CHAPTER 5: The Silent Witch Speaks Fervently on the Golden Ratio

CHAPTER 5: The Silent Witch Speaks Fervently on the Golden Ratio

CHAPTER 5

The Silent Witch Speaks Fervently on the Golden Ratio

When Monica was about five, she had begged and begged her father for a certain object. The object she had wanted so badly was a tape measure.

Monica had learned her numbers and basic arithmetic faster than the other children her age; at five, she already knew from her father—a scholar—how to measure area and volume.

And so, she had asked for a tape measure because she’d wanted to find out the area and volume of the things around her.

Her father’s friend, who happened to be there at the time, was completely taken aback when he heard her request. But when Monica’s father heard her reasoning, he had smiled gently and given her a tape measure as a gift, just as she had asked.

Having acquired the object of her desires, Monica lost herself in measuring all the furniture in the house, as well as the sizes of her own limbs and her father’s.

“The world is filled with numbers,” Monica’s father had often told her. “Humans are the same—our bodies are made up of vast quantities of numbers.”

Each time she used her tape measure to figure out the area or volume of a nearby object, she felt in her bones how correct her father had been.

For young Monica, this had been an irrepressible source of joy and happiness.

* * *

…I walked around with that tape measure until the division markings wore down beyond recognition, didn’t I?

As her half-awake brain lingered on a dream of her childhood, Monica turned over in bed, at which point the morning sunlight coming in through the window made her face scrunch up. Slowly, she rose. The attic room didn’t have any curtains, giving the morning sun free rein.

Once Monica had gotten out of bed, the first thing she did—before even taking care of her appearance—was bring her coffeepot out of the drawer. Then she used an unchanted spell to create water and filled the pot with it.

It was said that water fabricated with magic was unsuitable for drinking, due to the mana it contained.

A human body could retain only so much mana, so consuming a large amount of mana-rich water would lead to magic poisoning. That was why Monica normally drew her water from a well.

But a little bit wouldn’t hurt. As one of the Seven Sages, Monica could store a higher amount of mana than normal people anyway. It wasn’t easy for her to come down with magic poisoning.

She filled the pot with the water she’d created, ground some coffee beans, and set them up on the pot. Then she took out a small metal trivet, placed the pot on top of it, and used another unchanted spell to create fire. Because a caster needed to maintain the intensity of the heat as well as its position, even a small flame like this required an intricate spell and quite a bit of control.

Nero, who was lying on the bed in his black-cat form, looked at her with mild exasperation. “Using your skills just to make a cup of coffee? Isn’t that a bit of a waste?”

“W-well… I can’t just use the kitchen without asking, so…,” said Monica softly in protest, pouring the coffee from the pot into the cup.

Nero jumped up onto Monica’s desk and gazed at her with his golden eyes. “Monica, I want to try some of that.”

“Really? Why?”

“I read it in a novel recently. Bartholomew, the protagonist, drinks coffee in silence—it’s very cool and refined.”

Monica thought for a few moments, then scooped up a little of the coffee from her cup with a spoon and placed it in front of Nero. Coffee probably wasn’t the best thing to give a cat, but Nero wasn’t a normal cat, so he’d be all right. Probably.

“Are you sure?” she warned. “It’s pretty bitter.”

“When a creature loses his sense of adventure, he atrophies.”

“…Was that in a book, too?”

“You bet. Dustin Gunther is the greatest.”

After naming one of the capital’s trendiest novelists, Nero gave the coffee in the spoon a quick lick. Immediately, the fur covering his entire body bristled.

“Hogyah-rah-phah!” he cried out—a peculiar exclamation neither human nor feline—and began rolling around atop the desk.

As she had expected, it didn’t seem to be to his taste. Nero let out a ragged breath, like a warrior just returned from the brink of death, then looked up at Monica.

“Yes, that certainly excited my sense of adventure. You must have some messed-up taste buds to be able to drink that and enjoy it.”

“……”

Monica ignored him and sipped her own coffee.

Hot and bitter as it flowed past her tongue, the liquid woke her hazy mind right up.

Suddenly, her father’s words came to mind: “First, eliminate the unnecessary. Once you have done that, the remaining numbers will be exceedingly simple.”

…But what’s unnecessary? she thought. For example, morning coffee certainly wasn’t unnecessary for her. It was important. But for those who hated coffee, such a custom may have seemed pointless. If only it were a formula. Then I could solve it right away. How difficult it was to suss out the unnecessary in a person’s mind.

Still sipping her coffee, Monica glanced at the ribbon and berries on the desk. She’d never cared about her hairstyle before. Prior to yesterday, she would have said for certain that ribbons were unnecessary.