Chapter 111: Fish

A thin film shaped like an upturned soup bowl. It made the magic stone inside harder to see from outside. Ren watched it for a while, then began laying out a different set of magic stones.

Last time he had put the water magic stone at the centre, so this time he tried a wind magic stone there.

Rustle

He set water magic stones and dark magic stones alternately around the wind magic stone, and when he passed mana into the wind magic stone there was a sound like wind grazing through leaves, and something that looked like a Simple Barrier formed. Comparing the two, it was only a little smaller than the one made with a water magic stone at the centre.

“The size of the magic stones, maybe…”

He was curious about why the one built round a water magic stone and the one built round a wind magic stone came out different sizes. He hadn’t measured the central stones exactly, but he had meant to use ones of about the same size. Still, there might be a slight difference between them.

“…Come to that, I don’t have the Wind Magic skill or the Water Magic skill. Why was it laid down as ‘someone with the Water Magic skill’ in the first place…”

Ren tilted his head as he looked at the little Simple Barrier he had made.

“If it’s only a matter of passing mana in, either ought to do… Maybe it’s different when someone with the Water Magic skill does it. …I could get Yona to try it… No, I don’t know yet whether it’s dangerous…”

Yona’s face came to mind as someone who had the Water Magic skill, but letting her use it while he still didn’t understand it properly felt dangerous. Besides, he could hardly bring Yona out into the forest.

“If Yona used it, maybe a huge barrier would come out…”

He said it half as a joke while he laid the magic stones out. As he was thinking about what to put at the centre, it suddenly crossed his mind to try putting his own “small box” there.

“Small Box!”

He set the little “small box” that appeared down on the ground and arranged the magic stones around it.

Then he passed mana into the “small box” at the centre.

Fwoom

Something spread out. Larger than before.

“It worked!”

Ren stepped outside the thin film. He narrowed his eyes and studied the thinly stretched film.

There was one part of it clearly different from when he had put a water or wind magic stone at the centre.

“…It’s square…?”

The Simple Barrier that had formed with the “small box” at its centre was a cube.

“…Because it’s a ‘small box’?”

Thinking about it produced no answer, but it looked as though the nature of the “small box” at the centre had been carried over into it.

“If it’s like this, maybe I could use it in the magic tool…”

He opened the heavy lid of the stone magic tool and swapped the magic stone at its centre for the “small box”. He wound thread round the “small box”, then wound thread round the surrounding magic stones as well.

Last of all he passed mana into the “small box”, and it was done.

“Whoa, it’s big!”

The Simple Barrier produced by starting up the magic tool was larger than the one made by merely laying the magic stones out. Whether that was the effect of the thread wound round the stones, or whether the magic tool had some device in it to strengthen the effect, he had no way of knowing.

“A Simple Barrier… I’ve done it…!”

Whether it matched the original magic tool for effect or for size he couldn’t tell, but a Simple Barrier large enough to take in the hunting hut and the ground round about it had certainly formed.

The shape was, again, a cube.

He had yet to confirm how long it lasted or how well it worked, but a satisfied smile had risen to Ren’s face.

In a slightly buoyant mood, he stopped by the river on the way home and fished for magic fish.

He took more than he usually did, thinking of his grandmother and the servants she had brought with her. That said, all he had to do was put the “small box” into the water and the magic fish came pouring in, so it was hardly any effort.

Back at the mansion, he opened the door at the back of the kitchen.

“Oh? Er…”

A man sitting on a stool peeling potatoes turned and looked slightly at a loss. It wasn’t the usual cook but somebody Ren didn’t know, and Ren froze in confusion too.

“You’d be the young master of the house… would you?”

“Ah, yes…”

“I see. Ah, I’m a servant of House Noisette. Denis, my name is. Was there something you wanted?”

Noisette was the family name of his grandmother’s birth house. Ren recalled one of the servants she had brought with her saying so. His grandmother must have brought a cook along as well for the preparations for the celebration, he decided.

“Um… fish…”

“Fish?”

Ren lowered the hemp sack from his shoulder and held it out. Just as Denis went to look inside it, the door at the far end of the kitchen opened and the usual cook appeared, carrying some large earthenware jar in his arms.

“Young Master. On an errand… today as well?”

the cook said, catching sight of Ren.

“An errand?”

Ren’s voice and Denis’s overlapped. The cook set the jar down on the workbench and pointed at a large slab of meat lying on a tray on it.

“The Young Master always brings the meat over for us on his errands… Only I think we’ve crossed paths today. The meat’s already been delivered, you see.”

“Ah, so that’s what it was. Thank you for your trouble with the errand. …That salted boar meat is from House Noisette. Same as the rest of the vegetables.”

At Denis’s words, the cook nodded as though it made sense.

“Ah, so that’s how we crossed. …What shall I do…”

“Tomorrow’s about when the guests start arriving one after another, isn’t it? Just balance it out against what you buy in tomorrow.”

“Ah, of course… Well now, I’m always being told to keep inside the budget, so I’ve never had the trouble of having too much to work with before.”

The talk went on between the two cooks, each satisfied. Denis took the hemp sack Ren had held out, pleased at how fresh the magic fish looked.

After he left the kitchen, as he made his way towards his room, one small thing snagged at Ren.

“An errand, was it…”

The cook had said “errand”. About Ren.

It seemed he had been taken for someone told by his father or mother to carry the meat and the fish over.

It wasn’t as though being thought of that way amounted to anything. Perhaps what snagged at him was the sense that it had been treated as a matter of course.

Ren himself had been carrying the ingredients to the kitchen for the reason that if he handed over meat and fish, they would cook it into something good. That they had been cooking it into something good for him didn’t change.

But he felt, just a little, something catch in his chest.