【日記 Nikki】
二零二五年二月二十日周四
天气预报多云转阴晨间零下十七度
今天做了一个很长很奇怪的一个梦，想想不如写下来。
梦见去上智大学边上若叶町的一个小书店淘旧书，然后抬头看见了身材高挑的一名医学生，霎时间自觉红霞满脸，支支吾吾不能言。
后故作轻松，交谈方许，遂同出书店，谁知街景竟成海淀学院路。边偕行边闲谈，数步又至团结湖东方歌舞团所住社区。进得小区，却实为广院宿舍。（北京广播学院，今传媒大学）梦境如此混乱，而心中不以为异，佳人在侧之故也。
与佳人表心意，共饮食，而至紫竹院湖畔。佳人以古之狱事恐吓之，扼余咽喉，后似有争执，竟置身冰湖之中，乃昏厥。
苏醒后，竟然置身岩洞中。洞中四处无数幼童奔跑玩耍，身亦同为其中一儿童。
儿童需要避难于岩洞，是因为外界空气充斥微不可见之魔法元素，儿童六岁，方可出洞一试。
被领至洞口，洞口如若露天音乐会之半圆穹窿顶舞台，洞顶极高，外洞厅亦甚宽。
地面上遍布魔法阵。有类似阴阳双鱼者，有类似欧洲六芒星阵者，诸多形制，不一而足。另有图腾样式，观之多有恐怖之感。
大学文学院曾经有课程介绍女巫术法之历史，原本意欲同校友一同报名，惜不敏，予多行悖，失之。课程因而未学，故而魔法阵之种种专名，尽皆不识。
令立于其上，自当感知作何之用。若可行，则出离岩洞，外间入学。若失败，则静候来年。
而后乃知此等试验一年一次，于旧历十月，神無月，之望日。妾身生辰为旧历九月，長月，故而是最幼一个，刚刚六岁。
站上阴阳太极图形，瞬间不能呼吸，实在是承受不住。虽然图形是在洞厅的半圆穹窿顶之下，但是图形之上，不知为何，空气如同外间。
难道说地面上的法阵可以凭空腾挪外间空气，而不令其逸散乎？
No one explained anything to me. And of course, I was busy trying to breathe. I think I finally decided to slide my feet according to the YinYang symbol, and those movements caused me to semi levitate while I automatically started spinning violently. Though it was dizzying and scary, I was immediately able to breathe again. I could feel the heavy air, full of magic, coming into my lungs and then spreading through the bloodstream. With Taichi-like movements, I was able to live with the feeling of something new and volatile gushing through me. So I guess I was able to ‘quell’ the elements.
I chose the YinYang symbol because I had at least seen seniors doing Tai Chi, which is related. I have never seen anyone doing witchcraft or summoning using the magic matrix in the open, apart from what might be shown on an anime, so I have not had a chance to observe how to use a magic circle, or spell, or matrix, or whatever I should be calling it.
After I had success, I was led to a group of representatives from many academies.
I liked the group from Aohi, the azure sun. I liked their name because I thought it was very cool. I also liked their uniform. A very pale teal, or an off tone turquoise, I think that’s what it was. If one has seen Chinese web manga and is familiar with Hanfu, Chinese traditional clothing, the style should be very very familiar: y-shaped collars and a straight down lower half of the long coat. “Zhi Ju” is what people call it. Straight skirt. Technically. The sleeve opening had a width of approximately one foot.
I really liked the colour, the style, and their name of the school, and that was why I chose them.
Then, a girl called out to me and said that I should go to Kageyama instead. She had a lavender long coat, y-shaped collar, but crossed-over skirt. “Qu Ju shen yi” would be the official name. I really like lavender. Or more accurately, I crave anything in amethyst and lavender. This girl’s clothes had very wide sleeve openings, almost like furisode kimonos, and so I went to Kageyama instead.
Kageyama had a neo-classic main hall where everything happened. They called it Hall of the Phoenix, supposedly due to its shape. I will just refer to it as the Hall. The hall had classic East Asian roofing. The North wing is the same design as the South wing, and these are to represent the wings of the legendary bird. The central tower was to be the neck. The main hall underneath the tower was the chest. The Inner Hall (Oku Den) was to be the torso, and there were three tall boardwalks leading to three storage houses on tall stilts, which immediately reminded me of the original design of the great shrine of Izumo.
So the North Wing was for magic. A member of the group of the representatives from Kageyama, named Akishi, studied there during the instructional hours. Akishi’s younger brother, Hideo, studied alchemy in the South Wing. The girl who invited me, named Arashi, studied swordsmanship in the Inner Hall.
Not many prospective students ended up coming to Kageyama because it was a place of academia. Graduates had a hard time looking for employment, and many of them became contract employees working in affiliated estates and craft shops. Those among the most talented would get a chance to become an instructor.
New students gathered in the public square in front of the Hall every morning, and senior students would do simple lessons and demos. Sometimes, a novice student would enter contemplative silence, and it would be greatly celebrated.
I didn’t say new students just now because it wasn’t exactly the best term to use. Some new students would stay on the public square every morning and never enter contemplative silence. Upon turning fourteen, or when a novice gave up trying, a student who had never entered the Silence would become apprentices in trades. Kageyama had a lot of wood shops and wineries, many glass blowers and blacksmiths, so it would still be a very acceptable outcome if one didn’t become a knight, a witch, or an alchemist.
If a student entered deep silence, then the actual introductory lesson would be given to the student. The basic version of sword routines of the Kageyama style, or the basic inventory of beginner’s spells, or the Introductory to Alchemist Materials would be passed onto the student, who would become, then, an “official student.”
Every morning, I would look at the senior students entering the Hall after giving demos, into the rising sun. I longed to follow them, and to walk alongside them. So I started to ask senior students to give me mini demos and share their experience and stories during meal time.
It took a while, but I think by the next month, Shimodzuki, the eleventh month of the old calendar, I was getting a feeling that I might enter the silence relatively soon.
That feeling made me happy. Arashi entered the silence within her first month here, and when she held a sword in her first class in the Main Hall, her spirit entered the sword effortlessly, and the sword gave a pure ring. Arashi was recognized on the spot as a prodigy of the sword. She quickly passed all the introductory courses taught in the Main Hall, and had since gone into the Inner Hall for advanced lessons.
After a few more days, it turned out what I thought was true was not accurate. Introductory lessons for all three subjects are taught in the Main Hall, whereas regular lessons for magic happened in the North Wing, regular lessons in swordsmanship still happened in the Main Hall, and regular lessons for alchemy happened in the South Wing. The Inner Hall was only for advanced courses in all three subjects.
Most students only had time to maybe take on one or two advanced courses before graduation, but Arashi had been taking courses there for years. I think they said something like four years. So that makes Arashi the top student at the age of eleven.
Akishi was fifteen when I joined Kageyama, and Hideo was like, fourteen, I think? Akishi started her regular courses in the North wing last year, and Hideo had just about finished all his introductory courses in the Main Hall, and soon started taking all his courses in the South Wing.
I got a tour of the Hall from Akishi in Shihazu, the twelfth month of the old calendar. The Main Hall was like a large classroom, with a large stage in the front. On the three sides of the front stage, there were stairs to enter, or “ascend” into the rest of the Hall. I guess students are encouraged to “ascend” in their pursuit of mastery of the Arts of Swordsmanship, Magic, and Alchemy. The Wings all had four levels, but the Inner Hall had five. Instructors taught in the North Wing, the Main Hall, and the South Wing, but Elders taught in the Inner Hall.
It was not commonplace at all for a student to fully enter advanced studies before graduation, let alone having already spent four years there at the age of eleven. So Arashi had more prestige than most instructors, actually. I felt very proud when I learned that. Arashi personally invited me to join her at Kageyama, so I must have some potential to be like her.
So every morning, I stared at the silhouettes of senior students entering the Hall, thinking of Arashi ascending to the Inner Hall. My heart went after them, and I sighed very often, daydreaming.
Spring came. I was six and half, and an instructor came to teach all the new intakes about ‘body-building’, I guess. We also had lessons on how to stand tall while exercising. I got a lesson on how to sprint but with the effort of jogging, which was fascinating to me.
I was to have shallow breaths, with my chest mostly expanded, and try to have a mini current of magic element kept in there. The mini current of magic inside me would resonate with the torrent of magic in the outside environment, and that would lift me up until only the tip of my feet touched the ground. With this buoyancy on my side, and if I could practice so as to have the magic element of Wind break up the air in front of me to reduce air resistance, then I could run very fast with very little effort.
I practiced daily after the morning demos, mostly at the side of the mountain where there were lots of boulders. After I could run with ease on well maintained paths, I practiced running on pebbles, rocks, sand, grass, moss...
Eventually, I thought maybe I could try jumping from boulder to boulder. That was not easy. My jumps were too short, and I fell off often. Eventually I managed to jump, not from top to top, but from side to side. That required a lot more fast thinking, as well as improved reaction time, as my ‘air-time’ was considerably shorter, the curvature of my trajectory was almost nonexistent, and I had to switch my body orientation in mid air to prevent my head, or worse, face, from hitting the rock’s surface.
After spring had ended, I figured it was enough madness, and went back to trying to get into the deep silence by asking Akishi to give me mini demos.
I found Akishi to be the easiest person to become friends with, from the three people that I knew. I was aware of other people, but somehow my path rarely crossed with theirs.
I don’t exactly feel comfortable beside boys, and despite the fact that Hideo was very nice, I didn’t actually interact with him all that much. Arashi was reserved. It made one nervous standing near her, often resulting in her being by herself. I tried to be friends with Arashi, but she was rarely seen during the bulk of the day, as she was immersed in study and training.
I told Arashi that I wanted to be strong just like her, and wanted to stand beside her, shoulder to shoulder. ... and whether I could sit by her side sometimes. She took me to the west cliff, and we watched clouds. We managed to sit and watch clouds and sunsets a few more times. Maybe on average once a month? I don’t think Arashi said anything to me at all during those months. She just let me sit beside her, and to spend some time together. She didn’t show much emotion on her face. Was there a hint of melancholy every now and then? I could not be certain, but I was pretty sure she was showing me special kindness.
Summer came, and I was almost seven. We had a race among the new students, and I did fairly well. Being bad at physical education since kindergarten, I was very pleased with myself. Then, there was an opportunity for me to earn pocket cash: I could deliver letters to the town at the foot of the mountain. Important messages were transferred using magic, but ordinary messages were still written on paper and delivered by couriers. Couriers did not come up the mountain very frequently, so when people wanted letters to be sent, they had to go down the mountain themselves.
Some of Hideo’s classmates found the trips unnecessary, and they much preferred to spend their whole day watching the cauldron. Thus, a notice was posted to find someone willing to run down the mountain to pass on letters to the courier station in the little town by Kageyama.
Since I did fairly well in the race, and since I wanted some money to buy gifts to show my gratitude, I signed up. I wanted to thank Akishi for all the extra demos, and Arashi for watching the clouds and sunsets with me.
I was going into town for the first time, and on my way back, I saw a very interesting looking water-eroded marble boulder in a small valley by the side of the road. I went there to take a look, since I really liked eroded rocks with intriguing shapes and patterns.
I heard talking and I looked through a small hole on the rock. I remembered what had happened during this episode only after I woke up, and during the dream I was not aware of this encounter. Later on it would be self-explanatory as to what exactly happened to cause that.
There was a special place called Himeyama. At Himeyama, the student council called all the shots. They made all the decisions and their instructors followed orders from the student council. Himeyama was a place where the nobility and royalty attended, and the instructors being only minor lords at best, naturally viewed themselves as, well, more like servants than academy faculty members.
Major members of the student council at Himeyama were composed of a group of elite users of magic called the Five. All of them were major nobility and royalty, and they had lavish private residences (Unlike Kageyama, where everyone stayed in small, plainly furnished dorm rooms.).
At Himeyama, the five were not addressed by their names, and there were severe consequences for violations. The leader of the Five, who reigned supreme, was Yukari, and the only acceptable way to refer to her was apparently Her Majesty of the Lofty Amethyst Palace. People told me that she was a mastermind of schemes and plots and intrigues. She wanted to rule over the world and had no morals. She was a ruthless, merciless warlord. She had plans for entire cities to be slaughtered if they stood in her way.
The next in the five was Midori, and I was to remember to refer to her as Her Highness of Emerald Palace. People told me that she was an expert in manipulating the human mind.
Then there was Kasumi, known as Her Excellence of Ruby Castle, whose expertise was analyzing situations.
The fourth was Yayoi, her Eminence of Peridot Castle. She was one of the most dangerous. She could turn people into dolls, and no one would notice when the spell was cast. The person carrying the spell had no feeling of it. Then all of a sudden, when Yayoi activated the spell, from near or afar, the person would become her puppet, with no chance of putting up even the slightest resistance whatsoever.
Finally the youngest, at age fifteen, is Ryō, Her Highness of Rose Quartz Hall. Due to her age, Ryō had not received her own castle or palace, but apparently she was the most experienced and the fiercest on the battlefield, and had vowed to earn an estate for herself by the spoils of war instead of through inheritance. Ryō was also the Lord of the Dungeon, most skillful at torturing and interrogating prisoners. She spent most of her free time either devising new methods of interrogation or designing new equipment for torture.
There stood the Five, on the other side of the water-eroded rock, and they were planning attacks on Kageyama.
I heard Yayoi suggest turning students into dolls, and try to gain access to the room where designs for the spell that protected the academy would be located.
I heard Ryō asking whether it would be okay with the rest if she tortured and slaughtered the whole academy and then made Kageyama her own estate, and she could be known as Her Highness of the Mountain of Shadows afterwards.
I heard Kasumi and Midori discussing how to compromise the fellowship among instructors and elders, and I heard how Yukari would make a bloody example of Kageyama for anyone who dared to withhold themselves from voluntarily offering their full surrender and submission to her.
I heard Kasumi lauding the idea, since all other academies were trade colleges with no share in the supreme arts. If Kageyama, with its centuries of tradition in swordsmanship, magic, and alchemy proved to be no match against the superior Himeyama, then any potential resistance would be discouraged.
I heard Midori describing how grand the empire would be after Yukari reigned over every person and every land. I saw Yukari show a faint smile as her ego was satisfied by Midori’s skillful command of words...
I was debating about how to get out of there and alert Kageyama of Himeyama’s scheme, and I was lost in my thoughts. When I returned from my imaginary conversations and what-if’s and maybe-I-should... I found the Five standing right behind me, with their shadows enveloping me. I was scared and terrified. I could not say a word.
Ryō said she would have fun with me, seeing that I must be just waiting for her to make me into a toy of hers. “Be patient” she told me, as I was destined to be hers.
Midori said that when a young girl was just about to cry, her watery eyes would make her heart itch, and the shimmering of light in tears that were just about to roll was the most beautiful sight in the world.
Yayoi cast a spell on my neck, and Kasumi agreed that it would be convenient to turn me into a doll every now and then, so as to have an espionage device.
Kasumi then commented that I seemed to have a good amount of talent, probably on par with Arashi’s, but in magic. If I ended up in advanced studies, I could try to resist the spell after I found a chance to detect there was something unusual on my body.
Midori then held the top of my head, and invaded my mind and my body with her magic. Flames engulfed me on the inside, and it placed barriers to prevent growth in the Arts, while burning away most of my talent and capability.
The four of them took a step back and bowed their heads. I watched in horror as Yukari walked toward me, and slowly raised a finger of hers to within a few centimeters of my forehead. Then, Yukari erased my memory of the whole encounter, from hearing the conversations right to that moment, and she also placed three spells inside me. One in my mind to slow down my thinking and the sharpness of my faculties, one in my spine to slow me down in my movements, and one in my heart that would turn me into a remote-controlled explosive device at her command.
I only remembered these after I woke up. During the rest of the dream I had no recollection of what had happened at the foot of the mountain. I lost consciousness and fell asleep.
I woke up toward the evening and found myself by an interesting looking rock. I must have gone over to take a look, and fell asleep there.
I went back to Kageyama, and could not run very fast. It should not have been that tiring, even for uphill, as it was considerably easier than jumping between rocks.
I was very exhausted when I finally got back and went to bed soon afterwards. I found myself very sleepy during the day, and restless in the night, with very shallow sleep. Toward my eighth birthday, I had lost all capability to understand Akishi’s demos, and I felt no inkling of entering the silence at all.
Life became very depressing as a result. I believe by my ninth birthday I had entirely given up. I asked Arashi to watch the sunset with me for the last time, and I felt a bitter mixture of complicated emotions. The setting sun was warm, the lap of Arashi was comforting, my heart was in despair, my tears were flowing...
Arashi let me stay there, with my head on her lap, until the evening wind was too cold for me. I knew that was the end for my efforts to stand beside her. I had watched the sunset with her for the last time.
I signed up to be a kitchen helper in the morning, and a cleaning staff in the early evening. I enjoyed cooking and it made me feel like a member of Kageyama again when I served food in the cafeteria and said hi to my former classmates. Cleaning duties, on the other hand, were depressing hours of loneliness. Reminding me that I had given up and had been left behind, my mind often wandered.
As an evening cleaning staff, I went into the Hall every day of the week. I cleaned classrooms, offices, laboratories and storage rooms. I often found myself lost in daydreams when I was cleaning, and would eventually snap out of it toward the late end of the night.
Now as I’m writing this down in my journal, I think I must have been turned into a doll to flip through documents and manuscripts. It would be useful for Himeyama to have an accurate understanding of the opponents’ knowledge and abilities, and the proof of this guess is that, after I suddenly snapped out of my daydreams, I did not have any recollection of what I was thinking about. But I never found that suspicious, probably due to Yukari’s spell on my mental capacity.
Now as I am writing this in my journal, I wonder... I found out about what had happened by the water-eroded rock because I retrieved my memory back from what was once locked up part of my mind, whereas when I was turned into a doll, my awareness must had been forced into hibernation. Since my ‘self’ was never there when I got turned into a doll, I was not able to know what had happened or what the doll did when I woke up from the dream earlier today.
As part of my cleaning duties, I also went to the central tower that sat atop the Main Hall. The offices for instructors of swordsmanship took up two floors, and above those floors sat the library, which took up five floors. On the top was the section of forbidden books.
Akishi once explained to me that since forbidden magic and alchemy always demanded a greater price to be paid by the user than the promised gain, a gain which only happened by a slim chance, these titles, considered dangerous elsewhere, were available for open browsing here at Kageyama.
Located on top of the library was the chancellor’s office and a series of small locked rooms. I found myself daydreaming for long hours standing in front of those doors. I suppose that Himeyama was trying to gain access to them. Maybe important security documents and charts were kept there, but I would never know.
I guess, now I’m writing this, that being an evening cleaning staff was a very efficient way to effectively spy on Kageyama.
I was a kitchen helper and cleaning staff for, I think, a total of seven years. I was sixteen after those seven years, and Arashi was twenty one, Akishi was twenty five, and Hideo was twenty three, soon to be twenty four.
That year Arashi got married. Arashi had become one of the elders with her mastery of the sword. She was an instructor at the age of seventeen, and was elevated to the prestigious status a year and half later.
Hideo became a successful alchemist, and established his own workshop at Kageyama. I wasn’t aware of how the two got together, but I was a little envious and resentful. I thought Hide’o was not good enough for Arashi.
I bought an obsidian brooch for Arashi, and gave it to her as a gift the day before the marriage. I wished her all the best. Lots of students gave gifts to her that day. I believe, at that time, Arashi had become the icon of Kageyama. More students joined after hearing the Legendary Elder who had advanced in ranks well past the rest of the world, at the age of eighteen and half.
The wedding was supposedly grand and sweet. I did not go. I sat alone by the west cliff for the entire day that day.
People talked about it for days afterwards, and the cake was supposedly sublime. I excused myself from my kitchen job during those weeks because I did not want to be part of it.
Eventually I could not take all the gossip about how lovely the new couple was when I was working in the kitchen or serving meals, and I quit my kitchen job. I spent my days in the library reading, and my evenings cleaning.
Two years later, Arashi was pregnant. I stopped interacting with others at all. I even stopped talking to Akishi, who had become one of the chancellor’s assistants. I did not want to hear people eagerly discuss what baby clothes to prepare.
The infant was born, and Arashi became mother to a little baby girl named Ran, which meant orchid. Ran was sent to the caves with a pile of baby clothes, many of them made by students and instructors. Then, a week later, news came back from the cave. Arashi’s aura, which was visible whenever she concentrated her strength into her sword, was seen on Ran. This aura protected Ran every single moment, and eventually the director of the cave decided to take the baby to the opening, and the baby did fine in the outside air. This was the first time in history that a human child could survive on the outside of a crystal cave after three days of being born. Usually, the mother’s spirit was only able to protect the child for three days after birth, and that was the time that people had to bring babies to caves for their own safety.
Ran was brought back to Kageyama. There was an enormous celebration, as now a family could finally be together.
I had finished reading all regular books on magic a year earlier, and did not find them helpful in getting some ability back in me. I then started reading books on forbidden magic and alchemy.