The Graduate Student Has Arrived

The mage dispatched by the Mage Tower arrived sooner than I expected.

Honestly, I thought it would take at least a month.

That’s because I thought mages were generally creatures that spent a season or so holding meetings, conducting research, nitpicking each other’s theories, and then attaching papers to those nitpicks.

But it seemed the Mage Tower took Maison Monbel’s once-a-month priority dinner reservation very seriously.

The person they dispatched arrived in a week.

The mage looked about twenty-five. Their hair was brown, but they had parted ways with the civilization known as brushing it a long time ago.

Thick glasses rested on the bridge of their nose, and their robe was stained with ink and sprinkled with some kind of white powder.

My first impression was that they looked like a graduate student dragged straight out of a laboratory.

As soon as the mage entered the drawing room, they bowed their head.

“I’m Estelle Lavini of the Mage Tower’s Department of Applied Material Sensory Research. I’ve come as a researcher dispatched to Maison Monbel.”...