Chapter 22: Girl, Works Miracles

 

 

 

Chapter 22: Girl, Works Miracles

 

SOWING seeds proceeded smoothly with the assistance of the villagers. By the afternoon, they had finished removing the dead plants, tilling the land, and putting oil cake fertilizer in the ground.

Surrounded by the smell of fresh, earthy soil that was strong enough to make her choke, Nichika beamed brightly as she pulled weeds in spite of the fact she was covered in mud.

“Nichika, you seem to be in a really good mood,” Wolfie observed.

“Do I?” she asked, turning toward the bewildered wolf with a big grin on her face.

“Did something happen?”

“Not really?”

Oswald’s compliment had definitely affected her, but Nichika hadn’t given it much thought as to question the source of her high spirits.

“It’s my first time gardening, but it’s a lot more fun than I thought it’d be.”

Working with the smooth and silky soil with its rich aromas had a way of washing away the mud clogging up her feelings. Taking a closer look at the ground, Nichika noticed orange mana drifting about the earth here and there, vanishing as if being absorbed.

“Digging holes is fun, isn’t it?” Wolfie animatedly dug his claws through the dirt, kicking piles of it behind his back legs. “Master and I also did that here yesterday—” He froze in the middle of his fun dig.

“You were digging yesterday too?”

Wolfie suddenly started to tremble. “O-O-Oh yeah, I f-forgot! I-It’s b-buried i-in this f-flower field!”

“What is?” Before Nichika could hear his answer—her attention was drawn to another conversation.

“Miss Violette, are you feeling unwell?” a villager inquired.

“N-No…I-I am fine,” Violette replied.

Violette looked whiter than a sheet pulling weeds several plots over from Nichika—rather, her complexion had passed white altogether and gone straight to ashen. Nichika was becoming increasingly more puzzled by the deathly ill skin color of the normally unreadable woman’s face. Overhearing them, Makina stopped pulling weeds and looked over his shoulder.

“Why don’t you sit down and rest if you’re not feeling well?” he suggested.

“…Thank you very much for your…kind words. I will take you up on them for a moment.”

Makina and Nichika worriedly watched her unsteadily stumble away.

“I wonder if she’s okay,” Nichika said.

“It’s my first time seeing her like that. Who knew homunculus could fall ill too,” Makina noted.

Violette sat under the shade of a tree with her head drooped and her hands pressed against her chest. Her shoulders painfully rose and fell with her breathing.

“I should go check on her,” Makina said, rising to his feet.

“Okay, I’ll com—” Nichika tried to dash after him but was suddenly yanked backward by the hood of her mantle, making her choke out a weird sounding, “Gueeh!”

“…What an unattractive noise.”

“That’s your fault for suddenly pulling on my mantle! You choked me! Quit grabbin’ me whenever you feel like it! Sheesh.”

As expected, it was Oswald who was behind her. Only, he wasn’t letting go, but trying to drag her off somewhere by her mantle.

“Whoa! Hey!” Nichika protested.

“Come. It’s almost time.”

“Time for what?!”

As usual, he didn’t provide an explanation. After bringing her some ways away from the field, he instructed her on what she had to do next.

“First things first, a miracle isn’t going to happen. But we can make it appear like one has.”

“Okay, how?”

Oswald plopped a hand on her shoulder. “I’m counting on you, Spirit Priestess,” he said, tossing the problem into her lap.

“Excuse me?!” Nichika felt like he’d just punched her in the head. Enduring the disorienting feeling, she clenched her fists in anger. “Wh-What’s that supposed to mean?! W-Weren’t you going to use a Witch’s Item to make the flowers bloom?!” she sputtered.

“You think I’d make an item with no demand?”

“It’s in high-demand right here and now! HERE AND NOW!” She fiercely stomped her feet on the dirt.

Seriously, what a scam artist! Or should I say he’s got a nasty habit of doing whatever he wants without considering the consequences?!

“How could you go and make me speak so highly of you, when you didn’t even plan to make a miracle happen in the first place!”

“Put everything you’ve got into it if you want something to happen then. I’ve perfectly arranged all the conditions for you.”

“…What?”

Oswald bent over and scooped up a handful of dirt. Then, burying a single seed from his pouch in it, he elaborated, “The seeds I prepared are the fastest flowering type out of all the plant species suited to this environment. The fertilizer we mixed with the soil is of the highest grade and specially made to fine tune the balance with the original dirt to encourage growth. As you can plainly see, the most favorable conditions for growing flowers are now present in this field.”

“…Are you sure you’re not actually the son of a florist?”

“Don’t be stupid. This much knowledge is required for potion making. Back to the point. This is where we’ll be borrowing the power of mana.” He stroked the surface of the pile of dirt in his palm and called, “Come!”

Orange lights took on the form of birds and began to flock around his hand. One landed on his finger, and he gave a command as if speaking to it.

“O spirit of the fertile earth, please lend the sprouts of life your aid.”

The bird cocked its head then dove into the dirt, becoming one with it.

“Wow!”

Before their very eyes, a young green bud sprouted from the dirt in his hand. It grew rapidly, as if they were watching a recording with fast-forward on, until it finally bloomed into an adorable pink flower.

“And well, that’s how it works,” he concluded, holding it out to her.

“Cool! It actually bloomed!” Nichika accepted the flower, dirt and all, and poked at the pretty petals. It wasn’t artificial; it was a real, live flower. “All I have to do is ask the earth mana for help? I wonder if they’ll listen,” she said uneasily, as she planted the flower in the ground.

While the Great Fire Spirit had opened up the world of mana before her eyes, Nichika still didn’t have a firm grasp on manipulating them. It’d never occurred to her that she might have to do it on the fly at an important time like this, without any practice.

“Whether or not the flower festival can be held depends on your ability.”

Nichika glanced up at Oswald’s face. “…Do you want things to go well?”

If they failed to help the festival, it’d mean he’d lose his bet with Makina. In other words, Nichika would remain in Lolo Village.

Oswald stared down at her without answering. The wind played with their hair as it blew past. When he finally opened his mouth to speak, he spoke in a businessman’s voice, “…I forgot to tell you something.”

“What is it?”

“It’s possible for you to one-sidedly put an end to our contract.”

Processing what that meant made her eyes bulge. In other words, he was saying—

“You decide. Will you come with us? Or stay here?”

“B-But if I stay behind, the issue with Fake Lover will never be resolved…”

“You don’t need to worry about that. That four-eyes Makina is from a family that runs a huge enterprise based on magic. If you just want to gather information, staying with him might actually be more effective.”

“But…but!”

A lump formed in her chest from her bitter feelings of having him thrust this upon her. No, that wasn’t quite right. Really, Nichika just wanted to know what Oswald was thinking. What did he want? Why was he entrusting her with this choice?

Those questions surfaced within her but failed to form proper words that would break her silence.

Oswald stared off into the distance as he candidly asked, “Isn’t that…what would make you the happiest?”

“…!”

“Rather than…coming with me.”

Nichika couldn’t bear to have him see the emotions surging in her, so she made a run for it as if to flee. Why? Why is he suddenly saying something like that? She slipped in to the throng of people working in the field and stopped to catch her breath. I knew it. I just knew it. Oswald wants to get rid of me. That’s gotta be it.

She was furiously trying to hold back the tears threatening to spill over for reasons she couldn’t understand, when some of the children came over and worriedly peered up at her face.

“Nichika! Whatz w’ong? Do you have a booboo?” one of the girls asked, holding her hand.

“Are you sleepy? Wanna nap? We’ll work hard, so you can go nap!” one of the boys offered, rolling up his sleeve to flex a tiny arm.

Their innocent voices helped her wrench the faucet of her tears closed before it was too late. She roughly rubbed at the corner of her eyes with her dirt-covered sleeves and showed them the best smile she could manage.

“Nothing’s wrong! I’m perfectly okay!”

“You’d better be okay, ‘cause the flower festival is almost here!”

“The flower spirit won’t come if you aren’t smiling, you know!”

Nichika nodded once to their expectant faces and solidified her resolve. That’s right—I need to make the flowers bloom, no matter what. I’ve got to push the bet to the back of my mind so I can do my best to help the villagers who are looking forward to the festival. Ignore the pain in my chest, concentrate on the problem at hand. I can think about what comes after this later.

Nichika took a deep breath of the earthy air and searched for mana in the vicinity. Instantly, she located a vast number of orange lights. Not caring if she got dirty, she knelt on the ground and tried to offer her hand to one of the orange butterflies fluttering around her feet. However—

“W-Wait!” It swiftly flew away from her hand as if fleeing from her. The other mana reacted the same way, like they were avoiding her for some reason. “Why?”

At a loss, Nichika suddenly became aware of something out of the ordinary occurring in her waist pocket. It was strangely warm—or more like hot!

Consequently glancing at her pocket, she let out a shocked, “Hey!” The magic orb was glowing red—the red mana were violently zooming around inside the glass in a rampage. “D-Don’t do that! You shouldn’t intimidate the other mana!”

But the fire mana menacingly flapped their wings, driving away the earth mana. They were almost behaving like they were Nichika’s loyal guard dogs.

Why are they acting this way? How am I supposed to fix this?

The same pattern kept repeating, and the orange butterflies fled in fear whenever Nichika tried to approach them.

***

“OH no, the sun is setting!”

It was still too early for dusk, but the sun had descended quite a distance since Nichika had started. In less than a few hours, the flower festival eve celebration would commence.

Yet, the only flower that had sprouted around her was Oswald’s. The village adults forced smiles, disappointed. Cynicism hung in the air as they reconciled themselves with the fact that nothing was going to happen. “We knew it,” they said to each other.

“Nichika! How goes it?” Wolfie ambled up to her.

Nichika looked at him with tears in her eyes. “Wol…fie…! It’s not going well at all…”

“Why?”

About to cry, she explained her predicament. After she finished, the brown wolf’s ears perked up as if he’d hit on a great idea.

“Hmm, why don’t you try giving the fire mana an order? Try telling it to go away for a while or something?”

According to Wolfie, wizards typically chased away the unnecessary elemental mana before activating their spells with the mana they needed. But Nichika didn’t want to do that.

“How could I do that when these cuties are just trying to protect me? Driving them away is too cruel…”

“In that case, why not try asking them to get along with each other? Just like you did when you introduced me to the village kids yesterday!”

“Tell them to get along?”

With that in mind, she stared hard at the mana. Despite having been consistently chased away for the past few hours, the earth mana were still trying to approach her. The fire mana flared up threateningly in response, but they weren’t trying to attack the earth mana.

“Um, listen guys,” Nichika spoke softly to the red butterflies, “you don’t have to be so heavily guarded against the other mana.” The red mana stopped flying around and hovered, confused about what she wanted from them. “You see, I want to borrow the other mana’s power. I’d be really happy if you guys could help me out too.”

She shifted her attention from calming the fire mana to reach out to the earth mana. “I’m sorry we scared you. It’s okay now. Will you come here?”

Orange lights timidly approached her, reminding Nichika of how the village children had reacted the prior day. People and mana weren’t all that different; her voice had reached them.

“Okay! With that settled, won’t you please both listen to what I have to say?” she asked both the orange and red lights. “A flower festival is supposed to begin in a few hours. A ton of flowers are necessary for it, but the flowers that were originally growing here all died.”

Now that she mentioned it, she wondered if Oswald had ever ended up figuring out the cause. She quickly brushed the thought away for the moment.

Thinking of all the kindness the villagers had treated her with and the children she had befriended, Nichika poured her heart into her request. “So please! Help me revive the flower field for all the villagers!”

The mana that had been swaying in the air during her plea—abruptly turned to move as one. The quarreling red and orange lights mingled with each other and spread out together across the entire flower field.

“Wow…!”

New green leaves immediately sprouted from the ground, absorbing the orange butterflies and red butterflies as they flew around the new buds to adjust the temperature. The earth mana seemed to have summoned its friends, because soon aqua butterflies appeared to provide the flowers water from the atmosphere. Green butterflies were stirring the air to blow a gentle breeze, weaving the colors throughout the field.

 

A miracle was taking place.

 

“Holy moly! What’s going on?!”

“They’re blooming! Flowers are blooming!”

Below the startled villagers’ feet, countless flowers were blossoming. A rainbow-colored flower field unfurled before their very eyes; an almost mirror image of the different elements tinged every flower.

“Now that’s a surprise,” Oswald said to himself, watching Nichika from a distance, “I didn’t think you’d be able to get the earth mana on your side, much less all the other elements.” Without noticing him, Nichika twirled and rejoiced with the children in the middle of all the beautiful flowers.

Even controlling just two elements of mana at the same time usually required substantial training, but Nichika had unconsciously mastered the rarest of skills.

“Spirit Priestess, huh…?” Oswald didn’t believe in mythical existences, but what he had just witnessed that evening was at least enough to make him consider it.

Now the flower festival could safely go on without issue, and he had also pinned down the culprit who’d been killing the flowers. Nevertheless, he was going to leave the decision to Nichika; he didn’t have the right to tell her whether to stay behind or not.

Out of the blue, Oswald was struck with the realization that he’d taken actions very unlike himself. If he had truly wanted to rid himself of the flea he’d picked up, otherwise known as his apprentice, shouldn’t he have simply forfeited the bet on purpose instead of bothering to resolve the case?

Sure, that four-eyed little punk’s challenge had more or less taunted his pride as a man. But that fact aside, all that effort didn’t really seem worth it. Why had he not only deliberately gone out of his way to find a solution that would satisfy all parties, but also given Nichika the final choice?

If he had wanted to get rid of her, he could’ve made that happen. If he had wanted to keep her, he could’ve made that happen. But what did he want?

I… An unshakeable feeling warning him not to think about it too deeply came over Oswald. If he thought about it too seriously, he’d have no choice but to accept the full ridiculousness of the situation. I can’t believe I hoped that she might actually choose me.

 

“GYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

 

A sudden shrill scream brought Oswald’s thoughts to a skidding halt. The villagers, who had been dancing with joy around the flowers, turned toward the sound as well.

“Violette! What’s wrong?!” Makina cried.

“Aaaah….aghh…gaaaaaaaah!”

The villagers scanned the area for the source of the terrifying cries and found Violette, who should have been resting at the base of a nearby tree, wildly throwing her head back so far that it looked like it would snap right off. Children fearfully retreated from the tree where Violette was madly grabbing at her head and writhing around.

“Get a hold of yourself!” Makina ran to her side and held her upright.

Turning her bloodshot eyes on Makina, she wrung out, “P-Please run away…I’m—”

“What?! What in the world is happening?!”

In the final moments of her struggle, Violette shed a single tear. Her head lifelessly lolled to the side, like her neck had broken. Nobody moved. A creepy, humid gust swept through the area, lifting the colorful flower petals up with its current.

Violette, who had ceased to move like a marionette that had its strings cut in one go, abruptly began to cackle, hard enough to jolt her shoulders unnaturally. From her mouth, an utterly foreign voice rang out.

“What the hell?” it snarled, “Who went and laid this nasty little trap?”

“What?” Makina said.

Then it happened entirely in a single second. Violette slammed a sharp whirlwind kick right into Makina’s stomach. The force blew him away, sending him flying through the air in a wide arc. He crashed into the ground before he could even prepare for the blow.

“Makina!” Nichika took off in a run, but Oswald stopped her.

“Don’t go near him!” he barked. Then his lips turned up in a nervous, tense smile. “I figured the mastermind would show up if the area was filled with excess magic, but I never thought they’d expose themselves so soon.”

“Excess magic? What do you mean? What’s going on?” Nichika asked all at once, without taking her eyes off the back that was turned to them—the back that supposedly belonged to the maid Violette.

“That maid’s no homunculus or anything of the kind. She’s a living, breathing human being. She’s likely being controlled by the Witch’s Item embedded in her chest.”

“Whaaaat?!”

“The culprit behind the deaths of the flowers is the one controlling her. They’re keeping the magic item active by having her regularly absorb magic from the flowers that grow here.”

“So what? You mean by having all the flowers blooming at once, it overloaded the item with magic?” Nichika demanded in a louder voice than she meant to.

At the sound of her voice, the person in the maid outfit mechanically turned toward them.

“…!”

Nervous, Nichika braced herself, but the person controlling Violette let out a jovial whoop upon noticing them. “Oooh, why isn’t that you, my upperclassman Oswald?! Long time no see!”

“…?!”

The puppet master undid Violette’s bun, letting her hair fall free as they saluted Oswald. Violette’s face was wearing a radiant smile filled with intimacy as she gazed at him.

Nichika looked to her master beside her. “Uh, know them?”

“……”

“It’s me! Lambert!”

“I don’t know any frivolous man like you.”

“So you do remember me! You haven’t changed one bit!” Lambert’s voice sputtered from Violette’s lips. He moved her hands to her hips to reflect his exasperation. “Anyway, what’re ya doing here? Prexy’s been lookin’ for you in a mad frenzy, y’know.”

“Zip it. I’ve got my own circumstances to deal with.”

Still not following what was going on, Nichika ventured, “Your friend?”

His guard firmly up, Oswald kept his eyes trained on the body Lambert was using and quietly answered, “Not in a million years. More importantly, this is someone worse than what I was expecting.”

“Worse than you were expecting…?”

“He’s dangerous.”

Lambert twirled Violette’s fingers through her hair as he hummed and prodded Makina’s unmoving body with the tip of her shoe. “Oh, is this the Prof’s son? They don’t look much alike. Not that it matters much, anyway.”

Then, making Violette thud her hand against her chest, he dramatically rambled on, “Now look what you’ve made me do. It was all fine n’ dandy that I stuck an observer with him, but this kiddo has got zero magic, so I’d no choice but t’have her replenish the item’s energy with flowers. But keepin’ that up for years n’ the equipment went n’ started to deteriorate n’ have higher energy consumption, so I was just discussing with the Prof about g’tting rid of her soon. And then what happens? Magic jammed into the item past capacity, short-circuiting it! Ahahaha! Then when I came to check out what’d happened, my upperclassman’s here!”

A nasty smile twisted Violette’s lips as Lambert’s voice cruelly concluded, “Repairing the core’s a major pain. Meh, it was a good run. Fastest way to get rid o’ the problem is to have her throw herself off the cliff like Prof instructed, I guess.”

Violette’s body made a mad dash through the thunderstruck villagers. “Sorry for the ruckus, boys and girls! You guys can tend to lil’ master Makina after this is over!”

“Wai—”

Her body ran away faster than they could stop her.

Oswald was the first to move. “We’re going after her! That guy lacks any kind of ethics! He’s seriously going to have that maid throw herself off a cliff!”