Chapter 2: The Day I Lost My Power ②

✦ ✦ ✦

When I came to, the first thing I noticed was antiseptic.

White ceiling. The steady rhythm of machines. It took a few seconds to understand I was in a hospital.

“You’re awake, Zerovalt-kun.”

I turned toward the voice. A middle-aged man in a white coat was looking down at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read.

“You were brought in from the Babel Thirteen engagement. The Angelus-type has been confirmed destroyed — well done. Thanks to you, all three of your teammates are unharmed.”

All three of them, unharmed. I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding.

(Good. It was enough.)

“However…”

The doctor’s voice dropped slightly.

“I need to explain the cost.”

The cost. That word made me look at myself.

My left arm had no feeling. I looked. Everything below the elbow was gone. The bandaged stump just sat there, making reality impossible to argue with.

My left eye couldn’t see either. I blinked, and the left half of my vision stayed dark.

“Your left arm was crushed from the elbow down and had to be amputated. Your left eye ruptured and has lost all function.”

He said it like he was reading off a chart. I’d known. The moment I used that spell, I knew this was coming.

“Prosthetics can compensate for the arm and eye. Rehabilitation will be required, but you should recover to a level suitable for daily living.”

He paused—a heavy sigh.

“But that is not the problem.”

My stomach dropped. His expression got worse.

“The Magiacraft you used at the end… it caused critical damage to the Magia Transistors throughout your body.”

“…Yeah. I figured.”

“Test results show that close to ninety-nine percent of your Magia Transistors are nonfunctional.”

Ninety-nine percent. Total loss, for all practical purposes.

I knew what that meant before he explained it.

“So…”

“Approximately one percent of your Magia Transistors remain intact — numerically, that classifies as zero. Casting Magiacraft is not impossible, but returning to active duty at any meaningful level is, frankly, out of the question.”

One percent. Not zero. But might as well be.

A Xenograph who could only output one hundredth of what he used to was dead weight on a battlefield.

What he was telling me, politely, was that I was done.

“…I see.”

The doctor left. Alone in the hospital room, I glanced at the small mirror on the bedside table.

I didn’t recognize the person looking back.

My hair had gone completely white. Every strand of it — black before — had lost all its color. Side effect of the Transistor damage, maybe. Between that and the bandages over my left eye, the person in the mirror was someone I’d never met.

(Well. At least I’m alive.)

Strangely, facing all of it at once, I didn’t feel despair. I was alive. They were alive. That was enough.

I was still thinking it when the door slammed open.

“Zero!”

Lunamiris. She was first through the door—the sharp light that was always in her eyes — gone.

Nephiliza and Rizeletta came in behind her. All three of them had pale, dark rings under their eyes.

“No…”

Luna’s gaze moved over the empty end of my left arm, the bandages, the white hair.

“Why — why does it have to be you, why do you have to —!”

Her voice rang off the walls and then collapsed inward.

“Was it because I was… too weak…?”

Tears ran down her face. The girl who always played the confident honor student wasn’t playing anything right now.

“That’s not it, Luna.”

I shook my head.

“You kept everyone together. Nobody died. You did your job as captain — you did it well. You can be proud of that.”

“But —!”

She opened her mouth and couldn’t find anything to say. She looked down with her teeth in her lip.

“Zerovalt-sama.”

Rize stepped forward. Every bit of her composure was gone, and her eyes were wet.

“These injuries are my fault… if I had been stronger, you wouldn’t have…”

She bowed her head.

“I will accept any punishment. Whatever you ask.”

“All right then. As your punishment —”

She looked up.

“Stop making that face and smile. I like it when you smile.”

“…Zerovalt-sama…”

Big tears rolled down her cheeks. Rize — who kept everything inside — was crying out loud.

“Zero-kun…”

Nephi drifted toward me. In her hand was a blade formed from mana.

“It hurt, didn’t it… because I held you back…”

“Nephi…?”

“I’m sorry… I’m so sorry…”

She turned the blade toward her own arm.

“My arm and eye should just… disappear too…”

“Stop—!”

I grabbed her wrist with my right hand. The only hand I had left. She flinched like I’d startled her out of somewhere far away.

“Don’t. Your arms and eyes are going to save a lot of people. You need them.”

“But… but…!”

The blade dissolved. She bent down and buried her face in my chest and sobbed.

When they’d quieted down a little, I said what I had to say.

“I need you all to hear something.”

All three of them looked at me.

“I just got the doctor’s report. Ninety-nine percent of my Magia Transistors are nonfunctional.”

A sharp intake somewhere in the room.

“The remaining one percent can still cast Magiacraft. But the output is one hundredth of what I had. The way I am now, I’m nowhere close to standing beside you.”

I kept going.

“Effectively — I’m combat ineffective. I’ll be expelled from the lower school, and at this rate, they won’t accept me into the intermediate level either.”

“That can’t be…”

Luna barely got it out. Rize covered her mouth with both hands. Nephi gripped my clothes and shook.

“We won’t… be able to be with Zero-kun…?”

Nephi’s voice was almost nothing.

“Then… what’s the point of fighting…”

“I feel the same. What meaning does any battlefield have without Zerovalt-sama…”

“If Zero isn’t there, I…”

Their words — barely words, more like something wrung out of them — pressed hard against my chest.

But. No. Because of that, I couldn’t give up.

“Wait. I have an idea.”

All three of them looked up.

“That one percent — it’s nothing. The way I am now, it’s useless. But if I train from scratch, I might be able to get more out of it.”

I looked at my right hand. The only real one I had left.

“I won’t make it back for the intermediate school. But the upper school entrance exam — there’s time for that. I’ll train like my life depends on it and come back as a Xenograph who can stand in the same place as you.”

“Zero…”

“If all I have is one percent, I become better with that one percent than anyone else is with a hundred. Skill and experience fill the gap. I’m not quitting.”

I smiled. The best one I could manage, and I meant it.

“So wait for me. Three years from now, I’ll be back. I promise.”

Silence. Then, one by one, they made up their minds.

“…That’s a promise.”

Luna wiped her eyes — red around the rims — and said it.

“We’ll be waiting, Zerovalt-sama.”

Rize said it quietly, with more weight in it than the words themselves.

“That’s a promise… Zero-kun… you absolutely have to…”

Nephi still had my clothes in her fist when she looked straight at me and said it.

Each of them in their own words. The same promise.

Their eyes were still wet, but what was in them wasn’t grief anymore. It was something harder.

That was how we made our promise.

✦ ✦ ✦

— Three years passed.

I spent them grinding — every hour devoted to squeezing everything possible out of that one percent. Meanwhile, the three of them moved through Academia’s intermediate school, sharpening themselves into proper Xenographs.

Without the intermediate school between us, we rarely saw each other. The occasional letter was about all that connected us.

The promise we made that day in the hospital.

“Three years from now, I’ll be back.”

That was what kept me moving.

What I didn’t understand then was how much that promise had weighed on them. What three years of absence had carved into them.

The guilt, the tenderness, the possessiveness — all of it fermenting in the dark into something I couldn’t have imagined.

I’d find out soon enough.