[R1999] Short Stories' Collection

A chaotic incident in Sicily (10)

"Mamma! Guess what I have in my hands!"

The boy excitedly showed his bare hands to the woman who was reading some papers on the office desk. Apart from those in her hands, there were other bunches of papers crowded with words that covered the surface of the desk. If an ordinary person tried to read a few pages of these, they would easily feel dizzy and perhaps, nauseous.

Hearing her son calling, the woman turned her sight from the paper to his small hands.

"Hmmmm..."

She let out a curious sound and lightly rubbed her chin as if encountering a difficult riddle.

"Can I touch it?" She asked.

"No! You will immediately find out what it is!" The boy shook his head.

After staring at the air between his hands for a while, she put her hands up to surrender with a defeated expression.

"I lost to you again."

Obviously, her reaction pleased the little boy very much. He smiled joyfully, then revealed the object he was holding.

"It was an orange ball!"

Following his words, patchy orange streaks gradually appeared in a spherical shape and became an orange ball in his hands.

"Oh? Now you can hide bigger objects."

She patted his head with a praising tone.

"Yes, mamma!"

The boy nodded and looked at her with a pair of sparkling eyes.

"One day, I will be taller than you and my arcane skill will be stronger, too!"

"Then I can help you with your work. You will have more free time to play like me!"

The consistency and seriousness in that child's eyes was no joke. Still, the woman didn't take those words seriously and just saw them as a source of motivation for herself to work harder.

Like every normal parent who wanted to give their child a better life.

To her, that better life was a place where arcanists wouldn't face harsh discrimination from humans. A place where her son could grow up safely and healthily. A place where when she got older, she could watch her child live happily with his own family.

When people thought everything was going well, bad things happened.

Tragedy suddenly struck the boy, who now became an adult with a promising future, without any sign of warning.

His right leg was the first part that disappeared, which led to the collapse of the whole body. Blood gushed out from the empty trouser leg, but soon became transparent and left no trace on the cement ground.

Before any sound of extreme pain could come out of his throat, other parts of his body had vanished respectively, including his tongue.

"FEDERICO!!!"

The middle-aged woman shouted his name helplessly and ran towards him as she saw her child quickly swallowed by the explosion of arcanum in his body.

The right hand that tried to reach out to her, dissolved as soon as she could grasp it.

............

"Mrs. Mozzoni! Mrs. Mozzoni!"

Waking the old lady up from her recurring nightmare was the voice of a young girl who had a pair of green eyes and long orange hair. The blurred vision of her eyes gradually became clearer as well as her consciousness.