The Last Magic Chapter 15

# Chapter 15: Ayano

My encounter with Sakurako-senpai happened some time after I had entered university.

Having come from the countryside, I was completely homesick due to the unfamiliar life of living alone.

Though I had joined the Mystery Research Club through my mother's connections, sorcerers are fundamentally individualistic creatures who don't engage in casual relationships. Simply put, you can't become friends with them.

I would attend meetings somewhat halfheartedly, but the conversations were always probing and suspicious, making me feel uncomfortable and unable to stay for long. That said, being shy, I couldn't make friends in my classes either, leaving me in a completely isolated state.

That might be why I fell for the recruitment tactics of other clubs that were being conducted in front of the school gate.

"Hey, you're cute. You're a first-year, right? How about joining our club?"

I was approached and instinctively stopped.

I knew I should have ignored such recruitment, but being mentally weakened, I made the mistake of listening to their pitch.

The more I listened, the more I felt guilty about taking up their time, making it increasingly difficult to refuse their invitation. Moreover, they were upperclassmen, and they quickly became familiar with me, gradually becoming more aggressive, creating an atmosphere where I felt I had to join.

"Come on, you've come this far, so you'll join, right? It'd be a lie if you didn't join now, wouldn't it?"

Eventually, it became almost like intimidation, and before I knew it, I was surrounded by members of that club.

"Oh, what a cute girl." "We absolutely have to get her to join." "Hey, want to hang out with us after this?" they said one after another.

—It's over—

I genuinely thought that these people would mess me up and my life would end here. Maybe I should have shouted and resisted, but these people were just conducting recruitment activities and weren't committing any crimes.

Besides, they were skilled at steering the conversation and were experienced at it, and part of me was thinking, "Maybe it's okay to go along with them."

"Well, then..."

Just as I was about to say that, a voice called out.

"Ayano-san, so this is where you were."

Looking over, I saw Nagumo-senpai from the same club standing nearby.

Of course I knew her since she stood out particularly in the Mystery Research Club, but I had never spoken to her at all. Even within that club, she maintained her own pace and focused on magical training without breaking her concentration, radiating an aura that made her the most difficult person to approach.

"Sorry to interrupt your conversation, but she's a new member of the Mystery Research Club. I'll be taking her with me, okay?"

Speaking as majestically as a queen, Nagumo-senpai gently took my hand and led me away from that place.

The person who had initially recruited me tried to persist, saying,

"Hey, come on, that's not fair, is it?"

But 

"Hey, cut it out. I heard the Mystery Research Club is a dangerous place. And that's Nagumo-san, right? I heard from an upperclassman that she has connections with some scary people. Do you want to risk not being able to graduate from university?"

he was held back by someone else

(Eh? Not being able to graduate from university? Was this person that dangerous?)

When I instinctively looked at Nagumo-senpai's face, she said,

"Unfortunately, I don't have that much power. Let's go quickly before those people change their minds,"

with a troubled yet embarrassed expression that was very cute. When someone who's always cool shows you such a face, it makes your heart skip a beat.

Having my heart stolen in an instant, I asked like an uncool protagonist from a shoujo manga,

"Why did you help someone like me?"

I blurted out.  

"Because if you were my friend, I think I would have helped you in the same way."

Senpai looked a little lonely.

When we faced each other in the empty club room, Nagumo-senpai said to me,

"Ayano-san, you have something ordinary about you despite being a sorcerer, so I was a little worried that you might get caught by a club like that. Those people don't have a very good reputation. But you know, in the end, whatever happens is your own responsibility, so you have to properly refuse. If you're aiming to become a sorcerer, you need a strong will, don't you?"

Since I thought no one in the Mystery Research Club was paying attention to me, I became completely happy at those words.

The person who seemed to have the least interest in anyone had been watching over me.

From then on, I began calling Nagumo-senpai "Sakurako-senpai" and became completely attached to her. Sakurako-senpai also doted on me, and we gradually became closer.

---

Sakurako-senpai could perform magic and had an eye-catching appearance, so she had been expected to do great things since her first year. When I entered university, she seemed busy with various job offers and requests for help from alumni.

Such a promising sorcerer as Sakurako-senpai apparently disliked relationships between sorcerers. I say "apparently" because I gradually came to understand this after being around Sakurako-senpai.

In reality, senpai wanted to learn methods for increasing magical power from the club members and alumni, but she was disappointed that there was less useful information than expected.

I could understand that. The first thing that aspiring sorcerers learn when they become university students is the reality that it's important for sorcerers to find well-paying patrons like businessmen or politicians. It's not much different from hostesses or hosts.

Sakurako-senpai seemed to handle such relationships skillfully, but in her heart, she apparently wanted to focus on magical training and was looking for a different path.

That said, I was surprised when she suddenly announced that she would "start posting videos." Well, to be precise, Tanaka-senpai was the first to start posting videos (he was also a bit eccentric), and Sakurako-senpai saw Tanaka-senpai's videos and decided she wanted to do it too.

Because of this, Tanaka-senpai was scolded by various people, saying, "It's your fault that even Nagumo has gone astray." Nagumo-senpai herself wasn't criticized much, so I thought it was a bit unfair.

When starting videos, Sakurako-senpai said to me,

"I'd like Ayano to help me too,"

so I reflexively replied,

"Yes, I understand!"

Like Pavlov's dog. I couldn't say no to a senpai I respected.

Sakurako-senpai said she started posting videos to spread the amazingness of magic to the world and because she could earn a decent amount of money while having the freedom to use her time as she pleased. If you become a traditional sorcerer, you're forced to live a life bound by personal relationships and surprisingly have little freedom. Especially if you have good looks and skills.

Well, I understood those circumstances to some extent, but I ended up helping senpai. Ended up—yes, I ended up doing it. I had no idea this would change my life and really accepted it with a light heart.

Senpai had already gathered people to cooperate with her, asking professional video creators to handle the filming and renting a proper studio. The amount of money involved was different from ordinary YouTubers.

This was apparently a network that senpai had built up while helping alumni. Her shrewdness in this regard was impressive. What I helped with was support as a fellow woman and fellow sorcerer—schedule management, SNS management, and so on. It was almost like being a manager.

"Ayano seems good at that sort of thing."

When senpai smiled at me like that, I didn't feel bad about it. Besides, I was paid much better money than I would have earned from a regular part-time job.

Moreover, as senpai's income increased, that money kept growing, and by the time senpai graduated, the salary had become better than getting a regular job. Since I had finished my university credits by my third year, I was almost exclusively helping with senpai's work during my fourth year.

"I'd be happy if Ayano could continue helping me after graduation,"

she said, and I got excited and didn't do job hunting. I don't regret it. I thought it would be fine to make supporting someone my job. Maybe I really wasn't suited to be a sorcerer after all.

Besides, when senpai started appearing on TV and such, her income became incredible. During my time as a student, we created a personal agency for tax purposes and incorporated it. Senpai was the president, and I was an executive. A small company with just the two of us. But somehow, that made me very happy.

Sometimes I would appear in videos and on SNS as an assistant, and each time there would be a commotion with comments like "Who's that girl?" or "I might prefer her!" Of course, I didn't feel bad about it, but I didn't get carried away either.

Cuteness is also a type of magic. On SNS, you can be celebrated for a moment just by being a little cute, but the entertainment industry is full of monster-like [cuteness]. People who are cute like supernatural beings. I don't have the confidence to fight against people like that. I think it's possible to fight by creating your own unique atmosphere—by staging it—like Sakurako-senpai does.

---

Both when she was at university and after graduation, Sakurako-senpai used as much time as possible for magic.

No matter how busy she was, she would go to bed at 9 PM and wake up at 5 AM. Her diet consisted only of vegetables and fruits. Except for absolutely necessary time like university classes and video filming, she devoted all her time to magical training. From the perspective of modern female university students, she was like a hermit. I couldn't imitate her.

For example, one of the training exercises Sakurako-senpai often performed was zazen meditation, which was quite difficult—most sorcerers can't last even an hour. Even ordinary people seem to have a limit of about 30 minutes for zazen, and continuing this while channeling magical power is difficult. I can barely manage an hour.

But Sakurako-senpai could continue zazen for as long as time permitted. Probably enough to be recognized as a record if she applied to Guinness.

I suggested making videos of such training scenes too.

"I think it's better not to show this kind of behind-the-scenes content as a sorcerer,"

Sakurako-senpai showed reluctance, but I said,

"No, we should show these aspects too. Demonstrating that you have to work this hard to perform magic also connects to the amazingness of sorcerers. Besides, showing behind-the-scenes content is trendy these days,"

and pushed through.

So we did a live video of her doing zazen, but because of its extreme length, people wrote comments like "Isn't she sleeping?" and "Did you stop the video?" Of course, we weren't doing any of that, so to prove we weren't faking it, I unnecessarily appeared in the background waving my hand.

Still, since such time continued for over four hours, the video was naturally unpopular. It was commented on as "looks like she's dead," "a robot with its switch turned off," and "maybe it's a mannequin?" On top of that, people found it amusing and it was even made into internet articles like "Was Nagumo Sakurako actually a robot?"

However, it received praise from sorcerers around the world.

"There's no sorcerer who can dive so deeply into the inner world at such a young age."

Ultimately speaking, magic is the technique of manifesting one's inner world—one's spirit—into the outer world. Continuously facing oneself is the most effective training for magic. Therefore, zazen meditation that allows you to dive into your inner world is said to be effective, and being able to continue it for a long time is also proof of strong magical power. Generally, magical power tends to strengthen in proportion to age, but it's rare for someone of Sakurako-senpai's youth to have such strong magical power. She has reached a level that's 10 years ahead of ordinary sorcerers.

However, no matter how well-versed in magic one becomes, that time never exceeds 10 seconds. One theory suggests there's a limit to the time one can connect the inner and outer worlds, but whether that's true or not is unknown. There's no way to prove it.

Sustaining magic for 10 seconds isn't that difficult, so any sorcerer can quickly learn to do it. The problem is the output. The reason sorcerers often show fire or water in their magic is because those are easy to imagine, but conversely, things that are hard to imagine are difficult. For example, you can close wounds and heal cuts, but you can't cure a cold. That's because you don't know what a cold is, so there's no way to cure it. You might be able to suppress throat pain, coughing, or fever, but that's only for ten seconds, so it's definitely better to go to a doctor.

Of course, if you have a concrete image of how to cure a cold and the strong magical power to do it in 10 seconds, it might be possible to completely cure it. But learning such magic takes a tremendous amount of time, and you'd need to create new incantations yourself.

To begin with, chanting incantations and creating incantations require different talents. It's similar to how the talent for singing songs and the talent for writing lyrics are different. To make people listen to long incantations without getting bored, you might need to add melodies, so composition might be necessary too.

That's why creating new magic is quite difficult. The magic we use now was created by great sorcerers of the past. In that sense, it might be similar to classical music after all. Just as Beethoven and Mozart's music is still loved today.

And the magic recorded at the end of magic books is ancient, so old that we don't even know when it was created. All sorcerers are aiming for that magic... no, perhaps more people deliberately choose not to aim for it. I don't think I want to become strong enough to use it either. That magic is like Pandora's box. You lose everything in exchange for fulfilling one small hope.

Sakurako-senpai has been working hard because she wants to fulfill that small hope.

I... of course I support her, but I also felt a faint jealousy.

Because I too wanted to have the passion to hold such desire as a sorcerer. And because I wanted to be cherished by Sakurako-senpai in that way.

But without a target, that jealousy had nowhere to go.

That's why I made videos of the training scenes too. At least to let people know what kind of efforts senpai had accumulated.