LGHTNOVELBOOK Chapter 5 Part 6
“Erase magic, huh…”
Lying on my bed, I gazed up at the ceiling.
Beside me, Carbuncle peeked at my face.
When I stroked its head, it narrowed its eyes in pleasure.
Sophie had said that magic had taken everything from her.
Despite all her achievements, despite the admiration she received from people all over the world, she still felt robbed.
I didn’t fully understand what she meant, but I couldn’t say I didn’t relate.
If magic hadn’t existed, my life might have been different.
Without magic, I wouldn’t have been cursed. I might have been just another ordinary student, living an easy life.
At the very least, I would have lived peacefully, without having to constantly worry about my life being in danger.
But at the same time, I thought—
Without magic, I might have been lonelier.
I wouldn’t have met so many people in town, nor would Carbuncle be here, rubbing its head against me. Even the white owl watching me from the window wouldn’t be there.
At the very least, the witch Meg Raspberry wouldn’t exist.
Everything in life has two sides.
That was something my master had taught me.
Sure, there were painful things that came with magic.
But on the other hand, magic had also given me so much.
Surely, the same had to be true for Sophie.
“Ahh, I could use some tea.”
“Kyui.”
With Carbuncle perched on my shoulder, I went to the living room and started boiling water.
“Oww…” came a weak voice, and my master appeared, wincing in pain.
“Master, are you sure you should be up already?”
“Somehow… Your medicinal cloth must have done the trick.”
“That’s good to hear. Want some tea?”
“I’ll take some.”
As we drank the freshly brewed tea, both of us let out a contented sigh.
Tea really hit the spot on cold winter days. People had been saying that for ages.
“What about Sophie?”
“She went straight to bed in the guest room as soon as we got back. Just collapsed.”
“She must’ve been exhausted.”
“Master, has Sophie always been like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like she’s always carrying this loneliness. Like solitude has taken root inside her. It seemed connected to her hatred of magic.”
At my words, Master gazed off into the distance and murmured, “Yeah…”
“When I first met her, she was already like that—trying to keep her distance from people, preferring to be alone.”
“She told me she wants to erase magic. She also said I carry too much.”
“I see… Maybe that’s how she sees you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Meg, do you know how old Sophie was when she left home?”
“Wasn’t it when she became one of the Seven Sages? Seventeen, right?”
“She was five.”
“Five!?”
“She was too intelligent. More than anyone else. And no one wanted to accept a child like that.”
Sophie was born in the northern regions, possessing immense magical power from birth.
Because of that, she was born with blue hair and blue eyes.
Her relatives saw her and lamented, “A child of the devil has been born.”
Even so, her parents tried to love her.
But they quickly realized that their child was unlike any other.
“Papa, Mama…”
Sophie spoke her first words at just one year old.
At an age when most babies were only starting to babble, Sophie was already capable of conversation.
By the time she was two, she understood letters and arithmetic.
But that wasn’t all.
“Hey, there’s a boy standing over there.”
By the time she was nearly three, she started saying things like that.
Seeing things that weren’t there. Talking about things no one else could see.
At first, her parents thought she was just playing make-believe or telling lies.
“Sophie, did you take that plate from here?”
“The boy took it to the bathroom just now.”
“Again with that nonsense…”
Then—
Crash!
A sound of something shattering echoed.
When her mother went to check, she found a broken plate in the bathroom sink.
The very plate they had just been talking about.
As such incidents piled up, Sophie’s parents began to fear her.
And soon, people around them started distancing themselves from Sophie too.
Left alone, she grew interested in magic and began studying it on her own.
Maybe, as a young child, she had only wanted to be accepted by her parents.
But in the northern lands, where magic was barely understood, it was feared as “the work of the devil.”
A lonely girl, seeing things no one else could see, using powers beyond human understanding—
That was the beginning of the genius who would one day be praised across the world.
Eventually, she was noticed by the Magic Association and sent to a special institution for training.
Her parents accepted it willingly.
At the time, my master happened to be working there as an instructor on an Association request.
“Magic changed Sophie’s life. The thing she excelled at the most was the very thing that led her to be abandoned by the people she loved most.”
“That’s… awful.”
“To a lonely child like her, you must look far too blessed. Despite being in a similar situation, you have so many people around you. What Sophie lacked was never magic itself, but people who accepted it.”
“So that’s why she hated magic…”
I had misunderstood her all along.
I had assumed she came from a privileged family and received elite magical training from a young age.
She may have been trained, but inside her, there must have always been a struggle.
Because it was magic—and her own power—that took her loved ones away from her.
“My dream is to erase magic from this world.”
That’s what she had said.
Maybe she still believed that if magic had never existed, she could have lived a normal life with her parents.
The reason she became a world-renowned witch at such a young age was probably sheer determination.
For someone who had nothing, magic was all she had left.
So she devoted herself to honing it.
Having nothing at all was, perhaps, the best way to master magic.
But… was that really true?
“There’s one thing I don’t get. If Sophie hates magic, why does she perform at festivals and ceremonies? Isn’t that the most public display of magic there is?”
Master gave a small, wistful smile.
“She wants someone to notice.”
“Notice…?”
“That girl is alone. But somewhere inside, she still longs for people. That’s why she chose magic that makes others happy. Because maybe, just maybe, one day, her parents will acknowledge her. She’s trying to reclaim what she lost through magic.”
“Through magic…”
Sophie, the aloof, unreadable genius witch.
She had been desperately fighting all this time.
No, she was still fighting even now.
“Listen, Meg. You’re nowhere near as smart as Sophie. You grew up spoiled, in a comfortable world. You’re loud, and the only good thing about you is your cooking skills.”
“That’s just rude.”
“But you have something Sophie doesn’t. If anyone can melt her frozen heart, it’s you.”
Master grinned mischievously.
I sighed. Another ridiculous task.
Opening someone’s heart wasn’t that simple.
But still…
I couldn’t just leave things as they were.
Because someone as amazing as Sophie—someone admired by the whole world—shouldn’t have to be alone forever.