Head start

ALICE LEYWIN

Arthur was the most adorable baby. Some mothers are besotted with their

babies even if they're homely, but that wasn't the case with me.

No.

Arthur had a scruffy little patch of glowing auburn hair, playful eyes that

seemed to radiate blue light, and his gaze at times was almost… intelligent.

But I wasn't besotted. I planned to be a strict and just mother. I knew I

couldn't rely on my husband to teach little Art any common sense. For God's

sake, he'd tried to teach my baby how to fight when he could barely crawl.

I knew the little rascal would turn out just like his father if I let him. When he

started crawling, I was so proud I was on the verge of tears, but I didn't know

how much of a handful he'd be as he became more mobile.

I couldn't take my eyes off him for a single moment before he'd crawl into

the study room. It was very strange. We made sure to buy him lots of stuffed

animals and wooden toys to play with, but he always ended up going to the

study room. In that, at least, he was the direct opposite of his father—

Reynolds shied away from texts longer than the weekly newspaper.

My son seemed interested in a lot of things. I couldn't get enough of seeing

his head, so disproportionate to his little body, turning left and right while

trying to take in everything around him. Seeing how excited Art got when we

went out to town, I began doing the shopping every other day instead of twice a week.

No, I was not besotted with him. It was just for his education regarding the

outside world and for fresh food in the house. Nothing more than that.

He was particularly intrigued by his father's practicing. Reynolds had been a

competent adventurer back in the day—he was a B-class adventurer by the

age of twenty-eight, which was a pretty fast climb. To keep from sending

eager but ignorant adolescents to their deaths, the Adventurers Guild, where I

worked as a medic-in-training, required applicants to pass a test before

acquiring their E-class rank—the lowest. As for the higher ranks, I'd only

seen a couple of A-class adventurers in my years of working there, and I had

never seen an S-class adventurer, though I assumed they did exist.

Working at the Adventurers Guild—or what we just called the Guild Hall—

back then in Valden, I got to see too many eager teens. Once I was assigned

to proctor a basic practical exam, where the examinee had to simply

demonstrate fundamental competency in mana manipulation, but before the

test even began, the kid fell straight onto his back because the sword he was

carrying was too heavy for him! At least they were ambitious, but I was

always surprised they didn't float away from having their overly-inflated

egos get to their heads.

Reynolds seemed like just another airhead back then. The moment he saw me

in the Guild Hall, his jaw literally dropped. He just stood there until the guy

in line behind him elbowed him to hurry up, then he managed to mumble,

"H-hi… can I trade in th-the stuff for the mission?" I just giggled as he turned

beet red from embarrassment.

He finally managed to gather up the courage to ask me out for dinner, and we

hit it off from there. Even after five years of being together, I still smiled

when I saw his droopy, blue, puppy-eyes looking at me.

Art somehow wound up with the best traits from each of us, making him that much more adorable. You should have seen him when I changed his diapers.

For some reason, he'd start turning red in his cheeks every time and cover his face with his tiny little fingers. I didn't think babies that age could get

embarrassed, but that was what it seemed like.

But one of the best moments of all had to be when he said his first word:

'mama.'

He said 'mama' first!

I told him to say it again and again, just to make sure I didn't hear wrong, and

Reynolds sulked for the entire day because Art said 'mama' before 'dada.'

I put on a stern face and reprimanded Reynolds for being so childish, but I

secretly relished the fact that I had won.

I was so content in those months, with my son close by me wherever I went.

Together, we would frequently watch through the window as his father

practiced after dinner. I was glad Reynolds had given up being an adventurer

and taken the post as a town guard instead. Being an adventurer might have

brought in more money, but not knowing when or if my husband would come

home was not worth any amount of extra money. Especially after what had

happened on our last quest together.

Little Art never got sick, but I often found him sitting motionless with his

eyes closed. At first, I thought he might be having trouble relieving himself,

but that didn't seem to be the case. It was strange, and I didn't know what to

make of it. I'd thought babies that age were supposed to be energetic and

flighty, but he seemed to expend most of his energy escaping to the study

room, only to sit there, perfectly still—almost as if he was meditating.

I worried at first, but although it happened a couple of times a day, it only

lasted for a few minutes, and Art always seemed strangely happy afterward.

The way he held his arms up and looked up at me made me just want to

gobble him up

Ahem. But I was not besotted.

ARTHUR

Two years had passed since I'd made my first difficult journey to the study

room.

Since then, I had been constantly gathering the little bits of mana spread out

in my body and focusing it, attempting to form a mana core. It was a slow

and arduous task. I would have had an easier time learning to walk on my

hands and eat with my feet in this damnable body than trying to will my

mana core to condense.

It had become clear why the book said it took until adolescence for a person

to 'awaken.' If I had let the mana particles in my body move by themselves,

it would have taken at least a decade for them to gravitate toward each other

enough to form anything remotely close to a mana core.

Instead, having the mental capacity of an adult meant I had the cognitive

ability to consciously will my mana particles together. This was something I

had done in school in my past life, where they taught you from childhood

how to control ki. The key lay in being able to sense the ki—or mana, now—

in your own body and force the particles together toward the solar plexus. If

left alone, they would eventually slowly float toward each other, like goose-

down drifting toward the bottom of an open sack, but I had decided to grab

the feathers and shove them into the twill sack, figuratively speaking, instead

of waiting for them to float down by themselves.

My daily rituals consisted of trying to spend as much of my limited energy as

possible on gathering my mana, while not arousing suspicion in my mother

and father. My father seemed to think that being thrown into the air would be

quite enjoyable for a child. While I understand that the adrenaline effect

might excite some people, when he used mana to reinforce his arms and

throw me into the air like a high-speed projectile, the only feelings I had were

nausea and a traumatic fear of heights.

Fortunately, my mother had a firm handle on my father, but she scared me

sometimes too. I often caught her staring at me, practically drooling, looking

at me like I was some kind of premium meat.

I tried to match my behavior to my body by only speaking in very simple

sentences, talking just enough to get the point across, no grammar necessary.

The first time I said "mama," to let her know I wanted more food, she almost

burst into tears of joy. It had been a long time since I'd received that sort of motherly affection.

The pace of my training was strenuous and slow, but I was getting a head

start compared to everyone else so I wasn't complaining. The past two years

had not gone to waste, for I had finally gathered all my mana into my solar

plexus and was in the process of condensing a mana core when...

*BOOM*