Kasumigaoka Utaha and Hayasaka Ai obediently stretched out their delicate, pale hands toward Roy.
Both of them looked at him expectantly.
Roy, too, looked back at them with equal anticipation.
"…"
"…"
"…Where are the lines?"
Roy's brows furrowed, his eyes narrowing in dissatisfaction.
"Lines?" Utaha blinked in confusion.
Hayasaka Ai froze for half a second, then her rosy lips twitched. A flawless smile bloomed on her face.
"Master, please test our aptitude for magecraft!"
Roy nodded in approval.
Utaha's face spasmed slightly.
"M–M–Master… please test me as well!"
The long-haired girl sucked in a deep breath, forced herself to endure Roy's merciless gaze, and blurted out the entire sentence like a rapid-fire volley. Her face turned as red as if it had been painted, her ears glowing crimson.
Only then did Roy nod in satisfaction, raising his hand to grasp theirs.
For a fleeting moment, Hayasaka Ai suspected he had concocted this whole ritual just to trick them into letting him hold their hands.
But then a warm current spread from the point of contact, flowing up her arms and into her body. Her spirit jolted, and she hurried to sense the changes inside herself.
Yet after a long while, she felt nothing but that warm current circulating endlessly. No transformation. No awakening. Nothing.
A faint sense of dread crept up her spine. She instinctively looked up at Roy's expression.
His brows were tightly knit. There was no trace of satisfaction—only a heaviness utterly opposite to the joy of witnessing a new apprentice being born.
Utaha also began to realize what this meant. Her complexion darkened, lips tightening.
Before long, Roy released their hands.
"…Well?" Utaha asked stiffly, her voice cracking.
Hayasaka Ai only stared at him, silently demanding an answer.
"I couldn't find a single magic circuit," Roy said bluntly, wasting no words. His honesty cut sharper than any blade.
"No magic circuits means… we can't ever use magecraft?" Utaha pressed on desperately.
"That's right. Magic circuits are the foundation for all magecraft. Systems and terminology may vary across regions, but that foundation never changes. Circuits are innate, not something you can train or acquire later. I checked carefully—there isn't a trace of them in your bodies. Which means… magecraft is forever beyond your reach."
The words were a knife, sliding in white, coming out red, stabbing them again and again until nothing remained unscarred.
The two girls withdrew in silent despair.
Not long after, they put their inner garments back on.
Although disappointment weighed heavily on them, life still had to continue.
Under Hayasaka's guidance, Utaha began learning the duties of an attendant bit by bit.
The Aozaki residence was vast. Cleaning it thoroughly was grueling work—even two seasoned maids would struggle to finish in a single day, let alone one teaching while the other stumbled along.
Strictly speaking, Hayasaka Ai had never been meant for this kind of drudgery. She was originally a lady's personal maid, trained for refined, high-class service. Yet even so, she handled the rougher chores with practiced ease.
Roy couldn't help thinking he'd like to wrest her away from Tohsaka Rin permanently.
In the front courtyard of the estate, beyond the lawn, sat a small vegetable patch. Rows of winter crops—radishes, potatoes, and other hardy plants—pushed up stubbornly from the soil.
Hayasaka stopped in front of it, studying it intently.
"What's the matter?"
Utaha, wiping sweat from her forehead, walked over. She found it odd that Hayasaka was staring so hard at such an ordinary garden.
"The Aozaki family should count among the great households of Fuyuki City. So why would they grow vegetables in their own yard?" Hayasaka asked, confusion in her voice.
At the Tohsaka residence, she had never seen anything like it.
Utaha blinked, stunned. It took her a long moment to catch on.
For ordinary families, growing seasonal vegetables at home was perfectly normal. But the Aozaki estate was sprawling, planted right in the middle of Fuyuki, where every inch of land was priceless. With such lofty status, wasn't it demeaning to grow vegetables here?
"Well, if you've got this much space, you'd better put it to use."
Roy's voice drifted down from the veranda. He strolled over casually, tone perfectly natural.
"But… if other households of similar rank saw this, wouldn't they laugh?" Hayasaka persisted.
"They wouldn't."
Roy sat down at the veranda, a faint smile tugging his lips.
"Because everyone does it. In Fuyuki, every magus probably racks their brains figuring out how best to plant crops in their own yard. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if magi all over the world did the same."
Hayasaka fell silent.
This was nothing like the nobles she had pictured.
Utaha, however, didn't think much of it. Her own family wasn't high-ranking enough for this to feel strange.
"Hayasaka, this world is far different from the one you lived in before," Roy said meaningfully. His gaze sharpened. "Ten years ago, the Curse erupted. The flames of that disaster raged across the globe for over a year. Imagine what was left behind afterward."
He didn't wait for her answer.
"Curses."
Roy's tone dropped, grim.
"Humanity hasn't remained inside the Base Cities just because the wilderness crawls with monsters. The greater reason is that the land itself is saturated with curses. They warp the human spirit, yes—but they also poison the earth, making it uninhabitable, unfit for planting or living."
"Every patch of land you see in use today had to be purified by magi before it became livable—before it could grow food, support homes, sustain life. But the curses are endless, and there are far too few magi. There's no balance. That imbalance makes food resources critically scarce—and the status of magi impossibly high."
"Now… do you understand why refugees rank so low?"
Neither girl spoke.
Food was scarce enough for citizens, and still the city had taken in useless outsiders like them.
Only now did they begin to grasp how merciful Fuyuki truly was for letting them stay at all.
"Saving you refugees, bringing you into the city, giving you a roof and meals—that was all thanks to Rin, fighting tooth and nail against the Mage's Association," Roy continued.
He stood, turning back toward the house.
To wrest such concessions from the local Association branch, dominated by obstinate old relics who cared only for their own interests, had been no small feat. Rin had likely paid dearly for it.
The reason there was no vegetable patch at the Tohsaka estate was simple: Rin was too busy running herself ragged to tend one.
Hayasaka and Utaha remained rooted in the yard, wordless for a long time.
Their earlier resentment—of being branded refugees, stripped of dignity, given no standing—quietly melted away.
That night.
Hayasaka Ai and Kasumigaoka Utaha had long since gone to bed. Even Okita Sōji had been ordered to rest.
Roy lay sprawled across the master bedroom's bed. His wide eyes glistened with agony, his fists clutching the sheets until his knuckles whitened. Sweat poured from him in waves.
The pain in his body was unrelenting, searing all the way to the bone, as if his flesh were being roasted alive. His frail frame writhed on the mattress, tormented without mercy.
At first, he clenched his throat shut, stifling any sound. But eventually, he couldn't hold it back. A low, guttural roar tore from his chest.
Moments later, heavy thuds echoed through the room—the sound of his body slamming into walls, the crash of flesh against furniture.
The torment raged on deep into the night before finally, mercifully, subsiding.