TMST 36

Chapter 36

Almost reflexively, he slipped a hand into the inner pocket of his coat and pulled out a small glass bottle.

With trembling fingers, he removed the stopper and tilted the bottle. Three round white pills rolled onto his palm.

Without hesitation, he swallowed them.

Yet the pain refused to subside easily. After a long struggle against the agony, he was forced to take one more pill.

As the pain gradually faded, a harsh reality dug into his chest in its place.

How long had it been since he increased the dosage from two pills to three? Two months ago, perhaps?

When he had confessed that no painkiller seemed capable of easing the agony, the doctor had handed him a glass bottle filled with pills and warned him that taking more than five at once would be dangerous.

But at this rate, the day he would need five pills did not seem very far away.

The one fortunate thing was that the Asite Flower Festival was not far off either.

He could simply tell the Duke he was returning to his hometown. The Duke had found him increasingly displeasing lately, so he would likely let him go without much comment.

And as for the Princess…

What should he tell her?

If he said he was returning home, she would surely widen her eyes and ask if something had happened. Then what was he supposed to say?

What could he possibly say that would not make her worry?

“…Useless thoughts.”

This, too, was not a matter worth considering.

Who was Karin? She was the Princess of the Second Principality. A person from a completely different world than himself—a commoner with no backing.

There was no way a princess like her would be genuinely saddened by his departure.

At most, she would feel the regret one feels when parting from an acquaintance. Nothing more, nothing less.

Rather than grieving, she would probably forget him completely after a few days.

So he should forget her as well. He should leave the Princess to live her own life while he followed the path fate had laid out for him.

Arken erased the image of Karin that surfaced in his mind.

But as always, no matter how desperately he tried to erase her, that dazzling smile remained vivid, refusing to let him go.

Even in his final moments, he could not escape her.

The realization slowly crushed him.

Sliding down the wall, he sank to the floor, buried his face in his hands, and closed his eyes.

She had once said she wondered how he would have reacted if she had pretended not to know and asked him again.

There were countless possibilities, but among them, none would have been the reaction he truly wanted.

Reality was not a fairy tale.

Everything had been nothing more than his imagination.

When Arken was young, his hobby had been reading.

It wasn’t that he particularly loved books; there was simply nothing else to do.

The orphanage in the remote countryside had no proper playground or toys, but when a nearby library shut down, all its books were donated to the orphanage. As a result, books were the one thing they had in abundance.

Given the circumstances, reading became the best way for a boy who disliked socializing with the other children to pass the time.

A quiet boy who read books.

That was his place in the orphanage, and no one paid much attention to him.

At least, not until that day.

“Hey, I heard you don’t have either a mom or a dad.”

The one who picked a fight with him while he was quietly reading in a corner, as usual, was the child who acted as the leader of the orphanage.

“I’m different from someone like you. I’m only staying here while my mom is at work.”

Unlike the other children, that boy had a mother, and she occasionally visited the orphanage.

He constantly used that fact to look down on the others. The children envied and admired him because of it.

But the quiet boy who read books was an exception.

To him, there was little difference between that boy and the others.

The leader knew this very well. He disliked the fact that the boy refused to acknowledge him as the leader.

That was why he approached him and started trouble despite the boy doing nothing.

“My mom is different from yours. She didn’t abandon me.”

The leader expected the boy to become angry or flustered.

Then he could laugh and say that an orphan was an orphan after all.

But contrary to his expectations, the boy’s expression remained calm.

“That’s just what you want to believe.”

“What?”

“When was the last time your mom came here?”

“That’s…”

The leader hesitated.

In truth, his mother’s visits had been becoming less frequent. It had already been three months since he had last seen her.

The boy clenched his fists and shouted.

“Anyway, I’m different from you!”

“Think whatever you want. Whether you believe you’re different from me or not, I don’t really care.”

The boy replied indifferently and turned his gaze back to his book.

The Story of Panetone.

It was the book he had been reading recently.

The leader felt completely ignored.

He snatched the book from the boy’s hands, threw it away, and shoved him hard.

The boy tumbled helplessly to the ground.

“I said I’m different from you!”

Seeing the boy unable to respond after falling, the leader turned away in satisfaction.

Having taught him a lesson, he assumed the boy would no longer dare ignore him.

A flash of white light erupted at that very moment.

The leader was suddenly hurled through the air and crashed into the dirt.

His head struck the ground, and he lost consciousness instantly.

The boy stood nearby, staring blankly at his own palm.

As the other children who had witnessed the commotion ran to fetch the headmaster, the boy found himself locked in solitary confinement and left hungry for the entire day.

Children getting into fights and someone getting hurt was common in the orphanage. Most people simply accepted it as normal.

But there was one exception.

A woman who was always kind to the children and was nicknamed “the smiling teacher.”

After hearing the full story from the children who had witnessed the incident, she visited the boy in confinement.

“What did you do to that child?”

“He pushed me first, so I pushed him back. I didn’t even push him hard. It was really just a light shove…”

“They say a white light came from your hand.”

“That…”

The boy himself had no idea why light had emerged from his hand.

“Arkenas, I think you have talent.”

She clasped both of his hands and looked him directly in the eyes.

“What you did was magic. You have the talent to become a mage.”

The boy could not understand her words.

Talent to become a mage?

All of a sudden?

“But I’m an orphan.”

“That has absolutely nothing to do with it. As long as you work hard, you can become anything and do anything.”

The boy still looked confused.

Then the teacher remembered the book he had been carrying around recently.

“You know The Story of Panetone, right? That girl lived in terrible poverty with only her sick grandmother. But because she never gave up and worked hard, she found medicine to cure her grandmother and even married a prince.”

The boy’s eyes brightened as he understood her meaning.

“Just like Panetone, you can achieve anything if you work hard. For example…”

She smiled warmly.

“You could become a Court Mage.”

From that day on, his dream became becoming a Court Mage.

While the other children played, he studied basic subjects with the teacher. He read every book in the orphanage and filled himself with knowledge. He enrolled in the village school and studied harder than anyone else.

The teacher supported him wholeheartedly.

She worked to get him into school, encouraged him to take the entrance examination for the Royal Academy after graduation, and when he passed with the highest score, she spent all the money she had to pay his tuition.

He worked tirelessly to meet her expectations.

He stayed up through the night memorizing textbooks and reference books, studying magical theory, and practicing his magic.

At the Academy, where nobles were the norm, he was the only commoner. His classmates ostracized him, and professors looked down on him.

But he did not care.

Just as Panetone had journeyed far from home, fought the dragon in the tower, and rescued the prince to obtain medicine, he believed these hardships were merely trials on the path to his dream.

And just as Panetone had ultimately cured her grandmother and married the prince, he believed happiness would eventually be granted to him if he endured.

He shattered the Academy’s highest examination scores time and time again and never once lost his position as top student.

Graduating with dazzling achievements, he sought out the teacher on graduation day to thank her.

She had become the orphanage director and was now well into middle age.

She looked at the grown young man with genuine pride and blessed his future.

Filled with confidence, he immediately applied to become a Court Mage.

And that was when the God of Fate began to toy with him.

As though it had been waiting for this exact moment.

He earned perfect scores in both theory and practical examinations.

Yet his application was rejected due to a lack of experience.

Watching classmates who had graduated alongside him pass the document screening without issue, he once again felt the wall of social status standing before him.

Still, he refused to give up.

Believing it was simply another step toward success, he applied for a position as an aide in the First Principality.

Recognizing his abilities, Duke Lucas hired him with ease.

And around that time, it began.

The pain near his chest whenever he used magic.

There was a common illness among mages called mana pain, and since medication usually solved the problem, he paid little attention to it.

Besides, he had no time to concern himself with something so minor.

Being an aide in the First Principality was demanding enough.

Three years later, believing he had gained sufficient experience, he applied once again to become a Court Mage.

On the day of the examination, he coughed up blood despite taking twice his normal dosage of medicine.

Only then did he realize something was terribly wrong.

He underwent a thorough examination at the Magical Research Institute.

Exactly one month later, he was diagnosed as terminally ill.

Mana Over-Depletion Syndrome.

A disease caused by an incomplete mana core, which allowed mana to leak endlessly until death eventually followed.

The amount of leaking mana increased over time. Most people born with the disease would not survive beyond five or six years old.

But Arken was different.

He possessed a vast amount of mana comparable to that of an ancient dragon.

That was the only reason he had survived this long.

But what did it matter?

He had less than three years left to live, and the pain was so severe he could no longer use magic.

He fell into despair.

Yet he eventually overcame it.

The results of the Court Mage examination had not been announced yet.

If he entered the administrative branch, he would not need to use magic even as a Court Mage.

The leaking mana would continue to torment him, but if he could achieve the dream he had pursued his entire life, he was willing to endure the suffering and live until the end.

But the God of Fate was not on his side.

The very day after receiving his terminal diagnosis, he received another rejection notice.

Again, the reason was lack of experience.

All he had left now were fragments of the past.

He went to the orphanage to bid his teacher a final farewell.

The village was completely deserted.

After pushing through overgrown weeds, he finally found the orphanage.

It had become a ruined building.

“A plague swept through the village, so everyone left. The orphanage director stayed behind to care for the sick, but she caught the disease herself and died. Must’ve been about two years ago. If you’re looking for her grave, it’s over there.”

Following the directions of a resident from a neighboring village, he found a small earthen grave.

There was not even a gravestone.

He knelt before it.

“As long as you work hard, you can become anything and do anything.”

You were wrong, Teacher. It wasn’t true.

“Just like Panetone, you can achieve anything if you work hard. For example… you could become a Court Mage.”

Reality is different from fairy tales.

It’s different.

It has everything to do with me being an orphan.

Working hard doesn’t guarantee happiness.

Teacher… what am I supposed to do now?

At the abandoned grave that no one visited, he covered his face with both hands and wept bitterly.

She gave him no answer.

Only the grass growing atop the grave swayed weakly in the wind, rustling softly.