Volume 2 - CH 10

For the second time, the garden was even darker in the night. Nelson used the magic of the light in his left hand.

The four of them walked in silence for a while. Soon they reached the entrance of the labyrinth.

After entering the labyrinth and walking for quite a while, Norris finally spoke up.

I was bullied a lot in the first year because I was a crybaby,"

Norrisch named two boys that Almark had never heard of.

“Now they are both in the third grade. They are pretty mean- pirited kids."

I cry easily, and they thought it's funny because I'm so cheeky. They were rude to me every day."

Nelson leads the three of them in silence, holding up a magic light.

Every day after school I would come home and cry because it was so bitter and frustrated but I didn't want to be seen crying in front of my roommate .

Almark and the others listen to her story in silence. Nelson's light occasionally makes a blaring sound.

“One day, , I went into this labyrinth I thought maybe I could cry here without anyone seeing me."

"It turns out that the boys often use it for games, so it didn't worked that way I want . I guess it was Nelson and his friends."

"But then I made one amazing discovery."

Nelson silently turns left at a break in the vegetation, and the three of them follow.

Before they knew it, they had reached the central square. Norisch looked up at the stone statue of Lord Boruk.

'I hadn't really paid attention to it before, but it was only then that I noticed it. that he looked exactly like my beloved late grandfather.”

Norish, the daughter of a large, relatively wealthy farmer, had a grandfather whom she loved very much. He was a scholar by nature, but he had retired from farming and spent his days by , reading old books with glasses and enjoying his retirement.

He was also the one who was most pleased when it was decided that I would enter this academy," .

Norrisch's beloved grandfather, who taught her many things , passed away before she entered the academy. The stone statue of Lord Boruk is said to resemble his grandfather.

“Of course, the details are different . But at the time I thought, 'There's my grandfather! "

From that point , whenever Norisch had a bad day, she would come to see the statue . This habit continued even after she moved to the second grade, switched classes, got away from the bullies, and stopped crying.

Norisch, who is good at wind magic and had recently tried her luck at the Wind Letter spell , came up with the idea of "statue " as a place to send wind messages.

"The content could be anything, really. Every day after dinner, I would ask my grandpa to listen to what I was thinking or what I had done that day, or whatever came to my mind o. I would send them out the window of my room on the wind."

That is probably what Norisch would have wanted to do if her grandfather been alive. But the incomplete spell of wind in practice had turned into scattered fragments of words on the way, and without successfully bringing the wind to at Lord Boruk's side, it had, on the contrary, fizzled out the moment it reached there.

'So that's what the mysterious voice is ......'

Wendy muttered.

But Almark knew exactly what she was talking about. It was the wind.

Wendy looked at him. The labyrinth is surrounded by vegetation, so the only place for the wind to pass through is at feet, just below ground level. The wind was blowing in one direction all the time, but very little, and the topography of the gardens meant that the wind was blowing in the opposite direction. And given the topography of the garden, the wind would tend to gather in the central square, he thought.

......

" though not from a magical point of view at all."

"No, that's great. I think that kind of perspective is important."

Wendy added that neither she nor Nelson had noticed the wind.

I didn't realize it was such a rumor, "but I'll have to think abut practicing a little more.”

"Oh, no!"

Nelson suddenly exclaimed.

"What's with all the male romance? It's just a magical practice when you get right down to it."

"Nelson, don't talk like that,"

Wendy was about to speak, but Nelson was walking quickly toward the exit.

“Norish, I don't mind practicing magic or having a chats like this' though!”

Nelson says as he walks with his back to her.

'We'd listen to you too, you know!"

“What?"

“ Eston and Pollois, right? I'm looking forward to the martial arts tournament now!"

Nelson walked on without looking back at the three of them.

"We're going home now! What a waste of time!"

Almark looks at Wendy, who giggles and says in a quiet voice, "I was just coming here to see the magic of the light."

“You saw the magic of the lights shaking when we were coming here, didn't you? Nelson's pretty pissed off when he hears that Norish has been abused."

“I remember that the lights were occasionally flickering and making a buzzing sound. Was that Nelson's emotional turmoil?”

“I guess it's his way of expressing his feelings of friendship,"

Wendy's words brought a smile to Norrisch's face.

“Nelson approached me once when I was crying in the labyrinth in the first grade," . We were in different classes at the time, and I didn't know him. He said, 'Let's play hide-and-seek! with a carefree smile. I was so surprised that I turned him down, but I was happy."

As he watched Nelson's back move further and further away from him , whether he could hear or not, Almark thought to himself that Nelson is a great guy after all."