CHAPTER 3

HER NOBLE EYES

“Huh? Oh, come on. I can’t go this way?”

Ayato had tried to cut through the courtyard, thinking it would be a shortcut to the dorms, but found himself stuck at a metal barrier.

Apparently, the school closed some of the gates in the evening.

The gate wasn’t all that high, and Ayato could have gone over it—but that was exactly what had landed him in so much trouble this morning. Better to just head back and find another way.

“Oh, well… It’s not like I’m in a hurry.” Taking walks, after all, was one of the few things Ayato liked to do for fun.

The courtyard was as spacious as an average-sized park, with impeccably maintained greenery. Looking around, Ayato saw several humanoid robots that resembled featureless dolls—Puppets—pruning the trees. While he had heard somewhere that Puppets for military use could be remote-controlled, the ones in common use were entirely automated, slow-moving and able to handle only simple tasks. By now, Puppets like these had largely taken over the realm of harsh physical labor.

Still, this was not a sight commonly seen in provincial towns like the one Ayato had come from.

He was walking between the sharp silhouettes of trees against the setting sun, curiously watching the Puppets at work, when an angry shout suddenly echoed through the courtyard: “Then why the hell did you duel that new kid!?”

It was a young male voice, ferocious enough to freeze a fainthearted listener in his tracks, making the air crackle with tension.

Some kind of argument…? thought Ayato.

Keeping himself hidden in the shadows, he peered through the trees to find a small gazebo in a clearing. In front of it were three male students. The boy in the middle stood out, tall and sturdy with a muscular build, intimidating even from a distance. The other two—one thin and one fat—stood a step behind, giving the sense that they deferred to the tall boy.

They seemed to be talking to someone inside the gazebo, but from his vantage point, Ayato couldn’t see who it was.

If someone was in trouble, he could hardly just walk away—but at the same time, he would rather not poke his nose in where he wasn’t wanted. All the more so considering that this school had its own set of rules, to which Ayato was only just starting to acclimate.

Still…

“Tell me, Julis!”

Hearing that name, Ayato automatically leaned closer.

“I don’t have to tell you anything, Lester. We all have the right to duel whomever we please.”

“You’re right. That goes for me, too.”

Ayato moved sneakily from tree to tree, and there she was—a girl with shining rose-red hair sitting in the gazebo. She and the student named Lester glared at one another so fiercely one could practically see sparks flying. The situation hardly seemed amicable.

“We also have the right to refuse,” said Julis. “You can challenge me all you want, but I have no intention of dueling you again.”

“Then tell me why!”

“You really need it spelled out for you?” Julis sighed heavily and stood up to face Lester. “It’s because this will never end. I’ve bested you three times. There’s no point in us fighting again.”

“I’ll beat you this time! Don’t let that string of lucky breaks go to your head! You haven’t seen my real power!”

“That’s right! You wouldn’t stand a chance if Lester went all out!” One of the pair standing behind Lester, the fat one tried to score points by jeering at Julis.

“Then prove it to someone else.” Julis turned away, declaring an end to their conversation.

“Hey! This isn’t over—!”

Just as Lester reached out to grab her shoulder, Ayato stepped out from behind the trees and blurted, “Oh, it’s you, Julis! What a coincidence, running into you in a place like this.”

“…What are you doing here?”

“Who the hell’re you?”

Ayato’s timing and words made for such a transparent act that both Julis and Lester looked daggers at him.

He forced an awkward laugh and fumbled, “Well, um, I got a little lost…”

“Oh, hey! Lester! That’s him—the new kid!”

“What…!?” Lester impaled Ayato with an even sharper glare. If a gaze had physical force, Lester’s would have blasted through a sheet of metal.

But Ayato calmly let it roll over him. “So, Julis, who’s this?” he asked.

Julis answered him with her hand on her hip, looking at him as if he were something ridiculous. “Lester MacPhail. He’s ranked ninth.”

“Huh, so you’re a Page One, too,” Ayato remarked, turning to Lester. “Wow!”

Lester said nothing.

“Oh yeah—I’m Ayato Amagiri. Nice to meet you.”

Lester kept staring balefully down at him, without so much as a glance at Ayato’s extended right hand.

Up close, Lester’s size was even more impressive. He had to be almost seven feet tall, with broad shoulders and bulging, honed muscles.

Genestella musculature was far more powerful and limber than that of ordinary humans, but it was largely resistant to bodybuilding efforts. Which meant Lester must have worked unbelievably hard to achieve his current physique.

He had short, bristling brown hair over a chiseled face that was currently full of fury.

“You…you fought a little brat like this, but you won’t fight me…?” Lester growled, his clenched fists trembling. “The hell with that! I’m going to crush you! No matter what it takes!”

Apparently Ayato didn’t even register to him. Lester stepped up toward Julis with a belligerent swagger.

“H-hey, Lester, take it easy! This can’t be the best place…” The thin boy tried to calm him down, but Lester didn’t seem to hear.

Julis was around average height for a girl her age, so that next to Lester she looked like a child beside an adult, but she stood there undaunted. “That’s unlikely. Unless you do something about that charging-boar personality of yours, I will beat you every time.”

“Wha—? Damn it!” Lester was on the verge of exploding in rage, but realized that doing so would only lend more truth to her words.

“Y-you better take Lester seriously, or you’re gonna regret it! He’ll get you next time, just wait and—”

“Enough, Randy!” Lester barked at the pudgy boy and stepped down from the gazebo with a sour sneer. “I’m not giving up,” he spat. “Not until I make you see my true strength…!”

He left Julis with that and the two sidekicks hurried after him.

“What a bother,” she sighed once the boys were completely out of sight and took a seat again on the bench.

Ayato laughed under his breath. “Maybe I shouldn’t have done anything?”

“I’ll say. Thanks to you, he was even more annoying than usual.”

“Sorry… Wait, that’s usual, though?”

Julis shrugged in reply. “Apparently, he doesn’t care for me. He’s not alone in that, but he’s the first one to be so persistent about it.”

“But he’s ranked ninth, so he must be pretty strong, right?” Ayato was about to ask if she would be okay but caught himself. Even one day’s acquaintance was enough for him to understand that taking that sort of tone with her would set off her temper.

“If we’re talking about fighting ability, yes, he’s strong. But not as strong as me, and rankings aren’t all that reliable to begin with. There are plenty of skilled fighters who aren’t in the Named Chart. There’s also the matter of chemistry—how you match up against a particular opponent.”

Julis lifted her gaze to him, the corners of her mouth curling up slightly, as if she expected something. Ayato averted his eyes.

“Since we’re here, I have a question of my own,” she said.

“Um…wh-what do you want to know?”

“You used Meteor Arts in our duel this morning. How did you do it with an uncalibrated Lux?”

“Oh, that wasn’t Meteor Arts.”

“You’re serious?”

“I can’t use Meteor Arts in the first place. I don’t think I get along with Luxes—well, it’s just not for me. I’d rather have a real physical weapon.”

“Then, that technique from this morning…”

“That was just a sword technique. My family has a traditional swordsmanship dojo going way back, so I know a few.”

“Just a sword technique?” Julis’s eyes widened. “Granted, it’s not impossible to cut through my flames with a Lux blade. But I’ve never seen anyone slice them in half as cleanly as you did. Exactly how good are you?”

“Oh, I was just lucky,” Ayato laughed.

“…Hmph. Fine. We’ll see how long you can keep up that innocent act. This place isn’t as nice as you think.”

“I don’t really think that at all…” Ayato scratched the back of his head. “What about you, Julis? Why are you fighting in such a dangerous place?”

“What?”

“I heard…you’re a princess.”

“It’s true—I am the first crown princess of Lieseltania. And so what? Everyone here, to some extent, is fighting for something that they can’t obtain anywhere else. Titles and status have nothing to do with it.” She spoke quietly, but her words held a fierce, unwavering resolve.

He hesitated, wondering if he would be going too far, but then he posed the question anyway. “…So what do you want?”

Julis gave him an unexpectedly straight answer. “Money.”

“Huh…?”

“I need money. And fighting here is the fastest way to get it.”

A princess, fighting for money? He would have thought that a princess would be plenty wealthy. Then why…?

“I need it quickly,” she went on. “And the timing is convenient. I’ll go undefeated in all of this season’s Festas. That’s my objective.”

“All three Festas…?”

The so-called “grand slam.” Even Ayato knew how difficult that was.

“Yes, and I’ll start with the Phoenix,” said Julis. “I have to win that, at the very least.”

The amount of Festa prize money was determined based on the points earned, but winning even one event, Ayato had heard, would gain you enough to spend the rest of your life in leisure.

He wanted to ask why but decided against it. He had that much discretion. But what little he’d heard answered a different question for him.

“Oh, so that’s why you’re looking for a partner?” said Ayato, recalling the exchange that morning between Claudia and Julis.

The Phoenix was a tag team tournament, so of course Julis could not participate on her own.

She flinched a bit. “…W-well, yes.”

Her reticence on the subject seemed to indicate that she really was having some difficulty finding a partner. Maybe that was inevitable, given her personality…

“I—I may not have found a partner yet—but that’s not because I don’t have any friends! I mean, it’s true that I don’t have friends at this school, but that isn’t the issue. There simply isn’t anyone who meets my standards as a partner.”

So she admits that she doesn’t have any friends? Ayato thought but stayed away from that. “Then what kind of partner are you looking for?”

“Well… First of all, someone as good as me—but I know that’s asking for too much. So someone with at least the abilities of a Page One, a person of impeccable integrity, who thinks well on their feet, with a strong will and a noble spirit. Someone with the qualities of a knight.”

“…You’re setting the bar pretty high,” Ayato remarked.

“Hmm, really? I thought I was being fairly lenient…”

Maybe that was the princess in her talking.

“Although the entry deadline is getting close, I suppose I can’t be too picky at this point,” Julis said under her breath, as if talking to herself, then picked up her bag and stood. “It’s about time I was leaving… But what were you doing here, anyway?”

“Oh, well, um… I thought it’d be quicker to go this way, but the gate over there was locked.”

“It would be. The courtyard gates close automatically at night. At this hour, though, the only ones that are shut should be on the middle school side.”

So I was completely lost, Ayato thought with chagrin.

“Wait, so if the gates close automatically, does that mean that I’ll be trapped if I hang out in here too long?” he wondered. “Should I be worried about that?”

“Huh?”

“I mean, um, I like to walk around places like this, but I wouldn’t want to get stuck…”

Julis stared at him blankly for a moment, then burst into laughter.

“Well, obviously! Are you really that dumb? After the mess you got yourself into this morning, you didn’t even bother to look at a campus map!? Don’t worry—the high school gates stay open until the middle of the night,” she said teasingly, and her eyes narrowed with a smile. She looked right then like a normal girl…

“Hmm? What?” she said, noticing his silence.

“Oh… I was just thinking, so you do laugh.”

“Wh…!?” The color rose to her face before his eyes. “Wh-what are you talking about!? I laugh sometimes, just like anybody else!”

Then her expression regained its usual sullen cast, and she turned away in a huff.

“Then why don’t you act more friendly to start with?” said Ayato. “You could if you wanted to…”

“Shut up! That’s none of your business!” Julis snapped. “Wh-who are you to talk, anyway? Why don’t you get that spaced-out face of yours in order? A slack face reveals a careless mind! If you carried yourself better, maybe you wouldn’t be making such stupid blunders, like you have all day today!”

That seems like a stretch, he thought, but conceded. “Well, okay—I was being careless, but also, I just don’t know enough about this place…”

This campus was too big, to start with. And there were so many strange rules. Not at all easy for a newcomer. Maybe if there had been someone to show him around…

“Oh!” With that thought, Ayato looked straight at her.

“Wh-what now…?” For some reason, she blushed and took a step backward.

“Julis, would you show me around the school? Oh, and maybe the city, too, while we’re on the subject.”

“…Huh?” Julis didn’t bother to hide her displeasure at the request. “Is that a joke? Why would I do that?”

“Well, you owe me a ‘debt,’ right? You said so yourself—I can ask you one favor.”

“I did say that, but… Are you serious?”

“Serious…?”

“I mean, is that enough to repay the debt I owe you? I don’t like it one bit, but you did save me this morning. That’s no small debt. You could have anything you want from me, within reason— Th-that is, nothing indecent, of course! But for instance, I could lend you my strength as a Page One.”

“You mean, you’d help me out in a fight?”

“Yes.”

“No, that’s okay.” Ayato shook his head. “I think I’d better get used to this school first.”

At this nonchalant reply, Julis gave him a searching stare, then smiled sarcastically and sighed. “You’re a man of mysterious depths. Or maybe you really are an idiot?”

“If those are the two possibilities…I’m probably the latter,” Ayato admitted.

“Hmph. Probably. But very well. I’ll show you around, if that’s what you want.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it!”

“W-well, I don’t have much choice, do I? A debt is a debt. I’ll show you around campus after school tomorrow. As for the city…well, I’ll have to set aside one of my days off for you.”

“Great. I’m looking forward to it.” That should solve some of my most immediate problems, he thought. “Okay, I guess I better find my own dorm now… Ghk!”

As Ayato started to walk away, Julis grabbed his collar from behind.

“Let me give you one tip right now. The fastest way to the boys’ dorm from here is to go by the college building.”

Choking, he managed to answer, “Th-thanks for that. But I’d appreciate it if maybe you could be a little more gentle with your lessons…”

As Ayato wheezed against the pressure around his throat, Julis replied with a faint smile, “Too bad. You failed to specify that in the terms of our agreement.”

It was completely dark by the time Ayato arrived at the boys’ dorm, which was situated on the opposite side of the school buildings from the girls’ dorm. The girls’ building sported a classical European facade, but this one looked like a conventional apartment high-rise.

“Let’s see, room 211…” This time, Ayato made sure to check on the map before heading to the room.

While they were split into separate wings, middle school and college students shared the same floors as the high school students. Ayato found that somewhat refreshing. Every student who saw him walking by gave him a curious stare, which was bewildering, but he decided not to let it bother him and returned the attention with smiles and waves.

Room 211 was a corner room on the second floor. A fresh nameplate bore the name AYATO AMAGIRI. He knocked cautiously before entering.

“Hey, there you are. Took you long enough.” Eishirou, lying on his bed, waved lazily in greeting.

“Yeah, it was one thing after another… Wow, this is bigger than I thought.” His room was about two hundred square feet and came with a bed and desk. A single bag, casually placed atop the brand-new sheets, contained the few belongings that Ayato had arranged to have shipped.

“Is that all your stuff? You didn’t bring much.”

“Yeah, just enough to wear. You don’t seem to have a lot either, though.”

There were some handwritten notes and piles of papers on Eishirou’s desk, but other than that, it was practically bare.

“I don’t have a lot of hobbies. Just my work with the newspaper.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” said Ayato. “I’ve got a question for you, Mr. Reporter. There’s this student called Lester—what kind of a guy is he?”

“Lester? Lester MacPhail?”

“That sounds right… Someone was saying he’s ranked ninth.”

“That’d be him. Lester, the Ax of the Roaring Distance.” Eishirou sat up and touched his mobile to call up an air-window. It showed the very same tall, sturdy male student whom Ayato had met earlier.

“Lester MacPhail. First-year at Seidoukan Academy High School, Page One, ninth place. He excels at physical combat that allows him to make use of his body, and he’s peerless in close combat. But he tends to struggle against opponents with special powers like Stregas and Dantes. He wields an ax-shaped Lux, the Bardiche-Leo.”

“Wow, you’re good!”

“Well, that was all information you can find on the Net. If you want something more, that’s a different story.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean this.” Eishirou meaningfully rubbed his thumb and fingers together.

“You’re going to charge me!?”

“Come on, what did you expect? The students at this school—actually, the others are pretty much the same, too, so the students of Asterisk—mostly fall into two categories. One is those who are going all out to fight in the Festa, like the Princess. And the other is people who’ve long since given up on the Festa—like me.”

“Yabuki, you’re not even going to try?”

“Nope. It’s not like just any Genestella can win here. If you’ve been here awhile, you can’t help but notice the differences in people’s strength. And you realize there are barriers you can’t overcome. So, the question is, what do people who’ve dropped out of the competition do?”

“What do they do? I don’t know.”

As Ayato began to get lost in thought, Eishirou laughed and puffed out his chest. “Simple! We find things we want to do and ways to make money that aren’t fighting in the Festa. For me, it’s the school newspaper.”

“I had no idea being in the newspaper club was so lucrative.” Making money for personal gain was not an activity that one usually associated with student clubs.

“Hey, have some respect. Not to toot my own horn, but we do pretty well, y’know. You must’ve seen images of Asterisk on the Net or on TV. If it’s a picture taken on a campus, you can bet it came from one of the student journalism clubs. There’s a convention against outside media setting foot on campus.”

Now it made sense. “Ha-ha, I get it… So you and your fellow reporters sell those kinds of images and information to media companies.”

“Bingo!” Eishirou grinned and raised a finger. “There are lots of others who run a trade. Like the Society for the Study of Meteoric Engineering… They take on work customizing Luxes, and they’re way better at it than the Matériel Department. Well, no match for Allekant—they’re the best at technology out of the six schools—but still. And don’t go saying this too loud, but a lot of the gambling around school duels has students as the bookies.”

“The school doesn’t crack down on that kind of thing?” It seemed to Ayato that gambling and bookmaking strayed far outside the realm of student activities.

But Eishirou wagged his uplifted finger and clicked his tongue. “Who’s going to raise an objection these days to money changing hands? The IEFs run all the schools in the first place.”

The integrated enterprise foundations prioritized the stimulation and development of economic activity. Essential to that objective was the flow of cash, and consumerism was encouraged as a global trend. Asterisk, too, was built with all that firmly in mind.

“And what else…?” Eishirou went on. “Right, there are some that join the entourage of stronger students. Especially Page One students. There are a lot of perks to being close to them.”

“Oh? Is that… Does Lester have people like that?” Ayato remembered the two students standing behind Lester.

“You mean these guys?” Eishirou opened two more air-windows, one displaying the thin boy and the other one the pudgy boy. While their physical features made for a sharp contrast, they had the same obsequious look in their eyes.

“Yeah, it’s them.”

“The skinny one is Silas Norman. He is a Dante, but doesn’t have much to show for it. Some telekinetic powers. The fat one is Randy Hooke. He was in the Named Chart once, but not anymore. He uses a bow Lux.”

“You really are good with intel…” Ayato was honestly dumbfounded. It was one thing to keep track of the strongest students—but having ready knowledge of their hangers-on to boot was on another level.

“Heh. Impressed you, did I?” Laughing, Eishirou closed the air-windows and leaped off the bed. “Okay, then. Let’s get something to eat. I’ll show you the cafeteria.”

“Before we go, there’s one more thing I want to ask about Lester.”

“Oh?”

“Is there…something between him and Julis?”

Eishirou grinned at the question. “Oh, I get it. I was wondering why you wanted to know so much about this guy all of a sudden. You really are after the Princess, huh?”

“Th-that’s not it, at all…” It was true, though, that the girl was on his mind a lot, for reasons Ayato couldn’t explain.

“It’s fine, I don’t care. But like I said before, it’ll cost you.”

Eishirou waited for Ayato to nod in consent, then opened another air-window.

This one showed a video. A girl wielding swaths of flame danced brilliantly on the display. Opposing her was a giant of a boy. He was swinging around an ax the size of his huge body, but it was clear that he was losing the fight.

“This is from last year’s official ranking matches. Lester was ranked fifth at the time. The Princess was seventeenth.”

“You mean…”

“Yup. She won. This is the fight that made her Page One. A match to remember.”

“And for Lester, a match he’d rather forget.”

“You could say that. In fact, Lester challenged the Princess in two more official matches, and he lost spectacularly.”

Official matches were selective examinations held once a month by the school. Because the consent of both parties was necessary to duel, one could decline indefinitely. To prevent high-ranking students from using that as a loophole to keep their position, they were required to fight at least once a month. As a rule, in an official match, a high-ranking student did not have the right to decline a challenge from a lower-ranked student.

“Still, you can only challenge the same student twice,” Eishirou explained. “Otherwise, you might have people throwing matches.”

“So that means Lester can’t challenge Julis again in an official match.” That’s why he’s so obsessed with dueling her, Ayato thought.

“Lester has a lot of pride and a temper to go with it. It’s probably driving him crazy, not getting back at her. I don’t think he stands a chance, though,” said Eishirou, pocketing his mobile. “What do you think?”

In that matchup, Lester was at a disadvantage, but he did have considerable skill. Luck counted for something in a fight, too, so nothing was certain.

“Going from that video, I don’t think it’s impossible for him,” said Ayato. “But…their eyes are different.”

“Hmm,” Eishirou mused.

Julis’s eyes weren’t seeing Lester in that video—they were fixed on something far away, beyond her opponent. In contrast, Lester’s eyes were focused on Julis alone. At that rate, Lester couldn’t hold a candle to Julis.

But her far-off gaze… Ayato had seen something like it before.

“Thanks, Yabuki. So, what’s that intel come to?” As a scholarship student, Ayato wasn’t charged tuition or matriculation fees. But he didn’t exactly have a lot of money. In fact, his family’s run-down dojo was on the verge of shutting its doors. He did have some spending money saved up from part-time jobs, but if he wasn’t frugal with it, he might run out quickly.

“All right! Time to eat! Let’s get going, Amagiri!” Eishirou forcefully draped his arm around Ayato’s neck and more or less dragged him out of the room. “We get a choice between the Japanese meal and the western meal. What’ll it be?”

“Uh, um, then Japanese, I guess…?”

“The Japanese option today is grilled marinated Spanish mackerel, fried tofu, and stew of daikon radish and fish paste… Okay, I’ll take your fried tofu.”

“…Huh?”

“That’s my fee this time. Consider it a new student discount.” Eishirou grinned, then unwrapped his arm from Ayato’s neck and clapped him on the back. “See? Aren’t I a great guy?”

“I might think so…if you didn’t say so about yourself.” Ayato smiled and returned a slap to his roommate’s back.