Chapter 29: Transformation

Sixty-nine years had passed since I met Ai.

Dalga and Ken too... everyone from the cave where Ai first lived had already passed away.

While their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren supported the village, only Ai remained alive.

「Thy name is old age, the flow of time, and death... Depart from within my body and be no more.」

After finishing the long, long incantation, Ai let out a breath and lay down on the bed.
It was a special make, felted from the wool of sheep I’d caught on another continent.
It probably wasn’t all that comfortable, but Ai had smiled and said it was worlds better than plain straw spread on the ground.

「Ai, are you okay? ...You don’t have to push yourself.」
「I’m fine. By now it’s basically part of my daily routine.」

Ai said it slowly, in an unsteady voice.
The longevity spell, swollen longer and longer as we kept adding lines to it, now took about ten minutes to chant. Ai, it seemed, had recited it without fail every day even when I wasn’t around. Even though she could hardly stand anymore, she still kept up the habit.

I had thought the spell ineffective, but given that Ai alone had lived so long, perhaps it wasn’t entirely so.
Even so, it was no more than a comfort at best.

「Besides... either way, I probably don’t have much time left.」

I couldn’t answer her, and simply smoothed her bangs.

Nina had told me the same.
That Ai likely had only a few days left.

I couldn’t imagine a world without her.
Yet even as I thought that, there was no denying a resignation creeping through some corner of my heart.

For a human of this era, she had lived more than long enough.
Her age-ravaged body could no longer run the fields, no longer chatter brightly, and her ears had grown almost deaf.
To keep watching her like that was painful for me as well.

「Sensei.」

Ai gazed up at me.
The straight, single-minded way her black eyes fixed on me never changed.

「May I ask just one thing, at the end?」
「What is it? I’ll answer as many as you like.」

Don’t call it the last.
Holding down the pain threatening to tear my chest apart, I forced a smile.

「I... want to know your name, Sensei.」
「My name?」

Dragons of any kind do not herd, and even parent and child rarely live together.
Perhaps for that reason, they did not take names.
Of course, with their high intelligence, they also understand that having one’s name known is to have one’s soul seized.

It felt odd to name myself, so I asked Ai to call me “Sensei.” The title spread through the village, and only two people did not call me Sensei: Nina and Dalga.

「Didn’t I explain? Dragons don’t have names. So the “Sensei” you all call me is my name.」

At that, Ai shook her head.

「What I want to know is your... name as a person.」

Her words jolted my memory.

That’s right. I was once human.
Of course, it’s not that I had forgotten.
But since becoming a dragon, had about as much time passed as a human lifetime?
I had grown completely used to life as a dragon and hardly called my past to mind anymore.

「You... noticed?」

I had told no one that I used to be human.
It wasn’t that it would cause trouble if it were known; I just figured no one would believe me.

「I understand you completely, Sensei.」

Ai said that and smiled.
That might not be an exaggeration but the truth.
For some reason, even with her poor hearing, she never misheard my words.

「I... yes. I was human. Not a human of this world, but one who lived in a completely different world.」

Ai listened, nodding, without the slightest hint of doubt at my outlandish story.

「That world had no magic—no, I should say it had only one. And that one was... to be reborn into this world as a dragon.」
「Be... reborn...」

Ai mouthed my words as if savoring them.

「Ryoji. Ryoji Sekiguchi—that was my name when I was human.」

“This is how you write it,” I said, tracing the kanji in the air.

「...Ryoji...-san.」

The instant Ai murmured that, searing heat roared through my entire body.
Not when I soaked in heated water, not when I accidentally ignited the surrounding trees and got caught in the flames, not even when bathed in magma, had I ever felt heat like this.

It was the first time since being born a dragon that I ever felt something I could call “hot.”

「A... i...」

I forced out a voice.

「This... is this you?」
「Probably... I think so.」

Ai widened her eyes and stared at me.

I reached out a trembling arm and gently stroked Ai’s cheek.

Then I pulled her into a tight, tight embrace.

「Ah...」

Ai’s arms went around my back, and she breathed a small sound of wonder.

「I was happy.」

Ai whispered it at my ear.

「But...」

Strength steadily drained from her lips, her eyes, her fingertips.

「I...」

The rest made no sound; slowly, Ai’s mouth moved without a voice.
And then—hoo—she let the air leave her chest.


That became her final breath.





「...Is it over?」
「Yeah.」

After nodding to Nina’s quiet question, I suddenly realized something.

「How did you even know it was me?」

Even though my appearance had changed into something completely different.

「Nothing’s changed. Those golden eyes, that red head.」

Yet Nina said it as if nothing were out of the ordinary.

「And that pathetic look on your face, too.」
「Is it that pathetic...?」

I patted my own face. There were no hard scales, no long muzzle, no sharp horns—only a soft sensation.

「Well, if I had to say...」

Nina glanced up at me and said,

「I thought you’d be more of a child.」
「As a dragon, I suppose I am.」

Without a mirror I couldn’t be sure, but judging from my height, voice, and limbs, I now wore the body of a human of about twenty. I didn’t know a dragon’s lifespan, but it must still count as a very young age.

「...You’re less down than I expected.」
「No, I’m incredibly down.」

If not for Nina’s eyes on me, I’d break down crying right now.

But.

「Nina. Let’s build a magic school.」

I repeated the words I’d once said to her.

「...? We did build one.」

Ai truly was the best wife.
To the very end, she thought of me.

「An even bigger, even greater school.」

So I can still look ahead, believing in what she left me—what she meant to say.

「I’ll build a school so wonderful that everyone in this world will know it.」

Someday.

Someday—so that when she comes back.