Sing! Ancient Female Vocal Magic!

♪Adagio (Present)♪

“Hah... hah... It looks like our body has split in two.”

Hm? That was a high voice I didn’t recognize. Who had said that?

I looked toward the source of the voice and saw a long-haired, androgynous beautiful boy of the dragonfolk. On his alluring bare legs was the monitoring tag automatically fitted to anyone on parole from prison.

“N-no way. You’re... Allegro?!”

At my voice, the beautiful boy glared right back at me. So if he’d grown younger, his temper had too.

“And you must be Adagio! Becoming a woman—what a disgrace to the dragonfolk!”

Ah, there it was—Allegro’s usual voice again. Then what had that shrill voice been a moment ago? And as if his words were my cue, I checked my own body again and realized anew that it now had a girl’s shape. Sure enough, the thing that ought to have been between my legs wasn’t there, and my chest was—

“Fwahhh?!”

They say that when a body splits along personality lines, each new body takes a form that matches its mental age and the gender of its heart.

And my body was a girl’s.

Which meant... that my heart had been a girl’s from the very beginning.

Even though up until this very moment, I had lived believing I was a man...

Just as Allegro had said, in the world of the dragonfolk, for a man to have a woman’s heart was considered deeply shameful. Waaah, no! I hate this! Everyone’s going to make fun of me!

“Cute.”

At that voice, I turned and saw Poet-kun wearing a radiant smile. M-me? Cute? My heart began pounding wildly, and my sense of self-worth swelled all at once.

N-no, that’s bad! I’m supposed to be a proud dragonfolk man! I mustn’t be happy just because someone says something like that! What kind of shameless person does that make me?!

“You’re standing there grinning like an idiot! I’ll finish you off!”

A blast of compressed wind came flying from the trumpet.

“Look out!”

Poet-kun grabbed my hand and pulled me clear at the last possible instant. This made me feel exactly like a heroine being protected. My heart fluttered like I’d been pushed into the girl’s role or something.

B-but wait, grinning? Had I really been smiling? Without realizing it, being called cute had made my heart dance. Being treated like a girl had soothed me inside. Even though I’m a man—I’m a pervert!

N-no, this is not the time for that. I need to press my lips into a straight line. Mmgh. Mmph.

This is no time to be smiling. I have to survive this crisis!

An instrument...!

Following Allegro’s example, I cast a spell and tried to pull an instrument from subspace.

But the trumpet had already been claimed by Allegro!

Still... a cornet! The spare cornet! That would work! It used the same fingering and tuning as a trumpet!

“It’s—not there!”

“Too bad. Is this what you were looking for?”

Allegro held up the cornet right in front of me, flaunting it.

“Well then! Now you’re completely unarmed. Which means all you can do is get beaten down by me.”

“Gghhh...”

“Like hell you will!”

Poet-kun began strumming his guitar furiously, shaking the earth. Leaves rose into the air and sharpened into blade-like forms.

Then, as he played harmonics at the twelfth fret, the leaves shot one after another toward Allegro, one of them grazing his cheek and leaving a shallow cut.

“You insolent brat!”

Allegro answered with a fanfare. The volume was tremendous. The leaves scattered like mist, and Poet-kun’s body was blasted high up through the gaps in the trees before slamming into the ground.

Music played on the trumpet was powerful. It completely overpowered the other instruments.

“You’ve made me waste enough time. Now then—let’s start by taking care of Adagio.”

He began walking slowly toward me.

“Poet-kun...”

“Is this really the time to worry about someone else? Come on—you’re unarmed.”

He leveled the trumpet at me. At this distance, if he blew into it, my body might be blown apart.

“What’s wrong? Not going to resist? Heh. Of course you can’t. The instrument is in my hands. And with a woman’s body, you can’t even cast powerful male vocal magic. This is the end. I’ll try to make it painless.”

Allegro was right.

I had no real move left.

There were few offensive spells that could be performed with female vocal magic. It was mostly used for support and healing magic that assisted male vocal magic. But even if I had no winning move, that didn’t mean I could just do nothing.

Basic Fire.

The most fundamental male vocal spell. If you had a tenor voice, it could be effective. There was technically a soprano version too.

But no one used that spell in a female voice. The pitch was too high to produce any meaningful effect. At most, it would make a tiny flame appear and vanish, like a match or a lighter.

I didn’t think I could overpower him with it.

But perhaps, like nekodamashi—that sumo feint from otherworld martial arts—I might at least startle him for an instant, and use that opening to grab Poet-kun and run.

Surely even Allegro wouldn’t expect me to do something like this.

The spell only needed to surprise him.

Before Allegro could raise the trumpet to his lips, I sang the melody for Basic Fire.

And flame came out.

Like a flamethrower.

Both Allegro and I stared in stunned disbelief.

Only when I belatedly realized I was in danger did I twist my body and duck.

W-what is this? What just happened? This was Basic Fire, the most fundamental male vocal spell, wasn’t it?

“Just intonation!”

It was Poet-kun who shouted that. His knees were scraped up. They looked painful.

“There’s an ancient legend I’ve heard—that there was once an age when female vocal magic was used for offensive spells as powerful as male vocal magic. I always thought it was just a fairy tale. A made-up story someone invented. But if the music magic of antiquity was based on just intonation, then it all makes sense! This is lost technology!”