Silent Witch

For some period of time, Monica had forgotten how to understand human speech.

When her father died, her uncle took her in, and Monica lived in fear of him every day.

Her uncle hated Monica's father—no, you could say he loathed him.

Whenever her uncle spoke ill of her father, Monica desperately tried to refute him. It wasn't my father's fault, she said.

So every time Monica opened her mouth, her uncle would throw his fist at her.

Shut up. Stop talking nonsense.

His fists would swing down along with his curses. In the worst cases, she would get kicked in the stomach and beaten with a chair. Sometimes meals were taken away from her, which was not uncommon.

Whenever she went out, people in town would talk behind her back. All they whisper was how bad her father was.

Her mind and body were slowly being worn down little by little.

Gradually, Monica found herself escaping into the world of numbers when times were tough.

When her uncle beat her, or when she was forced into the barn in the middle of winter, Monica would just repeat in her head the formulas from the books she read in her father's study. In this way, she can forget the pain in her body and the cold of winter.

After some time of escaping into the world of numbers, Monica's perception began to become distorted.

At first, she couldn't recognize people's faces anymore.

The size of the eyes, the width of each eye, the angle of the corners of the eyes, the length, width, and height of the nose, the angle of the chin… she can recognize these in numbers, but she cannot recognize them as a human face. To Monica, a person's face was nothing but a mass of numbers.

Next, she could no longer recognize human expressions.

When her uncle got angry, his eyebrows would move this much, his mouth would open this much, the angle of his mouth would change by this many degrees, his eyebrows would move this many times in three seconds—everything would be converted into numbers.

However, Monica could not recognize the "anger" that her uncle's face meant. All Monica could understand was the number of how many parts of his face had moved.

Her uncle had kicked the desk, and the desk moved this much, so the amount of force needed to move… and so on as her mind began to calculate the numbers.

But Monica couldn't understand why her uncle had kicked the desk.

All Monica could understand was the numerical value of the force needed of the kicked desk.

By the end of it, she couldn't recognize human speech.

She could understand what her uncle was saying, but her mind could not perceive the meaning of his words. Since she can't understand what was being said, Monica combined the number of sounds into a mathematical equation, calculated it, and let the result leak out of her mouth.

When his uncle saw Monica mumbling those numbers, he kicked her, saying she was creepy.

Not recognizing what had been said to her, Monica calculated how many seconds it would take for her nosebleed to coagulate.

And so, by the time a year had passed since her uncle took her in, Monica had become so broken that she could not recognize anything but numbers.

She simply immersed herself in the world of beautiful formulas that never hurt her, turned her eyes away from reality.

Her body grew to the point where it was barely able to survive, and her originally thin body became as thin as a stick.

In such a situation, a woman reached out to Monica.

She was Hilda Everett, a mid-thirties woman in glasses with short auburn hair who used to be her father's assistant.

"I've been looking for you ever since Dr. Rayne died."

Hilda said in a calm voice as she covered Monica, who was freezing after being kicked out of the house by her uncle, with her own scarf.

But Monica can't perceive those words. All she could understand were the numbers.

As she muttered the exact number of letters of the words she had heard and applied them to the equation, Hilda smiled softly and stroked Monica's cheek.

"So Dr. Raine had taught you the formulas… and at your age, you're already so proficient on it."

"…………."

"You don't deserve to be here. Come with me, Monica."

"………Monica?"

When was the last time someone called me by my first name? wondered Monica at that word. After all, her uncle never called her by name but "trash" or "dimwit".

She hadn't heard his father's name in a long time, since everyone had treated it as a taboo to be spoken.

Her own name, her father's name, brought Monica's consciousness, which had been wandering in the world of numbers, to the surface.

"…my name… the name my dad gave me… Monica Rayne."

Hilda hugged the bruised and battered Monica, looking like she was about to cry.

"Dr. Rayne would be very sad to see you like this."

"…Dad… Dad… Dad…"

That person didn't punch or kick her when she uttered the word "dad".

She just mourned her father's death and hugged Monica affectionately. That brought her so much happiness.

"My dad wasn't wrong… my dad was… my dad was…"

"I know. Dr. Rayne was an outstanding man."

"My father was burned… and all of his study… all of them…"

As Monica's body quivered, Hilda's arms tightened around her body.

That alone was enough to convey how sad this woman was over the death of her father.

"*sniff* *sniff* uwaaaaaaaaaahhhhh…. Daaaad…"

Monica cried aloud for the first time in a long time in Hilda's arms.

That scene was like that of a whimpering young child.

The next day, Monica became the adopted daughter of Hilda Everett, a researcher at the Magic Institute, who later discovered her talent for magic and sent her to Magician Training Institute Minerva.

And this story took place about five years ago when Monica was still twelve years old.