Koi ka Mahou ka Wakaranai!

[SirCopert]

Author: Attsun
Alternative names: I Don't Know if It's LOVE or MAGIC!

Miyamae Kaito can't use magic at all! At this rate, his promise with his childhood friend of becoming great magic-wielders together will be ruined... When he was about to give up on his dream, Kaito suddenly feels magic power. However, that was magic that makes people who meet his eyes fall in love with him, a "charming magic"! Being popular is fine and all, but is this kind of magic really alright!?

[BWTraveller]

First chap is pretty interesting. I'll definitely be following it.

It's funny, this at least partly meets criteria to two different things I've wanted to see for some time. First, I've wanted to see a hero with a specific magic/superpower that allows him to control people's minds or make women love and obey him, but in which the hero remains a legitimate hero rather than deciding to use this power to get some tail (and then get ALL the tail); I've seen multiple stories where guys have this power but the fact that they always use it to make girls sleep with them is annoying and frankly very uncreative. Second, I've wanted to see an action/adventure story in which either the hero's female childhood friend is trying to become strong so she can stand at his side, or he's trying to become strong enough to reach her. Here, I get both of these things. It's clear the hero isn't about to try and build a harem using his powers to make girls love him, so it'll be fascinating to see him seek out other ways to apply his talent. And his core goal is to become a powerful and successful mage who can stand confidently at his childhood friend's side. Double satisfaction, but honestly I suspect that it'll be hard to find satisfaction of the latter desire given the former. It's hard to really see a boy trying to be as strong as a girl when the girl's strength is combat magic and the boy's strength is seduction.

[SirCopert]

Yeah, but I hope it will be specified if his charming eyes have a definitive or only temporary effect, and I suppose that after this he will be admitted directly to the Phonix class.

[BWTraveller]

I'm hoping it's temporary, but at least hopefully it'll be fairly easy with many to tell whether they're impacted by the spell or just plain in love. Most girls in love don't throw themselves at a boy and open their shirt to offer themselves to him, unless the boy is a famous singer or something.

But yeah, considering that his powers were able to instantly defeat the headmistress of the school, someone apparently no one else can do judging from the reactions, I'd be surprised if he doesn't get sent to Phoenix pretty quickly. Unless there's some sort of "misfit" class for people with unusual, uncontrollable or simply dangerous powers.

[kampfer91]

So it only work on women ? If his opponent is a man then he ded . Gotta wait for next chap to see the after effect of his charm ability though .
Also , age is just a number .....

[BWTraveller]

Not entirely sure yet whether it works on men. Maybe he just coincidentally only looked at women. Does seem more likely that it just works on girls though. That said, as long as there are any girls with any power around, he should be ok. Turn and eye them, and they'll fight with all their might to protect their beloved. Not an omnipotent power, indeed, but as long as he has some awareness he could be fairly secure. BTW, how often does that mag come out?

[BWTraveller]

Skimmed the new chapter, which gives us a bunch more information. The Charm power is indeed temporary, lasting only for a brief period after the target locks eyes with him. It does indeed hit men just as bad as women (poor guy was assaulted by a wall of muscles as confirmation). Additionally, society and the law are naturally very strict when it comes to powers that can be use to control people. For a few more details...

Spoiler:

Kaito is told by the headmistress that his power is going to be forcibly removed. Since this would make it so he can't use magic at all ever again, and he can never fulfill his promise with Mai, he's desperately opposed to this. Somehow his magic power breaks the ties that were holding him and he starts to run, quickly gaining a huge horde of girls and boys chasing him in the throes of his Charm. Mai manages to use magic to knock them all out and then warp him to the room of the seven elites (not sure of the exact translation, but basically equivalent to the Elite Ten in Food Wars). There, he begs them not to steal his power, explains that he didn't intend to use it on anyone at all, it just keeps going uncontrolled. Mai asks him what his goal is, what he wants to do with the power, and says that she wants to become the Highlant, the most powerful sorcerer of all (echoing the promise the two of them made as children to reach that level). He responds in kind that he'll become one of the Seven and reach that level himself. They still say it'd be dangerous to leave him alone, though it may be OK if he had a teacher of some sort. Mai starts to offer to look after him only for Moeka, an older student with a "lust" power, to jump in saying that since her power resembles his own she'd be the most suited to train him, further arguing that it's pretty much par for the course to have some big troubles happen when a person first awakens, implying in the process that there were some big problems when Mai specifically awakened her power. Though Mai seems rather unhappy about it, it concludes with Moeka becoming his guardian and teacher with a one-year time limit to control the power and apply it well.

[BWTraveller]

Well, Kiara's doing a good job solidifying her status as the ditz of the story. Tracks him down with the brilliant idea of attacking him blind so he can't Charm her, never noticing that her magic's going off in some random direction and hitting random bystanders. And of course, she only pulls the blinds off when his Charm has activated again and he's inches from her.

Still, Moeka really pulled a cruel move there throwing him out and ordering him to seduce a bunch of strange girls who had no knowledge of the situation and certainly didn't want to be seduced by someone they only thought of as a raging pervert. No wonder they ran from him; even if he did have the first clue of how to approach girls it would've been useless. Really, I just hope that after she knocked the victims out she either left letters for them explaining that he was acting under her orders to learn to get his power under control, or maybe just erase their memories of the incident. Seriously, at this point I think he really needs someone who's willing to participate, someone who would be willing to be forced to fall for him over and over again and who trusts Moeka or Kaito enough to not always worry they'd be assaulted or caused to assault him.

[kampfer91]

How charm gonna work on girls that already have feeling for him .

[BWTraveller]

Originally Posted by kampfer91

How charm gonna work on girls that already have feeling for him .

Since Mai hasn't experienced it yet no telling. I figured though that this will be brought up eventually, given a title like "I Can't Tell if it's Love or Magic".

[BWTraveller]

New chap and we have the first official declaration of love.

Spoiler:

Yui, the daughter of Kaito's former teacher, brought Kaito back to his master's house (where he'd lived and trained for years) to celebrate the awakening of his magic. Then, when he was gone, she made a request to her parents. That night, she went to his room and snuck into bed with him. When he woke up, she presented him with a marriage form and asked him to be her husband. She reveals that she's fallen in love with his determination from a very young age, but since she's the daughter of a magic school/dojo, she wouldn't be permitted to even entertain the idea of being with a man who couldn't use any magic. She relieved the stress of having to stifle every bit of her love for him by writing and storing away new marriage forms every single day. Since she'd never shown any signs of romantic interest in him over all these years he naturally thought it was the result of Charm, even though his eyes weren't hot like they get when active.

Basically, due to having never seen any indication of romantic interest prior to this, the sudden expression of intense love seems unnatural, so even though there's none of the normal indication that his power has activated he simply can't believe that the confession is anything but a result of his Charm.

[kampfer91]

Ugh it is the forbidden super dense male again .

[BWTraveller]

To an extent. But it does kind of make sense that a sudden and complete change of character in someone you've known for years and years would seem suspicious, and that a guy who has a power he doesn't fully understand that causes similar changes would be wary. Especially when the change is into someone that intense and overbearing. If she'd simply said to him that she'd been hiding that she loves him for all these years, I'd agree completely and conversely consider it more reasonable for him to be surprised but happy. But instead she threw herself at him demanding marriage and drowning him in affection that kind of crosses over into the realm of obsession. Without the power I'd expect him to think she was nuts or wonder if she hit her head; with the power I can sort of understand him suspecting it. And hoping that this is the case, as it'd probably be far more acceptable to him to think she's been brainwashed into changing her personality rather than believe that this person he's known and depended on for so long was basically a completely different person who always wanted to do this but couldn't.

[SirCopert]

I hope for a harem ending with all 8 girls

[Greenish Growth]

So what are they saying in chapter 5?

I can't understand very much of it.

[BWTraveller]

Spoiler for Lengthy description of ch. 5:

At the start, Yui is running after Kaito at school shouting "Wait! Please marry me!" over and over while he shouts back "this isn't the Yui-nee I know! This has to be the charm!". In an attempt to prove it's her she pulls some sort of magic Hammerspace and extracts a mountain of memorial albums that she'd been secretly keeping for years and years, diligently documenting and recording every single thing that happened to him every single day since he was a small child. He begs her to calm down when other students show up and start also thinking he'd Charmed her, and she seems to relax for a moment saying she can't trouble him any more, before trying to trick him into leaving a thumbprint on a marriage certificate (which he immediately rips apart). He again insists this isn't like her, to which she replies that she's completely sane, but for the sake of marriage she will never hold back. She proceeds to use a new "technique" in which she covers the ground around him with certificates, each with a duplicate of his stamp so that one misstep will push a stamp down on a certificate. He kicks them away, again desperately thinking this has to be Charm because the Yui-nee he's known for ten years couldn't ever act this stupid.

She wants to know why he won't understand, insisting that while she wasn't allowed to make any direct actions for the last decade she's always taken efforts to appeal to him. She asks if he hates her, or if he has someone else in his heart. At this point she recalls how he'd always said he needs to get into Phoenix to fulfill a promise, and wonders if he likes the person he made said promise too. She begins to go Yandere as she notices that someone just popped into his head, and demands to know who it is. She asks if it's someone she knows, before dismissing this because she's thoroughly checked out every single person he's met since she met him, male and female alike. She finally realizes that, whoever it is that he knew before meeting her, they have to be at the school since they're also aiming for Phoenix. Needless to say, her demands and insanity terrify Kaito. He manages to escape by telling her that the certificates are being blown away in the wind.

As he leaves, he worries over just how extremely her personality's changed, but admits that she is indeed a very attractive woman, only for Mai's face to pop back into his head, leading him to wonder just how he DOES feel about her and start thinking it over. In the past she was just an incredibly close childhood friend he promised to enter Phoenix together with. Now he can't be as close to her as they used to be due to the huge gap in status, and the pain of this loss has fueled his efforts to chase after her. He suddenly realizes that he hasn't really thought this sort of thing out. Is he working to fulfill the promise, or to get closer to her once more? What is she to him? A childhood friend? A goal to pursue? A mere friend? Maybe his love? He's interrupted by Yui finally catching up to him, but before she can finish repeating how serious she is about him Moeka shows up and starts molesting Yui as a joke, before telling him to come train with her. The headmistress gave permission for him to use Charm as much as he could as long as Moeka was with him. Yui protests that he doesn't need to use or master the power as he's going to marry her, and Kaito tells a confused Moeka that his Charm seems to have been effecting her nonstop. Moeka immediately tells him that Yui isn't Charmed, which he doesn't believe since she's been weird and constantly saying she loves him since yesterday. Moeka again confirms that she can't sense the slightest trace of Charm on Yui, and insists that it has to just be that something recent triggered her to confess her feelings, then grabs him and drags him off reeling over the fact that everything from the past day was entirely genuine. Yui uses her magic to snatch Kaito away. It thus ends with an up and coming fight between Yui and Moeka over Kaito.

It most certainly does make sense to me that Kaito would be this desperate to believe that Yui is under the effects of the Charm, considering just how incredibly intense she's become and how stupid she started acting. Fortunate that those with experience can sense magic and thus tell when someone is under a spell, so Kaito will not be allowed to play oblivious about this: Moeka will tell him immediately if a girl going nuts for him is Charmed or genuinely wants him.

[Greenish Growth]

Ah, thanks for the explanation.

So I guess Yui will be acting that way from now on.

[BWTraveller]

Yeah, looks like she's going to be a borderline Yandere from here on out.

[Chosen_Hero]

Dumbass is gonna do the same thing as every other MC and ignore the girl that he knows that openly likes him, not even trying to give her a chance and go for the girl he barely even knows and hangs out with that he made a promise one with one time in the past as kids.

[BWTraveller]

Originally Posted by Chosen_Hero

Dumbass is gonna do the same thing as every other MC and ignore the girl that he knows that openly likes him, not even trying to give her a chance and go for the girl he barely even knows and hangs out with that he made a promise one with one time in the past as kids.

To be fair, it's pretty clear that she likes him too. She made a point of bringing up the specific terms she and he shared in their promise, then tried to place herself as his guardian and trainer, and was clearly upset when Moeka jumped in and took the job. Additionally, while Yui may openly like him, I don't know about giving her a chance. The moment he lets his guard down at ALL she tries to force him to sign a marriage contract. When she thinks there might be someone else in his heart she goes Yandere on him and reveals that she'd been carefully monitoring every single person she'd seen him with, regardless of gender, since their first encounter. Not to mention that she kind of destroyed that point about him already knowing her. He kept insisting this had to be the Charm specifically because the girl he knew would never be so aggressive, stupid, and downright insane. If she were to calm down and try to approach him as just a girl in love, I'd agree about wanting him to take a chance. But as she is, I can't see her being proper girlfriend material.