Side Story: What It Means to Be a Wizard
In a dark room lit only by the glow of a monitor, a woman typed rapidly, her fingers dancing across the keys.
Tap—tap—ENTER.
“Phew… now we wait for the results.”
She slipped a cigarette into her iQOS and exhaled slowly.
Everything had been one shock after another.
Daisuke Todoroki—missing for years—had suddenly reappeared.
And not just reappeared.
He had grown younger.
At first she thought it was a prank.
Or someone who looked like him.
Maybe a child or relative.
But he insisted he was the real Todoroki.
And… if she was honest, he did look exactly like he did back when they parted.
But Wizards aren’t supposed to be like that.
To us, Wizards are people who age every time they cast magic.
Not immediately.
Not in a way you notice at first.
But eventually—sometimes suddenly—their bodies deteriorate, and their magic fades.
Only two percent of the world’s population are Wizards.
Even with global research efforts, the cause of their rapid aging remains unknown.
The leading hypothesis is that magic consumes a person’s “life force,” accelerating physical decline.
But no one knows what that “life force” actually is, or how it interacts with magic.
What we do know is simple:
The more magic a Wizard uses, the faster they age.
But the exact threshold—the number of spells before collapse—varies wildly.
No Wizard knows when their next spell might be the one that pushes them into irreversible decline.
The stress of that knowledge is unimaginable.
Daisuke Todoroki was the first Wizard to emerge in this country.
And he was once her lover.
Back then, the nation had no idea Wizards aged like this.
She was assigned as Todoroki’s support officer, and that’s how they met.
Then, one day, his aging accelerated.
Day by day, he grew older.
She stayed by his side, determined to support him no matter what.
She transferred to the research division to help him.
But Todoroki… couldn’t bear it.
Government aid.
Family encouragement.
The praise of the public.
All of it turned to despair when he suddenly became an old man, unable to cast magic.
And then—
He vanished.
No goodbye.
No explanation.
No contact.
She was devastated.
But time passed, and the pain dulled.
She stayed in the research team partly to help future Wizards…
and partly because a small part of her hoped he might return someday.
And then—
one day—
an email arrived.
“How have you been? I need your help.”
She thought it was a lie.
But only a handful of people knew her private address.
And she had kept that address alive for one reason:
a faint hope.
When she met him, it really was Todoroki.
She had so much she wanted to say—
how he left, how he hurt her, how he abandoned everyone.
But when she saw him in person, none of that mattered.
He was alive.
That was enough.
Then Todoroki handed her a PET bottle filled with clear liquid.
He asked her to analyze it—
and to run a full medical examination on his body.
He claimed that drinking the liquid had made him younger.
The liquid, he said, was made by soaking a Skill Orb in saltwater for a certain amount of time.
Why would he do that?
Why would it cause rejuvenation?
It sounded impossible—
like the delusions of someone suffering from age‑related dementia.
“Fine. If you don’t believe me, I’ll drink it again. Just examine me afterward.”
He warned that the liquid caused sudden sleepiness, so she secured a bed in the facility’s recovery ward and admitted him.
The results were undeniable.
Todoroki had grown even younger than when they reunited.
He was still hospitalized, undergoing detailed examinations.
The liquid he drank was sent to the research lab for analysis.
It would take several days for results.
She compiled everything—Todoroki’s condition, his statements, her observations—into a report and sent it to the ministry.
