Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou

Her earliest memories were filled with her older brother.

Due to their large age gap, her brother had doted on her. He had done everything she wanted. He had gone along with her self-indulgences as much as he was able and had put his little sister ahead of himself.

Naturally, that alone would not be enough for her memories of her brother to be so strong.

He had died just when she reached the age when she became more aware of the world around her.

She had constantly wanted to remember her brother, so she had started to a.s.sociate her brother with any enjoyable memory of the past. Eventually, she began fabricating convenient memories for this purpose. She began to confuse the brother in her memories with her image of the ideal male, so she created a strong, stylish, and kind mental image of her brother.

Everyone fabricates memories in this way, but they cause no problems because they rarely come to the surface. However, she saw her lies fall apart in a rather intense fashion. And it happened when she was a sensitive young girl.

She belonged to a well-known old family. She was to attend the prestigious Constant Magic Academy and learn the truth regarding her brother according to the “family custom”.

“Fujiko, you must become the head of the Etou family. You must take the place of that pathetic brother of yours who failed and lost his life!”

Etou Fujiko felt something was horribly off about her mother’s cold words.

—But wasn’t my brother our family’s treasure? Didn’t he have excellent grades but died in an unfortunate accident? Didn’t mother never mention him because it was too sad?

She had several questions, but instead of answering them, her mother had silently grabbed her hand and taken her to the mansion’s bas.e.m.e.nt. She had always been told never to enter the bas.e.m.e.nt. She had tried to go there out of curiosity a few times in the past, but it had always been locked.

Her mother had pulled out an old key and opened the bas.e.m.e.nt door. Cold air had escaped, but the bas.e.m.e.nt had not been even slightly dusty. It had obviously been frequently used surprisingly recently.

What she had seen there had been a cruel sight for a girl who was soon to enter middle school.

Her brother’s corpse had been sealed in a gla.s.s case. Unlike the brother in her memories, he had looked thin and unreliable. This was partially due to how much Fujiko had grown since her brother’s death, but it had more to do with how much she had idealized her image of him. She had not felt fear, but a corpse was still a corpse. He had appeared to be only sleeping, but the look on his face had clearly not been that of a living human. Fujiko had been unable to approach him. Simply put, she had been at a sensitive and cleanliness-obsessed age, so she had found the corpse to be “filthy”.

“You must not tell anyone what I tell you here. You must never tell anyone,” said Fujiko’s mother after circling around behind her.

Fujiko had turned around and looked up at her mother. She had seen an expression that was not quite anger and not quite sorrow. She had never seen this expression before. Her mother had held an orb made of light magic in her left hand and it had cast deep shadows across her face. Fujiko’s face had twisted in fear and her mother had violently tightened the right hand holding Fujiko’s shoulder.

“You must not cry! You must look at him!”

Fujiko had begun trembling without saying a word. Her mother’s grip on her shoulder had loosened, but her mother had continued speaking with the same look on her face.

“Each generation of the Etou family holds a position as a Muleet surveyor. Being a surveyor is an important job for a follower of the G.o.d Muleet. A surveyor is an adventurer who travels to many different places and provides our G.o.d with a report on the situation there. And yet he…”

Her mother had turned the magic light orb out toward the gla.s.s coffin. Fujiko’s young heart had felt it was cruel to refer to her brother as “he” rather than by name.

“When excavating some ruins in the academy, he saw something there. It scared him so badly that he abandoned his job and fled! I do not know what it is he found. However, it was likely nothing more than an average monster or some illusion triggered by a trap… Pathetic. He was truly pathetic. He ultimately failed to excavate the ruins. He was forced to take responsibility and had necromancy cast on him during an official trial. That is normally only done to have a criminal confess about his past! We were fortunately spared having to go to the trial…but it seems he truly did only see an illusion caused by a trap. He had always been a timid boy. He would always play with you and your dolls. …Your entry into the academy is the final judgment. That will also be when we can finally stop storing his body in our bas.e.m.e.nt.”

Her mother’s words had ended there. Fujiko had looked up to find tears running down her mother’s face. Fujiko had been unable to comprehend the complicated emotions of an adult. Fujiko’s heart had been filled within nothing but fear, cruelty, and irrationality.

—My brother was pathetic, but kind. He was a sad excuse of a man, but he died due to his weakness. This school must be a scary place, but this is what happens if I lose. If I am weak, something horrible will happen to me. There is something wrong with a G.o.d that allows such horrible things to happen. My brother was kind…no, pathetic, but no matter how pathetic and weak he may have been, that is no reason for him to die. Even the G.o.ds betray us. If I am weak, mother will treat me the same way… I must be strong. I must be strong…even if I am a girl.

From then on, Fujiko had always held those chaotic feelings deep in her heart.

Once she had entered the magic academy, she had never shown her true feelings to anyone. She had acted modest and graceful (because her high-cla.s.s upbringing had told her that was how a “strong” woman acted), but had secretly been zealous in her studies of both normal magic and black magic. By teaching herself necromancy and stealing a portion of her brother’s corpse, she had successfully resurrected his head. That had taught her anew that what her mother had told her was true, but this no longer discouraged her. In time, Fujiko grew to be the school’s madonna and the strongest member of its delinquents. If nothing out of the ordinary had happened, she may have influenced history as both a surveyor and a spy for the black magicians.

However, her destiny greatly changed when that demon king arrived at the school.