BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEE-!

            “-Shadduuuup...!”

            The throbbing pulse behind Kishino’s eyes somehow managed to synchronize with the piercing alarm, and pile on top of the already gross, groggy feeling of having pulled an all-nighter to create a swirling cacophony of ‘nope.’ Wondering if it was even a school day or not, Kishino voiced out a slur of incomprehensible grumpy noises and wordless protest as he shifted onto his right side to reach the night table. Still groggy, he grabbed the notepad for his schedule. Since when did he use paper instead of his phone…?

            Dallsday-

            7:30am - Breakfast

            8:15am/ish - Science notes

            9:00am - Tutoring

            10:00am - Norman / Meeting / Tutoring

            11:00am - Exercise……….

            There was no alarm clock blaring in Kishino’s ears. There were no blinds to open. There was no phone to check the time. Kishino was not sleeping in a futon. 

            “............”

             Kishino’s body was considerably smaller than before. Kishino was now the owner of memories that didn’t belong to him. Kishino couldn’t smell breakfast wafting through his door. 

            “......”

            Kishino looked out at the blood red carpet that sprawled on the floor of the room that was much larger than he was used to. The sunlight from large glass windows was pouring into the room, and he could hear the chirps of birds he wasn’t used to hearing.

             “...”

            Kishino’s brain throbbed in his skull. He looked down at the paper schedule in his hands and pulled himself out of bed. He called out to the maid at the door and had her guide him to the bathroom. It was six am. After washing himself down, he lowered himself down into the bath with shaking arms and let out a shuddering breath as the warmth enveloped him. He curled his knees into his arms, not exactly panicking, or even feeling overwhelming anxiety, just… processing. He wasn’t anxious. He’d already cried plenty of times just looking at the drawing of his parents’. He was not anxious at all, he really wasn’t. In a sense, it could be said to be surprising how calm he was. Or maybe it hadn't been processed in his mind yet.

           When Kishino looked down, he didn’t see his own body. Yes, he was just residing in Harold’s body after all. Right, he should be grateful to have control over the body at all, since it wasn’t even his. Harold didn’t know what to do. He really couldn’t tell what Kishino was thinking, but he was acting… not worse, but different than usual? He didn’t know if he should reach out or let Kishino have his space. 

           He ended up trapped with indecision until Kishino almost fell asleep in the warm bath, he changed into clothes that should have been too small and looked at the clock in his room. It was six fifty, leaving him with forty minutes of free time.

           Naturally, he pulled up his notebook, but even as he tried to read what he had written already and think about other things, his brain completely stalled. 

           -Oi, what’s wrong?

           -Oh, hey. Don’t worry, it’s just that I’ve filled in a bunch of the obvious stuff, and we can’t do history or societal problems yet, so uh... Wait no, that’s not how it is, um… 

           Kishino let out a huff and crossed his arms as he leaned back in the chair. Even in his own mind, Kishino was still having trouble expressing his thoughts. 

          -You’re not hyper-focused on it anymore?

          -Right! I had a dream last night, and I think I got some more of my memories back. You feel it too, right?

          -I do. So basically, so now you’re focusing on that instead? 

          -Yeah.

          -Don’t give me that crap.

          Kishino raised his eyebrows in surprise before letting out a laugh. He supposed it was pointless trying to hide anything from his brainmate.

          -We’re both exhausted as hell. The first week we panicked as we tried to regain control over everything, the week after it was hell, and now we’re utterly sleep deprived and don’t have immediate urgent distractions to turn to. We need to take a break.

         -My memory… 

         -I said WE. Our body is tired, and powering through it affects me too, you know? 

         He couldn’t argue with that. If it was him alone, Kishino’s mindset about the Japanese work hustle would’ve made him counterintuitively work himself to death, even though he objectively knew it was unhealthy. But now that his body wasn’t his own, he couldn’t afford to destroy it for his ‘roommate’.

           “Right. We both need to slow down and process all this bullshit, don’t we?”

           Crossing out all the work other than tutoring on his notebook, Kishino brainstormed with Harold about what he’d like to do for the next few days. He also made sure to swap out his Priorities with fun or relaxing goals, making sure that he would never, under any circumstances, do ‘work’.                                    

           After tutoring was finished that morning though, Kishino realized it would be best to at least relay some of his already somewhat fleshed out future plans to Norman, so he could handle it while the duo took a vacation. He felt immediate relief when the butler’s face stiffened. Until that moment, he hadn’t known for certain whether telescopes and microscopes were invented already, but now that he knew they weren’t, Kishino felt a sense of accomplishment along with reassurance that his knowledge was indeed revolutionary and not practically useless. There had been… a lot of ideas he played around with. A great majority of them pathetically ‘died off’ as he realized he didn’t know or remember nearly enough about the subjects or ideas for them to actually be practical. 

          When Kishino moved on to cell theory, he could swear that he saw Norman’s eyes blue-screen, and he had to summon inhuman strength of will to break the ‘why are you confused? This is obvious.’ act and burst out into laughter. It felt way better to feign ignorance, and he’d come off as humble in the process. There was also a bit of genuine unease with taking credit for whatever cosmic magical event that brought him here, but it was mostly just satisfying to feel humble, combined with the constant, repeated exposure to the ‘prideful guy gets humiliated cliche’ in every book, manga, and tv show under the sun. All of that most likely somewhat traumatized Kishino for the lack of a better word. If he ever bragged about himself, Kishino always felt a subconscious fear that it would bounce back at him somehow, even if he knew objectively that was a dumb way to think.

           -Oi. Stop over-analyzing your inner hypocrisy and snap out of it, Norman’s almost finished processing.

           -Huh. I always wondered if you could hear my thoughts.

           -Not really, it’s more of an intuitive feeling, plus I sort of know how you think from your memories.

           -Oh, interesting, I think I did that a few times without realizing it before.

           -Ugh, shut up and focus already!

           As Kishino wrestled his train of thought back to reality as best he could, where Norman was currently looking at Harold like he grew a second head. Depending on how you interpreted the phrase, he wasn’t incorrect. Kishino figured that was the normal reaction when hearing a kid talking about cell theory before anything close to it was ever even dreamt of. Norman didn’t even have the slightest idea of how to respond to the vast quantity of incoherent nonsense that had just reached his ears. He felt like the child was turning his hair grey with every word that came out of his mouth, but one thing about his monologue stood out in particular.

           “I’m terribly sorry Harold-sama, you explained a microscope as a telescope built for seeing small things, but what is a telescope? Also, when did you come up with all these concepts? And is it truly possible to confirm the existence of atoms? I was under the impression that the concept was highly theoretical.”

           “...”

           “Harold-sama?”

           “Ah, wait for me for a second.”

           Kishino walked over to his desk and set the notebook down to flip through it properly.

           “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”

           “Right, uh, wait, uhm, right, telescopes? And uh, our backstory, right, um…”

           Kishino was having another bout of ADHD. Trying to switch his brain to stop focusing on everything at once, and at the same time trying to switch gears to stop focusing on the previous thoughts of how Harold could feel his thoughts, and other identity-related questions, on top of planning out their vacation was extremely difficult. It wasn’t that he couldn’t pay attention or focus; it was that he couldn’t not pay attention to other things. He was normally very high functioning, but he supposed he had been off of his medication for quite a while now. 

          Oh, oooohhh, mental disorders and psychology might be more important than I thought. Medication doesn’t even exist, does it? Oh, shit. 

          For the life of him Kishino couldn’t recall anything related to creating medicine. He knew that he had taken a pill called Strattera, but that was only a meaningless word to him. He tried to remember what different words meant about different chemicals, such as -ase meaning the molecule was an enzyme, and -ose meaning it was a sugar. But he couldn't recall anything relevant, and the periodic tapping of his pencil against the notebook intensified with his frustration.

           -No, wait, microscopes. Norman. Plan. Right...

           -Just tell him you want to put together a team of glass workers and maybe carpenters, as well as engineers, to create eyeglasses but for looking at something really tiny and also far away. When you came up with microscopes you also came up with telescopes, and- you know, what, let me take over.

          -Oh, thanks! I thought the Greeks used telescopes really early in history but I guess not… 

           Kishino felt decidedly stupid at the moment. He already had everything he needed to say, so why did he take so long to simply put it into words? He seriously needed to take some medication, but it seemed impossible with his current knowledge.

          “Norman.”

          “Yes?”

          “I want to create a type of eyeglasses that doesn’t rest on your face, and can look at the tiniest of details of objects. Similarly, I want to create a large type of glasses that can look at things far away. I require a team of glass makers, carpenters, and engineers.”

          “Ah, and what about atoms?”

          “I simply believe in the theory; I am not sure where I read it, or maybe I heard it from someone, but I remember learning of an experiment where a man isolated two ‘Elements’ as he called them. They were chemical compounds that could not be further broken down into simpler substances by any means. He discovered you could combine the two elements to create two different alchemical compounds. However, he also realized the ratios of the compounds were one to one, and two to one. Thus, he concluded matter must be of whole numbered parts at an extremely small scale. Do you follow what I am saying?”

          Norman’s brow furrowed even further as he tried to follow along with Harold, who was trying his best to paraphrase John Dalton’s creation of atom theory.

          “...No, I do not understand. I apologize Harold-sama, I am not the brightest man to consult about maths or sciences. I shall simply take your word for it.”

          “Hmph, don’t ask idiotic questions if you don’t care about the answers. Now, the team of glass and wood workers?”         

          “Ah yes, Harold-sama, I was wondering as to how we could possibly hide such a team from Hayden. Similarly, I am unsure of how we can convince them to work for you enthusiastically.”

          “Well, obviously, you will pretend to give the orders, not me.”

          Norman pondered this. There were a lot of issues, such as how he could move freely from the mansion and back without drawing any suspicion from servants. But, as Harold had just proven, he is open to criticism and modification of his plans, so Norman felt free to give his own suggestion.

         “...hm, I am not confident that is the best option, Harold-sama. I believe Jake would have far more freedom than me to begin this project.”

         “He is already occupied with the other project. It would take up too much of his time.”

         “Surely he could recommend someone else then. I don’t have any more acquaintances that excel in economics or managing-“

         The heated brainstorming session continued for about half an hour before Harold decided they were working too hard. Even Zen barged in at one point and fell asleep on the desk, but Harold realized he could be of some use for something later, so he only kicked him out after explaining a certain request. Norman and Harold both eventually agreed to wait until Jake returned from the agricultural district to make their decision in the end, but the butler would do it himself if he came back during their vacation. Norman was honestly relieved that the child was taking a break. He had been looking worse and worse every day, and he almost had a heart attack after he saw what state Carmen had left him in. The scolding that followed after that had spiraled into a heated argument with the soldier.

         It wasn’t until after dinner that Harold realized that Kishino didn't even consider the ‘limits on interacting with the world’ priority before talking about microscopes. He didn’t even try to hide cell theory either, which would without a doubt irreversibly change the course of history. Harold couldn’t even begin to think of the possibilities should word get out that he and Kishino had come up with such a groundbreaking theory, especially if the farming is accidentally discovered. It was impossible to see how such things might affect the plot of the game.

         “... You seriously have no intentions of holding back, do you…?”

         Knowing what Harold did from Kishino’s memories, he wouldn’t be surprised if the naive teenager blindly believed that everything would work out in the end. The talented idiot always had an intuitive sense for schoolwork, and always somehow ended up getting A’s by putting in the minimal amount of effort. He just trusted his instincts and scheduling, and left the rest up to fate. Harold supposed he would have to take matters into his own hands then; by which he meant brainstorming and writing down arbitrary rules in the notebook telling Kishino what not to do after the vacation was done.

          -Oh come on, what does ‘widely spreading’ even mean? The farming is already set up to shift the economy of the domain in a few years; if it’s already changed that much, surely there can be some more wiggle room.

          -That is precisely why we don’t have wiggle room, idiot. Trying to stop the collapse of the Stokes house is already such a huge wave that we can’t possibly predict how things will change. We must absolutely restrict ourselves to advancements that will only gain momentum nine to ten years from now at the minimum. 

         We got lucky with the microscopes; there’s way too much research for something like that to… actually, we have no idea what studies scientists will do if cell and germ theory becomes widely known. Crap…”

           Harold brought his hands to his face and looked up to the ceiling. Clara, farming, the soldiers in the barracks… was the timeline already beyond salvaging? Kishino, on the other hand, felt Harold was worrying too much. They already knew the farming would only be ready after years of research, and if he feared the butterfly effect as much as his mom hated spiders, he might as well not change anything at all. He couldn’t just do nothing.

          -Hey, we already decided to save hundreds of lives that would’ve died in the plot; that kind of impact is already massive. If we’re restricting ourselves so much, we might as well just let them die.

          Harold sat forward again and practically burned a hole into the notebook with his stare. He didn’t know where he should be looking when he was ‘talking’, but he didn’t care.

          -I never said any such thing! We already are going to vastly alter the story, yes, but that’s just all the more reason we shouldn’t just go and give everyone in the country macbooks and show them how to make memes! 

         -Ha! You’re… sigh, you’re right, I’m sorry. I’ve been looking down on you because you’re younger, and I just assumed I knew better. You have a point, I’m just- I’m scared that if something goes wrong and we-

         -We won’t. You promised.

         Harold’s thoughts felt unnaturally sharp for a ten year old kid; Kishino couldn’t help but mentally shiver.

         -You know how unfair I think promises are… 

         -...You’re not getting us killed.

         -Not planning on it. However, when we reach the End alive, if we’re banished from the country somehow, we won’t have our noble status to make as many changes as we want to, right? We need to make use of this while we can, you know?

           Harold seemed to somewhat calm down with that, before flaring up again.

          -Well then, that’s just what I mean! We will SURVIVE the Ending, so we can just wait until then to do all of this risky stuff without risking the plot! Why are you rushing everything when you have literally no reason to!!??

          -That’s… true… 

          -Well!?

          -Okay, okay!... But if there’s something we can help right away, we will do it. And we will also begin researching a whole bunch of things, but it will only become public after the game’s events. The farming is already on its way, so it will continue whether we want it to or not. 

          -...We will consult the game knowledge and determine what changes might be made to the story. For every project, with no exceptions. There’s no telling how many side quests might be affected already. If need be, we must correct the plot ourselves.

         -Agreed.

         -...Sigh… Fine… Now, I suppose we’ll start with those microscopes then… 

 

        *** 

 

         “One more time……Aqua Sphere!”

          An imperfect orb of water launched forward three meters, before crashing into the tree trunk, leaving no visible damage. But that was enough for Kishino.

          -Welp, we were right- the Amalian techniques don’t match my style. 

          -Haha! Look who’s the senior now! Though, I suppose that was somewhat better than the earlier globs of water that only fell to the ground uselessly. 

         -How does that even work though? I can somewhat easily use a lot of styles of Magal Arts that are prominent in East Andria, but our weird cosmic situation pretty much confirms that one’s magic style can’t be genetics or ‘blood-based’ like most people say. Is it based  on cultural mindsets then? But then, your magic should be affected too… 

         -You’re right; it’s probably not the mindset, since then I would have to change my magic as well…  Do you suppose it has to do with Astral Bodies? That way it's somewhat genetic, like people have observed, but it makes sense for our situation too. 

         Kishino tilted his head and frowned. Though, it was somewhat awkward since he was still unsure of where to look, so he just leaned his back against a tree.

          -Wait, don’t you usually just say something like ‘how should I know’? Why do you care now?

          -It was obvious this time, not just some pointless questioning. If it’s not DNA or mindset, then it must be astral bodies; it’s simple.

          -You just think magic is fun, don’t you?

          -Hmph, stop changing the topic.

          Kishino had a wry smile on his face. He supposed this was what it’d be like to have a younger sibling. And to be stuck with them all day every day.

          -Alright, alright. It does make sense since Astral Bodies were basically just glorified magic souls of people in the game. It’s not hard to imagine them being the cause of magic diversity; it doesn’t explain WHY people use magic differently, but somewhat answers ‘how’. It’s not even a novel theory in this world; I think you read about it in a book once in your memory. So, it’d make sense that along with my memory, my Astral Body was shoved into you by the crazy god that pulled this off.

         -My astral body also could have split, and molded itself to fit your memories and personality when my brain couldn’t handle it all.

        -Sigh, yeah, that’s true.

        Suddenly Kishino felt awkward in Harold’s body, but discounting the possibility just because he didn’t like it would make him even more of a hypocrite than usual.

         -You know, I never researched very much about DID. If you split apart like some eldritch sea anemone, I wonder if I’d ever merge back into you some day? 

         -You, merge with me? Ugh, I don’t want to think about fusion dancing with a nerd like you. 

         Kishino couldn’t help but laugh at the mental image. Harold was using his own techniques against him; the clever brat. 

          -Geeze, are you even a ten year old anymore? I’m such a lame senpai, being comforted by my junior. 

          -Who knows? Maybe I aged up with your memories.

          -Wouldn’t that mean I aged down!? No way, I’m not doing highschool again! 

          -If you’re feeling better enough to complain about useless things, start practicing again already. You’re lucky the magic that works best for you is practically the inverse of mine at basic levels.

          -Says the one who needed a vacation.

          -No, this isn’t work. It’s practice.

          -Pfft, brat.

          Still, Harold was right; magic was more fun than actual work. And he was lucky, too; if Kishino had to learn an entirely new form of magic from scratch, he’d never catch up to Harold. Especially since for some reason Kishino needed to rely on chanting much more than normal people. Even now, memorizing all the spells Harold had learned, in the form that suited Kishino, would be considerably difficult. To sum up the difference between Kishino and Harold’s style; instead of imagining water as being ruthless and powerful in his mind, Kishino needed to imagine it as a cool, calm flowing force with patience and determination. Similarly, instead of lightning being cool and relentlessly precise, Kishino needed to envision it as a chaotic force of energy that took the easiest path of ionization and violently thrust towards its goal, never stopping until its objective was complete. It was practically the inverse of most of the principles that East Amalia traditionally followed. It was admittedly still somewhat similar, but it was unquestionably different, evidenced mostly by it’s chant. 

          -Even so, if this is really all you can do, you might as well sit back and do our homework while I get to thrash our enemies.

          -Still gonna learn it though.

          -But this is so inefficient. It’s not like we can both use magic at the same time, so just let me handle all of it so we can use our training time effectively.

          -I’m not giving up literal magic just because you can do it better. I want to shoot fireballs and lightning bolts too, you know? Besides, I could come up with and do stuff you can’t.

          -Ugh, this is boring… 

          But despite his difficulties, it was still endlessly amazing getting to learn and practice real, actual magic. It was the greatest fantasy that so many kids, teens, and even adults could only dream about, including Kishino, and now it was right here, literally at his fingertips. If he tried hard enough, he might even be as powerful as Harold in the game one day! For the self-proclaimed number one fanboy of Brave Hearts, it was impossible to not feel excited at the prospect! The way it correlated to how it worked in the game was especially interesting; there were a few bits and pieces of dialogue referring to imagination’s role in magic, but nothing as cohesive as this. The way you learned spells was also interesting; in the game, you could only learn unlock spells when you leveled up, but you had to actually learn those spells by ‘studying’ and gaining experience with using them. Some magic was completely intuitive, and you could learn it immediately after you level up, but even for those spells, they would be somewhat inaccurate or even less powerful early on, and you’d have to train them to hone your skill.

         Similar to the game, which only allowed the characters to learn a fixed set of spells and skills, some people could learn some spells much easier than others. But here in the real world, things weren’t so limited; even the main character, Liner, could become a master at healing spells if he really wanted to for example. But since he’d be joining the healer of the hero’s party eventually, there really was no reason for him to spend so much effort. Kishino was terribly excited at the fact that he might be able to learn spells that Harold couldn’t, and they’d be practically cheating together. Of course, he would immediately give that up if there was an opportunity to get a second body, but it was nice to think that there would be some benefit to this weird-as-hell situation. 

         -Is it my turn yet?

         -The stick’s shadow didn’t pass the pebble we set down, so no.

         -But I want to use magic… 

         -Just zone out then. You’ll come back when it’s your turn.

         Kishino almost felt relieved that Harold still acted like a normal kid. He hoped his memories didn’t screw him up too terribly… 

         Heading back to the spellbook that Kishino had leaned against a random tree, he moved the text out of the shade and skimmed the pages for the chant to a different spell he needed to practice. For now, Kishino needed to master the Basic Offensive Three in each Natural Element, which were broad categories arbitrarily created to categorize all spells. It was about as accurate as using grades to measure intelligence; horribly flawed, but possibly better than nothing if they didn’t do more harm than good. There were hundreds of variations of the basic three, but they all generally followed the same logic of building up one’s foundation for learning future spells. The version he was attempting included the three water-based spells Sphere, Slash, and Jet. For lightning it was Jolt, Bolt, and Charge. And it continued on for earth, fire, ice, and wind. That was not to say that there weren’t spells that utilized multiple of the elements combined, but it was officially considered to be those six that were the basic elements that could not be divided any further. Though, ice was a bit of a controversial topic as of the past few decades.

          The thing that confused Kishino the most was the chant system. It was pretty common knowledge that chants were the ‘language of magic’, like code to a video game. And the language itself was consistent and made sense; certain phrases correlated to directions for your magic to shape itself to. Like telling one part to spiral, telling this part to come out of your hands, and multiple different phrasings of compress, flow, and thickness were common for water spells, etc. This meant you could recognize a spell by its chant if you expertly understood the language. This was all fine and well except… 

           “Who the hell came up with all this shit!?”

           Why does something like ‘Fî’ translate to ‘Expand’? In programming, someone had to create the programming language before anyone could actually use it to make something. You couldn’t insert Python code into JavaScript and expect it to run smoothly. So who made up all these ‘rules’ that govern chants? Why did they even work like that anyways? Did it have something to do with the fact that only after understanding the full meaning of the chant, you could use it? 

           The theory Kishino came up with is that the concepts like ‘expand’ and ‘flow’ along with the numerical equivalents and even Kanji-like meanings, were all thought of first. Then someone arbitrarily created symbols and words to properly communicate those concepts. Of course, this had the flawed logic of assuming that some random guy one day just thought ‘Graph Space (point A point B point C, expand twenty over one at five, two, one centimeter. Property; fluid……….)’ and they accidentally created the first spell. 

           -My turn!

          -Wha? Ah, damnit, I was thinking about-

          -Ahahaha! No take backs!

           Harold left the woods and headed back to the normal training grounds for magic, since only Kishino needed to hide how not-powerful he was. Later that day, when Kishino asked some of his tutors, they said that no one actually knew for certain the origins of the chant language, only that the language it was based on was an extremely old ancestor to a variety of modern day languages. The theory that he’d made was actually one of the common hypotheses of many historians, linguistics, and other professors. When Kishino asked if anyone tried anything different, they said some people actually did, but it was either nowhere near as efficient as the system already in place, or it was just integrated as a change to the system. One of the tutors even went as far as to say it was almost like mathematics; you could come up with new ways to use it and solve different problems, but it was all the same system in the end.

            The tutors were somewhat used to Harold occasionally acting curious and enthusiastic for no reason at all, so it was honestly the most time they’d seen him in the past few weeks. What they didn’t expect was the child requesting that they spend more time teaching him the mechanics of the chant language instead of mathematics. Previously, Harold never cared much more for chants than he had to, only memorizing the ones he needed for whatever spell he wanted to learn. Even stranger, he seemed completely confident in his ability to teach himself the match curriculum without any help. If they hadn’t seen evidence of Harold’s near-genius learning speed with math first hand, they wouldn’t have believed him at all.

          After ironing out the details, Kishino went to bed early and satisfied. To say he was looking forward to his future tutoring was an understatement. One of Kishino’s countless regrets had been that he never seriously learned how to code before being shoved into Harold; it was always an fascinating topic that he only put off because of how utterly frustrating it could be, but he knew if he ever found the right teacher it might have become a really fun hobby for him. Only now, since he was stuck in the fantastical renaissance age, he’d never get the chance to try it again. Or so he had believed, but the more Kishino thought about it, the more he realized that magic chanting was actually really similar to coding and mathematics. So technically he’d actually be learning both coding and literal goddamned magic at the same time! 

           Fuck yeah, magic is cool as hell!!!

           Maybe one day, when he gained some level of proficiency, Kishino’d even be able to ‘program’ his own spells! With those as his last thoughts, Harold called him a lame nerd as they passed out together due to sleep deprivation.