Chapter 8

Rionne rang the bell. Again it was Fuyutsuki Ryuuichi who came to open the door. “Rionne-sama,” the boy greeted her with a bow. “You grace us again with your visit. I hope this humidity hasn’t been a bother.”

The elf bowed back, imitating the customs she had observed. “It is a nuisance,” she agreed. “The intense rains certainly don’t help this mugginess.”

He gave her an odd look. Under her transparent umbrella, now heavy with rainwater, she was again dressed in her white shirt and jeans outfit, with matching white sandals. Then he smiled lightly. “I was wondering why you had not used your talents to mitigate it, but then I see your shoes are spotless.”

She evaded his gaze with some unease. “Your parents’ warnings about restraint are worth keeping to heart.”

“They are expecting you. Please come in.”

Rionne walked into the small vestibule and took off her sandals. She heard voices coming from up the stairs: “Katsumasa and… Ayase. And someone else?”

“My students,” the boy nodded.

She followed Ryuuichi up the stairs to see the winged silhouette of Ayase Rumiko first. Opposite her sat Katsumasa Shinichiro, who was concentrating on a piece of obscured glass before him.

Steps were heard on the floor above, then Rinka climbed down the stairs. “Ah, Rionne-san! There you are! Glad that you could join us. Would you mind going upstairs? Hiroshi-san is already waiting for you.”

“Gladly. Anything you require me to bring upstairs?”

“Oh—yes, please, just…” Rinka reached into a cupboard and took out three crystal chalices. “Take these with you, please.”

“As you say.” The elf took the delicate chalices from her and climbed the stairs—only to be puzzled. It was a traditional Japanese bedroom, with quilts and futons arranged on a tatami and two doors, one leading into a bathroom, and the other seemingly into a dressing room, but a thick curtain obstructed the view.

Rinka’s voice came from downstairs: “Through the curtain!”

Rionne walked to the second doorway and pushed the curtain aside—

—only to find herself in a clearing in a pine forest. A few standing torches arranged in a hexagon pattern provided lighting, and in the center a table and three chairs had been set. Hiroshi sat in one. “Ah, Rionne-sama, welcome,” he said affably. “Please, take a seat. Enjoy the night with us. It’s lovely, isn’t it?”

The elf looked behind her. The curtained doorway was the same, but part of a large tent. No traces of the house or the city. The atmosphere smelled of wet soil, pine, and flowers—some of which had the same fragrance as flowers from her own realm.

The mage before her smiled. “Surprised?”

Rionne stepped forward and sat to his left, but could not stop looking around. “I am trying to piece together what you did.” She reached for her purse—

—but Hiroshi stopped her: “That’s not just unnecessary,” he said softly. “It will spoil our gift to you.”

The elf was puzzled again. “I meant to look for my monocle.”

“Again I say: unneeded,” he insisted. “Please believe me.”

Rionne was going to push back, but she could not defeat his quiet request. She was still picking at it in her mind when there was a shuffling sound to her right, and Rinka pushed the curtains aside. “Ah, there we are. How do you like it here?”

“It’s…” She breathed in the air. “This reminds me of home.”

“Sadly, it’s not,” Hiroshi said softly. “We’ve curated this place carefully so that it keeps those memories for us.”

“You said your son was born there.”

“Ten years back,” Rinka confirmed as she sat to her husband’s right. “We ourselves were born here. But being born in your realm had an unexpected effect on our son, so we decided we had to move back.”

That got Rionne’s mind working. Ryuuichi looked like a completely normal ten-year-old boy—except that his demeanor was completely not that of a normal ten-year-old boy. “I can venture an explanation for that.”

“And I’m certain you’d be spot on. But let us leave that for later, please.” Rinka took one of the chalices to her lips, took a sip, and put it back on the table with a pleasured sigh. “This has no business tasting this good.”

Rionne eyed her curiously. The chalice was empty and crystal-clean. “There is no—”

Except that there was. A trace of purple-red liquid remained on Rinka’s lips.

The elf stared at her in complete confusion. “I fail to understand how did you manage that.”

Rinka blinked. “Manage what?”

Rionne gestured at the chalice. “There was nothing—there is nothing on that chalice, and yet you just sipped some drink.”

Hiroshi motioned at the chalice too. “Why don’t you give it a try? It’s delicious.”

Hiroshi took his own chalice and drank from it—some kind of thick, brown liquid that stuck to his lips and moustache. “Sorry.” He reached for a white napkin in his pocket and cleansed himself, then left it on the table.

Rionne’s eyes were glued to his perfectly clean chalice and the brown stains on the white fabric of the napkin.

“What am I seeing here?”

Rinka looked at her. Warmly. “Tell us what you see first.”

Hiroshi gestured at her purse. “Use your monocle, if you want.”

Rionne did that, but the exquisite monocle revealed nothing—it was a completely normal clearing with completely mundane torches set around them, the crystal chalices exquisite and entirely mundane too. The liquid in Rinka’s lips was also perfectly normal.

“Whatever you did, it is very clean. No lingering traces of mana, no leylines converging here…” She looked to her right. “The tent seems… is just a tent. Not a design I have seen, the materials are strange, but it is just a tent.” Frustration rose inside her. “What am I seeing here?” she repeated. “What is happening here?”

Both Hiroshi and Rinka let her question hang in the air for a few seconds before the latter answered, “Our son Ryuuichi has told you we need no Tapestry to practice our art.”

“He did,” Rionne answered, still frowning.

“You’ve also met Sugiyama,” Hiroshi added. “He’s a practitioner of many different martial arts styles. One of them has a pair of concepts that can help you understand what is happening.”

“One of them they call Mienai Keiko, ‘the study of the unseen,’” Rinka described. “After mastering it, the last leg of their journey is Wakaranai Keiko, ‘the study of the incomprehensible.’”

The elf stared at her hosts, even more confused now. “How does one even teach something that can neither be seen nor understood?”

“You don’t,” Hiroshi said simply.

Rionne’s confusion was starting to morph into frustrated anger. “Is this your gift?” she said dryly. “Some ploy to confuse me?”

“Let me try and explain it like this,” Rinka asked. “The discipline where Sugiyama came across these concepts has ten ranks a student must complete before attaining proficiency—symbolized with a black belt. But that’s not where the journey ends.”

“Proficiency is not mastery,” Hiroshi expanded. “Two more ranks follow before an apprentice can be called a master. They have to study very hard and learn many new techniques. But the final test consists of evading a single sword strike while blindfolded.”

Rionne blinked. “So?”

“So,” Rinka said, tenderness permeating her face, “we wanted to show you what magic looks like after you’ve graduated.”

The elf sorceress was astounded. “You mean to say—there’s more learning? More spells to master?”

Hiroshi shook his head slowly. “We would be hard pressed to find a spell you cannot learn. The Silver Archsorceress who defeated an avatar of the Endless Thirst? Impossible.”

“After attaining mastery,” Rinka continued, “a student of Sugiyama’s discipline continues training. But nobody hands down teachings to them, nobody instructs them on secret techniques or maneuvers reserved for masters only.”

“That is not knowledge,” Hiroshi said. “That is wisdom that cannot be taught, only developed. A student has to master first the study of the unseen before they attempt to tackle the study of the incomprehensible.”

Rionne blinked twice, then regarded the three chalices before her, the stained napkin and the tent. Then spent some long seconds in thought before saying, “If I appealed to my craft, I could do some of what you did,” she said quietly. “I could transport us here, put liquors in our chalices.” She exhaled. “But I would need implements, words of power… and I would leave traces behind. You did not.”

Rinka reached out to hold her hand. “There’s whole realms of magic beyond what you know, Rionne-san,” she said earnestly and warmly. “But we can’t teach you those. We would like to, but that can’t be taught.”

“We can only show you the doorway,” Hiroshi added quietly.

The elf remained quiet for a long minute.

Her eyes did not veer from the stained napkin.

“The ‘second caveat’ you told me about in the dinner… This is it, isn’t it.”

“The ‘second caveat,’ Rionne-san, is that you’re already using magic like we do—without realizing it,” Hiroshi stated gently. “There is no Tapestry here, yet your power still works. Even when it shouldn’t.”

She breathed once. “My magic is already weaker than what it was before coming here.” Her voice was slightly hesitant, though, conveying uncertainty.

“Keep going, Rionne-san.” Rinka looked on encouragingly. “Why do you think that happens?”

“Because… Because I cannot understand why it functions without a Tapestry to sustain me?” She blinked. “Because by all rights it should not? Or… because I keep telling myself it should not?”

Both of the Fuyutsukis were quiet for a while before speaking again.

“This was our gift to you today,” Hiroshi said. “True Magic is not the seen or the knowable. It just is.”

“How you develop it is up to you,” Rinka added gently. “We cannot teach you that.”

Rionne struggled with her thoughts and intuition for long seconds. She felt the answer was just right there, she had just to stretch out a little longer to grasp it.

But she could not reach it. Not yet.

“Why tell me now?”

Hiroshi and Rinka exchanged a look. “When you arrive in your realm, you’ll see it’s in distress,” the former said. “That was why your teleportation spell failed. Not because of a mistake on your part.”

“The Tapestry is fraying,” Rinka explained. “The very scaffolding that supports your magic is weakening. When you go back to your realm, you’ll find that the power you felt diminishing will be restored—but as time goes by and the Tapestry continues to deteriorate, it will start to fail you.”

“We don’t know how your door unlocks,” Hiroshi admitted, “and even if we knew, we couldn’t answer that for you. But it may happen that you’re rendered completely powerless because the Tapestry can’t support your magic anymore.”

“When that happens, you have to start walking,” Rinka said intensely. “When you walk you don’t measure each step and each motion of your legs, how your arms move to maintain balance. You just do it.”

“When your supports crumble, walk on,” Hiroshi said, repeating his wife’s words. “Don’t think about walking. Just walk.”