[V3C19] The Kindness of Someone You Can’t See
Translated by Jodas 3: The Fateful BrothersAfter leaving the workshop, Tia plodded around the halls of the Third Spire: Water Bubble, but eventually came to a stop. She realized she was lost.
The Third Spire had undergone many expansions, so the layout could be very convoluted in some places. Even without that, as a Harpy, Tia wasn’t very familiar with buildings; so she found herself easily getting lost when indoors.
“………..Pevuu.”
As she came to a stop, Tia let out a distressed noise.
(Humans think about way too many things.)
All Tia wanted to do was to learn flight magic and fly through the sky, but that was highly difficult, and the path to get there was long.
Even though before, flying had been as simple as walking to her.
“Pevuvuu……”
“That voice, could that be Tia over there…..?”
She heard a familiar voice responding from around the corner of the hall.
It was the voice of her fellow Apprentice Mage, the glasses-wearing girl with the braid — Ella Frank.
When she waddled over towards the source of that voice, she found Ella hunched over on the ground for some reason.
“Piroro…… Ella, are you feeling bad? Want me to carry you?”
“No, nothing like that. I just tripped and dropped my glasses somewhere…….”
Now that she mentioned it, the glasses that usually rested on Ella’s face weren’t there.
Ella, who usually smiled shyly, now had her face scrunched up as she patted the ground with her hands. What could she be doing?
“I, can’t see without my glasses……”
“Piyo? Um, that means you can’t see me?”
“Yes, I can kinda tell there’s a person there, but that’s it…….but I can tell from your voice that you’re Tia……”
Tia realized that she had misunderstood something this whole time.
(Glasses weren’t a decorative accessory after all! They were magical devices!)
She had thought that glasses belonged in the same category as necklaces or bracelets.
Among the people Tia knew, aside from Ella, both Director Hegelich and Hütter wore glasses as well, so they weren’t wearing them for style either!
Tia looked around the hallway. She instantly found the glasses laying on the ground a short distance away from Ella.
Cautiously and carefully, Tia picked up the glasses. There weren’t any cracks in them.
“Ella, I found your glasses. I’ll bring them to you.”
Before handing the glasses back to Ella, Tia raised them once in front of her face.
The world she saw through the transparent panes of glass seemed strangely blurry and distorted. If this was a magical device, did that mean she would be able to see the world clearly by inputting mana into it?
“Piroro……Umm, here you go.”
“Thank you very much.”
Once Ella took the glasses and set them back on her face, she gave a shy, gentle smile.
It felt like once Ella put the glasses on, she was back to the usual Ella. That’s how well the glasses suited her.
“So glasses are magical devices, huh?”
“Eh? Um, no, they’re not. These are just normal glasses.”
“Piyo? But, when I looked through the glass, the world looked all blurry and stuff?”
“In my case, the world always looks blurry to me. That means these warped lenses focus my eyes back to normal.”
She didn’t really understand Ella’s explanation, but apparently glasses weren’t magical devices.
“……Piyo.”
“Tia, what’s the matter?”
Tia held her lips shut and dipped her head, to which Ella voiced her concern.
Ella was the second-tallest girl among the Apprentices after Sevil.
As Ella squatted down to meet Tia’s eyes, Tia felt genuine compassion.
Where Sevil would show her strong compassion by pulling her into a warm embrace, Ella’s was quite different.
Thus, Tia slowly began to talk.
“……Ella, do you not dislike using glasses?”
“Huh?”
Tia and Ella’s circumstances were different. Tia was a Monster, while Ella was human.
Regardless, Tia tried to ask her.
Whether or not Ella felt the same unsettling feeling when using those devices called ‘glasses’ that Tia did.
“I wanted to learn flight magic so I could fly. That was why I came to the Wedge Tower. But I, because I’m not good at controlling mana, they said flight magic would be impossible for me…….”
Tia glanced at Ella. Ella didn’t look bored or disappointed in her.
She was quietly and earnestly listening to Tia’s story.
That gave Tia the reassurance she needed to continue.
“The Management Office made a magical device for flying, and they said that if I used that, then I might be able to fly after all…….but relying on a magical device like that makes me feel all twisty inside and……”
That strange, unidentifiable feeling of discomfort always cloud’s Tia’s chest.
It made Tia feel so disgusting, but she didn’t have any idea what to do about it.
That was why she had said the wrong thing.
“When I said I didn’t want to use a magical device; that it made me feel disgusting…….Rukiye got mad at me.”
“Rukiye really wants to be a magical device artisan, so she probably just doesn’t like seeing people refuse to use magical devices.”
“Peuu…….”
That was definitely true. Even a Harpy would get mad if the things they liked or held dear got rejected.
Tia made a mistake.
But, that didn’t change the fact that the idea of using a magical device made her feel uncomfortable.
As Tia groaned “Peuuuu…….” Ella asked her a question in a gentle voice.
“Tia, is it that you just don’t want to rely on tools?”
“Something…… like that? Hmm, I can’t really think of how to say it…….but it’s hard…….”
Tia held her head and groaned, and Ella slowly stood up and straightened her back.
Then, she caressed the bridge of her glasses with her fingertip.
“Tia. You know, I used to have very good eyesight.”
“Eh?” “However, when I was around ten or so, I suffered from a serious illness…….I managed to survive, but my eyesight kept getting worse. Even though you’re right in front of me, I can’t even tell what kind of expression you’re making. And I can’t read books at all.”
They weren’t the same, but she felt like they had something in common.
Tia could fly, but became unable to fly.
Ella could see, but lost her sight due to an illness.
Even though the most important things to a Harpy were their ability to fly and sing, it would be a big problem if they couldn’t see. Without a doubt, it would be a problem.
That held true for Harpies and humans alike.
“It was my punishment for staying up all night reading books. That was what my childish mind thought. I was so scared…… what if I could never read a book again? It really scared me……..”
Tia’s face tensed up, but Ella relaxed hers and smiled.
“That was why, when they gave me these glasses, and I could read books again, I was so, so happy……”
“…………”
Would she feel the same way? Tia directed that question at her own heart.
If she used the Magical Flying Device, and once again was able to fly through the sky, would she be able to smile like Ella was now?
(…….I still don’t know.)
She felt like she could see the edges of that hazy feeling. However, that wasn’t enough to swallow it.
When she thought about it like that, the clothes and boots she wore; the utensils she used when she ate: and even the desks, chairs, and beds she used; those were all tools, in a way.
However, all of those were things that she felt were necessary for her to pretend to be a human. Even if she felt like she could never fully get used to them, she didn’t resist them.
The resistance she felt against using a magical device to fly was something entirely different.
“Sorry, Ella, even then, that hazy feeling isn’t going away. I wonder why? I want to fly so bad, but the idea of relying on a magical device makes me feel so weird……I don’t know what this feeling is, so it feels even grosser.”
Tia held her hand on her chest to try and ascertain the shape of that hazy feeling inside her, then Ella spoke.
“Do you think that hazy feeling might be frustration?”
“Piyo?”
“Like you’re frustrated that you can’t fly without relying on the magical device, or something……”
Frustrated. That was a shocking word to this Harpy.
After all, up to this point, Tia had been happy just being able to fly and sing, so she never really had a reason to feel frustrated.
(Frustrated……I’m frustrated. Not being able to fly is… frustrating.)
To a Harpy, flying is something that came even more naturally than walking.
That was why she was frustrated at having to rely on a magical device. —The haze inside Tia’s mind now had an edge and she could see it more clearly now.
With Tia’s mouth still half-open, Ella lowered her voice slightly and spoke as if she was sharing a secret.
“I actually failed out of my last school. I enjoyed studying magecraft so much, but I couldn’t emit mana at all, so…..”
Tia was surprised to hear that Ella had failed out.
After all, Ella was always so diligent and so passionate about her studies.
On the other hand, it was clear that she lacked the ability to emit mana. In stark contrast to Tia emitting too much mana at once, Ella could barely emit any at all.
“Do you remember how Director Hegelich let me use that special mana conducting ink?”
“Yeah.”
“My previous school wouldn’t let me use that. They said it was ‘being soft’.”
Ella’s face contorted a bit.
Sadness, frustration, hopelessness — as if swallowing all of those emotions in one big gulp. That sort of face.
“I kept practicing, wondering if I would spend the rest of my life unable to emit mana at all…… It was extremely painful for me. Like I was wandering through a forest with no exit.”
She recalled those days she spent fruitlessly flapping her wings as the unease crept up on her that she may never be able to fly again.
Again and again, she jumped from high up, only to end up as a bruised mess at the bottom.
It terrified her. She was miserable. Her heart felt like it was going to implode.
“When Director Hegelich let me use that ink, and I was able to emit mana properly for the first time….. it was a huge weight off of my shoulders. It made me think that even I might just be able do it. That there might be a point in trying as hard as I could.”
The moment Röhm and Hegelich noticed Tia and Ella were struggling with their mana output, they immediately brought out mana-resisting paper and mana-conducting ink for them to use.
When she succeeded at emitting mana using that ink, Ella’s face looked like she was about to cry.
Ella’s words, and the feelings she could interpret from her expressions, shone more light on the haze inside Tia’s mind.
Since her flight feathers were clipped, she hadn’t been able to fly.
But she didn’t give up, and kept jumping from the highest points she could find, and kept falling like a rock.
When she was beaten and bruised, splattered on the ground…..The feeling that dominated Tia’s whole body was frustration.
(Yes, that’s it. I was frustrated. I was so, so, so frustrated.)
Surely, Ella must have been similarly frustrated when she couldn’t properly control her mana.
In spite of that, Ella swallowed that feeling of frustration and came to the Wedge Tower.
(I’m frustrated. Extremely frustrated.)
Once she became aware of the frustration within her, she could finally ascertain the true nature of the resistance she’d felt towards using magical devices.
Unlike humans, Harpies could fly as if it was the easiest thing in the world. Because it was something so basic to her, relying on a tool for that was frustrating.
She wasn’t sure if her sister and the others would accept her using them either.
There was also a little bit of trepidation, as she wasn’t accustomed to using tools.
……..Those resistances against magical devices piled upon each other, and built into that haze she felt.
“Ella. I’m, frustrated. Not being able to fly, is super frustrating. Relying on a magical device, too, is frustrating.”
“Yes.”
“How do you manage to swallow that frustration, Ella? I just want to shove and squeeze it all deep into my stomach, but it just comes right back out. So the feeling of being frustrated for relying on a device never goes away.”
Tia, who had been content by just flying and singing, had few experiences with feeling frustration. As a result, she didn’t know how to erase that frustration.
Something told her this frustration might clear up if she just sang for a while.
As Tia fretted over how to collect all of that haze, give it a form, and chew it to digestible chunks, Ella spoke to her.
“Tia. You can think of tools as things that were born from the kindness of someone who thought ‘There’s someone out there who would be saved if they had this.’”
“Someone’s, kindness……..”
“There are many things that I can’t do as well as the average person, so I’ve always been saved by the kindness of such people whose faces I will never know.”
Even if Monsters might steal tools from humans or make their own copies, they won’t ever make anything new by themselves.
Monsters were creatures who lacked creativity. They were incapable of making anything new.
Tia started to wonder if that was because they lacked the kindness to think this might help someone else.
“That’s why, rather than feeling frustrated for relying on a tool, I think the feeling of gratitude towards that kind person who thought up and made such a tool is far stronger. ‘Thank you for helping me‘…..I think.”
‘Ella is a kind person herself,’ Tia thought.