The days passed, as they always did.
The air outside grew colder with each passing day, and now, a true cold snap would arrive before long.
But the interior of this house was equipped with an excellent heating system powered by mana, so there was no need to wake up trembling in the cold air from dawn.
No matter that I could warm my body with magic; it was unreasonable to do so while sleeping, since I was unconscious after all.
Besides, maintaining magic all day long was, if only a little, tiring.
As soon as I woke up, as always, I attached the hair ornament I had removed to the left side of my head and rose.
The triple-ring-shaped hair ornament shone golden in the sunlight streaming through the window.
After stretching out widely once, I gently shook awake Iliana, who had been sleeping soundly right beside me.
"Iliana. It's morning."
"Yes……"
These days, there was one thing that worried me, if only a little.
Iliana would be celebrating her birthday in a few days, and I wondered what on earth I should do for her.
It wasn't her real birthday, but rather the day marking exactly one year since I had rescued Iliana from those black magician bastards.
Since it was the day she was reborn as my disciple, one could say it was a birthday of sorts.
Had I not bothered with such things at all, it might have been fine, but since I did so for Cassian, I couldn't leave Iliana out.
Just last month, I had carved a small pendant and given it to Cassian as a birthday gift.
He had worn it every day, happy with it, for the first few days, but afterwards it ended up stuffed at the bottom of his backpack. Still, it was the gesture that counted.
……Well, I'd come up with a good idea somehow.
◇
Today was a rest day. No training, no studying, just a day to relax and recharge.
Ordinarily, Cassian and Iliana would have gone outside to play with Rutina, but right now a blizzard was raging.
Both were quietly staying inside the house.
So, probably sometime past noon, while I was half-reclining on the sofa reading a book and eating the cactus fruit Chloe had cut for me.
Iliana, sitting properly on the small sofa right beside me and eating the fruit piece by piece, looked at me and spoke.
"Teacher, I've always wondered, that hair ornament you always wear……"
At those words, I raised my left hand and tapped the ornament on my head with my index finger, pointing at it as I asked.
"This?"
"Yes, that. You always have it on except when sleeping, so is it precious to you?"
To that question, I answered without a moment's hesitation.
"Yes. Tremendously."
"That much?"
This hair ornament was so precious to me that if I were to rank my most treasured possessions, it would undoubtedly be within the top five.
To the point where it could even vie for first or second place among them.
When I answered thus, Cassian, who had been reading a book beside us, cut in.
"Is it something like, you know, a gift from someone you knew in the past?"
"Something like that, but a little different."
"What's different about it?"
"This is in memory of the first friend I ever made."
A friend whose very soul had been shattered into pieces, one whom I could never meet again even if I turned back time to those days.
The first person I saw when I opened my eyes in this world.
In a sense, someone who had been like a mother to me.
A precious person who had shown me the world when all I had known was a narrow hospital room.
Looking at the bewildered Cassian and Iliana, I closed my book and placed it on the table right in front of me.
Then, smiling faintly at old memories, I spoke.
"Shall I tell you an old story for a moment?"
◇
In the warm spring sunlight, I sat on the sofa, dozing off.
Then, feeling something poke, poke at my cheek in succession, I slowly opened my eyes as I woke.
"……Euphie."
"Ah, sorry. Did I wake you?"
"No, it's fine."
Before my eyes appeared a woman with platinum-blonde hair and golden eyes, looking down at me with her body slightly lowered.
Her name was Euphrasia.
She was the first person I faced when I opened my eyes in this world, and simultaneously, the only one who looked upon me as a "person."
If there was anything peculiar, it was that her ears were extremely long; the sharply pointed ears protruding to each side looked incredibly tempting to touch.
Though she wouldn't get angry if I touched them, since she disliked it, I refrained as much as possible.
She was of a race called the "Elpheb."
They were, in effect, the progenitors of the spirit race—that is, the elves—the very pinnacle of humanity's magical bioengineering.
One might call them the Celestial Spirit Race (天靈族).
Though their numbers were extremely few, they were a race that could solely rival the dragons in this world, or even surpass them in some respects.
They were a race that had guided humanity since prehistoric times, before human history began.
Even though their numbers did not even reach a mere five hundred, they led and mediated between humans across the world.
Naturally, they possessed abilities befitting that role; had they not been benevolent, humanity would likely have gone extinct long ago.
"Didn't you have a lot of work?"
"Well, won't it work out somehow? It's a situation where no solution is in sight no matter what we do……"
"That may be true, but still."
The work she spoke of was, so to speak, post-war cleanup.
Humanity's experiment, which had used me as a test subject in an attempt to advance to a higher realm than anything before, had failed.
As a result, humanity had fallen to this narrow world at the hands of the remnant forces of the outer gods they had been slaughtering until now.
Honestly, if I were to reveal my thoughts at the time, I could only say I thought it served them right.
After all, my memories of being treated as a test subject were far from pleasant.
Moreover, had that plan succeeded, I was fated to suffer in dreams forever without ever waking.
And not just simple pain, but the ultimate agony—a mixture of all the sufferings endured by all of humanity.
It was a plan that could never succeed, but had it somehow succeeded, the consequences would have been truly horrifying.
"Still, now we can finally head in the right direction."
"I certainly hope so."
"No, I will definitely make it so."
Even among those researchers, Euphrasia was the only righteous person.
When everyone treated me as a test subject or an object, only she dealt with me person to person.
Even when the researchers shouted about efficiency and pushed me into horrific experiments, only Euphrasia opposed them.
Despite her overwhelming ability and standing, a single person's voice was merely drowned out, so nothing changed.
Nonetheless, until the day humanity fell, she struggled to protect me against the other researchers.
And then.
Despite the plan's ultimate failure, I had nearly fallen into slumber, plunging into perpetual agony.
Once the failure of the plan that wagered humanity's fate was confirmed, the cornered research team had tried to force me into slumber to unleash that power.
At that moment, Euphrasia destroyed and overturned the entire research complex to rescue me, and I was barely pulled back from the gates of hell.
She was a benefactor to whom I could never be grateful enough.
Moreover, after everything ended, she took me in when I had nowhere to go, letting me live in her home.
It was an emotion I was experiencing for the first time, so at the time, I myself did not know how to describe it.
But before long, I could explain what this was with a word that nothing else could suit better.
It was love.
We were each other's dearest friends, and at the same time, we could say our relationship was similar to that of mother and daughter.
With the daughter Euphrasia bore later, I had gotten along almost like sisters.
"Ah, right! I made this little by little since we started living together; would you wear it if it's okay?"
Euphrasia said so and held out to me something small enough to fit in one hand.
An ornament made by joining three golden circular rings, crafted from Rematon, also called the metal of eternity.
When I turned it over, my name and Euphrasia's name were written side by side where the rings touched each other.
"What is this?"
"A hair ornament. If you bring it close, it'll attach itself."
Honestly, I didn't particularly like adorning myself with accessories like this.
Even though I had lived here longer than my previous life, I still hadn't been able to throw away the sensibilities from that time.
Still, since she had made it herself, I could accept it gladly.
I took the hair ornament and brought it to a spot slightly higher than my left ear.
Then, emitting mana on its own, it stuck firmly to my hair as if fixed with a pin.
"……How is it?"
"Yes! Cute, so cute! It suits you incredibly!"
Euphrasia took out a mirror from thin air and tilted it so that I could see myself.
In the sunlight streaming through the window, the ornament on my head sparkled golden.
This.
Was an object that connected the me of the distant, far-off past with the me of the present.