? Maybe that’s it?

But the mage quickly shook her head in response to my excited anticipation.

“No, I just saw you asking around near the gate.”

I let out a long, drawn-out sigh.

“Ah…I guess that makes sense…”

“Don’t you think it’s rude to act so openly disappointed…?”

Upon further inquiry, I learned that apparently this woman was a traveler who had arrived several days before I began my search for knowledge, and that she was touring the region alone. She also told me that she was a mage, or more accurately, she was a witch, but I didn’t really understand the difference between the two anyway. I did know now that mages were not as I had imagined them, and I didn’t really care about the difference, so I let her explanation go in one ear and out the other. To make a long story short and simple, she was a traveler. The end.

“But it’s rare, isn’t it? To find a girl who has doubts about the conventions and customs of her home,” she said, staring at me, the one who had looked so openly disappointed.

“……” After answering her initially with silence, I asked, “…Are you telling me that I’m strange for having doubts, too?”

I could tell from the way that her eyebrows moved into a slight frown that my tone of voice had been somewhat harsh.

Then she shook her head.

“No, it’s actually the opposite. I’m impressed.”

“……?”

“I’m just glad there’s someone around here who has some sense.”

I didn’t really understand what she was trying to say.

I continued to tilt my head in confusion.

Maybe because she could tell what I was thinking, or maybe because mages could actually read people’s minds, she looked at me and said, “Rules and regulations are often made to benefit the people who make them. Having doubts about them is a good thing. It seems like most people around here have no idea if they’re benefiting or losing out by following the rules. Compared to them, you’re very shrewd.”

And so on.

I found myself borrowing a popular local phrase.

“I’ve never given it any thought.”

I must have had a wild look on my face as I said those words, and the mage laughed at me.

“Well, you’re not exactly the kind of person who thinks about whether or not you’re shrewd, now, are you? You’ve got a sort of dumb-looking face.”

“…All I understand is that you just made fun of me.”

“If you don’t understand anything, you’d better watch your step.”

She looked fed up and let out a sigh.

For some reason, I got the feeling that this person was going to tell me all the things I had been dying to hear. I had a feeling that, unlike the good-for-nothing travelers and merchants I had spent all day meeting, she was going to satisfy my craving for knowledge.

“…Um.” So I looked at her and said, “Miss Mage, do you think I could get you to tell me about the outside world?”

In response to those words, which I had to muster up a little courage to say, she nodded and said, “Yes, of course.”

But right after that, she shook her head. “But today’s no good.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The sun’s going down soon.”

“…What do you mean?”

I didn’t understand what she was getting at.

It felt a little irritating, being kept in suspense, but she gently placed her hand on my shoulder as if to comfort me.

“Tomorrow will be good. But I can’t do it today.” She repeated herself, but as she spoke, she smiled and looked out the window of the library. “You see, tonight, the night sky will be incredibly beautiful.”

Outside the window, it was already dark enough that the stars were coming out.

As to whether it was beautiful…well, I couldn’t tell from where I was.

“Come to the library again tomorrow. If you do that, I’ll tell you all sorts of things.”

After forcing me to postpone our meeting, the mage left the great library. After she’d left, I read my book for a while, then also left myself.

That night, the stars were very beautiful.

There wasn’t a single cloud in the night sky, and the twinkling stars spread out to the ends of the earth, looking just like they might sprinkle down onto the ground at any moment.

The sky was such a beautiful sight, the people of the city were gathering in the streets.

“……”

No—

Apparently, the people were gathering in the streets for a completely different reason.

“Ahh, how awful…!”

“What on earth…?!”

“What is that…?! It’s terrifying…!”

The commotion among the people had nothing to do with the beauty of the stars. It was just focused on the sky to the west.

“……”

Sure enough, there was something strange there, strange enough to eclipse the beauty of the stars.

Stars were hanging, twinkling, in the night sky. There was one star that was noticeably brighter and bigger than the others. This strange star suddenly appeared, trailing a brightly shining tail as it streamed across the sky from one side to the other.

I was certain it hadn’t been there the day before. The city was in a stir over the star that had suddenly appeared, and words of confusion arose from all directions.

“It’s inauspicious.”

“It’s a sign, warning of a natural disaster.”

It was the first time in my life I had ever seen the strange star, but apparently it looked familiar to a few people.

Someone said, “The star of death from twenty-two years ago has appeared again.”

Someone else answered, “Hurry, if we don’t conduct the ritual right away, we’ll be too late—”

That was the moment I realized that I had arrived at the thirteenth spring since my birth.

“ ”

And that was about when my consciousness started to go fuzzy.

From behind me, someone placed a cloth over my mouth. It was suffocating and smelled strange. When I took in a breath, my head felt dizzy, and my body felt like it was starting to fall asleep. My body became numb, then my eyelids grew heavy, and finally, I lost consciousness in the street.

“Congratulations. You have been selected for this year’s ritual. This is a great honor,” someone said to me.

“Now, change into these clothes. You must wear them in order to pray in the shrine,” someone else said.

“Oh, wonderful. She’s just perfect.” Yet another someone clapped their hands happily.

“We’re all ready now. All right, shall we go perform the ritual?” Then someone tugged at my hand, and we started walking.

I had no accurate memory of how many days’ time had gone by since I passed out. We had the custom of praying every night at twelve, so I should have been able to figure it out by counting the number of prayers, but my head had been in such a daze since that day that I couldn’t even do that. It might have been one day later, or a whole week could have gone by.

“……”

When I came to, I had been selected for the ritual. But I didn’t have any of my usual doubts about it. I didn’t even have any doubts about the fact that I had no doubts about it. The more I tried to get my mind to work, the more it refused, and I walked on toward the shrine.

I tried to resist when the doors to the shrine were opened, but I kept on walking, as if my body was being sucked into it.

Inside, the light flickered from innumerable candles.

“The nameless maiden, our chosen one, has now entered the shrine—”

Behind me, I heard the chieftain say those words. I tried to turn around, but by that time, the door to the shrine had already been closed.

Only the faint light of candles illuminated the dark space, where even moonlight didn’t reach.

“……”

That was when I noticed that there was a strange scent hanging in the air inside this shrine, but by then, I was already starting to lose my ability to think straight.

I started to walk down a narrow path into the deep recesses of the shrine. I knew for certain that my body was not listening to my conscious mind. It was just moving like a marionette.

There weren’t even candles to provide light deep inside the shrine. It was dark, and damp, and the strange smell just got thicker as I went.

After a short while, I stopped.

“…Ah!”

In the depths of the shrine, I discovered hundreds of flowers. Beautiful white blossoms growing from between many, many bones. Atop a cluster of skeletons, all dressed in the exact same clothing that I was wearing at the moment, the beautiful flowers were in full bloom.

Then, at that point, I finally realized something.

The lady from the orphanage, who had taught me so much—she’d never actually left.

I realized the true purpose of the ritual.

“I’ve never given it any thought.”

The fact that each and every person I’d asked about our traditions had given me the same answer was not because nobody ever questioned our customs. It must have been because anyone with any doubts was quietly eliminated.

The lady from the orphanage must have been one of those so selected.

This place was even worse than I’d imagined.

“Ah, ah…!” But by the time I’d realized all this, it was too late to do anything. “No…no…! I don’t want to die…not yet…!”

In this airtight space where not even the moonlight could reach, the strange scent that was dulling my senses gradually yet steadily grew stronger and thicker.

It might have been mixed in with the smell of the burning candles. Or maybe it was coming from the many blossoms.

Even if I tried to resist, even if I tried to escape, my control over my body was gradually being stolen away.

And then I collapsed on top of the many bones, just like I had collapsed when I had been smothered by a cloth beneath a sky sparkling with stars.

I couldn’t find my breath. I was gasping for air. I felt sleepy, and my eyelids began drooping.

“Why…did this happen…?”

Come to the library again tomorrow. If you do that, I’ll tell you all sorts of things.

I felt overwhelming sadness when it became clear that I would never live to see tomorrow. Even though I had finally met someone who seemed to understand me. Even though I had finally gotten the chance to talk to someone like her.

Without fulfilling my promise to meet her, I was going to lose my life, here and now.

Ah, if only I had asked that mage’s name, I thought wistfully.

My eyelids, growing heavier by the second, slowly closed.

In this city, anyone who challenged the status quo was branded an enemy, locked away, and suffocated.

I saw all sorts of images in the brief moment after I closed my eyes. They looked like they were on a revolving lantern. Scenes of my everyday life passed through my mind and disappeared. The days I spent at the orphanage, the days I spent absorbed in reading at the great library, memories of people getting mad at me because I didn’t make it in time for nightly prayers, and foolish memories of when I had admired the girls who were chosen for the ritual.

And then…

Before long…

The curtain fell on my short, thirteen-year life.

In this region, there is apparently an incredibly beautiful comet that appears in a cycle once every twenty-two years.

This spring was exactly when it was expected to arrive, and every town in the area was holding some sort of festival or hawking some kind of special something-or-other, trying to draw in tourists.

Of course, I, a traveler who was just journeying along according to my whims, fell victim to their schemes and was practically forced to buy all sorts of things in all sorts of places.

For example, there was the plain white bread from an old woman at a roadside stall who claimed that it was “special comet bread.” Or the unremarkable stone from a curio dealer who insisted that it was “hewn from a fragment of the comet.”

It was enough to make me wonder if maybe every last one of the tourists who were so excited to see a comet that came every twenty-two years was an idiot with a flower field blooming where their brain should be.

Nothing makes me angrier than people carrying on with shady business! But setting that aside, this ill-tempered witch, munching away at the alleged comet bread, who on earth could she be?

That’s right, it’s me.

“……”

I can almost hear a voice from somewhere asking, What’s this? So you did buy the special comet bread after all? What’s become of you? But I’d like to make one thing clear here. I was definitely not tricked into purchasing the bread by the old woman running the roadside stall.

“I’ve heard that there once was a place called Bielawald around here. Do you know anything about it?” I asked her. That’s right, I bribed her—I bought some of the old hag’s bread so that she would tell me something useful.

Unfortunately, the place I was trying to find, Bielawald, had been abandoned by its citizens long ago and fallen into ruin, so it wasn’t on my map. Consequently, I decided to bribe this old lady to make her hurry up and spit out its location.

“Huh? You want to go to Bielawald? I don’t know what to tell you… That place hasn’t existed for quite some time… I wonder if I can remember…? My memory’s a little fuzzy, you see.”

“Mm-hmm.”

So buying the bread wasn’t enough to make you talk, huh? Is that it? I see, I see.

“Here, take this.” I gave her one gold piece as a bribe.

“The location of Bielawald, was it? I remember it perfectly. Let me borrow your map for a second.”

The old woman quickly marked the spot on the map.

So it was that easy?

And so that was what transpired. I’d had to sacrifice one gold piece, but I considered it a necessary expense.

“But tell me, just what business could you possibly have in a place like that? There’s nothing there, you know?”

While she was writing the location on my map, the old woman had narrowed her eyes seductively, as if she were looking at a lover or something, then looked up at me.

I didn’t know how to answer.

There was nothing in the place where I was headed now. The city had been abandoned by its citizens before I was even born, and only the deserted ruins were left, passing the years alone. Of course, since there were no people, there was no light, and it was probably quieter than anywhere else.

“That’s exactly why I’m going.”

I was certain that the sky, seen from such a place, would be brighter than the sky I could see from anywhere else, and more beautiful.

When you’re a traveler, you sometimes find that the reality of a place is not at all what you had expected. Bielawald was one of those experiences for me.

Not because it was entirely different from what I had imagined or because I was somehow disappointed. But because the place indicated on my map—these ruins deep in the woods—had something really strange going on.

“…What is this?”

I suppose the forest had considered the departure of the people to be a good opportunity to regrow, because the city was disappearing into the greenery. It had probably been a beautiful white city long ago. But ivy was creeping up the walls of the houses that lined the avenue, working its way around them.

And the large street that I was walking down must once have been covered in cobblestones, but in the intervening years, weeds had grown up, and many flowers of different colors had bloomed.

Surely there are no human beings living in these ruins.

Up to this point, I hadn’t seen anything surprising. But there was one thing that stood out to me—a humble dwelling in a far corner of the ruined city.

“All right then, everyone, let’s sing songs today. Does anyone have any suggestions?”

Through a small window, I could see the figure of a woman facing some children and smiling at them.

Well now, so there are people here after all, I thought to myself as I approached the window giddily. But the figures of the children and the woman disappeared, as if they had been just a momentary illusion.

What remained in that spot was nothing more than an ancient, time-worn house that looked the same as every other building in the city.

It looked like there was an orphanage here, but—

No matter how close I got, no matter how many times I blinked my eyes, the young woman and the children did not appear before me again.

“Congratulations! You’ve been selected for the ritual—”

Someone, somewhere, was speaking to someone else.

“Now, change into these clothes—”

When I looked, I saw an older woman handing white clothes to a young girl.

“Twenty-two years have passed since the unlucky star last appeared—”

“The time has come.”

A little farther on, there were two people talking in the street.

“So that means it’s going to appear again this spring?”

“No mistaking it.”

“What should we do? Who do we choose for the ritual?”

“…Right. I know the perfect girl.”

I approached them, intending to try to speak to them, but they took no notice of me, no matter how close I got, and just continued their discussion with somewhat worried expressions.

Eventually, I said, “Umm,” and tried walking right in between the men, but…

“I’ve heard that girl has doubts about our traditions.”

“Apparently, she’s even been doing some research at the great library.”

“I got a tip-off from a librarian about it, so there’s no doubt.”

…they ignored me.

They didn’t even look at me. As a test, I said, “Hellooo,” and waved my hands in front of the men. “How are you today?” I jumped up and down. “I am the Ashen Witch, Elainaaa!” I looked quickly between them.

But sure enough, the men still ignored me.

As you might expect, this blatant disrespect was making me rather angry.

“Hey now, are you listening?” I reached out and tried to touch one of the men on the shoulder.

“……”

But my hand passed through the man’s body. My hand, which I had extended with a little too much force, appeared to sharply bisect him from the shoulder down. But the man himself was still wearing the same serious expression and turned to look toward the city, saying, “All right then, as we planned, we’ll seal a girl in the shrine again this year.”

“……”

That was when I realized that this place was showing me an illusion.

In the direction the man was looking stood a single tiny building.

The shrine in the center of the city looked weathered by the passage of time, the same as the other buildings. Moss had grown over the door like a seal.

“……”

I was a little concerned by the words that the ghostly figures had exchanged. But still, I placed a hand on the door of the shrine. If what they had said was true, then it had been customary here to lock young girls away in this small building.

For some reason, I was curious.

“Hellooo…”

The moss-covered door creaked open easily when I pushed on it. The moss that covered the outside of the door had apparently extended its reach inside, for the walls of the shrine were coated in green when the sunlight shone in.

When I stepped inside, the floor creaked underfoot. The inside of the shrine was surprisingly empty, and to my disappointment, all I saw was a bunch of nothing.

An empty city, abandoned by its citizens. In the center of it stood a lonely shrine, shrouded in silence and full of hidden significance. I was certain that it must be holding some treasure, but there wasn’t a single such thing inside, and no matter how far in I walked, the only thing to find was more moss.

It was all the same, even as I proceeded into the depths.

There’s nothing here. Well now, isn’t this boring…

I did see a girl with black hair dressed in white clothes lying on top of the weeds, but this seemed to be an apparition like the ones I had seen before, so in the end, I didn’t think it was anything to worry about.

I had anticipated that there would probably be something interesting left behind in this mysterious place that had been abandoned by its people, but this was clearly nothing more than an illusion.

I had been betrayed by my expectations and was feeling awfully disappointed. Still, I pressed on deeper into the shrine, when—

Squish.

“Gyaah!”

A voice came from below me. I felt a strange sensation under my feet, which were supposed to have been treading on moss.

“……”

I had been convinced that the black-haired girl must be an apparition and had started to walk right through her as if she weren’t there, but…

Let me see, what’s going on here?

My foot was standing on the girl’s face. I wasn’t passing through her body but, sure enough, was touching her where I stood.

“……Huh?”

What’s this? Are you serious?

Going extremely pale, I removed my foot, crouched down beside her, and extended a hand.

I poked at her cheek. It felt soft and squishy.

“…Nngh.” The black-haired girl let out a groan.

Next, I lightly slapped her cheeks.

She clearly felt like something corporeal.

“…Oww,” she moaned.

Clearly, she existed on this plane.

“……”

I was silent for a brief while.

I see, I see, no matter how I look at it, she is alive…

No matter how I think about it, she’s not an illusion…

…Wait, that means—

Who could have ever expected that there was a living person in a place like this?

I was sure that I should have died, and I felt like I had, but when I opened my eyes, the bright sky stretched out above me.

I was looking at a blue sky, so bright, it was almost blinding.

When I narrowed my eyes and let my gaze wander, I saw bookshelves around me, extending upward. Ivy was coiled around them, and they were lined with books that didn’t look to be in any state to read.

I had a strange feeling that something about that scenery looked familiar, and yet unfamiliar at the same time.

It was apparent that this was without a doubt the great library. But it looked completely transformed from the library in my memories.

“…This place…?”

Where on earth am I?

When I sat up, I heard someone speak from beside me.

“Oh, you’re awake?”

My attention was drawn to the voice. I turned to look and saw a mage with ashen hair staring at me.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know the details of how you came to be sleeping in that shrine, but it felt wrong to leave you there, so I moved you here.”

“……”

I honestly had no idea what had happened to me.

Everything that had taken place since the moment when I was watching that sparkling star blaze a trail across the western sky was hazy in my memory, like a dream or a vision.

Unbeknownst to me, I had been selected for the ritual, and when I came to, my body wasn’t listening to what I told it to do. The people of my homeland had tried to kill me, and when I opened my eyes again, I was with a stranger in the library, which was not as I remembered it. My memory bounced around these scenes with such dizzying speed that I couldn’t tell how much of it was reality, and I even wondered if it had all been a dream.

Perhaps my mind was still spaced out because of the strange odor in the shrine.

“……”

But in the midst of all these vague memories, the thing that remained more vivid than anything else was the fear I had felt, and I couldn’t get away from that.

I was afraid. Afraid of the people around me, who all seemed to think the same thing. Afraid that I was alone, the only person who could see that something was wrong. Afraid that I had made myself a target with my curiosity. Afraid that the one person who had been kind to me had died a long time ago.

I couldn’t help but be afraid.

“…Ah, uh…mm…”

I felt my cheeks growing hot. I realized I was crying when my vision blurred and my lip began trembling. I pressed my lips together and tried to hold back the tears, but the more I put up my futile resistance, the less able I was to keep from crying.

I had been much more frightened than even I had realized.

As I suddenly burst into tears, the mage looking down at me laughed uncomfortably and gently stroked my head. “Did you have a scary dream or something?” she asked.

When I felt the warmth of her hand, neither a dream nor an illusion, I cried even harder.

The girl suddenly burst into tears, which made me terribly worried that I’d done something awful without even realizing it. But after she had finished sobbing, she told me, in bits and pieces, her story, and it had nothing to do with me.

It was also the story of a lone girl who’d experienced a terrible misfortune. The story of an unlucky girl who had found herself in mortal danger just because she was curious.

But if her story was true, if what she had experienced hadn’t been a dream or an illusion…

“…In other words, you came here from a long time ago—from twenty years ago or more—is that what you’re saying?”

The comet appeared only once every twenty-two years, so that would mean that the girl before my eyes was someone from at least twenty-two years ago, or maybe even two or three times that.

“It’s a difficult story to believe all of a sudden…,” I muttered.

To begin with, how on earth did you manage to get here, from twenty-two years in the past?

I was wondering this, but when I stopped to think about it, I realized that I had encountered many strange happenings since arriving here.

It seemed likely that this old ruin was the locus for some kind of unusual magical phenomenon. Surely this girl and I, and the apparitions I had seen, were all caught up in the same phenomenon.

But of the two of us, she was less able to hide her bewilderment at the circumstances she found herself in. She had been imprisoned, and when she opened her eyes, twenty-two years or more had passed. It was no wonder she was confused.

And I was the one to have to tell her that her home had gone to ruin a long time ago.

Looking up at the crumbling ceiling from the library chair where she was sitting, she mumbled, “…So right now, I’m in the future?”

She seemed calm, but—

“…Could this be…a dream maybe? Oww…” She tugged at her own cheek with all her might, and I could guess from the tears in her eyes that she wasn’t all that calm.

You’re gonna rip it. Are you all right?

“How strange…it hurts…” Unsatisfied with just pulling at her cheek, she started slapping herself.

Are you a masochist? You don’t seem all right.

“Stop that. You’ll ruin your pretty face.” Her cheek was already red and swollen by the time I managed to intervene.

She looked around through teary eyes and groaned. “…Is this all for real?” she asked quietly.

“As you can see, it is.” I nodded. “Things have become much more peaceful since the time you lived here.”

“…It’s just fallen into ruin, hasn’t it?”

That’s right.

“That’s what I said.”

Perhaps the black-haired girl and I had something in common.

Once the flame of my curiosity was lit, I found it very difficult to restrain myself, no matter what. In a word, once something caught my eye, I couldn’t help but get curious.

That held true about this place as well.

I wanted to ascertain the reason why it had fallen into ruin. This “great library” was surely the most suitable place to seek out that reason, so for now I was pulling every book I could find off the shelves, stacking them up on a table entwined in greenery, and reading them one by one.

I thought that if I could learn the reason the city had fallen into ruin, then maybe I could figure out the key to returning the girl to her own time.

“Huh? But I don’t particularly want to go back to my own time,” she said.

“……”

I tried a different tactic. “Well, you’ve got plenty of free time right now, don’t you? If you’ve got free time, won’t you help me with my research?”

But she just tilted her head and asked, “Huh? Why should I have to do something like that?”

How strange… I remember her being a little more serious, but…

“Look, I only investigated that stuff so seriously because I had an interest in it,” she continued. “I’m not actually a particularly studious person.” The girl quickly shook her head. At least she was being honest. “Actually, given the choice, I just want to sleep all day.”

I see—apparently she’s just very lazy.

On top of all that, she rapidly brought her face closer to me as she asked, “By the way, Miss Mage, I’ve got a request if that’s okay?”

Her lovely blue eyes peered into mine.

And then, at point-blank range, close enough that I could feel her breath, with eyes full of determination, she looked at me and said, “Won’t you please teach me magic?”

“Huh? No way,” I immediately replied.

As you can see, I’m currently busy with my research.

“That’s no good. Teach me, please.”

What do you mean, “That’s no good”?

“Look, you’ve got plenty of free time right now, don’t you? If you’ve got free time, then you can teach me magic, can’t you?” she said, looking slightly annoyed.

“……”

It seemed we really did have a lot in common.

“Please teach me.”

“No way.”

“I said, please teach me.”

“And I said no, didn’t I?”

“If you don’t teach me, I’ll spread the rumor that you kidnapped me.”

“…But there’s no one here.”

“Please teach me anyway.”

“……”

We had this pointless back-and-forth, and in the end—

“…If you help me with my research, then okay. I’ll teach you magic in return.”

I folded.

If I was being honest, I was facing all sorts of uncertainties regarding her traveling from the past and the reason this place had fallen into ruin. But when I considered the possibility of her returning to her own time, it occurred to me that teaching her magic now might help her out a lot back in the past.

Though it wasn’t yet clear whether she could actually learn to use magic or not.

I can’t help but wonder if she’ll still assist me with my search if it turns out she can’t use magic. If possible, I’d like to discover both why she came to this place and how to keep her from returning to the past while there’s still time.

“Come to think of it, you haven’t told me your name yet, have you?” I held out my hand to her. “I am the Ashen Witch, Elaina. I’m a traveler.”

“…Thank you.”

She gripped my hand lightly and smiled, looking just a little bit bashful.

And then…

“My name is…”

And when she said her name, I could scarcely believe it. It made everything else—the question of whether she could learn to use magic, the question of why she’d come here from the past, the question of why she and I were so much alike—seem trivial.

This girl, with her black hair down to her shoulders and her lovely blue eyes, spoke up.

She said…

“…Fran.”

Just “Fran.”

And she smiled at me.

At that point, I had figured a few things out. There was the fact that the lazy witch known as the Stardust Witch, Fran, who had taught me all sorts of things as my teacher, had in actuality met me before in the past, and had apparently been keeping it a secret from me this whole time. And there was the fact that the girl before my eyes definitely had to return to the past somehow or other at some point.

The more I looked at her, the more I could see that the girl in front of me was definitely none other than my teacher, Fran. I just stood there thinking, Ah, she used to make faces like this before; she hasn’t changed a bit, still a beauty, huh, wow.

It’s safe to say that, in that moment, I was in quite a state of confusion and couldn’t get my thinking straight.

“Elaina? Um, I’d like you to let go of my hand anytime now… And having you stare at me so much is, um, a little…”

Fran was fidgeting, looking rather embarrassed. The more I looked at her, the more she looked like herself.

“……”

Hearing her call me “Elaina” felt oddly embarrassing. Some very complicated emotions were bubbling up in the depths of my chest.

“…Ahem!” I shook off these troublesome thoughts. As I released her hand, I asked, “All right, are you listening? From this point forward, I’m going to become your instructor, so please address me as ‘teacher’ from now on.”

“Understood. Teacher.” Fran nodded obediently.

“……”

Miss Fran is calling me “teacher”…

“Teacher, what’s the matter?” she asked. “You’ve got on a very complicated expression…”

“T-that’s just the way I look.”

“Uh-huh…you must have had a very complicated life…”

Setting that aside…

“For now, let’s establish our schedule,” I said. “We’ll have to balance research with practical studies, so we’re going to be rather busy.”

Conducting my investigation while also teaching her magic would be difficult, not to mention a real pain. It seemed like the best approach would be to strictly divide my time between the two tasks.

“For the time being, we’ll investigate from morning until afternoon,” I said. “From afternoon until evening, we’ll study magic. How’s that sound?”

“…If we do it like that, I’ll only end up doing the magic studies, is that all right?”

“Wait a minute, why are you assuming that you’re going to sleep in late? Is this a joke?”

“I hate waking up in the morning…”

“Ugh, I know.”

“Hmm? Did I already tell you that, teacher?”

“……”

It would be difficult to explain how I already knew that she hated waking up—that she’d been like this when I’d known her in the future, and that I’d figured that she’d probably been that way since she was young.

“…No, I could just sort of tell somehow…,” I answered. “For now, I’ll plan to wake you up when I get up. That’s the idea.”

When I was in training, waking Miss Fran had been part of my daily routine after all.

That much was no hardship.

“Well, it’s already the afternoon now, so can I take that to mean you’re going to start teaching me magic?” Fran tilted her head.

“Yes. That’s the plan.” I nodded. “Are you ready? When I say I’m going to teach someone magic, I teach them properly.”

“I look forward to your lessons.”

“Unlike some other people, I’m going to teach you seriously. Prepare yourself.”

“…Who are you talking about?”

“…I’m talking about my own teacher.”

“Your teacher didn’t teach you proper magic?”

“Well…um…”

“I see. That’s really crappy, huh?”

“……”

Fran nodded repeatedly and made knowing noises, while I stood there in silence.

“Your teacher was a real jerk, huh?”

“……”

You’re just trashing your future self, you know!

I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t say it.

And so the curtain rose on our strange daily routine.

This girl would become my teacher in the future, so it was no surprise that she had a talent for magic. Actually, she was more gifted than I’d imagined.

“Let’s start with a drill to practice manipulating magic. There’s water here in this bottle, right? Without touching it, please draw the water out.”

“Something like this, I suppose?”

“……”

Fran quickly drew the water out of the bottle using a wand that I had loaned her. The water was floating in a blob in midair.

How on earth can she handle magic so easily the first time she’s ever picked up a wand…?

The thought lingered in my mind, but I found it vexing, so I stayed silent.

“…All right, next, form the water into a ball.”

“Like this?”

Fran quickly made the water into a ball in the air.

“……”

She didn’t seem like a beginner at all. The lesson appeared to come to her naturally.

I thought she would have a little bit of difficulty with it, but…

“All right, next, let’s try using wind magic.” After moving the bottle far away from her, I said, “Send some wind in this direction, and knock down this bottle, please.”

“Something like this, I suppose?”

“……”

She sent the bottle flying with a ping!

“…Have you got experience handling magic?” I asked.

“…? No, I don’t, but…”

Apparently, she was a natural prodigy.

Oh-hoh, I see, I see. She’s so absurdly gifted, it makes all my days of hard work seem ridiculous.

After she’d grown comfortable handling the wand, Fran turned to me and asked, “Um, teacher? Is it possible that I might be a little bit of a magical prodigy…?”

“Huh? What are you talking about? This is normal progress. Don’t get carried away with yourself.”

There stood a wicked witch who used the fact that her student knew nothing about the wider world to temper her enthusiasm.

“……”

She was a prodigy, plain and simple. She seemed to have an unparalleled gift for magic, and it seemed like I would be able to teach her absolutely everything I knew, so that it would be useful to her when she returned to the past.

From that day forward, we took up lodging at the great library. Moss and other greenery had invaded most of the houses in this area, making them musty and impossible to sleep in even if we tried. So there was no avoiding it, and we decided to sleep in the library. After easily using our magic to repair two beds salvaged from nearby houses, Fran and I set them up beside each other.

“And we get to sleep in the great library, too… How nice… It’s so romantic…”

Fran gazed up at the starry sky from her bed, and her mouth relaxed ever so slightly into a cheerful smile.

Looking over at her, I answered, “How gratifying to hear that you’re happy,” and turned back to my desk.

“You’re not sleeping yet, teacher?”

“I’ve got research to do.”

“…There’s no decent information in this library. Just stuff that everybody here knows.”

“Well, things that are common knowledge to everyone here are still new to me,” I answered. “You can go ahead and sleep.”

“……”

In the brief silence that followed, I got the sense that she was troubled by something, and holding something back, but she must have been tired.

“…Well then, I’ll take you up on that.”

Shortly after she’d replied to me with those words, the sound of her quiet, sleeping breaths echoed through the great library.

The Miss Fran I knew was extraordinarily lazy, and apparently that was true in this era as well. The next morning, when I awoke in the great library, she was there beside me, snoring quietly, snuggled under her covers.

“Wake up. It’s morning.”

“Five more minutes…”

“Not a chance. Hurry and get up…”

“Nngh.” Fran squirmed deeper down under the comforter.

“……”

Apparently, she hadn’t woken up even the slightest bit.

…Well, she did handle magic for the first time yesterday, plus she just had a pretty harrowing experience, so…maybe she shouldn’t be faulted for sleeping in a little bit?

Making excuses like this to myself, I patted her blanket.

“…All right then, I’ll do my research on my own today.”

I was almost certainly going easy on her, giving up in the end like that.

If there was one thing that was clear in her…in Fran’s recollections that she told me about, it was the fact that no matter how much I searched this great library, I wouldn’t find anything.

Maybe it had all been censored, but either way, it wasn’t here in the open. Apparently, any unfavorable information about the place was not a matter of public record.

In that case, if that’s how it is, then I should probably postpone my search of the great library. It seems like it would be much more worthwhile to take a look around instead.

“It doesn’t seem likely that the cause for all this ruin is going to come to light quickly or easily, does it…?” I mumbled to myself as I toured the city alone.

The phantoms that I’d been seeing ever since arriving the day before continued to appear constantly, regardless of the time of day or what was happening at the moment.

Before I went to sleep at night, the figures of people I had never seen before had shown up several times, reading books in the library.

“Ah, welcome, welcome! We’ve lowered our prices!”

“I wonder what I should have for dinner tonight…”

“Excuse me, but I’ve just moved here today. Could you point me toward the orphanage?”

Not long after, I found my way to the city gates.

It was the same road I had taken the previous day, but there was one thing I hadn’t noticed before—according to stories of Miss Fran’s youth, the people here hadn’t been big fans of trading with the outside world. So one would expect the city gates to stay locked.

But I had been able to enter without the slightest inconvenience. I had just walked right in.

“……”

The gate had been destroyed. An enormous hole had been punched right through the middle of it.

“Ah, what the heck happened here…? Our gate is…,” someone said from somewhere. But by the time I looked around for them, the apparition had already disappeared.

In other words, someone had put a hole through the city gate. That’s what it must have meant.

But I wonder who on earth could have done such a thing…

“……”

After that, I tried standing there watching the gate for a while, but the apparitions only ever appeared when I wasn’t looking for them.

And so a routine coalesced for the both of us.

In the morning, I would wake up, shake Fran’s body, and whisper, “It’s morning!” She would answer me with, “Five more minutes,” indicating a time that would never actually arrive. I would sulk off to do my research alone, saying, “All right, all right. Well, I’m going by myself, then.” In the afternoon, Fran would open her eyes and badger me. “Okay, teach me magic now!” Putting on an incredibly reluctant face, I would extract a promise that would never actually come true—“All right, but tomorrow please get up early”—and teach her spells.

I taught her enough to handle herself even after she returned to the past.

I had a feeling that that was probably my destiny here.

I taught her magic to the best of my ability, so that she might become the splendid witch who would teach me magic in her future.

To tell the truth, I felt like the time I spent teaching Fran magic was much more valuable than my own research—more important even than learning the reason why this place had gone to ruin.

It was probably because I felt more of a sense of satisfaction from teaching what I knew to the person who would go on to teach me, rather than from searching for something I might not find, no matter how hard I looked.

“……”

No, I’m sure that’s not the only reason.

I’m sure this is some kind of very, very long-term repayment of a favor.

Fran was very important to me. She was the one who had taught me magic in my past.

Though I wasn’t sure whether or not I was going to be an important figure to her, as the person who had taught her magic in her past.

Six days had passed since I got Elaina to start teaching me magic, but nothing had changed. Whether awake or asleep, I was still in the future.

Once I awoke in the middle of the night, but of course, I still found myself in the decaying remains of the great library.

Just when am I going to go back?

Whenever I lay awake, trying to fall asleep, a vague unease smoldered inside me.

I hadn’t entirely recovered from my traumatic experience in the past. Even though outwardly I was perfectly composed, inside, the awful memory of it was eating me up. That was why I would ignore my teacher, who was staying up late reading books in the great library for her research, announcing that I was going to sleep as I crawled between my blankets.

Maybe she could guess what was on my mind, because she didn’t compel me to accompany her on her searches of the city and seemed to be going out on her own to explore in the mornings.

In all honesty, I did feel a little lonely when I woke up in the mornings with my teacher nowhere to be seen, but I was sure that if I’d said anything about it, it would’ve only caused even more trouble for her.

Even though I was grateful to still be alive here in the future, it was very clear to me that I would upset my teacher if I spoke of my feelings, so whether sleeping or waking, I acted as if I didn’t have a care.

“……”

If I looked up through the holes in the ceiling before the break of dawn, I could see stars sparkling in the sky. I didn’t see any that looked like that ominous, unlucky comet. Just a normal night sky, stretching out before me.

I wonder how many years older this sky is since I last saw it…

“Miss? I’m terribly sorry, but customers aren’t allowed past this point…”

It happened when I was lost in my own thoughts. From out of nowhere came a voice; it sounded annoyed and perplexed.

I crawled out of my bed to look for its source, but there was no need to search for it. The whole of the great library was blanketed in an illusion, showing it as it had looked a long time ago.

“Oh, come on now. You’re hiding something back there, aren’t you? That’s right, isn’t it?”

An image of a mage was interrogating an image of the librarian.

“No, I’m telling you, this part of the library is off limits to outsiders, even if you think something is hidden back there…”

And the image of the librarian looked troubled but stubbornly refused the mage passage.

I had seen both of them before.

I was looking at two people with whom I had exchanged words in the past.

“……”

Hearing their conversation, I was reminded that every single one of the books I’d read about this place had either been missing sections or only contained knowledge so common that anyone might know it. It was obvious that the government was censoring anything that might make them look bad.

The mage seemed to have guessed that what she was looking for was concealed in the back rooms of the library. She leaned in even closer to the librarian. “There’s absolutely nothing that might make this place look bad. You must be keeping it all in the back, right?”

“I don’t think that we have anything like that…,” the librarian said. She looked bewildered, but she didn’t seem to know anything useful.

The mage narrowed her eyes to stare intensely at the perplexed librarian before she eventually said, “…Well, whatever. I’ll come back again,” and turned on her heel to leave.

In the past, access to the back rooms of the library had been blocked by the librarian.

“……”

But now the library was deserted. It would be easy to investigate.

I thought about telling this fact to my teacher right away, but when I looked over my shoulder at her, she was still breathing peacefully in her sleep and showed absolutely no signs of waking.

I wonder if I should wake her… Should I? Surely I ought to tell her right away, since I have no idea when I might return to the past?

After debating it for a moment, I shook my teacher’s shoulder and called out to the sleeping woman, “Teacher, teacher!”

However…

“Nngh…”

She let out a delicate sigh.

“…Five more minutes,” she mumbled.

She didn’t wake up. She didn’t wake up at all.

What’s the meaning of this? Surely I ought to wake her up, even if I have to slap her or something, right?

“Teacher…”

I shook her shoulder once more, and then…

A book fell free from her clothes and hit the ground with a loud thump. I picked up the beautifully bound tome, which must have been her private property. Tempted by my own curiosity, I began flipping through the pages, against my better judgment. The pages were tightly packed with lovely handwriting.

“……”

It was a diary. She seemed to have already filled several volumes, because unfortunately there was no mention of the start of her journey. But she had recorded the events of recent days.

From trifling everyday events like buying a particularly good loaf of bread, to the story of her meeting someone and then parting from them, it was all there.

There was the tale of her encounter with an immortal mage. There was the story of the time she ran into a friend in a certain city. There was the story of an adventurer traveling around and freeing slaves. All this and more was recorded in her diary.

The outside world I had yearned for was all written in this book.

Her descriptions of the past few days were also there. In short, she had written about the days since meeting me. I knew it wasn’t something I ought to be reading, but my hand seemed to turn the pages on its own, and I ended up reading to the end.

According to her diary…

XX month, XX day

I suppose it’s my mission to teach her magic. That’s what it feels like.

If possible, I’d like to drill every bit of knowledge I have into her, but unfortunately, I have no idea how much time we have left together. I’m going to put off my vacation for the time being and will consider teaching her magic to be my top priority.

I can do my research about this place whenever, but the time I have now to spend with her isn’t going to be that long.

So I’ve made little progress exploring.

XX month, XX day

She didn’t get out of bed this morning, either, no matter how long I waited. I wonder if there isn’t a spell to cure oversleeping.

As expected, her talent for magic is exceptional. In fact, she probably far surpasses me in terms of latent potential. I felt a bit jealous watching her learn everything I taught her with ease. But at the same time, it also made me consider that perhaps I have a talent for teaching.

Regarding my research, after two days it’s become clear that there is no pattern to the apparitions. They seem to be disconnected in time, and in every other way, nothing more than phantoms that appear and disappear, remnants of the city’s past. What on earth could be showing me these visions?

XX month, XX day

Starting today, our third day together, I’ve been able to catch moments of brightness in her somewhat gloomy expressions. It seems that she’s not necessarily going to be influenced by her past forever. That’s good.

As usual, I’m still a little upset that she’s so darn good with magic, and also annoyed that she’s so bad at getting up in the morning. But anyway, putting all that aside, after three days of my instruction, she should at least be able to put up a fight if she’s challenged by any normal human after returning to the past.

Though I definitely don’t think I’m ready to tell her that yet.

My exploration of the city has, as usual, made no progress. Today’s search also concluded without finding a way to return her to the past.

XX month, XX day

Today is day four.

Our days together continue without interruption.

I’d like to end today’s diary entry with a prayer that they will persist.

Today I took a break from exploring the city.

XX month, XX day

It’s day five.

She was still here when I awoke this morning. Seems she hasn’t returned to the past yet.

When night fell, I remembered that I hadn’t searched the city.

XX month, XX day

Today is day six, but she’s still here in the grand library.

I suppose tomorrow will be more of the same.

Some part of me hopes that’s true.

“……”

My teacher is a liar, I thought. She told me that she was staying up late doing research, but she hasn’t been doing any such thing.

Beside her where she slept facedown on the desk was a small mountain of books about magic. She must have been using her sleeping time to study. She must have been trying to learn more spells to teach me. Maybe she didn’t want to seem like she was doing me a favor, so she kept it a secret from me.

“…Thank you so much, teacher,” I said as I stroked her hair. It was the kind of thing I could only ever say to her while she was asleep.

Maybe we were more alike than I had imagined.

Strangely, that didn’t bother me.

The following day, Fran woke up first for once.

Such strange behavior from her was enough to make me wonder if it was an ill omen or something.

“Oh my, what’s this? A harbinger of some natural disaster?”

I even went so far as to say it out loud. That’s how rare it was for her to wake up early.

“Heh-heh-heh…teacher, I’m not the kind of person who is just going to sit back and let you go easy on her…”

She smiled boldly.

Oh my, I don’t remember going easy on you, though?

“Today I mustered all my feelings of gratitude for you, my teacher, and put in a little effort.”

I found this puzzling, but she wore a broad smile as she set some strange black thing down on the table and said, “Please enjoy.”

The black thing sitting on the plate sizzled and sent up smoke of a disgusting color. It was impossible to look directly at the mysterious object.

“…Um, what is this?”

I looked up from the table at her, and she smiled.

“I made you something to eat,” she answered.

“……”

Huh? Is this some kind of prank or something?

Fran puffed up her chest with pride. “I tried to bring out the full flavors of the raw ingredients.” I thought that she would probably have gotten better flavor by throwing the ingredients straight into the trash.

“Exactly what kind of cooking results in something like this…?” I wondered aloud.

“Eh-heh-heh…”

Ah, no, that wasn’t a compliment…

I wasn’t trying to hide my grimace, but apparently my feelings weren’t obvious to Fran.

“I put my whole heart into making it…,” she told me proudly.

To think that your heart is this pitch-black…this is the first I knew of it…

“Please, go ahead,” she said, and pushed the plate toward me, urging me to eat. “I’m planning to help you with your exploration this morning, so please hurry and eat up.”

Well now, that’s a very admirable thing to try to do, though it’s really not necessary.

“Did something happen?” I asked suspiciously. “You got up awfully early this morning…”

“I’m going to grow and develop, too, teacher.”

“Huh? Develop?”

I looked at the plate sitting in front of me.

Well, your culinary skills certainly aren’t going to get any better, if the Fran I know in the future is any indication…

“What’s wrong, teacher? You really don’t look so good…”

“…No, it’s nothing…”

“Anyway, hurry up and eat, please. We don’t have much time. I woke up in the middle of the night last night, and I feel like I might have a clue about the disaster that took place in this city.”

I tilted my head quizzically. “Oh? What do you mean?”

Fran told me breathlessly about the apparition she had seen the night before.

It had been only one scene, that of a mage who had come here by chance, pressing a librarian to be allowed to enter the grand library’s back rooms. The mage had seemed to recognize that everything in the public part of the library was heavily censored as a matter of course, meaning that anything significant was probably hidden in the back.

However…

“By any chance, was the mage you saw a witch with nearly white, ash-colored hair, wearing a black robe and triangular hat?” I asked.

“…!” Fran’s eyes opened wide in surprise. “S-so mages can see into people’s minds after all…?”

“…No.” I shook my head and answered, “Actually, I’m looking at her.”

I pointed into the back of the library. There was a lone mage there wearing a devious smile and muttering to herself about sneaking in.

Fran sighed wearily. “Ah…so that’s it…”

Apparently, she was feeling disheartened.

However…

“The fact that an apparition has appeared now means we had probably better hurry,” I said. “Since we have no idea when it might disappear again.”

“Ah, but your breakfast…,” Fran said.

“I’ll eat it later, alone, in secret,” I replied. “Since it’s a meal made for me by my precious first student, I want to take care when eating it,” I told her quickly as I gathered up my things.

“Teacher…” Fran looked overjoyed.

“Well then, let’s go.”

Jumping on the opportunity to leave behind the mysterious black mass that Fran had called breakfast, we chased after the apparition of the witch with the whitish hair.

“By the way, don’t you think that woman resembles you, teacher?”

“Not at all.”

“B-but…”

“We look nothing alike.”

Regarding the question of how exactly the witch with whitish hair had managed to sneak into the back of the great library, well, her apparition showed us the answer in due course.

“Heh-heh-heh…” Wearing a daring smile, she cast a spell on herself right then and there.

Immediately, she transformed into a little mouse.

I see, she must have thought it would be easy to sneak in as a mouse.

In fact, since no one seemed to take any notice of her now that she was transformed, the little mouse was able to run around as she pleased in the depths of the library. Though I was watching her from the future, her trick was quite obvious.

“Squeak, squeak!” Mm-hmm, I see! Looks like they’re hiding all sorts of things back here, the mouse seemed to want to say as she ran farther and farther into the back of the library.

“Squeak, squeak!” Oh? Where could this door lead? …It’s obviously suspicious, the mouse seemed to want to say as she transformed herself back into a human.

“…Suspicious.”

Then the witch extended a hand toward the door, but it seemed to be shut tight, and there was a large lock installed near the handle. It wouldn’t open, regardless of whether she pushed or pulled.

Even so, before a witch, a lock or any other contrivance was meaningless.

“Hyah!”

The witch struck the lock with a spell and broke it as if it were nothing, then opened the door.

That’s where the vision ended.

“……”

“……”

We were left standing in that spot, with only an open door before us.

It had probably been standing open like this the whole time, right here, ever since the witch had visited twenty-two years earlier.

Without much hesitation, we went inside.

However…

“…There’s nothing here.” Fran shook her head, looking around the room.

“…There really isn’t,” I agreed.

It was completely empty.

The large room was lined with bookshelves, but there wasn’t a single book on any of them.

I was certain that this room would be packed with juicy secrets, but…

Could we have missed the mark?

“…I see,” someone said.

Someone’s voice rang out from beside us as we stood there, stumped.

It was the voice of the mage from earlier. Apparently, the vision was not over.

“…They’re hiding quite a lot of books, huh?”

And apparently what we were looking at was entirely different from what she was seeing.

She reached out toward one of the shelves and gripped a book in her hand.

Not paying any mind to us gazing at her from the future, the witch leaned against a bookshelf and began reading right then and there.

“……”

“……”

We looked at each other.

If there was nothing here now, then there was only one way for us to learn the real story. Without saying a word to each other, we quickly leaned in close to her on each side.

We were peeking over her shoulder.

“By the way, don’t you think that this person looks a lot like you…?”

“She does not.”

We kept on staring intently at the book in the witch’s hands as she leisurely flipped through the pages.

In her hands an entire history was flowing by.

The ancient history of this place was said to have begun about a thousand years ago, when stones rained from the sky above the forest. A part of the forest was flattened by the falling stones, leaving the ground bare.

The people who had been living in the forest revered the sudden appearance of the sky stones as an act of the gods and built their houses around that spot.

Before anyone noticed, this nondescript cluster of houses came to be called Bielawald.

The people living here were said to witness a strange object in the sky every twenty-two years.

A contemporary account had this to say:

Once every twenty-two years, an unfamiliar star appeared in the night sky.

It was the comet.

The people of ancient times must not have had any knowledge of comets—when it first started appearing, they apparently thought that the appearance of a new star was quite ominous.

They couldn’t understand why it had appeared at all, or why it showed up only once every twenty-two years.

All sorts of mysterious things began to happen after that. For example, people’s houses would suddenly disappear into thin air. Or people’s bodies would spontaneously catch on fire. Never-before-seen flowers would sprout from the ground. Never-before-seen creatures would appear from nowhere.

The people who lived in Bielawald at the time didn’t know what was causing all these strange phenomena, but they were certain that the gods were angry. So one spring, they decided to start offering up their prayers every night to appease the gods’ wrath. Even so, the strange phenomena continued happening at regular intervals.

The people of the city decided that they had better offer up a sacrifice. They thought for certain that the gods demanded a sacrifice. So the people erected a shrine in the center of the city and started making sacrifices there whenever the comet appeared.

The person chosen as the sacrificial victim was always a young, pure girl. The girl would be put to sleep using a drug made from the white flowers, sealed inside the shrine, and offered as a sacrifice.

Back then, they believed the ritual could prevent any misfortune. And after the sacrifices started, the strange phenomenon did stop appearing.

In exchange for this peace, girls were routinely sacrificed.

In the beginning, it was nothing more than a way of quelling the wrath of the gods.

The tradition was threatened when the city began to grow and prosper. Some people, who hadn’t been there when the sacrifices began, began insisting that the practice was barbaric and outdated. Young people who didn’t remember the time before the sacrifices thought that the ritual was nothing more than a terrible waste of life. It was only natural for them to harbor doubts, since they didn’t remember a time before the sacrifices.

However, the adults were quick to silence those doubtful voices. They believed that the tradition was necessary and that if they didn’t make a sacrifice at least once every twenty-two years, they would come to even more harm.

But the children who had their doubts about the tradition never ceased their protests.

Eventually, the adults decided to take a hard-line policy.

“We should make a sacrificial offering every year. If anyone voices any misgivings about it, that person can be locked in the shrine as the sacrifice the following spring.”

It was forbidden for anyone to ask any questions about any of the customs or traditions. The people in charge of the city sealed away any controversial books in the depths of the great library, and anyone who still had doubts about the city’s traditions was killed in the shrine.

And so time passed, but nothing changed. The customs and conventions remained while the ages advanced and people went on living their lives. Eventually, there was no one left who knew the reason why they had started in the first place.

Only the disgusting tradition of killing anyone who questioned the system continued to be passed down through the years.

Even so, very few people questioned it.

Because anyone who did was killed.

The comet floating through the night sky continued, as always, to appear every twenty-two years.

“…I see.”

The witch slammed the book shut and crossed her arms, as if she was thinking. Then she disappeared.

The apparition had ended, and only Fran and I remained among the ruins.

“……”

“……”

Both of us simply stood there in silence.

Twenty-two years ago, Fran had been chosen as a sacrifice. According to an ancient tradition, she had been fated to die and was locked up in a shrine.

But the fact that she’s here now, surely it was because she had also gotten swallowed up by another strange phenomenon that came around once every twenty-two years—an event known to cause many strange manifestations, such as spontaneous combustion, or the sudden blooming of white flowers, or the birth of strange creatures.

“Teacher, do you know when the comet is going to appear next?”

Supposing Fran was to return to the past, it would have to happen when the comet was visible again in the night sky, something that she herself seemed to realize.

I had been thinking the same thing.

“Seems like we’ll be parting ways very soon.”

Unlike in the distant past, these days we could accurately predict when comets would appear, right down to the day, even. That was the source of all the recent excitement.

“It’s tonight,” I said. “Tonight, the comet will appear in the sky.”

Our parting was very near.

After that, we focused our efforts on magical training until the sun went down.

I taught her as many spells as I knew—as many as time would permit.

Well, actually, I drilled her on all the spells that I had been taught by Miss Fran during my time training with her.

“You really know all sorts of magic, don’t you, teacher?” Fran asked during a pause in our training. “Are all witches as amazing as you?”

Well now, I wonder…

“There are all sorts of witches,” I answered. “So I suppose there must be some who aren’t as good with magic as I am.”

“…Were you perhaps boasting a little bit just now?”

“No, no, I wouldn’t dream of it,” I answered with feigned humility. “The reason I know so many spells is because I had an outstanding teacher.”

“What kind of person was your teacher, teacher?”

“Let me see…” After some hesitation, I answered, “She’s a little dumber than I am, the type of person who skips out on lessons to chase butterflies, and who, as a rule, sleeps right through the afternoon. When I started my training, I could barely get her to teach me any magic.”

“I see.” Fran nodded.

“And she was unbelievably bad at cooking,” I added.

“That’s really crappy, huh?”

“……”

“No matter how much I learn about her,” Fran continued, “it sounds like your teacher was a real jerk.”

“Yeah, well…I won’t deny that. But you know, she was an excellent teacher. That much I can say for certain. I’m sure that, without her, I wouldn’t be the person I am now.”

And so we continued our training until the sun set.

“There’s nothing left for me to teach you. Well, I wouldn’t say that. But there is a limit to how many spells I can teach you in just a few days.”

By the time the sun began to sink below the horizon, Fran and I had set aside our wands. Neither of us seemed to have any further inclination toward more lessons.

This last bit of time we wanted to spend at our leisure.

We sat next to each other in front of the grand library, gazing at the setting sun.

“What will you do once you return to the past?” I asked, tilting my head.

Fran hummed. “Hmm…first of all, I’m going to leave this place. I don’t have very good memories here, and besides, I’ve always wanted to travel,” she told me casually.

“It makes me very happy to hear you say that.”

“You know, I thought that since I make you so happy, you might give me something as a parting gift, teacher.”

“What a presumptuous thing to say…”

With a sigh, I picked up my wand. Then I waved it with a grunt and cast one more spell.

A triangular hat appeared out of thin air. The pitch-black hat resembled the one that I usually wore, with a slightly different design. It was the best I could come up with on short notice.

“I made the perfect hat for you,” I said as I placed it on her head. “Please wear this and try your best, even after you go back to the past, okay?”

“……”

She probably hadn’t really thought that I was going to give her anything. Seeming quite surprised and embarrassed and hesitant, Fran said, “T-thank you, very much…,” and touched the hat, feeling its texture.

“Teacher?” she said after a few moments, staring vacantly up at the darkening sky. “Once I’m grown up, I’m going to come see you again, okay?”

And so I answered matter-of-factly, “See you again someday. Until then, good-bye.”

I replied with these words that my teacher had said to me some time ago, exactly as she had said them.

And then Fran disappeared with a smile.

When I returned to my own time, I was greeted by the sight of the city as I had always known it. The place wasn’t ruined or abandoned. I had returned home.

The only thing that seemed different was the way the people who greeted me were behaving.

The people of the city were naturally surprised when they laid eyes on me as I emerged from the shrine—when they saw the girl who should have died.

But they didn’t react with hostility.

“Oh…! How remarkable…! She’s alive…!”

“Ah…! Wonderful! How truly wonderful…!”

The people of the city crowded around me, crying with joy, and gave me a warm welcome. It was very different from how they had treated me when they had put me in the shrine.

“…?”

Huh, what on earth is going on?

Did I arrive somewhere else, and not Bielawald?

I couldn’t help but wonder.

What on earth happened while I was away in the future?

“……”

The answer to my question was in the sky.

Countless scraps of paper were fluttering down from the clouds above. One of them landed in my hand. It was one of the documents that my teacher and I had seen in the future, exposing the country’s secrets.

All the papers that had been hidden long ago in the back room of the great library were falling from the sky.

“How on earth…?”

But immediately after I’d voiced my question, I realized the answer. In the future, there hadn’t been a single scrap of paper left in the back room of the great library. And the witch I had met in this time had been obsessed with getting her hands on them. So while I was in the future, she must have broken in and stolen them all.

She had found a way to show them to everyone.

“Open your eyes, you ignorant people! The history of this country is much more brutal and barbaric than you think!” she was shouting from the sky. “You sacrifice innocent children just for questioning your ways. Is that how far you’re willing to go to protect your traditions? How can you not see the obvious corruption that’s been going on for so long?”

Stirred up by the witch in the sky, the people of the city picked up the papers that had fallen to the ground, or caught them out of the air, and got a glimpse of the truth that they had long forgotten. They were being told by a witch tossing paper from the sky that their coveted traditions were actually meaningless.

“Miss Witch…”

Standing apart from the crowd, I murmured as I looked up into the sky at the witch.

I looked up at the woman who was the spitting image of the teacher who had taught me magic.

“……”

My quiet murmur must have reached her ears. The witch met my eyes for an instant, and she looked almost surprised, then…

“…Thank goodness. You lived,” she said.

She smiled happily.

And then, she didn’t say anything more. She just turned her broom around and flew away.

Come to the library again tomorrow. If you do that, I’ll tell you all sorts of things.

That was when I recalled the words she had said to me.

And so I…

…threw away the paper that was in my hands and ran after her.

And that was how my journey began.

I was all by myself.

That was what I had wanted, actually—to find a place where I could watch the comet in peace, with no one else around to bother me. I had figured the comet would look prettier that way. I had figured that I would be able to relax and enjoy the show.

But this was the first time I was alone since I’d arrived here. Because she had been with me the whole time—and for some reason, I was starting to feel lonely. The echoes of her presence were weighing on my mind.

At some point, I had also stopped seeing the apparitions.

I was all by myself, alone in the ruins, staring up at the lonesome sky.

Stars twinkled overhead, but I couldn’t see the comet.

It was almost as if I had been abandoned by the night sky, too.

I was so very, very alone.

“How lonesome…”

The words that I muttered disappeared into the emptiness of the night.

Or they should have.

“Is that so? Even with me here?”

But a voice answered my words.

I turned around in surprise.

“……”

There stood a witch with long, lustrous black hair. I wondered how long she had been there.

“Miss Fran…”

Sure enough, there she was.

She wasn’t a dream, or an illusion. She was right there in front of me.

“I told you that I was going to see you again once I grew up, didn’t I, Elaina?”

“Can I sit with you?” Before she had even finished asking, Fran plopped right down beside me.

I didn’t say you could sit yet, did I…?

I was about to ask her what on earth she was doing here, but as if she could sense what was in my heart, as if she could read my mind, she said, “I’ve been looking forward to this day for a very long time.”

Then she smiled impishly. “I never would have imagined that the person who taught me magic would become my pupil, though.”

I suppose she must have remembered everything this whole time.

But if that’s true, there’s something I’m not entirely satisfied with.

“…Miss, you never said anything about meeting me in the future, did you?”

That’s depraved. I’m really peeved.

“Goodness, what are you complaining about? You did the same thing, right? Didn’t you stay silent about the fact that you were my pupil?”

“No, I told you!”

“Oh, did you?”

“I said that I had been taught magic by a wonderful teacher, didn’t I?”

“You studied magic under a lazy, good-for-nothing teacher who just chased butterflies all day—at least that’s what I remember you saying.”

Ha-ha, seems like we remember things differently, huh?

Well, setting that aside for now…

“What did you do after that, Miss Fran?”

I could more or less imagine what path Miss Fran had taken after returning to the past, but even so, I couldn’t resist asking.

Had she managed to flee the country after all that?

“Things generally went the way you would expect,” she said. “After that, I left Bielawald to go find that witch—my teacher—and apply to be her pupil. Apparently, she had made quite a mess of things, and the police had tried to arrest her, so she broke her way out. Then we ended up on the run for a while.”

“……”

Quite an aggressive departure…

The gate to the city had never been fixed. Probably because by the time Fran managed to escape, the whole place was headed for complete destruction.

Once they knew the truth, the citizens stopped fearing the unnatural phenomena that had been happening in Bielawald and fled the oppressive city.

After everybody had left, this place was just a ruin.

I suppose that’s what happened.

“And then, for several years, I traveled with her. Along the way we happened to meet the girl who would be my sister pupil, and now I’m here beside you.”

“…Is that so?”

I didn’t know how to respond, so I looked up at the sky. As always, the lonely firmament stretched out above me. I couldn’t see any sign of the comet, just a clear, starry sky.

I wonder when the comet will appear.

Maybe it won’t at all…

I was still looking up at the sky, thinking uneasy thoughts, when—

“…Ah!”

Finally, a streak of light crossed the starry sky and disappeared.

It was a shooting star.

No sooner had that single shooting star begun to fade than bright flashes lit up the night, one after another. A whole succession of shooting stars streamed across the sky.

“Huh, what the…?”

There were so many, they would have been impossible to count. There were so many flashes falling through the starry sky that it even seemed like we might be witnessing the end of the world.

“…Goodness.” Miss Fran watched the sky in fascination beside me and said, “This is what’s called a meteor shower.”

I mean, yeah, I know that, but…

“Why is there a meteor shower going on when we came to see a comet…?”

Fran pondered my question for a few moments, making a humming noise as she thought. “I’ve heard of this before. Some meteor showers are caused by comets breaking into pieces. The scattered bits of the comet rain down as a shower of light.”

Well, well…

“You’re very well informed,” I remarked.

“Surely it’s only natural to learn about the place where I was born?”

Perhaps even after leaving, she had done some investigating into the strange phenomena that took place in her hometown.

And then she told me all sorts of things.

Apparently, after this country had gone to ruin, she had visited the place many times. According to Fran—

An enormous rock was buried directly underneath the shrine in the center of the city. When the city was founded, the people built their homes right on top of that rock, but no one knew it was there.

As the story goes, the huge rock was a fragment of the comet that appeared once every twenty-two years. Fran believed that when the comet in the sky came very close, this fragment must have reacted with the magical energy in the forest and caused the strange happenings. That’s what she told me.

I see… So her name, the Stardust Witch, is pretty fitting after all.

“I don’t suppose that comet will ever appear again.” Sitting beside me, she looked just a little bit lonesome as she spoke. “And I don’t suppose this place will ever go back to the way it was.”

It had fallen into ruin long ago and was now all but forgotten.

“But it is pretty, isn’t it?” I said.

That’s when it happened.

Just for a moment, I saw an apparition of one witch and one mage walking side by side toward the city gate. But it disappeared just as quickly.

The apparitions that we had been seeing were probably echoes of the city before its decline.

“Is something the matter, Elaina?” Beside me, Miss Fran was wearing a puzzled expression and tilting her head.

I shook my head. “No,” I said, and then I looked at the living, breathing woman beside me. “I just had a little dream.”

“I wonder, where should we go from here?”

After violently destroying the gate, she—the witch with ashen hair—let me get onto her broom behind her, and we flew off into the outside world.

Far behind us, I could see the soldiers of Bielawald still chasing us. But there was no way ordinary humans could possibly catch up to a witch’s broom, and every time I turned around to look, their figures had gotten a little bit smaller.

I soon forgot about the clamor in the city as beautiful greenery stretched out around us.

We sped over grassy fields, which undulated like gentle waves in the bright sunlight.

I was seeing the outside world for the first time, and it was beautiful and shining.

It left me speechless.

“There aren’t really any particularly interesting places to visit around here. And anyway, I’ve already made the rounds through every place nearby.”

My attention was captivated by the scenery, so the witch ignored me and idly pondered where to go next. Views like this must have been a regular sight for her. It occurred to me that one day I, too, might think such sights pedestrian.

“……”

How very wonderful the possibility seemed to me.

She turned to me with a smile. “Is there any place you’d like to go?”

So I smiled back and answered, “As long as I’m with you, I’ll go anywhere.”

The day after stargazing with Miss Fran, the two of us left Bielawald—or the ruins that used to be the city—and emerged into a grassy field.

All through the night, on and on, we had talked of our travels, and now that we felt very sleep-deprived, the light of the sun sparkling brilliantly directly above the field was dazzling and disorienting to our eyes.

“And where will we go from here?” Miss Fran asked with narrowed eyes as she gazed out over the field. She might have been asking what I intended, or maybe just pondering her own next move.

“Well, what are your plans, miss?”

So I asked her directly.

“Let me see… For the time being, I was planning to return to Royal Celestelia, but…that country is pretty far away, so I’ll probably end up taking a few detours on my way back.”

“Is that so?” I nodded. “In that case, I suppose there’s a chance that we’ll run into each other again, isn’t there?”

Because maybe on her way home, she would happen to stop in places that I had yet to visit.

“I suppose there is,” she replied. “And I suppose that, if we end up visiting the same place, we might travel to the next place together as well.”

And traveling together in such a way, we might just end up taking Fran’s whole route home together.

“……”

That seemed like a very lovely idea to me.

She turned to me with a smile. “Is there any place you’d like to go?”

So I smiled back and answered, “As long as I’m with you, anywhere is fine.”