Chapter 30: Reincarnation

Have you ever wished you could fly?

Every time I looked up at the blue sky, at the white clouds floating there, at the birds flying free, I thought so.

How wonderful it would be to fly like that.
I can’t clearly remember the time before I learned to speak, but I think I already felt that way.

With hardly any food, day after day we picked up twigs and nuts in the forest, cowering in fear of wild beasts, living a life of nothing but watching our siblings die.

That doesn’t mean I was dissatisfied with it.
That was my whole world, and I never even imagined any other way to live.

Vaguely… I think I carried a kind of resignation that I would die someday without ever knowing what lay beyond that sky.

What blew that away so easily was a great, great dragon that descended from the sky.

When we first met I was simply terrified; from the bottom of my heart I thought, this is where I die.

But—

「Ah, it’s all right, little lady. It’s okay—despite how I look, I’m a good dragon.」

I didn’t understand his words, but his tone was so gentle, and even if the meanings didn’t reach me, what he meant came through clearly.

So—

When my father chose a child to make an offering to him as he slept at the forest’s edge, I was the first to insist that I would go.

If I went to that red dragon who flew in the sky, maybe something would change.
With that faint hope in my heart.

In reality, it wasn’t just that something changed.

The dragon—no, Sensei—was dozens, hundreds of times more eccentric than I’d imagined, and everything he said lay far outside anything I could conceive of.

To begin with, we didn’t even know something like language existed.

Names. A house made of wood. Food cooked with fire. Vessels shaped from earth. Salt. Spoons. Concepts. The categories of plants and animals. Energy. Writing. Combs. Baths.

And magic.

Everything Sensei brought into being was something we had never seen or heard of, and it was only natural that the child I was would admire him… and that those feelings would turn into love.

Watching him from his side, I came to realize he was, in many ways, a very ordinary person.

He loved peace, was poor at fighting, was gentle, but got angry when he needed to;
and he was very timid—and just a little indecisive.

He knew so much it felt like there was nothing he didn’t know, and though he was a dragon stronger than anyone, inside he was an ordinary man.

That almost felt strange in itself, but it made him feel more familiar than a dragon who was simply amazing at everything, and I only came to love Sensei more and more.

…Well, getting Jack Frost to help me force his confession might have been a bit overboard, even I think so, but no one besides Nina-san caught on, so please chalk it up to youthful indiscretion and forgive me.

I don’t know how others will judge me.
I bore no children, never knew a woman’s joy, and in the end my life ended after being held just once by the person I loved—there are surely those who would call that a wasted life.

For example, Nina-san.
She’s the sort who states such things quite plainly.

But I don’t think so.
A life at Sensei’s side was truly, truly happiness itself.

I have not a single shred of regret; I don’t for a moment think I should have lived differently. If I could do it over ten times, I would make the same choices all ten.

Magic is made of names.
Sensei said that many times.

Of course, he was probably only talking about the principles of magic.
But to me, it wasn’t just that.

The very first thing he gave me—
that was, truly, the greatest magic of all.

As a teacher, as a father, as a brother, and as a husband—
Sensei kept pouring overflowing love—Ai—into me.

So the last spell I will use is myself.
He taught me that I could do that, too.

So—so—

no matter if it takes tens, hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of years—

I will find my way back to Ai—to love.

Please wait for me, Ryoji-san—