Touko rubbed her forehead in frustration, sitting in a spacious room, troubled by the mountain of investigation reports on her desk.
A few weeks prior, Touko had come to Mifune City after receiving a request from an old high school classmate, asking her to investigate some inexplicable strange occurrences at her former high school.
Of course, the commission wasn't about money or personal gain—after all, as the Third Magician, Touko would never bother with such trivialities just for monetary reward. The only reason could be personal ties.
The requester was a junior from her time at Reien Academy, someone she was quite close with. Perhaps this junior reminded Touko of her sister, so she never revealed her identity as a magus to her.
But it was exactly this friendship limited to the mundane world that made Touko decide to carve out some precious time from her duties as a Magician to help her junior.
Her name was Misaya, a member of one of the major shareholder families of Reien Girls' Academy. Back in the day, Touko was juggling school and magical research and often found herself short on money.
Misaya was sharp enough to notice Touko's financial troubles and generously used her wealth to help Touko through many difficult times. Touko even suspected that Misaya might have, on some level, sensed her secret as a magus.
Touko, before learning that her grandfather had passed the Aozaki family's Magic to Aoko, was a relatively personable magus, but if she had confirmed that Misaya knew her secret, she would have killed her without hesitation.
At the same time, Touko hoped such a thing would never happen. So, she turned a blind eye to Misaya's attempts to probe her secret, choosing self-deception to maintain their good relationship.
After becoming a Magician, Touko naturally wouldn't kill ordinary people for seeing magecraft—after all, the rules binding magi don't apply to Magicians.
But now, recalling those days, she couldn't help but laugh, knowing Misaya had probably seen her magical experiments but she had just pretended not to notice.
This also explains why, after supernatural events occurred at Reien, Misaya immediately thought of Touko and called her for help.
"Sensei, should I put the new investigation reports over here?" A lively voice interrupted Touko's thoughts. She looked up to see a black-haired girl in a Reien school uniform, possessing the impeccable beauty of a wealthy young lady.
"Yeah, just put them over there, Azaka." Touko, a bit weary, waved at the girl, then lit a cigarette and started reading the unfinished reports. "So, any new leads at Reien?"
"Nothing at all," the girl called Azaka shrugged. "I followed your instructions, keeping myself hidden while investigating, but the only thing that's changed is more and more students are having memories brought up—things they'd already forgotten themselves."
"And the ones who said those things—did they do it?" Touko pressed.
"No," Azaka shook her head, "but for the past month, they've all been receiving those strange letters, same as before."
"I see…" Touko fell into thought. Reading memories is something many magi can do—not a top-tier trick, but not something just anyone could pull off. She doubted any current Reien student could do it, as she'd already checked and found no magi bloodlines among them.
Azaka, the girl who addressed Touko as sensei, was named Azaka Kokuto, her newly accepted apprentice. Touko had bought a plot of land—an abandoned, ruin-like building—after learning from her sister about someone in Mifune with absolute future sight, and turned it into her workshop.
Originally, Touko had sealed this workshop with a rune-based ward to repel ordinary people, but Azaka had wandered in one day, seemingly drawn by fate, and met Touko while she was conducting magical research.
Touko was curious—an ordinary person shouldn't have been able to enter. But Azaka, as it turned out, had the taboo origin and was a first-generation magus. The barrier only worked by instilling a sense of forbidden entry in normal minds, but with an origin of taboo, Azaka was innately curious about danger, which let her bypass the ward.
This origin-driven curiosity canceled out Touko's barrier, allowing Azaka, a normal person, to find her.
At the time, Touko had just accepted Misaya's request and was pondering how to infiltrate Reien undetected. Azaka appeared at just the right moment.
"Do you want to learn magecraft?" Touko had asked her abruptly. Azaka immediately accepted and became Touko's investigator at Reien.
Back to the present: as Touko reminisced, a horn sounded outside, drawing her attention to the window.
Azaka, too, was curious about who could pass through Touko's wards. With her basic magical training, she knew enough to be wary. But what she saw surprised her—a stunning, fiery red-haired woman with an amazing figure, waving and smiling from a motorcycle parked at the entrance.
Behind the red-haired woman was another Reien-uniformed girl with short black hair. Azaka prided herself on her social skills, but she'd never seen this woman before. Who was she?