Majo no Tabitabi - Volume 9 - Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5

Familiars

Born on a vast estate, the girl knew almost nothing of the outside world.

She had been a captive on the grounds her whole life. Daughter of the only family of mages in the whole country.

“Listen, child, you are to become the heir to this household,” the girl’s grandmother told her.

The girl spent her days learning about magic.

Learning how to command familiars.

This especially was part of the girl’s obligations as the heir to a distinguished house.

“Ready? Inside the box is a vegetable. Cast a spell of transformation, and turn it into a living creature.”

The girl’s grandmother was a strict and overbearing teacher, and the girl came to despise her harsh lessons. She didn’t want to become a witch in the first place and sometimes even wondered why she had to learn magic at all.

“Inside the box is a mouse. As a test, try turning it into a dog.”

“Does this look like a dog to you? When will you ever learn to do real magic?”

“If this is the best you can do, you’ll never master your own familiar! You’re hopeless!”

Day after day after day after day, the girl kept practicing.

But her efforts were in vain.

Because the girl hated magic from the bottom of her heart.

She loved something altogether different.

“Oh! You want to make bread again?”

The girl’s sole pleasure was learning how to make bread from her mother. Every time her mother would go to the kitchen, the girl would follow her and beg to be shown how it was done.

But the truth was that making the bread was nothing more than a bonus.

The girl really just wanted time with her mother.

Because only her mother understood her.

“It’s always difficult for you, isn’t it? But you’ll be all right. I’m sure that someday you will command many splendid familiars,” her mother often told her, as if she was trying to convince her. “Your great-grandmother used to always be angry with me, too. But you know, because she was so harsh with me, I learned many spells, and now I can use magic to run the household. Grandma wants you to become splendid, too, so she’s being strict with you on purpose—severity is the other face of expectation.” The girl’s mother stroked her face lovingly as she spoke.

By her side, a wolf with a tawny coat sat wagging its tail. The wolf, which was the mother’s familiar, probably felt the same way as its mistress.

The first time the girl saw the outside world was when she was ten years old.

To celebrate her birthday, her mother took her into town. The world full of people seemed to sparkle and shine in the eyes of the girl who knew nothing but the inside of her family’s mansion.

In town, the people fawned over the girl’s mother because of her magical abilities. The girl’s mother and grandmother were the only people who could use magic in the area, so whenever either of them left the estate, people would make all sorts of requests of them.

They would be asked to mend broken cups, or find lost items, or fulfill other insignificant requests that might ordinarily be laughed off.

But the girl’s mother smiled kindly at the townspeople, and replied, “Yes, of course,” and listened to each of their requests.

The girl admired her mother deeply. She wished that someday she could be just like her.

Then one day, while the girl and her mother were walking through town, something happened. After checking that there was no one around them, the girl’s mother whispered to her, “To tell you the truth, when I was about your age, I also hated learning spells. Just like you. Long ago, I wondered why I had to suffer and learn magic.”

“……”

“But you know, I realized why once I grew up. All the hard work paid off, and now I have the power to help other people in need.”

The girl’s mother told her that she would have to overcome the hardship of learning, so that she could become strong and capable of helping people, too.

“……”

But the girl responded with silence. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand. It was just that she didn’t believe it. She didn’t believe that she could ever become a strong woman like her mother.

She stared up at her mother, who stroked her hair kindly. “…I’m sorry, dear. You’re only ten years old. It must be so difficult for you.”

In addition, her mother told her one more secret. “When you’re feeling down, you can leave the estate by yourself. If you learn about the outside world, I think you, too, will surely come to appreciate magic a little bit more.”

“…But…”

Leaving the estate by herself had always been strictly prohibited. The only time the girl had ever seen the outside world was when she was at her mother’s side.

The only thing that had ever been permitted for the girl was magical training—such was her unpleasant life on the estate.

“Try pushing your way through a certain bush about thirty paces to the right of the front gate. There’s a small hole in the fence there.” The girl’s mother stealthily explained to her that she could get out that way. “You know, your mama was actually a naughty kid back in the day!”

She taught her daughter one method to become more like her.

After that, the girl started escaping outside the grounds whenever she had free time.

Even though she knew it was bad, even though just thinking about what punishments awaited her if her grandmother ever found out was terrifying, even so, as soon as the girl had snuck out once, she became numb to that fear and started slipping away from the mansion more often.

The town looked quite different alone, compared to when she’d had her mother by her side. This new, lonely world seemed awfully vast, and shining with promise. But at the same time, she could also see darkness. The girl soon realized that her mother had kept to the larger, more crowded, and safer parts of town.

There were lots of people in the city. There were lots of animals, too.

The girl learned that she was by no means the only unhappy one.

She saw adults who had failed to do their jobs and who were being reprimanded harshly. She saw people sleeping by the side of the road, who had no homes to live in. She saw stray dogs, rummaging through trash cans for food. She saw a mouse that had gotten caught in a trap and was dying.

In a back alley, covered in blood and close to death, she saw a tiny creature.

“……”

That was the first meeting between the girl and her familiar.

She had been born on a vast estate, but sure enough, she knew almost nothing about the outside world.

“…The same dream again.”

The girl rubbed her eyes and looked around. The world seemed like it was filled with light. On top of the table, dense reference tomes were piled up like a mountain. Nearby lay a pen and an unfinished document.

Apparently, she had fallen asleep in the middle of writing.

Partway through the text, the letters devolved into clumsy lines, dampened by tears and sweat. They were completely illegible.

“……”

Filled with frustration, the girl crumpled the paper up into a ball and tossed it to the floor. There was no one there to chide her for doing so. This was her private room.

Besides that, there were no longer any humans in the mansion, other than the girl.

Half a year earlier, everyone else had disappeared from the estate.

They had left her behind and passed away.

There was no one around to criticize the girl, no matter how dirty her room got, no matter how untidy she was.

Almost as if possessed, she muttered to herself.

“Harder… I’ve got to work harder…”

Then the girl took up her pen once again.

“Are the two of you in possession of any familiars?”

A government official had taken us aside as we were waiting to enter Ballad, the City of Silence. She had told us only that she had something important to discuss, then invited us into a separate room near the city gate, locked the door, and tossed out that question.

Familiars?

“I don’t have any.” Miss Fran shook her head.

“Same here.” I nodded.

To begin with, magic users can manage to handle most situations by themselves, so there aren’t many circumstances where we would need to use familiars. These days, you could even say cultivating familiars is more like an old-fashioned, traditional hobby, and it’s rare to see mages who keep one on hand.

“Is that so…?”

But the government official’s expression grew cloudy at our answers.

What’s this now?

“By any chance, are you saying that we can’t enter the city if we don’t have familiars? Not only do we not have any, but I hardly even have the knowledge to use them in the first place…”

What a pain.

We’ll be in trouble if we can’t get in the city… We’ll have to camp out.

But my concern was nothing more than unfounded worry. The official shook her head.

“No, you’ll be permitted to enter regardless of whether or not you have any familiars. The reason I summoned you here has nothing to do with customs.”

“Well then, why?” Miss Fran asked the obvious question.

The official’s expression didn’t change much as she told us, “The only family of mages in the area has employed familiars for ages. Generation after generation, down to the present head of the family, they have inherited the tradition. We have a request for the two of you regarding this family—no, regarding an issue that is troubling the city.”

She held out a piece of paper in front of us.

It was a request form to be submitted to the United Magic Association. In the section for remuneration was an amount of gold coin based on the estimated total cost of all food and lodging for the period of stay in Ballad, the City of Silence.

It was a considerable sum.

Enough to take my breath away.

“I’d like to ask you to undertake the job, with the conditions that are listed here.”

But if they were offering substantial remuneration, that could only mean one thing.

The problem itself was equally substantial.

“…What on earth happened here?” Miss Fran held the paper up.

I glanced at the paper from the side and read only, Seizure of Familiars.

“One of the familiars employed by the family went on a rampage and murdered almost every one of them, sparing only its mistress, a young girl. Now the wild familiar is appearing around the city, threatening people’s daily lives… This is a local problem, so we’re terribly ashamed of asking for help from travelers, but…”

The family that had been using the familiars had been completely annihilated, leaving only one girl, the mistress of the murderer.

Which means…

“There was only one mage left alive.”

…that the very person who let the familiar carry out its rampage is the only one left.

And presumably the girl wasn’t a capable enough magic user to stop her family’s murder. So that was why this official had turned to me and Miss Fran, even though we were travelers.

From the official’s perspective, we had arrived at exactly the right time.

“……”

Miss Fran was silent as she stared down at the piece of paper.

So from beside her, I asked, “What is the girl’s name?”

The government official looked at me and answered with a single word.

Karen.

That was the name of the pitiful girl, the only one left on the estate.

I could smell the faint aroma of saltwater wafting throughout the city.

As we looked down the gently sloping road, the glaring light reflecting off the ocean’s surface was dazzling. The city extended right down to the water’s edge.

We were approaching the end of Miss Fran’s journey. She had plans to return to Royal Celestelia by boat.

“It showed up right after sunrise. My pet dog suddenly started barking, so I looked out the window to the garden, wondering what was going on, and there it was. It looked disgusting.”

Miss Fran had immediately accepted the official’s request, and I had agreed to join her on the investigation.

We’d been going around randomly speaking to people we passed in town, and we had discovered that apparently Karen’s familiar had been causing quite a lot of trouble for the people in the city.

We heard countless eyewitness reports.

“My shop’s garbage cans were broken into. It somehow removed the lids and picked out anything that still seemed edible from the cans. I know it’s not really serious damage, but…”

They said that the familiar took the form of an animal. Its coat was black. Its eyes were green. Its fangs were sharp, and its claws were filthy. Apparently, its form resembled a wolf in some respects, but more than anything, its build was enormous, and it was about as long as a grown man is tall.

“It seems to like bread. It used to come to my shop often and stare hungrily at the bread. I can easily chase off the homeless kids that I always see hanging around, but that thing, I mean, it’s huge! And I’ve got a little daughter at home, so it scared the living daylights out of me, thinking it might hurt me.”

We heard that the beast rarely appeared to humans, but since it had apparently been lured in by its favorite food—bread—we decided that it couldn’t be especially intelligent.

But the question was why a creature like this had been ignored by the people of the city for half a year? If it was so repulsive, a ghastly monster that destroyed crops and went rummaging through garbage cans, then why on earth had no one dealt with it yet?

A guard on his rounds was kind enough to answer this extremely natural question for us.

“We’ve tried to capture it many times before, but it didn’t work. We even recruited help from the townspeople and chased the beast down with everything we could muster, but…that wolf is very fast. There’s absolutely no way that ordinary people could ever hope to catch it, not without magic,” the guard told us with a sigh. “It would be great if we could turn to our own mage for help, but…”

He explained.

Ever since the death of her family, Karen, the mistress of the familiar, had isolated herself in her estate. She had stopped leaving the place altogether.

Many people in the city felt like they owed Karen’s family for their help in the past, while others took pity on the poor girl and her awful circumstances. Some people occasionally went to check on her and left food for her, but not one of them had actually seen Karen in person.

At this point, no one knew whether she was alive or dead behind the closed gates.

“…Where is that estate located?”

The guard nodded to me and pointed to an enormous mansion at the other end of town.

Since we knew the characteristics of the rogue familiar and had a rough estimate of its territory, we figured that was sufficient.

Next, we planned to search the mages’ estate, then hunt down the familiar’s whereabouts, and then finally, head to find Karen…into the mansion where the girl whom we had never even seen was holed up. That seemed like the thing to do if we hoped to resolve the affair quickly and decisively.

In any case…

“Um, first let me get one of the chef’s special salads, and a cup of your cheapest coffee, and then all of the bread from here to there. That’s my whole order.”

I promptly slammed the menu book shut.

Miss Fran and I were sitting across from each other at one of the city’s cafés. We had more or less finished interviewing witnesses for the day. A member of the waitstaff had come to take our order, so I had done something I’d always wanted to do, and asked for all the bread from here to there.

“Is it all right to ask for so much?” Miss Fran tilted her head questioningly beside the waiter, who was hurriedly jotting down my order on a memo pad.

There was no cause for concern. After all…

“The city is covering all of our food expenses, yaaay!”

As long as someone else is paying, there’s no problem ordering exactly what I want, right?

The unexpected boon was messing with my head and leading me to make some odd choices. Miss Fran, on the other hand, was as reserved as always.

“Ah, I’m fine with a cup of tea,” she said to the waiter.

How modest.

“But is it all right, Elaina? An order like that?”

After the waiter had left, Miss Fran leaned forward and whispered the question at me.

She was probably worried about whether I would be able to eat all of it by myself.

“No need to worry. This is the kind of upright café that allows carryout.”

“No, that’s not what I mean.” Miss Fran shook her head in exasperation. “Is the cost all right?”

“It’s someone else’s money, so I really don’t care.”

The government is covering the full cost of our meals as long as we’re in the city. No matter how much money we spend while we’re here, as long as we get receipts, we’ll get it all back. What are you worried about?

“But if we mess up the job, we won’t be getting any money, you know.”

“…!”

“I mean, that’s just common sense.”

“………………………………………………………………I knew that!”

“I’m letting you know this in advance. I’m not paying for you, okay?”

“Miss Fran, under no circumstances can we fail to fulfill the city’s request!”

“Now there’s something I might have liked to hear you say once or twice before…”

Only after the risk of having to pay my own way for everything had come up, and before I had time to cancel my order, the waiter brought over everything we had ordered, all together.

At that point, it was too late to do anything. Hanging my head, I stopped him before he could leave. “Um, sorry, but…could I get a bag for takeout? A big one, if possible.”

With a puzzled face, the waiter brought me a bag.

I packed all the bread into it, sobbing the whole time.

Miss Fran watched me vacantly and took a sip of tea. Then, as if she had just remembered it, she said, “When we leave this café, we’ll be going to Karen’s place, of course.”

“……” After getting my bread bag together, I nodded. “Yes, of course.”

Frankly speaking, neither Miss Fran nor I had much experience with familiars.

If we were able to stop the rogue familiar with the help of its mistress, Karen, then we would do that, and if she couldn’t leave her mansion for some reason, then we would need to determine what that reason was.

There was no way to do either without meeting her.

But if we were going to meet someone…

“From here on, it would be best if you and I took different paths, Miss Fran.”

“Right,” my teacher said. “We don’t know what kind of state Karen might be in, but she hasn’t left her mansion in half a year, so we can be quite certain that she’s got some reason for that.”

Since Karen had lost her family, and on top of that, the familiar that was supposed to belong to her had been causing so much trouble in the city, it was hard to imagine that she was just up there relaxing with too much time on her hands, completely unbothered.

Maybe she’s closed up her heart just like the doors to her house?

If that was true, we still needed to go meet her and talk to her. But although we’d been traveling together, it seemed to me that if both of us showed up uninvited at her door, could she really be expected to open her heart to us?

Probably not.

“I’ll go alone to Karen’s place.”

According to the government official, Karen was a little bit younger than I was.

I figured that if one of us was going to head up to her mansion, I would be more suitable, as I was comparatively closer in age.

“I’ll leave it to you.” Miss Fran nodded. “Meanwhile, I’ll chase down the familiar’s whereabouts.”

And then, not long after we’d stopped to rest, we stood up from our chairs.

Right as we left the café, Miss Fran proposed, “I’ve got to go make a reservation at a hotel, too. Let’s meet up at the end of the day and both report on our progress.”

I see, I see.

“Please choose a cheap place.”

“Let’s stay somewhere expensive.”

“Miss…”

“We can split the cost, all right?”

“Miss……”

In the end, after much badgering and quarreling, it was decided that we would be staying in a reasonably expensive inn.

This means that we have to fulfill the city’s request, by any means necessary…

“Excuuuse meee! Your gate was open, so I came on in! Is anyone heeere?!”

Well, now.

On an estate somewhere, there was a mage who, after using a spell to easily open the lock on a gate that had been shut tight, made a shameless introduction as she casually committed criminal trespassing.

Who on earth could this girl be, who didn’t hesitate at all to commit such a blatantly illicit act?

That’s right, it’s me.

“…Huh, there’s no answer.”

I wonder what that means. I made my entrance pretty obvious.

As I pondered this, I walked toward the huge mansion that towered before me.

I wasn’t particularly worried about one girl, especially because we weren’t even sure if she was alive or dead, so I also unlocked the mansion doors easily with another spell.

“……”

Unlike the stately exterior, the inside of the place had fallen into ruin.

A chandelier that must have once hung from the ceiling lay pitifully on the red-carpet runner, sparkling fragments scattered all around the floor. The paintings hanging on the walls were black with filth, and the staircase was riddled with holes. The place looked like a storm had blown through.

Whenever I took a step, chandelier fragments crunched and snapped underfoot.

Karen must be somewhere in this house.

“Hellooo?”

I didn’t really know which way to go in order to find her, so I walked around aimlessly, exploring the house and shouting greetings into empty space.

After trekking through the mansion for a while, I eventually came to an area of the house where there were no glass shards underfoot. Instead, the place was littered with balls of scrap paper.

When I picked one up and smoothed out the wrinkles, the scrap of paper revealed rows of messy writing.

After that, I picked the papers up one by one as I walked.

Eventually, the pieces of paper led me deep into the mansion—to a door that was slightly ajar.

“……”

Inside was a spacious room, in terrible disarray.

The balls of rubbish that had spread out into the hallways were scattered liberally across the floor of the room and on top of the bed, and here and there across the walls, overlapping papers were held up by pushpins.

The sound of the creaking door echoed through the quiet space, where an open curtain swayed in the sunlight, and the gentle breeze that flowed in turned the pages of a book that sat spread open on the desk.

The girl who was facedown in front of the book frowned slightly and sat up. Her golden hair went down past her shoulders, and her robe was decorated all over and looked incredibly expensive. She certainly appeared to be the daughter of a noble family.

In age, she was probably about two or three years younger than me. There was still youth in her features. She finally noticed me standing beside the door and turned her head in my direction.

Her eyes looked dull, and I could see faint, dark circles beneath them.

“…Who?”

She made an expression that looked halfway between enraged suspicion and unbearable drowsiness and tilted her head to the side.

I wasn’t sure how to answer her.

“I’m a traveling witch.”

I offered the briefest of introductions.

“I came here to put a stop to the trouble your familiar is causing in the city,” I added.

“……”

I wasn’t sure what she made of what I said. She just stared at me silently, with no change in her expression.

Surely she must be aware of the strange things that are happening around town.

Maybe she felt responsible for what was going on. Maybe she was worried about it. I was sure that she had to be in a more difficult position than anyone in town. So I stood there waiting for her to say something.

“Trespassing.”

That was it.

“……”

She was unexpectedly calm.

After Elaina and I had gone our separate ways, I heard all sorts of stories from the residents of the town, but there didn’t really seem to be anyone who had any promising leads.

Apparently, the people who lived in town had seen the familiar many times, but they had absolutely no way of guessing where or when the elusive creature might appear next.

I was at a loss.

But my meandering hadn’t been a complete waste of time.

“…What’s this?”

Just as I was thinking that there was no way I’d run into the familiar by chance, I happened upon something very strange in the back alleys of the city. I had no way of knowing whether or not it had anything to do with the familiar.

Right in the middle of a dirty alleyway, placed neatly atop a small plate, was a single piece of abandoned bread.

“……”

What’s this, lost and found? But it’s sitting on a plate for some reason. I feel like it was clearly left here intentionally. Wait, wait, this has got to be a trap.

“My goodness…”

When I looked up, I saw another piece of bread farther down the alley.

That was approximately when even I, as clueless as I am, noticed that the plates with bread sitting on them continued endlessly down the alley.

“My, what a waste…!”

I picked them up one by one and stuffed them in my bag.

I’ve never seen anything so absurd. Surely this must be a trap that has been laid out in order to catch the familiar. In that case, the person who came up with the strategy to waste all this bread probably ought to be lying in wait at the end of the trail.

I believe I know of someone who purchased such a huge quantity of bread recently.

Actually, I was just with her.

“Elaina…unbelievable.”

If I’m not mistaken, she should be on her way to Karen, but…what on earth is she up to? Actually, it’s outrageous to think that she would come up with a strategy like this that wastes so much food!

And so I walked along collecting pieces of bread, so that I could scold Elaina, who I assumed was lying in wait at the end of this ridiculous trap.

After proceeding on for a little while, I reached the final piece of bread.

The bread had been laid out nicely on plates the whole way, but the last piece was in an unusual place.

It was hanging suspended beneath a streetlight.

Moreover, it had been dusted abundantly in a mysterious white powder.

Too suspicious…

I wasn’t sure whether eating the bread would knock you out or just paralyze you, but it was quite clear that there was something off about it. The trap was just too obvious. But I was certain that no harm would come to me, as long as I didn’t eat it.

So I pulled the last piece of bread toward me and took it in my hand.

“Elaina, where—aaah!”

—are you? Come out now. Jeez. That’s what I was about to say. But the rest of the words didn’t make it out of my mouth. Instead, halfway through, they were cut off by an immodest scream.

“……”

The trap sprang into action as soon as I tugged on the last piece of bread. Before I realized what was happening, I was suspended below the streetlight just as the last piece of bread had been a moment earlier.

Both arms were pinned near my hips, and both legs were restrained along with my skirts. I was completely helpless, just swaying slowly back and forth under the lamp.

Nothing could have been more wretched.

And then…

Just as flames of shame and humiliation were about to erupt from my face, the person responsible for catching me in the trap stepped out of hiding.

Is it Elaina? It must be Elaina. There’s no one else it could be—that’s what I thought, until I saw her face.

“I never thought you would be that easy to catch. You may be a familiar, but in the end, you’re still just a dog.”

Standing there was a witch…but it wasn’t Elaina.

She wore a white robe and a white triangular hat, and upon her breast she wore both a star-shaped brooch and a moon-shaped brooch with pride. Her hair was golden blond, and she was about the same age as me.

“……” She studied my face, frozen in place, her pipe dangling from her mouth.

“……” For my part, I was already physically immobilized, ever since I had been strung up.

Now, if I had stopped to think about it, I would have realized that since there was an organization in the world whose very purpose was dealing with magical disturbances, it was probably pretty likely that the government here had already reached out to that group before asking a couple of wanderers for help. And that it was also fairly likely that another mage had already been dispatched from the United Magic Association.

And so…

…the face before me was a very familiar one.

I was looking at my fellow former apprentice, Sheila.

“…What’re you doing?” she demanded coldly before blowing smoke in my direction.

“…What does it look like I’m doing?”

“Something stupid.”

“……” I stared at her silently.

“……” Sheila stared silently back.

“……” Eventually, I looked away. “Um, first of all, could I get you to let me down?”

Sheila nodded solemnly. “And afterward, we can go get something to eat together. My treat.”

“Stop that. Don’t talk down to me,” I huffed.

“If you’re strapped for cash, come and talk to me. I’ll help you out if you need it.”

“Seriously, stop it—you’ve got it all wrong anyway—this is…”

“Sure, sure. Of course I’ll keep quiet about it to your pupil. Even she would feel sad if she knew that her esteemed teacher was eating off the street.”

“Oh, there’s no issue there. Elaina’s had her fill of watching me do that.”

It made me sad to admit it.

Why am I telling her that?

“……” Sheila made an extremely complicated face, then clapped a hand down on my shoulder. “We can go get something to eat together. My treat.”

“Stop that. Don’t talk down to me.”

“I figured someone would come sooner or later,” the girl said after glancing at the brooch on my breast. Maybe she didn’t have enough strength left to turn me, the trespasser, away. Or maybe she allowed me in because she could tell I was a witch.

With an expression like she understood everything already, she said, “I suppose you’ve come to kill me?”

……

No, you don’t understand a thing, do you…?

The girl probably had no idea what I was doing there.

“No, um…not at all?”

Why would you suddenly jump to such a disturbing idea? Are you so tired that you’re ready to die?

“I just came to talk…,” I insisted.

“And you’re planning to kill me after we talk? You mustn’t. Please, I must ask you to wait a little longer before killing me.”

No, I’m telling you, I didn’t come here to kill you, Karen…

And anyway…

“Even supposing that I did sneak into your mansion intent on killing you, I would have finished the job while you were taking your afternoon nap.”

“…!”

“What about that is surprising?”

Karen looked unusually confused. Fatigue must have been sapping her wits. The bags under her eyes told me that she hadn’t been sleeping much lately.

“All right, so if you didn’t come to kill me, what did you come here for?”

“I think I said this already, but…” I figured I would repeat myself. “…I came here to put a stop to the trouble your familiar is causing in the city.”

“……”

Karen listened to my words, and then glanced quickly behind and around me, then cocked her head and asked, “Miss Witch, do you not have a familiar?”

“As you can see, I do not.”

“So your knowledge of familiars is…?”

“Rather poor, unfortunately.”

“So you don’t really know what you have to do to stop a familiar?”

“Well, I suppose when you put it that way…”

That’s why I came to see you. If I had known why you abandoned your familiar and locked yourself in here, and how to stop a familiar to begin with, I wouldn’t have bothered breaking in.

“I see.”

Karen nodded curtly.

Either she was a naturally stoic person or just deadened by exhaustion. She kept her gaze fixed to the ground and didn’t make eye contact as she began to fill me in little by little.

“The word familiar describes an animal that has been imbued with magical power. When a familiar goes rogue, there are two ways to stop it. One is to dissolve the connection it has to its master. If you do that, the familiar will revert to its original form. It’s even possible to stop my familiar from threatening the city that way.”

Well, how about doing that, then?

The heartless words made it into my throat before I stopped them.

Karen has stayed shut up in her house despite knowing a way to stop the familiar, which must mean that it is not an easy method.

As far as I could see anyway, the girl before me now did seem to be moping around all heartbroken.

“What can you do to dissolve that connection?” I asked.

“What will you do if I tell you?” Karen asked me in return.

“Help you do it.”

“I don’t need your help,” Karen insisted briskly. “This is my problem. It’s got nothing to do with you. Besides, even if you do help me, I can’t compensate you in return.”

Well, if it’s a question of payment, there’s a chance I can squeeze plenty out of someone else, so you don’t need to worry about that.

“If you wouldn’t feel right without paying me somehow, you can tell me the sequence of events that led to your familiar’s rampage. How about that?”

“…Why are you so insistent on helping me?”

“Because you seemed to be feeling awkward about not being able to pay me.”

“I don’t really feel awkward about it. It’s simply that it’s my fault that my familiar is causing so much trouble, so if I don’t resolve the situation myself, it won’t mean anything.”

“You mean you want to accept the full responsibility for the disaster you caused?”

“That’s it exactly.”

I see, I see.

A sigh slipped out of my mouth.

“Well, I have to ask you to save that tiresome way of thinking for later,” I said. “You can take all the responsibility you want for releasing your familiar onto the city after we resolve the problem. We’ve got to get it done, no matter what it takes.”

“……” She stared at me silently for a short while.

And then, finally, Karen tilted her head and asked, “And I’m supposed to trust you, a witch I just met?”

“It’s fine if you don’t particularly want to trust me. But at least let me help, please. At the very least, it’ll be far more effective than continuing to sit at your desk by yourself,” I replied.

“……”

Karen answered with only silence. She glanced once out the window, then looked at a picture frame that was standing on her desk. After that, she spoke very reluctantly, and said, “…Understood. Then, I will make use of you.”

But before I began the long work of reverting the familiar back to its original form, another thought occurred to me.

“That reminds me, what was the other method for stopping a familiar?”

How on earth can we stop it, other than by dissolving the bond it has with you?

Karen answered flatly, without looking at me.

“The death of the master,” she said.

If the master dies, so does the familiar…

I realized why there were no familiars left in the mansion.

“How long have you been here?”

We were in the alley.

I asked Sheila the question with a composed expression, as if nothing strange had occurred in the past few moments. She tapped a bit of ash out of her pipe onto the ground nearby and answered, “I was dispatched to this city about a week ago. You?”

“I just got here today. I happen to be visiting, along with my pupil, Elaina. We were asked to help capture a familiar.”

“……” The moment she heard Elaina’s name, a slightly strange expression surfaced on Sheila’s face, and she nodded. “I see.”

“…What?”

“No, nothing.”

Ah, come to think of it…

“Is your pupil Saya getting on well?”

“…Recently, she’s—no, that’s not something to discuss now.”

“……?”

“More importantly, you could say that my objective and yours are more or less the same, huh?”

“Yes, though I would be grateful for any help you could give us.”

“Sure, as long as you don’t interfere with my next plan.”

“Oh, did I get in your way or something? Oh-hoh-hoh!”

I don’t remember that at all.

“……”

Sheila screwed her face up into a very, very crude expression.

At any rate, I then revealed to Sheila that I had basically been gathering information since my arrival in the city. I also revealed that Elaina was, at that very moment, heading up to the mage’s estate.

“Hmm.” Sheila nodded slightly, as if she didn’t care. “So you left it up to her to make friends with the familiar’s mistress?”

“Yes. Its capture has been left up to us, though.”

The familiar’s whereabouts were still unknown. We didn’t know anything about where it was or even what it was doing.

“Have you gotten any results after being here a week?” I asked.

“For now, I know that the familiar likes bread,” Sheila answered.

“Ah, so you interviewed witnesses for your investigation.” Elaina and I had also obtained that information. “And? Anything else?”

“Apparently it won’t eat bread that has fallen on the ground.”

“……”

“What else?”

“That’s all.”

“That’s all?”

But I already knew that, and I’ve been here less than a day…

“That’s how hard this thing is to pin down. I’ve been looking everywhere for a week, and in the end I still haven’t laid eyes on it once.”

“……”

So that’s why you resorted to desperate measures like leaving bread out in the middle of the road… Well, the only thing you caught was me, though.

Sheila scratched her head in irritation and spit out, “…For something that pops up all over the place, it doesn’t seem to be anywhere at all. It’s a real troublesome dog.”

“My, my. If it can appear anywhere, then maybe if you wait for it, it will simply show up sooner or later.”

Let’s think positively about this.

“You think I’d be having so much trouble if it was really that easy?”

As Sheila was speaking, her eyes turned in the direction of the lamppost where I had been strung up a few moments earlier.

A moment later, I looked, too.

It seemed like something was moving over there.

“……”

At that exact moment, I remembered something.

I remembered that, earlier, I had collected all the bread that Sheila had scattered down the alleyway, placing each piece one by one in my bag. But when I’d reached out for the last piece and gotten strung up in midair, I had carelessly dropped that bag on the ground. Then Sheila had appeared, so I had completely forgotten about the existence of the bread.

I recalled that fact right at that moment.

The moment that I spotted a familiar holding my bag in its mouth.

“……” Sheila stiffened.

“……” Naturally, I stiffened as well.

I was surprised that the familiar had suddenly appeared from out of nowhere, but more than anything else, I was surprised by its appearance.

It seemed that the rumors hadn’t been exaggerated.

Its coat was black. Its eyes were green. Its fangs were sharp, and its claws were filthy. Its form did resemble a wolf in some respect, but more than anything, it was enormous—about as long as a grown man was tall. Sure enough, it was huge, just like the rumors said.

But one thing, one single thing, was completely different from the rumors.

The familiar was all skin and bones.

I could tell even through its black coat. Its limbs were as slender as twigs, its tail drooped, and its paws trembled on the ground. I knew right away that it had to be starving. And yet it didn’t eat the bread that was before its eyes. Holding the bag in its mouth, not so much as looking our way—it probably didn’t even have the extra energy to look at us—the familiar jumped up on top of the roof of a nearby house and disappeared, dragging one leg behind it.

All we could do was stand there doubting our eyes at the astonishingly sudden sight.

I wondered if a creature in such a weakened state could really have been threatening the people of the city.

“…Hey.” Sheila finally looked back at me. “Shouldn’t we chase after it?”

“…I suppose we should.”

I nodded and pulled out my broom.

We finally had a lead on the rogue familiar. We weren’t about to let it get away.

Apparently, we were going to have to investigate just where the creature had been and what it had been doing before now, before it got so thin.

As we followed the familiar, I thought that it looked very, very frail.

According to Karen…

When an animal made a pact to become a familiar, it was infused with magic and took on a new form. It became a servant, made to obey any order from its master and carry out any task.

Once master and servant were tied to each other, the familiar gained the ability to borrow magical energy from the mage, and its physical abilities improved as its form changed. Additionally, it gained the power to cast spells, and grew more intelligent, even gaining the ability to speak. Those were generally the kinds of changes that appeared, Karen said.

But it was important to remember that the changes applied only so long as the compact was valid.

So then, if the compact failed, what would happen? Karen answered my extremely reasonable question while she read over some documents.

“Usually, when a pact fails, it happens before the transformation. And in most cases, it results in death at the moment of failure.”

“……”

I feel like that is a slightly different circumstance than the present situation with the rogue familiar. Because actually, right now, that familiar is out walking freely around town.

“If a familiar goes wild after a compact has been formed, then the worst possible thing happens,” Karen said. “That’s what happened to my familiar.”

“What happens to them when they go wild?”

“They go into a temporary frenzy, and often injure or even kill anyone nearby.”

“……”

That seemed to be what Karen was dealing with now, as she continued her research in isolation.

“You said ‘temporary,’ meaning that their rampage must end at some point, right?” I asked. “What happens to them once it’s over?”

“They are no longer bound to follow their master’s orders. They act only on their own intentions.”

That probably described Karen’s familiar at the moment. Halfway bound by pact, but no longer under its mistress’s command, the familiar had been prowling around the city.

One of two means could be used to dissolve the compact.

Either Karen had to die, or the defective pact had to be broken.

Karen told me that she had suffered a setback when she first started searching for a method to rescind the master-servant pact. No matter what she tried, she hadn’t been able to make the magical potion she needed to do it.

Although she had inherited all kinds of books on magic along with her estate, the recipe for a potion that would dissolve the pact between mage and familiar was not recorded in any of them.

The idea of doing so had probably been unthinkable to any of the people who had lived in the house before her.

“I’ve been researching the problem for half a year, but it hasn’t been going well.”

All she had done was cover the floor in scraps of paper, with nothing to show for it. Sparing almost no time for sleep, she had found it incredibly difficult to try to fumble her way through the magical tomes.

She had studied, made up a recipe for a potion, mixed it, failed, then repeated the process nearly every day. Over and over, she had done it again and again, only to fail each time, destroying the inside of the mansion in the process. The chandelier had fallen, the paintings had gotten filthy, and still, she had repeated her experiments many times.

“……” I picked up the documents that were sitting on her desk. “I understand the circumstances now. First of all, please give me all of the potion recipes you still have on hand.”

“But all the ones I mixed were failures—”

“But if I mix them, we might get different results.”

“…Understood.” Karen nodded reluctantly.

After I took the recipes from her, I started comparing the documents in my hands.

I don’t know anything when it comes to familiars, but all my other knowledge and experience should amount to something.

So I sat down beside her, facing the desk just like she was.

“……”

“……”

Both of us remained absolutely silent as I ran pen over paper in fits and starts and discarded scraps of paper by tossing them behind my back.

We forgot the time and sat there all day until the sun set.

The hours passed quietly.

“…Come to think of it, was that familiar originally a dog?”

It suddenly occurred to me to ask, as I was reading over documents.

“Why do you ask…?” Karen looked over her shoulder suspiciously.

“Oh, just because I heard a rumor that its appearance is like a wolf.”

Although it wasn’t like I had ever actually seen the familiar, so I only had the gossip I’d collected to go on. My rough guess was that if a dog got bigger, it would pretty much look like a wolf. It was almost too simple.

“Wrong.”

And apparently my rough guess missed the mark.

“Completely wrong.”

Apparently, it was a total miss. Karen shook her head so strongly that her hair swayed. “You can turn your familiar into any form you like. Once the bond between master and servant is formed, the familiar can become anything at all.”

Well, from what Karen says, it sounds like transformation magic is a big part of creating a familiar, so I suppose it makes sense that it would take on a new form during the process.

Karen pushed herself away from the desk and turned around.

“My family lineage has raised wolf familiars for generations, so my familiar also took the shape of a wolf, that’s all.”

So in that case…

“All right, so what kind of animal was it to begin with?”

I was just asking out of curiosity.

I was sort of interested, that’s all.

“……”

In response to my completely natural question, Karen hesitated, looked bewildered, and her eyes began to waver.

I must have asked something that I shouldn’t have. I had made a mistake. I felt uncomfortable at the strange way she was acting.

“My familiar is…”

And then, after a brief hesitation, she answered.

The familiar, still clutching the bag of bread in its mouth, eventually led us to the ruin of a small factory on the outskirts of town. There were no signs of people, and it wasn’t hard to understand how no one would have noticed the familiar hiding out in a place like that.

On top of that, the familiar got around by bounding across the rooftops.

“It’s hardly surprising that people say it appears out of nowhere, huh?” Sheila nodded to herself, hiding in the shadows so as not to be noticed by the familiar. “No one pays any attention to their rooftops.”

“…Yes, indeed.” I nodded, too, observing the familiar from a distance.

The wolf with the black fur alighted from a rooftop and headed straight for a small hut that stood in one corner of the ruined factory.

There was no hesitation in its gait. It didn’t look tired either, even though it was so unsteady, it had barely been standing a short while ago.

The familiar just walked slowly toward the hut.

“What should we do? Capture it?”

Sheila pulled out her wand and looked at me. Compared to earlier when the creature had been moving around, it seemed like it would be easy to apprehend with magic.

“……”

I didn’t answer. Watching the familiar’s actions from afar, I just kept silent.

There was a great deal of food lying around the hut in front of the familiar.

There were fruits and vegetables and bread—plenty of food just sitting there. The familiar set the bag of bread that it was carrying down on top of the pile and stood motionless.

It didn’t eat any of the food.

It’s probably been bringing food here like this for a long time. Even from afar, I could see the remains of the food that had been strewn about in front of the hut, as if someone, or something, was inside.

“…What’s it doing?”

“……”

Again, I didn’t answer.

But one thing I could have said without a doubt was that even if we didn’t capture the familiar today, or tomorrow, or the next day, if we kept on waiting, the familiar was certain to return to this place.

There was no need for us to try to capture it right away.

Before long, the familiar took its leave from that place. Just like when it had arrived, it moved slowly and weakly toward town.

“……”

“……”

In the end, we didn’t capture the familiar. But it didn’t matter. We knew that we would have many more chances, even if we didn’t force ourselves to act on that occasion.

It turned out that our decision was the right one.

Immediately after the familiar left, small figures came crawling out from inside the hut.

Clad in tattered scraps of cloth, three little girls came out, checking their surroundings.

That evening, when I went back to the hotel, Miss Fran and Sheila were waiting for me.

They told me about how Miss Fran had run into Sheila in town, and how Sheila was working toward the same goal as we were.

Moreover…

“In the meantime, we’ve got a general grasp on the familiar’s movements. We can capture it at any time,” Miss Fran told me hopefully, without hesitation.

But…

“……”

I wasn’t exactly happy about the news.

Even if they could capture the familiar, I didn’t want them to. For Karen’s sake, and for the familiar’s sake.

“How did things go for you?” Miss Fran tilted her head.

I answered frankly, “I’m now working with Karen to make a magic potion. Once we perfect her potion, we should be able to return the familiar to its original form.”

At my words, Sheila nodded. “Is that so? Then, what kind of animal was that familiar originally?” she asked, staring at me. “I don’t suppose it was any ordinary beast.”

“……”

I kept silent as the two of them told me about the spectacle they had witnessed that afternoon.

They described the figure of the familiar, which appeared basically as the rumors said, yet completely changed for the worse. They told me about the homeless children who were living in the crumbling hut. And they recounted the familiar’s mysterious actions and how it only showed mercy to the children, leaving without taking a single bite of food for itself.

Sheila and Miss Fran, who had witnessed the whole thing from beginning to end, told me that, ultimately, they had totally lost any inclination to capture the familiar.

“We were supposed to hunt down a familiar that was destroying crops and causing panic among the people. We witnessed no such behavior from the familiar we saw earlier. I can’t help but doubt that the familiar we saw is actually a threat to the people at all. Do you know anything about it, Elaina?” Miss Fran looked at me.

I do know.

I know because I got Karen to tell me about her familiar’s original form.

I know why the familiar is gathering bread and leaving it at the hut.

I know everything.

“……”

Hesitantly, I opened my mouth.

“Karen’s familiar’s name is Scieszka.”

I told them the story of the familiar and Karen.

I told them a tale of two girls.

The two of them first met when Karen was walking down a back alley by herself.

Scieszka was near death.

Her black hair was tied up in a single ponytail on the back of her head. Her eyes were green. Her skin was a little darker than Karen’s, and she had bruises and cuts all over. Her clothes were tattered, and Karen actually couldn’t tell whether they were just worn, or if they had been torn apart by whatever had caused her injuries. It looked like she wasn’t even wearing clothes at all and was just wrapped in plain cloth.

Right away, Karen could tell that Scieszka was in no condition to walk on her own.

But Karen was still an inexperienced magic user.

She didn’t know any spells to heal Scieszka’s injuries.

“…Wait here, I’ll call someone!” Karen called out to the girl whose name she didn’t even know.

At the time, that was about all she could do to help.

“Don’t.” Scieszka grabbed her hand and stopped her. “It’s no use.”

According to Scieszka…

She had been beaten by the owner of a bakery. She had stolen some of the bread lined up on a shelf at the shop, been chased into the alley, gotten caught, and taken a beating.

“I always steal from there, see, so I think that I hit the limits of the baker’s patience. As he was beating me, he said he was going to make it so I never stole from there again. I’m paying for my own mistakes, you know.” The girl grinned foolishly, still stretched out on her side.

For someone who was nearly dead, she somehow seemed to have enough strength left to smile.

“……” Karen looked down at Scieszka. “So then, is there anything I can do?” she asked.

Scieszka answered, “I guess I’d like to eat some bread.”

That was her only request.

“……”

Karen wondered what her mother would do in such a situation.

She probably wouldn’t hesitate to help.

She decided that if her mother had been there, she would have answered the request with a smile.

“Got it. All right, I’ll go buy some bread.”

So Karen heeded Scieszka’s wishes.

That was the first time Karen had ever eaten bread sold from a bakery in the city.

She didn’t think it was particularly tasty. It was hard, and cold, and not really special. She felt that the bread her mother made for her was much better.

But she figured it must taste good to the city folks, because Scieszka devoured the bread with gusto, weeping as she ate.

Mysteriously, Karen and Scieszka seemed to be linked by fate. After that day, every time she went into town, Karen would encounter Scieszka.

One time, Scieszka was being chased by someone. Another time, Scieszka was walking along eating some bread that she had probably stolen. Yet another time, she was gazing into a bakery window with a look of determination in her eyes. Scieszka apparently wandered here and there around the city at all hours of the day and night, and every time Karen saw her, she spoke to her.

“Come to think of it, I haven’t thanked you yet, have I?”

One day, Scieszka pressed a bundle into Karen’s hands. It was soft and a little warm.

Inside was a single piece of cheap bread.

“Thank you for what you did before. You saved me.”

Apparently Scieszka really liked bread. And she must have thought that Karen also liked what she liked.

But…

“…This isn’t stolen, is it?”

“That’s confidential.” Scieszka held a finger up to her lips and smiled.

“What does confidential mean?”

“It means I’ll tell you once we’re better friends.”

“But it’s obvious, even if you don’t try to hide it.”

Scieszka had been beaten nearly to death, and yet Karen had seen her stealing from bakeries many times since then. At this stage, even if Scieszka wouldn’t admit it, Karen knew perfectly well where the bread she had been handed had come from.

She wasn’t happy to be given stolen goods. Even less so if Scieszka had put her life in danger to steal it, as she had before.

“Why do you steal things?”

Karen couldn’t understand why. She wondered how on earth Scieszka could cause such trouble for other people and then be so calm about it.

“Why? Because I have no other way to get things. Someone like me can’t get a proper job. I can’t even feed myself tomorrow. So I’ve got no choice but to go digging through garbage or steal in order to survive.”

Scieszka didn’t look pessimistic.

Still speaking in a very cheerful tone of voice, she said, “I don’t have any other means of getting by, you know.”

Then Scieszka added, “But I’m not unhappy,” and turned to look at Karen. “I think it’s boring to live life feeling sorry for yourself.”

Karen felt like Scieszka had been making fun of her, in a roundabout way, for leading a boring life. Though she knew that Scieszka had no way of knowing the kind of treatment she received at home, she still felt a little bitter about it.

About the fact that she was leading a boring life, trapped on a limited estate, and about the girl who smiled happily despite living as a thief with no family.

After that…

Karen began to take her magical training very seriously. Under her grandmother’s instruction, she kept practicing her spells.

Of course, she also kept meeting up with Scieszka whenever she went into town.

Scieszka taught Karen all kinds of things. Like which restaurants threw away the tastiest foods, and how to steal bread from a bakery, and how to pickpocket.

Most of this was not knowledge that Karen needed, but Scieszka talked about it unprompted, in one-sided conversations.

One day, Karen said to Scieszka somewhat cynically, “For someone who refused to answer whether or not that bread was stolen, you sure talk a lot.”

With a composed face, as always, Scieszka answered simply, “Didn’t I say I would tell you once we were good friends?”

Then she added, “Though I guess you could say I dodged the question because I wanted to become better friends. Nothing gets people invested like a juicy secret,” she said.

The two girls did become friends.

Spring, summer, autumn, winter—before long, Scieszka and Karen would chat excitedly whenever they saw each other.

Scieszka was a mysterious girl. She lived a very hard life, after all. With no one by her side, she lived each day not knowing if it would be her last.

She should have been anxious, insecure.

And yet she was always smiling.

“I’ll introduce you. This is my house.”

One day, Scieszka took Karen to the ruins of a factory and showed her a little hut that had been built out of random scraps of wood. Bits of cloth were spread out over the roof so that the rain wouldn’t get into the hut, and similarly, a sheet hung over the entrance.

It was quite a bit smaller than Karen’s bedroom. Too small for someone to live in.

That was what Scieszka called home.

“…It doesn’t look like a house.”

“You’re supposed to say, ‘Wow, what a great house!’ Even if you don’t mean it, you know.” Scieszka puffed up her cheeks and opened the cloth curtain. “I’ve got a family, too.”

Several little girls were sitting inside. The girls, who all looked a lot like Scieszka, were gathered around a book propped open on a wooden plank, reading.

When they lifted their gaunt faces, they all smiled.

“Welcome home, big sister!”

“Welcome back!”

“No food yet?”

As soon as she saw them, Karen understood.

She knew that the girls in the hut were children with no families, just like Scieszka.

That was when Karen first realized that there were many more children in the same circumstances as Scieszka.

And that Scieszka had been giving the stolen bread and other food to girls younger than herself.

“Big sister, how do you read this word?” one of the girls asked, holding the book up and pointing to it. Scieszka hummed for a minute, staring at the book, but she had probably never learned to read and write.

“Sorry, your big sister’s a dummy. I have no idea,” she answered with a smile.

“Useless!”

“Totally!”

Scieszka’s sisters teased her.

“Come on, now!” She smiled, as always.

“I have a dream, you know.”

The second spring had arrived since the two girls had met.

Munching on stolen bread, Scieszka tore a piece off and pushed it into Karen’s hands as she said, “I dream of saving up lots of money and leaving the city when I’m grown, to run a bakery in some distant land.”

Karen, holding the bread she had been given, asked, “Have you ever made it before? Bread, that is.”

“Of course I haven’t. But I’ve already decided on the name of my shop.”

“…What will it be?”

“The Black Bakery.”

“…What’s the inspiration for the name?”

“My hair is black.”

“That’s too obvious.”

“…Ah, wait. Not that…how about The Black and Gold Bakery?”

“…And I suppose I’ll be working there?”

“Not just you, Karen. I’ll hire the girls who live with me, too, and the five of us will somehow manage to run the place. And…,” she continued, “after we get that going, I want those girls to live decent lives. I don’t want them to have to go through what I’ve been through. I want them to live honestly, without stealing. I’ve suffered enough, and there’s no need for those girls to suffer the same. So I want to save up money as quickly as I can and get out of here,” she said.

“……”

Karen marveled at Scieszka.

She was always amazed by her friend.

“Why are you telling me all this?”

Scieszka had told Karen every little thing about herself, like how she lived her life, and what kind of family she lived with, and about her dreams.

Karen wondered why she had done that.

“You have the same eyes as I do,” Scieszka answered casually, as if it was the most obvious thing.

“What kind of eyes?”

“Eyes that want to escape from this place as soon as possible.”

Scieszka’s eyes were clear as she spoke.

Karen looked away from Scieszka, as if to escape, and bit into her bread.

“This is terrible.”

“You’re supposed to say it’s delicious, even if you don’t mean it.”

Before long, Karen began visiting Scieszka’s house frequently. She had lots of books in her mansion, and she could read and write.

She started to help the little girls with their studies.

The days went by peacefully.

Ever since Karen had started going out into the city alone, her magic had improved day by day.

“Perfect. I have nothing left to teach you,” her grandmother told her one day.

That year, it was officially decided that Karen would be granted a familiar on her fourteenth birthday.

Scieszka was invited to the estate on the day of Karen’s fourteenth birthday.

“Your magic has improved, thanks to your friend, right? In that case, we need to thank her, as a family.”

Karen’s mother was delighted and suggested the idea of bringing Scieszka to the house.

Karen honestly felt a little reluctant at the thought of bringing Scieszka around. Her family’s mansion was obviously very luxurious, while Scieszka lived her life not knowing where or when she’d get her next meal.

Karen wondered what she would do if Scieszka’s visit made her feel inferior—or made her hate Karen.

So she was hesitant.

But Scieszka was always so cheerful in front of Karen.

After wavering for a while, Karen finally invited Scieszka to her home.

“…It doesn’t look like a house.”

Scieszka, looking shabby as always, stood in front of the gate, staring up at the mansion with her mouth hanging open.

When Karen showed her inside, the servants, along with Karen’s parents and grandmother, came out to greet the two girls.

Everyone who came out of the house to greet them stared at Scieszka, aghast. Probably because she was such a shabby little girl. They probably couldn’t believe that such a dirty child was Karen’s friend.

So Karen puffed out her chest. “This girl is my friend, Scieszka,” she said clearly. “The fact that I learned to use magic is all thanks to her.”

Karen’s grandmother let out a sigh, and the servants were obviously flustered. It was not surprising that everyone was so perplexed, since the two friends were so different in social standing.

Only one person smiled tenderly at the two girls.

“I see—so you are Karen’s friend?”

It was Karen’s mother. “You’re the one who’s been looking after my daughter, are you? Thank you. I hope you enjoy your time here today.”

Karen’s mother welcomed Scieszka as an honored guest.

Scieszka seemed hungry, so she fed her a delicious meal. Scieszka was dirty, so she let her take a bath. Scieszka was wearing tattered clothes, so she dressed her in the finest outfit that they had. By that afternoon, Scieszka fit right in on the estate. She was dressed in beautiful clothes and decorated with beautiful accessories. She looked just like she had lived there all along.

“Amazing…I look like a different person.”

Scieszka’s reflection in the mirror looked like someone else entirely.

“You can keep those clothes,” Karen’s mother said, placing one hand on Scieszka’s shoulder. “Take good care of them.”

“Such nice clothes, is it really okay…for me to have them?”

“Yes. It’s no problem. They’re extras anyway, and besides…,” Karen’s mother continued, “…you’re Karen’s friend, which makes you family.”

In Karen’s family, children were treated as fully grown from the day that they were granted their own familiar.

On the day of Karen’s fourteenth birthday, as the sun set, all of her family gathered in one room of the mansion, including the servants and the familiars.

Scieszka was instructed to stand beside Karen’s mother and grandmother.

“……”

But the strange thing was that one essential party was missing—the animal that was to become Karen’s familiar.

Karen had assumed that she would be using a mouse or something, just like she did during practice. She had been under the impression that she would be employing some animal or other as her familiar.

But there was no animal on the altar.

“Mother?” Karen had never learned how to produce a familiar from nothing. “What about the animal…?”

She gazed at her mother with eyes full of anxiety.

Her mother smiled at her tenderly as always.

“It’s right here.”

Karen didn’t understand.

There is no animal anywhere. The only familiars here are already bound by master-servant compacts; otherwise it’s just people.

“Right here,” her mother said.

Standing beside her, Karen’s friend Scieszka just watched the two of them, oblivious to what was going on.

“This girl will become your familiar.”

Then there was a spray of red.

It fell from Scieszka’s neck, onto the floor. Karen’s mother was holding a short knife. When Scieszka let out a mute scream and collapsed, the mother stepped over the fallen girl and approached Karen.

Then she whispered into her ear, “All right, Karen. Try casting the spell, just like Grandma taught you.”

Karen was astonished. She struggled to make sense of what had taken place. It was like the inside of her mind was blank.

Her mother spoke to her as gently as always. “We were surprised when you brought her here, but I won’t deny you. It’s fine. If this girl is important to you, I’m sure you’ll be successful.”

“Mo…ther…?”

“Come now. Hurry. If you don’t do it quickly, she’ll die. If you turn her into your familiar, the wound will heal. If you don’t want her to die, hurry and make her into your familiar.”

Karen looked down and saw Scieszka.

She saw Scieszka, suffering on the cold floor, spitting up blood.

“Scieszka…”

She called her friend’s name.

“Come now, hurry.” Karen’s mother took her hand and pointed her wand toward Scieszka. “Cast the spell quickly. It’s all right. You can do it, just as I once did. I know you’ll do a fine job.”

Scieszka’s pretty clothes were dirty now. They were covered in blood, tears, and saliva.

Karen had never questioned the customs of her family. She had never worried about where they had gotten generations of familiars, or what forms they had held before the ritual.

Finally, she realized how foolish she had been.

“Ah…”

She realized her own foolishness after it was too late to turn back, no matter how much she regretted it.

With a trembling hand, Karen readied her wand. With an endless stream of tears, through a blurred vision, sobbing inconsolably, she took aim.

“Aaah…! Aaaaaaaaah!”

Cursing herself for her own ignorance, she cast the spell.

That day, Karen became a fully realized mage of her family.

In the puddle of blood on the floor was her familiar, which had taken the shape of a black wolf.

“Great job, Karen! It was a success! Have a look! It’s a great familiar, isn’t it?”

“……”

Karen’s mother stroked her head happily.

Karen lay flat on the floor and apologized over and over and over and over again.

For bringing Scieszka to a place like this. For stealing any chance of her dream ever coming true. For the fact that she would no longer be able to help the little girls grow into splendid adults.

She kept on apologizing to the wolf.

Resentment toward her family coursed through her veins.

She hated them—her grandmother, who believed that employing familiars was the only correct way to live, and her mother, who had never actually had the least bit of kindness in her. From the bottom of her heart, Karen wished to escape from that place as soon as possible.

From the bottom of her heart, she wished that everything and everyone would disappear.

Just then…

The black wolf bit into her mother’s neck.

“Wha—!”

Its powerful jaws tightened around her throat, gouging into her flesh so that she couldn’t even scream. It kept biting, until her expression was twisted with fear.

“You beast—!”

While everyone else was too astonished to move, Karen’s grandmother readied her wand.

“Hey, Karen!” She glared at the girl. “Stop that anima—”

But before she could finish, the wolf bit into her arm.

“Aaaaaah! Aaah! What have you done!”

What happened next was like a scene from hell.

Karen’s mother stood up, bleeding, and fired off a spell—a blade of force slashed at Scieszka’s leg. A brown wolf bit into Scieszka’s throat, but Scieszka did the same and tore at the throat of Karen’s mother’s familiar. Covered in blood, the two of them rolled around in the middle of the room. Karen’s grandmother tried to restrain them from afar, but Scieszka must have seen her and bit her in the leg. The old woman’s face warped with intense pain, and she lashed out at Scieszka, but every time she landed a hit, Scieszka dug her fangs in more and more powerfully, rending the flesh.

The first to die was Karen’s mother. Next was her grandmother, then all the servants who were running around trying to escape. No one made it out alive.

“Ah…ahh…”

In the middle of the room, surrounded by screams and the spray of blood, stood Karen, hanging her head and sobbing.

Eventually, once all the noise had died down, she dared to look up.

Her surroundings were soaked in blood.

Gradually, she realized that her spell had succeeded. The pact with her familiar had definitely taken hold. But her intense emotions had sent her familiar on a rampage.

The gruesome scene before her eyes was the result.

“……”

She wondered what Scieszka was thinking, now that the rampage was over and she had come back to herself, looking at the sea of blood spreading out before her. Scieszka surveyed her surroundings with her lovely green eyes and let out one frail cry, then bounded for the exit of the mansion, dragging her leg behind her.

“Wait. Scieszka. Please, wait!”

Karen sank to the floor in a daze and called her name.

But she didn’t know what to say to get Scieszka to come back. She had turned her friend into a monster, and made her kill people, and didn’t know what she could possibly say after that.

In the end, she said nothing at all.

Karen’s familiar disappeared into the dark of night without looking back.

After the tragic incident, half a year went by, but there was nothing that Karen could do on her own. She just hung her head, powerless, and didn’t accomplish a thing.

She knew that she had to turn Scieszka back into a human as soon as she possibly could.

But her distress addled her wits, and as a result, all her potions were failures, and all she did was destroy her house, without anything to show for it.

But that was because she had been going up against the problem alone.

“First of all, I’ll be staying here in the mansion twenty-four-seven, starting today. So let’s hurry up and make that potion.”

It was the day after I’d reported the situation to Miss Fran and Sheila.

I headed for the estate as the sun rose and began researching potions right away. Karen looked like she hadn’t slept, and she stared at me with an expression so hollow, I couldn’t tell whether she was awake or asleep. “…Thanks,” she murmured. It was an automatic reaction.

Just how long has it been since this girl slept?

“You ought to go rest for a while,” I suggested.

“No.” For someone who was just barely conscious, she managed to respond very clearly when she was refusing me. “I’d rather research than sleep.”

“Um, in your condition, you’d be better off sleeping rather than conducting research.”

“No. I’d rather research than sleep.”

“……”

“I’d rather research than sleep.”

When she spoke the same words like a broken record, I gave up and let out a sigh.

The two of us took our work very seriously. Karen would write the recipe for a potion, then I would mix it. The work was perfectly divided. Though I also did my own research on familiars while Karen was puzzling over her recipes.

“…What do you think of the compound in this recipe?”

“I’ll try mixing it.” I skimmed over the recipe Karen handed me and then mixed a batch. “Finished…and it’s a shrinking potion.”

“Hmm,” Karen thought. “…It won’t return a familiar to normal but maybe we can use it.”

No, no.

“Also, as a side effect, anyone who drinks this will have their lifespan shortened by about one hundred years.”

“Wouldn’t that mean instant death?”

“This one’s a bust.”

But she wasn’t discouraged, and before long, Karen brought me another recipe.

“How about this one?”

“I see, let’s try it.” I mixed that one as well. “Done. This is a potion that can create an inexhaustible supply of gold.”

“Got it. Useless.”

Karen tossed the liquid aside.

“Ah…um, sure it is…yes.”

Every day, I kept mixing and mixing, and kept shaking my head no, no.

“This one’s perfect, huh?” I held up a piece of paper that contained an ordinary cooking recipe.

“Look at this. I made a recipe.” Karen proudly brought me a blank sheet of paper.

Such outrageous things did happen sometimes, maybe because we were exhausted, but even so, we continued the work.

For one, two, three, four days we continued the work, on and on.

Morning, noon, and night we went on endlessly mixing magic potions that all turned out to be failures.

And then finally…

After suffering through failure after failure, drifting through the days like a dream, or perhaps a waking nightmare…

…Finally we saw the light.

It happened on the fifth day of our work together at Karen’s house.

“Look at this.”

I understood immediately what kind of effect the potion would have.

I started mixing the potion right away. I followed the recipe, assembled the ingredients, threw them into a cauldron, infused them with magic, and stirred as the mixture simmered.

Karen fell asleep while I was working, so I did every bit of the job by myself. But there was no helping that. After all, I was tasting only a tiny bit of the suffering she had gone through long before I had arrived.

It’s good for her to have some time to sleep soundly.

“Rest well, Karen.”

I put a blanket over her shoulders and let her sleep, facedown on her desk.

Scattered all around her were finished potions.

Day one.

Looking down from high overhead, I clearly recognized Scieszka’s usual behavior. Every day, she dropped down from the rooftops into town and went rummaging through the garbage or stole some food. She was living the same way she always had before.

Her appearance had changed, yet her actions were the same.

She stole things and provided food for the girls waiting in the hut, but she rarely ate anything herself and just wandered from place to place.

That was how she passed the days.

She didn’t know who she was, and no one knew her. She was just a monster, and she lived like that for half a year.

Alone.

Never meeting anyone face-to-face.

“……”

But those days were over.

Scieszka was walking around town when she came upon a piece of bread sitting on a plate. The girl who had been turned into a black wolf sniffed the bread gently, then picked it up in her mouth and started walking. After she had gone a little farther, there was another piece of bread sitting on a plate. There was also a bag sitting beside it.

Clearly, this was very suspicious. It was an obvious trap.

Even so, Scieszka picked up the bread and stepped forward on frail legs, placing both pieces into the bag. She must have been thinking about providing the girls with bread again.

As I watched from high up in the air, Scieszka wandered on and on, picking up the pieces of bread that were laid out like guideposts on the road and packing them into the bag.

And then she stepped forward.

To the last piece of bread.

She stopped under a lamppost.

“……”

Scieszka looked up.

There was a girl there.

“Scieszka.”

Her golden hair went down past her shoulders, and her robe was elaborately decorated all over, and seemed very, very expensive. She looked like the daughter of a noble family. She was probably about fourteen years old, and there was still youth in her features.

When she kneeled before the eyes of the black wolf, she finally broke.

“I’m so sorry I hurt you…,” she said tearfully.

Karen, the familiar’s mistress, was crying.

The black wolf didn’t answer. She just squinted at Karen.

Finally, Karen embraced Scieszka. As she stroked the stiff, fluffy black fur, she cried and smiled and addressed her friend.

“Let me take responsibility. For the rest of our lives, for a long, long time to come, let me make amends for your loneliness…,” Karen said.

In her hand, she held a small vial—the magic potion that had only just been perfected the day before.

And then…

As Sheila and I, along with Elaina, watched from the sky, Karen administered the potion to Scieszka.

Day one.

The first day after completion of the potion.

Their long, long days of loneliness came to an end.

It was very difficult for us to summarize everything that had happened, but we managed to convey it all to the government official, without keeping anything secret.

We explained that Karen’s familiar was a girl—that it was Scieszka. And that Scieszka certainly hadn’t been rampaging around town. We also explained that Karen had not just shut herself away out of grief.

We told the government official that the familiar would never terrorize the town again.

We laid everything out in clear detail.

“…I see. It’s difficult to believe, hearing that all so suddenly, but—”

But it’s the truth.

Since three witches are each giving you the same testimony, it would be troublesome if you didn’t believe us.

After she’d finished interviewing us, the official told us she was going to talk with Karen. Probably to confirm the facts.

The rest would be decided by the people of the city. In the end, we were outsiders, and wouldn’t have anything more to do with the matter.

Besides, it wasn’t difficult to imagine how things were going to go for the two girls, even without our involvement.

If I had one concern, it was that there was basically nothing of value left in Karen’s ransacked house. It seemed like it would be very difficult for her to lead a normal life like that.

“By the way, I have one more request…” I tilted my head as I pocketed only a few of the gold coins that the official had offered me in payment.

“…What is it?” The official also tilted her head and frowned, looking puzzled.

“I want you to give the rest to Karen.”

“……”

The official didn’t say anything for a while.

Maybe she was having trouble understanding what I was doing. Or maybe she was stunned because the two people beside me had also done the same thing.

But eventually, the official nodded. “…Understood. If that’s what you ladies want.”

Then she collected the three stacks of coins sitting on the table.

After we had divulged everything to the government official, we left the city immediately.

There was no need for us to stay any longer, and Miss Fran was in the middle of her own return trip.

If anything, I already felt bad that we had stayed in a single city for almost a week. The fact that it took me so much time to mix the potion was to blame.

“Are you two headed for the harbor now?” Sheila cocked her head.

We were standing in front of the city gates. Sheila was holding her pipe in her mouth as always, but the wind was blowing and the smoke curled up into the sky, so the smell didn’t bother me that much.

Miss Fran nodded at her. “That’s right. That’s my plan. What are you doing?” she asked.

Sheila made a slightly bitter expression. “I’ve got another job to get to. Guess this is where we part ways.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Miss Fran said quite readily, in spite of the actual words. “I can tell that you’re enthusiastic about your work, but don’t push yourself too hard, okay?”

“Does it seem like I am?”

“I was just being polite.”

“……” Sheila shrugged. “I’m jealous of you two. If I had my way, I’d like to fly over to the harbor, too, but…work is work. Unfortunately, I can’t go with you.” She already looked fairly exhausted. “You don’t need to see me off. It’s not like this is our final farewell, or anything.”

“We’ll meet again someday, so don’t feel like you have to come with us.” Miss Fran smiled.

Sheila sucked in a breath, exhaled, and blew out smoke like a sigh. “It’s such a pain the way your responsibilities increase as you get older. You can’t even do what you want anymore. I’d like to go with you, but I can’t.”

Sheila had been working at the United Magic Association for a long time and probably had a lot of responsibility there.

She had the duty of going from place to place and resolving incidents as an Association-affiliated witch.

She had the duty of teaching classes as a professor.

She had the duty of being Saya’s teacher.

“……” Miss Fran was a little bewildered. “Um, I’m not sure how to respond, now that you’ve said something like that so suddenly…”

“……” Sheila chuckled at seeing Fran that way. “Well, enjoy your two-person journey as much as possible. The third wheel is leaving now.”

And then, without any further parting words, Sheila turned on her heel and walked off.

Though she kept her back to us, we could see ribbons of smoke wafting from her silhouette, and an odor that made me screw up my face in disgust was carried our way by the breeze.

We also turned our backs on Sheila.

Neither of us suggested getting on our brooms.

We just started slowly walking.

I turned to look at Miss Fran. “I wonder what kind of place is waiting for us next?”

She looked at me and gave a vague answer. “I bet it’ll be a place fairly close to the seashore, where the scent of the ocean fills the air.”

But right after that, she added with a smile, “I hope it’s someplace wonderful.”

I just said, “Me too,” and nodded, then kept walking alongside my teacher as always.

Before long, the smell of smoke that made me screw up my face had dissipated. Without turning around, Miss Fran and I pulled out our brooms and set off.

Toward the end of our journey together.