CH 14

Words : 898 Updated : Sep 10th, 2025

Sebastian Explained Magic To Me After dinner, Ms. Claire and I drank tea in the guest room with a relaxed atmosphere. As Sebastian and the two maids were servants, they did not sit down but waited behind us. It must be tiring to have to stand for so long. And so I asked them to sit and rest, but they firmly refused. I suppose it was their pride as servants. “Well, that was very delicious, Ms. Claire.” “I’m happy that you enjoyed it. I will be sure to tell the cook.” “Yes, please do.” “Wuff-wuff.” Leo had also eaten sausages to her heart’s content. As Leo was so big, I felt bad that she was eating so much. But when I tried to stop her, Ms. Claire assured me that it was fine. Apparently, sausages were a very common food and hardly luxurious. And she insisted that Leo eat as much as she wanted. Of course, I had tasted some as well. And I was amazed that such delicious sausages could be served in that quantity. It almost made me feel bad for the sausages I bought from the convenience store. Aside from that, there were meat dishes, soups and salads. It really did feel like a feast. “As it was a welcoming dinner, I had them make more than usual, and served with the best tableware. But it really isn’t too different from what we normally eat. As you requested that we do nothing that is too fancy.” “…Uh, I actually thought that it was very fancy…” The amount of it aside, if that’s what they usually ate…then they must eat very well indeed. I suppose that was how it was for a lady of such a great house as this. “Now that I think about it, Mr. Takumi. Were you not trying to ask me something before dinner…?” “Ah, so you could tell…” When he was talking about Gifts, the word ‘magic’ popped up, and I had been wondering about it ever since. In my world, magic was just something from stories, and didn’t actually exist. Well, there were metaphors about how technology was like magic. But Sebastian and Ms. Claire had been talking about magic and magic energy. And I couldn’t say that the idea of magic didn’t appeal to me. While I didn’t know a lot about it, magic was often used in cartoons, comics and novels. Even though I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to use it, if magic really did exist here, then it was only normal for me to want to know more about it. “Um… You said something about magic earlier. Is there really magic in this world?” Ms. Claire and Sebastian raised their voices in astonishment. Ms. Lyra and Ms. Gelda managed to keep silent, but their faces expressed the same shock as they looked at me. So magic was normal in this world. And they could not imagine a world without it. “Wuff!” Perhaps because the conversation had nothing to do with her, Leo was curled up on the floor and relaxing in the satisfaction of having eaten so many sausages. While she was curled up, she was so big that it looked like a giant silver, fluffy ball was lying right next to me. “…Do you really not have any magic in your world, Mr. Takumi?” Anyone could use magic… Perhaps I could use it too then. I had wanted to use magic ever since I was a child. And so the thought made me very excited. Ah, but first, I had to listen to his explanation. It was possible that there were downsides to using it. In the stories, you sometimes had to make a contract with someone in order to gain such powers. And there were other stories with various consequences. And so I turned to Sebastian, who looked like he could not wait to tell me about it in detail. …He clearly liked explaining things to people. He had looked quite happy when talking about Gifts earlier, and just seemed more livelier in general. He almost looked more youthful. I started to think of nicknames for him like Old Explainer Man, but did not say it, because that would be very rude. “Uh…please tell me about magic in detail.” “Sebastian. Please explain it to Mr. Takumi.” “Yes, certainly. Ah, there really is something nice about being able to explain things.” I knew it! Sebastian smiled broadly with satisfaction and then began to explain. “What is magic? To put it simply, it is the controlling of magic energy that exists in your body. This energy resides in all living creatures. In fact, it is said that one cannot survive if they lose that energy.” “You can’t live without magic energy?” Was it like moisture? Everyone knew that humans couldn’t live without water. Was it something similar to that? “Yes. There are records of people who have died after using magic until they had no energy left. Of course, such experiments are not conducted today.” “…I see.” So they had actually put it to the test.. It seemed very inhumane to conduct lethal experiments, but I doubted they had understood the danger at the time. Perhaps it was because someone died that they stopped experimenting with it altogether.

CH 14

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