[4]

"You will inherit the Aozaki family's Magic," the old man said in an emotionless, mechanical voice.

"Aoko."

From the moment she was born, Aoko had awaited this moment. Even though she retained memories from her previous life and knew this outcome in advance, when the moment arrived, she still felt as though fate was rolling toward her like an unstoppable force.

"Alright," Aoko responded in a surprisingly calm tone.

"I understand."

Across from her, Aozaki Touko, who had worked hard and grown up as an heir, didn't react as strongly as the old man had anticipated.

The old man's gradually deteriorating humanity made it increasingly difficult for him to gauge human emotions, but he still understood that this last-minute change of successor would leave Aozaki Touko extremely dissatisfied.

Ignoring Touko, the old man gave Aoko a series of instructions, telling her to stay at the workshop that night to prepare for the transplantation of the Aozaki family's magic crest. Aoko accepted his words with a similarly indifferent attitude.

Throughout the conversation, Touko's face remained expressionless, and she didn't say a word or ask any questions. However, as someone who had long been attuned to her sister's thoughts, Aoko knew that Touko was already nearing the edge of an emotional explosion.

As expected, just as Aoko and the old man were discussing the details of the succession, Touko turned and left the magus's workshop without looking back, departing from the place where all her previous efforts had been rendered meaningless.

"...Aren't you curious why I made you the successor?" the old man asked after a slight pause, once Touko had left. This might have been the most human-sounding sentence he had uttered all night.

"I don't think you'd tell me, Grandpa," Aoko said with a smile.

"If I'm not going to get an answer, why bother asking?"

"…"

The old man seemed to be thinking or perhaps appeared to be sleeping, as he closed his eyes.

"Let's not waste any more time. Follow me, Aoko."

...

Touko walked through the cold night wind, dressed in an elegant evening gown.

As the eldest daughter of the Aozaki family, raised with everyone's expectations, she had achieved all the goals that seemed impossible to others. She had accepted the benefits and praise that came with being the egg of a magus as her due, something she rightfully deserved in her view.

A prestigious family background, a wealthy life, a passable relationship with her sister, and her exceptional talent—each of these was something people spent their entire lives striving for. Yet the blow Touko received today made all her efforts up until now seem utterly meaningless.

Touko, who was born with Mystic Eyes, should never have had any vision problems. However, in her attempt to meet the expectations placed upon her, she had overworked herself to the point of needing to wear glasses for nearsightedness.

Returning to her empty home, Touko sat on the comfortable sofa in the living room, her mind a complete mess.

This Western-style house was inhabited only by Touko and Aoko. Aoko had begged their parents to buy it after she decided to follow their grandfather to study magecraft. The house was located in the countryside, not far from their grandfather's workshop.

Touko had originally lived in their grandfather's workshop, but she eventually gave in to her younger sister's persistent pleas and moved into this house, where they had spent over a decade living together through a mix of joy and hardship.

Touko got up from the sofa, walked to the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator, where she found a dessert stored in a glass container.

It was a chocolate lava mousse cake, beautifully made by Aoko, especially for her, decorated with fruit pieces and tasty nuts.

Touko took out the container and noticed a note stuck to it. In elegant handwriting, someone had written, "Don't forget to eat this, you idiot Touko."

Touko sat down at the dining table, opened the container, and picked up the silver fork that had been thoughtfully placed inside, cutting herself a small piece of cake to taste.

The bitterness of the chocolate was balanced by the sweetness of the sugar. The soft cake melted in her mouth, and the carefully selected nuts added a texture that kept it from disappearing too quickly.

As Touko savored the cake Aoko had made, a slight expression of satisfaction appeared on her face. It wasn't that she had forgotten what had happened that night; it was simply that the dessert she was eating was too delicious.

After finishing the dessert, Touko stretched lazily, her previous gloomy emotions swept away by the surge of serotonin. Her eyes now burned with determination. She decided that tomorrow she would personally confront her grandfather to demand an explanation for his actions. Then, when the time was right, she would settle things with her sister.

...

The intense pain jolted Aoko awake from her unconsciousness. The last time she had experienced pain like this was when her grandfather activated all of her magic circuits. For reasons unknown, Aoko possessed far more circuits than either her grandfather or Touko—a staggering total of ninety-nine. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say she was practically a person made of magic circuits, a talent even the Aoko of the original timeline didn't possess.

She struggled to sit up on the operating table in her grandfather's workshop, looking around to find her grandfather sitting with his back to her, reading a book.

"I suggest you rest a little longer," her grandfather said without turning his head.

"The Aozaki family's magic crest is a bit different."

Just a bit different?

Aoko thought silently to herself.

The so-called magic crest was the crystallization of generations of magi's research and training.

It could be the materialization of a unique magical mystery or the condensed and purified product of a generation of a magus's magic circuits.

At its core, it represented the lineage of a magus's path—an engine that allowed spells to be cast without incantation simply by injecting magical energy.

In a magus family, it was less that the magus controlled the crest and more that the magus was the vessel for the crest. The one in control was not the magus but the inherited magic crest.

However, the Aozaki family's crest was different. What it passed down wasn't magecraft but True Magic.

True Magic and magecraft were fundamentally different. True Magic did not follow the laws of this world. It was something beyond—a calamity that had flowed from the Root by chance. And compared to the other kinds of True Magic, the Aozaki family's was even more so.

Aoko furrowed her brow, enduring the pain brought on by the magic crest's transplantation, feeling the pulse of the Aozaki family's magic crest. She injected a little magical energy, and the foreign organ in her right arm began to emit a faint glow.

Aoko grimaced in pain and had to stop the flow of magical energy. She had only intended to test whether the crest her grandfather had transplanted was functioning correctly. She would wait until this gift had fully integrated with her body before testing its full capabilities.

Pulling her sleeve back down to cover her still-aching arm, Aoko stepped down from the operating table.

"Can I take some books with me?"

Aoko asked casually while putting on her coat.

"I have a feeling Touko will come here tomorrow and make a huge scene."

"Take whatever you want," her grandfather said without looking up.

"Just don't touch the grimoires."

Without a trace of politeness, Aoko suppressed the pain and activated her imaginary number magecraft, stashing all the magical books she had long been interested in—but which her grandfather had previously forbidden her to read—into her private imaginary space. It was like a dimensional pocket that no one but Aoko could access. Normally, this kind of magecraft was extremely difficult to perform, even for skilled magi. However, Aoko had a surprisingly high aptitude for imaginary number magecraft. In addition to the Aozaki family's wind attribute, she also possessed the exceedingly rare imaginary number attribute.

After this discovery, her grandfather had even gone so far as to pull some strings in the magical world to find a skilled magus with the imaginary number attribute to teach her.

After stashing all the magical books of interest into her imaginary space, Aoko gave her grandfather one last glance.

He remained in the same position he had held when Aoko had woken up, without any noticeable change, occasionally turning the page of his book.

Aoko squinted, trying to make out the contents of the book, but she could only see the title printed at the bottom of the page.

It was De Profundis by Wilde, recounting the scandalous affairs of a certain unconventional writer.

Aoko had no interest in such literature, so she left her grandfather's workshop without looking back, not even bothering to say goodbye.