Chapter 6

The club committee headquarters, just before closing time.

“—And that concludes my report on the incident in which the kenjutsu club interrupted the kendo club’s recruitment demonstration.”

Tatsuya had just finished relating the full story of the incident he had witnessed and experienced: the argument between Sayaka Mibu and Takeaki Kirihara, their personal struggle, and the sequence of events culminating in an attempted brawl where Tatsuya had taken on the kenjutsu club by himself. Three students were in front of him.

“I just can’t believe you fought over ten people and came away unscathed…”

Facing him on the right was the student council president, Mayumi Saegusa.

“Fourteen, to be exact. I guess I should expect nothing less from one of Kokonoe’s disciples.”

In the middle was the disciplinary committee chairwoman—and in a sense, Tatsuya’s boss—Mari Watanabe. Her comment was accompanied by a jovial laugh. It was amused rather than derisive, and not sarcastic in any way. She wasn’t entirely honest with how she expressed her emotions, but her praise sounded sincere.

Mayumi and Mari were impressed (?) with how, after he’d subdued Kirihara, he’d dealt with the frenzied group of kenjutsu club members without actually attacking them at all, purely by defending himself. Tatsuya, however, didn’t truly feel he had shown any praiseworthy skills.

He was out of touch with the expected skill level of average high school students. What he’d done wouldn’t have even been up to the Yakumo temple’s gatekeepers’ standards. He didn’t get it—what was so good about dispatching fourteen people at once and being unharmed?

Instead, he was paying more attention to the male senior on the left facing him. That was probably Katsuto Juumonji, head of the club committee—the eldest child of an elite Numbers family, with the juu in his name written with the character for “ten.”

He’s like a giant boulder…

He stood around six feet one, so Tatsuya didn’t need to bend his neck to look at his face. But he had a bulky chest, wide shoulders, and muscles that bulged distinctly through his uniform. And his striking physical characteristics weren’t the only thing on his side. The very density of his existence had to be measured on an entirely different scale. It was like he contained every factor humans possessed, compressed into the smallest space possible.

He was one of the three giants of First High, along with Mayumi and Mari, and his appearance and impression were more than enough to convince Tatsuya of that.

“You didn’t see how it started, right?” asked Mari, having calmed herself.

Snapping back to reality, he summoned up his memories of the incident he’d just finished reporting on yet again. “Yes,” he confirmed. “However, I don’t know who started it. The kendo club says Kirihara provoked it, and the kenjutsu club claims the kendo club made the first move.”

Tatsuya had only come in during the start of Sayaka and Kirihara’s argument. He and Erika had left their spots on the viewing deck and were just about to leave the gymnasium when they heard noises that sounded like people fighting over something. From that far away, though, he couldn’t hear what they were saying. By the time he’d cut through the crowd there and seen for himself, it was already a touchy situation, with Sayaka and Kirihara staring each other down.

“Perhaps that’s why you didn’t intervene right at the start?” That was Mayumi. Katsuto had been just listening the entire time.

“I did intend to disrupt them if I decided things were dangerous,” assured Tatsuya, though conditionally. “My thoughts were that they could deal with it themselves if all that resulted were a few scrapes and bruises.”

The reason Tatsuya had taken an observer’s viewpoint at the beginning, like Mayumi noted, was because he didn’t know which of them needed to be stopped. There was always the option of stopping both, but one of two conditions would need to be fulfilled for him to do so: Either there still needed to be enough room to talk them down, or there needed to be a justification for overpowering them despite how famous—or notorious—they were. Neither of those had applied in this case.

That wasn’t his only reason, however. A disciplinary committee member’s job, at least as far as Tatsuya understood, was to take control of situations involving acts of magic-based violence. Though the contest between Sayaka and Kirihara was a personal one, it started as a battle of sword skills. There had been no magic involved. If Kirihara hadn’t used any—like his High-Frequency Blade—then Tatsuya probably would have stuck to his guns and watched it play out.

“…Well, that’s fine. We obviously can’t be there every time someone gets into a fight. We don’t have enough people for that,” said Mari. Her remark was rooted in the rule that the club committee—not the disciplinary committee—was the one that dealt with recruitment-related trouble. Neither Mayumi nor Katsuto had any objection to that. “What did you do with Kirihara after subduing him?”

“His collarbone was broken, so I gave him to the health-care committee. It was a light enough wound that magic could heal it quickly, though. He admitted his fault in the nurse’s office, so I decided no further action was necessary.”

In reality, getting hit with a shinai wouldn’t do any more than put cracks in a bone—his collarbone had been broken when Tatsuya slammed him into the floor. That, however, didn’t need to be said, so he didn’t.

Mari hadn’t been present when Kirihara was hurt, nor did she see his wounds firsthand. She wouldn’t have known better. “Hmm… All right. We’re leaving the choice to take legal action to the other party anyway.” Tatsuya nodded briefly, and Mari looked at Katsuto. “That’s that, Juumonji. The disciplinary committee won’t be bringing this incident to the punishment committee.”

“I appreciate your generosity. The High-Frequency Blade is a highly lethal spell, and he used it in the open for a petty reason. Normally he’d face expulsion for this, but I think he knows that. I will give him a good talking-to and make sure he learns his lesson.”

“Thanks,” said Mari. Katsuto bowed lightly, and she nodded back.

“Will the kendo club be satisfied with that?” asked Mayumi, worried.

“They’re equally guilty. They took the bait and got into the fight,” answered Mari, cutting down her concern with a single stroke. “They have no right to complain.”

The disciplinary committee chairwoman had delivered her judgment, the club committee leader had accepted it, and the student council president had no objections. That marked the end of the incident.

Tatsuya listened to their exchange with a detached attitude. It wasn’t his job to smother any smoldering flames of discontent. He conveyed his position by asking for permission to withdraw. “Chairwoman, may I leave?”

“Oh, wait, one more thing I want to know first.” Mari’s tone of voice was casual; she didn’t seem to want Tatsuya to do anything else. For today, anyway. “Was Kirihara the only one who used magic?”

“That’s right,” nodded Tatsuya simply.

More precisely, Kirihara was the only one who had successfully executed magic—but Tatsuya wasn’t possessed of the hardworking spirit he would have needed to explain the particulars.

“I see. Good job, then. You can leave.”

With permission to go, Tatsuya put the club committee headquarters behind him.

After leaving the club committee HQ, Tatsuya planned to head straight for the student council room.

There was only a little sunlight left. Regardless of how talented with magic they might have been, it was inappropriate for girls of Miyuki’s age to walk around on their own at this hour. Miyuki would never have ventured to leave Tatsuya at school and go home anyway.

Halfway there, however, he was forced to revise those plans.

The club committee was in a separate building from the main school building, where the student council room was. To get to the former from the latter, you needed to go out to the courtyard (no need to change into your shoes—the custom of wearing slippers had all but disappeared) then go around the entrance. But as he turned the corner he found familiar faces there to greet him.

“Oh, hey there! Good work!”

“Tatsuya!”

The first one to say something was Erika, but the first one to run over to him was Miyuki. The others looked surprised at her unexpected agility.

“How was work? I heard you did a lot today.”

“It was nothing much. Miyuki, you probably had a harder time.”

Separated from Miyuki only by the bag he was holding in front of his waist, she looked up into his eyes; he stroked her hair a few times as her look asked him to. She narrowed her eyes comfortably, but didn’t turn them away from her brother.

“You know, I get that you’re brother and sister, but…” muttered Leo, walking over to the two of them and glancing subtly away with an embarrassed look.

“You two look kind of picturesque…” Next to him, Mizuki blushed, but looked at them with a penetrating gaze.

Erika narrowed her eyes at Leo and Mizuki. “Hey… Just what are you two expecting from them, anyway?” She lifted her hands to the left and right in an exaggerated shrug, looked down, and slowly shook her head from side to side. That kind of action was obviously feigned, but it looked good when Erika did it. “Didn’t you just say they’re brother and sister?”

The implication in her repeating what Leo said as Erika stared at him seemed to be understood by both Leo and Mizuki. Their flustered reaction spoke to that.

“D-d-d-d-don’t be stupid! I-I’m not expecting anything!”

“Th-th-th-th-th-th-that’s right, Erika! D-don’t say strange things!”

“…Okay, okay. I’ll be nice this time and drop the subject.”

Nevertheless, if Erika hadn’t made her wisecrack, Leo’s and Mizuki’s misbegotten notions probably would have run away with them.

Ignorant of Erika’s solitary struggle, Tatsuya finally removed his hand from his sister’s hair and looked at the three of them. Miyuki followed suit with a reluctant expression.

—The fact that she made that kind of expression all the time was exactly why they were getting those strange ideas.

But Tatsuya, without any expression or action that could have been linked to such flights of fancy, addressed his friends apologetically with an honest look and said, “Sorry—did I keep you waiting?”

With the odd atmosphere swept away, Leo suddenly broke into a smile and shook his head. “Don’t be so formal, Tatsuya. This isn’t the time for apologies.”

“My club orientation just ended a few minutes ago. I wasn’t waiting at all!” Mizuki, too, gave an affable smile and rejected Tatsuya’s apology as unnecessary.

“He just got out of club, too. Don’t worry about it,” Erika replied arrogantly with her usual mischievous smirk.

Leo, Mizuki, and Erika all welcomed him with a smile.

Tatsuya quickly realized the truth was the opposite of what they said, but they were only doing it out of consideration. He wouldn’t bring their efforts to naught. “It’s late, so why don’t we grab a snack somewhere? I’ll treat you, as long as it’s less than a thousand yen.”

The denominations of monetary units had been changed twice now, so the value of currency had been about the same for a century. One thousand yen for a high school student was a bit on the high side, but still an appropriate line to draw.

It was an invitation offered in lieu of any further apologies. All present understood as much, and refrained from acting needlessly reserved.

In a café different from the one they’d used on the day of the entrance ceremony, the five students enthusiastically spoke of the various experiences they’d had today—like the clubs they’d entered, having to mind their club rooms in the absence of others and being bored, and people hitting on them under the guise of recruitment. But of the most interest was the grand tale of Tatsuya’s arrest.

“—This Kirihara sophomore—he used magic with rank B lethality, didn’t he? And you didn’t get hurt by it?”

“It may be deadly, but the High-Frequency Blade has a fairly narrow effective range,” answered Tatsuya to the blindly impressed Leo, shrinking back a bit. “If you leave aside the fact that you can’t touch any part of the blade, it’s no different from a well-sharpened katana. It’s fairly easy to deal with spells like that.”

“But that means you stopped someone with a sword using only your bare hands! Isn’t that really dangerous?”

“It’s all right, Mizuki. You don’t need to worry about my brother.”

“You seem pretty relaxed, Miyuki,” remarked Erika. Miyuki’s expression did indeed have an unnatural ease to it as she soothed Mizuki, whose own face had clouded over.

“Yeah, considering you handled over ten guys, your skills can only be called excellent—but Kirihara’s were certainly nothing to shake a stick at. In fact, he was a cut above everybody else there. Miyuki, you really weren’t worried?”

“No,” answered Miyuki instantly and without hesitation. “There can’t possibly be anyone who can best my brother.”

“—Umm…” Even Erika didn’t know what to say to that. She had seen Tatsuya’s skills firsthand when it happened. Even from her point of view, Kirihara’s swordsmanship had been merciless and keen. Tatsuya would have known that his blade’s sharpness rivaled that of an actual sword. And still, he didn’t use any more energy than he absolutely needed to, which had betrayed the complete absence of any nervousness or fear in his mind. He had closed in on Kirihara faster than Kirihara could bring down his shinai, grabbed its hilt, twisted its wielder’s wrist, and thrown him to the floor like it was an aikido technique. In fact, Erika mused that it might have been an actual technique—one meant to disarm an opponent.

Calling his skills master class wasn’t an exaggeration. Tatsuya had already learned enough that he’d earned the title of master. Or, at the very least, something close to it. Still, though, Erika would have been lying a little if she said she wasn’t worried.

“…I’m not doubting your ability, Tatsuya,” began Mizuki, “but the High-Frequency Blade isn’t just a normal sword. Doesn’t it create ultrasonic waves?”

“Oh yeah, I’ve heard of it, too,” remarked Leo. “Don’t some people use earplugs when they cast it so they don’t get sick on the waves? Well, I guess you would have already considered that.”

“That’s not it. It isn’t just because of my brother’s superb physical abilities,” answered Miyuki to their worried questions. She, however, seemed to be holding back a smile. “Nullifying magic programs is my brother’s forte.”

Erika lost no time in getting a word in. “Nullifying magic programs? Not, like, Information Boost or Area Interference?”

“That’s right,” nodded Miyuki meaningfully. Tatsuya gave a resigned smile.

Erika looked at them in turn and muttered, half in admiration and half in astonishment, “That, uh, sounds like a pretty rare skill to have.”

“Yes. At least, I don’t think they teach it in high school. Not everyone who learns it can actually use it. Erika, right after my brother ran out there, did you feel like the floor was wobbling?”

“Hmm… It didn’t do much to me, but I think there were kids who came down with a bad case of motion sickness. Come to think of it, it wasn’t just at the start. Smaller ones kept happening during the fight, too, I think…”

“That was my brother’s doing. Tatsuya, you used Cast Jamming, didn’t you?”

“You always see right through me, Miyuki.”

“Well, of course. I know everything about you.”

“Wait, wait, wait!” interrupted Leo, grimacing as the two exchanged smiles—one dry, and one happy. “That’s not how siblings talk to each other. You’re even past the level of a married couple!”

“You think so?” “Is that so?” answered Tatsuya and Miyuki in perfect harmony. For a full second, Leo froze, then collapsed onto the table entirely drained of energy.

“…It would be absurd to try and get a word in when they’re in newlywed mode like that,” said Erika quietly to him. “I told you, you never stood a chance.”

“Yeah, I was wrong…” Leo answered, also quietly, sitting back up.

“This is not something I would willingly have people say about us…”

“Oh, but it’s true,” said Miyuki soothingly and fluidly. “My brother and I are bound together by strong fraternal love.”

This time, both Erika and Leo fell onto the table at the same time. “Ghah!” Leo even made his own sound effect as though blood were spurting from his nose, expressing his sentiments.

And still Miyuki didn’t stop. “I do adore my brother more than anyone else in the world.” She moved her chair and brought her body near Tatsuya’s, then passionately looked up into his eyes, all as if putting on a show for their friends.

“Ah, okay, I think I’m going home now,” said Erika, utterly sulking, her cheek still plastered to the table.

“Miyuki, don’t get carried away, all right? There’s, let’s see…approximately one person who doesn’t understand it’s a joke.”

“…” “…” “…”

After Tatsuya grinned drily and chided Miyuki, she, Erika, and Leo all looked toward the last person present.

“…Huh? What? A joke?” Mizuki’s gaze was downcast, and her face flushed red—her eyes were even darting from left to right. Someone sighed.

“…Well, that’s what makes Mizuki who she is, I guess.”

At Erika’s heartwarming murmur, Mizuki groaned, her face turning red for a different reason.

Then, despite having been strung along himself, Leo couldn’t seem to take the creepy atmosphere any longer, and forcibly brought the conversation back to its original topic. “…By the way, you mentioned Cast Jamming, didn’t you?”

“Well, it’s a secret, but yes.” This wasn’t a topic Tatsuya much wanted to discuss, but he probably cared more about dispelling the air that had formed around them. He went along with Leo’s suggestion without any other choice.

“Cast Jamming… That’s jamming magic waves, right?”

“They’re not waves,” retorted Leo, though it was better left unsaid.

“It’s a figure of speech!” Erika shot with a straight face, turning her gaze back to Tatsuya.

Cast Jamming was a type of magic that prevented magic programs from going to work on the information bodies called eidos that were incidental to phenomena. It could be broadly classified as having the same properties as typeless magic.

There was another spell called Area Interference that also nullified an opponent’s magic. This spell used a magic program that specified only interference strength in a fixed area around the caster and prevented all alterations to information in that area. Using it would shut down the other person’s magic program interference. Cast Jamming, however, worked by scattering large amounts of psionic waves, or psi-waves—a technique to prevent the process by which magic programs interacted with eidos.

In a way, Area Interference “reserved” magic in an area and prevented other casters from interrupting with their magic. Fundamentally, you needed more magical influence than the opponent.

On the other hand, Cast Jamming affected the metaphorical radio tower that other users tried to upload data to. By requesting a huge amount of access, it would reduce their upload speed to almost nothing. One’s magical influence wasn’t that much of a problem. In exchange, the psionic noise could obstruct all four families and eight types of magic—following with the radio base example, by rapidly and irregularly changing the frequency of the waves. It would require one to create enough waves to completely block off an entire region with just one transmission antenna.

“But don’t you need a special rock for that? Anti…anti-something.”

Erika broke off at an odd point, unable to remember the proper noun. Mizuki, who had managed to revive herself, threw her a lifeboat. “It’s antinite, Erika. Tatsuya, do you own any antinite? I thought it was really expensive.”

Antinite was known to be a substance that could generate enough psionic noise to fulfill this condition. While it was theorized that a magician could create the noise needed for Cast Jamming with their own calculations, it was nevertheless difficult to implement.

Unlike Area Interference, Cast Jamming would obstruct the caster’s own magic as well. Even if a magician tried to construct the noise for Cast Jamming consciously, his or her unconscious would instinctively reject it. (The magic calculation region formed within a person’s unconscious, so it prioritized unconscious control over conscious control.)

Because of this, antinite—which could generate the required noise just by emitting psions—was thought to be indispensable for using Cast Jamming.

Tatsuya’s answer, however, overruled common sense. “No, I don’t have any. It’s a military-grade product in the first place, after all. The problem isn’t the price—civilians can’t get it.”

“Huh? But you just said you used Cast Jamming…” Erika was the one who actually spoke, but both she and Leo looked at him incredulously.

He paused for a moment, his face troubled. Then he leaned over the table and said lowly, “Uh, this is all off the record, okay?” The other three, now drawn in, leaned forward as well, nodding in seriousness. “It’s not technically Cast Jamming. What I used is Specified Magic Jamming. It operates under the same theory.”

Upon hearing Tatsuya’s whispers, Mizuki looked startled and blinked a few times over. “Umm… I didn’t know magic like that existed.”

Erika was the one to directly answer that question. “I don’t think it does,” she said. “Doesn’t that mean you worked out the theory for a new spell?” Once again, her voice sounded more appalled than impressed or shocked.

There were plenty of magicians who used their own, original magic—and plenty of up-and-coming ones who specialized in original magic from a young age. However, that was a case of them instinctively—or intuitively—coming up with magic in a natural way. There weren’t many magicians who could construct new magic from a theoretical standpoint.

Magic depended heavily on the use of one’s unconscious.

While it may have been easy to retroactively attach a theory to magic one could use unconsciously, creating a new spell on a theoretical level—even if it was a simple variation on an existing one—demanded a complete and total understanding of the spell’s construction and the principles it operated under.

Someone the age of a high school student formulating a theory for a new spell wasn’t just abnormal—it made no sense.

“It was less me working it out and more a chance discovery,” answered Tatsuya, smiling at Erika’s straightforward reaction. “You know that in most cases, when you try to use two CADs at once, the psi-waves interfere with each other and the magic doesn’t go off, right?”

“Yeah, I learned that the hard way,” nodded Leo.

“Whoa, that’s way out of your league,” muttered Erika, appalled at Leo’s words.

“What was that?!”

“You were trying to use two brooms to cast magic in parallel! If you thought you could pull off a high-level technique like that, then you were way out of your league.”

“Oh, shut up. I thought I could! Since I can activate multiple spells as long as they’re my type, you know.”

“No way. Seriously. Amazing.”

“…You’ve made your point already, so quit talking in monotone. It’s making me even angrier.”

“H-hey, come on, let’s listen to what Tatsuya has to say!”

“…”

“…Hmph.”

Erika and Leo looked away from each other.

Tatsuya shrugged at Mizuki, whose gaze was wandering to and fro. “I’m fine with stopping here…but you want me to keep going? I don’t mind, I guess…

“The psionic interference waves emitted when using two CADs at the same time, just like with Cast Jamming, get sent to the Idea, which contains the eidos of events near the magician. With one CAD you expand an activation program for the spell that will do the obstructing, then with the other CAD you expand an activation program in the opposite direction. Then you make multiple copies of the activation programs without actually converting them into magic programs. If you release the resultant psionic signal waves as typeless magic, then—to a certain extent—you can block the activation of spells that are the same type as the two magic programs you would have created from the activation programs with each CAD.

“Even for persistent spells like High-Frequency Blade, you can’t maintain the magic program’s effects indefinitely. At some point, you’ll have to expand another activation program and redo it. I just happened to figure out the exact timing to do that in this case.”

“Seriously…” whispered Leo. His monotonous tone revealed that it wasn’t only his expression that was dumbfounded.

All of a sudden, Mizuki coughed. She had nearly choked on her straw—she’d been slurping from it even after her glass had been emptied. Her emotions seemed to finally snap out of her trance because of the painful coughing, and her face gave way to shock.

Erika furrowed her brow, silently thinking about something. It didn’t look like anything particularly pleasant given the grim look on her face, but it didn’t seem like she was particularly unhappy with anything.

“…I have basically no idea what you would actually do, but I think I understand the logic behind it. But why is this all off the record? If you patented it you could probably make money off it,” said Leo, managing to restart his thought processes and evidently not satisfied.

In response to his confusion, Tatsuya grinned bitterly—more bitterly than happily. “First, because this technique is incomplete. It just blocks the spell the enemy is in the middle of activating; it isn’t like they can’t use magic at all, it just gets harder. The user, however, can’t use magic at all after using this. That in itself is a fatal flaw, but the more important issue is that it can obstruct casting without using antinite.”

“…Why is that a problem?” asked Leo, more unsatisfied than suspicious.

Erika, who had been lost in thought, scolded him in a fairly serious manner. “You’re an idiot. Of course it’s a problem. Magic is currently something that national defense and peacekeeping forces need at all costs. If some easy, magic-nullifying technique that didn’t need expensive antinite or a lot of magic power started to spread, it could shake the foundations of society.”

“Those are my thoughts as well. There are even radical groups advocating for the abolition of magic on the grounds that it’s somehow a source of discrimination. Not much antinite gets produced, so it doesn’t realistically present a threat. Until they can find a way to deal with it, I don’t want to go public with this Cast Jamming imitation.”

Leo nodded a few times, his curiosity appearing sated at last. For some reason, Mizuki was nodding with the same expression. “That’s amazing,” she sighed in admiration. “You thought so far ahead.”

“Yeah, I would’ve probably gone straight for the fame and popularity!” sighed Leo in turn.

Miyuki gave a soft, reserved smile at him. “I believe my brother is thinking a little too hard about it, to be honest. It isn’t as though just anyone can read an activation program as an opponent is expanding it, or project CAD interference waves. But I suppose that is just how he is.”

“…How I am? Are you calling me lazy and indecisive?”

“Well, I don’t know. What do you think, Erika?” said Miyuki with feigned ignorance, throwing the ball to Erika.

“I don’t know. I, for one, want to hear Mizuki’s opinion on it,” said Erika in an affected tone, tossing the ball back into Mizuki’s court.

“Huh? Um, I, well…”

“No one’s going to disagree for me…?” With Tatsuya’s rueful stare turned on them, Miyuki constructed a cheerful smile and averted her eyes, Erika hid her face behind her menu, and Mizuki’s eyes darted back and forth, unsure—but from none of them came any help.

Tatsuya was on the run again today.

The new club member recruitment week (which was the fancy term for all this horseplay) was already on its fourth day. Though perhaps the word still would have been more apt than already…but regardless, it was busy. It seemed backward to him that it was far more exhausting after school than during classes, but unfortunately, nobody would listen to his objections.

It made him wonder what resort in which time period these barkers belonged to—or rather, these solicitors—or sorry, the recruitment officers. Instead of cutting through the jam-packed schoolyard, he avoided it (he’d learned on the second day there was no point in volunteering himself for labor like that) and ran toward the location from which he’d received the report of trouble.

On the way there, from the other side of the tent-forested area in the shade of some trees, he detected signs that someone was about to fire magic at him.

It wouldn’t interfere with him directly—it seemed to be a spell to upturn the ground at his feet (more accurately, to shift the ground under his feet on top of the ground to the front and back).

Not again, he thought, sick of it. He must have stood out too much on the first day. Now people were bullying him like this all the time.

Thanks (?) to that, though, he’d gotten used to it. In an unhurried, matter-of-fact way, he activated his Cast Jamming imitation and matched it with the spell’s type. He actually possessed a way of nullifying the spell more easily, but the kind of aftereffects it would cause made it highly probable he’d have a pain dealing with it later. One of the valuable teachings he’d acquired during his short life thus far was that cutting corners never led to anything good.

His psionic wave spread and dispersed, and the magic program dissipated without going off.

Without stopping even a moment, he took a sudden turn.

Cutting corners really wasn’t ever a good thing. Maybe it was because he’d let things be since they didn’t actually harm him, but the number of times he’d experienced magic harassment like this had been escalating rapidly. He’d been ignoring it out of his responsibilities as a disciplinary officer, but at this point, he thought it was okay to start taking his self-defense more seriously.

His opponent, however, was shrewd as well. Right as Tatsuya turned toward him, he leaped out of the shade with speed impossible by pure physical talent. Whoever it was had probably prepared a high-speed running spell beforehand by combining movement magic and anti-inertial magic. The issue with such spells was that your legs wouldn’t normally be able to keep up with the speed and you’d fall, but the culprit seemed to be quite physically fit.

Tatsuya judged it would be hard to apprehend the person in a short time and canceled his pursuit.

The only clues he’d gotten were the tall, thin stature of the culprit and the white wristband, lined with red on blue on either edge, he wore on his right hand.

A week passed.

The new club member recruitment week had been a torrent of events for Tatsuya.

He was probably the busiest out of all the members of the disciplinary committee.

—For slightly different reasons than you might think.

Takeaki Kirihara, whom Tatsuya had subdued on the first day, was apparently one of the school’s most hopeful competitive magic athletes. Some held the opinion that Tatsuya could dispatch him so easily because Kirihara had been hurt during his duel with Sayaka Mibu before Tatsuya had gotten involved. However, most of the students who weren’t aware of the finer details of the competitive magic athlete certainly weren’t too pleased with the incident where the regular athlete had been beaten by a freshman—and a Weed, at that.

As a result…

“Tatsuya, you got disciplinary committee stuff again today?” asked Leo, picking up his bag and getting ready to go home.

“I’m off today. Looks like I’ll finally get a break.”

“You did a bang-up job, after all.”

“I’m not at all happy about it, though,” sighed Tatsuya glumly.

Leo was clearly holding back laughter. “You’re a celebrity now, Tatsuya! The mysterious freshman who went undefeated against all the regular magic athletes in the room—that’s what they’re saying.”

“Mysterious? Why…?”

“There’s one theory that you’re a hired killer sent by a magic opposition group!” That was Erika poking her face into the conversation, also just about ready to go home.

“Who on earth would spread such irresponsible rumors…?”

“Me!”

“Hey!”

“I’m joking, of course.”

“Give me a break… You’re really nasty, you know that?”

“But it’s true that the rumors exist.”

Tatsuya ended up sighing once again at the substance of the rumors Erika had brought to him. He didn’t think anyone would readily believe such groundless stories—at least he didn’t want to. It was fully within the realm of expectation that someone or other would take advantage of the talk and make a move on him, though.

“That was quite a sigh!”

“No empathy at all, I see… Try putting yourself in my shoes. I almost died three times this week!”

“No thank you!” Leo wasn’t trying to hide the amusement from his face. Tatsuya felt an urge to punch him in the nose, but instead he just breathed a third sigh.

Takeaki Kirihara, viewed as the top of the sophomore class in terms of practical ability, was the next ace of the kenjutsu club. And a freshman Weed had beaten him. As stated before, the news surprised and infuriated those steeped in a superficial stance of them being some “chosen ones.” They directed their completely unfair anger and resentment at Tatsuya. Currently, people bent on misdirected acts of retaliation were coming out of the woodwork.

Nevertheless, instigating any direct fights would mark them as targets to be purged. He was backed by the disciplinary committee chairwoman. Everyone, even those without intimate details of the situation, could easily imagine the student council and the club committee coming to his aid.

Then what should they do? The standard move would be to pretend like it was an accident. And that’s what they did. They would wait for Tatsuya to approach on his patrol, then create an intentional quarrel. When he stepped in to mediate, he would be hit with magical attacks made to look like misfires. That seemed to be the pattern.

From Tatsuya’s point of view, incidents were suddenly breaking out wherever he went, one after another. It was unbearable. But as long as he was a disciplinary committee member, he couldn’t ignore them and pass by—he needed to make an effort to bring the situations under control.

On top of that, people were just flinging magic at him at random, too. He was able to nullify most of them before their effects manifested and escape danger, but there were some he couldn’t completely quell, too.

He’d known on the first day that people seemed to be after him, but he couldn’t do anything until he discovered proof that it was all secretly connected—and by the time he did, recruitment week would be over.

In other words, he couldn’t help running right into every trap.

He had only discovered a culprit during that one incident on the fourth day, but he had fled as well. The person was, after all, a student studying at the elite First High. In general, everyone here was extremely skilled in their methods. Tatsuya got the feeling, though, that the time, place, and objective for their superb abilities couldn’t have been more thoroughly mistaken.

“…When I think about it, it’s amazing I didn’t get hurt…”

“They’re putting the restriction back on carrying devices around today, so you don’t have any more to worry about, right?” said Mizuki, trying to console him.

“I sure hope so,” said Tatsuya, taking the opportunity to nod.

The student council may have had off-seasons, but it had no days off. It didn’t work on a shift system, after all. Miyuki had to work at the student council again today. And for the siblings, leaving one at school and going home alone wasn’t an option. From an objective spectator’s point of view, it was their own fault they were teased as having a brother/sister complex.

Nevertheless—“I’m sorry, Tatsuya. I will need to make you wait for me…”—as long as they still had the good sense to feel guilty over making the other wait, they could still be saved.

“Don’t worry about it… Well, you probably can’t do that, can you…” Tatsuya said, smiling, patting his sister’s head a couple times.

It would be more apt to call it a pet than a pat. His hands were gentle, and Miyuki bashfully—but comfortably—narrowed her eyes.—While walking through a hallway with students going home.

Their display of intimacy was prone to being misunderstood (?). The glances cast toward the two heading for the student council room were a mix of goodwill and malice. However, there was a marked difference in them from the all-too-common stares given to couples that were too friendly with each other, and Tatsuya pulled his hand away when he felt the malicious ones.

When he walked with Miyuki like this…

Until last week, the greater portion of those mean looks would have been ridiculing. Now, there was a hateful antipathy…and, peeking out from behind it, fear. Not the awe given to the strong…but the fear given to the unknown. The Course 2 students who should have been relieved at his actions were doing the same.

All that said, this was the first time this week he was spoken to by someone he didn’t know.

“Shiba?”

Tatsuya and Miyuki turned around in sync. His physical abilities were clearly superior. The reason they reacted at the same time regardless was because Miyuki’s act was done out of reflex, whereas Tatsuya hadn’t been completely sure the person had been talking to him.

“Hello. And pleased to meet you, I suppose?”

It was a fairly pretty girl with medium-length hair pulled back in a ponytail. A strange hairstyle, but Tatsuya remembered seeing her face. “You’re right, nice to meet you. Your name is Mibu, right?”

She was the sophomore in the kendo club who was essentially the beginning of his week of violence—and one of the parties involved in the kendo club intrusion incident.

Tatsuya stopped, and she approached with unhesitating movements. Either she was fearless by nature, or free of worry because he was younger. Or maybe she held him in disdain for the same reason. Whichever the case was, it was certainly better than awkward reservation.

Miyuki aligned her movements with the upperclassman as she stopped before her brother and took a half-step back. She was in a spot just out of Tatsuya’s focus, but naturally inside it if he turned the slightest bit away.

“I’m Sayaka Mibu. I’m in Class E, same as you.” Tatsuya’s eyes were naturally drawn to Sayaka’s left breast. Sewn onto her green blazer was a plain green pocket. He realized immediately that’s what she meant by same.

“Thanks for before. You saved me, and I didn’t thank you—I’m sorry.” She gave him a friendly smile, steeped in the charm boys her age would be hard-pressed to resist. Though it was a term not to be used easily around those who could manipulate magic, in a literary sense, one could say her appeal had magic hidden in it that would steal your heart away. —Well, in popular literary terms, anyway.

“In addition to thanking you, there’s something I’d like to talk to you about… Do you have time to come with me for a little bit?”

Whether or not she was conscious of the effect her smile had on male high school students was up for debate, but she probably understood it quite well. Although, for Tatsuya, with his too-beautiful sister at his side, it might have been somewhat uncomfortable.

“I can’t right now.” Sayaka seemed more shocked than annoyed at his brief rejection, to which he followed up with, “Are you free in fifteen minutes?”

At Tatsuya’s words, spoken quite definitively, she looked at him with a desolate, even blank expression, then hurriedly blinked a few times, and finally seemed to understand what she’d just been asked.

“Oh, yes, that works. I’ll wait for you in the cafeteria.” Though quite flustered at the unexpected response, she succeeded in obtaining Tatsuya’s promise.

Tatsuya could only accompany his sister as far as the door of the student council room. Were he to enter, he’d probably see Hattori. Neither of them would be very comfortable if that happened, so Tatsuya, with nothing to do there anyway, had been naturally avoiding the student council room after school.

“All right, I’ll be waiting for you in the library.”

Until yesterday, Miyuki had always been waiting for Tatsuya. This was the first instance of him waiting for her, but it was the pattern he’d simulated in his head before school had started. He knew that she would surely come into some sort of official position. Therefore, he would not mistake how to spend his time. All the more because one of the reasons he’d come to this school in the first place was for the private literature and records he couldn’t access except from organizations related to the National Magic University.

“The library?”

But Miyuki, who would have known all that, tilted her head and repeated what he’d said. Even he couldn’t help but let doubt creep into his voice. “…That’s my plan. Why?”

“No, it’s just that you were going to go see Mibu in the cafeteria after this, so…” Miyuki’s eyes were directed toward his collar.

“Miyuki?” Despite him saying her name, she didn’t bring her face back up.

She didn’t try to meet his gaze. In fact, she averted hers to the side.

Tatsuya didn’t understand why his sister was acting this way. In anyone else’s case she would have been sulking, but that was the one thing his sister would never do. Although he tried to get an answer out of her, the student council room was before their eyes and both were making people wait. “I don’t think it’s going to take very long. She probably just wants to recruit me for her club.” He knew as well as anyone that was mistaken…but it gave him a chance to resolve the situation.

“…Is that really all it will be?”

“What?”

“Is it just a club recruitment offer? I think it might not be. I don’t have a reason, but…I feel rather anxious. I’m very happy that you have won a reputation…but if they knew even a fraction of your real power, there would be many flocking to use you for their own ends. I think that those who wouldn’t are in the minority. Please, take extra care.”

It would have been easy to laugh it off as imaginary fears…if it hadn’t been Miyuki Shiba saying it. “…Don’t worry. I’ll be fine no matter what happens.”

“That’s why I’m so worried!”

At last, Tatsuya got a dim idea of what his sister was afraid of. “…I’m all right. I would never get that desperate.”

“…That’s a promise, Tatsuya.”

“All right… By the way, Miyuki, I don’t think some committee activities in high school are enough to be called winning a reputation.”

“…Geez! What does it matter, really? To me, your very name is famous, Tatsuya!”

Miyuki twirled herself around and headed for the card reader. Her cheek, hidden behind her black hair fluttering in an arc, was tinged with crimson.

He immediately found who he’d come here to meet—Sayaka was standing right near the entrance. “I wouldn’t have minded if you’d sat down to wait.”

“But then you might not have noticed, Shiba. I’m the one who invited you, so I didn’t want to make you need to look.”

It was a very feminine concern for him, or maybe it was just because she was older. But Tatsuya got the impression she didn’t understand much about herself. She was sticking out like a sore thumb. He’d have to prepare himself for more annoying rumors after this. He sighed as the thought of the faces of two certain upperclassmen who would laugh mightily at his expense crossed his mind.

Of course, he wasn’t careless enough to let his sigh show on the surface—on his face. He was meeting this girl for the first time, so it would be rude to sigh at her as soon as he met her. “In any case, let’s sit down. Then we can talk.”

“It’s not very crowded, so we should buy drinks first.” That was neither a question nor an invitation, but an assertion. He was a little surprised by it, but he wasn’t about to suggest otherwise.

He bought coffee, and she juice; then they sat down at two empty seats, facing each other. He took a sip of his coffee, then, with the cup still in his hands, looked toward the opposite seat.

Sayaka focused on slurping up the brilliant scarlet liquid through a straw. She downed two-thirds of it in one go and finally looked back up.

Their eyes met.

She looked taken aback, and immediately reddened. It seemed very much like the hue of the juice had made its way into her face.

“…Do you like that kind of juice?” It was a plain question for Tatsuya, but…

“Mmgh… Who cares? I like sweet things! I’m basically just a child, after all!” …She suddenly grew angry—no, sulky, even.

If it’s so embarrassing, then why did you bother getting it? thought Tatsuya. He also felt that her degree of shyness and her level of defenselessness weren’t in balance. But what he actually said was on a completely different vector. “I like sweet foods, too. I’ve never had that before, but I drink juice often at home.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“Oh…”

He didn’t actually do anything of the sort, but Sayaka put a hand to her chest and sighed in relief. The action didn’t make her look older than him—she seemed quite different from last week.

“Umm, well. Leaving all that aside… Again, thank you very much for last week. It was thanks to you the situation didn’t get out of hand.” She touched her knees together and placed her hands on them, straightened her posture, and gave a bow.

She was certainly the kendo belle—she seemed much more like that now than the “cute girl” she’d been until last week. He let his half-automatic observations flow toward the back of his mind and gave a noncommittal answer. “You don’t need to thank me. I was doing my job.”

Sayaka didn’t seem satisfied with his formal reply, however. “I don’t mean for just stopping Kirihara. That was a stupid duel we were having. Kirihara and I were one thing, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if both the kendo club and the kenjutsu club were punished. It was resolved peacefully because you insisted there was no harm done, didn’t you?”

“It really wasn’t anything to make a big fuss about anyway. Aside from you and Kirihara, nobody was injured. After that it was just the kenjutsu club going nuts, so at the very least, the kendo club wouldn’t be blamed for anything.”

“But that’s because you were fighting them—that’s sort of why it wasn’t a big problem. If it was anyone else, people would have gotten hurt for sure. Maybe other people could have stopped them without hurting them, but you dealt with so many of them without even letting yourself get hurt. I’m still in disbelief! I think the kenjutsu club should thank you for going easy on them.

“And about that, I did let Kirihara get hurt…so this might sound like an excuse or kind of unfeminine, but… If you do martial arts for a while, this kind of thing happens. The time comes, no matter what, when you can’t hold back your desire to display your own strength in the process of achieving mastery. Shiba, you know what I mean?”

“I see—yes, I know.”

—That was a lie. At least half of it, anyway. He didn’t see his training as being martial arts. They were nothing more than combat techniques he was studying. He could understand the appeal of wanting to show off your ability to carry out your duty, but simply put, he had never had anything to do with impulses to simply flaunt his strength.

“Right?” However, Sayaka wouldn’t have known much about what was deep inside him—obviously, since they’d only first talked to each other today. “No one needs to make a huge deal out of everything. Well, if people had been injured during that brawl, it would’ve probably been a big problem, but Kirihara was actually the only one who really got hurt. He and I were both fighting well aware we could get hurt, so it’s nobody’s business to make a fuss out of it.”

That’s wrong, thought Tatsuya. The problem was that Kirihara had broken the rules and used a highly dangerous spell. In principle, recruitment week troubles were handled within the club committee. If things would have ended with just Sayaka and Kirihara swinging their shinai around, Tatsuya would never have intervened, and Mari probably would have kept out of it, too.

Of course, he said none of this aloud.

“But there’s still a lot of people who want to make such a small thing into a problem. A lot of students have been exposed for the same kind of thing—just so the disciplinary members could get better grades.”

“…I am a member of the disciplinary committee at the moment, so…sorry.”

“I-I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it like that, really!” Feigning an ashamed expression, she looked at Tatsuya, who was bowing his head. Sayaka, suddenly flustered, began to explain herself in a mad haste. “What I wanted to say was that you’re different from them, and that’s why you helped me, and um, I didn’t want to bad-mouth the disciplinary committee—well, I don’t like them, but, umm…?”

Tatsuya expressionlessly observed Sayaka as her gestalt collapsed…though his own eyes were smiling. The random list of words she was saying had already lost all meaning, and they quickly faded out. Soon, he only saw her mouth opening and closing, with no sound coming out—and then she noticed the smirk in his gaze and looked down, embarrassed.

“…Hey, Shiba, you’re kind of a bully…”

He felt like he’d heard that before. “I am not possessed of such a unique inclination,” he said nonchalantly, pretending he didn’t know what she meant. Then, forestalling any argument to the contrary, he continued. “So what did you want to talk about?”

“…I’ll come right out and say it.” Her lips were saying otherwise, but maybe she gave up or her sense of objective won out, because then she said, “Shiba, will you join the kendo club?”

Finally, she began to talk about the original reason he was here.

It was so predictable he couldn’t deny feeling slightly deflated, but he already had an answer. If she’d said that from the start, this would have gone more quickly, he thought, a little irritated. He gave her his prepared reply. “I’m grateful for the offer, but I have to decline.”

“…May I ask your reason?” Sayaka couldn’t keep the shock out of her face at Tatsuya’s immediate response, to which he didn’t seem to have given even the slightest bit of thought.

“Actually, I’d like to ask why you invited me. My skills are empty-handed ones—they’re completely different from kendo. With your level of skill, you know that, right?”

His tone was a calm one, not particularly rough or provocative, but there was an unmistakable sharp edge to what he’d actually said.

Sayaka’s gaze wandered through empty space. She looked like she was desperately seeking an escape route. In a way, she probably was. After breathing a single sigh, she began to speak in an abstract way. “One’s grades in magic are treated as the most important thing at Magic High School… I knew that much from the start, and still enrolled here. But don’t you think it’s wrong to decide everything just based on that?”

“Please, continue.”

“There’s no helping the fact that classes are separate. We just don’t have any practical ability, that’s all. But that’s not all being at high school is supposed to be. Even clubs are prioritized based on magical talent, and that’s wrong.”

Just from what Tatsuya had seen this past week, there was no truth to the statement that clubs unrelated to magical competition were being unfairly oppressed by the school. It was true that the school provided various forms of support to competitive magic clubs. However, that was part of their advertising to make them look better as a magic high school, done from an administrative perspective.

In his view, this girl was making this fervent speech because she couldn’t tell the difference between her not being given preferential treatment and her being given the cold shoulder.

However, that proved to be too hasty a conclusion. “I can’t stand even my sword skills being scorned just because I can’t use magic very well. I can’t endure them being ignored. I won’t let them deny everything I am just because of magic.”

Her tone was unexpectedly strong. The emotion in it was beyond conviction, closer to deep-seated delusion—that’s what Tatsuya felt.

Perhaps feeling uncomfortable at Tatsuya’s steady, serious stare, Sayaka cleared her throat and repositioned herself. “The noncompetitive magic clubs have all decided to be allies. We got a lot of people who agree even from outside the kendo club. We’re planning to create an organization separate from the club committee and announce our thoughts to the school at some point this year. I would like you to help as well, Shiba.”

“I see…” He’d thought her more the idol type, but she was a true warrior woman. He smiled at how mistaken his impression had been.

“…Are you making fun of me?” It seemed she’d mistaken his smile.

He felt like leaving her misunderstanding alone would mean she wouldn’t bother him in the future, but he went and said something he didn’t need to anyway. “That’s not what I meant. It was just funny how I thought wrong about you. I thought you were just a pretty girl who does kendo—I misjudged you…”

The second sentence was spoken half to himself. Ever since enrolling, there had been attractive girls appearing one after the other, each with one or two quirks. He actually felt like laughing loudly about having unconsciously hoped this one would be a normal, pretty girl.

“Pretty…” Perhaps because his awareness was directed inward at that time, Sayaka’s mutter, her face flushing with red, and her suspicious fidgeting all passed him by.

“Mibu?”

“Wh-what is it?”

Still unaware of it, and suppressing an urge to smile, Tatsuya set his face again. Sayaka’s voice in reply had been somewhat flustered, but he didn’t show any signs of thinking about it. Then, he said something that was really unnecessary. “After you tell the school what you think, what are you going to do?”

“…Huh?”