Chapter 16: Symphon

Shiori read aloud from The Last Word: “The Reverse Mirror began to vibrate as it was fed power. Without direction or control, the pure knowledge fed to the mirror from the girl’s words made it vibrate powerfully, but in complete silence. She had no way to know except, from what was written in the book, that the other Speaker had noticed this power and was drawing near.”

Shiori stopped reading. She hadn’t considered that the other mysterious Speaker would notice the energized Anchor. “If the other Speaker shows up, what will we do?”

“I can’t tell if you trust Otonashi-senpai or not.” Tsubame said. She touched the mirror, but pulled her hand away with a hiss. “What was that?”

“Can you not tell that the mirror is vibrating? That was why you dropped it before the shadows attacked.” Shiori answered.

“It’s vibrating? Besides, I can barely remember what happened before the attack.”

Tsubame couldn’t detect the vibrations from the mirror? But Shiori could and apparently other Speakers could detect that energy from a distance. She needed to ask someone about that, but couldn’t ask Otonashi because he was looking for the mirror.

She knew reading aloud fueled Speaker magic best, but The Last Word was more than a book. The energy from the mirror was intense after a few sentences. Who wrote this book? Who was Kawamura?

The Anchor began to rattle toward the desk’s edge. Shiori didn’t relish catching it if it fell.

Instead, Shiori grabbed various things from her bedroom desk to corral it into place. Her hands shook. This was too much. Last week she was a normal girl surviving her first year of high school.

Now she was learning magic and worried a dangerous hidden wizard would break into her bedroom to acquire an ancient artifact made from shearing souls. She wished Tsubame had left her a sponge cake.

The vibrations stopped.

The girls were silent.

“Well,” Tsubame said, “that’s probably either a very good thing or a very bad thing.” After consideration, Tsubame took two big steps away from the desk and the Reverse Mirror.

Shiori first noticed Motohara-senpai in the mirror. “There he is!” she said excitedly. “We were so worried for you. Are you safe?” Shiori caught herself, realizing he couldn’t hear her.

“I wasn’t so worried, why were you?” Tsubame teased while Motohara-senpai smiled.

Shiori was torn between glaring at Tsubame hard enough to melt the little goblin, or melting herself at Motohara’s smile. She settled for goblin annihilation.

“What? He won’t hear me. Those things eat sound like I eat cake.”

Shiori recreated the Anchor looks at the makeup mirror looks at notebook setup again. She wrote ‘Are you okay?’ on the notebook and showed it to the Anchor through the makeup mirror.

Motohara seemed to be putting on a brave face. While he wasn’t as haggard as when she last saw him, he looked like he hadn’t slept. When he read the paper he smiled and gave a ‘thumbs up’ sign.

She desperately wanted to reach out and tear open the space between them. She sighed, then tensed.

Next to her, Tsubame sat with legs folded on her bed, smirking. She made a passable imitation of Shiori’s sigh.

Shiori planned to resume operation ‘melt goblin’ at her next available convenience. Until then, she wanted to see that smile and be with him. Oh, and she needed his help to avoid being stolen to a dark world of eternal warfare

Motohara surprised Shiori with a bundle of cut canvas. Paper and parchment were forbidden in Kryptopeda where writing was a crime, but one could write on canvas. Motohara took crude charcoal and scribbled: “It’s good to see you.”

Shiori quickly wrote: “Is it dangerous to write over there?”

Motohara smiled and turned his mirror to face a fire. It was built in a depression in the fields outside the castle. The castle had unusual walls that jutted in and out, giving it a spiky appearance from the sky.

Motohara’s head was visible through the mirror, tossing the canvas with the illegal writing into the fire. He turned the mirror back to his face and smiled with a wink.

“Clever,” Shiori remarked.

“Are you going to sigh again, or can we move on with his plan?” Tsubame asked.

Operation ‘melt goblin’ was going to be awesome.

Shiori shook her head to focus. She wrote: “We have the other Speaker’s Grimoire. He’s trying to teach me magic. Have you learned any?”

Motohara’s eyes widened. He wrote: “Name in Grimoire?”

“Many names.” Shiori wrote, then opened the soft leather book. She was immensely careful to open it to a page filled with names and not to the flattering drawing.

It looked odd seeing Motohara whoop and shout for joy through the mirror, since there was no sound. Shiori laughed with him. His earlier severe tiredness was fading.

Shiori turned the page and wrote more. “He’s teaching me magic. Maybe I can learn to use my Anchor to open a portal?”

Motohara looked confused. He wrote: “You know about Anchors?”

Shiori tapped her mirror. “And I’m learning magic.”

Motohara’s face scrunched up. Tsubame leaned against a wall with her arms folded, watching them like a pointless chaperone.

The barrier between them was chaperoning, and Shiori thought five minutes by his side would make everything feel better.

Motohara showed new writing on his canvas: “Have you read the names?”

“Can’t,” Shiori responded.

“Show,” he wrote.

The next ten minutes were spent with Motohara looking at names and transcribing them into Japanese. This went poorly. Motohara couldn’t hear Shiori’s, and many sounds didn’t fit into Japanese.

Shiori had done okay in English grammar, but her pronunciation was poor. She could never make a ‘tee’ sound but instead the Japanese ‘chi’. Otonashi’s alphabet had a weird ‘Ps’ sound and too many ‘Xs’ sounds.

Motohara pointed often at a phrase: “Did it feel like you read that one right?”

Shiori would point to a phrase she had written: “How will I know?”

Motohara would sigh and point to: “There’s a certain feeling.”

After struggling with bizarre foreign names, Shiori asked for a break.

Motohara reluctantly agreed.

Shiori wound where she had written: “He’s teaching me magic. Maybe I can learn to use my Anchor to open a portal?”

Motohara waved that away.

Shiori wrote: “Are you learning magic?”

He nodded but pointed to a new sentence he had written. Writing on canvas with charcoal was slow and sloppy. He was running out of canvas. Shiori thought he was in a hurry because of the limited resources, or was he in danger?

He wrote: “Show me all names.”

She turned the pages. She almost showed him a drawing which made her blush since the second drawing was of her at her school desk, looking quite fetching.

Shiori flipped through the book’s dozen pages, then noticed Motohara flailing his arms. When he had her attention he made a sweeping motion to go back a page.

When she did, he held a hand up and searched the page again.

“Did he find something?” Tsubame asked.

His face went pale. Not like last time they spoke, when he looked nearly dead. Not like at the beginning of this conversation, when he was tired. Pale like in fear.

He took a new canvas, one of his last, and wrote two things. First, he wrote one of the names on the page: “Σύμφων“

Shiori quickly recognized it in the book, it didn’t seem special.

Second, he wrote the name in Japanese for her to read aloud: “シンフォン”

Shiori read it aloud, but nothing special happened. She shook her head and Motohara did the same in frustration.

He rewrote the instructions, and Shiori winced. It had a ‘See’ sound, which she always turned into a ‘Shi’ in English class.

Shiori struggled as Motohara pointed at the ‘S’ in “Sシmンフォnン”. He also indicated that the first ‘ン’ was more an ‘m’ and the second was more an ‘n’. The difference had always seemed arbitrary to Shiori

Struggling like it was a single syllable tongue twister, she kept saying ‘Shee-nfom’.

Then she said ‘Symphon’. Her chest vibrated with power. There was a rush in her mind, like a door opening that reminded her of Otonashi with his calm confidence and careful wariness.

She could feel Otonashi’s massive reserve of power. She sensed that touching his reserve of power weakened him.

She had found his true name. If she focused on it, she sensed where he was. Then, she realized he wasn’t far away.

Motohara had placed his mirror on the ground, pointed up at him. He had run his fingers through his hair in frustration, and was nearly pulling his hair out.

“Something wrong? I said it right. His name must be Symphon.”

Motohara wrote on his last canvas: “Symphon of Felthal dangerous. Stay away. Don’t talk. Run.”

Shiori’s breath caught as she read it. She could feel Otonashi getting closer. Fast.