“No matter how much time pa.s.s you never change. Your face still looks like a child"s.”

            The cue that made me notice the abnormality was truly something trivial. It was when I went to shop at the market for Emma who said she wanted to eat some fruit. The proprietress of the street stall said that sentence while staring at my face. When I bent my head and asked, “… Is that so?” she strongly nodded her head several times, “Yeah, it is.” It was a stand I frequently visited. Before I knew it, I realized I"ve been going there for so long that they now called me a regular. At first, they acted quite reservedly in front of me as they could see from a glance I was a n.o.ble, but after meeting me so many times they grew used to it. At that time when things were still awkward, I showed them a smile. Now, I was acquainted with most of the shopkeepers and got along with them to the extent of exchanging a word or two even if I wasn"t here on an errand.

            When these words that didn"t contain any malice dropped among my peaceful ordinary days, my eyes widened in shock.

            “You"ve the same face as years ago,” said the lady shopkeeper while laughing. Poking my cheek with her finger, she said my face was too child-like. Then she teased me, With such a youthful appearance, isn"t it hard on your wife? A woman always wants to stay young forever, yet it"s her husband that looks younger.

“Well, your wife is also a pretty cute person, but you don"t lose to her!”

            The words oozing out of her laughing voice echoed in the depth of my ears. Then, my whole body greatly shook once. Even though it was the same frivolous talk as usual. Was it my imagination that something sounded different?

“… Hey, what"s wrong so suddenly? Your complexion looks bad.”

            The shopkeeper who was staring at my face frowned in anxiety. I averted my head to evade her gaze, but only my voice was pretending to be calm. I pressed down on my chest, trying to suppress my panic pulse, and I desperately made a smile. I don"t remember what I said and what the shopkeeper answered. Nevertheless, I must have said some parting words before I left that place. To support my staggering body, I cautiously took one step after the other, stepping firmly on the ground. But eventually, I could no longer stand it and broke into a run. I got on the carriage that was waiting for me near the market place and kept inhaling deep breaths again and again while listening to the sound of my heart beating louder and louder. The words “No matter how much time pa.s.s you never change” continued to repeat on a loop inside my mind.

“… Such an absurd thing cannot be…”

            When I tried to persuade myself, my whispering voice quivered helplessly. The tips of my fingers had lost their color and had grown numb with cold despite the fact we weren"t in winter. I sunk on my seat and curved my back, holding my body with my arms. It felt I would fall apart if I didn"t do that. I heard the coachman ask if it was alright to depart now, but I couldn"t answer him.

            Memories of my childhood revived inside my head. Yeah. Memories of the day father casted that unknown spell on me. Of the spell and symbols used to invoke the sorcery that filled to the brim that firmly locked room. Even till now some of them were still seared into my eyes. Even if I tried to forget that I couldn"t. Since what happened between father and me was annoying, I wanted to forget the whole incident as quickly as possible. Yet, I never could.

            Therefore, these past few years… I spent them trying to determine what the h.e.l.l was the sorcery father tried to cast. Emma was quite anxious seeing me so immerged in my research. Bringing back with me stacks of books upon stacks of books from the library, I secluded myself in my room and my complexion wasn"t that great. The fact she still didn"t say anything to try to stop me was because she worried about me. It"s surely something I shouldn"t say myself, but I must have looked very bloodcurdling.  Each pa.s.sing day I tried to clarified it, father"s magic square…. a.s.sailed by an ominous presentiment, I s.h.i.+vered.

            Still I could have some peace of mind because I was convinced father"s spell had failed.

            Not the slightest change could be seen on my body that was supposed to have received father"s magic. I had thought this was the exact proof it had failed. Of course, after the spell was casted on me at first, I couldn"t move and strange patterns appeared on my skin. But afterwards, this never happened again. On the contrary, I wasn"t sick even once. I had been the very picture of health itself.

            … … But these words that were said to me at the market… shattered my confidence. Was it successful?...... That doubt dominated all my thoughts. My appearance looked younger than I actually was. My height that should have shot higher remained low. Appearance and height were hereditary, and when I thought of my parents and grand-parents, it seemed I was the only one different. If you think about it calmly, in this body of mine that received father"s spell, a transformation had certainly taken place. A transformation where nothing would change. Thinking about it, for a magician as great as father, weren"t the chances of success higher? In that case, I…

“…b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l. Oh, my G.o.d, how could you, how could you do such a thing…”

            I desperately suppressed the urge to shout. I frankly swallowed down the words I wanted to spat. The lump of words that couldn"t come out seemed to block my throat like a ma.s.s of plomb and it hurt. While my teeth clattered and my lips quivered, I strongly closed my eyes. Then I tried to force myself to recall father"s magic square. 

            The sorcery father had tried to cast at that time was……,  the magic of perpetual youth and eternal life, the so called “immortality spell”.

            It wasn"t so long ago that I got clear evidence of this. When I was helping a famous magician with his research, I happened to see the books collection kept by the country. In there were recorded magics remaining incomplete due to their complexity and a forbidden art that shouldn"t be researched. In that confidential collection, a part of a spell that no ordinary people could hope to come across was recorded. Since it was incomplete, only one part of it was written down. But I knew that spell and these symbols.

            Father"s magic square was etched in my mind. It was the same spell as the one written there.

            I did my own research for several years and using both the remaining books in the study used by father and the symbols written in the confidential collection, I concluded that he was undoubtedly about to complete the spell related to “immortality.” The sorcery of eternal life was said to be an empty theory. And the spell of perennial youth was treated as a technically achievable but forbidden art. By combining these two spells, he completed a sorcery said to be impossible. Then, I finally reached the conclusion he had used his son as his experimental subject.

             At first when I realized this, I laughed scornfully. That he might have been a matchless magician, yet he was an utter fool. At that time, I had enough composure to sneer in ridicule. …… I mocked him because he wanted to finish his research so badly he even used his own son as a guinea pig, yet it failed. I had even been able to laugh loudly but now...

“Father, you…”

            …really didn"t love me at all, my whispering voice squeezed out these words but they vanished under the sound of the carriage that had started to move.

*

“Welcome back.”

            When I came back to the estate, Emma welcomed me with a smile. Like usual, the corner of her kind eyes was gently narrowed. Her lips were drawn in a soft arc. Her cute noise was small but not too short. I stared fixedly at her face and slowly breathed out. Her ash brown eyes were reflecting my face. That alone was enough to make me feel relieved. Naturally, her appearance hadn"t changed. When I kissed her cheek, she laughed and said it tickled.

            When I was living with father, the manor felt quite gloomy, but since she came, the atmosphere had completely changed. For the sake of that young and lonely girl, the servants started to decorate the interior with flowers. Emma noticed it and as she grew up she began to chose the flowers herself and fuss over the vases" arrangement. It might only be a trivial change, but unexpectedly the influence on the whole was quite consequent. Just because the estate was decorated by flowers it became brighter and livelier. Maybe, her existence itself was part of the reason everything brightened. Then, since Emma and I got married, another small change happened. Laugher would echo here and there inside the mansion. Even the employees who usually engaged in their duties silently happily chatted with Emma. Our relations.h.i.+ps that felt somewhat strained before I went to the academy were mended without me realizing it. Even though we got married, it"s not like we did something special. We didn"t change the arrangement of the house and didn"t buy new furniture either. Yet, the wind blowing through the corridors felt fresh and invigorating. The people living in a place affect the building itself. I understood that such a thing probably wasn"t true, yet it was strange because it did seem so.

“Rya? What happened?”

            I didn"t know if I managed to keep up the appearances well but I tried to act like the usual me. I told her “I"m home,” had a meal with her, narrated today"s events, and laughed from time to time. When the conversation came to a halt we each went to take a bath. Then we once again chatted pleasantly for a while before entering our bedroom. Everything unfolded like usual.

“Rya?”

            Emma was sitting on the bed. She looked up with worry as I stood unmoving at the entrance of the room. When she came to the estate, I remember I had a bigger figure and was the taller one. It was particularly visible as she was considerably smaller than other children her age, the difference in our stature was very apparent. “Rya?” Step by step I closed the distance between her who was tilting her head with a puzzled expression, then I touched her cheek. Remaining sitting, she looked up at me. Her sparkling eyes that seemed to have captured the faint light inside the room were beautiful.

“You"ve become a lot taller compared to the past.”

            She was slightly tall now. So inevitably, the occasions where she had to look up at me had lessened. But, she wasn"t especially tall. On the contrary, her stature was smaller than average. And I was even smaller than this average woman. Until now I had laughed about it. Even if I was teased, we had joked and said one day I would grow up.

“Yeah, and so? ……What is it? Mentioning this after all this time.”

            She giggled and grasped my arm. She clasped my hands in hers. Feeling Emma"s warmth transmitted through her palms, I heaved a little sigh. Usually, just by joining hands with her, my unease would fly off somewhere…… That"s what should always happen but…

“Emma, you see, I want a family.”

            Her fingertips I was squeezing slightly twitched. Then, with her eyes opened wide due to the sudden realization, Emma answered back, “Yes” and made a very happy expression. “I"ve always known that.” Indeed, we had made an oath. To make a lively family, with lots of kids. It might be because we had both lost our families. We wanted to built a family, raise kids, live happily. Even though we had vowed to create such a natural and ba.n.a.l future, I felt a strong longing as if I was starving for something. If happiness could take a shape, then surely, I dare say it would take the form of these very days I spent together with her. Now matter how many years will pa.s.s thereafter, these days will never fade in my memory. Even these trifling events that seemed to be something that would eventually be forgotten, felt so dear to me.  

            … … That"s why, I couldn"t let go of these hands I was grasping tightly.

“Rya. I"m sure we"ll make a wonderful family.”

           As she laughed bashfully, I embraced her. I didn"t want her to sense that my heart was behaving strangely, but I couldn"t help but hugging her. “Why are you so tense?” Emma whispered in my ear. Her gentle voice was laughing a little. It was the voice that always supported me. Yet now, hearing it made my heart shake helplessly and it seemed my legs would crumble at any time. With my trembling fingers I gently caressed her shoulder. I didn"t want her to notice my uneasiness. But on the other hand, I was thinking of honestly telling her everything if she had.

“You"re quite tired, aren"t you?”

            I couldn"t say anything back to her kind voice that cared for and sympathized with me. The coward I was simply swallowed his breath and strongly closed his eyes. If I speak now, I"ll surely end up crying. I probably understood. That almost certainly, G.o.d won"t bless us with children. If the reason humans gave birth to children was to perpetuate their descendance. If there is a meaning in not letting your blood run out, in having someone succeeding and in leaving something behind. Then, I should not need these.

            But, if my deduction is correct, my blood won"t run out. I, won"t die. That"s probably what it meant, to be immortal.

            “… You should sleep now.” As I heard my wife say so, we entered the bed. With our hands still connected, we stared in each other"s gaze without saying anything for a while. We knew we were both looking for the right words. Seeing me in a different state than usual, she was perplexed, but in the ended she seemed to have decided to watch over me. Was it the so-called motherly instinct? In our childhood, I had been like her father, her older brother or maybe an elder in life. But along with our growth, our mental ages seemed to have been reversed. Maybe, she was thinking that if it"s me, then no matter what happened I would be alright. Because actually, that"s how it had been up till now. For most things.

            If it had been the usual, I would have also thought like her. … … That I"ll surely be alright. I could say without any conceit that the fact was I had the social position, the a.s.sets and talents to believe such. But problems exceeding our imagination, problems that couldn"t be solved seemed to exist in this world. One of them might be my own existence. Father"s magic square had disappeared long ago, the spell carved in my body had been removed from my flesh. In other words, I couldn"t draw “the correct magic square” written by father. That"s why there was no method to break this magic. I didn"t know any spell that could counter it. Besides, there weren"t any magician who could break father"s magic. Meaning that, by irony of fate, this magic had been completed by father"s death. Due to his death, the key to undo this spell was perpetually buried in the dark. In short, the spell has become eternal. Wasn"t it what father had been aiming for all this time?

            An eternal life. A lifespan that would never end.

“Even if it"s a lullaby, do you want me to sing something?”

            Did she get tired of waiting for me who seemed to be determined not to sleep, but she asked me that question with a quiet voice. I bet she intended to say it as a joke. But when I nodded, Emma made a slightly surprised expression. For the span of a few seconds only, a wry smiled floated on her lips, then she wrapped her arms around my back and started to sing. It was a melody I wasn"t very familiar with. Although she had sung it several times, it was a bit different from the lullabies that had been pa.s.sed down in this country since the olden times. But because it felt nostalgic, it was a bit strange. Emma had reached this place after struggling for a long time, coming from a far away place. But I had never asked her in detail about her early days. Maybe she had come from a place even farther away that I imagined. Shall I ask her when I wake up tomorrow? But I could also do it now, was what I was thinking when I realized her singing has stopped, and I opened my eyes. She was at a distance close enough for the tip of our noses to touch, deep asleep. I felt something heartrending seeing her gentle face. My exhaled breath trembled then disappeared. 

Will she one day leave me behind and die? Then will I be the only person remaining, all by myself?

            I"ll never be able to endure it. Such a thing, is absolutely impossible. 

Nocta"s thoughts:

Not much to say.

Ema changed to Emma.

Next chapter is quite long so I might not make it on time. I"m feeling lazy lately ^^