Chapter 1 (Prologue)
Chapter 1 (Prologue)
I raise my head and scrub my eyes.
There was drool on my face. It seems I had slept on top of my desk.
I must have lost consciousness while in the middle of reading a book again.
While it’s not healthy, there isn’t a person to call fault to this.
When I gained awareness, my mother was already gone, and my father was stabbed by a knife and died while I was still small.
Since my grandfather who took me in died last year, I am now living alone.
My father was a magician who had his name known quite well in the business, an oddball who liked traveling.
A no-good father who left his child behind to wander around across the sea, buying meaningless souvenirs to try and curry favor with me.
”I’m a real magician,” was father’s catchline while he was working.
As part of his performance, he had a hired applauder take a knife and stab him as a magic trick. A viewer who saw that and got excited used their own knife to cut at my father.
After that his consciousness didn’t return and he quickly died.
When I was small, I believed that father was a real magician, so I believed that he would sometime, someday return.
If I asked, “When is Tou-san coming back?” grandfather would narrow his eyes and pet my head.
If I think of it now, he was showing pity to me.
I direct my eyes to the front cover of the book I had been reading.
Middle Ages Black Magic Encyclopedia
I don’t want to acknowledge it, but what got me into this sort of shady stuff was unmistakedly the fault of father’s souveniers.
Not limited to this suspicious book, there are many shady black magic kits in my house.
After continuing to think something like, ‘There’s definitely no such thing as magic, but if there were, it would be nice,’ I reach seventeen years old.
If it were the past, it would have ended as an imaginative kid, but now I’m completely what society calls a chuunibyou.
I naturally don’t have anyone to talk with at school, and am looked at with eyes as if directed toward an unusual bug, cast out.
The people I can call an acquaintance are just the black magic research society, but due to studying for exams, a lot of seniors have retired and right now is just the underclassman Icchan and me.
In short, Icchan is the only person I can talk to. It’s lonely.
By the way, with accordance to the school’s rules, if no club applicants appear next year, our black magic research society will be shut down. Evil will be destroyed.
The black magic research society is the only place I feel comfortable.
I have to protect it no matter what.
I have to start opening meetings with Icchan about freshman soliciting methods soon.
Perhaps in the black magic kits I bought on the net, if at least one of them could be called the real thing, applicants will appear. No, something like that, I understand couldn’t possibly exist.
When the event occurred was after school.
“……No, I, think I, will stop participating in the club.”
After school, the underclassman I trusted resolutely handed a club withdrawal form to me.
If I think of it now, the fact that the Icchan who was a well mannered beauty and a person of common sense remained in this odball club until now was a miracle.
However, even if I think so, considering the club’s situation I can’t give in so easily.
For now, I wanted to negotiate for a break from the club or if impossible, leaving her name in for the head count.
However, Icchan gave me nothing to cling to.
After recovered from my panic and sought to proceed the conversation, she had already left the clubroom.
I somehow managed to catch up at the school gates, but I couldn’t make the discussion there.
Due to the uncomfortable atmosphere, Icchan suddenly walked out as if to run away from me and tried to pass through a pedestrian crossing.
The traffic light was red.
Probably, she was distracted by me and didn’t notice the the light changed.
Unluckily, it was when a large truck attempted to pass through.
After I noticed, I had dashed out.
My body suffered a strong impact, and my vision turned to black.
Hot. My body is hot.
I somehow manage to open my yes, but my sight is horribly blurred.な
Rather than my eyes, it seems my brain has undergone damage.
The surroundings start becoming noisy. I thought, ‘It’s noisy, huh,’ as if it were someone else’s problem.
Someone is clinging to me.
“――――N, Nooo! I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Because of me, …… ”
While in intermittent, I was able to hear my underclassman’s voice.
Great. I managed to save her.
If we both died after I jumped in, it wouldn’t be cool after all.
Rather than the school’s popular person, it would be better if the social outcast, I, died, since the people who would grieve are less.
While it’s strange to call it lucky, but I have no relatives anymore. I barely have any acquaintances either.
Even my regrets are just that the alchemy history research I did was done half-heartedly, and the ‘dragon’s nails’ that I ordered over the internet arrive today. Even if I say so, I’m sad.
Even a dream of the future, I don’t have.
At the end of such thoughts, my consciousness ceases.