Chapter 1

2095 AD, mid-July.

The students of the National Magic University Affiliated First High School had just finished with their first semester exams last week; they were now devoting their energy to prepare for summer’s Nine School Competition. Tatsuya Shiba, though, found himself unable to go along with the enthusiasm filling the school grounds. Part of it was, certainly, that he had a sober personality. But today, the main reason was that a teacher had called him to the office about his exam scores.

“Tatsuya!”

“Leo… What’s wrong? What are you all doing here?”

After Tatsuya was finally released from the student guidance office, his classmates—Leonhard Saijou, Erika Chiba, and Mizuki Shibata—confronted him.

Circumstances dictated that his younger sister, Miyuki, wasn’t here; she couldn’t get out of her competition preparations and had to go to the student council room without seeing him first.

Still, as though implying they were here in Miyuki’s place, her classmates Honoka Mitsui and Shizuku Kitayama were present, both with worried looks.

The guidance office was on the faculty floor; the classrooms for students weren’t on the same story nor were they even in the same building. That didn’t mean students never came by here, though. Fellow freshmen and upperclassmen alike passed by, giving furtive, scrutinizing, or otherwise nonchalant glances to the group of five in front of Tatsuya.

There was no helping that, either; they stood out.

Of course, that wasn’t something limited to just today—this was par for the course.

Despite being a Course 2 student, he was chosen to be a disciplinary officer and went on to display exceptional martial aptitude during the new student club recruitment week. Tatsuya had become famous at school.

The fact that he’d also crushed a terrorist group was a secret, but his efforts during that recruitment week alone were more than enough reason for freshmen, as well as upperclassmen, to pay attention to him.

Erika was a positive, beautiful young girl, and ten out of ten people would agree.

Mizuki seemed rather plain—perhaps because she was usually caught between Miyuki and Erika—but she had a mature, refreshing sort of beauty and she was garnering popularity mainly among upperclassmen.

Leo always found himself on the receiving end of Erika’s disparaging criticism (although roughly 100 percent of that was simply abusive language), but with his strong German features and his excellent motor skills, he’d earned a place among female students as “a boy they were a little curious about.” (To Leo, “pure Japanese” apparently meant having pale skin and dark eyes.)

In addition, Honoka and Shizuku, both of whom were considered to excel in studies even among their fellow Course 1 freshmen, had looks that most would place in the “cute” category. (All said and done, Tatsuya’s face and figure were the most average of the bunch.)

With this many people gathered around, Course 1 and Course 2 mingling without regard to the class boundaries, they were bound to draw prying eyes whether they liked it or not.

Even so, Miyuki, the matchless beauty who was not only the top seat upon enrollment and the year’s new student representative but also a member of the student council, was absent from the group. That was the only reason they could still tolerate how many looks they were getting.

Of course, certain people, including one closer to him, didn’t mind the stares at all—this man here, for example.

“What do you mean what’s wrong? That’s my damn line! Why in the world did they call you down to the guidance office?”

Tatsuya nodded to himself at Leo’s response. His friends appeared to have all gathered out of worrying about him. The thought of dodging the issue crossed his mind for a moment, but he thought better of it. He knew it would be dishonest.

“They were interrogating me about my scores on the practical portion of the exam.”

Leo narrowed his eyes, displeased at that. “…Interrogate? That doesn’t sound very good. What did they ask you?”

“In summary, they thought maybe I didn’t try very hard on it.”

Erika was the first to get indignant. “What’s that supposed to mean? You wouldn’t get anything out of doing that! What are they, idiots?”

Tatsuya was in complete agreement with the sentiment, so he just gave her a pained grin in reply. If he was doing something unfair to raise his grades, that would be one thing. But what would be the point of actively trying to get fewer points? It was, as she said, an idiotic suspicion.

“But I think I understand how the teachers feel,” remarked Shizuku.

“What do you mean?” answered Mizuki, looking at her sideways.

“Tatsuya’s grades were really shocking, you know,” replied Honoka.

That gave Tatsuya pause. He considered what facial expression that comment warranted—he couldn’t puff out his chest with pride, but being modest about it would come off as sarcastic. So he made another wry smile.

At First High—actually, at all magic high schools—periodic exams were separated into a written portion on magical theory and a practical portion.

On the other hand, general subjects like language, math, science, and social studies were usually graded based on just homework assignments. This was a high school to foster magicians, so it was believed to be unnecessary for the students to compete in anything but magic. (Tatsuya and the others knew the difference between magicians and magic engineers, but only because it was the main thing separating their paths in the future. For the rest of society, “magic engineers” just looked like a type of magician. They didn’t refer to those that worked on magical engineering but couldn’t use magic as “magic engineers.”)

The written portion on magical theory included fundamental magic science and magic engineering as requirements. There were then two electives selected from magic geometry, magic linguistics, magic pharmaceutics, and magic architecture, and one additional elective selected from either magic history or magic phylogenetics. This all brought the total to five subjects.

Magical practice looked at one’s magical throughput (the speed at which one could construct magic sequences), capacity (the scale one could achieve when constructing magic sequences), and interference (the strength with which one’s magic sequences could overwrite eidos, the information bodies accompanying events). All three of these constituted an individual’s “magic power,” meaning the practical portion measured four areas in total.

The best grades in the school were announced on the school network, full names included. Of course, freshmen student marks were no exception.

The students with the highest combined theoretical and practical scores were as expected.

First place was Miyuki Shiba.

Second place was Honoka Mitsui.

Third place, by a slim margin, was Shizuku Kitayama.

The entire top three were from Class A, with the first Class B student being a boy named Hagane Tomitsuka at fourth place. Other familiar names included Shun Morisaki at ninth. Of the announced top twenty scores, all were Course 1 students.

The scores for just the practical portion saw a somewhat different ordering than the overall rankings, but once again, Course 1 students were the only ones on the list. Specifically, Miyuki was first, Shizuku was second, Morisaki was third, and Honoka was fourth. The top spots were all taken up by Class A, giving the teachers a little something to worry about. (Classes A through D had been split up so that each class had an equal average score on the entrance exam. The issue here was that Class A displayed a clearly higher degree of proficiency than the other three.)

But when it came to the grades on purely the theoretical portion, the results were a stunning upset.

First place was Class E’s Tatsuya Shiba.

Second place was Class A’s Miyuki Shiba.

Third place was Class E’s Mikihiko Yoshida.

Honoka was fourth, Shizuku was tenth, Mizuki was seventeenth, Erika was twentieth, while Leo and Morisaki were both lower than that, so they were unranked.

While practical exam scores were a big part of the Course 1/Course 2 separation, normally, people couldn’t understand theory well enough if they couldn’t do the practical part of it. If they didn’t have an intuitive grasp of magic, they would have trouble understanding several difficult concepts from a theoretical viewpoint.

And yet, of the top three scores, two were from Course 2 students.

That in and of itself was completely unprecedented, but in average points—not total points—Tatsuya’s score was over ten points above second place. His score was far and away the best.

“Theory and practice might be separate, but not this separate,” said Shizuku, offering an objective viewpoint.

“But to say that Tatsuya was slacking, I don’t think it’s possible,” argued Mizuki, a little angry.

“Shizuku knows that, too,” soothed Honoka.

“But the teachers don’t know Tatsuya personally like we do,” added Erika.

“Yeah. They only know us from over a terminal screen…”

As Leo said, this could be called a glaring deficiency in their modern educational system. That said, even teachers from the last century didn’t necessarily understand what their students were really like on the inside.

Plus, with schools these days, there were replacement positions that supplanted the old homeroom teacher system to deal with this very problem.

“…Right,” continued Leo. “Why not go talk to Haru?”

The role of responding to student dissatisfaction and consulting them on school-related trouble belonged to the class counselors. Leaving aside whether it was proper to call Haruka “Haru,” Leo’s suggestion itself was appropriate.

Tatsuya shook his head anyway. “I talked to the teacher Miss Ono about it yesterday. She actually told me why I would be called down today.”

“You can’t rely on her for anything, can you?” blurted out Erika, not mincing words.

“Now, don’t say that,” chided Tatsuya, grinning. “Novice counselors don’t have the power to do much of anything in the first place.”

“…Tatsuya, that sounded a lot worse than what I said.”

Erika was right, though—Tatsuya had a way of talking that managed to be even more unreserved than most things she said.

“Ohhh?” Leo grunted at the accurate retort.

Erika gave him a narrow-eyed glare. “What?”

“So you can say normal things, too,” he explained, as though talking to himself, eyes wide.

“Shut up.” Erika hit him with a rolled-up notebook.

Incidentally, the demand for paper notebooks hadn’t gone away even in this advanced age of information systems. With magic high schools in particular, the act of writing characters by hand was very important in subjects like magic linguistics. And it was simply easier to physically draw diagrams and charts in classes like magic geometry than use a terminal. There were probably more students walking around with paper notebooks here than in regular high schools. Although it was a little suspicious how she was carrying a notebook in the hallway without a class to go to.

“Oww…” Leo, unable to avoid the swinging notebook, clutched his head and squatted low. It wasn’t as though he let her beat him without offering any resistance—it was just that Erika, for the moment, was more skilled than him, and Leo’s reaction time was too slow to evade the hit. Because of that (?), he always ended up saying the wrong thing and experiencing pain for it.

“…This girl’s crazy! My head isn’t a drum!”

Erika turned her face away, not listening to Leo’s perfectly reasonable protest.

Even Mizuki, who would always fidget around, unsure at first, seemed to have gotten used to the same sequence of events that have occurred over and over again for the past three months. She gave a perplexed sort of smile but didn’t say anything about their peculiar form of communication. Instead, she prevented further escalation of the conflict by steering the conversation back to where it was before.

“Anyway, Tatsuya,” she said, “did you clear up the teachers’ misunderstanding?”

“Yeah. Well, more or less.”

“More or less?” repeated Mizuki.

Tatsuya explained further, his tone and expression both reluctant. “I got them to understand it wasn’t that I wasn’t trying. But then they recommended that I transfer to a different school.”

“Transfer?”

“What? But why?”

Mizuki and Honoka both cried out, their faces changing color. The other three gave him similar looks.

“They suggested Fourth High was more suited for my talents because of its focus on magic engineering among the Nine Schools. I turned them down, of course.”

Two of them breathed sighs of relief, but two others displayed clear indignation.

The former were Mizuki and Honoka, while the latter were Leo and Erika.

Furthermore, the last remaining one maintained her impenetrable poker face.

“…Doesn’t it seem sort of contradictory for a school to tell you to go to a different school where your practical skills don’t need to be that good? It’d be one thing if it was like your grades are bad and you can’t keep up, but even your scores on the practical portion were passing.”

“I think the teachers just don’t wanna see him. Tatsuya might know even more about magic than they do!”

“I think the two of you should calm down,” said Tatsuya, shifting into firefighting mode—who knew how much Leo and Erika would have flared up if left alone? “Leo’s right. Even if my scores were just barely in the red, I’m under no obligation to drop out, so there’s no real harm done. It might really have been an act of goodwill on their part. Though, if it is, it was a pretty insensitive one… Self-righteousness, I guess you could call it.”

Tatsuya’s smooth, calm, and stinging assessment caused their noble fury to subside as their anger faltered. If he’d actually been trying to cool them off, it would seem like he had a deep and complex plan. But the reality was it just happened to look that way. Everyone seemed hesitant to answer after that.

“I think you’ve failed as a teacher if you mistake your basic premise,” said Shizuku in her unique monotone, her words possibly supporting theirs, and possibly not. It did thin the bite from Tatsuya’s statement, though, so once again, it happened as an unintended result; but he thought to himself that might have been what she was going for.

“It’s not as if Fourth High actually treats practical skills lightly. They just emphasize more complex, layered, technical magic instead of the combat-oriented magic reflected in Nine School Competition scoring.”

“Really? Shizuku, you’re very well-informed,” noted Mizuki.

“My cousin goes there.”

Everyone but Honoka nodded, now understanding. If she’d heard this from someone who actually attended Fourth High, then it must have been accurate information.

But, as the group nodded along with Shizuku, that only strengthened the sense of distrust they felt toward the teacher who had called him down here.

Of course, the topic of someone not actually present (in other words, the teacher) wasn’t enough to hold the attention of their young minds for long.

“Come to think of it, Nine School Competition season’s here soon, isn’t it?” mentioned Leo, reminded by what Shizuku had said.

Tatsuya nodded back to him. “Miyuki’s been grumbling about how many things there are to prepare, like work vehicles, tools, and uniforms.”

“Miyuki is going to participate herself, isn’t she? It must be hard on her.” Mizuki’s words of worry for Miyuki were no false pretense.

“She seems like she’d totally kill the rookie competition, though. The prep work’ll probably be harder for her,” replied Erika, half-argumentative and half-sympathetic.

“She can’t go in unprepared. The noble son of the Ichijou from Third High will be there this year as well.”

Shizuku’s objection seemed a little strange. Both the main games and rookie games in the Nine School Competition were separated by gender, so Miyuki wouldn’t be facing the noble son of the Ichijou.

Still, nobody in the group went so far as to point that out.

“Huh…”

“Ichijou—from the Ten Master Clans?”

Erika and Leo both seemed unaware that there were direct relations to the Ten Master Clans in the same year as them, and their surprise at the fact seemed pretty genuine. Mizuki wasn’t thrown off as much, though. Maybe she already knew about this “noble son of the Ichijou.”

“He might be tough to beat,” agreed Erika. “You seem like you know a lot about this, Shizuku.”

Honoka answered the question for her; she knew Shizuku almost as well as she knew herself. “Shizuku’s crazy about Monolith Code. That’s why you go to the Nine School Competition every year, isn’t it?”

“…Mmhmm, well…” Shizuku nodded at the proxy answer—and while the changes in her expressions were as minute as ever, she seemed a little bashful. Unlike Honoka, who had a debt to repay to Tatsuya—well, more like she felt an interest in him—he and Shizuku had only become acquaintances indirectly through Miyuki, since the two of them were good friends. Shizuku had begun to show this sort of frank emotion around him lately, though.

“I see,” nodded Tatsuya, convinced, to Shizuku diagonally opposite him; she gave him an awkward look. “You don’t get to see Monolith Code matches outside the Nine School Competition, save for the All-Japan Championship and the international goodwill matches that the National Magic University plays.”

The Nine School Competition hosted games between the high schools affiliated with the National Magic University—intramural matches, as it were—but the event was open to public spectators. It was, after all, one of the few places you could see magic competitions.

There were 1,200 freshmen total among all nine magic high schools. Given all the fifteen-year-old boys and girls in the nation, the total number who possessed a practical level of magic power ranged from 1,200 to 1,500 each year. In other words, nearly 100 percent of children with magical talent who wanted to be a magician or magic engineer enrolled at one of the nine schools. Because of that, the nine schools monopolized high school magic competition, save for certain sports like the sword-based matches of kenjutsu and kenpo.

The Nine School Competition was one of the few places to stimulate interest and deepen understanding of competing with magic, as well as raising public awareness of magic itself.

“Third High is going to be strong again this year, then?”

“Probably.”

Shizuku nodded and replied concisely, a little happy. Erika realized the event was her area of expertise so she tried to capture her interest with a leading question.

“This year you won’t be in the audience, but onstage, right?” remarked Mizuki, joining Erika.

Shizuku’s practical abilities were second in their class. The official announcement of which students would be participating in the rookie competition had yet to be made, but like Miyuki, Shizuku was practically guaranteed a spot.

“Yep…” Shizuku nodded, reserved, but her face showed the beginnings of determination.

Tatsuya spent his after-school hours in the disciplinary committee headquarters nearly every day since exams ended.

The student council elections would be right after summer break. After a new president was chosen, he or she would appoint a new disciplinary chairperson. Traditionally—though not a very nice tradition—there was no real test for inheriting the disciplinary chairperson’s post. Most of the time, it was left entirely up to their unorganized records of activity.

Still, Mari had been on the committee since she was a freshman, so she wasn’t that worried about whether or not there was someone to inherit the post. However, the junior she had her eye on for the chairperson position didn’t have any experience at leading the committee, so Mari wanted to ease her into the position as smoothly as possible.

And to do that, she’d left all the paperwork to Tatsuya.

“I’ve started to feel like I’m a lot more softhearted than I ever thought I was…”

“Softhearted and nefarious, eh? Quite the dual nature you have going on.”

“……”

The retort was so on-point that Tatsuya couldn’t find anything to say back.

“But this time, I’m grateful for that softhearted side of you,” added Mari. Even she couldn’t help but feel guilty at watching him silently do the paperwork. “Without your help, I’d have been in the same rut as always.”

Tatsuya, however, didn’t have a split personality. Nor was he merely “helping”—he was creating all these documents from scratch.

Her semi-apology fell flat.

“You are preparing for this considerably in advance, though,” said Tatsuya with an inadvertent dubiousness, still working. He’d complete the control-transfer paperwork he was drawing up within a week. As long as he didn’t have to draft anything more detailed after this, there would be over two months before it came into effect. There was no guarantee nobody better would appear for the position, either, or some other important matter wouldn’t arise. It wasn’t always best to get these sorts of documents done early.

“Once our preparations for the Nine School Competition really start getting under way, I won’t have any time to draw up the paperwork. Practice will start as soon as we’ve gotten the members together, and then I’ll have to get tools ready, collect and analyze information, think up strategies and plans… I’ll be swamped.”

Now that he’d heard the circumstances, he reflected on the fact that none of her reasons had anything to do with him. Still, he suddenly felt that he didn’t want to let this conversation expire. “…When was the competition again?” he asked to maintain momentum, returning most of his focus to the paperwork.

“It’ll be ten days, starting on August third and ending on the twelfth.”

“That sounds like a long stretch.”

“Hm? Haven’t you ever watched it before?”

“No, I’m always busy with minor business during summer break.”

Mari looked at him with even more confusion. “According to Mayumi, your little sister goes to watch every year, and even seems to remember matches the two of us were in…”

Tatsuya nearly burst into laughter. “Well, it’s not like we’re together three hundred sixty-five days a year… We do different things once in a while, you know.”

“Hmm? …Well, I suppose you do. It’s just whenever I look at the two of you, it seems like you’re never apart even for a moment.”

“When we’re not at school, we’re usually off doing our own thing.”

Mari looked uncertain confronting the objective truth offered to her, but she seemed to accept it for the moment. “I suppose that’s why you don’t understand how much preparation there is for it.”

“Exactly. I actually don’t even know what sorts of sports are played. I do know about Monolith Code and Mirage Bat, though.” He was talking while creating documents, but Tatsuya pretty much had to split his thoughts like this to prevent himself from falling asleep. And without anything to do—or rather, not being allowed to do anything—Mari was just killing time, so she was more talkative than necessary.

“Well, those are the two famous ones…” She tilted her head, wondering how to explain it. Then she put a loose fist to her mouth seemingly clearing her throat. (He didn’t actually hear her do it, though.) “The events at the Nine School Competition all need a lot of magic power, even compared to other magic sporting events.”

“Right, I know that,” agreed Tatsuya without stopping.

“They used to change the events every year, but for a few years it’s been the same six events: Monolith Code, Mirage Bat, Ice Pillars Break, Speed Shooting, Cloudball, and Battle Board. They have separate tournaments for combative martial arts like kenjutsu and magic martial arts, and for ball games like gymnastics and highpost basketball.”

“Isn’t physical condition fairly important for things like Cloudball and Battle Board?”

“Well, yeah. Magicians are people, too. They can’t neglect their physical abilities. There are plenty of cases where a one-on-one fight between magicians comes down to physical abilities in the end, too. I’m sure I don’t have to lecture you on that again, though.”

“You’re right about that,” answered Tatsuya; not much else came to mind to say. Mari nodded slowly. He asked, “Isn’t Cloudball usually played in doubles, though?”

“That’s the unpleasant part of the Nine School Competition. They make all the events individual ones in order to make magic power matter more. I have a pamphlet with a rules summary in it—do you want to see it?”

“Yes, after this,” he said, taking a thin booklet from Mari while still typing. “Printed materials? How unusual.”

“They’re not that unusual when it comes to the Nine School Competition. There’s a pretty deep-seated idea that using virtual terminals harms your magic ability. On the other hand, not many non-magicians use the old screen types these days. Even among magicians, more and more are using the virtual kind.”

“I see. That’s why the Nine School Competition uses printed, paper materials—so that there’s no need to use a terminal in the first place, is that it?”

“Oh? Are you one of the people who approves of the virtual kind?”

She must have noticed the criticism in his voice. She had extremely sharp senses, though she misrepresented them with her normal open-minded behavior and charming (?) lack of ability to keep things tidy and in order.

Reminded once again of that fact, Tatsuya chose his words carefully, but without stopping his work. “There are grounds for making the statement that virtual terminals can have a negative influence on inexperienced magicians. I, too, believe that teenagers in particular, whose abilities are still developing, should avoid usage of virtual terminals. But I don’t think there is any reason to forbid mature magicians, whose magic power has already solidified, from using the virtual kind.”

“…I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. Yeah, maybe telling adults to renounce their convenience just because they can harm children is going too far.”

The conversation settled for a little while. Tatsuya, following the characters on the screen he was inputting, didn’t know what kind of expression Mari was making, but she was probably thinking about the implications of what he’d just said.

However impulsive she usually pretended to be, there was no hiding her natural seriousness deep down. It seemed somehow charming to Tatsuya.

“…Anyway, we got off topic.” She seemed to have come to her own conclusion, and without warning, she changed the topic back to the Nine School Competition. “Each school takes a total of forty players—twenty men and twenty women, with ten of each for the main competition and the other ten for the rookie competition. The rookie competition is only for freshmen, while the main competition has no grade requirement. Still, one player can enter up to only two different events, so freshmen never appear in the main competition. Well, even without those limiting issues, it wouldn’t be a true test of skill for juniors and seniors if they played against freshmen anyway.

“The men and women played together in the rookie competition until last year, but starting this year, they’ll be separate like the main one. Plus, there were two events girls couldn’t participate in last year, but that looks like it’ll change this year.”

Mari didn’t have to mention the name Miyuki for Tatsuya to know she had her in mind.

With girls’ stamina, going through a series of magic competitions would be harsh. No matter how far beyond the norm they trained themselves, many of their bodies were delicate to begin with. Tatsuya resolved himself to support them as much as he could.

“Four of the six events are done by both the men and women. Monolith Code is men only, and Mirage Bat women only… Monolith Code is the only event where direct combat happens, after all. I suppose I can’t say I don’t understand why it’s only men.”

There was a clear look of disagreement on Mari’s face. From what he’d heard around the disciplinary committee, her magic was suited to personal combat, so she must really have been displeased at not being able to participate.

“Each school can enter a maximum of three people in a single event. Men and women entrants are counted separately, even if they are entered into the same event. With a total of five possible events (four unisex events and one male/female-only event) and fifteen possible slots for each sex, the general strategy is for five men and five women to be entered in two events each, while the other five men and women focus on one. The entries for the rookie and main competitions are also considered separate from each other, which is why schools bring twenty athletes (ten men and ten women) for each.

“It’s a team-based competition, so it’s important to plan who to place in each event. We have to ask things like whether we’ll let our strong players devote themselves to a single event and aim for a sure win, whether to have them play in two events to get more points, and where enemy aces will show up as well as who to pit against them.”

“I see.”

“Also, the Nine School Competition allows an operations staff for planning, composed of four people separate from the players. Though not all schools put together a team. We bring as many as we’re allowed every year, but Third High, for example, never brings one. Each of their players operates alone, thinking for him- or herself.”

“And they rival us for the championship every year? That’s interesting.”

“We’ve only lost to them twice, though—three years ago and seven years ago. The Nine School Competition was first held in its current form as a summer event ten years ago. In those nine years, we’ve taken first place five times, Third High two times, and Second High and Ninth High once each.”

“So we’d be going for a third championship in a row this year?”

“That’s right. For the current seniors, winning this year will be the true victory.”

Many called First High’s current graduating class the “strongest generation.”

Mayumi Saegusa, Katsuto Juumonji, and Mari Watanabe.

Two of them were straight from the Ten Master Clans, and the other one rivaled them with sheer ability.

Just the fact that they were coincidentally all in the same class at the same school was surprising, but even aside from them were several other skilled students who actually had class-A ratings (they couldn’t acquire an official license due to lack of work experience, but they had been judged by international standards to be skilled enough to merit a class-A license).

The participants for this year’s Nine School Competition hadn’t been announced yet, but First High was seen as the likely winner anyway. They were seen as so powerful nobody thought it was even worth it to set up any betting pools.

“But I heard that if all goes well, our school will win the championship for sure.”

“Well, yeah. Nobody doubts the skill of our players. The rookie competition rankings might be added in, but as long as we don’t flop too badly there, we’ll be able to win with our points in the main competition. If there is one thing we’re uneasy about, it’s our engineers.”

“Engineers? You mean people who adjust CADs?”

“Yeah. The official Nine School Competition lingo calls it a technical staff. The competition specifies a common standard for CADs used in the games; they have to be a type that conforms to that. On the other hand, as long as it fits within the hardware specs, we can do whatever we want on the software end. Whether or not you can tune CADs to bring out the most from the athletes while still staying within the limitations has a lot to do with whether you win or lose.”

The expansion speed of activation programs relied on the CAD’s hardware, but the performance of a magic sequence construction could vary greatly depending on its software. In sporting events where a single wasted moment could cost a player a victory, the skill with which the software was tuned certainly meant a lot.

Sophistication and versatility on the software end weren’t necessarily good things. Software that exceeded the capabilities of the hardware would hamper the hardware from doing its job, and that would only lead to lower performance instead. With a limitation on the hardware specs, choosing the right software and tinkering with it was even more important.

With these conditions, software engineering skills could lead to surprise upsets, thought Tatsuya.

“Compared to the level of this year’s seniors, we’re lacking in the engineering department. Mayumi and Juumonji are great at adjusting their own CADs, so they’ll be comfortable, but…

“……”

Mari must have been bad at tuning hers. Tatsuya accurately predicted what she’d avoided saying, but said nothing in reply because he understood. Her words faded into silence after that, and he immersed himself in his drafting work.

Advancements in centralized traffic control technology had caused a fundamental change in trains, yielding the leading roles in intracity transportation facilities to cabinets and server racks. Rail-based vehicle service was all centrally governed by a control room, which established safety, convenience, and high transportable volume at the same time.

On the other hand, traffic control on public roads hadn’t advanced as far as people had hoped. An automatic operation system had been introduced into highways connecting cities, but systems to control and self-drive individual cars on regular streets and inner-city highways had only been introduced on an experimental basis in a few larger cities. It hadn’t yet reached the stage where it could be called popularized nationwide.

Instead, there had been advancements in the development of onboard AI to assist drivers.

Excepting cases of illegally modified modern self-driving cars, you couldn’t cause a traffic accident if you tried. (The reason Katsuto’s car had been able to smash into Blanche’s hideout was because the car had been modified to be more like a military vehicle.)

Self-driving cars were exported with the same onboard AI systems, giving smaller nations without the money to spare on large-scale traffic control systems the benefits of traffic accident eradication. Because of this, the world tended to rate individual control technology more highly than centralization.

Of course, in exchange for the safety, inexperienced—or, if a more candid expression is permitted, bad—drivers caused traffic jams instead of accidents. Instead of one car braking and all the ones behind it crashing into it, the ones behind it would immediately apply their brakes, so maybe the traffic jams were just a natural consequence of this.

So even though there were fewer worries about safety, society stuck to its old driver’s license system under the pretense of preventing this sort of societal detriment.

Tatsuya waited in front of his brand-new motorcycle for his sister to come out.

He had bought the bike the moment he received his license in the beginning of April. It was a purely practical purchase, so he’d never taken it on any sort of leisure trip, but he had used it a few times already. He still made sure to tune it up every day, though, so even after two months, its still looked brand-new.

“Sorry for making you wait, Tatsuya!”

Tatsuya looked up at the voice to see his sister’s slender body emerging from the light of the gate lamps.

Miyuki had grown out her hair even longer, and she was wearing almost the same exact riding suit as Tatsuya was. The jumpsuit was tight on her body, showing off her graceful, immature yet feminine curves.

She put on the helmet he was holding, then unconsciously lifted her chin up. Seeing his sister treat this so naturally gave him a slight dry grin as he hooked the helmet strap under her chin for her.

Her neck drew back from the ticklish feeling, and a smile came to his face as he put on his own helmet and mounted the bike.

Raising the windshield, he prompted Miyuki, who got into the tandem seat behind him, to hold on tight.

After feeling her body glued to his back and her arms around his waist, he put the shield down and raised the position of the stageless power selector (equivalent to the throttle on internal combustion engine motorcycles).

The siblings then sped off quietly into the starry night.

He set a course for the Yakumo temple.

Tonight’s goal was for Miyuki’s training, however, not Tatsuya’s.

Miyuki had been unofficially offered a Nine School Competition slot, and they were going to prepare for it.

The competition’s events had been selected to be sports where magical ability was especially vital even among other magic-based competitions. That didn’t mean physical training was unnecessary, though. In Battle Board you had an advantage if you possessed good physical reaction time and balance, and certain strategies in Cloudball called for a high fitness level.

Miyuki specialized in deceleration and cooling magic, meaning the Ice Pillars Break event, which involved destroying pillars made of ice, was practically meant for her. Even if she took part in the main competition instead of the rookie one, there were few doubts that she would probably win.

However, with the increase in events she could participate in now that men and women were being separated in the individual events this year, she would likely take part in the Mirage Bat event as well. For that, she would need to be able to strike virtual orbs of light floating in the air with a baton.

Miyuki had been initiated into martial arts by Yakumo just like Tatsuya had, so she did possess more physical ability than you might imagine by looking at her delicate physique. She hadn’t had much time to move her body lately, though, so they decided to get some training in just to be sure.

At this time of night, Yakumo’s pupils would all have their lights out as part of their own studies.

As he expected, as they approached the darkened dojo they heard stifled breathing, the occasional step or two that couldn’t be completely hidden, and the creaking of floorboards.

Tatsuya quietly opened the old-looking door lest he disturb their training.

Despite not making any noise, a long, straight shuriken came flying at him not a moment later; he swatted it away with his bulletproof, knife-proof glove and in return fired lead balls hidden inside his jumpsuit.

However, he didn’t hear the “marbles” (this was a type of skill that launched small, hidden balls of lead with finger strength, a technique akin to slinging a marble) hit anything.

“You don’t seem to have progressed very much with marble-flicking. Don’t take it easy just because you have magic—you need to practice throwing weapons, too. Still, Tatsuya, it was a good judgment on your part to knock the shuriken away instead of grabbing it.”

There was no sign of anyone present. Only a voice.

Tatsuya hadn’t heard the voice come from in front of him, but from the wall to his right, and he fired a second lead ball in that direction.

“Whoa!”

At the same time he heard a distracting yell, Tatsuya felt the ripples of someone’s presence from where he’d sent a shot. Then he immediately wrapped Miyuki up and sprang back.

It was just in time; only missing by a paper’s width away from his sister’s back, a black sword-wind swooped down from the ceiling. He took a quick step with one foot, catching the wooden sword that was painted completely black, then stopped it from moving.

When Yakumo tried to pull it away and strike again, it didn’t budge an inch. He gave up and let go of it.

“…That was a rather violent welcome, Master.”

“…Oh, you know you were aiming to kill with those marbles.”

The teacher and student, staring at each other in the darkness, both exchanged wicked smiles at the same time.

Miyuki’s face, completely red now that she was buried in Tatsuya’s arms, was, thankfully, hidden by the darkness…or so she thought, but by the way her brother’s body stiffened up, it was obvious to Yakumo what face she was making.

They moved to one corner of the temple grounds, a square that had bonfires burning in iron baskets at each of its four corners. Normally, such a place would be used for firing cedar sticks to ask for blessings. (The temple apparently championed itself as a branch temple of Mount Hiei, but neither Tatsuya nor Miyuki had ever seen Yakumo conduct training in any sort of Buddhist prayers.) There, dimly blue and vaguely red balls of light floated in the air.

The place being what it was, those who didn’t know better might look at the lights, think they were disembodied souls, and collapse to their knees in fear. Fortunately, though, there were no outsiders present.

A long, narrow shadow passed through the blue lights, and one of the orbs winked out of existence.

A second one disappeared, and then a third.

A willowy silhouette pursued the scattered, floating orbs with surprisingly swift and forceful movements, cleaving them with the short cane in its hand.

Once the number of light orbs she struck reached thirty, Tatsuya signaled Miyuki to take a little break.

Tatsuya approached Yakumo with a large teacup in hand. His master was inside a simple barrier approximately thirty-six square feet drawn with lime on the temple grounds. The amount of skill needed to construct a barrier with four white lines was astonishing in itself. Yakumo let him in through the barrier with a mudra, and he entered.

His job was to supply Yakumo with drinks and put up with his heavy sighing. Usually that was Miyuki’s job, but today he was filling in. Tonight, Miyuki was inside the white lines, also sighing, so he was treating the both of them.

“Thank you very much, Master. Not only did you let us use this space, you’re even helping with the training,” he said, bowing to the man after handing him his drink.

Yakumo placidly nodded. “Hitting physical objects and hitting illusions is pretty different, after all. Miyuki is one of my cute students, so I would never turn her down if she asked for help.”

Tatsuya sensed a strange force behind the word cute, but he knew he shouldn’t let it bother him. At least until after the Nine School Competition.

Ninjutsu’s main field was illusion magic, and the art had a level of polish that exceeded modern magic in every way: projection speed, image realism, and fluidity of movement. Modern magic had made it possible to invoke many kinds of unusual powers with speed and precision, but there were still plenty more limited areas you’d be better off using old magic for.

Tatsuya could only use a limited amount of magic well; he couldn’t take Yakumo’s place as a human hologram projector as he used his Demonfire illusion technique.

“Miyuki, should we call it quits for tonight?” asked Tatsuya as he handed Miyuki, short of breath, a drink, but she shook her head and took a sip.

“If it’s all right with you, Sensei, I would like to get a little more exercise.”

“I don’t mind. Why don’t you join in the Demonfire chasing, Tatsuya?”

“No, I… I’ll pass, thank you.”

Yakumo smirked, and Tatsuya got the feeling he knew why. He certainly would have liked to topple the man’s expectations, but he prudently reminded himself that Miyuki’s practice came first today.

“I see. That’s too bad,” Yakumo replied with a smile he couldn’t hide, shaking his head, looking truly disappointed. After seeing his face, Tatsuya was convinced that declining had actually been the right move.

The evil grin suggesting ulterior motives changed to a mild, amiable one as he looked back to Miyuki. “Let’s begin, then, shall we?”

“Yes, thank you very much.”

At the signal to restart, Miyuki bent down at the waist.

Tatsuya had already collected the cups from both their hands.

She stood in the middle of the four iron basket lanterns at the corners of the square, and just as Yakumo was about to use his skill again—

“Who’s there?!”

A sudden and unexpected arrival.

Tatsuya had been the one to ask their identity.

Actually, chronologically, it was backward.

The moment Tatsuya had expanded his senses to the Idea to help coach Miyuki, he turned toward the presence caught in the limits of his awareness and demanded who was there in the seemingly empty darkness. Only after that did a person actually appear.

“Oh, Haruka.”

Yakumo addressed the presence with levity.

Both Tatsuya and Miyuki knew that name. A slightly more adult silhouette than Miyuki’s stepped out of the darkness into the flickering lights. It was a counselor of the National Magic University Affiliated First High School—Haruka Ono.

The dark-colored jumpsuit she wore was similar to Miyuki’s, and it looked like it highlighted her bust and waist quite a bit.

Miyuki followed Tatsuya’s eyes and made an irritated expression, but before she could plant her elbow in her brother’s side, she saw the steel color frozen in his eyes and calmed down.

His gaze might have seemed lecherous at first, but it was actually measuring Haruka’s physical capabilities.

“Tatsuya, you don’t need to be so cautious. Haruka is one of my students, just like you.”

“I wasn’t taught as intimately as you were, though, Shiba.” Haruka’s tone was light and jovial in contrast to her current dangerous outfit blending in with the darkness. “Sensei was one thing, but I didn’t think Shiba would notice me like that. Could my skills have declined?”

“Now, don’t lie to yourself. If you do it too much, you’ll lose sight of what you actually think, Haruka.”

“Shiba told me the same thing.”

“Whoops, guess I didn’t need to tell you, then. Well, leaving that aside, your invisibility was close to perfect, so I don’t think you need to worry that much. That is, if you really were worried about your skills declining.”

Haruka shrugged off the gaze Yakumo cast at her with the very definition of a deceptive smile. She probably didn’t think she could deceive him, and wasn’t trying to. Given the man’s smirk, Tatsuya figured it was their usual style of communication.

“Tatsuya didn’t notice your presence. His eyes are a bit different from ours, you see. If you want to fool him, you can’t hide your presence—you have to misrepresent it.”

“I see… Thank you for the lesson.”

“I would like to have my questions answered at some point, too,” interrupted Tatsuya, tired of listening to them amusing themselves with their master-student talk at his expense.

“Hmm… It would be unfair to only give information to Haruka. Would you mind?” The man made a show of saying “hmm” to insert a pause, but Tatsuya could tell from his attitude that he’d been waiting for Tatsuya to say something, too.

At Yakumo’s mention, Haruka shrugged and answered, “If I said I did, you’d just tell them after I left, wouldn’t you?” The action was candid, showing her state of mind had already reached the point of resignation.

“Now that I have her consent… Haruka is a Public Safety investigator.”

Yakumo’s explanation was concise indeed. Tatsuya could fully understand wanting to ask about just that, but in honesty, he would have liked a little more information.

However, Yakumo was the first to ask for an explanation. “Hm? You don’t look very surprised.” He seemed to have been hoping to astonish the siblings, and now he looked mystified—or rather, unamused—at not only Tatsuya, but Miyuki as well for accepting Haruka’s true identity so calmly.

“I do have a meager information network of my own, so I knew Miss Ono wasn’t related to the military. The only things left were Public Safety [the Ministry of Police Agency of Public Safety], the COIA [the Cabinet Office Information Administration], and being a foreign spy.”

Yakumo frowned. “An information network… Oh, him? Interesting… If word got out that someone in his position was leaking information to a First High student, things wouldn’t go well for him.” His frown, however, was also aloof, and it didn’t look at all like he was seriously concerned.

“His position isn’t all that different from yours, Master… In any case, am I correct in understanding that you are a Public Safety infiltrator posing as a counselor to scope out anti-governmental activities in First High beginning with Blanche, ma’am?” This time he asked Haruka for confirmation, his question brimming with implications.

“No.” Her reply, however, was a relatively firm denial. “It’s true that I am a spy from Public Safety, but my counselor position isn’t a disguise. If we’re speaking chronologically, I got in contact with my current superiors while trying to get my counseling certification, and after I was assigned to First High, I became a secret investigator for Public Safety. I trained with Sensei for one year two years ago, so you’re both my senior as his apprentices.”

“For a year’s worth of training, ma’am, your invisibility was wonderfully done.”

“Thanks to my magic traits. I can’t use other magic, though. That’s why my superiors first approached me.”

“…I see—you were a B.S. [Born Specialized] magician, then, ma’am?”

“I don’t like that title,” said Haruka, turning her cheek sullenly like a girl his age might do, causing an inappropriate chuckle from Tatsuya’s lips.

I.S. magicians, or I.S. espers. They were also called innate unique espers or innate unique magic technicians. The terms all referred to those with supernatural abilities specializing in unusual powers that magic found difficult to systematize.

As could be understood by their mean-spirited nickname of “one-trick ponies,” I.S. magicians were seen on a level below that of normal magicians. However, many of their unique abilities couldn’t be emulated by others, and if there was someone who could, they would have an extremely high level of technical ability. If the unique ability could be matched up to a profession, then often they were valued more highly than normal, jack-of-all-trade magicians.

“I personally consider those who have mastered one trade to be superior to those who have dabbled in all of them. But I suppose that’s an issue of your own sense of values, Miss Ono.” Saying that made him feel like their student and counselor roles had been reversed, but this wasn’t school, and it was too late to be considered after-school hours. He figured he didn’t need to worry.

Haruka, seeming displeased, stopped sulking, perhaps feeling the same role reversal as he had. “I didn’t have a choice today, Shiba, but my status as an undercover investigator is top secret. Please keep if off the record from others.”

Tatsuya immediately wondered if there was any use in doing as she asked. Public Safety spies would be easy for the Ten Master Clans to discover within minutes. Erika might have already figured it out, too, given her family’s deep police connections. Even Tatsuya had been convinced for a while that Haruka belonged to an intelligence agency, though he hadn’t known which one.

Haruka might have been the only one who thought her true identity was still a secret, but he didn’t say that. Instead, he answered her request. “I won’t tell a soul, ma’am. This may be slightly rude of me, but in exchange, would you be able to give me some information about what happened in April soon?”

“…All right. Give and take, right?”

The two of them shook hands, each hiding their various intentions.

It went without saying that magic high schools included classes on general, nonmagic subjects. One of them was physical education. Classes were set up to play as teams, so the boys were all burning with their usual excessive fighting spirit.

Today’s class was legball.

An encyclopedia would describe the sport as derived from futsal, an indoor version of soccer played by five on a team. Legball was played in a completely covered arena, a clear box with numerous small holes in it, but unlike futsal, players wore headgear to prevent injuries; heading the ball was prohibited as much as using one’s hands was. (As an aside, the “ball game played inside a clear box with numerous holes” was one of the particular sport trends of the 2080s.)

It was also played in concert with magic, but normal matches had a no-magic rule, and that went for how they were playing it in class today, too.

Legball used a light ball made for maximum elasticity, with walls and a ceiling that possessed springlike qualities enclosing the field. Players would chase after the ball as it hectically bounced from up to down and left to right like a pinball and kick it into the opposing team’s goal. The sport was speedy, powerful, and flashy, making it highly popular as a spectator sport as well.

Right now, the girls of freshman Classes E and F were taking a rest, cheering on their own classes.

“Out of the way!”

Leo rushed toward a rebound. Given how bouncy legballs were, dribbling like in soccer or futsal was difficult, so no one did it much. The general strategy was to pass the ball among the team’s five players using any surfaces available, including the walls and ceiling, and then try to score a goal. How much momentum the rebounds picked up was pivotal in deciding the outcome.

“Tatsuya!”

Leo, running everywhere he pleased, sent the ball to Tatsuya, who was near the middle, with the force of a shot trying to score a goal. The pass was so hard that if he tried to trap it with his chest or stomach he’d get knocked over, so instead, he kicked it straight up to kill its momentum. After it bounced off the ceiling, he trapped it under his foot.

After receiving the pass with precise ball handling, he aimed for the wall at the side and kicked the ball to it—he was using the wall to pass.

There was a slender boy there to get it once it bounced. His physique could be more appropriately described as toned and compact than thin; even now, he dealt with Tatsuya’s fairly fast pass in a single movement, and without turning back.

With the ball at his feet, he aimed for the other team’s goal and shot.

The electronic buzzer announcing the goal went off, and cheers erupted from the girls watching.

“He’s pretty good!” said Leo, giving honest praise as he ran up to Tatsuya.

“Yeah. He makes good reads, and he’s more fit than he looks.”

Even Tatsuya had to feel a little surprised at the unexpected level of physical ability. Of course, this wasn’t the first time they’d had gym together—they’d been in the same class for three months now. Tatsuya thought he had a handle on his abilities, and he’d made the pass like he had in the expectation that he’d be able to handle it. Still, there was a composed feeling to his—Mikihiko Yoshida’s—movements.

With only twenty-five classmates, everyone knew everyone else’s names. Tatsuya knew more than that about him, too. Mikihiko Yoshida was a direct descendant of the Yoshida family, which was famous for its old magic. Tatsuya had heard that the family was an old one that passed down outer magic of the spirit magic category, with each child inheriting it through traditional training. And if it was old methods of training, it was probably focused around asceticism. That told him Mikihiko would have been physically trained enough for that.

But as far as he could see, Mikihiko had no vestiges of such training on him. That was the main source of Tatsuya’s surprise. Looks like we had a hawk hiding its claws in a place we wouldn’t have thought to look…

As he ruminated, Tatsuya swung into a high roundhouse kick and slammed the ball coming through the air at him toward the opponent’s goal.

The match ended in overwhelming victory, mostly due to the three of them.

After Tatsuya and Leo went back into the spectator’s zone, they went up to Mikihiko Yoshida, who had taken a seat a little farther away.

“Nice play,” said Tatsuya, who had already regained control of his breathing.

“You, too,” answered Mikihiko, also with calm breaths.

Neither Tatsuya nor anyone else had built up equal friendships with everyone in their class. Whether out of an unsocial attitude or some other reason, there were classmates who treated Tatsuya somewhat distantly; he could talk to maybe half of Class E normally. But Mikihiko was even less social than Tatsuya, and he’d never seen him talking amiably to anybody else in the class. He’d even left the classroom by himself at orientation right after they came to school on the first day. Even Leo, who had a bigger relationship network, had only ever exchanged regular greetings with him.

“You’re pretty good, Yoshida. This might sound kinda mean, but you surprised me.”

But Leo had apparently thought of something after seeing Mikihiko’s performance, and invited Tatsuya—well, Tatsuya had been the first to say something to him, but Leo told him to do it in the first place—to take a walk over to where Mikihiko was sitting.

Leo’s tone was familiar, perhaps even overly familiar, depending on who he was talking to.

“Mikihiko.” Leo’s frankness, however, seemed to influence Mikihiko to do the same. “I don’t like being called by my last name. Please, call me by my first name.” He, too, responded frankly, something they’d never seen him do before.

“Sure. You can call me Leo, then, too.”

Despite class activities not being as prominent as the previous century, their conversation still may have sounded weird. It was three months after school started. That’s how big a wall Mikihiko had built between himself and everyone else, classmates included. Maybe this was just a flight of fancy brought about by the exhilaration of sweating through a sports game. Whatever the case, it was still an opportunity.

“May I call you Mikihiko as well? You can call me Tatsuya, too, of course.”

“Sure thing, Tatsuya,” he replied, relaxed, showing a slightly embarrassed expression. “I was actually thinking I wanted to talk to you at some point.”

First impressions were a weird thing. Sometimes you could say a thousand words and not change it, and sometimes you could give a short sentence and it would change completely. Tatsuya’s impression of Mikihiko changed from “antisocial” to “shy.” “What a coincidence—so have I,” he replied.

Though they had both enrolled as Course 2 students—substitutes, in other words—they were first and third on the exams among the freshmen. Practical skill was seen as more important, of course, but it wasn’t at all strange that they had an interest in one another.

“…Heh, I kind of feel left out.” Of course, whatever the case was for Mikihiko, Leo didn’t think that Tatsuya would show an interest in someone just because of that. In fact, they seemed to be feeling something more, leaving Leo with a faint smell of alienation.

Mikihiko’s next words cut through his gloom, though. “You’re imagining things, Leo. I wanted to talk to you, too.”

Not by the unexpected consideration he just showed after they thought he was too unfriendly to talk to anyone for real…

“At the very least, there’s basically nobody who can keep up with Erika as patiently as you can.”

…but by those spoken words of sincere astonishment.

“…Ehh, I don’t know.”

Leo’s face scrunched up at Mikihiko treating him and Erika as a packaged set. Tatsuya and Mikihiko started laughing at the same time. A moment later, though, Tatsuya thought about what Mikihiko just said. He quickly realized what had drawn his attention. “Mikihiko, do you and Erika know each other from before?”

He didn’t mean much by the question, so when he saw Mikihiko make a face like he wished he hadn’t said anything, Tatsuya decided to change the subject. Unfortunately, his forethought ended before it had a chance to start by the appearance of the girl herself.

“Yeah, sorta. We’re what you might call childhood friends, I guess?”

“Erika, why did you phrase that as a question?” asked Mizuki, who was tagging along.

“We met each other when we were only ten. It’s like, I’m not sure you can call that childhood friends, you know? And I haven’t seen him outside school at all for half a year. He always avoids me when we’re in class.” Erika, who had suddenly intruded on the conversation, answered Mizuki’s question without paying much attention to Tatsuya and the others.

“Hey, Tatsuya, what do you think?”

And suddenly again, she brought Tatsuya back into it. Going at her own pace as usual. “I think that makes you childhood friends, doesn’t it?”

And Tatsuya’s answer, spoken without hesitation or nervousness, might have indicated him going at his own pace, too.

Leo and Mikihiko weren’t just keeping silent out of mute amazement for Erika’s overbearing behavior, of course. Their widened eyes told him that.

The dress code in 2095 AD encouraged people not to show their skin in public spaces. School being a public space, wearing your school uniform’s jacket was mandatory even in summer, and female students were required to wear either opaque tights under their skirts or leggings that went down to their ankles.

These rules didn’t follow through all the way to sportswear, however. The more physical clubs normally wore uniforms that exposed the arms and legs, and nobody could blame them. Gym class didn’t have a dress code, either. Tatsuya and the other male students were all wearing shorts that ended above the knees. Mizuki was wearing leggings that hid only half her thighs, too—essentially normal for girls’ gym clothes.

And as for the problem, Erika…

Well, she was showing off.

Everything from her hips down was exposed to the hot midsummer’s air. You couldn’t measure the length of her bottom clothing, because there was no length—and with her short sleeves that were a strange length, at a glance, it almost looked like she was wearing only underwear.

Her thighs were tight but not the least bit brawny. The slight tan coloring of her body was actually emphasizing her light complexion.

“Erika, what are you wearing?!”

Having finally rebooted, Mikihiko’s voice cracked a little and his face grew red for reasons other than the ultraviolet-packed sunlight—it was understandable. There was no lack of opportunities to see a girl’s bare legs outside of school, so he should have been used to it, but Erika engendered enough charm to steal the presence of mind away from boys of the same age.

“What do you mean? These are traditional girls’ gym clothes.”

It was plain to see what mental state Mikihiko was in right now, but Erika didn’t make any mention of it. She just answered blankly, her slender neck tilted. She didn’t seem to be wearing this just to tease her childhood friend with it.

“Traditional?!” However, Mikihiko didn’t agree with that sentiment—he thought he was being teased. His face grew even redder as he lost his temper.

“Really? That seems like a strange design for leggings.” Tatsuya, though, by interrupting and deflecting the attack, prevented Erika’s unintentionally irritating behavior from angering Mikihiko any further.

“They’re not leggings.”

In the end, his efforts only resulted in the victim being Tatsuya instead of Mikihiko, but judging by the color of Mikihiko’s face, Tatsuya had a lot more resistance to this than he did. Or perhaps he just didn’t get ruffled by impish remarks not meant to hurt anyone.

“But it’s not just underwear, right?”

“Even I wouldn’t just go out in underwear without a skirt or something! These are called bloomers.”

“Bloomers? You mean like that really old kind of underwear girls used to wear?”

“Of course not! I just said they’re part of a girl’s gym outfit!”

Erika actually seemed to be the one on the ropes from Tatsuya’s witticism, whether it was intentional or not.

“Oh, I think I’ve heard of them,” said Leo, rejoining the conversation at last. “During the old days of loose morals, female middle school students used to sell them to middle-aged men for pocket change, right?”

…Unfortunately, it would have been better for both him and Erika if he’d remained in his frozen state.

“Shut up, you idiot!” cried Erika, her face going bright red, kicking Leo, who was on one knee, in the other shin as hard as she could.

Leo fell over in agony and grabbed his shin as Erika hopped up and down on one foot.

It seemed like the match between verbal violence and physical violence ended in a draw due to injuries on both sides.

The next game was a close one, compared to the one before that Tatsuya and the others were playing in. The score held even for a while. The skills of both teams were equal. At a high school level, of course. Because of that, most of the female audience had left. They had classes, too, so they probably couldn’t stay for very long. Unlike other subjects and magic practice, in gym class, there were faculty members certified as personal trainers watching. (It was one of the rare differences between those who could teach magic and those who could instruct students in training.)

The only girls still in the boys’ spectating zone were Erika and Mizuki.

“I just can’t believe it. Your brain is overflowing with that kind of stuff, isn’t it?” asked Erika with a sincerely scornful glare.

“Oh, shut up. It was in a book I read once,” answered Leo a little rudely, maybe thinking that the odds were not in his favor—this time, at least. Her eyes were already on something completely different anyway.

It would probably be all right to say the fact that Erika didn’t press him more thoroughly about it was one of her good points. “What book was that in… Actually, now that I think of it, you were looking at me the same way, weren’t you, Miki? Are these clothes really that arousing?”

Of course, it was probably just a whim of hers in the first place.

“Erika…” began Mizuki hesitantly. “Maybe you should just go with regular leggings next time.” Her difficulty speaking meant that she was in one of those states where she could think it, but not say it out loud.

“Maybe… These aren’t as easy to move around in as I thought they’d be. They actually feel a little tight, you know?”

The two boys present immediately turned their faces away, but fortunately (?) Erika didn’t notice.

“Hmm… When I dug them out of the dresser, I thought they’d be okay since they were unused and the perfect size. But I guess I’ll go back to leggings like you said, Mizuki.”

“I think that’s a good idea.”

This wasn’t really a topic for her to get so insistent over, but Mizuki nodded slowly a few times anyway.

“Huh?” And it would be lying to say it wasn’t like Mizuki to react a few moments too late. “Erika, who is Miki?”

Mikihiko’s shoulders stiffened. He was still looking away. Erika didn’t notice it, though, and inconsiderately pointed at his back. (Of course, whether she would have done something else if she had noticed it was up for debate.) “His name’s Mikihiko, so Miki.”

As the words came out of her mouth, Mikihiko whipped back around. “What kind of logic is that?!” Apparently this “nickname” wasn’t something Mikihiko could ignore even if he tried.

“What do you mean? You shorten Mikihiko to get Miki.”

“How many times have I told you not to call me that girly name?!”

Erika didn’t seem fazed in the slightest, though. Maybe she was used to being yelled at. “Huh? Should I have went with Hiko instead?” In fact, her face had even grown critical of Mikihiko, as if to say that he should have just said something about it.

“Why that?! Stop shortening people’s names without asking first!”

“So you want me to call you Mikihiko? Hmm… Mikihiko, Mikihiko, Mikihiko… No, that’s too hard to say. I don’t wanna.”

Mikihiko was certainly not the only one who felt like that was a little unfair.

“Besides, wouldn’t it be embarrassing?”

“What do you mean?”

Erika, standing, suddenly leaned over him suggestively and brought her face close to his. “Mikihiko…” she whispered sweetly.

Mikihiko was too agitated to stay mad.

“…Who is that?” He wasn’t the only one affected; even Leo was disturbed. Erika’s provocation was quite destructive.

“That’s embarrassing, right?”

Erika’s hair seemed to have grown out at an especially fast speed, and within just the three months since starting school, her medium-short hair had gotten down to her shoulders. She brushed the hair up over her ears and grinned.

Mikihiko still hadn’t lost his strength, but he couldn’t hide his discomposure. “Th-then just—”

“Ow, I bit my lip…” said Mizuki suddenly. Maybe she wasn’t as merciful as everyone thought.

Thankfully, Mikihiko didn’t have the flexibility at the moment to hear it. “Just call me by my last name, then!”

“Huh? But, Miki, I thought you hated being called by your last name.”

It immediately appeared that what she said had been insensitive. Mikihiko’s face stiffened tightly. His face was still red, and he still wasn’t calm—but at the root of all his anger was embarrassment. Tatsuya, however, felt that a darker sentiment more akin to hatred was mixed into it. “Erika, are you good for time?” Perhaps it wasn’t his place to mention it, but Tatsuya’s interruption drew Erika’s attention. He stuck a thumb over his shoulder. The physical trainer (aka the gym teacher) was looking in their direction with a bitter expression.

“Ack! I’ll see you later, Tatsuya!”

“Huh? Erika, wait, not so fast!”

Erika ran off in a hurry with Mizuki frantically following.

Tatsuya waved to them as they left, a dry grin crossing his face.

After an awkward silence, Mikihiko lowered his head and said, “Sorry for causing you trouble.” He was aware of it, and yet still lost control anyway; he must have had some deep-rooted family troubles.

“I think you were handling, anyway.” That wasn’t a lie told to comfort him, but what Tatsuya actually thought. From what it looked like, this wasn’t the first time this had happened, and Erika could have been driving Mikihiko up the wall on purpose, too. If he’d come out and said what was on his mind, they might not have had any future troubles.

“No, not at all. I mean, we are in class, after all,” said Mikihiko. That was exactly why Tatsuya had butted into it. There was a time and place for everything. Besides, Tatsuya wasn’t keen on getting involved in Mikihiko’s—or Mikihiko and Erika’s—personal issues. “You sure are calm, though, Tatsuya.”

Perhaps Mikihiko accurately sensed Tatsuya’s feelings and changed the topic. “What do you mean?” Tatsuya had learned from their conversation earlier that Mikihiko, despite his in-class attitude, was fairly sensitive to the feelings of others. Still, the change in topic was too sudden—or, rather, lacking reasonable context.

“What do I…” It seemed like Mikihiko had spoken before getting a very solid image in his head, too, so he had some trouble explaining. Eventually he managed to continue. “Err, I mean, you weren’t affected at all when you saw what Erika was wearing.”

That was a bit unsuitable to choose for a concrete example. It sounded pretty desperate. “…Well, I didn’t see it coming, so I was surprised. She wasn’t exposing that much skin, though, was she? It covered more than a swimsuit or a leotard, I think.”

In his mind, Tatsuya was thinking, What the heck is he talking about? His relationship with Mikihiko, which had really just begun today, would worsen if he said that, though. His decision to offer a harmless, inoffensive response might have made their conversation come off as a little dull to a third party.

“It was more plain than a swimsuit or leotard, but I don’t know if that quite made it all right…” noted Leo, understandable from a teenage boy’s perspective.

“…You’re pretty mature, Tatsuya.” Now even Mikihiko was saying something rude with a sigh, mentioning him again. At some point, maybe because he and Leo felt a connection in that they were both victims of Erika fooling around (?), they had chosen Tatsuya as a target.

“I don’t think he’s mature, I just think his rating scale is too harsh. With a beautiful sister like that, it’d make sense he wouldn’t be interested in most girls.”

“Oh…that’s right. Her name’s Miyuki, right? When I first saw her at the entrance ceremony, I was more surprised than fascinated. I couldn’t believe it was possible for a girl to be that beautiful.”

“What’s this?” asked Leo with a mean grin. “Hey, Tatsuya, someone’s goin’ after your sister. How does that make you feel, as her brother?”

Instead of Tatsuya, though, Mikihiko answered the betrayal (?) from his comrade-in-arms using him as an excuse. “Stop it. It’s not like that. I could talk to her, maybe, but anything more than that intimidates me just thinking about it. I’d want a girlfriend I could be with a little more comfortably.”

Leo nodded deeply—so deeply it looked like he was exaggerating. “Yeah, I hear you. Besides, she has that impregnable brother complex of hers, and to even get to her you’d need to bust through the invincible brother with a sister complex… Talk about high hurdles.”

“Leo… I think I need to have a nice, long talk with you at some point.”

“Whoa, scary! I’ll pass, thanks. It isn’t worth risking my life for.”

Leo dramatically trembled under Tatsuya’s heavy stare. He meant it to be an act, but a nontrivial part of it seemed real, causing Mikihiko to look between them with interest.

Leo was a size bigger than Tatsuya, and his limbs were thicker to suit. From how they were playing earlier, there didn’t seem to be much of a difference in agility between the two. The rumors said Tatsuya was trained in classical ninjutsu by a renowned master, but was it really so insanely strong? Enough to make up for his lack in magic power?

Mikihiko didn’t understand what about him had drawn Tatsuya’s interest, but he knew exactly why he was interested in Tatsuya since the beginning.

Mikihiko wanted to know the secret behind Tatsuya’s strength. They were both Course 2 students who had just enrolled, and yet he had shown he was powerful enough to make Course 1 upperclassmen yield. Mikihiko wanted to know how. His greatest wish was to find a way to make up for his own gap in magic power.

Something to replace the power he’d lost a year ago. Before then, he had been lauded as a prodigy, the start of hope for the Yoshida family. They said his skill in summoning magic, the central form of magic passed down through the family, had already surpassed that of his brother, the next leader of the family. Until the accident, he’d been one of the strong ones for as long as he could remember; now, he couldn’t stand having to be content as one of the weak.

He knew he wasn’t thinking calmly about it. That’s why he’d unnecessarily isolated himself and why his current mental state, which lacked any relaxation, was causing him to exhaust himself more than he needed to. And he knew all that. But he couldn’t help putting himself in this situation anyway.

In the past year, he’d devoted himself to studying more than he ever had. He began taking martial arts seriously, though he’d never been passionate about them in the past. But he still couldn’t get rid of the sense of loss.

That’s why he couldn’t help finding Tatsuya interesting: Despite his real disadvantage in performing magic, he could defeat upperclassmen with far more magic power than him.

Hand-to-hand combat skills that could make up for a difference in magic power?

Mikihiko wanted to have Tatsuya and Leo fight here so that he could see. And, though he didn’t realize it himself, he wanted to fight Tatsuya.

“Mikihiko?”

“Huh?”

And perhaps because of that, at the sudden mention of his name, he essentially put himself into a fighting stance.

Tatsuya and Leo both saw him and gave pained grins.

“Hey there, settle down, partner.”

“What’s wrong? First you stopped saying anything at all, and now…”

“Oh, uh… Sorry, it’s nothing.”

All Mikihiko could do was apologize awkwardly. He wasn’t very skilled in communication in the first place. They’d done so much to create a friendly atmosphere, but now it was a strained one. Though Tatsuya and Leo started joking around enthusiastically, the air between them wouldn’t be repaired before the end of class.

Summer’s Nine School Competition was one of the biggest events for the high schools affiliated with the National Magic University, along with the Thesis Competition that took place in autumn. With its appeal as a spectator event, however, it could be called number one, far and away the more entertaining of the two.

The competition involved magical sports. (Magical competitions included more than just sports-type games; there were 3-D puzzles, board games, mazes, and treasure hunts as well.) Each of these games had its own club at First High, as well as the other schools, but the Nine School Competition was all about different schools facing off against each other. So for this competition, promising athletes were selected from the entire school, not only those clubs.

Therefore, the student council, not the club committee, carried out the preparations for it.

“But still, we can’t ignore the athletes in the clubs. It’s so much work just to decide on who will compete…”

Even Mayumi, who always had an energetic smile to give, seemed a little less lively. For some reason, her chopsticks didn’t seem to care much for the contents of her lunch box. Miyuki had been substantially busy lately as well, but the student council president had more to do than just office work. There was an imperceptible hint of anxiety in her normally easygoing bearing.

“Juumonji did help me with choosing the competitors, so we got through that, at least.”

Today’s luncheon meeting had been more of a platform for Mayumi to endlessly vent her complaints, but it was almost over. Tatsuya’s stomach was strong enough not to let the anxiety cause him indigestion. He reflected, though, that some nice relaxing mealtime music would have been better for his mental health than her stream of grumbling. He sighed with relief at the prospect of being released from the pessimism.

…Unfortunately, he was too quick to that conclusion. “Still, the engineers were always a bigger problem than the competitors…”

“You still haven’t found enough?” asked Mari.

Mayumi nodded tiredly. “Our school has so many who want to be magicians that there’s a clear bias in favor of those with excellent practical skills… The seniors this year especially so. There’s a critical shortage of the sort of magic engineers that we need. The juniors have Ah-chan and Isori, as well as a few others, but we still just don’t have enough…”

“Isori, huh… He’s best at geometry, and his technical skills are pretty much all pure logic. He wasn’t very good at adjusting CADs, was he?”

“You’re right—but that’s the situation we’re in.”

Mayumi and Mari both sighed; the rare sight gave a vivid account of the gravity of the situation.

He got the feeling that measuring the gravity using body language alone probably wasn’t the best idea, though.

“Juumonji and I can make up for some of it, but not all of it…”

“You two are our best players! If your match results suffered because you were looking after other people’s CADs…well, that wouldn’t be very funny.”

“…It would certainly be easier if you could at least learn to make adjustments to your own CAD, Mari,” said Mayumi, directing a nice, friendly gaze to Mari.

“…You’re right. This is quite the predicament,” she replied, hypocritically looking away—whether out of exhaustion or some other reason, Tatsuya didn’t know. The council room was degrading into something that was clearly not psychologically healthy. Thinking that he needed to get back to class—and flee the scene—he waited for an opportunity to give Miyuki a glance and make his intentions known.

“Rin, couldn’t you be one of the engineers?” said Mayumi yet again. Suzune had been chained to the student council room even for lunch break during this precompetition crunch time.

“I cannot. With my skill, I believe I would only get in the way of Nakajou and the others,” came the curt refusal yet again.

Mayumi looked quite disheartened. Tatsuya hesitated, but this would probably be his best chance. He made eye contact with Miyuki, then began to rise from his seat…

“Umm, would it be possible to have Shiba with us?”

…when suddenly he was struck with an unexpected attack from Azusa that caused his launch to fail.

Mayumi, facedown on the table now, looked up without moving and gave a strange answer in an unknown language: “Whaa?”

Azusa had been groaning in front of a large tablet the whole time—likely struggling with her course work. She sighed a little, turned it off, and looked up. “I think Shiba does the adjustments for Miyuki’s CAD. She let me see it once. It was done so well you’d think it was the work of a craftsman from a top manufacturer!”

Mayumi immediately shot upright. Life returned to her face as though she’d never been tired at all. “Have we been blind this whole time…?!” She turned a predatory, hawklike gaze on Tatsuya. Just that caused him to give up almost completely.

“I see… How did I never see it? I even work with the guy!” And with Mari added into the equation, there was really no getting out of here anymore. “He tuned up all the CADs in the disciplinary committee room, too, didn’t he? He’s the only one using them, so I never actually noticed.”

I don’t think anything will change their minds now, thought Tatsuya, 99 percent giving up. Still, he hated losing by default, so he offered a modest—but likely useless—argument. “The chairwoman told me yesterday how important the CAD engineers are, but there is no precedent for a freshman being part of the team, is there?”

“There’s a first time for everything!”

“Rules are meant to be broken.”

Mayumi and Mari both answered without skipping a beat, their viewpoints radical.

“Progressive people such as yourselves may think so, but will the other competitors appreciate it? I’m a freshman, and I’m a Course 2 student, and I haven’t exactly earned the best reputation in my time here.” Actually coming out and saying that was a little disheartening, but he couldn’t avert his eyes from the truth. “The most important part of CAD adjustment is to have a relationship of trust with its user. The CAD capabilities that the magician can actually make full use of depend a lot on their mental state, after all. If the competitors would rather me not be there, then I don’t think I’d be a good choice…”

Tatsuya’s opinion seemed understandable at first, and Mayumi and Mari exchanged glances. But no matter what he said, the girls knew how he really felt. They made eye contact with him in turn, attacking him one by one, to give the final word to their difficulty-averse, slothful underclassman. Before they could speak, however, Tatsuya found himself on the receiving end of some unexpected support fire.

“I would very much like to have my brother adjusting my CAD during the competition… Is that at all possible?”

Miyuki’s stunning betrayal (?) caused Tatsuya to freeze in place. A good classical expression for his state of mind would be “Et tu, Brute…?!”

Mayumi wasted no time in delivering a follow-up attack. “You’re right! Miyuki, you’d be much more relaxed while competing if you had the trustworthy engineer always adjusting your CAD there, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes. If my brother was added to the engineer team, then I believe Mitsui and Kitayama could go into their matches with some more peace of mind as well.”

This was the first concrete statement he’d heard that those two had been chosen for the rookie competition. They were expected, and right for the job, thought Tatsuya…trying to take his mind off the reality before him: This was checkmate, no doubt about it.

The final decision of whether to add Tatsuya to the team would be made during a prep meeting held in the club committee headquarters after school. That meant there was still a ray of hope, but he’d already given up on it as impossible.

As soon as Miyuki said she wanted it, he had no recourse. He knew that even if he expressed disapproval, he’d need to make an impassioned argument to defend it.

It was a lose-lose situation. And in times like these, people generally reached for what they were good at. He was incredibly low on the priority list here, but for now, he got his grip back on his self-worth. He thought about what he was capable of, what he was used to, and what he was good at. It was a sort of compensation mechanism to help him calm down. He almost never needed to use it—maybe it was the stress—but right now, Tatsuya was falling into the same subtle trap as anyone else: the desire for self-compensation.

Two-thirds of lunch break had passed, but Tatsuya was trapped in boredom because of the piles of desk work Miyuki was burdened with. To keep himself occupied, he removed the silver CAD from his shoulder holster and began to check on all the physical moving parts, like the cartridge drive and the activation program selector switch.

“Oh, you brought your Silver Horn today?”

Azusa, who had been groaning over her course work a moment ago, spotted him with her sharp eyes and came over. He glanced away, and his eyes found Suzune this time instead of Mayumi or Mari. She correctly understood what Tatsuya wanted to say, and skillfully gave the facial equivalent of a shrug by using only her eyebrows. In other words, Azusa probably couldn’t concentrate on her work with the distraction.

“Yes. I bought a new holster, so I wanted to get myself used to it,” he answered, friendly enough on the surface—though to himself, he was thinking some objectively cruel things, like how birdbrained the girl was for being so distracted by the Silver Horn she wouldn’t be able to continue her course work until her curiosity was sated.

“Really? Can you show it to me, please?” she asked, her eyes glittering, drawing even closer. She seemed to be more interested in the accessory than the CAD itself. Tatsuya was unable to suppress a dry grin, given that she always avoided him—probably out of fear. Still, when the girl hopped over to him like a small animal, he found it impossible to act coldly.

Figuring it would be an act of kindness, Tatsuya removed his jacket, which he wore properly even in the middle of summer—and was, of course, made of high-tech heat-protection fabric—removed his shoulder holster, and gave it to Azusa.

“Wow! This is a genuine Silver model. Such a nice shape…and perfect curves to make the CAD easy to draw. It takes usability into consideration without going overboard with technology. Ahh, I want one so bad…”

Azusa was happy enough to take it, and she seemed about ready to rub her cheek against it in affection. Tatsuya was finding it difficult to keep a straight face. She turned the holster over and over again in her hands for a while, feeling it all over, until finally she returned it to him with a fully satisfied smile. “Are you a fan of the Silver model, too?” she asked. “They seem a little bit on the high end in terms of price if you just compare the value and specs to things like Maximillian’s Shooting model, Rosen’s F-class, and the Sagittarius series that FLT also creates—but the customization brings that kind of satisfying feeling that makes the price not matter as much!”

Mari had informed him some time ago that Azusa was a “device nerd.” Back then, he sympathized with Azusa, thinking it was a mean thing to call her—but now he was pretty sure she’d earned the name herself.

Tatsuya was also of the opinion that the holster had poor abilities for the cost, but he thought it lacked a certain “satisfying feeling,” too. Sometimes, though, the specs didn’t match the data in the catalog. It was often a matter of how much you could rate things about it that couldn’t be expressed in numbers; saying something was satisfying without doing that kind of analysis was essentially a simple act of an almost religious belief in it.

Still, satisfaction was a largely subjective issue, so if she said it was satisfying, then who was he to throw cold water on her?

“Actually, I have a minor connection to them, so I get the Silver models for cheaper in exchange for being a product tester.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, Miyuki’s shoulders gave a jolt as she sat facing the terminal at the wall, but nobody noticed.

“What?! Is that true?” Azusa’s face was positively shining with admiration.

Even Tatsuya had to make a pained expression at that. “…If I get another opportunity to test a new product, would you like me to give the set to you?”

“Huh?! Is that okay?! You would do that for me?! Thank you so much!”

There was no room to interrupt her reply. He managed to eke out a nod as Azusa grabbed Tatsuya’s free left hand in both of hers and started shaking it up and down.

Understandably unable to let this keep going, Mayumi paused her progress on her piles of paperwork and said, “…Ah-chan, why don’t you calm down a little?”

Azusa abruptly stopped moving. Slowly, she looked down at her hands…became aware of the fact that her hands were tightly gripping Tatsuya’s (visually now, rather than just in a tactile sense)…quietly looked up at Tatsuya’s face, lowered her gaze back to her hands trying to avoid his expressionless face…and then, as though she’d just put her hands into a fire, not only took her hands away but jumped back.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…!”

There was a metaphor about people getting red all the way up to their ears, but this was no analogy—Azusa’s ears were actually red as she bowed vigorously in apology, over and over again. Tatsuya started to actually worry about her making herself dizzy because of it, so he made eye contact with Mayumi for help.

“…Let’s leave it at that, okay, Ah-chan? I think you might be troubling Tatsuya.”

With the same concern in mind, Mayumi chided Azusa, not trying to stir things up with her usual mischief.

Azusa took a deep breath as she was told, and seemed to regain some calm. With a sigh and a shake of her head, Mayumi got back to work.

Azusa smiled bashfully at Tatsuya, then became suddenly serious and asked, “Then would you happen to know what kind of person Taurus Silver is?”

She was obviously trying to hide her embarrassment by asking something else.

Unfortunately, this particular question was extremely difficult for Tatsuya to answer.

“…No, I don’t know much at all.”

There was a beep sound from near the wall. It was the electronic tone accompanying a mistaken input for the workstation Miyuki was using. Everyone mistyped things every once in a while, but Miyuki making enough of a sound for that tone to go off was rare.

Mayumi and Suzune looked in her direction, surprised, but Miyuki simply continued her database work as though nothing had happened. They got back to their own jobs without a word.

“…Miyuki doesn’t make mistakes often.”

“Well, everyone does sometimes,” he said, explaining the situation to smooth it out.

Azusa didn’t seem to care at all about it, and went back to the original topic—or, the one she had just begun, anyway. “He may hide his true identity, but other scientists there would know who he was, right? Or does he make everything all by himself?”

“…No, I don’t think even he would be able to do that.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Oh, Shiba, couldn’t you ask that connection of yours?”

“…Well, it doesn’t quite work like that… Besides, there’s probably some internal reason Four Leaves has for keeping it secret, so I don’t think I’d be able to ask any of the scientists there, either.”

“Hmm, I guess you’re right…”

“…I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that using mental interference magic to gain access to secret information is a serious crime.”

“Huh? O-oh, no, the thought had never even…occurred to me…”

Tatsuya gave her a narrow-eyed stare and Azusa’s already-small body shrank even further. “…Well, just as long as you really understand. I was just saying it to make sure, that’s all.”

“I-it’s all right. I know that much, at least. Aha, aha-ha-ha…”

One drop, two drops—after seeing the physical, not metaphorical, cold sweat start to run down her cheek, he let up the pressure. “In any case, you really seem to be interested in who Taurus Silver is, aren’t you?” The CAD Azusa used wasn’t even made by FLT. Was the identity of the designer of the Silver model, one she didn’t use, really so interesting? It was a simple question for Tatsuya. The obvious one to ask.

“Huh?” Azusa, though, looked back at him like the question had been completely unexpected. “Well, of course I am. Are you saying you’re not, Shiba? I mean, it’s Taurus Silver! The Taurus Silver, the first one to realize the Loop Cast System, the one to improve the activation program expansion speed for specialized CADs by twenty percent, and the one who even brought the recognition error rate for noncontact switches from three percent to below one percent. The Taurus Silver who shares all that knowledge freely, who thinks advancement of the whole magic world is more important than personal gain. He’s a technical genius; he brought specialized CAD software forward by ten whole years in just one! Anyone who wants to be a magic engineer would be interested in what kind of a person he is.”

Azusa spoke with such keen force that it felt like she was criticizing him. Even Tatsuya couldn’t help but falter. The public image of Taurus Silver had grown far greater than he’d imagined. “I didn’t understand. As a user, it wasn’t like I didn’t have my share of gripes with the model, so I didn’t think he would be praised so highly…”

“Oh… I get it. You test their products, so the Silver model is pretty familiar to you… I guess that’s why you feel differently.” Though her face seemed a little noncommittal, he seemed to have gotten through to her.

“Hey, Shiba, what kind of person do you think Taurus Silver is?”

Eyes of pure inquisitiveness. Thinking he needed to change the topic soon at this point, Tatsuya answered in such a way as to buy himself time. “Let’s see… Perhaps he’s actually a Japanese man, and young like us, too.”

There was another beep from near the wall. Miyuki continued her work, not breaking her proper sitting posture.

She never showed them what sort of expression was on her face.

“By the way, Ah-chan…”

“Yes, what is it, President?”

In the end, as Tatsuya was beginning to find Azusa unmanageable, Mayumi was the one to throw him a life jacket. It may have been out of self-interest, but this was the first time he felt like she was dependable. He was sure she just wanted to get Azusa back to working on student council things as soon as possible, of course.

“Weren’t you going to finish that assignment by the end of lunch break?”

But though it may have been a life jacket for Tatsuya, it was essentially a merciless trumpet blast in Azusa’s ear… Well, that may have been an exaggeration, but her face was so shocked that he could have believed that happened. The conversation about Taurus Silver had been a distraction from reality for her.

“Presideeent…” Azusa, seeming about to cry, looked to Mayumi for help. She must have been in a pretty bad spot with her work.

“Don’t sound so pathetic,” said Mayumi with a pained smile, looking up from the order requests she’d been observing so carefully and at Azusa. “I can help a little bit if you need. What’s your assignment about?”

Mari gave Mayumi a look to tell her she was babying Azusa again, but Mayumi didn’t care—in fact she pretended not to notice—and smiled at Azusa instead.

“I’m sorry… It’s a report on the Three Great Practical Problems of Weighting Magic,” explained Azusa, looking despondent, causing Suzune, Mari, and Tatsuya to look straight at her. “Wh-what is it?” She gave a start and drew back at their collective stares. When she made that expression like she could burst into tears at any moment, it made Tatsuya feel like they were torturing her somehow. He immediately averted his stare for that reason, and perhaps Suzune thought so, too.

Mari was the only one who kept looking at her. “Oh, I see…” she muttered, looking at her—or rather, the tablet she was using—with keen interest. “You’ve never fallen below the top five in terms of grades, so I was wondering what could have been causing you so much trouble.”

“Isn’t there always at least one question about that by default?” asked Mayumi, looking baffled, then she followed up. “What is the question exactly, Ah-chan?”

Given the topic’s spot as a standard on tests, you could say that they had exhausted every possible question they could possibly ask. The topic was so important that it was all over the entrance exams for the National Magic University. She should have been able to find the answer to any question quite easily if she looked for it.

“It has to do with why the Three Problems are so difficult to solve. I figured two of them out, but I can’t quite explain why multipurpose flight magic can’t be done…”

Suzune nodded in understanding. “That means you aren’t satisfied with the answers to that question that have been posed so far.”

“Exactly!” Azusa’s head bobbed up and down at Suzune’s accurate reading of her thoughts. “Magic that defies gravity and makes your body float has been a thing ever since the eight families of modern magic were systematized, right?”

“Right, and one of the risks is that you could die if you fall,” remarked Mayumi.

Azusa looked at her. “Magicians specializing in acceleration and weighting magic can jump dozens of meters with a single spell, and there’s one that set a world record of over a hundred meters in the long jump. Actually, landing is even more amazing; some have even successfully jumped twenty meters into the air and landed perfectly.”

“So the question is…why hasn’t anyone figured out how to actually fly around in the air?”

“To be more precise, it’s why hasn’t flight magic been formalized so that anyone can use it?” explained Suzune to Mayumi. “There aren’t many, but there are a few people who use old magic who can fly very well.”

Azusa shook her head slowly, and perhaps unconsciously. “But those are essentially unique skills of I.S. magicians. It can’t be called technology if they can’t share it. Theoretically, you should be able to fly by canceling out gravity using acceleration and weighting magic. And magicians have formulated ways to float or jump. So then why can’t they fly…”

“I would think the answer would be in a lot of higher-level reference books…” mused Mayumi, her eyes asking Azusa why those answers weren’t convincing enough.

“Magic sequences always have an ending condition described in them, and until that condition is met, its event-altering effects will continue. If there’s an object currently under the effects of event-altering magic, then in order to bring about a different event alteration in that object, you need more influence over the event than the previous spell has.

“If an object is currently in flight, then every time you wanted to accelerate, decelerate, raise, or lower it, you would need to overlay a new spell on top of the one already affecting it. Each time the amount of event influence you would need grows. The very most a single magician can regulate his or her event influence is by ten separate degrees. After making ten changes with spells to an object in flight, that would be it… That’s the reason everybody says flight magic can’t be formalized, right?”

Mayumi assented without a moment’s thought to Azusa’s long explanation. “See, you get it, Ah-chan. All your points are in order, too. What has you so worried?”

“When you look at it, the issue is overlaying magic on an object already affected by magic, right? I feel like you could just cancel the currently active spell before executing a new one.”

Azusa had left her crybaby face far behind her, and now she almost seemed angry as she firmly presented the issues.

“Logically, you are correct, but practically, how would you go about canceling a spell?”

“Couldn’t you program in an ending condition into the active spell beforehand to respond to a different magic sequence, like a key? In other words, you could use a tiny spell and inject that into one currently active to trigger its ending condition and cancel it out.”

Azusa’s face was almost red as she passionately debated what was entirely her idea. In contrast, though, Suzune offered a cool and composed counterpoint. “Unfortunately, magic sequences cannot affect other magic sequences. They can only overwrite eidos. If you simultaneously inject two magic sequences into the same eidos, only the one with more influence will affect the eidos; it won’t erase the weaker magic sequence. That isn’t to say there is no anti-magic that can dismantle and erase magic sequences, but they’re extremely high-level spells that directly interact with the makeup of information itself. Doing it in a laboratory would be one thing, but I don’t know of any magicians that can do such a thing perfectly.”

“Oh, I see…”

The things Suzune explained were knowledge related to lessons on anti-magic—spells to counteract an opponent’s magic—which were a part of applied magic science, a subject not taught until the second semester of a student’s second year, when it took the place of fundamental magic science. The specific topic, in the regular syllabus, was given to seniors in their first semester, so there was no reason Azusa would have known about it. The very fact that she didn’t seem at all frazzled by the term anti-magic was a sign that she put a lot of effort into her studies.

“It is, however, an interesting idea,” said Suzune, smiling gently at Azusa’s zeal and depression. “I think you are correct in your thought to cancel a magic sequence’s active state.”

“Yes,” said Mayumi, showing assent to Azusa’s idea as well. “The rapid increase in the influence you need is caused by overwriting active spells, after all. I’ve never thought of it before, but if you stopped the active event alteration, you wouldn’t need more influence to overwrite it with the next spell… If you were in the air at the moment, you’d need to make the switch without any lost time, but with a CAD meant for the purpose, you could make it activate the next spell before you started to fall…” After muttering to herself for a while, she seemed to remember something, and cocked her head to the side. “But if all you needed to do was negate the spell’s effectiveness, someone would have already tried it, right? You’re basically just expanding Area Interference retroactively…”

Mayumi’s question prompted Suzune to bring up the search window on her workstation. “One moment, please… There was indeed a large-scale experiment held in England last year. The concept is just as you say—making flight magic practical by applying Area Interference retroactively.” Suzune immediately pulled up the relevant article from a database of magic-related news.

“How did it turn out?” she asked, in a rather lively way—Mayumi was still just a normal high school student, and she couldn’t hide her anticipation.

“A complete failure. They reported that they saw a sudden and radical increase in the needed influence because of the successive spell casting.”

“…Oh.” And with just that report from Suzune that betrayed (?) her anticipation, she couldn’t conceal her disappointment, either. “Does it say the reason?”

“No, it isn’t listed here. What do you think, President?” asked Suzune in return.

Mayumi put her finger on her chin. “Hmm… The previous magic would have stopped being active, though… Tatsuya, what do you think?”

Her question was to buy more time for her to think of an answer.

She hadn’t actually been expecting it to come from him.

“The experiment in England that Suzune cited was mistaken in its basic premise.”

So the conclusive response that he gave took Mayumi completely by surprise.

“…What was wrong with it?” Mayumi managed to ask, her eyes wide.

Tatsuya launched into an indifferent explanation—neither boasting nor condescending. “When magic sequence ending conditions aren’t met, they remain on the target eidos until they decay naturally over time. When you use one spell to nullify the effects of another spell, it may look like the other spell is destroyed, but that’s only on the surface.”

Mayumi, Suzune, Azusa, and even Mari were now looking at him eagerly. He kept a straight face and maintained his businesslike tone, as though the pressure they were putting on him didn’t exist. “Let’s say there’s a magic sequence A that was cast first, and a magic sequence B meant to nullify the effects of magic sequence A. By executing sequence B, the event-altering effects of sequence A are negated. However, the only thing it loses is its ability to alter events—the sequence itself still remains on the eidos. Sequence A and sequence B will continue to act upon the target eidos at the same time; it’s just that sequence B is the only one showing an effect. As Ichihara mentioned, magic sequences only overwrite eidos. They can’t act on other magic sequences. It’s the same even if we’re talking about Area Interference. As long as it isn’t a spell that erases the magic sequence directly, even anti-magic doesn’t break this basic rule.”

“…Does that mean the experiment in England was casting more spells than they needed for flight magic?”

Tatsuya nodded, then added, “What this means is that each time they want to change flight path, they have to use an extra magic sequence to overwrite the old. Those extra writes pile up each time you change your flight state, so it’s evident that you would more quickly reach the upper limit of the magician’s event influence. The English scholars on the experiment were probably under some illusions regarding the nature of anti-magic.”

Just as he finished his explanation, the portable terminal in Tatsuya’s breast pocket vibrated. It was a replacement for a school bell, notifying him of the end of lunch break.

“Miyuki, shall we go back?”

“Yes, Tatsuya.”

Miyuki, who had her back facing them the entire time, stood at once upon hearing her name. Her voice, expression, and behavior were just as elegant and ladylike as always.

That meant Mayumi, Suzune, Mari, and Azusa didn’t notice anything.

They never noticed it—how straight and proud Miyuki’s back had been as she sat at the console. How jubilantly her fingers had danced over the keyboard.

The air in the club committee headquarters had been tense since before the Nine School Competition assembly began. Those students who performed well in their matches would be given bonuses to their grades to match, but just being chosen as a member for the competition granted them an extended exemption from having to do homework—an A-class privilege by anyone’s standards.

This went for the engineers, too, not just the competitors; this competition was extremely important to the school. Even among the students, anyone participating had great status. As this assembly was to finalize the members who would be going, it was no wonder the mood was raw and harsh.

If Tatsuya had been an unrelated third party, he would have been looking at his fellow freshmen and upperclassmen with some sympathy as he watched their faces, now happy and now sad. Now that he was one of the people on the chopping block, however, he had to resist the urge to give a melancholic sigh—he just wished this farce would end as soon as humanly possible.

It wasn’t that he had no interest in the competition.

He, as much as anyone else, had the desire to pit his own skills against other magicians (in training) of the same age, though it was a different sort of hunger from the desire to prove his intellect filled with CAD improvement techniques he’d learned in his father’s laboratories.

He had been created to have less emotion than those around him, but he was still at the most energetic, vigorous point of his life. No matter what his classmates might have said about him, he wasn’t so mature that he wasn’t interested in competing with others at all.

But to do that, he would have to get past this ceremony seething with conceit, envy, vainglory, and bitterness. That’s why he felt so gloomy.

Ignorant of his current mood—as was only natural—the seats in the conference room filled up steadily. Once every seat had found a person, Mayumi took her seat in the speaker’s chair.

“I’d like to begin the Nine School Competition member selection conference.”

And thus began the hugely populated conference, including the junior and senior athletes and engineers who had already been unofficially offered the position, the club presidents of each of the relevant athletic clubs, the student council members (except for Miyuki, who was minding the student council room in their absence), and the club committee executives.

Tatsuya had been given an observation seat along with the other unofficially confirmed members. And it could be said that, given a large enough group of people, there would always be some nitpicker whose sharp eyes would discover an outsider among them.

As expected, immediately upon the conference’s start, the topic turned to why a Course 2 freshman was present.

That wasn’t to say none of the people looking at him were doing so favorably—in fact, much to his surprise, most of the opinions were in his favor.

Unlike his fellow freshmen, the upperclassmen seemed to be aware that despite Tatsuya being a Course 2 student, his achievements as a disciplinary officer set him apart from the rest.

Even so, there were many with opposing viewpoints. Their opposition was not clear nor was it based in logic; it was an emotional, passive opposition. Thanks to that, the debate regarding him ended up going in slow circles, with no conclusion in sight.

“So basically…” Suddenly, a grave voice silenced the conference. It was not a very loud voice, but it quieted the chaotic arguments of everyone present as the speaker turned to look at the one who had originally suggested there was a problem. It was the club committee chairman, Katsuto Juumonji, who had maintained his silence until now, returning all the gazes that had come upon him. “I understand that the problem is that we don’t know how high Shiba’s skill level is. If I am correct in saying so, then the best way of resolving this would be to see his skills firsthand.”

The big room fell silent. It was simple, effective, and nobody would be able to argue the results. Plus, it was a solution to the potentially substantial risks involved that nobody had been willing to mention aloud.

“…That makes sense,” said Mari, breaking the silence, “but how should we actually do it?”

“We should have him perform adjustments right now,” answered Katsuto, simply and clearly. “If you like, I can be his test subject.”

The CADs currently provided for their use would have to be adjusted to suit their users. Ten magicians would need to have ten different setups, even if they all used the same exact machine. Magicians absorbed the activation programs expanded by their CAD straight into their unconscious regions. In other words, the magician’s mind was completely exposed to their own CAD. In recent years, they were equipped with tuning functions for accelerating and smoothing out the reading-in of activation programs, and that was more than enough to have quite an effect on the mind of the user.

If this tuning process were done improperly, it would cause not only a decrease in magic efficiency, but also discomfort, headache, dizziness, and nausea—and in the worst cases, mental damage such as hallucinations—so the latest and greatest CADs would need adjustments that were meticulous enough and precise enough for the magician to handle them.

Therefore, leaving one’s CAD adjustments in the hands of an unproven magic engineer meant the magician would be shouldering a huge risk. Katsuto’s suggestion, while his own, had essentially been a very brave one.

“No, I’m the one who recommended him, so I’ll do it.” Mayumi immediately made an offer to stand in for him. Her suggestion was probably based on a sense of responsibility, but on the other hand, it meant she didn’t completely trust him, and that made Tatsuya rather uncomfortable.

“No, please, allow me.”

Kirihara announcing his willingness, however, was unexpected, quite the surprise—and Tatsuya found his masculine eagerness rather comforting.

The school’s CAD adjustment facility open to students and faculty was located in the lab building. But they weren’t going to use the adjustment devices provided there this time; instead, they brought the onboard adjustment machine they would actually be using in the Nine School Competition into the conference room. They also readied a CAD that was to the competition’s specifications for him to adjust.

The preparations for his test, at least on the equipment side, had been finished without a hitch, with skill and efficiency; they also made the lateness of the competitor selection stand out.

Tatsuya sat down in front of the adjustment machine, and Kirihara took a seat on the other side of it, though they couldn’t see their faces. The student council members and club presidents all gathered around them.

First he booted up the machine. Obstinate stares had already gathered on Tatsuya’s hands at this early stage, but he was used to using far more intricate adjustment devices on a daily basis; he could do this part perfectly in his sleep. He kept a straight face, ignoring the annoying stares, and quickly progressed to the point where he would need to prepare for measurements.

He asked for a confirmation of the test conditions. “Let me confirm: The task is to copy Kirihara’s CAD settings to the competition one, then tune it to allow immediate usage, but not to alter the activation programs in any way, correct?”

“Yes, that will be fine,” said Mayumi, nodding. Tatsuya, however, shook his head just a little at that. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I can’t say I recommend copying his settings to a CAD with different hardware…but that’s the task for now. Safety first, then.”

“?”

Mayumi wasn’t the only one who looked at him askance. Copying CAD settings was something done whenever you got a new device, so they didn’t know what the issue was. But as expected, the members of the engineering team, beginning with Azusa, seemed to understand what he suggested. Their reactions were all either a slight nod or an eager smirk from those who wanted to see his skills.

Tatsuya didn’t engage in any further useless talking and got to work.

First he took the CAD from Kirihara and connected it to the adjustment machine. It semiautomatically extracted the setting data; the process wasn’t one that would make any differences in skill clear. However, when he created a workspace on the machine and saved the setting data there, rather than copying it straight to the CAD, several people gave him strange looks.

Next he had to measure the particular characteristics of Kirihara’s psionic waves. At Tatsuya’s signal, he put on a headset and placed both hands on the measurement panel. This was the normal procedure as well; with machines equipped with auto-adjusters, it would automatically do all the adjustments just by setting up the CAD and doing the measurements. That was where it usually stopped for students who used the school’s machines to adjust their personal CADs.

At the same time, an engineer’s skills would be highlighted if he or she manually accessed the CAD’s operating system and made adjustments that were more precise than the automatic process would have done.

“Thank you. You can take it off now.”

With Tatsuya’s indication that the measurements had completed, Kirihara removed the headset.

Normally, at this point, the only thing left would be to connect the CAD to do the setup on, then make minor adjustments to whatever the auto-adjuster gave. But to do that, one needed to prepare the CAD that was either already set up, or, in this case, that already had the settings copied to it.

Most of the people observing thought he’d accidentally switched parts of the process around. And as if to substantiate that idea, Tatsuya sat still and stared at the display.

However, from the way he sat, it didn’t feel like he had made a mistake and didn’t know what to do anymore. No, he seemed far from helpless. His eyes were frightfully serious.

Azusa, unable to suppress her curiosity, leaned forward suddenly and looked at the display from over Tatsuya’s shoulder.

“Eh?” she muttered a moment later, a grunt that was a little inappropriate for a young maiden.

Tatsuya didn’t flick an eyelash at the sound.

Too hesitant to ask out loud what was the matter, Mayumi and Mari peered at the display from Azusa’s sides—and just barely managed to restrain themselves from giving the same kind of grunt.

There was no graph displaying the measurement results, which normally appeared on the screen at this point. Instead, the entire screen was filled with countless letters and numbers flying by very quickly.

The two of them could only make out a few numbers here and there; their eyes couldn’t keep up with the strings of characters rushing by.

The parade of letters and numbers stopped soon. It had taken only a few dozen seconds, and not even five minutes since Tatsuya had begun staring at the screen. Immediately after freezing the automatic scrolling, Tatsuya set the competition device on the adjustment machine and began typing fervently.

One after another, windows opened and closed on the screen. Two of the windows were left open; one had the raw data from the measurement results that he’d just been reading, and the other was the raw data copied from the original CAD. Only Azusa could tell all this.

Almost none of the people watching at the moment understood how high-level an operation was being performed. A lot of them were probably just in awe over his keyboard-only input speed, an unusual skill in this day and age. But Azusa knew that the truly astonishing thing was his skill at directly understanding the results of the psionic wave measurement in its raw data form.

Doing it this way meant that he could apply every last bit of the measurements to his adjustments—at least insofar as the device’s capacity would allow. It was a fully manual adjustment, not relying on the auto-adjuster feature at all.

She watched as before her eyes the setting data he’d saved to the temporary workspace was overwritten in the blink of an eye. Everything on the screen was still raw data like before, but Azusa was just barely able to understand the settings he had created.

They left a huge safety margin—“safety first” indeed. With these settings, the user would be at less risk than if the auto-adjuster had been used. Not only that, he could now supply the CAD with far more efficient activation programs.

In reality, it didn’t even need to be tested. This freshman’s skill at doing adjustments was above literally everyone else on the engineering team. Azusa resolved to drag him on to it no matter what it took.

With the condition being not to alter any of the activation programs, he finished doing the adjustments in no time. The performance had felt extremely short to everyone watching.

They tested it right away. The tension on Kirihara’s face, so subtle that observers wouldn’t notice it, was still in the “entertainment” category. But in reality, there were no accidents, no almost-accidents, and no bugs. The CAD Tatsuya had adjusted worked exactly the same as Kirihara’s personal device.

“Kirihara, how does it feel?”

“No problems here. It feels just like the one I use.”

Kirihara’s response to Katsuto’s question came immediately.

It was clear to everyone there that he wasn’t giving any unfair bias due to personal friendship. Even if someone only sort of knew of the connection between Kirihara and Tatsuya—the incident in which Tatsuya slammed Kirihara into the floor after he barged into the kendo club’s demonstration during the club recruitment week in April—they would still never believe Kirihara would be trying to make him look good. But even without such a misunderstanding, everyone there understood that the CAD was in perfect working order just by watching him cast a spell with it. However, other than the obvious result of the magic going off smoothly, which was only average, in a way, they couldn’t understand just by looking.

“…He seems to have some skill, but it doesn’t seem to be at a level to represent our school.”

“And the time he took to finish was average. I can’t call his performance overly good.”

“He does things in a strange way. That might mean something in and of itself, but…”

Sure enough, the first opinions to come from the junior competitors were negative ones, citing a plain and simple result. They were not necessarily out of resistance to selecting someone so singular for the team, though; some of it was just recoil. The student council president directly recommending him, and as an exception, even, had made them unconsciously hope for an eye-popping display of skill.

Azusa, however, opposed them violently. “I strongly support Shiba being on the team!” Her normally timid expression was gone without a trace. “The technique he just showed us is so advanced that I still can’t believe a high school student did it. At the very least, doing the adjustments all manually without using the auto-adjuster is something I can’t even hope to do.”

“…That might be a high-level technique, but if the end result is average, then what would be the point…?”

“It may look average on the outside, but on the inside it’s anything but! It’s amazing how he maintained its efficiency and still put in such a huge safety margin!”

“Nakajou, calm down… I feel like the time he spent putting in such an unnecessarily large safety margin could have been used to bring its performance up.”

“Well, that’s…probably because it was so sudden…” Unfortunately, Azusa was never what one could call eloquent, so her enthusiasm tapered off.

When it looked like Azusa was at a loss for words, suddenly, one male student raised his hand and stood up, drawing the attention of everyone in attendance. “The CAD that Kirihara uses isn’t so much for competition; it’s an extremely high-spec model. The fact that its user didn’t feel a difference despite the gap in specifications between his CAD and the competition one is, I believe, evidence of quite a lot of skill.”

“Huh? …Hattori?”

Surprisingly enough, Hattori had been the one to come to the rescue. “President, I also support Shiba being on the engineering team.”

“Hanzou?” Mayumi’s face, too, belied a clear surprise.

But Hattori, whatever his true intentions were, frankly explained his opinion, without (visibly) flinching from the negative impression doing so could make on the student council president he so respected (?). “Our school’s dignity will be on the line during the Nine School Competition. I believe we should select students with the most ability, regardless of their title. The job of an engineer is to support the athletes so they have an easier time competing. If Kirihara said it felt the same, then his skill can only be described as extremely advanced, like Nakajou said. We have such a shortage of engineers that we’re struggling to even find candidates; this isn’t the time to be caught up on him being a freshman or this whole thing being unprecedented.”

There were thorns in his voice, making themselves known every now and then—and they spoke to the fact that he was telling the truth. Nevertheless, Hattori having turned coats to support Tatsuya greatly impacted the entire room.

“I think Hattori’s explanation is correct. Shiba has displayed enough skill to be a team member and represent our school. I will support him for the team as well.”

With Katsuto clearly picking a side amid the silent opposition, most people there made up their minds.