Intuition

 

She possessed a mysterious power to see through to the heart of things, bypassing all logic.

And at the same time, the power to miss every logical step along the way and get it completely wrong.

 

"Somewhere between three and five years old… is what I'd estimate."

After measuring Chryse's height and weight, Nina delivered her verdict.

Chryse herself was sitting in a chair, happily munching away on bread with a big smile on her face. Up until yesterday, she hadn't even had a full set of teeth, let alone put anything other than milk in her mouth.

"So her growth caught up to her age?"

"Caught up? It feels more like it blew right past it."

Nina clutched her head at Rin's words. The child they'd thought wasn't growing at all had shot up overnight. I could understand her reaction.

"Maybe she has an identical older sister and they got swapped out…?"

"This child is Chryse. Of that, I'm absolutely certain."

Nina declared in response to Yuuka's suggestion. I felt the same way.

Going from infant to young child changes a face considerably. The plump roundness of her cheeks had slimmed down, and her short hair had grown long enough to reach her shoulders. Those adorably stubby, ham-like limbs had grown slender, and she'd taken on a distinctly girlish appearance.

It was understandable that Yuuka would suspect she was someone else entirely. But to Nina and me, it was obvious at a glance.

Even though she'd grown, the way her feet dangled and swung from the chair. The smile that crinkled her eyes as she chewed her bread. The gleeful little sounds she made. Everything told us this was the grown form of our beloved baby. There was no mistaking her.

"Well, at least now we know for certain she isn't human…"

Nina's gaze flicked to Chryse's forehead. What could only be described as a horn now jutted from it. As an infant, it had been nothing more than a slight rise in the skin, but now it was visibly pointed and hard as a fingernail to the touch.

"Whether this growth is a trait of her species or the effect of some kind of magic, I can't say."

Or perhaps there was no real difference between those two things.

"Well, if there's magic to make you younger, maybe there's magic to make you older too…?"

Yuuka glanced briefly at Rin as she said this.

"Is there magic like that?"

Rin asked, blinking in confusion.

As expected, she had no memory of "before" at all.

"… Well, magic is born from desire, after all."

Watching Chryse's beaming face as she happily ate the leftover stew from yesterday, I had a vague sense of what that desire might have been.

"Chryse."

"Hm?"

When I called her name, Chryse looked up at me. Meaning she recognized her own name.

"Why did you grow up?"

"… Dunno."

Still, she was too young to explain her own circumstances.

"No amount of thinking is going to give us answers."

Nina let out a deep sigh and threw her hands up.

"True. It would be a problem if she kept growing and aging nonstop, but…"

Somehow, I didn't think that would happen. Even if one wished to gain more abilities, no one would willingly wish to grow old and frail. It was guesswork piled on guesswork given how little we understood, but there was no point worrying over what-ifs, either.

"I'll make sure to keep an eye on her as much as I can."

"Mm. Please."

Things had settled down for the moment. When the fourth bell rang, I peeled Chryse from a reluctant Nina and sent her off to the clinic. As I was getting ready to head to the lab, Rin and Yuuka said they'd come along, so the four of us walked there together.

Terrifyingly, Chryse could already walk. If she grew even more during the day and was an adult by nightfall, Nina would be in for a terrible shock…

 

＊　＊　＊

 

"Chryseee!"

The moment we arrived at the lab, hooves clattered across the floor and fluffy white hair streamed behind.

"You're so cuuute today too!"

Mel galloped over to Chryse like the wind and scooped her up without a moment's hesitation.

"Hey, Ara. For quadrupeds, does Chryse look more or less the same as yesterday?"

I accidentally let slip a question that could easily come across as extremely rude.

"No, hardly… or rather, is that child Chryse?"

"If Mel's saying so, then I guess she must be, but what on earth happened to make her like that?"

Ara shook his head, his voice full of bewilderment, and Innis muttered in her usual languid way.

"That's the thing, we don't know. She was just bigger when we woke up this morning."

"… Well, you could say she's age-appropriate now."

I couldn't help but look at Innis when she said that, and she visibly grimaced as if she'd let something slip.

"Wait, Innis, did you notice that Chryse's growth was slow?"

"Well… and while I'm at it, I'd even noticed that you all hadn't noticed, too."

When I pressed her on it, she confessed without resistance.

"You could have told us."

"Too much effort."

A quintessentially Innis response.

"Besides, it's not like telling you would have changed anything."

Well, that was certainly true, but still…

"Hey, hey, Mentor!"

Meanwhile, Mel was holding Chryse up high as she spoke.

"I feel like Chryse got a little heavier!"

"Yeah, she roughly doubled in weight."

The rest of us were bad enough, but Mel was on another level of obliviousness… Actually, wait. She'd recognized Chryse on sight, so maybe she was perceptive after all? Honestly, her sensibilities often eluded my understanding.

"Chryse, you got bigger, didn't you!"

"I got bigger!"

Holding a proudly beaming Chryse aloft, Mel spun in place.

Well, they looked like they were having fun, so I suppose it was fine.

"Ara, want me to spar with you? It's been a while."

"Yes, please!"

Yuuka made the offer to Ara, and the two of them headed outside.

"Ooh, that looks fun. I'm gonna go watch!"

"Ah! Mel wants to watch too!"

When Rin followed after them, Mel carried Chryse on her back and fell in behind. A gently floating sofa trailed along as if it were the most natural thing in the world. In the end, we all went to spectate.

"I am thou, thou art I, shadow-self of mirrored form — come unto my hands and become my claws!"

With Ara's incantation, his shadow writhed and formed into a pair of swords that settled into his hands. Yuuka faced him with her stone sword still hanging at her hip, making no move to draw it or adopt a stance.

"My shadow — stretch forth and pierce!"

At his words, the jet-black swords warped and elongated into a spear that shot toward Yuuka. But it never reached her, passing just barely over her shoulder.

"My shadow — grow heavy, swell, and crush!"

With Ara's next incantation, the spear changed shape again. Its tip ballooned outward into something resembling a hammer. He brought it crashing down while simultaneously slashing inward with his left sword in a pincer attack.

But still, his strikes never so much as grazed Yuuka. The storm of destruction cut only air.

"Hey, Mentorrr, what are they doing?"

Watching this spectacle, Rin asked me with a puzzled expression. To the untrained eye, it looked like nothing more than Ara flailing weapons around a nearly motionless Yuuka.

"Apparently, Ara is being made to swing where she wants him to."

I couldn't understand it at all myself, but what looked like Ara attacking in random directions was actually Yuuka guiding him there. Her shifts of weight, her line of sight, every minute movement served as countless feints, and yet Yuuka herself barely moved at all.

"Hmmm?"

Rin's eyes glinted. This was the expression she wore when she'd thought up some mischief.

"Flame."

Rin whispered softly, and a flame ignited on the tip of a finger she held behind her back. Timing it to coincide with Ara's movements, she flung it at Yuuka as a surprise attack.

— Just before it reached her, Yuuka suddenly looked toward Rin and tensed her legs.

"Ah."

She would jump to dodge. Rin instinctively came to that conclusion, but the flame sailed a good two meters wide of Yuuka, who hadn't budged an inch. So that's how it worked…

"Burst!"

But the instant the flame passed by Yuuka's side, it exploded in response to Rin's incantation. It wasn't a particularly large explosion. Yuuka had read it perfectly, and a mere half-step backward was enough to avoid the blast entirely.

But that wasn't what Rin had been aiming for. Her true objective was neither the flame nor the shockwave.

"Ara's shadow — spread wide and stretch!"

Rin shouted her incantation. Ara's shadow, illuminated by the firelight, stretched long and dark. It transformed into a massive greatsword that came sweeping down on Yuuka.

And in the next instant.

"Whew, that scared me."

The greatsword Ara had brought down was caught between Yuuka's index and middle fingers, stopped dead. Not even a proper blade catch… she'd done it with just her fingertips…

"Rin, you really do the most unexpected things!"

Which meant she hadn't read Rin's intention until the very last moment and had caught it on pure reflex. If anything, that was even more impressive, but…

"Still couldn't make you draw your sword, huh."

Rin looked dissatisfied in her own right. The stone sword Yuuka always carried remained hanging at her hip.

"If only I could shorten the incantation a bit more…"

Ara grumbled in frustration. It was true that his incantations for reshaping his shadow were a bit long for use in the middle of combat. He'd been timing them with his movements to minimize the openings, but ideally you'd want to change shape with a single word.

"Come to think of it, big bro and Rin don't use incantations when you use magic, do you?"

At Yuuka's words, Rin and I exchanged a glance.

"You mean this?"

A flame flickered to life above my palm, and Rin's outstretched hands transformed into white wings.

Now that she mentioned it, she had a point. Early on, Rin had definitely needed proper incantations to transform her body. But at some point, she'd started transforming instantaneously, as naturally as breathing. I, too, had recently reached the point where I could freely conjure at least this much fire. Though if it were just producing fire regardless of power, that was even simpler.

"Yeah, that. Nina does the same thing when she grows plants. How do you do it?"

How, she asked… That was a difficult question.

"To begin with, incantations aren't strictly necessary for using magic."

"Wait, really!?"

When I said that, everyone around me wore expressions of surprise.

"It's certainly easier to produce greater effects with an incantation, but… for example."

I turned to Mel and tapped at Chryse's mouth, still cradled in Mel's arms, tap-tap.

"Food?"

Her eyes lit up as she asked. Our girl is truly clever. She still remembered the meaning of the gesture Ara had taught her yesterday, even after her body had completely changed.

"See? Just as meaning can be communicated without words, magic can be used without incantations. An incantation is merely… a means of layering and conveying one's intentions."

I'd arrived at that realization a very, very long time ago. But it was something I'd never forgotten… the fundamental principle of magic.

"Conveying them to whom?"

"Huh?"

Lost in the memory of a girl encased in ice, I flinched when Mel suddenly asked me that.

"In Ara's case, who is he conveying his feelings to? Innis?"

"Wh-Why would you bring me into this!? Obviously it's the shadow. The shadow spirit."

For some reason, even Innis seemed flustered as she pointed at Ara's shadow.

"Ehhhh, but the shadow isn't a spirit."

"What makes you think that?"

Rin asked Mel, who was giggling.

"Hm? Why, you ask… why?"

Mel tilted her head. The two of them were both easygoing and similar in some ways, yet their natures were polar opposites. Rin questioned things everyone else took for granted, while Mel leapt straight to the conclusion, bypassing all logic entirely.

— And somehow, she was almost always right.