The morning light streaming through the wooden window of the tower building cast long shadows across the desk. Lena had spread out before her the "Fundamentals of Circulatory Theory: Revised Sixth Edition" borrowed from the Deep Archive last night, and her own notebook filled with the character sequences she'd copied from the wall of the connecting corridor. She'd been staring at the two side by side for nearly thirty minutes now. ——One without circulatory pathways. One who breaks the circle. Not a single line about such a concept appeared in the theory book. It only repeated, from different angles, the explanation that without circulatory pathways, magical output was impossible. By textbook standards, someone like Lena was simply "a person who cannot use magic." She knew that. Which was precisely why those words on the monument bothered her so much. (What is someone without circulatory pathways supposed to do?) She held her pen against the paper without writing, then looked at her notebook again. The characters she'd copied last night had slightly uneven handwriting. Her hand had moved faster than her mind—that was the only explanation. A sound drifted from the direction of the courtyard. At first she thought it was just the wind. But it wasn't. There was rhythm to it. Something between words and song—a regular pattern. It repeated at fixed intervals, then cut off abruptly, paused, and began again. Lena stood and approached the window. Standing on the courtyard's stone pavement was a tall young man. His left hand was raised slowly toward the sky. A pale purple robe swayed slightly in the morning breeze, and silver hair gleamed white in the light—pure silver on the right side, but with a single streak of reddish mesh visible even from the second floor on the left. His left hand wore decorative gloves, and with each movement of his fingers, pale particles of light scattered through the air. A pattern was beginning to form. Threads of light tangled in complex ways, attempting to create some shape. Just before completion, it scattered like mist. The young man clicked his tongue softly and hummed another phrase. He repeated the same motion. It scattered again. He tried again. It scattered again. After the third repetition, Lena opened the window. "What are you doing there?" The young man showed no surprise, only tilted his face upward. Golden eyes—so genuinely golden that in the morning light they appeared crystalline. "I'm searching for the final line of a lost poem." His voice was smooth. He delivered an answer that made no sense whatsoever in a perfectly composed tone. Lena paused for a beat. "...I see." She began to close the window. "I actually wanted to talk to you." The window stopped. Left half-open, Lena looked down at the courtyard. The young man was already walking toward the corridor. His gait was light, as if he'd always intended to do this. (Who is this person?) After a while, the door received two knocks. "Come in." The young man from before entered. The hem of his pale purple robe swayed soundlessly against the wooden floor of the corridor. At around 175 centimeters tall, his posture possessed an almost gravity-defying lightness. The decorative gloves on his left hand—embroidered with geometric patterns in gold thread, clearly not ordinary—gleamed faintly in the room's light. His clear golden eyes glanced across Lena's desk and stopped. "That 'Fundamentals of Circulatory Theory: Revised Sixth Edition'—it's only half correct." Lena's fingers stilled on the book's cover. "Your basis?" Ion Lesval leaned against the edge of the desk without pulling out a chair. Apparently skipping such ordinary procedures was his way. "If you compare circulatory pathways to a river, that book only measures water volume. But the essence of a river isn't the volume—it's the direction of flow and the sea it leads to, isn't it?" Lena spent three seconds analyzing the metaphor. The issue wasn't just the quantity of magical power, but its directionality and destination. True—the "Fundamentals of Circulatory Theory" focused entirely on measuring magical output and the efficiency of attribute conversion, never addressing where the circulatory pathway was "directed." "...Could you explain that without metaphors? With equations?" "Reducing the melody of circulatory pathways to equations is like converting music into mathematical formulas." "That's also a metaphor." "Quite perceptive." He smiled without a trace of remorse. Lena pressed her notebook down slightly and reopened the theory book. She'd decided it was better to have evidence at hand when speaking directly with this person. "Then please offer a third metaphor." "Decisive." Ion considered for a moment, then gently curved the fingers of his left gloved hand. "The thinness of a circulatory pathway isn't about the smallness of one's voice. It's about language. A small voice can still convey the same words. But a different language—no matter how loudly you shout, it won't reach the other person. Don't you think that's the fundamental difference between zero magical output and a thin circulatory pathway?" Lena's hand came to a complete stop. At the right edge of her notebook—a hasty note she'd written last night when she couldn't sleep. "Inability to output ≠ lack of aptitude. Is pathway thinness a matter of quantity or conversion mechanism?" was written there. Ion's metaphor had given that question a perfect answer from an entirely different angle. (Language difference, then...) She tried to formulate a counterargument with equations, but couldn't. The logical structure was sound. This theory book didn't clearly distinguish between a thin circulatory pathway and a non-functional one. And her body's data from the circulatory pathway examination showed she had a "thin" pathway, not an absent one. Which meant— Lena returned her eyes to the text. It was less about frustration and more about not wanting her face to betray her. She felt Ion quietly observing her profile from beside her, sensed it in her peripheral vision. "...Please continue a bit longer." The words left her mouth before she realized she was saying them. She hadn't meant to say that. But she had. Ion smiled—truly, very slightly. Lena couldn't see it, but it seeped faintly into his tone. "Gladly." --- When the conversation reached materials from the Deep Archive's restricted section, Ion abruptly changed the subject. "Another student collapsed during class yesterday, I hear." Lena looked up. "That makes two this week. Both students with high magical aptitude." "I heard. The upper administration is attributing it to temporary strain from seasonal magical fluctuations." "That's what they're saying." "You don't think so?" Ion turned toward the window. He moved his left hand slightly—a habitual gesture, it seemed. "Verse-chanting mages—those who manipulate magical power through rhythm and melody, only one in three hundred among all mages—have a sense that allows us to read magical traces linguistically. Like reading between the lines of poetry." "And with that sense, you felt something unnatural." "If it were seasonal fluctuation, the pattern of magical disturbance should be much more irregular. But these two cases this week—" "—the victims are limited to high-aptitude students only." Lena closed the theory book. When thinking, it was better to keep unnecessary things out of her field of vision. "If it were a natural phenomenon, the distribution of victims should show randomness. Magical fluctuations affect everyone regardless of aptitude level. But if both cases involved only high-aptitude students collapsing, then statistically—" "—either there's intentional selection, or something unnatural is involved." Both their voices stopped almost simultaneously. The air in the room seemed to shift subtly. Not because something had happened, but because two different approaches—a poet's intuition and mathematical logic—had arrived at the same place. Lena found herself leaning forward slightly without realizing it. (With this person, I might be able to see what's invisible.) That premonition was born in Lena less as emotion and more as calculation. At least, that's what she tried to believe. "By the way," Ion continued after a brief pause. "You wouldn't be affected, would you? Your circulatory pathway is too thin to receive external magical interference easily—have you ever wondered why?" The air changed. In a different direction than before. Lena let her gaze fall to her notebook. She traced the lines on the page, pretending to read, but didn't answer. Not because she didn't want to—but because she couldn't tell how much this person understood about what he was asking. Ion didn't press further. "I see." He simply said that and turned his gaze back to the window. Not pressing—a choice. Lena registered that fact somewhere within herself. He didn't blame her for rebuilding her walls, didn't hold her accountable, just let it pass with "I see." That lightness—paradoxically—eased her wariness just slightly. For a while, neither of them said anything. A bird's call drifted from the courtyard. The bustle of Miravenne's streets mixed together distantly below. The second floor of the tower building was quite far from the main hall. Time seemed to flow differently here, Lena thought. --- As evening fell and the light turned slanted, Ion stood and gathered his things. He started toward the door, then stopped halfway. He turned back. "The fact that you cannot use magic might be—perhaps—the greatest privilege in this entire academy." Lena looked up. "What do you mean?" Ion was already outside the door. His voice reached her from the corridor. "Poetry's answers are more beautiful when you let them rest overnight." His footsteps faded away. Lena stared at the closed door for several seconds. She didn't understand. The meaning of the word "privilege"—where it connected to anything they'd discussed today. But it bothered her. That bothered her more. She pulled her notebook closer and picked up her pen. She wrote: "The fact that you cannot use magic might be—perhaps—the greatest privilege in this entire academy." Only after writing it did she realize—she was doing exactly what she'd done yesterday when copying the inscription from the connecting corridor. Her hand had moved first. (Again?) A wry smile threatened to escape, but she pressed her lips together. Looking out the window, she saw Ion standing in the courtyard again, now bathed in twilight. His left hand raised, humming. The same place as this morning, the same motions. But this time was different. The light pattern slowly took shape. Golden threads tangled together, geometric patterns completing themselves in the night air—gleaming in perfect form for just an instant before quietly dissolving and fading. Lena remained with her elbow on the windowsill, watching that light disappear. Longer than she expected. She caught herself and returned her eyes to the notebook. The last rays of sunset painted the page red, falling across the word "privilege." She still didn't understand the meaning. But—two high-aptitude students had collapsed this week, both with strong magical power, the academy was explaining it as seasonal fluctuation, and Ion had said he "sensed something unnatural." And Lena—her thin circulatory pathway made her resistant to external magical interference. (The victims are limited to high-aptitude students. Then I, with no aptitude—) Her thoughts tried to take another step forward, but she stopped them. There was no evidence yet. Running on speculation alone wasn't what a theorist did. Lena closed her notebook and mentally traced the path to the Deep Archive. The sequel to the "Fundamentals of Circulatory Theory" she'd borrowed today should be in the restricted section on the basement level. If ther