Chapter 8

With the club recruitment (war?) week ending, enrollment-related events came to a close.

Even Tatsuya’s class got up to full tilt with its magic studies.

Serious, focused education in magic began in the high school curriculum, but given the fact that the entrance exams included a practical portion, the students had already acquired some fundamental magical skills by the time they enrolled.

Classes were conducted based on this, too—so even though one would systematically relearn everything from the start, there were cases of students who were poor at practical abilities becoming unable to keep up not long after school started.

From a certain point of view, the Course 1/Course 2 divide was logical for taking this gap into consideration so that neither would negatively affect the other—even if that was leaving one side behind.

“Nine hundred and forty milliseconds. Tatsuya, you did it!”

“Sheesh… Third time’s the charm, I guess.”

Mizuki’s eyes glittered in vicarious pleasure, and Tatsuya responded with a tired grin.

Their class was in the middle of magical practice.

It involved pairing up, then compiling and executing a single type of magic program under a time limit.

One would read in an activation program, then use it as a base and let their magic calculation region, an unconscious region of the magician’s brain, construct and execute a magic program.

That was the modern system of magic.

Under this scheme, the process of converting the activation program—data that could be stored on a device—into a magic program that could not, used the word compile, which was taken from information technology parlance.

In modern magic, the scheme of digitizing the necessary work to execute magic and converting that data into an activation program, then using that as a base to construct a magic program, meant that it was accurate, safe, and versatile.

In exchange for that, it sacrificed the speed possessed by supernatural abilities, wherein a person could alter events just by willing it. As it placed the extra step of constructing a magic program in the middle, there was nothing that could be done about it. However, while the construction time for magic programs couldn’t be reduced to zero, you could come infinitely close to it.

The reason modern magic placed an emphasis on the speed at which one constructed magic programs went something like this: CADs were originally only a storage device meant to record the original activation program data, but magic execution speed quickly became the main point. The CAD they were using in class today didn’t need to be adjusted based on each individual—and because of that, there were absolutely no functions that supported speeding it up. The goal of today’s practice was to practice compilation speed by using this CAD, which was, in a certain sense, the way the devices were originally.

If one member of the pair couldn’t clear it, the other would automatically be kept for overtime. Mizuki had completed it on her first try, so for Tatsuya, this was the time to breathe a sigh of relief.

“But I was a little surprised. You really are bad at using magic practically, aren’t you?”

For single-type, single-process spells like the one they were using, the aim for magicians was to get the time between starting to read in a completely expanded activation program and executing the magic down to less than five hundred milliseconds.

Tatsuya, who needed three attempts to get under just one thousand milliseconds, couldn’t be called positive even in flattery. “Surprising? I feel like I make that assertion a lot.”

“I do hear you say it quite often…but I assumed you were just being modest. I mean, you can do anything, Tatsuya. I didn’t think you’d be bad at actually using magic.”

Mizuki tilted her head to the side, utterly confused, and Tatsuya couldn’t keep a dry grin from his face—he didn’t have the option to choose any other expression. “…It might sound like I’m bragging, but if my practical skills were average, I wouldn’t have been in this class at all.”

He took particular care not to let his tone sound sarcastic at all. Perhaps it worked—or maybe she was just being considerate—since she nodded straightforwardly. “I see. If you were good at practical skills, too…you’d be a little perfect! We might not have wanted to come near you,” said Mizuki, giving a carefree smile.

He was smiling along with her, but it got to him a little.

“But Tatsuya… Don’t you get frustrated?”

“…With what?” He couldn’t figure out what her repeated expression of confusion meant, so he started to want to answer her question.

“You’re actually very skilled, but you’re seen as having no talent. I think normal people would be frustrated. I personally can’t help feeling frustrated. If I had the kind of skill you do, I don’t think I’d be able to endure being looked down on as a Weed…but you don’t seem to care about it much, so…”

It was an extremely difficult-to-answer question.

Given Mizuki’s personality, he didn’t think she’d go and spread mean rumors or tell others, but if he were to try and give a convincing response, he’d need to get somewhat into his own personal circumstances. “Processing speed is a form of skill—and an important factor, at that. There are plenty of times where a tenth of a second can mean the difference between life and death. They’re not wrong in thinking I don’t have talent.”

Tatsuya decided to choose the answer he could say in public.

If Mizuki had been just any Course 2 student, she probably would have been satisfied with that.

But she—“But in the real world, Tatsuya, you can activate magic a lot faster, can’t you?”—was possessed of special “eyes.”

“…Why do you think that?” He knew giving such a response itself meant that he was admitting to what she’d said, and that he had been defeated, but amid his confusion he could produce no better reply.

“During that practice, you looked like you were having a really hard time on all three attempts. My mom is a translator, so it might sound strange, but it’s like you’re a person who can think about an English question in English and answer in English, but it wants to force you to answer in Japanese first and then translate it to English. And during the first attempt, you had almost put together a magic program, but then you got rid of it and redid the compile, didn’t you? From a timing point of view, you were reading in the activation program and constructing the magic program in parallel. And that’s when it hit me—that maybe you didn’t need to use an activation program for this level of magic. Maybe you could just construct a magic program directly.”

Using magic with the same speed as this, but without using an activation program—in other words, not using a CAD. He was under strict command to keep this skill a secret.

And she’d seen through it with just one attempt.

The very core of his mind froze over.

His caution reached its peak, his confusion went past its limit, and then subsided as he regained his calm.

Tatsuya was not at all used to being shaken like that; it was a very rare experience for him.

“I didn’t think you had seen that far. You really do have a good pair of eyes.”

This time, Mizuki’s face was the one that paled, reaffirming Tatsuya’s belief that she’d been trying to keep her own “eyes” a secret.

Maybe that was a little mean, he thought, the corners of his mouth turning up just slightly. But judging from her reaction, there was now far less risk of her seeing through to the true essence of this secret skill he had.

He then decided to give her one more push. She already knew that he was able to call forth magic programs without using an activation program. So by leading her to think it was purely a skill achieved through personal effort, he could lead her interest away from it. If he satisfied her curiosity just the right amount, then, considering her personality, she wouldn’t dig any deeper. “You’re right—if it’s a single type of spell, I can execute a little faster by creating a magic program directly. But I can only use it for magic that doesn’t involve a whole lot. Five processes is as high as I can go.”

The term process in the context of modern magic referred to two things: One was the actual process of executing magic, and the other was each individual step of activating multiple spells that you would put together to achieve some desired alteration in events. When Tatsuya referred to five processes, he meant a technique that brought forth a single event alteration by using five different “pieces” of magic put together.

For example, if you were going to use magic to move an egg from the kitchen to the table, you would need four processes: acceleration, movement, deceleration (negative acceleration), and stopping (ceasing movement).

Movement magic overwrote the speed of an object and its linear coordinates; if you didn’t also apply a specific acceleration process, the movement would ignore the target’s inertia and accelerate it. In the case of an egg, it would crack.

If you eliminated the movement process and tried to only use acceleration and deceleration, the egg would end up moving along a projectile path, and you’d need extremely precise deceleration control. It was easier, even at the cost of additional processing, to apply deceleration at the same rate as acceleration, then bring its speed to zero with a movement spell.

In contrast, man-to-man combat magic that launched your opponent was completed with just movement magic—one process. The objective was to damage the opponent in the first place, so there was no need for an extra process to soften the impact.

“I’d think five would be more than enough to use in combat…”

In general, consumer-use magic required more layers of processing than did combat-use magic. As Mizuki said, one-to five-process magic would probably cover the majority of combat spells.

“It’s not like I’m not studying magic for combat, though. I still need activation programs to get the most out of spells with more than one step, and I’m slower than others at doing that, so I’m naturally seen as inferior—which is fine,” he said, giving another thin smile. For some reason, though, Mizuki looked up at him with a film over her eyes. For a moment, Tatsuya got a terrible feeling—had he made a fatal mistake somewhere? But that calculation error itself was quickly shown to have been a mistaken result.

“That’s amazing, Tatsuya… I really respect that!” she said, fascinated, folding her hands in front of her. For Tatsuya, anyway, she had just said something he couldn’t ignore.

“Huh?”

“Normally people want to be magicians because they can use magic…but you actually have a real goal in mind for studying it…”

“Um, well, that’s true, but…”

“I must mend my ways!”

“Err…”

“I was really only studying magic to learn how to control my eyes, and I’ve never really given much thought to what I want to use magic for in the future, but from now on, I’ll be certain to think about it!”

What? She…she wasn’t trying to keep the stuff about her eyes a secret? thought Tatsuya at last, but he couldn’t get a word in edgewise because her energy was overwhelming him. “Hello? Miss Mizuki?”

“I see, I get it. If you have a clear objective, then of course you wouldn’t fall apart just because someone spoke badly about you. If you can achieve goals that are important to your life, then your grades in school are really just secondary! That’s what makes it worth living. Everyone lives their lives searching for meaning—”

“Hey, Mizuki, what are you all excited for?”

Mizuki’s solo recital—during the middle of class—continued until Erika cut in.

At last, Mizuki noticed the strange stares of her classmates—or the blank stares, really—and blushed and looked down.

As he watched her do so, he kept his expression discreet so as not to let his cynicism show on his face.

Meaning of life? That was far more than what it was. He never had the option of living a life without magic. He wasn’t going to become a magician because he could use magic. He had been made into a magician despite being unable to use magic.

Magic had been a curse for him ever since the moment he was born. All he was doing was struggling to change it into something he could tolerate.

But… If it was normal to become a magician if you could use magic, then it wouldn’t be odd in the slightest for magicians in the making to reject magic.

And then he thought…that maybe, just maybe, he’d made a slight error in his thinking.

And then, at lunch break, Tatsuya ended up staying behind anyway…because Erika and Leo begged him to.

“A thousand and sixty milliseconds… Keep it up. Just a little more.”

“I-it’s so far away… I had no idea point-one seconds could be so far away…”

“You don’t say time is far away, stupid. It’s long.”

“Erika… You got a thousand and fifty-two milliseconds.”

“Ahhhhh! Stop it! I was making fun of him to take a break!”

“I-I’m sorry…”

“No, it’s okay, Mizuki. Gotta face reality, no matter how harsh it is to you…”

“…I don’t give a damn about this stupid play thing you’re doing! Stop treating people like toys!”

Erika and Leo had been cooperating to fail at the exercise ever since class was in session, so they’d asked Tatsuya to coach them.

“Leo, you’re taking too long to take aim. You’re not trying to be a perfect marksman, here.”

“Yeah, I know, but…” Leo, who no longer had the energy to hide his complaints, nodded in agreement.

“Well, I suppose you do… Well, guess I’ll share a trick with you—what if you aim it first, then read in the activation program?”

“Wait, you can do that?”

“Yeah, but it’s a trick. It’s not practical, and it would only work here, so I don’t really want to teach you how…”

“What? Please, Tatsuya! I don’t care if it’s a trick or a cheat or whatever, just tell me!”

Leo put his hands together over his head and begged. Tatsuya sighed. “Don’t put words in my mouth. It’s not against the rules or anything… Geez, and I’ve been saying how bad I am at application this whole time, too. If you want to learn, you should ask someone with actual skill.”

“You say you’re bad at it, but you’re better than me! And you even know how compilation works on the inside. You’re the only one pointing out what I’m doing wrong, too.”

“I said I’ll teach you—no need to flatter me… And as for Erika…”

“What could it be? I don’t care if it’s a cheat or against the rules or whatever, please tell me! My stomach is growling!”

“I said, stop putting words in my mouth! Uhh, right, as for you… I don’t know what the issue is.”

“Whaaaat?”

“Frankly, I don’t understand why you can’t do this. You’re compiling far smoother than I was.”

“No way! Don’t abandon me, Tatsuya!”

Teary-eyed—probably as an act—she put her fingers together and looked up at him, clinging to him with her gaze. He sighed again.

The two of them act the exact same way, he thought. But he said something else. “Well, how about this? Erika, when you’re reading in the activation program, try putting your hands on top of each other on the panel.”

“Huh?” At that, Erika—and Mizuki as well—gave him blank stares. “…That’s it?”

“I’m not confident or anything, so if it works out, I’ll explain why.”

“O-okay… I’ll give it a shot.”

After Tatsuya saw her put her doubts to the side for the moment and face the stationary CAD, he started to lecture Leo on the “trick.”

Excess psionic light glimmered, and numbers other than the time were displayed on the top part of the small, round target. It was a scale attached to the target, showing the maximum pressure applied by the single weighting-type spell. It was set up so that it would record the time it took to actually activate when the scale detected a certain amount of force.

“One thousand ten milliseconds. Erika, you went down forty milliseconds all at once! Just one more push and you’ll have it!”

“O-okay, I got this! I feel like I can do this now!”

“One thousand sixteen. Don’t hesitate, Leo. You know where the target is. You don’t need to bother looking at it.”

“G-got it. Next time for sure!”

As Tatsuya and Mizuki reset the measure, Erika and Leo closed their eyes, stretched their arms, and focused their minds, each in their own way, to get ready to try again.

Then, from behind Tatsuya came a reserved voice.

“Tatsuya, may I be so rude as to interrupt…?”

He knew the voice belonged to his sister without needing to turn around.

Erika, though, did turn around at the multiple pairs of footsteps.

“Miyuki… Oh, and Mitsui and Kitayama, right?”

“Erika, don’t lose focus,” chided Tatsuya. “Sorry, Miyuki. One more and we’ll be good, so just wait a minute.”

“Eh?”

“I understand. I truly apologize, Tatsuya.”

Miyuki smiled and gave a slight bow when Tatsuya turned around and apologized.

Leo grimaced at the nonchalant pressure that had been placed on him. Tatsuya nodded his head to him. “Okay, this is the moment of truth.”

He hadn’t raised his voice, but his tone had been peremptory.

“Right!”

“Okay! This is it!”

The two of them, brimming with spirit, turned toward the CAD panel.

“We’re finally done!”

Erika’s cheer was the bell announcing the end of the lesson.

“Hoo… Danke, Tatsuya!”

Tatsuya lifted a hand to Leo’s word of thanks and addressed Miyuki. She was coming this way with a smile. Her two classmates, Honoka Mitsui and Shizuku Kitayama, followed with their own smiles, though hesitant.

“Excellent work, both of you,” she congratulated Erika and Leo, then asked, “Tatsuya, I’ve brought what you asked for… But is this enough?”

Tatsuya shook his head. “Well, there’s not much time left anyway, so it’s about the right amount. Thank you for coming, Miyuki. And Mitsui and Kitayama, as well. I apologize for making you help me out.”

He had already gotten to the point where he’d seen them around and spoken to them on occasion, but the two surrounding Miyuki were still only acquaintances; they weren’t yet friends to him. That was why he seemed a bit reserved when he spoke to them.

“No, not at all—this was nothing much!”

“We’re okay. I’m actually pretty strong.”

Honoka’s answer came with unexpected strength, and Shizuku’s with ambiguity as to whether she was serious or joking. He thanked both of them again, then took plastic bags from the three of them, including Miyuki.

“Here.” He held them out to Erika and Leo.

“What?”

“Sandwiches…?”

Inside the bags were sandwiches and drinks they sold at the store.

“If we went to the cafeteria to eat, we wouldn’t make it back in time for our afternoon classes,” he said, taking a bento box from Miyuki.

“Aw, thanks! I was totally starving!”

“Tatsuya, you’re the best!”

He gave a dry grin to his mercurial friends, then sat down in a nearby chair when Mizuki, too, addressed him in a reserved way. “…Is this all right? Aren’t food and drink not allowed in the training rooms?”

“That’s just for the area around the information terminals. School rules don’t have much to say about eating and drinking in the classroom.”

“Wait, is that true?”

“Yeah. Reading the school rules carefully would tell you that. I completely thought it wouldn’t be allowed myself, so I was a little surprised,” answered Tatsuya calmly, picking up his chopsticks. Mizuki was convinced and held out her hands.

“Huh… Well, in that case, don’t mind if I do!” Leo unwrapped his sandwich and began to devour it.

“Please, you wouldn’t have minded anyway,” retorted Erika, biting into her sandwich in an oddly refined fashion.

At the lively table—well, they didn’t have a table, so they brought over some chairs—Tatsuya and the rest of the party that had stayed behind began their late lunch.

Miyuki and the suppliers had brought just drinks for themselves and joined the circle.

“Did you three already eat?” asked Mizuki, probably in consideration.

“Yes. I was told by my brother to eat before him,” answered Miyuki.

“Hmm, that’s a little unexpected. I thought for sure you’d say something like I could not possibly partake of my food before my brother!” Erika’s retort was spoken with more of a smirk than a grin.

They could tell from her face she wasn’t serious. Those who heard her didn’t reply seriously, either.

—Except for one person.

“Oh my, you really understand, Erika. Normally, you’d be right, of course, but I did so today at my brother’s command. I cannot reject my brother’s words with my own selfish hesitations.”

“…Normally…”

“Yes.”

“…‘Of course,’ huh…?”

“Yes, that’s right, why?”

Erika’s smirk was starting to cramp, and Miyuki replied to her with seriousness, tilting her head to the side.

As if to wipe away the suddenly much heavier air, Mizuki began to talk in an unnaturally high tone of voice. “Miyuki, your class started practice today, too, right? What were you all doing?”

Honoka and Shizuku exchanged glances.

Their expressions were tinged with awkward reserve.

Miyuki, though, contrary to her classmates’ attitudes, didn’t make a big deal out of it; she lifted her lips from her straw and answered immediately. “I don’t think it was any different from what you all were doing, Mizuki. We were provided a dull-witted device and made to do boring practice that could never have any practical use outside a test environment.”

Everyone aside from Tatsuya looked taken aback. Those were blistering remarks for one who portrayed herself as a proper lady.

“You seem like you’re in a bad mood.”

“Yes, and I am displeased. The exercise would have been more useful to practice alone,” answered Miyuki, smiling, to her brother’s almost-teasing words, speaking in a pouty—and yet still obvious to onlookers, a fawning—voice.

“Huh… Maybe all that tutoring wasn’t such a good thing.”

“I will admit that I am blessed. I apologize if I’ve offended you,” said Miyuki, bowing seriously.

“No, no, you didn’t offend me at all,” replied Erika, waving a hand lightly.

“It’s only natural they’d separate the students with potential. Even in our dojo, people without potential get left alone.”

“Erika, your family runs a dojo?” asked Mizuki.

“It’s a side job, but yeah, we do a little of the old style of kenjutsu.”

“Oh, so that’s why…” Mizuki nodded, convinced. She was probably thinking of when Erika smacked Morisaki’s CAD out of his hands with her extending baton.

“Chiba… You think it’s only natural?” That was Honoka, hesitantly getting a few words in.

“You can call me Erika. Actually—I command you to call me that!”

“What do you keep acting so high and mighty for?”

Leo’s exasperated retort seemed to give Honoka just enough time to recompose herself. “Then you can call me Honoka, too, Erika.”

“Okay, got it! It’s natural, and maybe that’s why Course 1 kids get instructors and Course 2 kids don’t?”

“…Yes, that’s right,” said Honoka slowly, nodding.

“Then it’s only natural, right?” said Erika, nodding without any reservation. “It’s the obvious thing to do, so I don’t see why you or Miyuki need to feel bad about it,” she declared absently.

“…You really put things bluntly, eh?” asked Leo.

“Hmm? Leo, are you just mad about how things are?”

“No, I don’t think there’s any other option either, but…” His answer was stammered, unusually for him.

“I see! But I think it’s only natural, not that there’s no other option,” she answered, crisply and smoothly.

“…May I ask why?” said Honoka.

Erika cocked her head to the side. After a short silence to let her get her thoughts in order, she scratched at a temple with a finger and said, “Hmm… I’ve just thought it was only natural this whole time, so it’s a little hard to explain… Well, like, our dojo doesn’t teach skills for at least half a year after students join.”

“That right?” nodded Tatsuya, very interested.

“We only teach how to move your feet and practice swings at the beginning. And we only have to show them one time, and then watch as they do their practice swings over and over. Then, if they get to a point where they can really wield a katana, we start teaching them skills.”

“…But then wouldn’t there be students who would never get to that point no matter how long they tried?”

“Yeah, there are!” nodded Erika to Honoka’s question. “And those kind of people—they want to ignore their own lack of effort. The thing is, if they don’t get used to the motion of swinging a katana and moving their bodies, then they’ll never grasp the skills we try to teach them.”

“Oh…” grunted Mizuki.

Erika glanced at her, then continued. “And to do that, they need to swing a katana on their own. They learn how by watching. There’s plenty of examples all around them. It wouldn’t make any sense to wait for something to be taught to you. And thinking you’ll be taught from the beginning is a naive way of thinking, too. The instructors and the masters are people currently in training themselves, you know? They have their own training to do. Guys who can’t absorb what they’re taught would be talking nonsense if they asked for someone to teach them.”

Tatsuya watched quite interestedly as Erika, suddenly excited, went on and on with her strong declarations.

“…Thanks for the explanation, I guess, but both you and me were just getting Tatsuya to teach us, remember?”

“Ack! Ouch! It hurts when you say that.” Leo’s indication made her grimace, but her absent attitude didn’t change. “I mean, that was, like, something we had to do to get out of the immediate problem we were having… But I think if the person you’re teaching isn’t at a suitable level for you to teach them, then it’ll end up bad for both ends. Well, the worst thing is when the one teaching can’t keep up with the one being taught.”

She gave a quick, meaningful wink.

Tatsuya smirked in an ill-natured way. “Unfortunately, it looks like we got the worst result today. In the end, my record was over a hundred milliseconds slower than yours, Erika.”

A thin bead of cold sweat ran down Erika’s temple. “Oh, uh, I wasn’t, I didn’t mean that… C-come to think of it, you didn’t reveal how the trick worked! Hey, why did my time go down so much just by putting my other hand on top?”

She forced the topic to change.

It was clear to everyone she was diverting the conversation, but it seemed like if they persisted too much, they’d be feeling the unpleasant effects of it much later, so Tatsuya obediently let the topic be changed.

“What? It’s simple. You’re used to a one-handed style for your CAD.”

Tatsuya’s “revelation” had only just begun, but the one who had asked for the explanation, Erika, went “Huh?” and interrupted.

Her expression was asking him how he knew that, but he thought it was something one would naturally notice at first glance. Both the action she’d shown when they were facing Morisaki and her CAD’s form itself led him to easily guess the style she preferred with CADs. He ignored Erika’s slightly exaggerated reaction and continued his “revelation.” “So I thought that maybe you couldn’t smoothly access the kind of classroom CAD where you put both hands on the panel.”

“So by putting her hands on top of each other, you made it so she was only contacting it in one place…” Mizuki nodded in admiration. She wasn’t the only one giving him that look, though.

“Using only one hand would have worked, too, but I figured you’d get more pumped up if you put your hands on top of each other. In other words, it was all in the attitude.”

“…I get it. You played me like a fiddle, Tatsuya.”

Erika gave an empty grin.

Her sudden exhaustion was very comic-like, and it caused everyone else to smile.

“Yeah, I kind of don’t care anymore… Oh, right. Did you use the same CAD as this in Class A?”

“Yes,” said Miyuki, nodding, not bothering to hide her aversion to it.

That piqued Erika’s curiosity. “Hey, just curious, but could you try it out here so I can see what kind of time you get?”

“What? Me?” responded Miyuki, pointing at herself, her eyes growing wide.

Erika nodded unnaturally deeply.

Miyuki used her eyes to ask Tatsuya.

“Why not?” he nodded, giving a dry grin.

“If you say so, Tatsuya…” she responded hesitantly, indicating her understanding.

Mizuki, who was closest to the machine, set up the scale.

Miyuki placed her fingers on the panels as though she were going to play the piano.

Measurement began.

The excess psions flashed…

…and Mizuki’s face froze.

Impatient with her friend not announcing the results, Erika read out the results.

“…Two hundred thirty-five milliseconds…”

“What…?”

“Crazy…”

The facial-muscle petrification infected the others as well.

“That’s amazing, no matter how many times I hear it…”

“Miyuki’s processing abilities are close to the limit of human reaction speed.”

The students from A class sighed to themselves as well.

Her brother was the only one who wasn’t surprised. The girl in question frowned, unsatisfied. “I suppose that’s as good as it will get with an old educational one like this. Give it up, Miyuki,” said Tatsuya.

“I simply cannot bear it… I cannot stand needing to take in an activation program like this, with so much surface noise and not a hint of polish or sophistication. I truly cannot display the full extent of my abilities without using a CAD that you have adjusted, Tatsuya.”

“Don’t say that. I’ll negotiate with the president and the chairwoman on the school side of things to try and get the software switched out with something a little more usable.”

Tatsuya softly stroked Miyuki’s face, which was twisted in both sullenness and sweetness, like a small child.

Like always, despite the display, nobody went after them.

Not for the showing of her real abilities, and not for the words exchanged between the siblings.

Given the profound difference, it was absurd to even think about being jealous.

Tatsuya lazily watched the students coming and going in the cafeteria after school. There was an air of awkwardness about, perhaps because it was used by many of the new freshmen. From what Mari had told him, the school cafeteria saw its highest utilization rate right after school started. As they got used to it, they would find hangouts in rooms, courtyards, and empty classrooms, and stop coming as much. Well, they’re not running the place for profit, so they probably don’t care about having fewer guests.

The coffee on his table had already grown cold. He’d been placed into the reverse situation as yesterday. The only part that was the same was that he’d been the one invited this time. Tatsuya was currently waiting for Sayaka to hear her answer for her “homework.”

There was an annoying gaze watching him, following him around, but he didn’t take any particular action from his end. He was confident that if he cared enough, he could find who was spying on him, no matter what tricks they used to hide him-or herself. However, the cafeteria was an open space, so even if he caught the culprit, he knew they’d just feign ignorance. Rather than fruitlessly reveal his own intentions, it would be wiser to wait quietly and pretend he didn’t notice.

Fifteen minutes from the agreed-upon time, she finally showed up.

“I’m sorry! Were you waiting?”

“It’s all right. I got your message.”

He wasn’t lying to make her feel better. His terminal had received a message to the effect that she’d be around ten minutes late. It had come five minutes before they were going to meet, though, so it didn’t give him any time to change his plans. Tatsuya was patient, however—ten or twenty minutes barely even counted as waiting for him.

“I see, that’s good… I wouldn’t know what to do if you got mad and left.” Sayaka heaved an exaggerated sigh of relief.

It seemed like she was in her “cute girl” mode again today. She’s been putting on this performance for a while. What does she think I’m into? wondered Tatsuya.

“What’s wrong?” She sounded confused.

It looked like his thoughts had shown in his movements. “It’s nothing important. Sometimes you turn into a cute girl, and I was feeling the gap between that and when you’re holding a sword.”

“Oh, come on… Stop teasing me.” With a hint of fluster, she turned her eyes away.

Was that an honest response, or was it an affected act, too? He couldn’t tell. Unfortunately, his probing had fallen through.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized with a smile. This was his own act. He didn’t have much confidence in it, though.

“Geez… Shiba, deep down you’re a womanizer, aren’t you?”

“Well, I’m not a magician. Not yet, anyway.”

He put his cooled coffee to his lips and slowly turned around. He wasn’t trying to look away from Sayaka as much as he was glancing at the shadow peeking out from behind some decorative plants.

“Watanabe…” Sayaka noticed the shadow a moment later, too. Her voice was too soft, though, so it didn’t reach the ears of the one she’d spoken the name of.

“’Sup, Tatsuya?”

Mari was the first one to speak. But that was clearly a challenge; if he hadn’t clearly looked over there, she probably would have passed by with a look of indifference—if that wasn’t the case, then she wouldn’t have tried to keep out of sight.

“I’m not slacking off.”

Mari gave a pained grin to Tatsuya’s response. He actually meant “I’m not on duty today,” but she found it difficult to decide if it was a joke or if he was acting rebelliously. “I didn’t come to give you a warning as the chairwoman or anything. I just happened to be passing by.”

But thanks to what he had said, Mari’s appearance had stopped feeling unnatural. And Mari, who could get with things on the spot like that, was pretty impressive.

“Sorry, it seems like I interrupted something. I apologize, Mibu.”

“No, you didn’t…” Sayaka’s voice in reply and her expression had stiffened up a little at Mari, maybe out of nervousness from being addressed by an upperclassman. Or maybe it was antipathy toward the disciplinary committee.

Tatsuya, for whatever reason, felt like neither of those was quite accurate.

His impression was strengthened by the powerful gaze she fired toward Mari’s back as she left.

“About the other day…”

Once Mari had left the cafeteria, Sayaka broached the main topic herself. Tatsuya had been late in doing so, since he was thinking things like I was the one who asked and I can’t believe she’d come to check up on me… and Was she keeping an eye on something else?

“At first, I thought just telling the school what we thought would be enough.” Her arms twitched—maybe she’d clenched her fists under the table or something. “But I realized that wouldn’t be enough, after all. I think we should demand reform in how the school treats us.”

Right to the point was Tatsuya’s impression. Was she serious, or was it a bluff to draw him in? If it was a bluff, it had the opposite effect. “When you say reform, what exactly would you like to be changed?”

“Well…everything about how we’re treated.”

“When you say everything, you mean classes, for example?”

“…Well, that, too.”

“The main difference between Course 1 and Course 2 is the presence of an instructor. Given that, are you asking for more teachers from the school?”

That was impossible. The national school policy was a direct result of there not being enough adults who could use magic at an effective level in the first place. The two-course system was, in a way, a plan created in full knowledge of the drawbacks in order to secure a supply of magicians and magic engineers.

“I don’t plan on going that far, but…” As expected, he received a stammered denial in reply.

“Then is it club activities? Aren’t the kendo club and the kenjutsu club allotted the same amount of time to use the gymnasium?” As far as he’d looked into it yesterday, the days allotted to the kendo and kenjutsu clubs—surprisingly enough—were distributed equally.

“Or is it a budget issue? It’s true that magic competition clubs are given bigger budgets compared to other clubs, but I believe budget distribution based on club achievement isn’t unusual to see even in normal high schools.”

“Well that’s… That may be true, but… Aren’t you unhappy with it, Shiba? You’re superior to Course 1 students in every way aside from practical application—like magical theory, general subjects, physical fitness, and skill in actual combat. And yet just because you’re bad at application, you get looked down on as a Weed. Isn’t that frustrating for you?”

Her desperate, vehement argument made Tatsuya feel a little irritated. His dissatisfaction and resentment had nothing to do with how she felt. If she was the one who wanted to change things, then why wasn’t she talking about herself? “Of course I’m not happy with it.”

But he—

“Then…!”

“But there is nothing I really want to have the school change.”

—spoke of his own feelings.

“Huh?”

“I never expected all that much from a school as an educational institution.” It was no more than a piece of a fragment, but they were his true thoughts. “I don’t need anything more than the ability to view private documents and materials you can only look at from places affiliated with the National Magic University, and to gain the right to graduate from Magic High School.”

Sayaka’s face froze up at his detached—even to himself—statement.

“And I certainly don’t plan on blaming the school for the childish nature of my classmates for using hurtful slang prohibited by the school.”

At first, those words appeared to be criticizing the mistaken elitism of the Blooms looking down at the Weeds, but in reality, he was blaming Sayaka’s own weakness for trying to make her own dissatisfaction the fault of someone else.

“Unfortunately, it would seem we do not share a common position on this.” With that, Tatsuya rose from his seat.

“Wait!”

He turned around to see Sayaka looking up at him with a pale, clinging gaze, still seated—maybe she couldn’t get up. She wasn’t glaring—it was a look of pure sincerity and desperation. “How…can you think so rationally about it? What on earth do you have to support you?”

“I would like to make a gravity-controlled thermonuclear fusion reactor a reality. Studying magic is no more than a means to that end.”

Sayaka’s face blanked out. She probably hadn’t understood what she’d just been told.

The actualization of a gravity-controlled thermonuclear fusion reactor was one of the so-called Three Great Practical Problems of Weighting Magic, along with the realization of multipurpose flight magic and the realization of a pseudo-perpetual motion device by inertial infinitization. It was far too big a project for a Course 2 student to suggest as a future goal.

And Tatsuya hadn’t said what he did because he wanted her to understand. Without bothering any more with Sayaka, he turned back around.

A week passed without incident.

His disciplinary committee patrols saw none of the ambush-like attacks from the recruitment week, and as Mizuki prophesied (?), everything was mostly peaceful. Finally, Tatsuya had gotten his hands on his quiet high school life—or so it seemed. It was, in hindsight, no more than a momentary tranquillity.

It was right after classes ended, just at the start of what could be called “after school.”

Students who had club after this were going to their lockers to change or grab their things, and those who had brought in tablets and paper notebooks were grabbing their bags from the sides of their desks. Those who did neither were casually getting ready for the trek home, each in his or her own way. That was when it happened.

“Attention all students!”

A loud voice just short of howling burst from the speaker.

“What the hell was that?!”

“Would you calm down already? You’re basically yelling yourself!”

“…I think you should calm down, too, Erika.”

The many students still in the room were busy being confused.

“—Please excuse me. Attention all students!”

Once more, this time a little awkwardly, they heard the same line from the speaker.

“They must have messed up the volume control,” muttered Tatsuya lowly.

Erika keenly picked up on his words and immediately went for the jab. “Uh, I don’t think this is the time for witty jokes.”

Mizuki found herself unable to actually say, “That goes for you, too, Erika” aloud.

“We are a coalition of the willing who aim to abolish discrimination at school.”

“The willing…” muttered Tatsuya cynically after hearing the assertive voice of the male student from the speaker. Judging by what he’d heard last week in the cafeteria, this broadcast hijacking was for the treatment reform demands that Sayaka had talked about. He couldn’t help but wonder, though, just how many examples in all of history there were of members who were part of political organizations voluntarily becoming a “coalition.”

“We hereby declare our desire for negotiations on equal terms with the student council and the club committee.”

“Hey, shouldn’t you, like, go?” Erika expectantly asked Tatsuya, who was sitting and looking at the speaker. She probably hadn’t heard his unfriendly murmur, though.

“I suppose so.” He didn’t say that her attitude was imprudent; what she’d said had been reasonable. “They’ve obviously misappropriated the broadcasting room. The disciplinary committee will—” At the exact moment he spoke, a message arrived on the portable terminal in his pocket rather than on the information terminal fixed on the desk. “Oops, speak of the devil. I should get going.”

“Oh, okay. Be careful.” Mizuki’s voice trembled with unease as Tatsuya rose from his seat and turned away from them. Suddenly concerned, he turned around and scanned the classroom. Some of his classmates were sitting and some were standing, but not many looked like they were about to leave the classroom. There were few others who were bemused like Erika or curious like Leo. Most of his classmates looked anxious, unable to decide whether they should just get home.

“Oh, Tatsuya!”

“Miyuki, you got called here, too?”

“Yes, by the president. She told me to go to the broadcast room.”

Part of the way there, he met up with Miyuki and they headed toward the broadcast room. They weren’t moving very quickly, however.

“Could this be Blanche’s doing?”

“We can’t be sure of what group is behind this, but they would certainly do this kind of thing.”

They were still talking about it as they arrived in front of the broadcasting room together. Mari, Katsuto, and Suzune were already there, as well as others from the disciplinary committee’s and club committee’s active units.

“You’re late.”

“Sorry.”

He returned the superficial reprimand with a superficial apology and started coming to terms with the situation.

The broadcast had stopped, likely because they’d cut the electricity. They probably hadn’t gone inside yet because the door was barricaded. The culprits who trapped themselves inside must have gotten hold of a master key somehow.

“This is clearly a criminal act, isn’t it?” They let the ends justify the means—model activists.

Tatsuya had been talking entirely to himself, but Suzune didn’t hear it that way. “That’s right. We must respond carefully so that we don’t set them off any more than this.”

“I don’t have much faith that being careful will cause them to listen to reason,” put in Mari immediately. “We should devise a quick solution, even if it means getting a little rough.”

Their difference in opinions appeared to put them at an impasse. It was an incredibly clumsy way of dealing with the emergency.

“What do you have in mind, Chairman Juumonji?”

Looks filled with surprise turned on Tatsuya at his question. Even Tatsuya had wondered if he’d stepped out of line as he’d asked it, but he figured it was better than staying in this deadlock. It must have meant that he was no adult, either. And this wasn’t a situation in which they could ask an adult to intervene.

“I’m thinking we should respond to their demands for negotiation. We don’t have many clues in the first place. Firmly arguing against them may allow us to eliminate future worries.”

“Then you say we should wait here like this?”

“I am unsure what decision to make in that regard. We should not let unauthorized conduct be, but I don’t believe this crime deserves a hasty resolution if it means destroying school property. I inquired as to whether or not the school could open the door using the security surveillance system, but I was denied a response.”

That meant they couldn’t force a resolution for the situation. Accordingly, Katsuto’s stance was close to that of Suzune’s. Then they couldn’t do anything but wait like this.

Tatsuya gave a polite bow and stepped back, and Mari shot him with an unhappy stare. He hadn’t been urged on by her thorny gaze, but he took his portable terminal out of his pocket and booted it into call mode.

They could only wait, but if they weren’t going to do anything else, he wouldn’t have stood up and asked the question.

The call tone rang five times, then connected. “Is this Mibu? It’s Shiba.”

A few more surprised looks were directed at him.

“…And where are you now?”

Even more sets of perplexed eyes stared hard at him.

“I see—the broadcasting room. That is…unfortunate.”

A moment later he grimaced—possibly because a loud voice had shouted back at him before the volume controller could kick in. They couldn’t do any more than speculate, though, given the canal-shaped receiver was almost completely soundproof.

“No, I am not making fun of you. Mibu, please, consider the situation a little more calmly… Yes, I’m sorry. Now then, what I called you for…”

Mari’s, Suzune’s, and a few others’ ears perked up. They must have known they still wouldn’t be able to hear the voice on the other end, but they didn’t want to let a single word Tatsuya said slip by them.

“Chairman Juumonji has stated that he will accept negotiations. We still don’t know the student council president’s opinion—oh, the student council president thinks the same way.” Suzune gestured and Tatsuya immediately corrected himself. “With that said, they’d like to meet with you to determine a time and place for the negotiations… Yes, right now. That way the school won’t have to get involved… No, I can guarantee your freedom, Mibu. We’re not the police, so we can’t throw you behind bars or anything… All right.”

He took his ear from his calling unit and stowed the device along with the rest of his terminal, then turned back to Mari. “She said they’ll come out right away.”

“Was that Sayaka Mibu?”

“Yes. She gave me her private number so that we could meet, but it seems to have come in handy for another reason.”

Behind him, Miyuki cast her eyes down a little. It wasn’t so pronounced that it would seem unnatural, but he immediately knew she was doing it to hide her irritation behind her long hair.

“You’re a quick worker, you are…”

“You misunderstand.” Tatsuya didn’t notice it, however, since his awareness had been partially on Mari’s false accusation—for better or worse. At the very least, she had the good sense not to recklessly give him a sharp pinch in the back or anything. “Anyway, I think we should get ready.”

Without looking behind him (in other words, at Miyuki), he suggested their next course of action to Mari, Suzune, and Katsuto.

“Get ready?” Mari looked at him, wondering what he was saying.

Tatsuya looked back at her, exasperated, wondering what she was saying. “We need to get ready to arrest them. They stole a key. They probably brought their CADs with them, and they might have other weapons, too.”

“…I thought you just said something along the lines of guaranteeing their freedom.”

“The only person I guaranteed freedom to was Mibu. Also, I didn’t suggest anything that would imply I was negotiating on behalf of the disciplinary committee.”

This time, not only Mari, but Suzune and Katsuto as well, were taken aback.

The only exception present chided him lightly. “You’re a bad person, Tatsuya.”

“It took you long enough to notice, Miyuki.”

“Hee-hee, I suppose so.” Her tone of voice, though, was tinged with amusement.

“However, Tatsuya, regarding how you saved Mibu’s private number to your terminal—that is a different matter. You will tell me all about it later, won’t you?” added Miyuki with a broad smile and an even more amused tone of voice.

“What’s going on here?!”

Perhaps as they’d expected, and perhaps as was only natural, Sayaka pressed Tatsuya for an explanation.

Including her, there had been five people taking over the broadcasting room. As Tatsuya had thought, they possessed CADs, but didn’t have any other firearms or bladed weapons with them. Tatsuya personally felt that showed a complete lack of resolve, but they didn’t think they were doing anything wrong, so maybe it was a matter of course that their efforts had been unsatisfactory.

The four aside from Sayaka were arrested by members of the disciplinary committee, but they only confiscated Sayaka’s CAD. Mari had given consideration to Tatsuya’s reputation, and this was the result. Tatsuya himself felt he didn’t necessarily need to keep any oral promises, though.

Sayaka’s hands were reaching for his chest, and Tatsuya held her wrists in his. He had smoothly grabbed the hands trying to grab his collar, and he looked back at her indignation without expression.

“You tricked us!” She struggled to break her hands free, and Tatsuya simply let them go. She tried to complain further, but a voice addressed her from behind.

“Shiba has not tricked you.”

The heavy, strong tones caused Sayaka to tremble briefly. “Chairman Juumonji…”

“We will hear your excuses. We will also accept your negotiations. But acquiescing to your demands and accepting the actions you’ve taken as proper are separate issues.”

Sayaka’s aggressiveness faded. She swallowed her anger at the power of Katsuto, the overseer of all extracurricular activities.

“That may be true, but could I get you to release them?”

But then, with those words, a petite person stepped between Tatsuya and Sayaka. She had her back turned to him, as if to shield him.

“Saegusa?” Katsuto said dubiously.

“But Mayumi…” Mari began to argue.

Mayumi cut her argument off before it could begin. “I think I know what you want to say, Mari. But Mibu can’t meet with us to plan the negotiations by herself. And she’s a student of this school; she can’t run away.”

“We would never run away!” Sayaka snapped reflexively at her.

Mayumi, however, didn’t directly respond to her words. “I’ve just returned from consulting with the head life coach. They will apparently leave the matter of the stolen key and the use of the broadcasting facility without permission to the student council.”

Her explanation was nonchalant, describing both her lateness and the position they were currently placed in. Still, Sayaka and the others didn’t show fear. Regardless of the right or wrong of the situation, Tatsuya felt that their nerves of steel were praiseworthy.

“Mibu, I would like for you all to meet with the student council regarding the negotiations; could you come along with me?”

“…Yes, we will.”

“Juumonji, I will see you later, okay?”

“Understood.”

“I’m sorry, Mari. I hesitated to do this because it seemed like I’d be stealing your glory.”

“I may feel like that just a little bit, but practically speaking, there’s no advantage to getting any glory. Don’t worry about it.”

“You’re right. All right. Tatsuya, Miyuki, you two may feel free to leave for the day.”

There was a very short period of time where they were surprised, and Miyuki was the first one to recover from the situation. “…Thank you, President. We will take our leave.” She gave a polite bow. Tatsuya silently followed suit, then they left.