Chapter 12: Brownie Hood

「What’s this?」
「…A spirit, maybe?」

Staring at the water Rin had set to float, Mel knit her brows and answered without much confidence.

「And this?」
「I think it’s not a spirit…」

When I showed her a flame I’d moved onto a twig, the Provato Centaur girl shook her head.

「Then what about this?」
「Uuugh, I’m starting to not know anymore—」

Shown the water filling a cup, Mel finally threw in the towel.

What magic she feels is spirit‑derived and what she thinks is not—
We tried various tests, but the results were not encouraging.

It’s not as if she has a basis for it either. It’s just intuition.

「I’m starting to feel like you’re just saying things at random…」

Rin murmured wearily. Understandably so.
Ara’s shadow spear isn’t spirit magic, but the water sword Rin made is. So I made a sword of fire and that wasn’t spirit magic; stirring up wind was, and making a stone heavy wasn’t.

I was starting to feel like we were doing some bizarre quiz.

Nina is a genius who explains badly, but she at least gives explanations—even if they’re non‑explanations like, “You can tell by looking,” or, “Somehow, by feel.” In Nina’s view, it’s we who are strange for not understanding.

But with Mel, she doesn’t even know why she herself can tell. Is she judging by appearance, does she have some sense we lack, or is it a kind of magic? We don’t even know that.

Naturally, she couldn’t answer any of Rin’s repeated “Why?”s, and the more we went back and forth, the more it just wore us both down.

「Let’s take a short break…」
「Yeah.」

While we were trading our barren arguments, Yuuka and Ara had gone back to their sparring, and Inis was watching Chryse. Or, to put it more precisely, Inis quickly sensed our exchange would come to nothing, volunteered to babysit, and ducked out first.

「Thanks, Inis.」

That said, minding a child isn’t exactly easy. Especially Chryse—she’s a child you literally can’t predict—and I’m grateful to have someone keeping an eye on her.

「Here.」

Grinning impishly, Inis gave Chryse a light pat on the back.

「Good job, Daddy.」

The words Chryse uttered with an innocent smile hit me like a bullet to the heart.

「C‑could you say that again?」
「Good job, Daddy.」

Daddy.
That name, as commonplace as it must be in this world, carried terrifying destructive power.

「…Did you teach her that, Inis?」

Neither I nor Nina has ever called ourselves that. Which made it easy to imagine the grinning girl before me was to blame.

「There’s no way she should be calling you “Sensei.”」
「Hmm…」

To be honest, I think of everyone in Hiiro as my children. Of course, since I directly tend and raise Chryse, she’s special even among them, but though the amount of love differs, the quality is the same. Everyone else has kept calling me Sensei, so it wouldn’t feel strange to have Chryse call me that too.

It wouldn’t, but…

「Could you call me Daddy one more time?」
「Daddy.」

Her straightforward echo made me flush with an indescribable embarrassment. But it was by no means unpleasant.

「I want water.」

Chryse took the cup on the desk in both hands and raised it toward her mouth.

「Whoa there, that’s water Rin just made. Rin, the pitcher…」

—Would you get it? I was about to say that when I froze. Something had just flashed through my head.
It felt like some answer had brushed my palm and then slipped through my fingers.

「What’s wrong, Sensei?」

Tilting her head, Rin casually dumped the cup’s water, refilled it from the pitcher, and handed it to Chryse.
The discarded water simply vanished like it evaporated, leaving not even a wet mark behind.

As a rule, magical effects don’t last. Water conjured by magic is the same—if you carelessly drink it to wet your throat, you’ll suffer for it later. That’s why I stopped Chryse.

Except for rare cases like my or Rin’s transformation magic, once the effect ends it disappears as if it had never been. Everyone living in this town knows this fundamental principle of magic.

But what if that’s wrong?

What if it disappears not because it’s magic, but…

「Rin. Can you make water one more time?」
「Eh, okay. …Water.」

I set the cup Chryse had finished on the desk, and Rin filled it with magically produced water.

「Say: “This cup is a cup for holding this water.”」
「“This cup is a cup for holding this water”… What do you mean?」

Rin frowned in puzzlement but repeated my words exactly as told.

「Go away.」

At my command, the water vanished on the spot—
cup and all.

「Ah, I see. You gave the cup to Water-san, didn’t you—」

As Rin and Inis stared wide‑eyed, Mel said it in her easygoing voice.

「So you’d noticed after all, Mel.」

With a sigh building, I looked at the Provato Centaur girl.
Then I asked Rin to call water out one more time…

「This is a spirit too.」

I held up the water in the cup that had appeared and said so.

Things gifted to a spirit—limited to items small enough to be worn—become part of that spirit and start popping in and out along with it. Mel discovered that rule a few years ago.

I call this Brownie Hood. It’s based on a tale from Britain that a fairy called a Brownie, when given a hooded garment, makes it its own and disappears.

「I’ve been saying that from the start—!」

She puffed out her cheeks in a childish protest.
And she was absolutely right.

I’d been taking her “it is a spirit / it isn’t a spirit” to mean “is it using a spirit’s power or not.”

But thinking about it, Mel had never said that even once.
Pointing at a lump of water floating in the air, she’d said, “That’s a spirit.”

「A will‑bearing natural phenomenon cut out by magic and made to act like a living thing—that’s what I thought a spirit was, and it’s what I taught you. But that alone wasn’t enough.」

Even this, which looks like nothing but water with no will of its own, was a bona fide spirit.

…No. Rin said it before: everything in this world has a will. Even without manifesting as a spirit, a river’s flow behaves unpredictably. If so, then even the water in this cup has a will.
It just lacks the function to communicate it.

「But you said the flame you make isn’t a spirit and—ah.」

Before I could answer, Rin seemed to arrive at it on her own.

「Right…! Flame. Hey, Mel—Is this a spirit?」

Mel gave a little nod to the flame Rin conjured in her palm. It’s absurdly simple. The flame I produce is a real fire roaring inside me. It wasn’t a spirit’s flame. Which only made things more confusing; if I hadn’t been here, they’d probably have realized it sooner…

「…Hey, that—」

Inis, who had been watching the whole exchange, suddenly spoke up with a serious look.

「Do you think we could use this somehow to do something like enchantment?」
「What do you mean—?」

Maybe she didn’t follow what Inis meant; Mel tilted her head.

「That’s it!」

The strength of enchantment is that it can be fully activated with a single word.
But I know one magic‑user who can do something similar with other magic.

「Orders, Mel. If we could teach these spirits to learn the Orders…」

At my words Mel started, then swallowed hard.

「So that means…」
「Yeah.」

Judging that I’d gotten her understanding, I gave a little nod.

「What do you mean…?」

I hadn’t, after all.