Day 1 – Chapter 10
Shirou knew that Sakura needed to be kept away from the war. Archer’s words made perfect sense. The location, the boy’s own home, made perfect sense. After all, Sakura was familiar with the place and trusted its owner. The fact that the owner had been switched with someone else didn’t matter, seeing as ‘Emiya Shirou’ still appeared as he always did; or so he hoped. There was yet another argument in favor of sending her there; Sakura had never said a single bad thing about her grandfather.
“I agree that we should keep her away from this war, but I’d like to meet your grandfather first. After all, if he’s as great of a magus as you say he is then he might be able to help us with this whole body-switching mess,” said Shirou.
Beep, beep.
Giving it more thought, Shirou realized that Sakura had never mentioned living with or even having grandparents.
“Oh yeah, I never asked for his name,” said Shirou.
“It’s Matou Zouken,” replied Shinji disinterestedly while pulling out his phone.
Matou… Zouken, huh?
Shirou’s wrinkly body suddenly gave a violent twitch, as if something inside of him, something otherworldly, was reacting to his thoughts. Clutching his chest, he fell from his chair. The world around him seemed to blur. He saw a hazy figure of a red knight yelling at some other hazy shape. He wished that the red figure would stop talking. Every word, every yell seemed to agitate parts of his body; parts of himself. The blue shape had the right idea. The red one should’ve followed its example and been quiet, unless specifically asked a question.
“Stahpyo yelling i53i nka0! TC0oen9z first time sm45nos happened hkvae snt9e n4. KK don’t know rocg23 g54t hUVuRP!”
Why did the blue one have to start talking as well?
“E9o guesses?”
Shut up.
“V9uaSeth htOthnAS 93[TVH, konbbnb3.”
STOP---
With a sudden outburst of anger and magical energy, Shirou lost the last of his consciousness.
Day 2
“Hoh, hoh, being young and energetic sure is nice, isn’t it?” asked an orange-haired boy with a smile.
It was like talking to a wall; the three figures had not acted as if they understood anything for an hour already. Pleased that his creations had stopped twitching, the magus continued his speech, “Kekeke, it feels amazing to be able to work all night and not be worn down by fatigue.”
Zouken realized that this kind of behavior was far from his usual code of conduct, but he simply couldn’t help himself. The liberating feeling of being freed from a centuries old agony felt euphoric. The magus figured that there was something else affecting his state of mind but didn’t consider it a concern worth addressing. After all, things were working out for him so far.
His ‘prana puppets’ were no longer human, but simple tools to be used; magical batteries, so to speak. The entirety of their bodies, from the top of the scalp to the bottom of their feet, had been inscribed with small cuts. Together, those cuts formed a coherent carving for a spell meant to transfer the life of his puppets onto his future Servant in the form of magical energy.
However, there was a certain thing that the magus was worried about – Sakura. Last night’s incident had not unfolded as he had predicted; it had seen him use magecraft, it had seen him hurt someone. Zouken was unsure about how strong feelings it held, but seeing such a display of force could possibly damage its attachment to the boy.
No matter, I shall see once it arrives.
Zouken made his way to the living room and took a seat. He didn’t like watching television. Instead, he enjoyed to read. Unfortunately, the only books that he could find were cookbooks. Thinking that it would look like something that the ginger boy would do, he started to read.
An hour later, Zouken had finished reading every single cookbook that the Emiya household had to offer; and there were a lot of them. Fortunately, Zouken was a fast reader. The fact that the books had proved to be more enjoyable than he had originally thought had helped his tempo as well. They were essentially written like rituals; both had directions that one had to follow very closely or end up with disastrous results, both required catalysts for achieving your goal and both needed a lot of time and preparation to get going.
Impressed by these realizations, Zouken revised his opinion on culinary arts. In his previous body, he had had to sustain himself in another way; regular food had not nourished the magus. Now, however, he did need ‘regular nourishment’, and he had not eaten since last night’s dinner. Looking through the pictures and descriptions of a lot of delicious things caused Zouken’s stomach to rumble in an attempt to get the magus to notice its emptiness.
That rumble pulled Zouken out of the cooking zone, causing him to take note of the time. Before jumping to any conclusions, the magus decided giving his grandson a call. After three minutes of waiting for someone to pick up the phone, Zouken finally put down the receiver.
This situation reeks of wrongness.
As he was deciding on a course of action, an image of a soft girl with an even softer voice came back to him. “Berserker’s a heavy sleeper, so if I feel like it, I might be here tomorrow morning,” she had said.
What was he thinking? He couldn’t allow himself the luxury of wasting time on the off chance that she’d be there. Even if she were, his priorities lied elsewhere, didn’t they?
[ ] Go to the park.
[ ] Go to school.
[ ] Go to the Matou house.
[ ] Summon your Servant.
