Interlude 5: Phil
Outside the walls surrounding the Royal Capital, there was a large expanse of grassy fields with a wonderful view. Monsters rarely showed up in these fields, so they were almost exclusively a play area for children when the army wasn’t training there.
One child who regularly came to the fields was known for particularly having the respect of his peers—he was a young boy with dark-brown hair named Phil.
Phil was friends with a black dragon that would visit the fields from time to time, and if the other children were lucky, the ones who happened to be around during these visits were able to ride on the dragon’s back and fly through the sky. The children of the Royal Capital considered such play great fun, and were blissfully unaware of the fact that their parents would likely faint just hearing about it.
In the past, Phil had actually been bullied for his hair color, since it was close to black, but at this rate not a single child in his age group cared about that anymore. The change had started to occur roughly a month prior, thanks to a certain incident. But that was a tale for another day.
At the current moment, Phil and his group of friends weren’t outside the city’s walls, as they so often were. Instead, they were gathered in one of the plazas in the Royal Capital. They’d come to listen to the performance of a bard who’d begun to work in the plaza around a month before. Phil, along with his friends, had been hooked on the stories that the bard brought to life with his music.
“Yay!” one boy exclaimed. “We made it on time today!”
“Wait for me, Collin,” another called out.
“Now’s the moment we’ve been waiting for...so let’s go!” a third boy chimed in.
The group of boys—which numbered five in total—took advantage of their small frames and wove their way through the crowd, working themselves all the way up to the front. Just as they scored themselves premium spots, the infamous bard began to play his stringed instrument.
He sang a tale that followed one girl’s adventures: a girl who lived in fear of the dark power she held within her right arm. Afraid of the untrustworthy power, the girl avoided making use of it, but was left with no other choice but to release it in order to take down her archnemesis.
The girl won the battle, but that was not the story’s climax—no, the core of the story’s dramatic action was when the power of darkness the girl had unleashed turned on her, threatening to swallow her whole. It was her beloved partner who saved her from destruction.
“Whoa,” the group of boys mumbled, eyes wide as they listened.
The story the bard was telling was completely different from the fairy tales they’d read, and the uniqueness of the tale utterly engrossed them. Phil was listening intently as well, of course, immersing himself in the story.
There was something about Phil that was different from the other boys, however—his field of vision was smaller than theirs. In fact, due to certain circumstances, the young boy’s ability to see had been halved. And so, even as Phil devoured the bard’s story, he was also recalling an incident that had happened a month before.
◆◆◆
Phil had been bullied by his peers up until two years ago. Back then, he’d hated his dark-brown hair, which had been the reason he’d been targeted so relentlessly.
That had all changed when Phil had met a girl with hair so black it felt like a void that could swallow the world. This girl was older, and confident, and she didn’t care about how others perceived her. Phil had quickly come to admire her.
Nearly two years after that meeting, Phil had wistfully thought to himself, I want to be just like Yumiella one day, but that’ll never happen. She only comes to check on me every once in a while because I’m pathetic. Although, at least I’m friends with a dragon now since she introduced us. And he still comes to see me pretty often, even though Yumiella doesn’t live in the Royal Capital anymore. I’m not alone now...but that’s only because of their help. I didn’t fix anything on my own.
At that particular point in time, the other kids had stopped bullying Phil out of fear for the terrifying dragon that he was often seen with, but they hadn’t become friendly with him. Instead, they’d kept their distance.
But this particular day had been different. A boy had called out to Phil, “Your hair is cool!”
“What?” Phil had replied, baffled.
The boy, who’d been staring at Phil’s dark-brown hair with excitement, ran up to him and grabbed his hand. “Come on,” he urged him. “Let me show you something.”
Giving in, Phil had let the other boy drag him along as he ran down one of the main roads of the Royal Capital. Soon, they’d arrived at a plaza where a bard was about to perform, and the boy had settled in with him to listen.
During the performance, somehow the two boys had become five. Once the bard had completed his tale, the whole lot of them had gathered around to play make-believe. To Phil’s surprise, they’d ended up fighting over who would get to play the role of the dark mage, which was usually quite an unpopular role. After all, characters who wielded dark magic were usually villains, and would wind up getting killed off in these kinds of games. But that day, due to the bard’s tale, the dark mage had actually been the story’s main character.
Being a relatively shy boy, Phil had stood a distance away from the bickering, watching the other four boys argue among themselves. To his surprise, however, the conversation had soon turned to himself.
“Phil’s hair...it’s kind of like the color of a dark magic user,” one boy had said, pointing at Phil.
“What?” Phil had said nervously, the abrupt call out making him flinch.
“Yeah, that’s why I brought him here!” the boy from earlier had exclaimed. “Isn’t his hair cool?”
In the face of such compliments, Phil had been flummoxed. His dark-brown hair had only ever been the target of ridicule, so such things had never been said to him before.
How should I respond... he’d wondered. Oh! I could copy the main character from that story.
“Guh...my right arm, it’s aching. This is... It must be resonating with a demon’s magical energy!”
Phil had always been self-conscious about his shy personality, but in that moment he’d felt like he was able to change into someone else—no, that he had become his true self. The shyness that had so defined him before had only been a disguise for him to wear so he could sneak around.
“Whoa!” one of the boys had shouted jubilantly. “It’s just like the story!”
“I wanna be the demon then!” yelled one of the others. “The demon is a dark magic user too, right?”
“Hey, no fair!”
As the boys’ parts had fallen into place, they’d urged Phil to continue. And together, they’d immersed themselves fully into their make-believe play.
◆◆◆
Ever since that day, Phil had changed. Or, more accurately, he’d been changed by the play. He began to strike strange poses over the most random things, and would go around chuckling like a stereotypical villain. To top it all off, he’d begun to wear an eye patch over one eye. As was only natural, his ability to see had been deeply affected.
The new version of Phil watched the bard’s performance with a grin on his face. “I’m so excited to see the other dark magic user again one day...” he mumbled to himself.
Yumiella, the dark magic user who had given the bard his story in the first place, would run across Phil several months later. The site of his...new state...would trouble her, especially since she herself was the root cause of the entire situation.
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