Raban decided to roughly wrap up the ongoing consultation with Magi Black. By this point, he seemed to have filled his quota for the intimacy-raising work.
Before Magi White came in, he needed to analyze this ominous premonition more accurately.
***
In Nahyeon’s eyes, Raban’s counseling was cautious. How should she put it? An attitude that felt like an extension of the words the man always went around shouting: “I’m not an expert!”
Because he couldn’t be confident that his own choices were the correct answer or the standard approach, he continued the conversation more calmly and slowly. To understand the person who had requested counseling more deeply, and to derive the advice most suited for that person.
But today’s counseling was different. It was closer to speed chess.
Raban’s questions were sharp.
“Half black and half white. Is this an expression of yourself, or of your uncle?”
“…Both.”
The small human figure Nahyeon had drawn as a reflection of “herself” was located on the side not painted black. Raban relentlessly echoed back without hesitation.
“Right now, are you in a situation where you cannot trust your uncle? Without any substantial evidence for your own suspicions?”
It was difficult to affirm or deny. But there were words she had heard before the counseling began. That she had to face her own emotions accurately. Nahyeon bit her lips, then eventually nodded.
“It’s suspicion felt toward someone who used to be a reliable adult in the past….”
Raban stroked his jaw. Beneath the shadow cast by his long bangs, his eyes gleamed.
Nahyeon felt expectation and a kind of fear simultaneously. The expectation stemmed from the possibility that he might provide a clear answer to the conflicting emotions she felt now. The fear was….
‘Did I talk too much?’
From the sense that she had spoken too much of her personal information. The man had shown no particular interest even after deducing that Syune was Magi White, but her own case was somewhat different, wasn’t it?
From the standpoint of the man who had been a researcher at Naju Pharmaceuticals, for the blood relative of those who had caused her to lose her memories to become a magical girl and clean up traces of the past….
‘It must look somewhat contradictory.’
He might even see it as hypocrisy. Nahyeon herself didn’t even know the true nature of whatever her parents’ generation had been obsessed with, and by common sense, it was impossible for someone that young to approach a corporate secret.
As if emotions ever operated so precisely, measured with a ruler. Nahyeon knew very well that it wasn’t so.
She knew from the man’s reaction when he met her uncle and his attitude toward her that ‘the likelihood of that was low,’ but.
Still, if possible.
Because she didn’t want to be hated by someone she was close to.
In the fleeting moment Nahyeon was chewing over fragments of loneliness buried in long-standing regret, Raban threw out a new topic.
“Have you asked the person himself?”
“Huh?”
“Hmm, I cannot know what doubts Miss Magi Black holds. They must be personal matters, so it is not something I should reach out to speculate about either. If it is a story an outsider should not access, then the only person who can shed your cultivated doubts is yourself.”
The word ‘but’ hung at the tip of her tongue. She could list several reasons why she hadn’t spoken to her uncle until now.
Because he was a busy person traveling all over the world. Because she thought people could change after going through major events. Because her doubts had begun to rise in earnest only after meeting this man.
But none of those words could leap past her lips.
Because she was the only one in this world who could feel a sense of wrongness about her uncle.
The other family members who had known her uncle early on were no longer in this world, and the countless people who had worked at Naju Pharmaceuticals were no longer remaining either.
The people who associated with her uncle now could not even feel a sense of wrongness because they did not know the previous uncle. In the end, finding the identity of this vague sense of wrongness was something only she herself had to do.
At that moment, Nahyeon recalled once more the words she had heard at the beginning of the counseling. Those words telling her to face herself.
That sentence overlapped with the current question in her ears. If she truly was the only one who could uncover the identity of that doubt, then it was right for her to step forward.
Raban’s declaration that ‘only you yourself can shed your own doubts’ was not a spur but a plain statement of fact. It pointed out what Nahyeon had to do now, what she could do.
Nahyeon realized that both her fear and expectation had been fulfilled just now.
‘Mister, you noticed…!’
She hadn’t said exactly who her worries were about, just vaguely said ‘uncle.’ But the man had definitely noticed her identity, and furthermore that the uncle she was suspecting was Nachalsu.
Come to think of it, it was Raban who had first warned her about the villa in the Black Forest. He had also told her that her original Uncle Chalsu had a more introverted and taciturn personality than now.
Though the direction had been somewhat strange, wasn’t he the possessor of outstanding intuition enough to guess in one go that White was Syune? If he combined the clues she had unwittingly let slip, grasping the truth would have been simple.
But instead of revealing the truth to the whole world and pressing her, the man had simply echoed quietly. About the choice given to her.
That taciturn, gentle consideration was truly something to be grateful for.
Raban left not a conclusion but a question in this counseling session.
It was an easy question to answer. So easy that she could answer it refreshingly.
The fight against the Ochanja surrounding the Black Forest. Whether the black hand existing behind it was her uncle or not was not important for the moment.
To determine the truth of this doubt, shouldn’t she first bring her uncle and ask directly before her eyes?
All she had to do was thrash the Ochanja soundly, then hold her uncle somewhere sunny and ask.
Whether her uncle had truly intended the black magic dwelling in the Black Forest. Whether it was him who had drawn out a monster from the past that even the Ivory Tower would find appalling.
If he said no, that would be the end of it, and if he said yes….
‘Even then, it’s business as usual!’
She just had to beat her uncle well too. Wasn’t it originally a magical girl’s job to beat and wake people consumed by wicked hearts?
Her mind, confused as if shrouded in fog, cleared up.
Matching the man who had pretended not to know her identity for her sake, Nahyeon left a short farewell.
“Thanks, mister!”
***
‘Huh.’
He didn’t know what she was thankful for, but Raban smiled and nodded for now. He had thrown it out haphazardly this time to send her back as quickly as possible.
In fact, Raban had worried whether he was being somewhat irresponsible even as he spoke.
Wasn’t it like answering “Ask him directly” to a consultation saying “My family member might be committing a crime behind my back”?
But if the listener was convinced, that was that. Raban decided to make the most of the short break until the next counseling session.
Such sudden inspirations had to be seized when they came. Because heaven disliked black mages, they rarely came, and even when they did, they were quickly taken away.
If a certain Demon Realm Grand Duke had heard Raban’s thoughts, he would have slammed reality at him, saying, “That’s just because your memory is lacking,” but fortunately, the Demon Realm Grand Duke was rolling around in his own room at the moment.
‘Past and present personalities differ that much…. Learning black magic does make one’s personality filthy on average, but.’
But such change occurs gradually. Rather, there is little room to feel a sense of wrongness.
Then the most convincing hypothesis is.
‘Possession?’
The hypothesis that someone else had taken over Charles’s body. Raban shook his head. Hadn’t she said they were conducting very strange research with dark magical power at Naju Pharmaceuticals?
Originally, the entire family might have been possessed by a mysterious entity (tentatively called Charles) and manipulated to act, with only Nachalsu himself as an exception, but perhaps he lost his body to Charles following the Naju Pharmaceuticals destruction incident.
A method of taking another’s flesh in this manner was not very efficient. Because the original’s traces steadily resisted, the bond between soul and body became unstable, making it vulnerable to external interference. It would be a different story if the victim had accepted the erasure of their own existence deep in their heart, but.
‘Nachalsu, who was said to be an outsider in the Na family, wouldn’t have wanted to become a black mage.’
If Nachalsu was a separate individual from ‘Charles,’ he would have undoubtedly rejected Charles.
Then the story becomes simple. He merely had to prepare magic that severed soul and body. Since the bastard had already divided his own spirit body into several parts, he would be even more vulnerable to this type of attack.
But….
‘Tch.’
There was a problem.
Raban had no expertise in black magic regarding souls.
He was a man who had devoted himself solely to physical expansion.
‘Beg Inian for help? No, he quarreled with me before properly learning this and that. I doubt he has any experience using it in actual combat.’
Raban had charged targeting the Demon Realm Grand Duke’s secret safe right after the CEO change at Lamashtu Holdings. An intentional selection of the most vulnerable period before sufficient combat experience had been accumulated.
Because of that matter, he had built up a long-standing ill fate with Inian, and the Demon Realm Grand Duke, who should have originally performed the general supervisory duties of handling souls while overseeing Lamashtu Holdings’ contracts, had ended up mainly accumulating experience as a decisive weapon for national defense.
He might know how to handle souls through knowledge, but lacking practical experience made him hard to trust!
As Raban was lost in his troubles, a click sounded by his ear, followed by the sound of the inner room’s sliding door opening.
Raban immediately changed his expression.
***
“Ah, White. Are you all sorted out now?”
To the calm question, Syune nodded.
“Yes, some kind of impulse seems to be welling up in my heart.”
Impulse? Raban tilted his head. Didn’t he vent destructive impulses like that normally?
But what the scene Syune had seen in her dreams reminded him of was a directionality very different from destruction.
“Wanting to find my disappeared family again….”
An impulse asking whether she did not want to turn back death.