The chapter opens with Reina Mori's backstory. Born during a fire in Tokyo, her extraordinary naturalist powers manifested at birth when all nearby plant life gravitated toward her infant form. Unlike typical naturalists who ask nature for cooperation, Reina experiences nature as an insatiable force that feeds on her energy, emotions, and thoughts—more a curse than a gift. Her grandmother called her birth a miracle, but Reina sees it as the beginning of a lifetime of unwanted obligations.

Reina chose to study at the Osaka Institute of Magic rather than the arguably superior Tokyo program, seeking freedom from the expectations placed on her. She gravitated toward classics and mythology—particularly stories of witches who experienced exile and isolation—rather than the botany and herbology her teachers pushed on her. After graduating, she deliberately avoided lucrative agricultural jobs, instead working as a waitress in a plant-free café where she could read in peace, including a translated manuscript attributed to the Greek witch Circe.

Atlas Blakely arrives at the empty café and places three seedlings on a table, asking Reina to make them grow. Reina insists she doesn't control the plants—they simply react to her presence and energy. Atlas negotiates: in exchange for three answers about how her power works, he will show her something extraordinary. Reina reveals that her power uses her energy involuntarily, that it drains her, and that she typically restrains it rather than actively wielding it.

Atlas then reveals that Reina is tied for the sixth and final spot on a list of elite medeian candidates, competing against a traveler he considers less useful. He produces the original handwoven manuscript of Circe—a text Reina believed lost—and allows her to glimpse its pages without touching it. Seeing the crude illusion spell Circe used to mask her island, Reina is visibly moved.

Motivated by the promise of access to such rare knowledge, Reina deliberately channels her power for the first time in the scene. She communicates with the seedlings and lets them draw from her energy, causing one to branch across the ceiling, another to crack the table and sprout upward, and the third to burst into fruit-bearing vines with ripening apples. Atlas acknowledges her ability is both a gift and a talent. Reina boldly declares that no one can do what she does, and Atlas agrees, handing her a card that will transport her to orientation in four hours.