Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Where We Come From

The Evil That Helps Us Grow

The troubled eyes of a mother stared at a specific point in the ceiling. It was so concentrated and worried that to the woman it almost seemed like she could peek through it and into the room of her daughter. The young lady hasn't been eating or drinking, she hasn't done much sleeping either since she returned from the mission. 

Nakotsumi Kei tried questioning the girl but she barely even spoke, the mother tried talking to some people in the administration who confirmed that the mission was indeed successful and completed despite colossal complications with the mission objective that, if known, may have even bumped the mission difficulty by a whole rank.

Both parents of the young magician were troubled by the girl's refusal to talk, over a couple of days she spent just laying on her bed in her room she had never trained or meditated. That was something new and probably what raised the most concerns. Skipping a meal or two or having one or more sleepless nights was nothing unusual for young Mana but completely halting all training and not meditating even for a moment... 

Didn't the girl once look so happy after explaining how her meditation worked? Did her eyes not shine in that same childish glee while explaining the stages of her meditation just like they did when they first introduced little Mana to strawberry ice cream? She went on and on about how it made her aware of any problems in her body and made her one with herself, completely familiar with all that was happening inside of her...

It almost felt to the woman like her daughter has given up, maybe something happened during the mission? That much was obvious but what exactly could've crippled that noble yet unhealthy obsession with doing good and changing the world that Mana had? How could someone so obsessive and so kind just give up? Millions of possible explanations went through the head of the worried mother, from Mana failing to save someone during the mission to finding out that she had a sickness of some sort inside during one of her meditation sessions.

The more she thought about it the more the woman returned to the idea that maybe her daughter knew exactly what was wrong with her body which was why she didn't meditate at all. Maybe she was even afraid to confront that problem, afraid to see it again, what could've been so scary as to cripple such an idealistic and naïve child? 

Over her still quite short life Mana saw plenty, she struggled for her life several times, she fought her best friends and saw them leave the village, she blamed herself so often for things that may not have always been up to her to decide and influence in the first place... Yet she always stood back up and went on. The girl was completely broken now.

Quiet and slow footsteps echoed through the house, slight remnants of the continuous sound of small feet tapping against the wood reached Kei's ear and soon Mana showed herself after a long while in the kitchen. It was strange, the girl really did look tired and like she'd have just lied in that bed for days without even moving – her hair was all over the place and her face was a bit swollen from the tears but it was evident that some attempt at fixing herself was made over the days. The girl did apparently shower, as proven by an absence of nose crushing body odor most outbreaks of self-neglect produce and there were some marks on her hair that suggested at the very least attempts at restraining the monster that was bed hair.

"Where's dad?" Mana asked softly, she looked exhausted and despite her doing nothing but resting this whole time she still sounded tired.

"He's out. Something about those new herbs that are supposed to help his pain. He wanted to see you, he said that this new medicine, some potion or something is really helping him and he wanted to help you out with your shows more now but... You just shut inside your room and..." the girl's mother tried to approach the problem from multiple corners but she didn't know how to go about it. It was obvious that her child was suffering inside and she wanted to help without ruining it all or making it even worse.