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On that day, Leo seemed to be in luck since the morning.
He managed to push his sweeping duty onto a newcomer at the orphanage, and also stealthily pocketed himself a newly born egg from the chicken coop. While delivering newspapers, an old man selling chestnuts was in a good mood and gave him some roasted chestnuts. When he went to go buy some bread at the bakery, he got to sample a new creation. The autumn sky today was clear and blue, incidentally, the bakery’s aunty was pretty good looking as well.
The strict orphanage’s caretaker, Hannah, always use to scold the children saying 「if all you do is act frivolously, it’ll come back to bite you!」, but on that day Leo had forgotten all his teachings since he blessed with so much good fortune and continued on merrily.
(At any rate, being fortunate enough to obtain some delicious food beyond just satisfying my appetite without having to part with a single coin of my own money is a wonderful thing.)
In this world, the thing that Leo loved the most was money.
Leo gave a light kiss to the gold coin lucky charm that hung around his neck. While satisfyingly patting his stomach, he wondered if anyone’s dropped some small change out of habit. Leo began walking around town in his eagle-eye mode.
During that time, he saw an interesting spectacle behind the bakery, outside the flour mill.
「Oh…?」
(People even doodle outside a flour mill?)
A black haired girl holding a branch was crouched on the ground. Her looks were startlingly beautiful but the picture she was drawing looked more like some kind of symbol. But there was something Leo was more concerned with than that.
「heyheyheyhey…!」
A stone weight holding down the straw roof over her head seemed like it was about to fall down at any moment as it started slipping down.
Leo is not someone who threw away all his virtue. Instead, since he was raised at an orphanage, he had just become a little sly. Furthermore there was his worship of money, money, and money. In this neighborhood there was a saying that “After Leo walked down a street, you won’t be able to find even one copper coin left on the ground.”
That’s why this is even more surprising because usually, his motivation behind his actions are due to the expectation of what will happen by extension, or an optimistic hope of receiving some kind of reward.
However, his reckless rushing right now was nothing but pure instinct.
「Watch out!」
The black haired girl suddenly turned around. Long glossy black fluttered in wind and brushed against her face, what happened next appeared awfully slow in Leo’s eyes.
The sound of his rushing shoes against the ground, the feel of fabric on his extended fingers, a large shadow casted by the overhead rumbling stone, and then, an unpleasant view of the blinding autumn sky.
While the sound of a shouting girl entered his ears, Leo’s consciousness faded to black.
「—…It was…..So this is….huh.」
「—… Here is…well…ah so it became that.」
A voice was heard.
「—…That’s weird…..from what I read…ah is that how it is?」
The voice became clearer. It wasn’t breaking up anymore, it had a carefree tone, signature to that of a young boy. Almost as if he was recruiting someone to attend church, it was a boastful voice.
「—…Oh my! What a mysterious feeling!」
This is weird. Isn’t this my own voice? Why am I hearing it from the “outside”?
「Ugh…」
With a tiny groan, Leo slowly opened his quivering eyes.
His head felt like it got split open. He still wasn’t fully able to focus.
Wrinkling his eyebrows and making his way through the pain, the surrounding scenery gradually became clearer.
A dimly lit room. The first thing that entered his vision was a large stack of books. Followed by more books. And then even more books. Paper books, which was a precious commodity here in the lower city, were stacked on the floor all the way to the ceiling. In between the mountains of books were messy clothes, half eaten bread, a lamp, and a wash bin.
After he followed a light with his eyes and noticed that it was coming in through a crevice in the ceiling, he finally realized that he was in a shed.
Straining his ears, he could hear a water wheel creaking outside along with the sound of a flour mill grinding away. Looking closely, he also noticed fragments of wheat dancing in the air. The sight of the wheat flour fragments in the air glittering among the red evening sun was actually quite beautiful.
(…wait, evening sun!?)
Remembering that he had something to do, he suddenly stood up but was attacked with a fierce headache and fell back onto the bed. He held his head with both hands while letting out a groan.
「Ah, finally awake?」
Once he looked up, Leo widened his eyes in shock. Ordinary brown hair and reddish brown eyes. Small amounts of freckles still remained on the clever looking face — it was the face he saw in the mirror every morning, “his own” face.
「Wha-!?」
Raising his hands in surprise, he felt it brush up against something. Once again startled, he shook his hands again and at that time, glossy black hair fell on his shoulders.
「WHAAAAAAAT!?」
To the loud scream, the boy that had Leo’s face held an annoyed expression.
「Hey you, can’t you be surprised a little quieter?」
「Wait what? Huh, wha-? Why’s there two of me? Speaking of which, what’s with this hair- and this voice!?」
Feeling his hair and patting his face, it was evident that this was not the body he was used to. The voice that came out was also that of sweet young girl.
(No way.)
An unpleasant hunch ran through his head.
(No, no, nonono, there’s no way something like this could happen.)
While holding his head in denial towards the possibility of the predicament he’s in —
「Ugh, enough already. Hey.」
With a fed-up tone, the boy with his face suddenly took out a mirror. It was a dusty and dirty mirror — Incidentally, Leo was a surprisingly tidy person and would normally never use something so dirty. Once he peered into the mirror, what reflected was the stunned expression of a beautiful girl.
A smooth, porcelain white face with large irises. Even though earlier he had messed up his hair while feeling around, its glossiness still shined in the light.
There’s no mistaking it, it was the girl that Leo had tried to save earlier.
「How-……」
「Putting it frankly. We switched bodies, you and I.」
「Why-……」
「It’s a bit late now but, my name is Leena. A daughter of this bakery. I’ve seen your face before, Leo from Ms. Hannah’s place right?」
(Well, “your face,” now it’s my face though.)
Leena, who now had Leo’s appearance, let out a mischievous chuckle at Leo’s stuttering responses.
……Seeing his own face mischievously chuckle, Leo quietly trembled.
Overwhelmed by the situation he was in, he wasn’t able to take in anything that was said. Towards the dazed Leo, the now young boy Leena pulled him back to reality.
「Because you were soundly asleep like a long, we don’t have much time left. I’ll explain what’s going on for you so listen carefully, try your best to keep up okay.」
Indicating that it was the first point, she raised her index finger.
「You might not be able to imagine it as someone raised in the lower city but, I have a large amount of magical power. Thanks for my insatiable pursuit of knowledge and clear understanding, I was able to learn many magical spells. As for the reason for my magical power, I’ll point it out in a moment.」
It was the start of an extraordinary story.
On this continent, many countries believed in spirits. Spirits are sacred entities that have existed since ancient times. They appear in front of people in many forms, light, wind, fire, water, etc.
However, as time moved on, the amount of people that could perceive the wandering spirits have decreased. Now, there only few — it is said that only the great sage governing over the church and high ranked monks now know how to communicate with spirits. For the general public who couldn’t see spirits, they would touch a small wooden box and pray while borrowing the power of the clergymen to accomplish what they can’t with a single person’s power.
By the way, the 「magical power」that Leena was talking about is completely different from the matter about spirits. Basically, it is something exclusive to the Weiz Imperial family and high ranking noble households.
The history of the Weiz Empire runs deep, once before, they were the supreme ruler of the whole continent and were said to be descendants of dragons. What they were able to do was to invoke the power of their dragon bloodline. That is what is known as 「magical power」.
Separate from the power over earth and nature that spirits have, magic is an almighty power originating from the ferocious dragons. The Weiz Imperial family had many successive emperors who were born with massive amounts of magic power, one could control hell fire, another could control the minds of other people, and there was one that could teleport from one end of the continent to the other. That’s one of the reasons why the Weiz Empire could remain a hegemony on this continent for so long.
Although, for the general people who didn’t have a drop of magical blood in their body, it was an irrelevant story. For the 90% of the people born on the continent, rather than magical power, spirit power was much more relevant. And it was the same for Leo.
Even though Leena (who’s now a boy) was just a baker’s daughter, she’s saying that she has magical power. While giving her a suspicious look, Leena shrugged her shoulders and sighed — And then pulling in Leo’s arm, which was now that of a young girl’s, she chanted 「come, flames」. Right then, a faint fire ball appeared in the tiny palms of his hand, which startled him.
(It seems like this body really does have magic power.)
Leo exclaimed 「amazing…! 」with a surprised voice, and then in order to rein Leo in she, no, he raised another finger.
「Point number two. I have certain circumstances, it was a circumstance that made me want to escape from that incredibly lovely, wickedly beautiful body no matter what. Reading a large amount of books, I drew a magic circle to switch my body with something but」
With a bad feeling, Leo’s face cramped up.
「There was an unexpected circumstance. The scrooge from the orphanage, Leo-kun came rushing in while yelling something, right?」
The young boy Leena squinted his reddish brown eyes and gave a sudden shrug.
「The collision took a turn for the worse and I once I realized, with a large crash you splendidly swapped both our bodies…Well, that’s how it is.」
Leo was dumbfounded.
He had yet to catch up with the present situation, and now suddenly he was told a hard to believe story.
However, looking at the appearance reflected in the mirror, there’s no mistaking the reality of Leena’s story. And so, he realized that his rare upright actions were completely pointless to begin with — the truth hurts.
「By the way, what I was going to originally switch my body with was this grasshopper.」
What Leena raised for him to see was a thoroughly crushed dead body of a grasshopper.
「Ugh!」
As a male, he was less queasy about insects but, a tragic dead corpse is a different story. While Leo let out a shout, Leena listlessly caressed the body of the grasshopper with one finger.
「Even though I thought I’d be able to freely fly about in the autumn fields…Well, anyway you had this bird egg on you right. I can’t believe I became a mother with a man I barely even knew.」
There was too many things with retort about he didn’t even know where to start. And speaking from Leo’s experience, the only people who liked insects usually were really strange, a shut-in, or hated other people.
「……Well, this might be fine too. Without having to come in contact with any foul men, I could live off the rest of my life here with the children as a shut-in」
「…………」
See, told you so, Leo thought.
Incidentally, if Leena had successfully switched places with the grasshopper, wouldn’t the end product be a wiggling and hopping about beautiful girl? Imagining it, Leo felt a chill run down his spine.
「Well for now, I’ve generally understood the situation」
Leo shook off the eerie thought and quickly came back to his present problem.
「Well then, why don’t you look for a new grasshopper or whatever and hurry up and return my body to me.」
「Oh that’s right. Next is why I have magical powers in my body right?」
「What? No!」
Just as the angered Leo was about to interrupt Leena, she dropped a bomb on him before he could.
「It’s because I’m an illegitimate child of the Harkenberg marquis family.」
A brief period of silence.
「—Wha?」
The young boy Leena kept a smile at Leo’s current expression.
「Like I said, I am a person related to the victim of the ‘Disaster of Flora’ that shook the entire empire, the daughter of the young marchioness, Claudia Fon Harkenberg.」
「WHAAAAAAAAAAAAT!?」
It was reasonable that Leo shouted once again.
The Disaster of Flora.
It can be said there was no one that lived in the Weiz Empire that didn’t know about it. It was a huge scandal.