Chapter 7: Admiration from the Past

「Onii-chan, what's that!? What is that!?」
「Come to think of it, this is your first time seeing it, isn’t it, Yuuki?」

At the sight of that majestic expanse of blue, Yuuki excitedly tugged and tugged on my horns.

「That’s the sea.」

I used to go to the sea often to catch fish, but I’d completely stopped these past few decades. I just couldn’t bring back enough to support our ballooning population. Marine resources are appealing, but for everyone except me the sea is far too distant.
Flying there takes less than an hour, but on foot it’s days for a round trip. And with our current techniques we can’t harvest that much anyway, so compared to hunting it’s terribly inefficient.

「There they are.」

Perhaps because almost no one has touched this place yet.
The seas of this world are crystal clear; even near the shore the bottom is visible. Seeing creatures swimming as if they were flying through that water, I gave my wings a flap.

「Ah, a dragon!」
「Hi there. Hello.」

When I landed on the rugged reef, a small mermaid popped her face above the water and cried out.

「Hello!」

Even with me still in dragon form, the mermaid showed no fear and returned my greeting.
In human terms she was a girl of about ten. Her long blue hair drifted on the waves as she gazed at me with shining, wide eyes.

「Is Utai around? If you tell her the dragon from Hiiro is here, she’ll know what that means.」
「I’ll go get her!」

Brimming with energy, the mermaid child said so, fluttered her waist fin, and dove into the sea.

「I brought her!」

No sooner had I thought that than she burst back out in an instant.

「It’s been a while, Sensei.」
「Long time no see, Utai.」

What followed behind her was a beautiful mermaid. She looked like she was in her late twenties, but she had to be at least five hundred years old. Beating her large waist fin like a pair of wings, she hauled herself up onto one of the reefs.

「You didn’t come here just to pay a visit… did you?」
「Sorry. But you know I can’t go into the sea, right?」

Utai sent me a slightly reproachful look, and I shrugged. I myself could enter the sea without issue, but the fish that live there—and the plankton they feed on—were another matter.

If a lump of heat like me went into the sea, the water would immediately start boiling and cause no small harm to them. It made it hard to interact with the merfolk who live in the ocean.

「I came to see if there might be anyone who could become our student.」

But the reverse wasn’t a problem. As Utai was doing now, mermaids can act on land as well. I suspected their ability to breathe underwater was a kind of magic. Or perhaps it was the other way around—that they could breathe in air by magic.

「A student? You mean that thing you called a magic school?」
「Yeah. I was hoping to find someone to study magic together with us.」

Mermaids are, so to speak, elves of the sea. They have no natural enemies in the water, and there’s a certain ease to their lifestyle. Unlike the Lycos, there’s no reason they couldn’t study because survival demands their time.

「…It won’t work, Sensei. There aren’t any such children.」
「Really? I figured with how well‑connected you are, you’d know someone who might be interested.」

Utai covered her face with both hands and shook her head as if frightened.

「Because your school is on land… in that forest, isn’t it?」
「Yeah. Not inside the forest, but nearby.」
「There can’t be any child who’d want to go to a place where you can’t even see the sea…」
「I want to go!」

Cutting off Utai’s words and raising her hand was the little mermaid girl who’d brought her over earlier.

「I wanna go I wanna go I wanna go! I wanna try it, Utai!」
「…Rin. Keep quiet for a moment.」
「Eeh, why!?」

Utai, exasperated, gave the vigorously hand‑waving girl that order.

「I wanna go, I wanna go, I wanna go! The land just sounds so fun!」
「…She’s a little unusual.」

Our eyes met, and Utai said that as if making an excuse.

「Uh… Rin?」
「Yep!」

When I called out to her, the girl—Rin—nodded with all the energy in the world.

「How many layers does your waist fin have now?」
「Umm—」

Pointing to the fin at her hips, Rin counted the markings engraved there.
Just as Utai, who is over five hundred, still looks youthful, you can’t judge a mermaid’s age by appearance alone. But their skirt‑like waist fins thicken and grow larger year by year like tree rings. Counting them gives you their exact age.
Compared to Utai’s waist fin—large and beautiful like the skirt of a wedding dress—Rin’s was small and cute. She was certainly young.

「Eight!」

But the smallness of that number was beyond what I’d imagined. It was exactly the age her appearance suggested.

「In that case… it might be difficult…」

She was simply too young.

「Eeh—」
「Eeh—」

Complaints rose from both in front of me and from on top of my head.

「Why not, Onii-chan?」
「Eight is too young.」
「I’m ten, and I’ve been going to school for four years.」

Yuuki’s unassailable logic made me groan.
It’s true, I’d set entry to my magic school at age six—modeled after elementary school. By middle‑school age they can already work, so we can’t rob the village of labor, and any younger than that is simply too early to teach reading, writing, and magic.
With that in mind, Rin might indeed be old enough.

「But Rin still can’t walk on land, can she?」

Mermaids can use their large waist fins to move on land like seals or sea lions. But that’s after they’re grown. Rin’s small waist fin didn’t look anywhere near able to support and move her weight yet.

「That’s not true!」

Declaring as much, Rin scrambled up onto the reef and flapped her waist fin. But it only smacked weakly against the ground, and her small body didn’t move at all.

「Uuugh…」

Frustrated, Rin smacked the reef with her tail fin, slapping away.

「If only you could transform like Onii-chan.」
「Transform?」
「Yeah. Like this.」

I set Yuuki down from atop my head and shifted into human form. Rin’s eyes flew wide and sparkled.

「Amazing, amazing! I wanna do that!」
「It’s hard.」

Honestly, I suspect I’m the only one who can manage this.
Becoming something other than yourself isn’t something most can easily picture.
In my case, I can recognize both my dragon form and my human form as myself.

But that’s because of the peculiar circumstance of remembering my previous life.
At the very least, no other magician besides me had ever done the same.

「I definitely wanna do it!」

Rin declared with burning fervor, then dove with a splash and swam over to me, grabbing both my hands in appeal.

「That’s so wonderful! Please, take me with you!」

Maybe it was nothing more than a child’s momentary frenzy, like begging for a toy. Even so, I recognized the strong longing and joy shining in her eyes. I’ve never seen it, but I’m sure they must have shone just like that… my eyes, once upon a time.

「I’d love to make that happen for you, but…」

Even so, if she couldn’t move on land, daily life would be impossible.

「Oh, I know—why don’t we make her one of those?」

One of what?

「That roll‑roll thing we made for Luka and the others.」
「Ah… right.」
She probably meant the handcart.

A handcart won’t do, but that gives me an idea.

「A handcart won’t do, but that’s one way.」

The problem is whether I can make it. Anyway, I’ll give it a try.


* * *


「Amazing, amaaazing!」

Spinning the wheels round and round, Rin let out an excited squeal. It was a simple handmade wheelchair, but kids really do pick things up fast. She mastered how to handle it in no time.

Turns out, if you try, you can make one—a wheelchair. Structurally it might actually be closer to a dog’s wheeled prosthetics.

「It’s pretty roughly made, so it probably can’t handle outdoors, but it should be enough for around the village and in the classroom. There’s a pond she could live in too, so I don’t think it’ll be a problem. What do you think?」

We’d already confirmed mermaids do fine even in fresh water. She could live in the spring we used to use as a bath.

「…Do as you like.」

At my question, Utai said so in exasperation.

「Yay!」
「Yay!」
「I have no idea what’s so fun about going up onto land.」

Casting a sidelong glance at Rin and Yuuki, who were rejoicing hand in hand, Utai grumbled.

「You think so?」

I let out a quiet chuckle as I remembered five hundred years ago—when I first met her. The small mermaid girl who was so excited to see a dragon for the first time that she broke the adults’ rules to come see me.

「…What?」
「I’ll take good care of your daughter, so don’t worry.」
「She’s not my daughter.」

The lovely mermaid twisted her beautiful features into a bored look and said:

「She’s my great‑granddaughter.」