My plan to develop my magical potential depended on the fact that I had been reborn with a treasure trove of information in my head from the modern era. Of course, the modern era I was a part of didn't have any magical training programs. However, I had enjoyed free access to a nearly unlimited library of martial arts training techniques. There ought to be at least some overlap between those and the training used for magic. If not, I could try cycling through the various fictional approaches to magic that had been dreamed up by pop culture. I was bound to hit on something workable eventually.

The other advantage that I enjoyed as a transmigrator was my extreme sensitivity to magical power. At least, I assumed that was why I could perceive the magic within me so clearly. It could just be an allergy, but I thought it was more likely that some part of me still treated magic as something unnatural. That pinpoint perception of magical power would let me use it to do more than shake off colds.

I was eager to put my theories to the test. The next morning, I rushed through my chores and headed outside while the sun was still just clear of the horizon. Say one thing for a primitive society, the concept of a helicopter parent hadn't yet been invented. Even at such a young age, I was treated almost like a contract employee: generally free to run about and pursue my own interests as long as I carried out my assigned tasks on time and to specifications.

There was a small hill just outside the village, dotted with groves of bamboo. I headed that way, intent on using the privacy of one such grove for my magical experiments.

While Mama Matsu was happy to let me run around unsupervised, that didn't mean that I was left entirely to myself. I discovered as I made my way towards my destination that I had picked up a little shadow. Objectively speaking she was little, even if she was taller than I was.

I turned around and gave Kana a wave. "Good morning."

I needed to observe the usual courtesies. I did want to stick to my long term plan of obtaining a wealthy friend, after all.

She smiled at me, showing off a gap in her front teeth. "Morning!"

I just looked at her, unsure of what to say. In order to befriend her, we would need to spend time together. However, I was about to spend most of a day jumping around while trying to access magical powers. No matter how open minded this new world might be when it came to the supernatural, it wasn't something I wanted to do with an audience.

While I searched for a polite excuse to escape her scrutiny and carry on with my business, Kana decided that the silence between us had stretched on long enough.

"Whatcha doin'?" she asked.

I racked my brain for a plausible lie. She seemed surprisingly perceptive, and I didn't want to do anything that would hurt her feelings. While I was digging for an excuse, though, a thought occurred to me. If I wanted to take a scientific approach to things, then I needed a control group. A normal five year old who I could use as a comparison.

I smiled back at her. "Practicing magic."

I could tolerate a little embarrassment in the name of science.

"Can I come?" she asked, almost hopping in place.

I nodded. "Follow me."

She'd been doing that anyways, but I pretended she was following me because of my instruction as I led her to the little forested hill that would be our training grounds. Once there, I hiked up to a small clearing that was shielded from view of the outside world by the surrounding bamboo.

"All right," I said. "Do what I do."

I started working through a basic Tai Chi exercise. I didn't want to start out with anything too advanced. That was something that you needed to work up to. I certainly didn't want to do anything to harm my development by putting my childish body through stressful exercise.

Tai Chi is often described as a sort of moving meditation. I had found back in my first life that the more advanced forms were a strenuous workout in their own right, but it was true that the basic stretches didn't require much conscious focus. Instead, I turned my attention inward, focusing on that unsettling burning sensation that I had been assured was a perfectly healthy sign of magical potential.

It didn't seem to be doing anything. I tried willing it to do something. I tried moving it with my mind. I tried pleading silently with it to move. There was no response.

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That was all right. Rome wasn't built in a day. Actually, maybe it had been in this world, what with magic being real, but still, I didn't mind putting in time and effort even if the payoff would take a while to arrive.

I took a peek at Kana. Her face was screwed up in a rictus of concentration as she tried to copy my movements. I added a trickier move to the basic exercise, and as she followed along she fell onto her bottom. She hopped right up, though, moving quickly to mimic my pose.

This was all still new and interesting to her. In time the shine would come off and I'd be free to experiment on my own. At least, that was what I expected when I headed home after that first morning's practice.

As the days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years, it became clear that I had underestimated my neighbor. She stuck it out through thick and thin, from basic Tai Chi into basic Yoga and even into some intermediate forms. We were a pair of remarkably flexible seven year olds.

I'd confirmed about a month into our exercises that she also had magical power burning away inside her body. She could still provide a useful control group. I had held out hope for a long time that Kana would serve as a useful measuring stick to confirm that my own abilities as a transmigrator outstripped ordinary magic users.

Unfortunately, after all this time, I still hadn't unlocked the key to conscious control of magic. Sometimes I could feel the magic within me flowing through my body as I moved, but there was never any rhyme or reason to it. I also couldn't tell if all of our training was accomplishing anything. My strength had improved since I'd started exercising, but that was easily explained by the fact that I had grown older.

I couldn't tell if my magical strength had improved. I didn't even really know what that would mean. The first day I'd noticed it, my magic had been a little ball of fire burning just under my belly button. After years of practice, it was still a little ball of fire burning away in the same place.

I'd gotten used to the sensation. I could still feel it with the same clarity, but the sensation was soothing instead of aggravating. It felt like a part of me, something I could take comfort in. It would have been nice, though, if I had been able to do anything with it.

After two years of diligent practice with real world techniques had failed to deliver any results, I was ready to turn to fictional training methods. I probably would have done so earlier, if Kana hadn't been so faithfully following along with everything that I did. I was a little embarrassed to offer up such absurd training methods, even if it was impossible for her to call me out for drawing ideas from the movies, and I felt a little bad at the possibility that I would be wasting her time with such pointless things. Still, desperate times called for desperate measures.

All of which was to say that I spent much of my seventh birthday throwing a ball made out of tightly stitched together rags at my friend. She had an arm's-length wooden stick in hand and a blindfold over her eyes. She was attempting to reach out with her magical senses, at my direction, and feel an incoming attack. Then she was to use her stick to block it.

When I had been in her shoes, I had focused on using my weapon the way I had seen in the movies. That is, simply positioning it to block the incoming projectile. Mathematically speaking, that gave me the best odds of hitting something. Of course, the best odds available were still pretty low, and I had absorbed far more hits from the rag ball with my face than the stick.

Kana preferred a more enthusiastic approach, guessing at where the ball might come from and swinging her stick with great vigor. She rarely made contact, although her energetic movement did cause her to dodge the ball most of the time. Perhaps there was some method to her madness.

The sun was almost directly overhead when I decided that I was making my last throw for the day. Just like last time, and all the other times before that, Kana swung her stick as hard as she could. Unlike all of the other times, she made solid contact. The ball was sent skittering past me and kept going until it rolled out of sight behind a little stand of bamboo.

"I hit it!" she called out.

"Yes, yes," I said. "I'll go get it."

I turned and walked towards where I had seen the little ball of rags roll out of sight. It had taken some doing to acquire that much fabric to use for my own purposes. I wasn't going to let it go easily.

I came around the bamboo and saw the ball resting on the ground. Just then, a fox ran past me, snatching it up with its mouth without breaking stride.

"Hey!" I called out. I stood still for a moment in shock, then started running after the fox.

Much to my surprise, I was able to keep up with it. I wasn't catching up, but I wasn't being left in the dust as I had half expected. The fox was leading me around more twists and turns that I had thought were present in the little forest on the hill, but I just focused on watching its every move as I kept running.

The most disconcerting thing was that the fox seemed to have more than one tail. I couldn't tell just how many tails it had with the way they swirled around as it ran, but it was at least two. I thought about abandoning the chase. What if it turned on me? Catching rabies from a mutant fox would be an embarrassing way to die. In the end, though, I just couldn't bring myself to let the little thief get away.

The fox vanished around yet another corner. When I followed, I found myself in a grassy clearing. A stream burbled through the middle of it that I knew for a fact didn't exist on our training hill. The fox was nowhere to be seen, but an elegantly dressed woman lounged on a divan in the center of the clearing.

She had the face of a classic beauty, if you ignored the fox ears peeking up through her hair. Her kimono was dyed a vibrant red and decorated with detailed floral embroidery. It was the sort of extravagant garment that was probably worth more than our whole village. Something I wouldn't be able to afford even if I spent my whole lifetime working for it. Even so, as I took in the scene my only thought was that the kimono was lucky that she was wearing it.

She also had a cloud of tails whipping around behind her as she lay on her side, regarding me with curiosity. She held my little ball made out of rags in one elegantly manicured hand.