Secrets of the Silent Witch (Silent Witch: Chinmoku no Majo no Kakushigoto) is a light novel series written by Matsuri Isora and illustrated by Nanna Fujimi, which began publication in 2021. It also has a manga adaptation illustrated by Tobi Tana, which began serialization in the shoujo magazine B's-Log Comic during the same year. Both the novels and the manga were licensed in English by Yen Press in 2022. It is a fantasy series with a mixture of school life, mystery and friendship/romance.
Everyone knows that magic requires chanting to perform - working out the computations needed to properly control a spell in one's head is so difficult as to be impossible. But one person has managed this feat - Monica Everett, the Silent Witch, one of the Seven Great Sages of Ridill. Her mastery of magic is so great that she can cast any spell silently and instantly. Her power is so great that she slew the Black Dragon of Worgan with a single spell, shot the twenty lesser dragons following it out of the sky with a second spell, and then lowered all the bodies to the ground without damaging anything. But despite her great skill and power, virtually nothing is known about her. She is rarely seen outside of missions issued to her by the court, and even then arrives in a hooded robe, performs her duties, and leaves without a word.
This combination of skill, power and mystery makes her fellow sages think she's perfect for a task the king wants done - providing a discreet bodyguard to his second son, Prince Felix. She has the power to do the job, her silent casting means that nobody will notice she's doing the job, and since virtually nobody knows what she looks like due to her reclusive nature and hooded robes, nobody will know it's her. She's even young enough to pass as a student of the academy the Prince is studying in.
There's just one problem. The reason why Monica does the whole mysterious, silent mage routine is because she's shy. Cripplingly shy. And as far as she's concerned, going back to school is a far more difficult assignment than playing royal bodyguard...
Tropes
- Abusive Parents: Monica's father was loving, but the uncle who took her in after his death wasn't so kind. He's largely to blame for Monica's withdrawn nature.
- Adoption Diss: "Monica Norton"'s cover story involves this. She's supposed to be the previous countess's adopted daughter, but after the latter's death, she has to work as Isabelle's servant due to this trope.
- All Witches Have Cats: Monica has a black cat called Nero as her familiar.
- Becoming the Mask: By book four, Monica has realized that she has more friends as Monica Norton than she ever did as Monica Everett and isn't sure she wants her assignment to end.
- Familiar: In Monica's case, it's Nero, a black talking cat.
- False Friend: Monica's first and only friend in her first go-through at school, Bernie Jones, only really used her to prop up his own ego as his own dedicated admirer, and rejected her the first time she surpassed him in class.
- The Foreign Subtitle: The Japanese title of the work, Silent Witch: Chinmoku no Majo no Kakushigoto, translates to Silent Witch: The Secrets of the Silent Witch in English. To defy the Repetative Title, only the subtitle is used as the title of the English-language localizations. In other languages, the English title is maintained as-is while the Japanese subtitle is translated to the local language.
- Girlish Pigtails: Monica sports a braided pair of low pigtails, and is a painfully shy witch.
- High-School Sweethearts: Felix is one of the three most eligible bachelors in the country (only rivalled by his brothers), so pretty much every girl in Serendia Academy who isn't already spoken for is angling for an opportunity to become this with the Second Prince and have a chance to become Queen. All of these girls do not appreciate how much attention he pays to the plain, timid, stammering Monica.
- Hikikomori: Due to her extreme shyness, when left to her own devices, Monica lives as a hermit doing esoteric research, with her only outside contact being the girl from the village an hour's hike away that she pays to make deliveries.
- Instant Expert: Monica picks up chess so quickly that the teacher had to invoke advanced rules he hadn't taught her to defeat her the first time she played ever. And is good enough to compete in an inter-school tournament within two weeks.
- Intro-Only Point of View: The Prelude chapter is in the point of view of Isabelle, which showcases the Silent Witch's powers... and then the story proper moves to a narration centered on Monica the Silent Witch.
- Introverted Cat Person: Monica is a severely shy mage who happens to have a cat as her familiar.
- Loves My Alter Ego: Felix is a great admirer of the Silent Witch. But since he's only ever seen her from a distance, he has no idea that she's the timid transfer student he jokingly calls "little squirrel".
- Magic Staff: The acceptable length for a magician's staff is a function of their rank. As a Great Sage, Monica's staff is taller than she is.
- Mundane Utility: Monica invented silent casting so she could pass her practical magecraft examinations without being hindered by her fear of public speaking. If she doesn't have to speak to cast spells, then her issues with speaking in front of others are irrelevant when demonstrating her magic talents.
- Nervous Wreck: In the beginning, Monica is an extremely nervous person: Annie's discussion of the slaying of the Black Dragon by an unnamed mage (who is actually Monica herself) already gives Monica a bit of stomachache as well as Overly-Nervous Flop Sweat. The narration also mentions in the worst of her social-anxiety attacks, she will Faint in Shock and/or Stress Vomit.
- Ojou Ringlets: Isabelle sports a pair of these. It is invoked somehow, since she actually plays the "villainess" routine concerning Monica to make the latter's cover story believable.
- Puppet King: Prince Felix's detractors fear that if he is crowned, he'll just be a puppet of his grandfather, Duke Clockford. To be fair to the detractors, Felix himself admits that he's never successfully defied his grandfather on anything of substance.
- Real Name as an Alias: Monica's cover identity at the academy is Monica Norton, the Norton family being a noble house she saved from the Black Dragon of Worgan, and is allowing her to pretend to be a cadet member of the house as thanks.
- Red Baron: This applies to all the Seven Sages: Monica the Silent Mage, Louis the Barrier Mage, etc.
- Secret Test: Suspecting that there's more to Monica than she appears to be, Felix "accidentally" leaves behind the keys to all the student council records behind after he unlocks the bookcase holding the accounting records so she can audit them, to see what she does with them. Monica gets so caught up in the bookkeeping that she doesn't even notice that the keys are there.
- Serious Business: Virtually every unattached girl in Serendia wants to grab Felix, and resent anything that is seen as an obstacle to that, such as the plain nobody who somehow received the Prince's favor and was granted the title of Student Council Accountant (which Felix did because he needed a new accountant and Monica succeeded in auditing the books), never mind that Monica is so socially withdrawn that making the first move in a romance would never occur to her.
- Shrinking Violet: Monica is a very shy person, with her social anxiety reaching Nervous Wreck levels. In fact she effectively invented silent casting... to avoid speaking in public.
- Solitary Sorceress: Monica plays this straight in the beginning, being a powerful mage living far away from the next settlement. However, it's been stated that that's not how this society works: powerful mages are generally given important jobs at the Capital like in Louis' case, to the point that Monica has to hide this identity from the public.
- Stealth Escort Mission: Monica's job is to bodyguard the prince without Felix realizing that he has a bodyguard.
- Succession Crisis: The king has three sons, by three different women, and nobody's sure which will be king. While the third prince is currently considered a nonentity due to being too young, factions are forming between followers of the first and second princes, with many people seeking Felix ill because they think he'll be in the pocket of his highly unpopular maternal grandfather should he take the throne.
- Talking Animal: Nero is a cat that understands human language and speak with Monica; yet he still maintains feline mannerisms.
- Teen Genius: Monica is only seventeen, and became the youngest Great Sage ever at fifteen.
- Writers Cannot Do Math: Monica's favorite nursery rhyme as a little girl was "Old Man Sam's Pigs", a song about the Fibonacci sequence. However, the song gives the opening sequence as 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 8..., when the actual sequence is 1, 2, 3, 5, 8...
