MaruMA:Volume16:Short Story 1
In Greta’s Mirror
Greta sits next to drowned-rat Yuuri as one-by-one wondrous things emerge from his pocket, each more exciting than the last.
He had just returned to the other world from Earth; his shoes and clothes and body and hair were all wet from the dirty pond water. Of course, his personal items inside his pocket were as well.
“What’s that?”
“Ah, that’s a 100 yen coin. It’s silver-colored but it’s not made of silver, so it’s not worth much. Do you want it? But if you want it for the decoration, I think a 5 yen or 50 yen coin might be better.”
“What’s that?”
“Ah, that’s a cough drop. When your throat is bothering you, it quickly calms the pain. Do you want it?”
He put a yellow package on the table. Greta shook her head.
“My throat doesn’t hurt… then Yuuri, this, what’s this?”
With his fingers he held up a completely soaked card. On the front a person’s face was printed in color, and on the back were several small numbers side-by-side. The owner, Yuuri, peered at it.
“It’s a professional baseball card. For the major league. I guess it’s my bad luck that I put it in my pocket. I only got it today.”
“Yuuri, look at this! Isn’t this amazing? This person, it’s really a picture but it looks just like him!”
“Ah, that’s because it’s a photograph. A photograph is a painting that looks more realistic. Do you want it? I don’t know the player on the card, so it’s of no use to me...huh, Greta? Greta, where did you go?”
“Hey, look, Anissina, I got this from Yuuri.”
While showing off the major league trading card, Greta spoke to her genius confidante.
On the front of the card a blond man was holding a bat, printed in full color.
“It’s amazing, right? It has a photograph. A photograph is different from a painting. Isn’t it, Anissina?”
And she wanted a photograph of her mother, Greta said.
“From the very beginning, I never remembered father very much. But mother is different… the last time we met, she grabbed Greta’s shoulder and said. ‘I’m so happy,’ she said. Her, her face from that time…”
Anissina touched the little girl’s face with the palm of her hand, wiping overflowing tears away with her finger.
“The face from that time… that memory is steadily fading away. Greta loves Yuuri and Wolf and Anissina and Gwen, and Conrad and Günter, and everybody in this castle, but, but I still can’t forget something like my mother, but the image of her face keeps disappearing from my mind.”
“Greta.”
“Yes.”
From where her forehead was pressed against Anissina’s good-smelling shoulder, Greta’s muffled voice replied.
“With demon methods it is possible to do something like taking a photograph, but taking one of your mother would be extremely difficult. A normal photograph recreates the scene in front of the lens without change. Demon techniques can’t project an image inside somebody’s head.”
Greta sobbed in despair, but nodded her assent.
After that she went to her most beloved people one after another, asking everybody the same question. And one after another each mazoku reliably gave the same response.
Greta returned to Yuuri’s room and waited impatiently while her beloved family hugged her, then led her by the hand to Wolfram’s room.
“Wolfram will paint a picture of your mother from her childhood.”
“Childhood?”
“Yeah. Greta’s mother and the current you are painted pretty much the same.”
Greta sat on a large stool for several hours in the same position without moving.
Wolfram, closing one eye and measuring the length with a writing brush, painted a picture with strong-smelling paint.
“We can’t take a photograph of your mother, but we can paint a portrait. After this we can make one each year. When Greta is an adult, surely the mother from your memories will be almost exactly like the one in the portrait.”
“Really?”
“Really. Because Greta is her beloved mother’s daughter, right? But-”
Yuuri quickly lowered his voice and whispered in Greta’s ear. He felt around in his pocket again and pulled out a small mirror with a light-blue border, putting it in the smiling Greta’s palm.
“It’s a secret from Wolf.”
“Yeah, a secret from Wolf.”
Greta didn’t know whether or not the completed picture actually resembled her mother. That wasn’t because Greta was forgetting her mother’s face; it was definitely because Wolfram’s artistic style was so incredibly abstract that there was no distinction between a person and a tanuki.
Nevertheless she hung the portrait in her room, and spoke to it every morning without fail. But ever after that, Greta wished for a portrait or photograph of her mother.
And every time she used the tiny mirror, she remembered.
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