Clock Tower in 1987

On the fourth day after the old Aozaki family magus's body had been torn apart, Aozaki Touko, preparing to fly to London at the airport, saw news from Misaki City in the newspaper.

"The prominent local Fumigara family was attacked by unknown assailants. No family members survived, and the cause of death remains under investigation. Fumigara Eiri, the eldest son of the Fumigara family who worked at the local Goda Church, has gone missing. Misaki City police suspect he may have had a motive and have mobilized a large force to search for him."

Seeing this, Touko barely managed to fold up the newspaper and set it aside. A headache came over her, and she gently pinched the bridge of her nose.

Right now, she only felt utterly out of place in this bizarre city of Misaki. The sooner she could get away to London, the sooner she could relax...

Touko opened her shoulder bag, intending to find herself a painkiller, but unexpectedly discovered a letter. Frowning, she opened the envelope and found only two brief sentences inside. One read, "It would be best to get rid of Cornelius Alba as soon as possible." The other read, "It would be best to kill Araya Souren too." The signature was, "Your dear little sister."

The moment she finished reading it, the letter caught fire on its own. Azure flames instantly reduced the paper to ashes, leaving nothing behind.

Upon arriving at London's Clock Tower, Aozaki Touko immediately threw herself into a tense, fulfilling life of study and research. Gifted with extraordinary talent, Touko quickly became a star at the Clock Tower. Through her own maneuvering, she secured the Department of Creation's Lord, Inorai Baruyeireta Atroholm, as her mentor.

After studying under her for some time, Touko discovered that while the elegant and noble old woman seemed mild-tempered on the surface, she was still a cold and ruthless magus at heart.

Having seen through that, Touko could not help sighing inwardly for her former self. Whether compared to her mentor or to the younger sister she had once subconsciously looked down upon, the old Aozaki Touko had undoubtedly been a naive person.

No, Aoko and Baruyeireta were different, Touko thought. Aoko was freer than Baruyeireta. She did whatever she wanted.

Thinking about it now, how could Aoko, with an inhuman number of magic circuits and efficiency in circulating mana, who had even developed so many strange spells on her own, possibly have been an ordinary magus?

But I'm different now, Aozaki Touko thought firmly. I will never be weak again.

That was what she said, but after several months in London, Touko still could not get used to British "cuisine." This made her miss the delicious food Aoko had personally prepared for her. She had grown accustomed to that care without realizing it, only to regret it deeply after losing it.

Although she planned to fight Aoko someday and decide who was superior, Touko no longer harbored the twisted obsession from the original timeline of "having to kill Aoko and seize the Magic." It was more an obsession with proving before her grandfather that she was no worse than her younger sister.

Come to think of it, was Grandfather truly worthy of being called a Magician? Even after losing his body, he seemed unchanged, still "alive" and well...

Aside from the various trivial matters of research at the Clock Tower, Touko cared greatly about the letter Aoko had left her.

Why had Aoko told her to watch out for Cornelius Alba and Araya Souren? Touko had secretly investigated Alba during this period. His field of research resembled Touko's, involving both Rune magecraft and puppet-making, but Touko believed he was merely a mediocrity, with nothing worth noting.

However, during their interactions, Alba's deliberate and casual advances toward Touko made her feel thoroughly disgusted. He was an old thing nearly fifty years old, yet he used magecraft to maintain the appearance of a twenty-year-old.

It was not that Touko herself opposed using magecraft to delay aging, but Alba's methods were simply too crude... Though he looked like a young man of twenty, his bodily functions and the efficiency of his magic circuits had clearly aged to that of a fifty-year-old. In other words, he was the sort of person who could neither rise nor fall properly, yet still relied on cheap tricks to preserve a veneer of respectability.

Thanks to Aoko's warning, Touko naturally kept her guard up during her daily exchanges with Alba, without displaying any contempt. She had also vaguely sensed that the overwhelming majority of Alba's feelings toward her consisted of the ugly emotion called "jealousy."

Touko knew that something called future sight existed. She guessed that her younger sister might possess that ability, which was why Aoko had learned in advance of Alba's ill will toward her.

Alba was one thing, but why would Araya Souren also pose a danger to her? Touko could not understand it at all. According to her secret investigation, Araya Souren, likewise a magus from Japan who had come to the Clock Tower, was essentially an ascetic figure. (He really was a monk.) His talent for magecraft was utterly unremarkable, and he ordinarily focused wholeheartedly on researching the bounded field magecraft that was the only thing he excelled at, paying no attention to anyone else.

Touko even somewhat admired Araya Souren, because compared to Alba, he was undoubtedly a pure person. He had come to the Clock Tower only to seek answers and knowledge, treating the fame and profit Alba treasured as worthless trash.

Still, because of Aoko's letter, Aozaki Touko remained cautious. She did not attempt to approach or contact Araya Souren, and she kept her attitude toward Alba as politely courteous as possible. In secret, she began making targeted preparations against the two men's magecraft systems, in case either of them suddenly went mad and attacked her. After all, the formidable reputation of future sight could not be underestimated.

At this stage, Touko had no plans to get rid of either of them, even though Aoko's letter had instructed her to do so. The most important reason for this decision was that her footing in the Clock Tower was not yet stable. Getting rid of Araya Souren would be manageable enough, but killing Cornelius Alba would likely provoke retaliation from the Shubniggurath Monastery.

Touko had considerable confidence in her future. Once her research reached the appropriate level, she would be free as a bird in the sky. Neither that foolish monk from Japan nor that old man pretending to be young would pose any threat to her.

Aoko had left Touko that letter warning her to eliminate those two in advance merely as a precaution, lest her sister go make friends with them out of appreciation for their talent, expose too much of her own information, and end up getting killed by them.

But she did not think Touko was the especially obedient sort, so she had not expected Touko to seek an opportunity to kill them the moment she arrived in London.

Aoko had found an opportunity to silently wipe out the entire Fumigara family using mechanical devices combined with arcane magic. Fumigara Eiri had inexplicably gone mad and destroyed her grandfather's body. That matter had completely crossed Aoko's bottom line, so her revenge had been merciless.

Things were much the same on Grandfather's side, except that after she inherited the Magic, he no longer taught her personally and instead arranged other channels for her to study magecraft.

Aoko and her grandfather made an agreement: once she could partially activate the Fifth Magic, the old Magician would open that cave to her.

After graduating from Asagami Private Girls' Academy, Aoko chose a high school very close to home: Misaki Town's most famous private high school, Misaki Private High School. In this respect, her choice was the same as in the original timeline.

When she first entered high school, her exceptionally lovely figure and stunning appearance drew the pursuit of countless boys and girls. It truly troubled Aoko for some time.

Aoko's strategy toward the girls was to treat them kindly, but relationships were out of the question. As for the boys, Aoko struck hard. At an appropriate moment, she publicly beat the son of a local business owner so badly that he was hospitalized, then used the Aozaki family's influence in Misaki to forcibly suppress the incident's publicity. The whole affair intimidated quite a few people with impure intentions, and from then on, the boys kept a respectful distance from Aozaki Aoko.

The school had originally intended to use the incident to properly curb Aoko's arrogance, but her consecutive perfect scores in every subject left the principal with no excuse. He could only grit his teeth and let Aoko do as she pleased.

In terms of daily life, drawing on her knowledge of "the broader course of the world," Aoko used her status as "the inheritor of the Magic" as an excuse to reveal some information in advance to her father, the public head of the Aozaki family, allowing him to make preparations for investments ahead of time.

Several months passed, and the Aozaki family's companies in the mundane world did indeed make quite a bit of money. Even Aoko's usual family dividends increased considerably. But that was all there was to it. After all, her father was merely an ordinary person, incapable of becoming some invincible protagonist just because he received information in advance.

Aoko currently spent most of her time living at the Kuonji Manor on the mountain, which was Alice Kuonji's home.

As the managers of the local distorted leyline, the Aozaki family had always maintained a good relationship with Alice Kuonji, a descendant of the First Magician. Aozaki Touko and Alice Kuonji had also been friends for many years. Aoko's grandfather wrote a letter to Alice Kuonji, the Fairy Tale Witch, entrusting her with continuing Aoko's instruction in magecraft. Thus, Aoko had lived in Alice's home ever since she entered high school.

Alice Kuonji herself was a remarkably powerful figure among magi. The Mystery of her Fairy Tale magecraft system far surpassed that of most magi, meaning that even at the Clock Tower, no one could defeat her through magecraft alone.

There might have been the influence of the "Fragment of One" involved, but no one could deny Alice Kuonji's talent and magical prowess.

Compared to the occult, Alice was far worse at daily life.

Because of her magecraft research, Alice spent a great deal of money. Combined with her love of expensive black tea, the money she could normally use was stretched very thin, and sometimes she even had to carefully budget her meal expenses.

Her father was the eldest son of this generation of the famous Japanese Kuonji Group conglomerate. However, because he met Alice's mother in England, he gave up his inheritance and chose to marry her. But Alice's mother was a "witch among witches," so after Alice was born, her mother died due to the inheritance of power.

After her mother's death, Alice's father brought her back to Japan. Yet because of her mother, Alice's relationship with her father was extremely strained.

Later, Alice's father died as well. Thus, she had always lived alone in this enormous Western-style mansion on the mountain. She had not even made it to the hospital to see him one last time before he died, and this had always remained a knot in Alice Kuonji's heart.

Incidentally, Alice's line of witches was the only witch lineage among all witch families that retained beautiful human forms. This fact led outsiders to suspect that the witches of the Yumina line and other witch inheritances were fundamentally not the same thing. Take the notorious wolfman Beil, for example. He was actually the inheritor of a witch family whose origin was fairies. His mother had once been a completely ugly and evil fairy, only later becoming human and giving birth to Beil.