04 Rin
After graduating from elementary school, Sakurako and I ended up going to the same middle school.
Just because we were in the same elementary school didn’t mean it was a given we’d go to the same middle school.
In the apartment complexes standing in the reclaimed land full of silver grass, there are many parents with high social awareness. They send their kids to cram school from elementary school, plotting to get them into elite schools if possible. In fact, many classmates took middle school entrance exams and went to private schools.
Sure, if you get into an affiliated school like Waseda or Keio from middle school, it feels like life would be easy. But fortunately, my parents didn’t tell me to “go to cram school,” and I wasn’t that interested in studying, so I went to a regular public middle school.
However, since Sakurako was quite good at studying, I was worried, thinking, “Maybe she’ll go to a private school.” I couldn’t exactly say, “Wait, don’t leave me behind.” Sakurako has her own life, and I didn’t want to play the role of the losing heroine in a drama. That’s a bit uncool.
In the end, Sakurako didn’t take the entrance exams for an extremely logical reason: “I want to study magic too, so I don’t want to spend time commuting.”
The middle school uniform was a blazer, and Sakurako with her long black hair suited it so well she could have been in a Mitsui Rehouse commercial, which made me worry that she might be targeted by bad guys. It’s not exactly because of that, but we always went to school together.
As an aside, when I confessed that worry to her,
“No, when I looked at myself in the uniform in the mirror, I thought, ‘I look like a ghost from the Showa era,’ so I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.”
she said modestly
That’s ridiculous. There’s no way someone would mistake such a beauty for a ghost.
I joined the basketball club for no particular reason, and then it was summer vacation after being completely beaten by the first midterm and final exams. I was invited by Sakurako to an embankment along Tokyo Bay, a little away from the apartments.
Maybe this is technically a seaside, but since it’s bound by inorganic concrete and covered in tetrapods instead of a sandy beach, I want to believe it’s not such a fashionable thing. The “seaside” in my mind is a place with a bit more atmosphere.
There was no one around except for me and Sakurako. There is really nothing near here except for the apartment complexes we live in, and those fashionable residents living there rarely set foot in such a bleak place.
I thought that if someone were sunk into this desolate sea with the industrial zone visible on the opposite shore, or buried in the vast wilderness of silver grass behind us, a perfect crime could easily be established.
I don’t think the reason Sakurako brought me here was something so dangerous, but I was also a bit nervous.
Leaving me with my heart pounding, Sakurako opened her mouth as if she had made up her mind.
“Listen, Rin. I… I can use magic now!”
As if revealing a special surprise, Sakurako’s pale cheeks were unusually flushed. Of course, I was wonderfully surprised.
After all, it was the first time I saw the moment someone’s dream came true up close.
“Eh!? Really! That’s amazing! Congratulations!”
I hugged Sakurako with all my might.
And then, I cried a little. It was embarrassing that I cried even though I hadn’t done anything, so I didn’t let go of the hug until my face looked like I could fake it.
Because Sakurako had been putting in effort all this time.
She was told by her grandmother, “To use magic, it’s important to train your mind and body,” and without knowing if it was true, she honestly worked hard at both sports and studying, and on top of that, she learned magic. I just watched over her nearby. Well, occasionally I removed obstacles.
That had finally borne fruit. There is nothing happier than this.
After we celebrated for a while on the deserted embankment, I asked:
“By the way, why did you bring me to a place like this?”
“Because the magic I learned is fire magic. Here, there’s no worry about causing a fire, right?”
I see. This place with nothing but water and concrete is perfect for using fire magic. There’s nothing to burn.
After clearing her throat, Sakurako immediately began to chant the incantations.
By the way, it wasn’t the first time I heard Sakurako’s incantations. Since we met, I’ve seen her practicing incantations many times. She says, “It’s embarrassing,” so she doesn’t practice magic at school, but Sakurako’s chanting is very beautiful.
According to Sakurako’s grandmother, “The way you chant a incantations is also an important technique for a mage.”
There is no correct answer, and mages have their own ways of chanting. I heard there were mages who were heavily favored by the powerful people of the time because they were good at chanting incantations.
Probably, there was an era when mages were treated like artists.
Surely, if you’re going to listen to a incantations, a fun and upbeat one is better than something that makes you sleepy like a sutra. After all, the incantations lasts at least five minutes.
For that reason, Sakurako also studied vocal training and how to sing, and occasionally practiced incantations in karaoke boxes. She is incredibly good at it.
Now, too, Sakurako was carefully and beautifully spinning the incantations in front of me.
I sat on the steps of the embankment, enchanted by that beautiful voice.
And then—one hour had passed since the showcase with a single spectator began. The incantations is supposed to be completed in about five minutes, but it wasn’t going well. But I think that’s fine. Miracles don’t happen easily. If it could be done easily, there’d be no sense of value.
Just as I resolved to wait even if it became night, Sakurako suddenly held out both hands. I leaned forward, thinking the magic might finally be completed.
On Sakurako’s palms, a tiny, tiny fire flickered into life.
It was so small that I instinctively used my own body as a windbreak so the sea breeze wouldn’t blow it out.
“How… is it?”
Sakurako asked shyly.
Of course, if you just want to start a fire, a match or a lighter is easier and more convenient.
If I had met Sakurako after becoming a middle schooler and saw this fire, I might have just ended it with a “Hmm.”
But it wasn’t like that.
This was the fire I had been waiting for for years.
It was the crystal of everything Sakurako had built up since she decided to become a mage.
When I thought about that, it wasn’t strange at all that I started shedding tears.
Looking at my face, Sakurako was startled, and then she started crying in the same way.
“I’m glad I had Rin see it first after all. I was wondering whether to choose my grandmother or you, but I wanted Rin to see it.”
What a girl, saying such tear-jerking things. Thanks to that, the tears won’t stop.
In a dry, tasteless place with strong sea breezes and nothing but concrete, we hugged and cried for a while.
Then, I said:
“Sakurako’s magic is very beautiful, so in the future, you should chant it in front of many people. Surely everyone will be moved, and they’ll think ‘magic is amazing.’ They’ll never say ‘magic is no big deal’ ever again.”
It wasn’t flattery. It was an absolute truth.
It might have been a small fire, but I thought it was truly beautiful.
Sakurako was smiling bashfully.
Afterwards, we talked it over and decided, “If it’s fire magic of this level, it’ll be fine to practice anywhere.” It was a hassle to go all the way to the embankment every time.
At first, we chose the locations carefully, but we gradually became bolder and started practicing in empty classrooms after school. Sakurako, who was shy in elementary school, probably gained confidence now that she could actually use magic.
However, after a while, a rumor started that a ghost appeared at the middle school.
In a pitch-black, empty classroom, the face of a student who died at this school would faintly emerge.
The face of a female student with long black hair.
“That must be a girl who died in the Showa era.”
“She committed suicide in that empty classroom that isn’t used now.”
“So, is that why that classroom stopped being used?”
Rumors like that began to circulate among the students, sounding more plausible by the day, until eventually, people even started leaving flowers there.
One day, Sakurako-san and I went to that empty classroom to practice magic. When we saw the single-flower vase placed on a desk, we decided then and there to stop practicing magic at school.
READ THE ORIGINAL TRANSLATION AT LOCALIZERMEERKAT.GITHUB.IO
After seeing Sakurako-san’s magical fire, something shifted inside me. I made up my mind to put my absolute all into something. I was envious of Sakurako-san—of the way she set proper goals for her life and, in her own way, turned them into something tangible. Giving my best in the basketball club wasn’t bad, but I was only doing it because it was fun; I didn’t have that much passion for it.
After considering various options, I realized that with my current grades, there was no way I’d get into the same high school as Sakurako-san. So, I decided to focus on my studies. After all, I realized I just wanted to stay near her.
But I’d never actually studied seriously before, so I had no idea where to start. If I asked Sakurako-san, I’m sure she’d teach me, but I didn’t want to do anything that might interfere with her own magical studies.
After much agonizing, I decided to ask my father—who apparently graduated from a good university—to look over my studies.
My dad is a hardcore gamer. The moment he gets home, he does nothing but play games (my mom likes games too, so she’s understanding about it). I figured studying wasn’t exactly something he’d staked his life on, and besides, he’d surely listen to a request from his cute daughter.
So, my mother and I waited for him at the entrance when he returned from work.
“Welcome home! Dad, teach me how to study!”
When I said that, both my father and mother asked back at the exact same time:
“For what?”
Apparently, the idea of their daughter actually doing her schoolwork was completely beyond their expectations. Honestly, what terrible parents.
Even so, Dad started cutting back on his gaming a bit. Every day after returning from the office, he began teaching me.
His style was simple: Absolute, thorough review.
He claimed that if you use previews or cram schools to get ahead of the curriculum, there’s a chance you’ll stop paying attention in class.
“You spend the most time in school classes, so using that time effectively is the most efficient path. So, Rin, you just need to listen properly in class. Then, at home, we’ll do a deep-dive review on anything you didn’t understand or missed on small quizzes. Essentially, we’re going to systematically eliminate ‘the things you don’t know.’ If you do that, you’ll naturally get good marks on midterms and finals.”
What Dad said made a lot of sense, and he was actually a very good teacher.
Thanks to him, my grades started climbing rapidly.
But as that happened, something else started to bother me. I couldn’t help but wonder why he hadn’t taught me like this sooner.
When I asked him, he just said:
“Well, teaching a Rin who has no motivation is just a waste of time. It’s inefficient to teach someone who has no will to learn. Besides, whether you can study or not, I don’t think it makes that much difference in life. After all, anyone can play a video game, right?”
Classic Dad, I thought.
Even in games, he was a player who pursued absolute efficiency.
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