-----Narrator POV-----
At the tail end of every year, something quietly predictable repeats itself across the world. Charm sellers restock their shelves and planners sell out within the same week. Somewhere in the fluorescent hum of a gym at six in the morning on the second of January, a line forms out the door, made up almost entirely of people who have never set foot inside one before. It is not a small crowd either. Nearly twelve percent of every gym's annual new memberships are sold in that single month alone, a surge so reliable that entire fitness chains build their yearly marketing calendar around it in advance. The story people tell themselves while standing in that line is always the same one, that this year will be different and this time it will actually stick. For a few weeks it even looks true. The treadmills stay full, the mirrors stay crowded, and discipline, for just a moment, looks almost easy to hold onto.
Then February arrives, and with it comes the quieter half of the statistic that nobody ever prints on the enrollment poster. Of everyone who signed that January contract, eight in ten will have stopped showing up before the five month mark. Researchers even gave the exact day a name, calling it Quitters' Day and placing it on the second Friday of January, because the drop-off is never really a slow fade so much as it is a cliff, and it tends to arrive with an almost calendar-perfect precision every single year. Fewer than one in ten resolution-makers, by any serious count, ever manage to keep the promise they made to themselves at midnight.
The reason for that so rarely lies in the goal itself. It lies in what the goal had quietly been borrowing in order to survive in the first place. A new year, a clean date turning over on the calendar, the shared momentum of everyone else also starting over at the very same time, all of it functions as a kind of scaffolding, an external structure propping up a discipline that the person has not actually built for themselves yet.
And scaffolding, by its very design, always comes down eventually. What is left standing afterward is only ever what a person could hold up entirely on their own.
*3 Months Ago*
-----Rudues POV-----
Gasp.
Argh, my head...
I looked around, and the familiarity of my own room settled over me before I'd even fully opened my eyes. Then, as if someone had poured cold water straight over my head, the memories came flooding back all at once.
I pinched the bridge of my nose, feeling my forehead wrinkle under my own fingers.
Ah. I'm an idiot.
A four-year-old blowing the room open in the middle of the day. Fantastic. Now how exactly do I explain that one to Zenith and Paul.
I kicked the bed cover off and sat up straight, and that's when it hit me again, the piercing sensation that had torn through my chest in that vision, so vivid I could still feel the ghost of it lodged somewhere under my ribs. I lifted my shirt and checked my bare chest, and found it completely, boringly normal. I let out a breath I didn't realize I'd been holding.
"...A dream."
What a strange nightmare. It felt so vivid. So scary, honestly, and I don't say that lightly.
I remembered having dreams like that back in my old world, the kind where you could somehow feel pain inside the dream itself.
I'd had one once where a swarm of crabs was pinching me all over, and I woke up drenched in sweat because I could genuinely feel the faint pressure of a thousand little pinches crawling across my skin.
But that vision... Felt as if it was the real deal...
I could still feel my skin tearing and my bones crushing on impact, not some faint suggestion of pain but the real thing, or close enough that my body couldn't seem to tell the difference.
A sickening wave rolled through my stomach before I could brace for it. I flinched, dropped off the side of the bed, and felt something hot and violent surge up my throat and force its way out of my mouth.
"BLEARGH!"
Click.
The door swung open and a maid with maroon-colored hair stepped in, towel already in hand, her eyes and mouth widening in near-unison at the sight of a small child retching uncontrollably onto the floor.
"Rudeus-san?!"
*Later in the Day*
Oh, this smell. My favorite dish in this entire medieval world, rich and warm, thick with melted cheese and simmered tomato and something faintly herby underneath it all that clung to the back of my throat in the best possible way.
"Lasagna!"
"Mom made your favorite, Rudy!"
I rushed toward the table the moment the words registered, and found it practically buried under food, side dishes crowding every open space between the plates, and I could feel my eyes go wide and my mouth start watering before I'd even sat down.
This is great. I'd been running on empty since the stomach upset this morning, and a meal this heavy was exactly what I needed to make up for it.
Smack!
"Not yet, Rudy! Your father hasn't gotten back yet."
Argh, what the hell. Are we seriously just going to sit here and let it get cold?
"Rudeus-san."
I turned around, and my eyes dropped to the floor on their own, embarrassment creeping up the back of my neck before I could stop it.
"T-thank you, Lilia for early today..."
She blinked, caught off guard, and her eyes widened for just a second before a brief smile crossed her face.
"Feeling better?"
"Mnm."
"Mh. Please take a seat, I'll bring the drinks."
"Drinks...?"
I felt one eyebrow lift on its own at the thought of a four-year-old being handed anything resembling a drink in this world.
"You'll love them, Rudy! The village was finally able to trade with our neighbors for fresh fruit!"
Oh? So it's juice, then.
I watched, more excited than I probably should have let show, as Lilia carried over a glass jar full of pale yellow liquid and set it down on the table.
That looks like orange juice. I wonder if it tastes anywhere near as good as it did back home.
This is nothing like the soda back in my old world, but after four years of drinking nothing but milk or water, a change of pace like this felt genuinely amazing.
Lilia pulled the jar back once my cup was full and moved on to pour Zenith's next, and I excitedly grabbed my cup with both hands before she'd even finished. But before I could pull it up to my mouth, I caught something in the corner of my eye. Zenith was staring at me, longer than felt normal.
That's odd. Is she just waiting on Paul that intently?
I turned my head toward her.
"...Can I drink the juice?"
She didn't answer right away. She just studied me quietly for what felt like a full minute.
"...Of course!"
She broke off whatever that stare had been with her usual smile and her usual cheerful tone, snapping back into place like nothing had happened at all.
That was a strange moment.
Well, thinking about it, today had been eventful in general. Especially earlier, when I tried casting that intermediate water spell...
Oh, right!
That's right! I, a four-year-old, just blew a giant hole in the wall with a grimoire I'd stolen out of the family chest.
Ugh, how could I forget that?! Throwing up earlier had completely knocked me off my game, to the point that I hadn't even come up with an explanation for Zenith and Paul yet.
Where do I even start with that one.
"Rudy..."
The chaos in my head came to a full stop the second I heard my name, and I turned toward the sound on instinct.
"Yes, Ka-san?"
My vision filled with Zenith's face, and her expression was different from how she usually looked when she talked to me. I'd gotten good at reading her moods by now, happy, upset, tired, which made it easier to figure out how to answer her in whatever way would land best, courtesy of, embarrassingly enough, years of dating sim experience on how a proper, doting son was supposed to treat his mother.
"...My son, are you feeling okay?"
My mouth fell open, and the words got caught somewhere in my throat before I could get them out.
I'm okay, Mom. I'm feeling a lot better, and I'm sorry stealing your grimoire.
That's what I wanted to say. That's exactly what I meant to say. But for some reason, I couldn't get it out cheerfully, not the way I always managed to before.
Sure, the nightmare earlier had been traumatizing, but so what. It's completely normal for a kid my age to have nightmares now and then. And since I was, mentally speaking, a full grown adult, running to my mother in tears over some tall, terrifying man piercing my chest in a dream would only give her something to worry about for no good reason.
So I wasn't wrong to play the good son here. Let her know everything was fine, that earlier was just mana exhaustion upsetting my stomach, nothing more.
"..."
And yet, despite how airtight that logic felt in my head, looking into those wavy blue eyes, I couldn't force the words out loud.
Bam.
The front door swung shut, pulling both our attention toward it, and Paul stepped into the living room.
"Hey, I'm back!"
"Honey!"
"Something smells amazing... Oh, you made lasagna?!"
Paul came up close to the table just as Zenith rose from her seat and wrapped herself around his arm, leaning her head against his shoulder.
"We've been waiting for you! Did they hold you back today?"
At the mention of work, something flickered behind Paul's eyes for half a second, a sharpness that vanished almost before it registered, and then he waved the whole thing off with his usual grin.
"Eh, just some measly goblins helping themselves to the village's crops. Nothing Sir Paul here couldn't handle."
He shifted his stance, throwing his arms into some ridiculous front lat spread, flexing right there with Zenith still hanging off his arm.
"Ahh~~ So tough~~"
"Hee hee!"
Tch. Get a room, the two of you, and let me handle this beautiful lasagna myself.
Lilia stepped up to the table right on cue, gathering the utensils and portioning out a slice for every plate already waiting.
Oh, hail Lilia-san, truly.
The two lovebirds settled in beside each other, Lilia took her usual seat at the far end of the table, and dinner properly began.
"You should've seen the size of the burrow they dug under the east field," Paul said around a mouthful of bread, gesturing with his fork like it added weight to the story. "Three of them, maybe four, I lost count once I started swinging. Farmer practically kissed my boots when I dragged the last one out by the collar."
"You're exaggerating the kissing part," Zenith said, though she was smiling into her cup as she said it.
"Am I? Ask him yourself next time you're at the market."
"I might just do that, if only to see your face when he tells me it was two goblins and he tripped over his own fence."
Paul clutched his chest like she'd wounded him personally, and Zenith laughed, the real kind, not the performative giggle from a minute earlier.
"Speaking of the market," she said, setting her cup down, "Ranoa's finally started stocking the salve again. Sold out of it twice this week alone."
"It's been flying off the shelf lately," Zenith said, a small, satisfied smile tugging at her mouth. "Even had a few farmers ask if I could set some aside before it sells out next time."
"That's great news," Paul said, and he sounded like he meant it. "See, I told you people would come around to it eventually."
"You told me no such thing, you were the one who said herbs were a hard sell out here."
"Eh? Oh... Uhm! I say a lot of things!"
Huh. It really was the first time in a while that Paul had come home this late from what sounded like such a minor scuffle. I'd never taken him for the type to put in extra hours over a few goblins in a crop field. Also sales picking up like that, out of nowhere? Good for her, honestly, though I found myself wondering what had actually shifted. Maybe word finally got around, or maybe some farmer got hurt badly enough that half the village decided to stock up just in case. Either way, it didn't really matter what tipped it.
What mattered was sitting right in front of me. A table actually worth calling a feast, in a house that had been running lean for longer than I wanted to admit!
"Rudy?"
"Yes, Tou-san?"
"Let's talk about earlier today."
Like cold water splashing straight into my face, the feeling dragged down my spine and pulled me bolt upright in my chair, sweat already beading along my forehead before I'd even processed the sentence properly.
C-crap. What do I say?
"Did you steal your mother's grimoire, and read some magic incantations from its pages?"
Yep. I'm cooked.
"Erhm... I'm s-sorry—"
"Gaaaah! I knew it!"
Eh?
"That settles it! Our son is a magician!"
"Oi, Zenith, calm down, we've talked about this."
"A-am I in trouble...?"
Paul turned fully toward me and gave me a reassuring smile.
"You're not in trouble, my son."
I honestly couldn't tell if what I felt in that moment was relief or something closer to being touched.
"It's fine for my son to get up to a little trouble every now and then! Whatever happens, your father has your back, so don't you worry one bit about that giant hole that you blew into one of our guest rooms!"
Argh! Critical damage! I already said I was sorry about that!
"So, we'll be hiring a tutor to help you along with your magic!"
"Hmph! Don't get too carried away, my son. You'll also be learning swordsmanship, under my guidance this time."
Eeh, swordsmanship too? Well, I supposed I should just be grateful for how much support my parents were throwing behind raising me.
I could feel the grin spreading across my face before I'd even noticed it was happening.
But then, before I could fully register the warmth pooling in my chest, the vision from earlier that morning flickered through my mind uninvited, quick and cold, gone almost as fast as it arrived.
"Rudy?"
I hesitated. Just barely, just long enough that I caught myself doing it, and shook it off before either of them could notice. A magic tutor and sword training, in an actual world of magic and swords. Of course I should be thrilled about a start to my second life this exciting. I had to make the most of it. There wasn't a single reasonable argument against that.
"Uhm! Thank you, Ka-san, Tou-san! I'm really happy! I'll work hard!"
Zenith clapped her hands together, already talking over herself about which villages might have a proper tutor willing to make the trip out, and Paul launched into an entirely unprompted demonstration of his own swordsmanship form right there at the dinner table, nearly knocking his cup over in the process, which earned him a scolding from Zenith that dissolved into laughter within seconds. Lilia, clearing the last of the plates, allowed herself the smallest smile at the scene.
It was, without question, the best night the four of us had shared since I'd opened my eyes in this world. Every worry I'd woken up with that morning had somehow resolved into the single happiest outcome I could have asked for. I remember thinking, quite plainly, that I had never felt luckier to have been given a second chance at a family like this one.
*2 Months Ago*
Ah, it's raining.
I love the rain, if I'm honest, because it's usually the one excuse the whole family needs to just stay inside and let the water do the work of keeping everyone home. I'd bet every introvert alive shares that exact same feeling.
The hard part about a rainy day like this one, though, is finding something to actually do in a medieval world.
Back home, there was that old saying that besides food, water, and sleep, the human body apparently needs entertainment just to survive. When I first heard that phrase, I remember thinking it was nothing more than an excuse people invented to feel morally justified enjoying themselves, since it's not like the human body actually needs fun to keep functioning. Endorphins aren't exactly load-bearing for basic survival.
But it turns out that's not quite the right way to think about it. It's not that we need entertainment to live. It's that boredom kills, just slower, and a lot less dramatically.
And I can personally testify to that, because without electronics, games, or the internet back home to keep my depressing self entertained, my negative thoughts would probably run wild enough to drag me toward my own self-destruction.
Pretty scary if I think about it.
So here, in a world that runs entirely on swords and magic and absolutely nothing else, I think it's fair to say my very life essence is currently in danger.
"ARGH, I AM BORED!"
There's genuinely nothing to do in this house.
I can't touch the grimoire after the whole incident, not until we've got a tutor lined up, so unless I want to blow another hole in the wall unsupervised, that's off the table. And sneaking into my parents' bedroom is out of the question too, because those two lovebirds go at it constantly. It's honestly a little frightening how much stamina the two of them have.
"Haaa..."
A long sigh slipped out of me as I leaned against the edge of the window, listening to the rain hit the ground outside, the occasional drop of moisture drifting in and brushing against my face.
I wonder when my tutor's actually going to show up.
Knock knock.
"Rudy?"
"Yes, Tou-san?"
Click.
I watched the door swing open, and Paul stepped through the gap with a faint smile on his face.
Hm. Is it just me, or does he look a little tired.
I guess being out all day does eventually catch up with a person.
But then I caught the sound of something rattling inside a small sack he was holding, stones or pebbles knocking against one another, and I raised an eyebrow at it.
"Come to the living room! I'll teach you how to play marbles!"
Eh...
-----
"ORAAH!"
With a flick of his thumb, Paul sent a dark, swirled marble skimming across the stone in a low, near-flat arc, barely a wobble in it, and it split the space between two of my own marbles before slamming dead center into the cluster waiting inside the chalk ring, scattering half of them clean off the edge and shoving the rest further out toward the outskirts.
We'd cleared the furniture back against the walls for this, an open stretch of cold stone floor with a chalk circle drawn out in the middle of it, marbles of every color scattered inside waiting to be knocked loose. Rain kept tapping steadily against the window behind us, the only real sound in the house besides the soft click and knock of glass on stone.
Tch. Of course he's good at this.
"HOHO, a center hit! You still have so much to learn, Rudy! HAHA!"
I could feel my brow tighten as I clenched a handful of marbles in my palm.
This isn't fair. I do the exact same motion and I can't knock anything with that kind of force. Is it just because I'm stuck with a four-year-old's arm strength?
I picked out one of my own marbles and circled the ring slowly, scanning the cluster sitting inside the chalk circle, trying to find any angle that would let me knock the others out while dragging mine closer to the center.
Ugh, dammit. There's no good angle here.
Paul, meanwhile, hadn't so much as glanced at the ring since his last shot. He crouched at the edge of the circle with the kind of loose, unthinking posture of someone whose hands already knew exactly what they were doing without needing his eyes to check, flicking a marble between two fingers, testing its weight almost out of habit.
"Why's it taking so long~~" he said, not even looking up. "Are you that intimidated by your father's perfect shot? Back home, I used to play this with all my cousins every summer, rain or no rain, and I can say for certain—"
He dropped onto his side on the stone, propping himself up on one elbow while flexing his other arm into some ridiculous imitation of a Greek statue.
"I was the best~~"
Oh my god.
This guy is getting a kick in beating his own son on a game he only just learned how to play.
I'd only agreed to play in the first place because I was trying to keep up the model-son act, but honestly, this game wasn't fun at all. What exactly was supposed to be entertaining about knocking shiny balls out of a circle? I'd rather be upstairs reading through a spellbook, or better yet, actually casting something.
I crouched lower, wedged a marble between my index finger and thumb, and lined up a tight angle that might, if I hit it exactly right, clear the whole cluster off the center at once.
"Oh, Rudy~~ That's a tough shot to line up. Listen to your old man, come over here, I'll show you the angle."
Maybe it was the frustration of every magic book upstairs sitting untouched. Maybe it was the impatience of still not having a tutor after all this waiting. Or maybe it was just the sheer boredom of how dull the days had gotten lately.
But something hot and sudden flared up in my chest.
I flicked my thumb with everything I had, and the marble shot in a straight line, just barely clipping past my own marbles sitting near the center, and slammed into the cluster hard enough to send the whole group scattering out toward the edges of the circle.
"Oh... n-nice shot, Rudy!"
"Since I knocked two out past the ring, I get to go again, right?"
"O-oh! Yes, go ahead."
I picked up my next marble and clenched it hard in my palm, and the only thing running through my head in that moment was exactly how satisfying it would feel to finally wipe that smug look off this idiot's face.
-----
"Haha! You're still wet behind the ears, Rudy!"
Kusooo.... This guy has to be cheating!
"I-I'll win next time!"
"Yeah~~ yeah~~ you've got a lot more bread and beans to eat before you can start thinking about beating me!"
His shots were too perfect to write off as just adult strength. He had to have done something to the marbles, but my pride as a hardcore gamer wouldn't let me actually accuse him of it out loud.
"Paul-sama made his marbles slightly lighter than most," Lilia mentioned, kneeling down to gather the marbles scattered across the stone floor.
Huh? So he was cheating? What does she mean, lighter? Is there some parameter to this rigged little game I wasn't even told about?
"Oh, Lilia! That brings back memories." Paul straightened up, already reaching for his knight gear. "Rudy, Lilia's actually really good at marbles, we used to play all the time back in Asura. If you want more practice, you can always ask her."
He got dressed with the same easy speed he did everything, snatching his green coat off the hook by the front entrance.
"Duty calls! Rudy, make sure you get some practice in before you challenge me again, you hear?"
This punk. I will literally knock those marbles right out of him.
Thump. Thump.
I turned toward the staircase and watched Zenith come down in her casual pajamas, her face pulled into something tighter than usual.
"Honey, you're heading out? Isn't today your day off?"
Paul didn't turn around. He pulled the door open, and the heavy sound of pouring rain filled the silence of the living room.
"...I'm just going to check in with the boys. I'll be back soon."
Still without turning, he pulled the hood of his green cape up, stepped out through the front entrance, and shut the door behind him.
That was strange. I think that's the first time I've actually seen Zenith look unnerved watching Paul head off to work.
For as childish as Paul could be, the man was strong, so it wasn't like I was worried about him in the slightest. Besides, I had other things on my mind.
"Lilia-san..."
"Yes, Rudeus-san?"
"What did you mean earlier, that Paul made his marbles lighter than the others?"
Lilia glanced at me sideways, then set the bag of marbles down beside her. She turned to face me fully, extended one hand with her palm facing up, closed her eyes, and began to chant.
"O spirit of earth, hearken to my call. Gather the dust and the stone, round and smooth, hard and clear. Shape the sphere, small and true. Marble, form."
A small light flickered in her palm, and when it faded, a maroon-colored marble sat there, smooth and whole, like it had always been there.
OOOH, THAT IS SO COOL.
"You can make your own marbles?!"
"Correct, Rudeus-san. This particular earth spell was quite popular among the children back at the palace."
Wait, her marble looks completely different from the ones Paul was playing with. Does that mean the result changes depending on who's casting it? I wonder what mine would even look like.
"This spell is fairly simple and requires very little mana. Even Paul-sama was able to perform it. It's nowhere near as grandiose as the attack magic you've been reading out of Zenith-sama's book. But if you'd like to learn—"
Excitement got the better of me before she'd even finished the sentence, and I grabbed her hand with both of mine.
"Please teach me!"
A chance to learn actual magic, and beat Paul at his own game.
*Later at night*
As the cold wind drifted across the night, I opened the window of my bedroom and let it cool the room down.
It wasn't just that I liked sleeping in a colder climate, either. I liked staring up at the stars before bed, too, for some reason they always managed to keep me calm right before I drifted off.
"Ah~~ Honey!"
And of course, as the room closest to the master bedroom, the lewd sounds could be heard for hours...
"Those monkeys in heat..."
At this point, it doesn't even surprise me anymore how long they can go. I've grown so used to it that I can sleep straight through the noise without a second thought.
I just hope it doesn't leave some strange psychological mark on me down the line, and those pleasure screams in the night don't end up becoming my lullaby.
"Now that's perverted."
Pff.
Now that would be quite an inconvenience...
Anyway...
Learning magic with Lilia turned out to be genuinely entertaining. I managed to form my first marble under her instruction, and even though the edges came out rough, it still felt like real progress.
What actually caught my attention was comparing the three marbles side by side afterward. Lilia's was a deep, smooth maroon. Paul's were noticeably lighter despite looking identical to the plain ones. Mine, cast from the exact same chant, came out a dull gray with edges rough enough to feel under my thumb.
Same words, three different results. So the spell itself wasn't the variable, whatever each of us was doing with our own mana while casting it was.
That actually lined up with something I'd already suspected. My water ball spell kept overshooting for weeks, and I'd chalked it up to bad aim, but maybe it was the same problem showing up again: uneven control over the mana itself, not the spell.
If that was true, tightening that control should let me shape the outcome on purpose. A smoother marble. A water spell that actually landed where I aimed it.
"...This is quite interesting."
I couldn't wait to test that tomorrow.
Right as that thought settled, the quiet around me became a little too obvious, and I found myself raising an eyebrow toward my bedroom door.
Huh?
They already stopped?
Strange. I could've sworn their sessions used to run longer than that.
"...What am I even thinking about right now."
I pulled the blanket up to my neck and stared up at the sky through the window, at the countless points of light scattered across the dark blue, and let my consciousness drift in and out.
Falling deeper into the slump.
...
Muffled noises.
Ngh...
Muffled noises, growing louder.
Give it a break, you two. Someone's trying to sleep.
R-Rudeus—
Ugh, no, I don't want to join your orgy—
"RUDEUS!"
My eyes snapped open.
Cold air hit my face first, sharp enough to sting as and past that fading cloud, the first thing I actually saw was stone. Pale, frost-cracked stone, stretching out ahead of me in a narrow path just wide enough to walk single file, hemmed in on one side by a sheer wall of rock climbing straight up into a flat, colorless sky. On the other side, there was a sharp drop that fell away into mist so thick I couldn't tell if it ended fifty feet down or five hundred.
Where am I...
"RUDEUS!"
The voice cracked through my thoughts again, sharp and young and entirely unbothered by the height we were standing at, and I turned toward it on reflex and my vision filled with her bright red hair color whipping loose in the wind.
A wave of deja vu slammed across my forehead as I was reminded of something I was never supposed to have forgotten.
"E-Eris?"
How...
How do I know her name?
"WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?! HURRY UP!"
She grabbed my hand before I could answer my own question and yanked me forward along the path, and it was only then, feeling her drag me with an ease that I noticed that my hand being held was not small of an young child.
So I looked down at myself, and what looked back at me was a lean frame draped in gray traveling clothes, taller, older, nothing at all like the body I'd fallen asleep in.
Is this a dream?
It has to be a dream, nothing else makes sense.
"Oof!"
My foot caught on a jagged rock jutting out of the path, and I went down hard, my face driving straight into the frozen stone. Heat rushed through my nose almost instantly, and when I pulled back, a thin line of red had already started running down over my lips.
That is too much pain for a dream. No hallucination puts this much detail into a scraped face. My mind was racing now, faster than I could keep pace with.
I am not supposed to be here-
"Rudeus. Are you alright?"
A gentler voice cut through the noise in my head. I turned, and a tall, lean, heavily muscled man stood over me with a spear loosely in one hand. Odly enough, his presence was calm, controlled, and quite familiar that made my chest settle.
He gave a faint, brief smile, then turned his attention past me, to the girl.
"Eris. Let's slow the pace a little."
Eris looked down at me with open disgust, huffed through her nose, and turned away without another word.
"Mnph."
For some reason, I could hear the sound of church bells rigging in the far away mountains as I came into realization that this moment was the same as I've experienced from the nightmare of one month ago.