Altair

The next day, Tatsuko and Yoruhi were greeted at the door by Ryuji who was excitedly waiting like a puppy.

So that’s the kid they’re talking about, Nene thought upon seeing him, the one who parried that attack yesterday.

Nene, as the head of the maids in the household, often liked to watch the sparring that happened across the 20 floors of the estate, and she just so happened to be looking down below when Tatsuko dragged in Ryuji behind her.

Over the 5 years she had been taking care of the child, she had already gotten used to her shenanigans. She spent 12 years as her father’s friend prior to her birth after all, and she knew better than anyone how much he loved to cause trouble. It was only when the previous head of the Estate declared that he was considering Hayate to be his successor, that he finally decided to get his act together. Or so she thought.

When he dragged in a stray kid a couple days ago, she was worried that he had gone back to his delinquent days, but thankfully he did have a proper explanation as to why he did that. She was even more grateful when the kid Yoruhi turned out to be much easier to handle than Tatsuko.

The group made their way towards the library, and when they arrived, Yoruhi realized that the biggest tree he saw in the city on the first night was where it was located. He surmised that the city must’ve held knowledge and education to a high priority based on the fact that it was even bigger than even the estate he lived in.

The inside of the library was expectedly vast and enormous. It held a large number of floors, too many to count, and each of them were filled with towering bookshelves that were twice the size of an average room. The walls were adorned with flowers, and the heating blowing in from the ceiling warmed their cold faces from the snow outside. The center of the library was open to the floors above and had an elegantly sculpted water fountain made in the image of some avikin man. Below his feet was a sign that read ‘founded by Min-jun Elderowl.’

They passed through a line of magical scanners that prevented stolen books from exiting the library and made their way to the stairs.

This was where Nene had to make a decision. Each kid she had with her had to go to a different section of the library. One idea was to make them all stick together and pick out the books from each section one by one, but the library was huge and doing this would take them a large amount of time that Nene wasn’t willing to spend.

It didn’t help that the Magic section was on the other side of the library from the Swordsmanship section. And so she decided to gamble her trust in Yoruhi.

She pulled out a purple flower from her pocket and compressed it into her fingers as the children watched her with curiosity. A few seconds later, the flower transformed into a pointed shape and Nene placed it securely within Yoruhi’s white hair. 

“There,” she said before asking, “I can trust you to be alone right Yoruhi?”

“Sure?” he said, wondering why so many adults in this world were willing to trust him.

“Good,” Nene breathed a sigh of relief, “try not to lose this flower, okay? If you ever get lost in here, I can track the magicules from it and find you. I’ll be taking Ryuji and Tatsuko to the Swordsmanship section, while you head to the Magic section over there.”

He was beginning to realize that Nene was in fact not the responsible adult he assumed she was, or at the very least, she wasn’t very good at handling kids. She was lucky that Yoruhi even had experience with libraries from his past life and could therefore somewhat navigate himself around the place. The only tricky part was reading the signs, which he had trouble distinguishing the words on.

Although Nene had correctly pointed him to the Magic section, the section itself was split into multiple subsections, for magic was a very vast topic. He skimmed through many rows of bookshelves, climbing up and down stairways and sometimes taking the elevators when his small legs got tired, and eventually found the section where all the training books were located. It had been right next to the Medicine section on the second floor the entire time, and although frustrated, Yoruhi was glad that he managed to find it.

Still, there was another challenge left, and it was finding the row where the books that contained his skill level in magic was located.

Expert… intermediate… apprentice… he read the signs one by one, Aha! Novice! Wait… but there’s another section that says Beginner… What’s the difference between the two?

When he turned around and saw another section that said, ‘Introductory’ he was even more dumbfounded. He was already tired from all the walking, and he still had at least 3 more rows to check.

Exhausted, he dragged himself around the corner, but was immediately met with a stack of books to his face.

“Oof!” said the voice of a little girl.

Yoruhi had bumped into someone, causing the two of them to fall to the ground. When he recovered from his daze, he saw a little girl with a pile of books scattered around her.

She had long white hair similar to his, and her eyes were a bright shade of scarlet red, similar to that of blood. She looked to be about the same age as him but her frame looked very frail as if the simple act of touching her would cause her bones to snap. In her hair, he saw a grotesque, red flower—one that he was unable to identify.

Her parents trusted her to be alone too huh? Yoruhi figured, assuming it might be similar to the one placed in his hair.

“Ow…” the girl mumbled while rubbing her head in pain, but upon seeing Yoruhi on the ground, she frantically reached to cover up the flower on her head before suddenly bursting into a frantic apology. “Oh, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to bump into you! I was just carrying so many books with me and I couldn’t see in front of the stack I was carrying, and I should’ve been watching where I was going, but I wasn’t, and I’m so sorry that I wasn’t, and I should’ve been more careful, and—”

“It’s… okay?” Yoruhi said, trying to get her to calm down, “It’s my fault really. Here, let me help you out.”

He began to pick up the books for her, but when they finished and he saw just how high they piled up in front of her face, he began to feel bad.

“Actually, let me take some of those,” he offered, trying to take half the stack from her arms.

“No, it’s okay,” she said, “you can go find what you’re looking for. I’ll just be more careful.”

Yoruhi looked back at the long rows of bookshelves, and immediately became completely disinterested in his search for the training book.

“To be honest, I don’t even know what I’m looking for,” he admitted to her, “I’ll just help you out while I’m here. Where are you taking so many books anyway?”

Her eyes gestured over to a section behind the Medicine shelves where tables had been set up for people to read.

“My dad’s over there,” she explained, “I was helping him pick out books.”

The two of them carried the stack of books over to where a disheveled-looking white-haired man sat. When he saw Yoruhi, he looked upon him with curiosity.

“Who’s this you’ve brought with you Altair?” he asked. His language was surprisingly refined despite how he looked.

“Oh, this is…” she trailed off as Yoruhi remembered that he hadn’t introduced himself to her.

“Yoruhi,” he said, “Yoruhi Sakura.”

“Yoruhi Sakura,” she repeated, finishing her sentence, “I accidentally bumped into him and he helped me pick up the books and bring him here.”

Her father let out a sigh.

“Sorry about that young man, I did tell her not to bring so many over at the same time, but she doesn’t like to listen,” he said before turning to his daughter. “You know you can’t be doing too much because of your condition. What if you collapse again?”

Collapse? Yoruhi wondered, Condition?

“I’m sorry dad, I just wanted to help out,” she said.

He let out another sigh, but this time with an endearing smile following behind it.

“It’s okay sweety,” he said, “I know you want to find the cure as much as I do.”

He then looked over to Yoruhi.

“I would like to sincerely apologize again,” he said. “You said your last name is Sakura right? Most people don’t receive invitations to a Noble Family at your age, so I assume you’re one of their children. But I thought that the people at the Estate of Draconic Balance had a daughter not a son. Was I mistaken?”

Yoruhi shook his head and explained that he was recently adopted.

The man silently scratched his chin in curiosity before he said, “I see. Well then young man, as a token of appreciation for helping my daughter, what can I do for you? You seem a bit lost here. Are you looking for a book?”

“Yes, actually,” Yoruhi said, surprised that the man had figured him out, “if you can tell me where I can find the books that teach me how to get into magic, I would greatly appreciate it.”

“Oho, such a refined manner of speaking!” he said in surprise, “just like my precious daughter here. But you said you’re trying to get into magic? Aren’t you a bit too young for that?”

“Not according to my teacher,” Yoruhi said.

“Hmm…” the man mumbled in deep thought again, “I doubt you’ll succeed, but I suppose it’s always worth trying.”

He stood up and began walking back towards the bookshelves.

“C’mon then young man,” he said, “let me show you where the sections are.”