Chapter 7

The student council that day was quite different from how it used to be, and not even two weeks had passed.

First, the dining server had absolutely no part to play anymore. With Mari and Miyuki making their own lunches, Mayumi began to do so as well. With no past records, her skill made everyone a little anxious, though Mari was the only one actually worried. But she had gotten through the easier stages at a passable level, and now she was having fun changing up the kind of food she brought.

And there were more members now. Azusa usually ate with her classmates unless someone said something to her, but lately, people had been saying something every day. They invited her for a selfish reason, an absurd one—in any case, an illogical one: The ratio of freshmen to seniors in the room was unbalanced. Her personality wouldn’t let her turn them down, though she’d probably accepted reluctantly.

On the other hand, the ratio of boys to girls was one to four. If balance was an issue, then this was a bigger one. They didn’t seem to treat it as a problem.

“Tatsuya?”

“Yes, Chairwoman?”

In the middle of a lunch with those same members, Mari addressed him from across the table. (The positions at the table had Tatsuya seated next to Miyuki, with Mari across from him and Mayumi across from his sister, and Azusa next to Mayumi.)

Mari had tried to nonchalantly strike up a conversation, but there was no hiding the heckling in her smile. And even that expression looked good on her. “…Is it true you were topping Mibu, the sophomore, yesterday in the cafeteria? Conversationally, I mean.”

Tatsuya was grateful he’d already finished eating. If something had been in his mouth, it would be everywhere right now. “…You’re an adolescent lady, too, so I don’t think you should use immodest terms like topping.”

“Ha-ha-ha, thanks. You’re about the only one who treats me like a lady, Tatsuya.”

“Is that so? Your boyfriend must not be much of a gentleman if he doesn’t treat his own girlfriend as a lady.”

“That’s not it! Shuu is—” Mari broke off and held her tongue, her expression implying she wished she hadn’t said that.

“…” Tatsuya stared at his superior—well, the student who held a higher position in a high school committee, anyway—with an expression that was literally empty.

“…”

“…”

“…Why aren’t you saying anything?”

“…Should I be making some sort of comment?”

Mari glimpsed bouncing, thick, wavy black hair out of the corner of her eye. Extremely reluctantly, she slid her gaze to the side.

And as expected…Mayumi had her back turned, and her shoulders were shaking. Mari gave her a pointed glare, then quickly looked away, returning her gaze to Tatsuya. “…So is it true you were topping Mibu from the kendo club?”

It looked like she wanted to treat all of that as though it hadn’t happened. Tatsuya looked next to Mari; Mayumi stopped her stifled laughter and shrugged in an exaggerated manner.

—That was that, then. He decided to follow their house rules. “Like I said, I don’t think you should use terms like topping… I don’t want you teaching such vulgar terms to my sister…”

“…Excuse me, Tatsuya? You do know how old I am, right…?” argued Miyuki reluctantly but modestly, her voice low. Tatsuya shot her a look of apology and immediately dropped it.

Once again, silence was the name of the battle. If this were a shogi match, the current player would be changing up their strategy.

But these house rules…meant that, unfortunately, it was Tatsuya who needed to change things up. “…That is not true.”

“Oh, really? We have some witnesses who saw Mibu getting embarrassed, and her face getting bright red.”

Tatsuya suddenly felt a chill drift over from the seat next to him.

“Tatsuya…? May I ask just what it was you were doing?”

It wasn’t just his imagination; the temperature in the room was dropping physically and locally.

“M-magic…?” Azusa’s mumble was tinged with fear.

Modern magic was the natural progression of supernatural ability research. Basically, modern magic, in an underlying sense, had succeeded the so-called characteristics of “supernatural abilities.” The biggest difference between old magic and supernatural abilities was whether or not some non-thought process was required to activate it. This was the fundamental reason modern magic didn’t absolutely need CADs, too.

At the same time, modern magic wasn’t equivalent to supernatural abilities. Normally, espers could only use a certain type, or at most a few types, of strange powers. Modern magic had systematized and organized these so-called supernatural abilities. By introducing magic programs and activation programs, the tools for constructing magic programs, into the activation process, modern magic made it possible for people to use magic of dozens of types—even hundreds in some cases.

However, modern magic had a tendency to subdivide itself too thinly, and differing supernatural abilities that would be broadly measured under the same scale would end up in at least twenty or thirty different types. Despite that, modern magic was overwhelming in its versatility.

Modern users of magic, or magicians, used a plethora of magic through the medium of magic programs. The execution of magic used by these magicians, then, was adjusted to suit their own mental processes.

Magicians who were close to being espers and specialized in specific magic could activate magic through thought alone, without clear intent. Ones who used dozens of different types of magic, however, normally couldn’t use magic accidentally.

It is true that magic programs are processed by the unconscious part of the mind, but that was only because the caster was making a deliberate choice. There was absolutely no chance they could formulate and execute magic programs wholly unintentionally.

If one of those magicians skilled in many types of magic could also activate their abilities unconsciously, that would be…

“That’s quite impressive phenomenological influence…” murmured Mayumi. Tatsuya smiled drily. Even the now-abandoned supernatural abilities worked the same way to affect reality: by manipulating eidos, bodies of information that accompanied events. While magic running loose was proof of inexperience, it was also proof of superior talent.

“Calm down, Miyuki. I can explain. First restrain your magic.”

“I’m so sorry…” Miyuki lowered her eyes out of embarrassment and slowly caught her breath. The room temperature stopped decreasing.

“Guess you don’t need an air conditioner in the summer.”

“Midsummer frostbite is nonsensical, though.” Mayumi’s joke seemed more to buy herself time to regain her own calm than to lighten the mood, but Tatsuya brushed it off. “It seems Mibu’s inciting opposition among the students to the disciplinary committee’s activities,” he said, wrapping things up. Both Mari’s and Mayumi’s faces clouded. “But is it actually true that you get people in trouble on purpose for points? I know I didn’t see anything like that—at least, not this week.”

“I didn’t, either. I could only look at where things happened over a monitor screen, but judging from how out of control it was, the actions taken by disciplinary officers actually seemed fairly tolerant.”

At the siblings’ suggestions, Mayumi’s melancholic expression deepened. Mari shook her head and spoke. “Mibu is mistaken. Or maybe she’s just biased. The disciplinary committee is a completely honorary post; there’s no merit to being on it. Competition results might boost someone’s seminar grades, but there’s absolutely nothing like that here. You might gain some reputation just from being a member, but that doesn’t even leave school walls. It’s not like the student council, where being a member means you’re seen highly even after graduating.”

“…But it’s also true that it has a lot of power at school,” added Mayumi. “The disciplinary committee team actively maintains order here. If you were a student unhappy with how things are around here, they might look like a group of hound dogs abusing their power to you. Or, more accurately, someone is setting things up to make it seem like that.”

Tatsuya couldn’t help but be surprised. Things seemed to go a lot deeper than he realized. He asked the next natural question. “Do you know who it is?”

“Huh? Um, no, it’s not really that easy to find the source of rumors, so…”

“…We could stop it if you found out who the culprit was, though.”

For Mayumi and Mari, though, the question had been unexpected. Mayumi’s remark had been a slip of the tongue. Tatsuya looked her dead in the eye—she immediately looked away. This was the first time he’d seen her so clearly disturbed. “I wasn’t asking the identity of the underling at the end of things, spreading these false half-truths. I was asking about who’s controlling things behind the scenes.”

He felt his arm get tugged twice. He looked over to see Miyuki pulling at his sleeve, behind the table so others wouldn’t see. She probably wanted to tell him he was overstepping his bounds, but Tatsuya didn’t feel like backing down. His mind reproduced the image of the male student who’d attacked him with magic, then run away. He mentally zoomed in on the white wristband, its edges lined in red and blue, on the student’s right wrist.

“An organization like Blanche, for example?”

Their unrest changed to shock. Mayumi and Mari both stiffened. Azusa watched them, her eyes wide; it didn’t look like she’d been informed of the details.

“How do you know that name?”

“It’s not like it’s top secret information. There are apparently some press restrictions on it, but you can’t suppress every little rumor that springs up.”

For Tatsuya, the fact that Mayumi was this surprised was what surprised him more.

Blanche was an international anti-magic political organization. Their ideals were to oppose the current political system in which magicians were given special treatment by the government, as well as to eliminate societal discrimination based on magical ability.

But there was no truth to magic users being given special treatment by the government in this country in the first place. In fact, in reality, there was a lot of criticism of the government and the army for their inhumane treatment of magicians and of the way they used them as disposable tools. The country, though, couldn’t avoid the necessity to make up the difference in the quantity of troops it could mobilize with quality, considering a certain neighboring country had the highest population in the world.

Military officers and administrative officials who were also magicians certainly received higher pay than those who were not, but that was no more than a reflection of how much work they needed to do. It was no more than the price the nation paid for wearing down their souls with overwork.

Most anti-magic organizations conducted antiestablishment activities based on criticism of a reality they’d made up themselves. Among them, Blanche engaged in some of the most radical militant activities. This country supposedly protected freedom of political activity, so they were neither reined in nor oppressed. However, antiestablishment movements could gradually and easily slip into criminal acts—and in reality, there were multiple precedents of anti-magic groups conducting terrorist acts.

Currently, Blanche was representative of the kind of organization the public security bureau watched very closely.

And the color of the wristband worn by the student who had failed to dig out the ground beneath his feet was white, with one red edge and one blue edge—the symbol of a branch organization of Blanche called Égalité. The two organizations hid the fact that they were directly connected, but Égalité did actually operate under Blanche. The fact was, to those who knew, that they were no more then an outward-facing billboard for Blanche to attract youths fed up with the political situation.

They didn’t know exactly how many people had become part of it. That student from before could possibly have been the first one. But the fact they had gotten not just a simple sympathizer, but one of their agents into the students likely meant they had secured a foothold at First High, otherwise it wouldn’t have been possible.

“Trying to hide parts of it will only lead to bad outcomes, though… Oh, I’m not criticizing you, President, I’m just saying our government has managed this poorly.”

Despite Tatsuya’s consolation in the form of an excuse, Mayumi’s expression didn’t clear up. “…No, you’re right, Tatsuya. It’s true—there’s a group that sees magicians as enemies. It would be better to spread correct information, including how unreasonable they are, than to hide their existence altogether along with the inconvenient agitation that seems so natural. We could be taking effective steps…but we’re avoiding—no, running away from facing the problem.”

She actually seemed like she was blaming herself. “You don’t have much of a choice.” His dismissive tone, therefore, came off as fairly cold. “This school is a national institution. We’re just students, not government employees—at least, not yet. The student council is involved with operating the school; of course it would be held tight to the policies of the nation.”

“Huh?” With a flat voice, unable to connect those words together in her head, Mayumi faltered for a moment, and Tatsuya looked at her.

“I mean that as the president, you had no choice but to keep it a secret,” said Tatsuya, looking away from her uncomfortably.

Mari gave him a playful grin. “Wow, Tatsuya. You’re pretty nice once in a while.”

“But he’s the one who put the president in that situation in the first place…” Azusa muttered blankly.

Mari immediately picked up for her. “Pressing someone like that and then supporting them, huh? The tactic of a gigolo. He managed to coax Mayumi, too. He’s got skill!”

“W-wait, Mari, stop being weird!”

“Your face is red, Mayumi.”

“Mari!”

The student council president and disciplinary committee chairwoman began to tease each other.

Tatsuya was looking in the wrong direction, his face feigning innocence—pretending not to notice his sister’s cold stare upon him.

“All right… It’s getting late, so we’re going back to class. Let’s go, Miyuki,” said Tatsuya to Mayumi and Mari, still jostling each other, and rose from his seat.

Miyuki had been displeased, but he had brought her around with all sincerity, placating her. Azusa, who had watched it, had turned bright red and fled to the console in the corner of the room, but that was no concern of Tatsuya’s.

“Oh, wait just one moment, Tatsuya,” said Mari. “Okay, stop it, Mayumi, stop it already. We need to be serious now.”

“…We will carefully deliberate upon this matter after school today.”

“All right, all right… You’re more tenacious than you look… Tatsuya, what is your answer going to be?”

“I’m the one waiting for an answer, so I’ll decide once I hear it.”

Sayaka had been unable to answer the question he’d posed to her yesterday in the cafeteria.

—After you tell the school what you think, what are you going to do?—

She just started making confused, unintelligible noises after that. She couldn’t put together a response. So Tatsuya had given her some homework: He told her that when she figured it out, he’d listen to what she had to say again. “Based on what I just heard, this isn’t something we can just let be.”

“—I’ll leave things to you.”

“At this point, I can’t even imagine what you’re leaving for me to do.”

“Whatever you can—I don’t mind.”

“How vague. Are you expecting something from me or not…? Well, if that’s your condition, then I’ll accept the task.”

This wasn’t something they could just let be—that wasn’t just lip service. If the anti-magic organization was going to stop at just targeting the system itself, he didn’t need to take the initiative. However, their antiestablishment activities were violent, steadily making targets out of individuals in symbolic positions. He couldn’t discard the possibility that Miyuki would be targeted, since she had enrolled as the leading student and was now part of the student council. He was sure she would never lose out to some terrorists who could do nothing but skitter around in the shadows all day, but there was the worst-case scenario to think about.

“I’ll do whatever I can,” he said in acceptance, voice cool. He and Miyuki, who gave a small bow from behind him, went to the door and left the room.

Mari muttered to herself, “That’s probably how we’ll get the best outcome, after all.”

Given how the disciplinary committee duty worked, Tatsuya didn’t need to show up to the headquarters every day. Even the chairwoman normally hung around the student council room upstairs. The members elected to it were all the cream of the crop, each violent and uncompromising. Such people tended to neglect clerical work and tidiness, so because no one stayed there for very long, the room had been left to utter dilapidation.

Before Tatsuya’s achievements during the club recruitment week, he had—reluctantly—established a firm position as the one person in the disciplinary committee with any clerical skills. So, despite not actually being on duty, he’d gotten a call for help from Mari regarding the activity reports of the club recruitment week, that oh-so-bloody battlefield. They hadn’t been organized in the slightest…though it wasn’t so much help as Tatsuya just doing it all himself.

It had not been his intention to fall into this situation. His plan, at the time of his enrollment, had been to use his after-school time to browse the private, university-owned research documents and materials that you could only view with specific terminals in the National Magic University and the magic high schools affiliated with it. And yet here he was, doing this and that, going here and there, getting none of his research done.

I suppose I’ll finish up these incident reports… he figured to himself with a sigh, knowing how unproductive it was. First he needed to meet up with Miyuki, so he went to log out of a terminal, having completed a different task—and just then, something happened.

A notification appeared on the display that he’d received an e-mail. The timing was too perfect. The school’s crest was attached to it. That meant it contained instructions that a student wouldn’t be able to refuse, or an official notification e-mail. He couldn’t just ignore something like that. He hadn’t gotten far up out of his seat, but he sat back down and opened it up.

Displayed in the “sender” field was the name Haruka Ono.

“Sorry for calling you out so suddenly!”

“It’s all right, ma’am. I didn’t have anything urgent to do.”

They were in the counseling room. Haruka had given the standard apology, her smile not showing any regret at all; Tatsuya had given the proper response to it, not really meaning it.

In truth, he found this summoning to be a pain. He wasn’t in a hurry, but he had promised to help Mari. Sending an e-mail to notify her wouldn’t have been enough, so after apologizing to her profusely over voice communication, he ended up getting even more work to do than he’d planned.

He’d had to cancel walking Miyuki home, too. She seemed unaffected on the surface, but he’d already gotten a headache thinking of how he’d try to improve her mood when they got back to their house. Besides, he had nothing he wanted to talk to a counselor about anyway.

“So have you gotten used to the high school life?” asked Haruka, popping a standard question, whether or not she knew of his actual feelings on the matter (he was pretty sure she didn’t).

Tatsuya’s answer, though, was far from standard. “No, ma’am.”

“…Is there something worrying you?”

“I have a lot more to do than I thought I would, and it’s hard to focus on my studies, ma’am.” On the supplementary sound channel he was telling her that she was wasting time, and to quit the small talk and get to what she needed to say.

Even if she didn’t hear any of that nuance, she seemed to still understand that he wasn’t in a very amicable mood. She gave a vague smile, somewhere between a dry grin and a friendly one, then made a display of recrossing her legs.

He got a glimpse of her sensual thighs covered in thin stockings from under her short, tight skirt. There was nothing to obstruct their gaze between the chairs they sat facing each other in.

Modern etiquette discouraged the exposure of skin in public places. Female students were no exception—they all wore thick, opaque tights or leggings under their skirts. That was the school’s policy. Even leaving aside how mature the girl was, this was a stimulating sight he didn’t see very often at all. (Incidentally, even those styles that didn’t show any skin at all could be worn comfortably during the summertime, thanks to advancements in fiber materials.)

“…What’s wrong?” asked Haruka playfully to Tatsuya, who was unconsciously staring and unable to peel his eyes away.

He quickly averted his stare and would have given a disordered response—“Going by the present dress code…”—but Tatsuya’s answer was a tad different from the norm. “…I believe your outfit is too stimulating, Ms. Ono.”

“I-I’m sorry!”

There was no arousal in his eyes—in fact, they seemed cold and observing, and his tone gave the impression of a light criticism. Haruka, flustered, got her legs into a more modest position and sank back into her seat.

Inducing unrest in someone was the universal technique for taking the initiative. Haruka had chosen this kind of clothing to that end. But this freshman (Tatsuya) would only reply with an expressionless gaze.

She couldn’t figure him out. She was unable to gain the initiative, and it confused her.

“In any case, why have you called me here?” Despite trying to clamp down on it, his voice betrayed a tiny bit of irritation. And it was doubtful even that wasn’t part of his own act.

He might have been going on just sixteen years old, but she wasn’t trying to make light of him. She knew normal means wouldn’t work against him, and that’s exactly why she’d attempted to use sex appeal, a method she wasn’t used to. Unfortunately for her, it looked like she had to give up on that safe, roundabout plan.

Having made up her mind, she once again faced Tatsuya. “I came here to request your assistance, Shiba, with our work.”

“Our work, ma’am?”

She knew of his intelligence, even if only from the entrance exam. Nevertheless, his reply went straight for the vitals, putting her more and more on guard. “Yes—the counselors’.” She had the brief sense that he was seeing right through her. Right now, though, her only option was to keep pushing with her “counselor work” charade. “The tendencies of students tend to change by the year. For example—you use ma’am and sir quite frequently, don’t you? It wasn’t too unusual to hear while such a percentage of students in magic high schools desired military posts, but common use of those terms first spread among the other students after our victory three years ago at the Defense of Okinawa. Changes in the social climate bring about changes in student mentality as well. Especially after a big incident’s happened—the ways they think and feel about things and themselves change to the point where you couldn’t believe they were all the same age.”

She paused for a moment, gauging the boy’s expression. He didn’t seem disturbed in the slightest. In fact, he seemed like he was listening to things he was already aware of. “So every year, we pick around ten percent of the new students and have them undergo continued counseling. It’s so that we can get a good grasp of the student mentality each year and conduct the best counseling we can.”

“I would be a guinea pig, in other words, ma’am?” His words easily summed it up. She didn’t sense any of the negative emotions that he should have shown, like anger, indignity, or distaste. “If that’s all it’s for, then I’ll assist you, ma’am—but what is your real objective?” he replied with a faint smile.

At that moment, Haruka needed to use all her might to suppress her bewilderment. “…Do you think I’m concealing my real objective? That’s upsetting. I’m not a harpy, you know.” Her tone was light and jocular to the last—and was more to keep him from realizing she’d lost her calm than to placate him.

“I believe I’m a bit too unique to use as a sample, ma’am.”

“I see. I’m of the same impression—that you’re not quite a normal freshman. That’s why I want you to help us, though. You might be the first instance of someone breaching the walls between Course 1 and Course 2 students, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be the last.”

“…I’ll accept that, then, ma’am.”

Haruka was relieved—it seemed like she’d talked him down for the moment. He didn’t seem completely convinced, but unraveling stubborn minds like his was where counselors displayed their skill, she told herself. —Ignoring reality somewhat, that is.

“I regret making you feel like you can’t trust me because of my inexperience, Shiba… In any case, may I ask you a few questions?”

“Yes, go ahead, ma’am.”

She knew he was being cautious of her, but they didn’t have all the time in the world here. In order, she presented the questions she’d prepared beforehand to Tatsuya.

Counseling was a profession to which privacy was crucial. Protecting the confidentiality of clients was the cornerstone of their professional ethical code. That meant when faced with someone confiding in them, they would ask the person questions in order to solve their issue and never leak any of that to a third party—but in this situation, where Haruka was the one to ask him for help, she wouldn’t be able to set foot into his private life. Consequently, the topic of her questions was limited to what had happened at school since his first day.

And after Haruka had finished listening to Tatsuya himself briefly talk about the troubles he’d had since starting school, this was her reaction:

“…Thanks. I’m surprised you’re still okay. With that kind of stress accumulating, it wouldn’t be odd for a person to have a mental breakdown,” she said in some admiration, her expression doctorial.

She actually had a medical license, and she specialized in mental health—that’s why Tatsuya would call her a “doctor,” but he thought she was listening to what he had to say as a counselor.

“From a medical standpoint, you might be right, ma’am. Exceptions spring up in any aggregate data set, though.”

At Tatsuya’s remark that clinical data was always a by-product of statistical processing, Haruka looked away in embarrassment.

Her eyes wandered for a few moments, but she then noticed Tatsuya glancing at the old-fashioned (read: behind-the-times) wall clock—he was doing it so that she would notice, of course—and quickly looked back at him. “Right, that was all I wanted to ask for today… By the way, may I ask you one thing that isn’t directly related to counseling?”

“What is it, ma’am?”

“Is it true that Mibu, the sophomore, asked you out?”

“…That really doesn’t have anything to do with counseling,” said Tatsuya, not bothering to hide his amazement.

Haruka hurriedly continued. “If it was Mibu, I would have an interest… I can’t talk about the specifics, though.”

“It would be a problem if I heard about things private to others. Just where on earth did you hear such a groundless accusation?”

“Groundless…?”

“Yes, ma’am—is there something wrong?”

“No, it’s nothing… Well, truthfully speaking, if you had been of the mind to start dating her, there was something I wanted to ask of you. But if that isn’t how you feel, then don’t worry about it.”

“I already said all the nonsense about her asking me out was groundless, ma’am. Anyway, where did you hear about that?”

She purposely averted her eyes from his at his repeated question. “I’m sorry—it’s a confidential matter.”

He didn’t pursue the point any further. “Then I will get going now, ma’am.” Instead, he got up and headed for the exit, not waiting for a reply.

“If there’s anything bothering you about Mibu, you can talk to me anytime.”

There was something like conviction in Haruka’s voice as she spoke to his back—a conviction that something that would bother him would happen. Tatsuya had no interest in what that might be, but he also didn’t stop and turn around. He didn’t have the sort of innocent charm to let a pointless curiosity lead him into a trap.

After dinner, as Tatsuya was in his bedroom at his console, a voice came to him from the other side of the door.

“Tatsuya, it’s Miyuki.”

Practically speaking, Tatsuya and Miyuki were the only ones who lived in this house. It was plain as day who would have been knocking at his door without her needing to name herself, and he didn’t need a name if he heard her voice, either.

Still, though, at every turn, Miyuki always announced herself like this. As though trying to imprint her name into Tatsuya’s mind. As though she were afraid he might forget it.

“You can come in,” prompted Tatsuya without looking away from the display. From the door, the console was embedded in the side wall. As he read through lines of text, scrolling at high speed, he glimpsed the figure of his sister in his peripheral vision.

“The cake you bought for us has arrived… Shall we have some tea?” There was hesitation in her invitation—probably out of a sense that she didn’t deserve her brother’s needless consideration in this particular case.

For Tatsuya, if a cake was all it took, it was a small price to pay—but her modesty was another one of his sister’s charms. —Not that just anyone could bring it out of her, though.

The cake has arrived was a phrase that would have been quite limited in usage a hundred years ago, but the expression was used on a daily basis in today’s world. Advances in physical distribution systems had turned the term baggage into a dead word. You could get even small things like cakes delivered for free. Of course, for the stores, creating and shipping the product upon receiving the order had two merits: not needing to keep extra goods in storage, and the turnover rate of customers. The service was weighed upon a scale of minimized shipping costs.

“I’ll be right there,” he answered, saving the displayed information into their home network’s shared directory.

Tatsuya’s washed down the not-too-sweet cream left in his mouth from the chocolate cake—Miyuki’s favorite—with coffee he’d had her make more bitter than usual, then switched the living room’s display to data-viewing mode.

“…Is it all right if I see this as well?”

Tatsuya hadn’t finished eating either or anything, and Miyuki was going at an even slower pace. Nevertheless, his calling up a data file clearly meant that he wanted to show something to her. “Of course,” he said. Despite that, she had still asked for confirmation first, and upon his affirmative reply, she settled back into her seat. “It may not be a topic suited to family entertainment, but it seems like you’re not going to avoid getting tangled up in this, so I figured we should share information sooner rather than later… No, it’s nothing to sit at attention for.” His sister had put down her fork and sat up straight, and he waved away the action as unnecessary. He gave her a dry grin, which she answered with a slightly embarrassed one, and picked up her fork again.

“Open cabinet name Blanche.”

He couldn’t bring a full keyboard out onto the living room table with all the food laid out. Tatsuya didn’t like it very much, but he used voice commands to bring up the files containing his findings one by one on the display.

“That’s the anti-magic activist political society that came up during lunch, right?”

“They call themselves a civic movement, though. Behind the scenes they’re a prime example of a terrorist group. And there doesn’t seem to be any doubt these terrorists are moving around in the shadows at school. There is a group called Égalité—a branch organization of Blanche—and during my activities as disciplinary committee officer, I actually saw a student who I believed to be part of it.”

Tatsuya’s words caused Miyuki surprise, and she cocked her head to the side. “At Magic High School—a student of Magic High School?”

“I can understand why you’d find it hard to believe,” nodded Tatsuya deeply, indicating that he empathized with her bewilderment. “People who believe that magic high schools, not just First High, will help them with their magic are all coming to study magic. Whether it’s for their own sake or for another’s is a separate issue. A student of a magic high school rejecting magic is no more than a self-contradiction.”

It was a perfect and complete contradiction, and that was all. For Tatsuya, magic in the eyes of society labeled him negatively in some respects, but as someone who studied and researched magic, he didn’t feel like he wanted to reject it.

“It’s obviously strange when you think about it… But the obvious doesn’t work, so the strange people run rampant.”

“…Why is it like that, I wonder?”

“If you try to think about it using normal logic, you’ll get trapped in a maze. So instead of thinking about it logically, you have to think about it on a concrete, individual level. The first point that needs to be addressed is that despite them waving their flags of anti-magic beliefs in the air, they don’t outwardly reject magic.”

“Come to think of it…that’s true.”

“Their aim is abolition of the societal discrimination due to magic. That in itself is undeniably correct.”

“…Right.”

“What is discrimination, then?”

“When society’s opinion of someone doesn’t reflect their actual skills and hard work…?”

“Like I said, Miyuki, you shouldn’t think about it from a general viewpoint.” As he spoke, he smoothly picked up the remote control on the sideboard, then pointed it at the screen. One of the areas of the sixteen-way split screen came to the front and magnified. “Blanche, in terms of its outward political society guise, cites the difference in average salary earned by magicians and non-magician company workers as proof that magicians are being given special treatment. The discrimination they’re talking about, in the end, is a difference in average pay. But they’re only talking about averages, about results. They don’t think at all about how exhausting and taxing the work done by highly paid magicians is. They also completely ignore the vast number of ‘spare’ magicians who, despite having magical skill, can’t get employed in occupations related to magic, and actually make less money on average.”

The emotion in his flat voice was sparse, but there was just a hint of downheartedness in it. “No matter how strong it may be, magic that society doesn’t value won’t bring either money or honor.”

Miyuki cast her gaze downward, bitterly. He got up, walked around her, and gently put a hand on her shoulder. “The reason the average magician’s salary is high is because there are ones who do possess rare skills that society needs. Among those scant few magicians, there are a relatively high percentage of top earners, which means the average salary is calculated as being high, that’s all. And those magicians working at the forefront contribute to society—actually, that’s too pretty a way of putting it. Magicians receive high rewards for creating some sort of profit, whether it’s financial or not; but they aren’t given special treatment in a financial sense just because they’re magicians. Their world is not an easy one—they can’t live in luxury just by having the innate talent for magic. We know that all too well. Don’t we, Miyuki?”

“Yes… I know it well,” said Miyuki, nodding deeply and placing her own hand atop her brother’s on her shoulder.

“What this essentially means is that Blanche’s stance of opposition to magic-based discrimination really means they’re opposed to magicians being paid in a financial sense. They want magicians to donate their services to society unselfishly.”

“…I believe that a rather selfish, arrogant thing for them to say. Magicians and non-magicians are alike in that they need money to live. And yet they say they can’t allow magicians to make a living with magic, and that those who can use it have to make a living on something else… Doesn’t that just mean they’re saying they don’t want to respect magic as a human skill because they can’t use it themselves? They’re saying magicians don’t need to be repaid for the effort they put into studying magic, and that their hard work shouldn’t logically need to be respected… Or are those kinds of people not aware that you can’t use magic with natural, inborn talent alone? Has nobody told them that using magic requires long years of learning and training?”

Tatsuya pulled away from Miyuki’s back, gave a cynical smile, and returned to his seat. “No, they know. They just don’t mention it. It would be too inconvenient to say it, to think it. The ideal of equality is easy on the ears, so they trick others with it—and themselves. Remember what you asked at the beginning? About why students in a magic high school would be active in anti-magic groups like Blanche and Égalité?”

“Yes… You mean they don’t understand what the magic-rejecting faction really wants…?”

“People who can’t learn to use magic, no matter how hard they try, think it’s unfair that those who can use it to gain high positions. Then, even if you can use magic, the students with less talent for it think that it’s strange they can’t catch up to those with abundant talent even though they put in a lot of work, and that it’s strange they should be seen as inferior… It wouldn’t be mysterious to think this way, would it? Differences in talent aren’t limited to magic—it happens in every single field in every kind of human work. Even if you don’t have magical talent, you might have other talent. If you can’t stand not having magical talent, then you should find a different way of life.”

For those who didn’t know any more about Tatsuya than what he showed, it would have sounded like he was saying that for his own benefit. But Miyuki, the only person here listening to him, wasn’t prone to such a misunderstanding.

“The only reason for those studying magic to reject magical ‘discrimination,’ I think, is because they can’t get away from magic. They don’t want to leave it, but they can’t stand not being seen as a full-fledged magician. They can’t stand the fact that the same amount of effort on their part won’t make them catch up. They can’t stand the possibility that even working many times as hard won’t make them catch up either. So they reject being judged based on magic. Of course, they’re aware that those with the talent are paying the full price in hard work. They see it personally, every day. But they look away from the truth, shove all the responsibility onto ‘inborn magical talent,’ and reject it. Well… It isn’t as though I can’t understand such weakness. I have similar feelings as well.”

“That’s not true!” Miyuki knew as well as he did that he wasn’t seriously deprecating himself. But she still couldn’t help but protest. “You have a kind of talent nobody else can emulate, Tatsuya! Just because you don’t have the same talents as everyone else… You’ve done many-times-harder work to come this far, haven’t you?!”

Tatsuya didn’t have normal talent, that was all—he had a magical talent far exceeding others. Miyuki was proud of being the one who best understood that. If anyone was trying to deny that, even if it was the person himself, her older brother, she couldn’t let that slide.

“That’s because I had a different talent.”

“Ah…” Tatsuya, however, had still said he could “understand such weakness” even in understanding of what Miyuki was trying to say. She realized her refutation had been shortsighted, and her cheeks flushed crimson with embarrassment.

“I covered for my lack of talent in modern magic with another talent. I can comment from an objective viewpoint like this because I had that option. If I hadn’t…I might have been clinging to the beautiful ideal of equality myself. Even if I knew it was a lie.”

“…”

She didn’t argue with her brother’s matter-of-fact tone this time. Miyuki already knew what he was trying to say. Tatsuya was neither lamenting himself nor pitying others; he was talking about the “human weakness” that existed in him, too.

“Those with inferior magic talent don’t want to think about the fact that it’s inferior, and so they preach the ideal of equality. Those who can’t use it at all don’t want to think about the fact that it’s just another type of talent people can have, and so they veil their jealousy with ideals. So then, what about those who understand all of that, and are still fanning the flames? The equality they talk about is to treat everyone the same whether or not they can use magic. The abolition of societal discrimination based on magic is the same as not valuing magical skills. And when it comes down to it, that’s a denial of the significance of magic in society. Magic cannot advance in a society that does not value it. Hidden behind those who shout their opposition to magic discrimination and those who scream for equality between magicians and non-magicians is a faction that wishes to make this country abandon magic.”

“What is this faction…?”

“For better or worse, magic is power. Money is power, too, and technology, and the military. Magic has the potential to be the same kind of power as battleships and fighter jets. Military uses for magic are being researched all over the world, in fact, and plenty of military spies are hard at work snooping around through magic technology.”

“Then the magic-denying faction’s objective is for this country to abandon magic, and thus cause the nation to lose its power?”

“Probably. And because of that, they’ll spare no efforts—even inhuman terrorism. With that said, who is it that would benefit from this nation losing power?”

“Wait… Then they’d be supported by…”

“That’s right. And the Ten Master Clans would never leave them unchecked. Especially not the Yotsuba family. So we need to take extra care while we still have the chance.”

He didn’t say what they should be cautious of. There was no need to say it between the two of them.

Miyuki nodded to her brother, her face slightly pale.