“No, I’m not.”

“Oh, huh...” The girl seemed a bit disappointed. “B-But you still know who she is, right?”

“Well, I guess...” I didn’t just know her, the Merlin in the statue was likely the same Merlin who had taught me magic. Until I came to this town, I had thought Master Merlin was just some debauched mage, but she was apparently famous here. The town was littered with statues of her—ones that exaggerated her chest area.

“This year marks sixteen since she disappeared,” the girl muttered as she stared at the statue.

Huh... If I recalled correctly, it had been roughly sixteen years since Master Merlin had picked me up off the streets as a child. The timeline sounded right, but since I was still an infant when she found me, I didn’t have any memories of that time.

The girl sighed. “I’d love a chance to meet Master Merlin, even just once...” she muttered, watching the statue as if spellbound. There were a lot of people here in Ishtar who wanted to meet Master Merlin—in fact, it was the majority of the people. But I couldn’t understand how anyone could actuallywant to meet a woman like her at all. When we lived together, she left all the housework to me, and she forced me to participate in her magic research too. One time, she announced she was going to make an antiaging spell, cast magic on me so I wouldn’t have to sleep, and forced me to work with her for a week straight.

I learned a lot from her, but those days were pure hell. I eventually got fed up with it and escaped to this decently sized city. This world was big, and I wanted to live in it free from Master Merlin’s chains.

For some reason, Master Merlin despised crowded places. I highly doubted she’d come here to find me.

“You pro