Maydare Volume 4 Chapter 2 - The Final Exams ~The Spirit Search Game~ (Part 2)

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This time, I made it through the garden and back to the school building. 

But there was no one in front of the school building, and everyone had already gone to the beach where they could see the rainbow clearly. The rainbow had already disappeared, though.

“Haa…I’m completely late. Maybe I should give up on the hint about the spirit that appears after the rain…”

I was just about to look for another spirit when I saw a large pool of water in the square in front of the school building. 

I saw a large puddle of water in the plaza in front of the school building, reflecting the blue sky after the rain. It was very beautiful.

It was just like any other puddle, but come to think of it, rainbows are not the only things that appeared after the rain. Puddles like these appeared as well.

“...”

I peered into the large puddle. 

I looked at my reflection in it and became startled. For some reason, I looked considerably younger.

Then, I suddenly remembered a secret game I used to play as a child. 

I was born in a remote place called Deliafield, so I didn’t many friends who were my age. So, I convinced myself that my reflection in puddles was my “secret friend.”

Now that I think about it, I was a very lonely child.

But, my child’s imagination was very robust, so it seemed as though the product of my fantasy was real.

The girl reflected in the puddle laughed when I laughed, got angry when I was angry, and was sad with me when I was feeling down.

Of course she would. Because she was me.

Deliafield was basically a wasteland where it almost never rained. Puddles only appeared during the short rainy season, and my heart’s friend suddenly disappeared.

Even though it was just myself reflected in a puddle, I felt sad and even cried a little.

I remembered that I gave that girl a name.

What was it again? I’m pretty sure it was…

“It’s been a while, Kirie.”

Yes. It was Kirie.

It was a name that suddenly welled up in my mind without me thinking too deeply.

A gentle smile appeared on the lips of the young me, Kirie, who was reflected in the puddle, and she beckoned me.

“Correct. Now, please come over here, Makia.”

Unlike my child self, I secretly understood that this was a type of magic.

Along with understanding, without forgetting a calm mind, I stepped into the puddle and quietly sank. 

Gurgle…gurgle…

Even though I had an aversion to the sensation of drowning in water, I wasn’t all that scared.

It was because this water was warm and lacked hostility.

Soon I was freed from the sensation, and my body was flung out of the water to somewhere else. I shook my head and opened my eyes.

“This is…?”

A mysterious–room of mirrors.

There were mirrors as far as the eye could see, and my image was reflected in them from every angle, to the point that it was disturbing. Mirror, mirror, mirror, everywhere I looked.

“Welcome to the fourth labyrinth, the Chamber of Mirrors.”

A voice resounded low overhead.

I looked up and my mouth dropped open. 

“...He…Headmaster.”

I was stunned.

A large goat face was looking down at me. 

I was startled by the goat’s pupils, which were black and elongated, as if they had been drawn with a marker. 

Upon closer inspection, I saw that the goat's face was hanging from an even more massive ceiling mirror. 

The horns of the goat's head arced out from the mirror, spiraling like screws and extending far out into the distance. The head was so huge that it looked completely different from the friendly, adorable goat appearance of Headmaster Pan that I usually saw. 

Here, without a doubt, was Pan Faunus, the Great Spirit that was called a menace of the natural world. 

“Did I startle you?”

Unable to speak properly, I nodded.

“You are the first student to be able to find me. Excellent work on finding the entrance, Miss Makia O’Drielle.”

Called by my name, I returned to my senses.

“I had seen you appearing from a pond, sir, so I wondered if the water mirror would work as well…”

“Fuhoho. I don’t believe that’s the only reason. I believe you recalled your ‘child’s heart’?”

“Child’s…heart?”

I recalled what happened earlier. I remembered the secret friend I played with when I was a little girl. 

“...Yes. When I was little, I talked to my reflection in a puddle, and I couldn’t recall what I named her for a long time. When I recalled it, I came here.”

My cheeks flushed with embarrassment, but I spoke honestly.

Headmaster Pan laughed again. 

Every time he laughed, a lukewarm but strong wind blew all over my body.

“Children use magic unintentionally. It is always a primitive magic. Giving a name to something that has no name is also a type of children’s innocent magic.”

“A name, sir?”

I suddenly recalled Thor. 

When I was a child, I named a slave boy “Thor”...

"Only those who have learned such innocent magic can come to me through this mirror. As we grow older and become more skilled in the art of magic, we forget our child’s heart. By the way, I am a spirit from the world of fairy tales. Did you know that?”

“Yes. From the fairy tale, The Demon God of the Mirror.”

——The fairy tale “The Demon God of the Mirror.”

The story was about the adventures of the〈White Sage〉, who traveled around the world and encountered various spirits. 

Pan Faunus was the most powerful spirit who served the〈White Sage〉. 

His enormous body is so large that he was compared to a mountain, and when he walked even just a little distance, he shaved off mountains, destroyed the towns, and created storms and tornadoes that rivalled natural disasters. It was said that nothing remained after Pan Faunus passed through. 

He was supposed to be a noble Great Spirit, but he was called a demon god and feared. 

The gentle Pan Faunus, knowing that he would bring sorrow to others if he moved, lived quietly for a long time at the bottom of a great valley, motionless. 

The White Sage, on his journey, descended into the valley and, feeling sorry for the spirit who was left all alone and unable to go anywhere, decided to bring him out somehow. 

He decided to take the Pan Faunus’s too-big body and divide it into the following six parts: head, body, right front leg, left front leg, right hind leg, and left hind leg, and then sealed them into six mirrors.

By sealing him in the mirrors, the White Sage was able to take the Pan Faunus to all kinds of places and showed him different sights in the world. 

Since the White Sage had studied how to summon spirits in various forms, he could summon Pan Faunus in humanoid forms or in the form of a beloved mascot and travel with the Great Spirit. 

“Precisely. The White Sage called us spirits true friends, taught us many different forms that even we didn’t know, and was always by our side. That is why even now, I continue to protect the Lune Ruschia Magic School he left behind.”

For approximately five hundred years, since the school was founded.

It was unfathomably long.

“Does this mean that the Sage’s contract with the spirits continued even after his death?”

“No. The spirits remaining in the school are not remaining there by order of the Sage. Only one promise was exchanged there.”

“Promise?”

I'd heard this from someone else before. 

Yes, I believe it was Professor Ulysses. 

“What kind of promise was it?” 

“A promise…that one day he would come back here. Even if a hundred years passed, that Sage will return to this place.”

“...”

A fragile, dream-like promise was exchanged.

Did that mean the spirits stayed at Lune Ruschia Magic School, awaiting the return of the〈White Sage〉who died long ago?

Return…?

That was another distinctive word that I have heard several times somewhere else.

Principal Pan continued to stare at me with his long, horizontal, and straight black eyes. 

Even the mirrors around me seemed to be able to see right through me, and my heart began to race.

I suddenly asked him a question. 

“Um, sir, have you ever met the〈Scarlet Witch〉!?”

Yes, my ancestor.

“Of course I have. She was very foul-mouthed and called the White Sage a ‘shady bastard pretending to be a sage.’ She also made fun of me, calling me an ‘annoyingly gigantic spirit.’”

“Ugh…”

S-Sorry. I apologize for my ancestor…!

Apparently, she also tried to skin the minstrel fox Lafox to make a muffler. Was it possible that this school was filled with spirits who had grudges and history with the Scarlet Witch?

My future was in danger.

“But, the〈Scarlet Witch〉was a terribly contrary person. I think that the words she said and what she actually felt inside were often the exact opposite.”

“...Huh?”

I raised my head at Headmaster Pan’s unexpected words.

“When I look at the honest and hard-working Miss Makia, I feel that you are exactly the kind of girl that the〈Scarlet Witch〉 once wanted to be. Yes, I do think that is the case.”

“...”

I think I probably had a strange expression on my face, with my mouth in a straight line.

Certainly, I didn’t hate who I was right now.

Of course, I wasn’t perfect, but I think there was a part of me that felt like I was the kind of girl who Oda Kazuha wanted to be if she was reborn.

Did the Scarlet Witch feel that way too…?

“Oh, it's already time. I can’t keep you here for too long, or Prince Ulysses will get angry at me.”

“U-Um, may I ask you one last thing?”

I hadn’t yet asked Headmaster Pan for something very important. 

“Please give me your autograph, sir!”

“Oh, I forgot the most important thing!”

Yes, I was still in the middle of an exam. 

I got Headmaster Pan’s autograph, and after that, I went through the mirror that the headmaster had designated and returned from the fountain in the central plaza of Lune Ruschia Magic School.

I was drenched all over, but the signatures of the spirits on my paper mysteriously didn’t get bled out.

Soon the bell rang, announcing the end of the exam. 

It seemed that I had spent more time in the fourth labyrinth with Headmaster Pan than I expected.

We returned to the classroom and presented the papers signed by the spirits to Professor Ulysses in turn. 

Even when he saw Headmaster Pan’s signature on my paper, all he said was, “Good work,” without changing his expression at all. 

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