Chapter 85
As the door opened with a squeak, the side of a bookshelf was right in front of them. Bookshelves stood at evenly spaced intervals throughout the shop.
The gaps between the bookshelves were narrow—barely wide enough for two people to squeeze past each other.
Felix proceeded without hesitation between the second and third bookshelves from the right. Monica followed timidly behind him.
The shop smelled of old paper and herbs used to repel insects. The air was different from the night streets, filled with the scents of makeup, perfume, and alcohol, and Monica felt a little relieved.
As she glanced at the books on the shelves while walking, she saw them packed with academic works on medicinal herbs and medicine. These were outside Monica's field of expertise, but she could somehow tell that the books were well preserved.
Eventually, beyond the narrow gap between the bookshelves, they reached a small counter. A man was seated there, writing by the light of a lamp.
He was a bespectacled man with dark skin and unruly black hair. He appeared to have foreign ancestry. His almond-shaped eyes and strongly defined features made his age difficult to guess. He could have been in his twenties or his forties.
The floor of the old bookstore creaked slightly whenever someone walked across it, so the man had probably noticed their arrival, yet he made no move to look up from his papers.
"Hey, shopkeeper. Good evening."
Even when Felix spoke to him, the shopkeeper did not raise his head. However, he did not seem so absorbed in his writing that he could not hear a customer. He stopped writing, dipped his quill into the inkwell, and spoke.
"...Hello."
After saying only that, the man once again ran his quill across the page. Apparently, he was not writing in a ledger or anything of the sort, but something on manuscript paper.
The man's stubborn air, his curt attitude unchanged even toward Felix, who was visibly a nobleman, somehow reminded Monica of Claudia.
"Monica, this is Porter. He's the owner of this shop and a novelist. He spends about half the year traveling all over the place buying books. We're lucky to have met him today."
"I did. I only got back from buying books the other day. I picked up a few you might like, too."
"Really?"
Felix's face instantly brightened, and his voice became lively.
Porter pointed with his quill toward the bookshelf along the wall. Apparently, that was where the books Felix would like were kept.
Felix took one of the books from the section Porter had indicated and exclaimed, "Ah!"
"Back issues of 'The Fountain of Minerva'!"
When Monica saw the magazine Felix had picked up, she went pale.
Minerva, an academy for training mages, published a magazine every six months compiling the research results of its students and professors. That magazine was 'The Fountain of Minerva.' Naturally, several of Monica's papers had been published in it when she was a scholarship student.
(W-Why does His Highness have 'The Fountain of Minerva'!?)
Eighty percent of the magazine's contents consisted of magic-related material. The remaining twenty percent was made up of professors' hobby essays and little tips from the student council for making student life more comfortable.
(C-Could His Highness possibly be a huge fan of that professor's hair-growth journal...?)
That had to be it. It had to be. Or perhaps he was looking for tips on how to enjoy a more comfortable student life. It had to be something like that. Monica could think of no other explanation.
As Monica told herself this, Felix flipped through the magazine, his eyes sparkling like a child's, and said,
"There's a paper by the Silent Witch!"
Monica sucked in a breath and strangled a scream.
(Did he say "Silent Witch"? Silent Witch? Huh? S-Surely I misheard him... Surely I did...)
Behind Monica, who was nearly fainting, Porter stopped moving his pen and spoke.
"The three issues over there all contain papers by the Silent Witch. The latest issue has one she contributed recently, too."
"Porter! What a fine job you've done!"
Felix's voice was unmistakably excited. He really was excited. Monica had never seen Felix's eyes shine so brightly.
As Monica stood there, stunned by all the shocks she could not process, Felix smiled a little sheepishly.
"Surprised? I'm actually interested... in magic."
"B-But I heard you don't take Fundamental Magic..."
"There are circumstances. My grandfather has forbidden me from studying magic."
Felix's words came as a surprise to Monica.
Certainly, members of the royal family were expected to possess political and linguistic abilities rather than magic. Even so, many members of Rildel's royal family possessed magical talent, and several excellent mages had appeared among the royals throughout history.
She had heard that the current king was a user of earth magic, and the First Prince, Felix's older brother, was a graduate of Minerva.
Monica could not understand why anyone would go out of their way to forbid magic.
As Monica stood in confusion, Felix, unable to hide his good mood, flipped through the magazine and said,
"Magic books are usually expensive and thick, aren't they? On top of that, depending on the book, you need permission to read or purchase it. So secretly ordering them and hiding them in my room is difficult."
Apparently, that was why he had turned to the relatively easy-to-obtain 'The Fountain of Minerva.'
However, the papers published in 'The Fountain of Minerva' were all carefully selected. Understanding them required knowledge on the level of an intermediate mage.
Just how much did Felix know about magic? As Monica wondered, Felix leafed through 'The Fountain of Minerva' and became more talkative than usual.
"The paper I read before on positional coordinates in wide-area spell formulas was incredible. I can hardly believe she wrote it as a student. Put simply, rather than deliberately incorporating a tracking formula into a wide-area spell, it activates the spell at a precise point just before the target, thereby improving its accuracy. But the method of calculating the positional coordinates was so groundbreaking that it allowed the spell formula to be drastically shortened..."
Monica gave a silent nod, her face twitching.
(...Yes, exactly... The current tracking formulas have so many flaws, so before improving them, I wanted to try making a compact wide-area formula that didn't incorporate one... Aaaah, he understands it perfectlyyyyy!)
As Monica trembled, Felix suddenly seemed to come back to himself. He looked at her, slightly embarrassed.
"...Sorry. I'm actually a huge fan. When it comes to the Silent Witch, I get carried away and become rather eloquent."
"...A-a fan...?"
"Yes. She's one of the younger members of the Seven Sages. She hasn't achieved anything as flashy as the Barrier Magician, but I think she's made a major contribution to the field of fundamental magic in our kingdom of Rildel. More than anything, her silent-casting magic is... yes, incredibly beautiful."
Felix wore an oddly dreamy expression as he spoke those final words.
But Monica was far too preoccupied to care anymore.
(Have you ever seen me use silent-casting magic!? When!? Has my identity been exposed...? It hasn't, right? It hasn't... righttt...?)
"I've never seen such beautiful magic before... Ah, I wonder if I could ever see that silent-casting magic with my own eyes one more time."
Felix let out a wistful sigh, and Porter muttered,
"Right now, I'm writing a scene in my new novel about a foolish man who has fallen in love with a stage actress. The protagonist Bartholomew's friend, Abram, is hopelessly in love with an actress named Katherine, and at every opportunity he says,
'Ah, to see her perform with my own eyes one more time.'
...That's exactly what you're like right now."
"Ah, Porter, maybe that's true. Yes, surely this is what they call first love."
(F-First love...)
Monica's entire body began to convulse.
There had simply been too many shocks, and neither her mind nor her facial muscles was functioning properly.
What should she do? She wanted to escape into the world of numbers for a while.
"Surprised? This is what I'm 'obsessed with' right now."
"U-um, Y-Your, Your... I-Ike, have you ever met the Silent Witch?"
Felix's cheeks turned rose-red as he gazed dreamily at Monica and nodded.
"Yes, at the investiture ceremony and the New Year's ceremony. However, she always wears a hooded robe, and very few people know what she really looks like. She always skips the parties after the ceremonies, so I've never had a chance to speak with her directly. I've never spoken with her, and I've never seen her face."
Thank goodness. At least he apparently had not realized her true identity. Monica breathed a sigh of relief.
But it was too soon for her to relax.
"But if I become king, I'll be able to see her whenever I want, so it won't be a problem. The Seven Sages are the king's counselors, after all."
That was a major problem.
"If I become king, I'll be able to speak with her directly... Maybe she'll even let me see her true face."
(Please, absolutely don't! Stop, please! I'm not someone fit to advise the king! More than that, I'm sorry that someone like me is the Silent Witch!)
Monica finally clutched her stomach and lowered her head.
What should she do? She felt as though she might throw up everything she had eaten at the Star-Reading Witch's mansion right here.
For now, Monica firmly vowed to attend as few ceremonies as possible from then on—and never, ever take off her hood.