A new day came with a change of air in the Ruthford house. The smell of burn and anxiety. We should’ve had one more person at the breakfast table with us that morning, but reality somehow subverted expectations. It was only me and Ms Asia sitting there at the clean white sheet, past the appointed hour, somewhat confused and uncertain of the future.

  The late breakfast, when it finally arrived, included fried sunny side up eggs nobody asked for and rock-hard bacon. The egg yolk was broken and overcooked, the edges seared black. To top it off, the product was swimming in grease, so salty it brought tears to my eyes and drowned in coarse pepper.

  The menu wasn’t normally this down to earth.

  That one part of the civilian routine I’d come to cherish, the part that seemed to give my silent struggle a purpose, and was the main reason to wake up at all, had become something a hungry dog would leave alone.

  Was the cook having an off-day?

  The change to the usual was so extreme, we wondered if an evil spirit or a mimic had replaced him. Like he had become a completely different person overnight...

  “It couldn’t be…”

  Overcome by a sudden bad feeling, I left my seat, rushed out of the dining hall, and made my way down the west side hallway to the kitchen, where the cook, Mr Lennard, should’ve been at work. But he wasn’t. Through the small side window, I glimpsed that aged gentleman smoking in the backyard. I didn’t know he was a smoker. Exhaling spirited clouds, he admired the high sky like a man trying hard to leave reality behind.

  Meanwhile, a person considerably younger operated in front of the stove, making a mess of toast, humming merrily to herself. Just as I feared.

  “—What are you doing, Emily!?” I cried, unable to contain my overflowing irritation.

  “Oh, good morning, Hope!” the girl replied and spun around to me with a cheerful smile, a sooty, striped apron tied around her waist. “I thought I’d cook breakfast for everybody today! You know, as thanks for letting me stay over!”

  “Needless!”

  “Why!?”

  “Because, clearly, you can’t cook! At all!”

  Emily recoiled at this revelation, wearing a sincerely dumbstruck face, like she never knew.

  “What are you talking about!? I’m a great cook! My mom always says so! I used to make all the meals for us at home too!”

  “Your mother is not an objective judge.”

  “That’s my mother you're dissing! You're awful!”

  I went to wave the cook back in, and then dragged our guest by hand out of the kitchen.

  “It can't have been that bad!” she protested. “C'mon! I'd feel real bad being only a freeloader and a burden on you guys, after all you've done for me. Couldn't you let me have this much?”

  “The problem isn't just you having no skill,” I stopped to tell her. “Your whole way of thinking is messed up. You’re not a maid! What's the point of us taking you from that cafe, if you'll then only peel potatoes in our kitchen? You want to become a mage, right!? Then have some dignity, as a mage! Think about your training, and stop getting sidetracked by things that don’t matter!”

  “Whoa, why are you so angry?” the girl retreated, startled. “What’s it to you? It’s not like you can only be a mage and nothing but! I can study when I’m not helping with the other stuff.”

  “No, that’s precisely what it means. The reason I’m angry is because you’re too confused and understand nothing, and neglect your talent. Do you think magic is such a simple affair that you can wing it as a hobby, on the side of mopping floors? Magecraft isn’t some trick you do, it’s a way of life! Do you think you can survive in Belmesion with a half-baked attitude like that, or anywhere else? Among people who spend their every waking moment obsessing about nothing but magic? Either you give your 120% to it, or you go home!”

  I’d never been anything but a mage. You couldn’t even fathom what I’d sacrificed for this occupation, this calling, even if not always by choice. I was never not thinking about magic, around the clock. Seeing something so immense, difficult and manifold treated like play, like a plain 9 to 5, something to juggle on the side of sunny side up eggs—How could I not be mad?

  I'd staked my name to promote a person of this caliber to the Archmage? I had to lean on the wall to simmer down. God. My perfected self-control, utterly in shambles in five minutes.

  Maybe I had more to learn than I thought.

  “I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive,” Emily muttered, flushed, half ashamed and half offended. “Of course, I want to be a real and proper mage. But I don’t want to be one just for the sheer heck of it! I want to help other people. Even if I didn’t have the potential, that drive would still be there, I think, and I’d find some other way to do it. But if I can get better at magic, then of course I could help so many more people than an ordinary person ever could. On the other hand, if I had this really awesome power and didn’t use it to help everyone else, then what would be the point of even having it?”

  Did that mean my existence was pointless?

  “...”

  How could I reject her views, when I was no different myself when I was a child? Was I any different today?

  I want to save others. I want to make the world better for myself and those I care about. That impulse probably universally hit every magic-user when they first discovered they could manipulate reality with a thought. And almost all of them gave up on it before turning twenty.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  Because magic made the dream no less far-fetched than it was without.

  Being able to do alone a task that otherwise took the input of 20-50 ordinary people was impressive, from an ordinary person's point of view, but the world was too big to be profoundly changed by just that. A mage could move a barrel of water in the time a non-magician could move a bucket, but that river would never run dry.

  Magic didn't make you a superhero delivering equal salvation, but more a convenient handyman. Helping people only earned you more people to help and not as many thanks as you'd think. Keep at it for long enough and the magic was bound to wear off. So forget about others. What good had they ever done to deserve saving, anyway? Most of their problems were their own fault from the start. As long as you had bread on your table and a roof over your head, that was as good as life was going to get for anyone, and reaching for more was only asking for trouble.

  Such was the path of “ascension,” walked by a great many mages who couldn't make it to the top 1%.

  Emily Troyard was still at her heroic stage, it seemed.

  Or, not quite. It wasn't only selfless altruism behind this girl's passion. By her presentation and everything I'd learned about her so far, her real driving motivator was probably sheer terror.

  Acknowledging that made my anger cool down to lukewarm pity.

  “Look, I get it,” I told her. “You want to prove yourself useful. You want to justify the life that you have. The life that your father died to save. So that his sacrifice wouldn’t end up being a mistake. That's what frightens you most. Isn’t that right?”

  Emily’s face paled. “No. That’s—!”

  “But you're going about it the wrong way. The same as in the exam. Chasing acceptance will never get you what you want. You let strangers determine your worth, build your identity on the opinions of others like a poor man’s house. But that's shaky ground. If your ability falls short and they deny you, if they don’t want your help, and lob stones at you, then what? You’ll be nothing, neither a magician nor a useful person. Only another one of those naive idiots who are wrung dry and thrown away when they outlive their usefulness. Get rid of that way of thinking while you still can. Before you go and experience something you'll truly regret. Unless you do it for yourself and find your own value in the doing, even if the rest of humanity were removed from the equation, your path will never arrive at anything that has meaning.”

  “What are you even talking about?” she asked, wavering. “Then what am I supposed to do?”

  “Get yourself to the breakfast table to start with and leave the cooking to a professional. Then later we’ll have a look at what you can do, together.”

  I turned to return to the dining hall, the reek of burnt bacon finally starting to clear from the hallway.

  “Really,” Emily spoke with a bitter little laugh. “Why are you going so far for me?”

  Why. Never an easy question.

  “Because I have no friends,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  Ms Asia’s comment the day before cut surprisingly deep. It was frustrating to admit, but there was still a part left in me that could experience loneliness. The apathy that my meeting with the Archmage had lifted to the surface had yet to sink back down. It ached even more bluntly than before.

  But true companionship remained a distant dream for me. I knew that. It was a bond that could only exist between equals, built on mutual understanding.

  I could have no friends as long as nobody knew me, as a mage, or as a person.

  But rather than wasting my time looking for such exceptionally broad-minded people, I could try to make a friend.

  Not merely getting to know one another by spending a bit of time together—but shaping her from the ground up, so that she could one day stand by me, on the same level, or close enough, and maybe, maybe, endure the burden of knowing the real me without falling apart.

  My expectations were unfair and I knew it. If even a veteran Tier 8 wizard failed to rise to the challenge, how could this impulsive, foolish, lost girl? But if I took her there by hand, if I tempered her little by little the way a blacksmith tempers brittle metal, and kept leading her into the right direction, who knew, maybe she could still surprise me.

  The brief glimmer of light I saw in her magic wasn't only an illusion. I wanted to believe that.

  “Friends,” Emily Troyard repeated blankly. “I see. No friends. The—what the heeeeck!?”

  I covered my ears at her sudden yell.

  “What, you're loud.”

  “What are you even saying?” she exclaimed. “You don’t have any friends? You're the heir of the Countess Ruthford! You're pretty and talented and rich and smart and nice—well, somewhat nice. Sometimes, a little nice? In a sense. Anyway, how could you not have a million friends all over the world?”

  “Did you forget the part where I’m just an adopted orphan?”

  “Is that important?”

  “Weren’t you a noble heiress yourself? Many would say it's the only thing that matters.”

  “I don't get it!” Emily groaned, listlessly hanging her arms. Then, a little flustered, she glanced at me anew, fiddling with her bangs and began to mumble, “Well, I don't see why you'd want a bundle of issues like me as a friend so bad, but…I might be a bit happy if you do. More than just a bit. Really, really happy. Or something…”

  I’d just spent five minutes heatedly chewing her out, but that one word alone got her thawed out? Just how starved for empathy was she?

  Loners, the both of us.

  The soft glow of her cheek tops was even more pronounced by the overall lack of pigment in her appearance. I found myself fascinated by that subtle contrast. It was such a warm, glowing tone that no paint on canvas could recreate. Her eyebrows were rather strong, which added to the comical liveliness of her constantly shifting expressions. Now they angled downward in a tight scowl, her marble eyes wavering, the redness intensifying.

  “Hey. Say something, will you! I'm dying of embarrassment here!”

  I went over, put my hand on Emily's head, and wordlessly petted her.

  “Wha-what’s the matter with youuuu...!?” she hissed, turning even redder, but couldn’t bring herself to swat the hand away.

  Yes. She was a lot like a big cat.