Chapter 4

At last, it was August 1st, the day they would set off for the Nine School Competition.

Schools that had farther to go, like Eighth High in Otaru, Hokkaido, and Ninth High in Kumamoto on the island of Kyushu, would be arriving before the others. First High took up its residence on the western edges of Tokyo, though, so every year they usually arrived at their lodging at the last moment before the competition began. This was less of a strategic act and more to prioritize the faraway schools’ usage of the site’s practice grounds. First High wouldn’t be able to enter the grounds until the day of the competition, so they didn’t need to get there particularly early…

“…So that’s why we don’t leave until today.”

“Right… I guess the explanation was easy enough to understand, anyway.”

The moment Mari finished, Tatsuya had to resist the impulse to make fun of her and ask her who exactly she was lecturing. He shook his head instead and looked away.

The two of them were making conversation out under the midsummer skies, with the sun doing its best to make its presence known. He wondered who on earth would enjoy being out in such extreme heat, but he didn’t come up with any answers—he didn’t like doing this, either.

“Sorry I’m laaate!”

Mari sighed and grinned as she saw the owner of the voice, whose sandal heels clapped nimbly on the ground; Mari had shrewdly placed only herself under the parasol, leaving Tatsuya to burn up under the sizzling sunlight as he silently checked off an item on the list displayed on his terminal.

One hour thirteen minutes late. They were all finally here.

“Mayumi, you’re late.”

“Sorry, sorry.”

Those were the only words of criticism and apology passed between them. They stepped onto the big bus as though nothing had happened.

A moment later, though, Mayumi came back out empty-handed.

“…Did you forget something?” asked Tatsuya, feeling a little uneasy about whether he was keeping a straight face. The things they’d need for their multiple-night stay, such as extra clothes and makeup (having makeup when lodging away from home was, of course, a necessity taught to him by Miyuki) were already packed into containers and loaded on the bus. The packages were delivered directly from each student’s house, so they all would have known by now if they had forgotten something. Even if someone had forgotten something, most of what they’d need would be provided by their lodging anyway; there wasn’t all that much they’d need to take with them on a bus ride that was two hours long at most.

“No, that’s not it… I’m sorry, Tatsuya. I made everyone wait quite a bit.”

“Don’t worry about it; I heard what was going on.”

Mayumi wasn’t late for some irresponsible reason like she’d slept in or mistaken the time. Three hours ago, she had called and hurriedly explained that family issues were going to cause her to be late. She had told them to set off without her and she’d meet them there, but every senior present agreed on waiting for her, so Mayumi had ended up in a frantic rush to get here.

She wasn’t the next heir to the Saegusa family—she had two older brothers. Not only was she the third child, she was still a high school student; situations where they would need to round her up to do something were seldom at most. It probably would have been more convenient for her if the other students had left ahead of time. She wouldn’t have had to hurry in that case. However, they said they would wait—though Tatsuya was quietly against it—which meant they forced her to get here quickly. That was why Tatsuya didn’t feel like criticizing her for being one or two hours late.

“Wasn’t it hot out, though?”

“I’m fine. It’s still morning, and it’s not that hot outside.”

He was given the role of taking attendance for the ride for the allegedly inevitable reason that he was the only freshman noncompetitor going. There were forty competitors, four on the operations staff, and eight on the tech staff. He was the only freshman among the twelve who weren’t competing.

Of course, there would be more than just those twelve ready in the wings. Aside from the operations and tech staff, they’d put together twenty volunteers as assistance personnel for outside the venue, but they were taking a different route there. None of the school faculty was here at the moment, either. Their caravan consisted of a single large bus and four work vehicles, and the only ones on them, save for the drivers, were official staff.

“But you must be sweating as… Wait, what? You really aren’t sweating at all.”

“Well, I mean, I’m good enough at magic to be able to prevent myself from sweating… I’m not a lizard or anything—even I’d normally sweat in the middle of summer like this.”

He had used a spell that took the moisture and other components from his sweat off of his skin and clothing and dispersed it into the air. In terms of the magic families and types, Tatsuya’s characteristic spell, Dismantle, was a compound spell involving convergence, dispersion, absorption, and emission, and was a subset of separation magic. If any part of that held any particular weight, though, it was the dispersion part. Because of that, he specialized (relatively speaking) in the dispersion family.

“A lizard…” He hadn’t meant it to sound funny, but she seemed to think it was, and she giggled a little. Probably because of the season—Tatsuya thought to himself then that her smile reminded him of a sunflower. It was probably just an illusion caused by the sunlight, heat, and humidity…and as proof, it only took a moment before her smile changed into her usual mischievous grin.

“By the way, Tatsuya, how does this look on me?”

Yes…the same as always.

She was probably referring to the sundress she was wearing. She held the brim of her wide hat down with both hands and struck a pose. It would have been a little hard to misunderstand that even if he’d wanted to.

Today they’d just be checking into their rooms; there were no official events. Because of that, despite it technically being a school event, they weren’t required to wear their uniforms. All the freshmen, including Tatsuya, were wearing theirs, but about half the juniors and nearly all the seniors were in normal clothing.

Still, it was best to keep skin exposure in public locations to a minimum. It was the modern-day dress code, so like Mari, many of the students were wearing comfortable, drafty, long-sleeved shirts and thin pants down to their ankles. In terms of exceptions, there was one junior named Chiyoda, who was wearing short shorts and long socks that reached up to her thighs; it was a fashion statement, and one Tatsuya found difficult to decide whether she was exposing a lot of skin or not. A male student named Isori, at her coercing, was in shorts and high socks in a hiking style, and they looked like a matching pair. (Incidentally, the two of them were apparently dating.)

Amid all that, Mayumi’s outfit was extremely conspicuous. Strangely conspicuous, in fact. Her sundress exposed both arms all the way to her shoulders, and only reached down to her knees. Her bare feet were clad in high-heeled sandals. The tan tint of her skin was probably because she had put an infrared-reflecting, ultraviolet-proof breathable coating film on it. From that point of view she wasn’t exposing any skin at all, but the film’s color was like that of a good suntan, giving her skin the troubling illusion of sexiness.

“It looks very good on you.” The bold, flowery dress did indeed suit her exquisitely.

“Really…? Thank you.” Her silly tone and bashful expression combined for maximum effect as well. “…It would be nice if you were a little more shy about complimenting me.”

Two years older than him, and she intertwined her fingers in front of her waist and looked at him with upturned eyes as she approached. Her breasts, of average size for her small height, found themselves caught between her arms, giving him a clear glimpse of her cleavage. At this point, he had no doubt she was doing all this on purpose.

“…You must have had it rough.”

“…What?”

Tatsuya had no way of knowing what her sudden errand had been about, but she had obviously built up a lot of stress. “We should get going, President. You should be able to rest a bit on the bus.”

…At least, that was what Tatsuya chose to believe.

“Wait, hold on, Tatsuya. Don’t get the wrong idea…”

Mayumi found herself surprised and bewildered at his sudden attitude of consideration mixed with a hint of sympathy somewhere in there.

“…That was so rude. He was treating me like I was bipolar or something!”

The bus had begun its journey, and Mayumi was inside puffing out her cheeks in anger. Suzune watched her cordially from the next aisle seat over.

“He said he’d be nearby, then just ran away.”

Incidentally, Tatsuya was riding in one of the work vehicles as a member of the technical staff. From an objective standpoint—or at least from a visible one—he hadn’t done it to avoid Mayumi.

“Just who does he think I am, anyway?”

“It was the appropriate decision,” Suzune cut in flatly to Mayumi’s excited stream of complaints.

“Hmm? Rin, did you say something or was it just me?”

Her expression was scary: She formed a pleasant smile on her lips, but her eyes weren’t smiling at all. She responded in a cheerful voice, once again from a visible standpoint—and only the visible standpoint—but it didn’t put a dent in Suzune’s steely expression. “I did—it was an appropriate decision if he wished to avoid becoming your prey.”

“Huh? Hey! That was really mean!” In fact, her own serious assertion put cracks in Mayumi’s mask of composure.

“There are few male students who can endure your alluring figure. What I meant is that your beauty has great magical power in and of itself.”

“…Umm…”

“……”

Suzune spoke with such a serious face that Mayumi wondered for a moment whether she was being serious or joking. Of course, as soon as a magician heard the words “the magical power of beauty,” it was all but assured that it was a joke.

“It’s reasonable—I hear Shiba excels at negating his opponent’s magic. Perhaps your magic face just doesn’t work on him.”

“…Rin!” Finally she realized she was being 100 percent teased.

“There, there. Please calm down, President.”

“You’re one to talk!!”

Mayumi brought her indignant face closer to her friend, who still hadn’t broken her serious expression. Upon realizing it still had no effect, she turned her back to her, huddled over, and lay down on the seat, sulking to herself.

But depending on your point of view, her curled-up posture looked…

“Excuse me, President… Are you feeling under the weather…?”

…more like that.

A tense, incredibly worried voice addressed her from the aisle behind Suzune.

“Huh? Oh, no, that’s not…” Mayumi hadn’t personally expected such a misunderstanding. Still, the misunderstanding—perhaps better called an assumption—had caused Hattori to stand up and come see what was the matter as she sulked like that. It marched on ever onward.

“Shiba mentioned that you were tired. I see it wasn’t out of the question. If he’d just remember his place once in a while, he’d be…no, I’m sorry, this isn’t the time for that.”

“Umm, Hanzou? Like I said, I’m not feeling sick…”

“We truly believed your consideration worthy of respect—I mean, you didn’t want to make us worry—but if you push yourself too much and get hurt, it won’t have made a difference.”

Hattori, with a completely serious expression—this one earnestly worried for her well-being—watched Mayumi. He was a little red, perhaps of the rather slovenly way she was sitting, or maybe because of her thighs peeking out from under her dress. Her knees were still properly closed, though.

“Vice President Hattori, may I ask what you’re looking at?”

To explain the situation again, just to be clear, Hattori was looking at Mayumi’s face. He wasn’t looking at anything else, but at the same time, he seemed to be clearly avoiding looking at anything else. He had come around the seat, worried, and looked at her, then quickly averted his eyes from what he saw—and with the guilt that came with what he felt, he was unable to conceal his confusion.

…Feeling guilty about it and being flustered by it was, still, proof that he was a serious, pure-hearted young man.

“Ichihara?! I wasn’t…looking at… Well, I mean, I thought the president could use a blanket, and…”

In this particular case, unfortunately, his pure-hearted naïveté made him easy prey for the older girl.

“You were going to place a blanket on the president? Oh, then, go ahead.” Suzune rose and stood by her seat, her face an understanding one, then prompted Hattori with her eyes to proceed.

Mayumi, for her part, had figured out what was happening. She hid her wide-open chest with both hands and pretended to be embarrassed as she looked up at him.

Hattori froze, the blanket spread in his hands.

Mayumi’s eyes were trying to hide a very clear sadistic impulse. She certainly seemed to have less restraint at the moment. Shiba’s analysis was correct, Suzune thought to herself—putting her own role in this little fracas to the side.

“What the heck are they doing…?” sighed Mari softly enough so others couldn’t hear the irregular three-way deadlock between the frozen Hattori, the expectant and hopeful Mayumi, and Suzune watching indifferently from the side. After realizing Hattori had been turned into Mayumi’s toy as per usual, she sat back down. (She was in the seat opposite Suzune’s, across the aisle.)

She could say anything about it, but she was kind of worried about Mayumi’s health, and it was making her especially tired. “Well…same as always, I suppose…”

Mari knew it was a vicious cycle; Mayumi would tease him too much, which would stress Hattori out and make him needlessly dismissive of Course 2 students’ due, and then his actions as vice president then caused Mayumi, the president, to worry. Mari thought it quite unpleasant. Still, she knew Mayumi led a much more busy and worrisome life than her.

Mari’s family was quite an old one, possibly descendants of the samurai Watanabe no Tsuna, though she didn’t know whether that was true or not. On the current political map, they were just barely hanging on to a position as a descendant of one of the Hundred.

Whether it was due to a mutation, ancestral reversion, or just a lack of resemblance to her parents, Mari was the only one among all her relatives, blood and otherwise, to have magic abilities that were significant. Because of their position, though, she was almost never bothered by being used as a bargaining chip with another family in the society of magicians.

On the other hand, the Saegusa reigned at the top of the Ten Master Clans along with the Yotsuba. Mayumi may not have been the heiress to the family, but she was still of direct descent—and the oldest daughter. She’d received marriage proposals on many occasions during her time in high school, and some even earlier than that. (This wasn’t rumor—it was established fact.) Add that to the fact that even among the Ten Master Clans her magical abilities were amazing, and you had a thoroughbred of the magic world, with many hopes pinned on her future. Of course, she also burdened herself with the unneeded worries of being student council president.

However tough she was at heart, it couldn’t be easy. Mari felt she should be allowed some measure of cutting loose from time to time. As her friend. Though she wouldn’t even add it in her mind, this side of her might have been more due to shyness than a pretense of evil. Of course, if she said that to her face, she’d end up with a punch to the nose.

Getting back to the subject.

In any case, she decided (possibly arbitrarily) to let them be until things escalated—and despite everything he said, Hattori seemed happy she was paying attention to him anyway—and looked out the window. She was on the aisle side of a two-seater, so her gaze naturally revealed the person sitting next to her.

“…What is it, Mari?” said another female student seeming to be devoid of energy upon noticing her glance.

“Hm? Oh, I was just looking outside, Kanon.” She turned her focus from the scenery to the person next to her, a junior named Kanon Chiyoda, giving the cool grin that made her so popular, mainly with other girls.

She was someone Mari had her eye on in particular, and she had been making secret preparations to place her as the next disciplinary committee chairwoman. The documents to transfer control to her that she’d asked Tatsuya to draw up (though he’d doubtlessly insist he was made to do so whether he liked it or not) were actually for Kanon, too. If she wasn’t here, Mari wouldn’t have thought to prepare detailed paperwork in the first place.

The Chiyoda family was one of the Hundred Families like the Watanabe—the name contained the character for “thousand”—but they were a main family in them: one of the true Hundred turning out great magicians one after another.

The Hundred Families were not called such because there were one hundred families in it. It was sort of a play on numbers: The tenth place is followed by the hundredth place, so the moniker referred to the next families in line after the Ten Master Clans. The Ten Master Clans weren’t actually composed of ten families, either. There were a total of twenty-eight families with the qualifications to be called one of the Ten Master Clans. The ones actually chosen for the spots were based on the ones that churned out the most number of powerful magicians at the time (not the best ones, however).

The Saegusa family in particular produced many excellent magicians, and the Yotsuba family was host to one of the strongest magicians in the modern world as its leader: Maya Yotsuba, also known as the “Demon of the East” and the “Queen of the Night.” The two families were considered the brightest jewels among the Ten Master Clans.

The families currently comprising the Ten were the Ichijou, the Futatsugi, the Mitsuya, the Yotsuba, the Itsuwa, the Mutsuzuka, the Saegusa, the Yatsushiro, the Kudou, and the Juumonji. These ten happened to have the numbers from one through ten in order, but this was the first time such a thing had happened since the Ten were formed. Before now, having two or three families with the same number in their surname was a natural occurrence.

With the Ten Master Clans and the remaining eighteen, called substitutes by some, the next position down belonged to the Hundred Families. One of them was the Chiyoda family, which Kanon was from. She surpassed Mari in offensive ability against objects, and rivaled or surpassed actual combat magicians of the Ten Master Clans when up against land weapons, having a magical power fitting for one claiming direct descent from the Chiyoda.

Her lack of energy wasn’t due to any busy family matters, quite unlike Mayumi’s situation. Kanon, after replying to Mari with an “Oh,” looked back out the window and sighed lethargically. It was a sigh of futility, and it made Mari a little gloomy.

“Kanon…”

“Yes?”

When she turned around again, she faced a scowl, completely unlike Mari’s expression from before. Even that expression, though, with her brows knitted, was charming on her—again, mainly to other girls. “There’s only two hours until we get there. Why can’t you wait that long?” she asked tiredly.

“What? Hey, that’s mean! I’m not a little kid! I can wait two or three hours no problem!” Suddenly she was brimming with energy again, like a different person. Her hair leaped along with her facial movements as she pulled her lips into a frown. “But I thought we were going to be together for the whole bus ride. I’m allowed to be a little disappointed, aren’t I?”

“You two are always together, though… I know he’s your fiancé, but you two might actually be together even more than the Shiba siblings are.”

“Nobody ever travels by bus anymore. It’s a novelty, and I was looking forward to it! I was by myself last year, after all. And obviously an engaged couple would spend more time together than siblings!”

“…Really?”

“Of course!” she declared, puffing out her chest—which was, dare she say, a bit lacking in volume.

Mari sighed to herself. Her underclassman was usually a quick thinker, did what she promised, and was tough and positive and the kind of brave, imposing girl Mari liked, but… It happens every time—when it comes to Isori, she’s like a different person…

“Besides, why does the technical staff have to be in a different car?! They can’t do work on the ride, so there’s no point in separating us! More people could fit on this bus, and if they couldn’t we could just get a double-decker or triple-decker!”

Mari sighed to herself once again as Kanon, who seemed to have found a good outlet to vent her frustration, complained about all sorts of things.

There was another girl on the bus with the same frustrations as Kanon—and this one didn’t make a fuss about it, instead making her friends oddly scared of her.

“……”

“…Umm, Miyuki? How about some tea…?”

“Thank you, Honoka. But I’m just not that thirsty yet. I’m sorry. I wasn’t being forced to stand out under this heat like my brother was.”

Her tone was quiet and soft—and like a deep snow burying everything in white, just looking at her made you feel cold.

“Oh. Yeah. Okay,” Honoka stammered, flustered. Then she was poked in her side from behind.

Why did you make her think about her brother?

There was nothing I could do about it!

Neither Honoka nor Shizuku possessed telepathy. Still, they clearly knew what the other was thinking just from eye contact, perhaps because they were united in wanting to do something about the ominous intimidation Miyuki was giving off.

“…I swear, they knew someone was going to be late, didn’t they? They shouldn’t have needed to make him wait outside… Why is it always my brother that suffers…”

Now that Miyuki had begun muttering complaints under her breath, her scariness basically doubled. Honoka wanted to run away. Or at least trade seats with Shizuku. But if she traded seats with her in this situation, what might Miyuki do to her? …No, Miyuki wouldn’t do anything that bad to a friend just for this, but the turbulent mood around the girl was enough to make Honoka think she just might. (Incidentally, the female freshman next to Shizuku was shrinking down in her seat with her gaze fixed on the window.)

“…And making him ride in a cramped work car… I would have at least liked for him to rest during the trip…”

Shizuku looked at how scared Honoka was and sighed. She thought briefly that Miyuki’s muttering had left the “next to me” off the end (in other words, she thought Miyuki wanted him to rest next to her), but she said something else. “But, Miyuki, I think that’s part of what makes your brother so amazing.”

As she addressed Miyuki, she leaned forward to take Honoka’s place. Behind her, Honoka placed her hands together in a gesture of gratitude, but neither Shizuku nor Miyuki, facing away, saw it. Miyuki didn’t immediately realize her mumbling was being overheard, so she couldn’t react immediately.

Shizuku, without wasting a second, pressed her further, her normal taciturn nature nowhere to be found. “I don’t think anyone here would complain about waiting inside the bus. But your brother was earnest about making sure all the competitors were on board. It may have been just for attendance’s sake, but he still didn’t take any shortcuts, even when there was unexpected trouble. Not many people can do that. Your brother really is a great person.”

Honoka reflected on how Shizuku was able to say those teeth-grating words without blushing—she wasn’t one to get flustered easily.

Miyuki’s eyes went wide at the excessive praise Shizuku gave with a completely straight face, as though she’d been attacked without realizing it. “…You’re right. My brother truly is a softhearted person at the strangest times,” she said, barely managing to hide embarrassment.

The air of chilling intimidation went away. Still hidden behind Shizuku, Honoka pumped her fist.

Humans, save for a few exceptions, are made in such a way that they can only see what they want to see. More accurately, perhaps, would be to say we have come to pretend we don’t see things we don’t want to. For living creatures, it is quite often the case that unpleasant information received from the senses is more important than pleasant information. That which is unpleasant is threatening, and locating threats quickly is the key to survival.

Humans, however, avert their eyes from that which they don’t wish to see.

For example, even if people knew without a doubt that there was a weapon of mass destruction pointed at them and that it could wipe them all out, they would ignore the truth until the very last moment.

This tendency is especially strong in more advanced nations that have truly grown distant from a struggle for existence. In fact, they don’t have to be such bombastic examples—examples of ignoring things we don’t want to see happen so often, on a daily basis, that one would be hard-pressed to count them all.

Take the dangerous pressure emanating from this fair lady, for example.

Miyuki, now back to her usual graceful, ladylike state, was being crowded around by boys—even though they hadn’t approached her in the slightest until a moment ago. She was pretty enough to make anyone timid, so nobody tried to get overly familiar with her, but the students, mainly freshmen but with some juniors and seniors mixed in, would address her for whatever reason.

No longer able to let the nonsense pass unnoticed, Mari forced Miyuki, Honoka, and Shizuku to move to the seat behind her. The seating arrangement now had the finally-calmed-down Miyuki and the fully vented, refreshed Kanon at the window seats, the former behind the latter. Kanon sat next to Mari, while they had gotten Katsuto to go behind Miyuki and the others to exert his own authority. With those changes, they managed to lower the tension in the bus. (Also, Mayumi, perhaps satisfied at her incessant teasing of Hattori, was sleeping soundly.)

It was fun to talk among just the girls, but she couldn’t escape the feeling that something was missing. The two girls in the window seats felt the same way, lazily watching the scenery go past.

Thanks to that, Miyuki and Kanon were the first two to notice it.

“Watch out!” shouted Kanon. At her voice, almost everyone in the bus looked out the windows toward the opposite lane on the road.

There was a large car approaching—an off-road vehicle meant for leisure, well smaller than the bus—and it was scraping along the road at an angle, sending sparks flying everywhere.

“They’ve got a flat!” somebody shouted.

“The wheel’s not even on!” came another excited voice.

There was no sense of danger in their voices. Opposing lanes on the highway were constructed separately and divided by a sturdy guard wall. It would be impossible for an accident in oncoming traffic to affect them. It was no skin off the young ones’ noses—it was an exciting spectacle.

Until a few moments later, anyway.

Somebody screamed.

Maybe it wasn’t just the one person.

But that was only natural. By some freak coincidence, the big car began to spin, then collided into the guardrail, flipped over it, and flew straight toward the bus. The driver hit the emergency brakes and all the passengers pitched forward. Some gave cries of pain—probably students who hadn’t fastened their seat belts like they’d been told to.

The bus stopped, avoiding a direct hit.

However, after the car fell back to the road, it slid straight toward the bus in flames.

“Blow it away!”

“Get out of here!”

“Stop!”

“!!”

The fact that the bus didn’t degrade into panic might have actually been praiseworthy—but unfortunately, in this case, it just made the situation worse. In the span of an instant, the chaotically executed magic spells all chaotically altered the same target of the event. As a result, the spells fought against each other, keeping them from averting the crisis.

Mari realized it right away. “Stop! Idiots!” Thankfully, all the magic that had been used was in an incomplete, still-activating state. If everyone here canceled their unfinished spells, there would still be time to take meaningful action.

Powerful magic could instantly overwrite reality. The magicians here may not have taken flight from their mothers’ nests yet, but plenty were able to do it.

…Unfortunately, if they’d still had the good judgment to do what Mari said, they wouldn’t have chaotically blasted out all that magic at once. In order to negate the effects of the spells already cast, they’d need enough magic power to overwhelm them all…

“Juumonji!” called Mari, saying the name of one magician who could make that happen. He was already readying a spell. But there was surprise on his face, an emotion not seen very often on him, and it almost made her feel desperate. She knew what was going on: the chaos of magic sequences overlapping one another in the area was similar to the entire bus being under the effects of Cast Jamming. Even Katsuto wouldn’t be able to stop both the impact and the flames…

“I will take care of the flames!”

A graceful freshman stood up by one of the windows. She had already finished preparing a spell, and when Katsuto saw her, he constructed a defensive magic sequence. Still, she may have had ridiculous talent, but with the storm of psions surrounding them, would a mere freshman’s magic have any effect?

A moment later, Mari thought she was hallucinating. She doubted her magic-perceiving magician’s senses. Right before Miyuki set off her magic at the approaching clump of metal and fire…

…all the magic sequences that had been activated in the chaos all dissipated.

And then Miyuki’s spell went off, as though she’d expected that impossibility to happen.

Her spell was brilliant, cooling the flames down enough to extinguish them immediately while neither freezing the burning car itself nor cutting off the oxygen to the flames, which would suffocate the driver (though it was pretty unlikely the driver had survived anyway).

Mari’s jaw dropped at the performance. But at the same time, understanding that was proof Mari’s magical instincts were functioning normally.

As she listened to the remnants of the car being crushed even further by the defensive wall spell Katsuto expanded—a spell of the movement type that put any moving object entering a specified area from a specified direction into a state of rest—her focus wandered away from the threat in front of them. (She had absolutely no doubt Katsuto’s spell would hold back the car hurtling toward them.)

What in the world had just happened?

What had just erased all the magic sequences preventing the usage of magic that would let them avoid this disaster?

Was it Mayumi? she thought before immediately shaking her head. She could certainly have dealt with such a chaotic storm of magic sequences. But if she had used anti-magic (magic for going against other magic), she would have fired a psionic bullet and destroyed several of the projected magic sequences at once. She would never have completely smashed every single one of the sequences to smithereens like this. Mayumi’s magic was like precisely controlled antiaircraft fire. This spell (if it was magic, anyway) was more like carpet bombing an entire town and reducing it to a burnt wasteland. It wouldn’t leave a pillar standing; it would melt all the steel beams and even blow away the concrete foundations of buildings, turning it into a perfectly empty lot. That’s how violent it had been.

As Mari and Katsuto had stood petrified at the confused magic power, Miyuki had, without hesitation, cast a spell as though she knew the obstacles would be erased.

Did she know who that “magic” came from?

Could it have been…?

“Is everybody all right?” came Mayumi’s calm voice. Mari snapped out of her reverie, staring at the work vehicles following them, now stopped right behind their bus. “That was close, but there’s no more need to worry. Juumonji and Miyuki seem to have averted disaster. If you were hurt, then I do hope you will take the time to reflect on how important seat belts are and to put them to good use. Though hopefully there won’t be a next time,” she added in jest, winking, forcing a few laughs.

With everyone’s tension and fear gone, she sighed in relief. “Juumonji, thank you. Your skill is always impressive.”

“No… It was extinguished immediately, so I could focus on stopping it. Also, was that you who erased the reckless mess of magic sequences?”

Mayumi looked away guiltily at Katsuto’s question. “Umm, well, I didn’t actually realize what was happening until the bus stopped…”

Come to think of it, she was asleep right before the incident. Katsuto seemed to remember the fact a moment later as well, but he arched an eyebrow and left it at that. He was the number one man of character in the school’s leaders without a doubt.

“Oh, and Miyuki! Your magic was beautiful. Even seniors like me would have a hard time striking such a precarious balance with a magic sequence in that short amount of time.”

Katsuto and Mari nodded in agreement. The three of them understood how difficult it was not to go overboard in an emergency, to choose an appropriate spell and carefully control its power.

Miyuki blushed faintly at Mayumi’s wholehearted praise. “You honor me, President. However, I only had time to choose a magic sequence because Ichihara stopped the bus. Even I would be a little scared to think of what crazy things I might have done if she hadn’t. Thank you very much, Ichihara.”

Miyuki bowed to her, and Suzune nodded back silently. Kanon turned around in her seat to look at Miyuki with a vacant face. Even Mari couldn’t conceal her surprise. Now that she thought about it, the bus’s brakes alone wouldn’t have slowed them down that fast. It wasn’t hard to imagine a deceleration spell at work, assisting the brakes after they were first applied. Mari had been so preoccupied with the spells aimed at the oncoming car that she hadn’t noticed Suzune casting a spell to stop the bus.

While everyone else had been focused on the threat, she looked below them and took exactly the right action. Some said her precision surpassed even that of Mari, Katsuto, and Suzune, so it only served to bolster her reputation—and the fact that Miyuki, of all people, had noticed her casting it spoke to how frightening her own talents were.

“Compared to that, you were…” said Mari, suddenly hitting Kanon in the head.

“Ow! Mari, what are you doing?!” Kanon demanded with tears in her eyes.

“Be quiet. No complaining! I can understand Morisaki and Kitayama panicking and using magic to the detriment of the situation, but they’re still just freshmen. A junior like you—what were you thinking throwing everything into confusion like that?!”

She groaned. “But I was the fastest! I didn’t think other people would start casting, too…”

Her excuse caused Morisaki and Shizuku to look down, embarrassed. There were a few others looking awkward as well.

“Speed isn’t always the best answer! You have to read the situation. It’s basic logic—you should have talked to everyone else to get them not to cause interference, right? And besides, even after the interference happened, you didn’t cancel your spell. You obviously weren’t making any calm judgments here.”

“…I’m sorry.”

Kanon looked down despondently, and Mari didn’t pursue it any further.

Though she’d said that, a person normally couldn’t maintain calm judgment in a situation like that unless they had some experience with it. And once again, the fact that Miyuki had properly called out that she would handle the flames had been surprising. You couldn’t do something like that with just talent. In fact, genius skills tended to place one in front of everyone else, and you usually got worse at that kind of cooperation.

In that sense, Kanon was the archetypal genius.

Miyuki must have been through a lot of fighting or something. And now, as she sat patiently waiting for the bus to get under way again, that sort of experience seemed both to suit her and not.

“By the way, Shiba…”

“Yes?”

Mari had taken to calling Tatsuya by his first name, and Miyuki by their last. She normally referred to others by their last name, reserving first names for those close to her, like Mayumi, Kanon, and some of the disciplinary committee members. One could say she had a particular affinity for Tatsuya.

“That magic sequence… Actually, never mind. It was fantastic.”

“Yes? Well, thank you.”

She had intended to ask whether Miyuki knew who had used the anti-magic that wiped out all the magic sequences. But as she stood on the precipice of the question, she found herself hesitant to learn the answer. She wasn’t sure why, exactly, but she felt like it would conclusively destroy something near to her.

Outside the window, the male students on the technical staff had gotten out of the work vehicle and were starting a rescue operation. Of course, the car had been ablaze, and had crashed into the guard wall with enough force to send it flying into the air. Survival of the driver was practically hopeless.

The girls stayed in the vehicle, perhaps because nobody wanted to show them a tragically burnt corpse. Behind the senior trying to cut the car door open was a freshman with a video camera set up, probably to get a record of the incident. He noticed Mari watching him from behind, and she quickly turned away.

After the accident they lost about thirty minutes informing the police and getting the road cleared again, and given how late they’d left, they arrived at their lodgings just past noon.

One of the competition’s characteristics was that many of the competitors would go on to choose paths in the military. It supported the Nine School Competition on all fronts for the purposes of securing talented combat magicians. To this end, it reserved the stadium hotel for students and school faculty members for the duration of the events instead of for the civil inspectors and high-ranking officers and their aides who came from other countries for conferences.

Still, their support in the matter couldn’t be said to be perfect. The hotel was still part of a military facility, so there were no full-time porters or doormen. The base’s soldiers on duty usually took on those roles, but given that it was a high school event, the students would be unloading their own luggage. The large devices they loaded into the work cars could be used without taking them out, avoiding no small amount of trouble. The smaller tools and CADs, however, would have minor adjustments done in the students’ rooms, so they had to be loaded onto hand trucks and wheeled in.

After quickly finishing that work, Hattori set his eyes on the freshman technical staff who had loaded and pushed the hand trucks and a group of female students walking next to them, laughing and talking, and shook his head gloomily.

Someone casually addressed him from behind. “What’s the matter, Hattori? Why the long face?”

“Kirihara… It isn’t a long face,” said Hattori, turning around to see his friend he recognized from the voice and reflexively denying the statement.

“Really? Well, it certainly isn’t a happy face you’ve got.”

Hattori knew it. He smiled in a self-torturing way and stopped trying to argue with him. “I’m just…not feeling too confident after that.”

“Hey, whoa, the competition starts the day after tomorrow! Now’s not the time to develop an inferiority complex.”

Kirihara would only be participating in the Cloudball event on the second day, but Hattori was entered in Battle Board on the first and third days, as well as Monolith Code on the ninth and tenth. Unlike Kirihara, who was only entered in one event, Hattori was one of their main competitors, despite being a junior. If he was in bad condition, it would have a pretty big effect on their team’s strategy. Kirihara’s confusion was understandable.

“What the heck are you so depressed about?”

The Hanzou Gyoubu-Shoujou Hattori that Kirihara knew was a confident, hard worker—or perhaps had confidence because of his hard work. His combat skills were placed right under the so-called three giants of the school, but his talent wasn’t the only thing people often talked about behind his back. He had an arrogant attitude—one which even his friends couldn’t deny—so he was prone to being misunderstood, but the hard work he put in was just as stunning as his talent. At least, insofar as Kirihara could tell.

With effort, talent, and results all rolled up into one package, he wasn’t the kind of person to lose confidence in himself very easily…

“So you didn’t feel it? That makes me jealous…”

“What? You calling me a blockhead or something?”

“No, though I do think you’re a little dull.”

“Hey!”

Hattori gave the mean grin that made other people often misunderstand him. It showed he had gotten a little bit of his usual self back. The fact that he was teasing Kirihara about it made Kirihara feel a little complicated, but it was still obviously a good thing.

“…Moping doesn’t suit you, you know. What’s the problem?” asked Kirihara, throwing in a bit of revenge.

Hattori wasn’t thickheaded; he knew his friend was trying to be considerate in his own awkward way. “About that accident before…”

“Ohhh, right. That was a close one, eh?”

“Yeah. If we didn’t do anything, we would have had casualties. Maybe even deaths.”

“But the president and everyone got us through it, didn’t they? You’re worrying about a what-if situation that didn’t actually happen. What-ifs normally go the other way, but it’s still unhealthy!”

Hattori smirked at the stout remark. “I really am jealous of how you can find such clear solutions, you know. That’s not what I was thinking about, though.” He paused, then shook his head a little again. “…I couldn’t do anything about it.”

“Well, if you had tried and screwed it up, they might not have gotten the situation under control. I think the fact that you didn’t help meant you were still able to make good decisions.”

Kirihara’s words were comforting, but didn’t give him peace of mind. They were founded in an objective analysis of the event, and Hattori knew he was exactly right. However, his face remained clouded. “Still… Shiba dealt with it properly. She immediately decided that the problem fell into her realm of expertise, and even remembered to communicate with others. Even if all the magic sequences interfering with each other hadn’t disappeared, she and Chairman Juumonji would have cooperated and still coped with the situation.”

“But not even Chairwoman Watanabe could do anything! That Shiba girl seems to be good at cooling magic, so isn’t it just a matter of whether or not your magic was right for the job?”

“Watanabe’s specialty lies in personal combat, so her self-restraint in that situation to not try and help was a boon. But I could have done plenty of things… And it’s not just a matter of someone’s magic power. Watanabe decided right away that she shouldn’t try and help, and asked Juumonji to deal with it. And he had already decided he had to do something before she said anything, too, and was in the middle of constructing a magic sequence when she did. He even held back on using it, worried that it would be too difficult for him to avoid the disaster by himself. Then, Shiba, on top of calmly deciding she could do something, communicated with him to help.

“That goes beyond the technical issue of having a lot of magic power, being able to use a wide array of magic, or knowing how to use strong spells. It’s whether you can use the proper magic at the right time as a magician—it’s not based on the qualities of the magic, but on the qualities of the magician. I mean, sure, her magic power is through the roof. I probably couldn’t beat her in terms of pure strength. But I didn’t mind that fact until a little while ago. Because having strong magic doesn’t necessarily make you a good magician. Still, to have lost to a younger girl not in terms of magic, but as a magician… I can’t help but feel unsure of myself.”

Now Hattori was dejected again. Kirihara sighed and looked at him. “Right, but that’s all based on experience. I think those siblings are special that way.”

“The siblings?” repeated Hattori dubiously; he probably hadn’t expected him to say “those siblings” instead of “her.”

“Her brother… I think he’s killed before.”

“Killed?” repeated Hattori again, still dubious, but this time surprised as well.

“Yeah. I think he’s actually killed people. And not just one or two, either.”

“…You’re not saying he’s a murderer, right? You’re saying he has real combat experience?”

“Yeah, maybe it’s just the way he acts… You know how my dad is in a navy landing force?”

It may have seemed like a sudden change of topic, but Hattori didn’t hesitate to follow up on it. “Right. He has a lot of experience in evenly matched battles on the sea, right?”

“Yeah, but he’s a noncommissioned officer. But since he’s so low on the ladder, he has a lot of experience on the front lines. He’s actually had to get through some seriously life-threatening situations, too. Sometimes his navy buddies will have a party at our house, but they just seem different from the rest of us. However much you polish your sword skills, or shooting skills, or whatever kind of combat skill it is, their purpose is to kill people. But the soldiers who have actually killed people and the mere athletes who haven’t—there’s something different between them. Like, there’s this bloodlust or something. You remember how the thing in April went down?” he asked, changing the subject again.

“You’re jumping around here. Apparently it was the work of some anti-magic terrorists. The Juumonji family crushed their organization, but that’s all I know.” Hattori voiced his discontent at the suddenness this time, but didn’t look angry. He had a gut feeling that this all connected somehow.

“Right… So I can’t tell you too much… Well, I guess I can say this, since it’s you and all. I was there when they were cleaning out the terrorists. And so was her brother.”

“…You’re not pulling my leash, are you?”

“I know it may seem crazy, but it happened. And I think that I saw his true nature there.”

“His true nature?” Hattori repeated out of reflex, noticing the slight tremble in Kirihara’s voice as he said it.

“Yeah, what he’s really like. Or at least part of it. And it’s crazy. He’s just like soldiers who have killed people on the front lines and lived to tell the tale. He had this bloodlust, I’m telling you, way more of it than us. He practically wore it like a coat. It was terrifying. Like, I wonder why he’s even a high school student.”

“…I don’t think he would be lying about his age.” Hattori wasn’t trying to play dumb—it was evident from his expression that he’d been shocked enough to make him say something that was slightly off the mark.

“Well, age and experience don’t always match up, right?” Kirihara understood his friend’s shock. He’d gone down that road once before himself. He didn’t bother to argue Hattori’s off-point remark, so he answered normally, with a dry grin.

Hattori asked another question, extremely hesitantly. “…Her, too?”

Obviously most of his hesitation came from not wanting to believe such a thing. Unfortunately for him, his state of mind didn’t work on Kirihara—possibly because he’d been affected quite a bit by getting a girlfriend in spring—and he answered his friend flatly. “Well, I didn’t see her personally, but her brother took her to the fight scene. She can’t just be some normal girl. From what happened today, it’s like, pretty roses have thorns—though in her case, she’s like a peafowl devouring a poisonous snake with sharp claws and a vicious beak. Making a pass at her would probably be life-threatening. Ignorance is bliss, I guess,” he added, not to Hattori but to the other boys who had been crowding around her on the bus. As Hattori stood there, unable to hide how disturbed he was, and not quite digesting all the information, Kirihara grinned teasingly. “But wow, I never thought you of all people would say something like that!”

“…What do you mean?” he asked, clearly not happy with the meaningful smile Kirihara was making.

Still, his amused expression didn’t waver at all. “Having strong magic doesn’t necessarily make you a good magician, huh? If the student council president knew you said that, she’d be so happy, you know.”

“…!” Hattori glared sharply at him. But his friend just kept on smirking—in fact, his smile was deepening at Hattori’s extreme reaction—and instead of looking at it, Hattori looked away.

“Well, I guess it’s true. Your magic power isn’t the only thing that decides if you’re strong or not.”

Without trying to get a word in edgewise, Hattori began walking away from him. Kirihara didn’t seem to care less about it though; he followed and kept talking. “Blooms and Weeds—they’re just based on test results from when we enrolled. Even some of the Course 1 students won’t progress too much while others do. I mean, Chiyoda is a totally different person. Remember how uppity she was last summer? And if you look at the Course 2 students, there are plenty of them that could get strong if they don’t give up on themselves, right? …Actually, that doesn’t just go for the future. There are more than a few of them who can really do it if they need to. Especially in this year’s freshmen. Oh, and I’m not just saying that because those siblings got the better of me!”

Hattori’s shoulders twitched. Kirihara saw that and decided his friend had realized “that jerk handed this guy’s ass to him on a silver platter, too, didn’t he?”

“Well, at the moment, he’s stronger than I am. I admit it. He may seem like a complete fraud with how strong he is, but I won’t stay in the loser’s circle forever. I’ll keep improving and improving, and when we face each other again I’ll beat him. If I give up because I’m not as good as him right now, I’ll always be the loser.

“Until this year, the Course 2 kiddies always gave up on the present because they already lost in the past. That’s why they couldn’t get stronger, and that’s why we didn’t have to treat them like equals. But if they’re trying to get stronger, or if they’re already really strong, there’s no reason to be making fun of ’em, right?”

Hattori, again, didn’t answer. He headed straight for the room he’d been assigned and kept his mouth shut.

Kirihara shrugged and turned back to look at the siblings they’d been talking about. The younger sister, behind, was staring at her brother’s face with a serious expression for whatever reason. He couldn’t help but think, Hope this doesn’t turn into any trouble again.

And then he laughed drily at the thought’s lack of logical reasoning.

Kirihara’s premonition hit the mark in a way that betrayed his own trivial, yet perhaps sincere, wishes.

“Then you say the accident earlier wasn’t an accident…?” Tatsuya’s sister asked as she walked next to him, frowning.

Tatsuya nodded, pushing his cart along. “The way the car jumped in the air was unnatural. As we expected, we found traces of magic when we looked into it.” He spoke in a quiet voice, cautious of the eyes and ears of those around him.

Miyuki followed his example and lowered her own voice. “I didn’t see anything, but…” Her statement was an argument, but she didn’t doubt her brother’s words at all. She’d seen the accident from start to finish, but she hadn’t sensed any evidence that magic had been used. But unlike her, who could only see the present, her brother could perceive the past. If he stated there was, then Miyuki knew it was true.

“It was an instantaneous spell of small scope and minimal power. A sophisticated technique; it didn’t allow any psionic traces of the magic sequences to be detected. Whoever it was, they’re a trained field agent. Skilled enough, you would think, not to be discarded like that.”

“Discarded…?” The ominous air behind that term caused Miyuki’s voice to go quieter than she wanted it to.

“Magic was used three times. First, to blow out the tire. Second, to spin the vehicle. Third, to add diagonally upward force to the vehicle and have it use the guard wall as a springboard. Each of them was cast from inside the vehicle—likely to hide the fact that magic was used. And it worked. None of the talented magicians, including you, noticed it. I didn’t notice it at the time, either. They pulled the wool over all our eyes. The driver had to precisely measure the moment of collision while the car was spinning in order to cast the last spell, too. They were no amateur.”

“Then it was the driver…”

“Yes, the magician in question was the driver. It was a suicide attack.”

Miyuki stopped and looked down. Her shoulders were shaking a little.

“What cowardice…!”

Her trembling was not a product of sadness but of anger. She didn’t have any misplaced sympathy toward the criminal; instead, she voiced her indignation toward the one who had ordered such a thing.

Tatsuya nodded with satisfaction at her actions. “Criminals and terrorists are a cowardly sort in the first place. The ones who order others to risk their lives are seldom willing to risk their own. There’s no point in getting angry about every single one, you know. I’m more curious about what their stake in this was.”

He patted his sister on the back a couple times to soothe her, then resumed pushing his cart.

Miyuki followed shortly after—but then she stopped again before they made it ten steps.

In shorts; high-strapped sandals that exposed her clean, bare feet to the world; and a tank top that let her show her bare shoulders as well, a girl was waving to them from a sofa near the wall.

Tatsuya stopped, too. What does she think this place is, a beach resort? he thought, looking at his friend’s outfit as she stopped waving and rose from the sofa.

“Hey, haven’t seen you all week! How have you been?”

“Well enough… Erika, why are you here?” asked Miyuki dubiously after exchanging a lighthearted greeting.

“I came to cheer you on. What else?” answered Erika readily. Of course, Miyuki had expected that sort of response, so it wasn’t enough to convince her.

“The competition starts the day after tomorrow.”

“Yeah, I know.” Erika seemed to enjoy playing tricks on people like this and seeing them confused. Sometimes it took a while to get to the main subject.

“Miyuki, I have to go. I’ll see you later, Erika.” Tatsuya, having given it up as hopeless, decided it was more important to get the equipment-laden hand cart over to the room the technical staff had reserved as a work space. He went to the elevator landing, leaving the two of them there.

“Oh, uh, right… You know, it wouldn’t hurt to say hello.”

“I’m sorry. His upperclassmen on staff are waiting for him,” apologized Miyuki in her brother’s place, then got back to the subject. “Why are you here two days early?”

“The banquet’s tonight, right?”

“……”

“……”

“…And?” She waited for Erika to continue, but she didn’t seem willing to conclude her explanation. Without a choice, she decided to get the ball rolling again herself. “I’m sure you know, but they won’t let people not part of the event into the party, even if they’re students.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s fine. We’re part of the event.”

“What? What do you…”

Before she could ask what she meant by that, she was interrupted by the voice of a girl trotting up to them. “Erika, I got the room key… Oh, Miyuki?”

“You’re here, too, Mizuki?”

“Hello, Miyuki,” said Mizuki, bowing cheerfully in greeting. Miyuki was looking at her intently, though, instead of answering. “What’s the matter?” she asked, giving an uncomfortable but cordial smile.

“…Your outfit is quite lovely.”

“Oh, umm… Is it?”

Mizuki anxiously looked down at her clothing: a camisole and a skirt that ended well above the knees. Depending on one’s point of view, her outfit might have been even more suggestive than Erika’s. Miyuki’s immediate impression was Is she mistaking this for a summer resort?

“Erika told me I shouldn’t dress too formally…”

“I see…” Miyuki briefly considered saying something to Erika about that, but the girl in question was looking away and feigning ignorance. She gave up; it probably wouldn’t do anything anyway. She thought she understood why her brother sighed a lot whenever he talked to Erika. However, she was a little too serious to play it off with a dry grin like her brother did, and disliked losing more than him. “Mizuki, I won’t say anything bad, but I think you should change now. Your clothes are cute and look good on you, but I don’t think it’s right for the time, place, and occasion.”

“Oh…really? …You think so, too?” asked Mizuki, shooting a glance at Erika.

Miyuki nodded, doing likewise. “Yes, I believe so.”

“Huh? I don’t know…” argued Erika, dissatisfied, obviously unable to keep up her act.

…This time, Miyuki played dumb. “By the way, you said ‘room key.’ Are you staying here?”

“Yes,” answered Mizuki. Erika looked on in disappointment next to her but didn’t make the mistake of getting angry with Miyuki. A pretty girl like her who would never harm a fly—Erika knew from their four months together that she was actually stubborn and merciless at times.

“I’m surprised there was an open room… Actually, I’m more surprised the hotel accepted you. This isn’t a place for regular people to be staying.”

Erika pulled herself back together. “Yeah, I’ve got connections,” she revealed on the spot, without being shy.

Miyuki couldn’t help but giggle. “I should have expected that from the Chiba family.” She was smiling, but she hadn’t said that to tease her—she was just trying to keep the conversation going.

Just as the Ten Master Clans’ surnames consisted of a number from one through ten, the main family of the Hundred Families had numbers above that in their last names, such as Chiyoda, which had thousand, and Isori, which had fifty. The number didn’t signify strength or weakness, but the fact that a number was there at all meant there was a good bloodline involved; it was one of the yardsticks by which to estimate the strength of magicians. Magic families with such surnames were nicknamed Numbers. (Of course, it was only a way to estimate that strength; among the student council at First High, the only one for which the term Numbers applied was Mayumi, the student council president.)

Erika came from the Chiba family, which also had the character for thousand in it, meaning she was one of the main families of the Hundred—one of the Numbers. The Chiba family was renowned for its hand-to-hand combat techniques using self-acceleration and self-weighting. The particularly unique thing about them was not only were they very skilled in the usage of magic, but they had systematized it and almost single-handedly constructed the main style for training hand-to-hand combat magicians. Approximately half of all magicians in the police force and the army’s infantry had received either direct or indirect instruction from the Chiba family. Even in the navy and air force, any units who could potentially see hand-to-hand combat situations quite often had instructors dispatched to them from the Chiba.

In terms of their connections to military groups, they might have had even more influence than the Ten Master Clans.

“But are you okay with that? I thought you didn’t like using your family as support for things like this.”

“What I don’t like is people doing things for me because I’m a daughter of the Chiba family. Connections are there to be used, right? They’d be a waste otherwise.”

Miyuki’s question might have set the person on edge depending on who they were, but Miyuki in particular asking Erika in particular resulted in an extremely indifferent answer.

“Hee-hee, I see,” she agreed. “I need to unpack my own things. I don’t know how you’re related to the event, but let’s meet at the party, shall we?”

With Erika waving and Mizuki bowing, Miyuki headed for the elevator landing.

“Hey, Erika. Can’t you at least carry your own stuff?”

“Shibata, I brought your things. Not that it matters at this point, but the front desk was really crowded.”

As Miyuki walked there, she heard the voices of two boys calling Erika and Mizuki. One of them she recognized, but the other she’d never heard before. The girls hadn’t come by themselves; they came in two pairs.

She smiled to herself, not stopping nor turning around.

Why, in the first place, had the bus carrying Miyuki and the others planned to arrive two entire days early in the morning even though they didn’t need to be there?

The reason: There was a party scheduled for that evening.

As they were high school students, there would, of course, be no alcohol. There would be a buffet meal that brought every competitor together to meet one another before going head-to-head with one another. It was essentially a preopening ceremony with much more tension than harmony.

“And I really didn’t want to come, you know…”

Tatsuya politely ignored the student council president’s unbecoming remark. The technical staff would always be in the wings here, but as they were official members who would be active during the competition, they needed to attend this party. Tatsuya, for his part, was bad with parties, receptions, and other such events. He concurred with Mayumi in secret.

The dress for the party was each school’s student uniform. He was thankful he didn’t have to worry about what to wear, but his borrowed blazer didn’t fit him perfectly, which only magnified his negativity toward the party.

Miyuki must have caught him shaking himself a little; she frowned and looked up at him. “Perhaps we should have bought them new…?”

“No, this is fine. Sorry for making you worry.” Tatsuya was actually embarrassed, too. Who was the older sibling here? This was an official event where everyone participated, so he couldn’t be talking about how much he disliked it.

“No, there is no need for apology.” Miyuki smiled, knowing her slight change in expression had let Tatsuya get over his foul mood.

“Hey, you there! No getting cozy; you’re siblings.”

He looked up at the half-teasing voice—strictly speaking, he had to look down after looking back up—and saw Mayumi looking at them, evidently holding back laughter.

“Cozy…? What do you mean by that?”

Tatsuya had read before on a gossip site that some girls were afflicted with a “condition” that made them connect any male-female relationships as romantic, but he wished life would give him a break and not put one such patient so close to him.

Nevertheless, Mayumi probably just wanted to tease him like she always did. He didn’t expect an actual answer, but he prompted her to give one anyway. She wasn’t looking at him, though; she was looking next to him. And she was about to burst into laughter, too. He followed her gaze to find…

…his sister, looking down, embarrassed. “Miyuki… Why are you blushing at that?”

“Let us sally forth!”

In complete contrast to her earlier backward-looking attitude, Mayumi now, for whatever reason, urged everyone onward with a cheerful expression. Tatsuya couldn’t say he was fully satisfied—it seemed like she’d used them to cheer herself up—but he watched how much lighter her step was now and figured it was all right.

Even counting only those who would be directly competing in the events, there were three hundred sixty students participating. With all the support staff, the number rose well above four hundred. Although the party was supposed to be mandatory attendance, there was certainly no shortage of people who couldn’t make it for whatever reason. Still, the banquet was a very large one, hosting anywhere from three to four hundred people. It was easy to imagine the hotel staff and on-base assistance being unable to cater to all of them, which had to be why there were young people clearly doing this as a part-time job dressed in serving clothes and going around the hall.

Still, seeing someone he actually knew among them surprised even Tatsuya.

After the short opening—he was thankful there were no speeches whose only selling points were their length—Tatsuya had gone straight to get food when someone addressed him from behind.

“Would you like something to drink?” asked the familiar voice. He turned around to see Erika standing there with a drink tray in one hand.

“So this is how you were involved…”

“Oh, you heard from Miyuki? Were you surprised?”

“…Yes.” Tatsuya nodded, unable to think of a clever counterattack to Erika’s amused smile. “How did you slip in…? Actually, I suppose it wasn’t hard.”

The place being what it was, high school students wouldn’t easily gain employment, even as a part-time job. There was an age requirement, too. Alcohol may have been absent from this party, but that didn’t mean they could loosen their restrictions. The waiters and hostesses walking around the hall all looked to be in their twenties.

He supposed it would have been an easy feat for the Chiba family, though he felt like maybe she wasn’t using her connections properly. “Still, though…”

“Hm? What is it?”

“Nothing…” said Tatsuya, uncharacteristically evasive. Even he found it difficult to come out and say that she looked completely different. Erika probably knew all the mature makeup she had on could cause problems considering her age; she looked as old as the other hostesses present from up close. She was already a sprightly, slender, and pretty girl for her actual age, but the grown-up makeup suited her well.

“She”? Singular?

Tatsuya suddenly felt like something was out of place.

Erika wasn’t by herself; Mizuki had come with her.

She wasn’t exactly a smooth customer in groups of people; would she be able to handle the role of hostess for the party?

In the silence of his thoughts, Miyuki cut into the conversation with just the right timing to compensate. “Oh, hello, Erika. You look very cute! I see this is what you meant by being involved.”

“That’s right! And thanks, I think so, too! Tatsuya wouldn’t say anything, though,” she complained, twisting left and right to wave her short Victorian-style dress uniform around, her skirt softly expanding as she did so.

Tatsuya suddenly found himself with the figurative knife at his neck, but he was quick-witted enough to think up a retort in an instant. Unfortunately, Miyuki was just a tad bit faster. “It’s pointless to demand such things from my brother, Erika,” she said, shaking her head.

Erika seemed more surprised than Tatsuya as she looked back at her. They’d both been caught off guard by Miyuki’s clear negative idea about Tatsuya. That, however, was a premature conclusion on her part.

“My brother isn’t taken with such superficial things as a girl’s clothing. He sees us as we are, without indulging in interest in some one-time-only employee uniform.”

Tatsuya thought it both an underestimation and overestimation of his nature. In this specific instance, he was just preoccupied with something else—namely Mizuki. He at least knew how to compliment a girl on her outfit, and risqué clothing would cause him to have trouble figuring out where his eyes should go—though perhaps in that case the issue would be less the clothes and more what he could see under them.

“Aha, I see. Tatsuya probably thinks cosplay is stupid, huh?”

“Is it cosplay?”

“Not really for me, but I think boys would see it like that.”

Unfortunately, their conversation kept on barreling along, with him unable to voice his actual opinion on the matter.

“Boys? Do you mean Saijou?”

“Hah, I can’t even say that much about him. Miki’s the one who brought it up. I made sure to give him a good talking-to for that one, though.”

The disturbing phrase at the end caught Tatsuya’s ears. Miyuki didn’t seem to be worried though. “Miki”? The proper noun was unknown to her, and with it sliding so easily off the other’s tongue, perhaps it was only natural she would be more interested in that. “…Who?”

Erika made an expression of realization. “Oh, right. Miyuki, you’ve never met him, have you?” No sooner had she said it than she ran off before they could stop her.

Tatsuya watched Erika dart off with the tray in one hand, without spilling a drop of the drinks on it, and said in admiration, “How nimble. She must have a good sense of balance…”

Miyuki thought perhaps he was a little off point with the comment, but she said something less offensive instead. “I wonder what could have been the matter.”

She didn’t actually expect an answer; it was just something that slipped out after being left behind so suddenly.

Unexpectedly, though, her brother gave her a clear answer. “She probably went to go get Mikihiko. You know, Mikihiko Yoshida. I’m sure you’ve heard the name before.”

“He is in your class, isn’t he?” He’d been famous for his position on the exam grade rankings, so Miyuki remembered it well.

“I think he’s known Erika since they were kids. You’ve never met him, so maybe she wants to introduce the two of you.”

Miyuki was convinced; it sounded like the sort of thing she’d do—including the running off without saying anything part.

As the siblings stared off in the direction Erika went for no particular reason, a different two students addressed them.

“There you are, Miyuki.”

“And, Tatsuya, you’re here, too.”

“Shizuku, I’m sorry, were you looking for me?”

“Honoka and Shizuku… You two are together just as much as we are.”

Now that he thought about it, he couldn’t recall ever seeing the two of them apart. He didn’t mean anything in particular by it; it was just a curious observation, but…

“Because we’re friends. There’s no point in going off on our own,” answered Shizuku without any embarrassment.

“That’s true.” Tatsuya let a pained grin slip at his foolish question. He’d only begun calling the two of them by their first names last month. Honoka had been zealous about asking him, but Shizuku had put her own kind of silent pressure on him to do the same with her, and he’d folded under it.

“Where is everyone else?” asked Miyuki, though not very enthusiastically.

“Over there,” said Honoka, pointing to a group of male students who hurriedly looked away. Their female freshman teammates were clustered in the same place.

“Maybe they want to get close to Miyuki, but can’t because Tatsuya’s here,” guessed Shizuku.

“What’s that supposed to mean? Am I her guard dog?” sighed Tatsuya. He couldn’t laugh it away, though. It was probably true.

“I think they all just don’t know how they’re supposed to talk to you,” said Honoka to soothe him, but he felt like that was also true. He was well aware of his own “weirdo” status. It was probably up to him to approach them first, but…

A new voice cut through the conversation like a knife. “It’s so dumb. They’re all from First High. Plus, they’re your teammates.”

“Oh, Chiyoda.”

Kanon had joined their circle with a glass in her hand (a soft drink, of course). Behind her was Isori, holding the same glass.

“Sometimes people still can’t bring themselves to do anything even though they know that, Kanon.”

“But that’s only an excuse in certain cases, Kei.”

Kanon and Kei called each other by their first names. They were engaged, after all, so nothing could have been more natural.

“I think you’re both correct, but there’s a simpler way of resolving this.” He wondered for a moment whether he was butting in, but he didn’t have the energy to get into an argument over what they’d just said—and he couldn’t bring himself to worm in between their communication. He had come to a quick conclusion, though. “Miyuki, go over and say hi to everyone. Teamwork is important, after all.”

“But, Tatsuya—”

“You can come to my room later. My only roommates are mechanical anyway.”

The competitors and staff both generally had twin rooms, but Mayumi had given him a twin room to himself. That way, being the only freshman and Course 2 student on the staff, he wouldn’t have to worry about anything. She could put the room down to doubling as an equipment storage room.

“That goes for Honoka and Shizuku as well, if you wish.”

Miyuki still seemed unhappy, but she knew the exact reason behind Tatsuya’s suggestions.

“…All right. I will see you later on.”

“Thanks for inviting us to your room!”

“Later.”

Miyuki, Honoka, and Shizuku answered respectively. Tatsuya smiled and waved, then felt a displeased set of eyes on his back and turned around.

“How adult of you. You know you’re just postponing the issue, right?”

Tatsuya and Kanon’s relationship didn’t go beyond the simple knowledge that the other existed. Kanon’s interjection about Tatsuya’s personal relationships was misplaced, but she was just trying look out for him, so he chose to answer seriously. “I’m okay with that. The problem doesn’t have to be resolved right this second. It could take a while to sort out anyway.”

“Well, I mean…” stammered Kanon, frustrated. The female upperclassman didn’t seem to enjoy losing very much.

“Kanon, he’s right. Sometimes hastiness isn’t a virtue.”

Isori hadn’t exactly sided with him; he was just trying to settle things amicably. Unfortunately, an interloper appeared, bringing his efforts to naught.

“I still think he should act more like a kid.”

“Hello, Mari,” said Tatsuya to the newcomer with a light bow, not arguing her point.

“Isori, Nakajou was looking for you.” And just like that, as though she’d expected such a response, she stated what she came here for. She must not have come by just to mess with him.

“I’m sorry. Where is she right now?”

“In work truck number one. The guest introductions are starting soon, so whatever it is, get it done quickly and bring Nakajou back. The other random people might not matter, but being absent during the Old Master’s speech would be a blow to his honor.”

“All right, I will.”

“Excuse us, Mari.”

Isori quickly headed outside to follow her directions and Kanon followed in his wake as though it were the natural thing to do.

Mari turned to face Tatsuya. “Looks like it fits,” she commented on the blazer he was wearing.

“Well, it’s a little cramped under the arms,” he replied, looking down at himself.

“Can’t be helped—it was a spare. We might have all different sizes, but we can’t fit it to your exact body type. Any bigger and it would have been baggy.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” he said, shrugging—inwardly, at least—at Mari’s smile and words.

“Should we have gotten it new?” Her voice didn’t sound malicious.

“I’ll only be wearing it twice anyway, so I think that would be a waste. If it was just a badge, I could take it off and wear it like that, but it’s embroidered on, so…” he said, looking down at his left breast a little annoyed. The eight-petal emblem was sewn onto it. He was being forced to wear it to make it easier for the students from other schools at this social gathering to tell which school he was from.

“It might not only be twice, you know. The Thesis Competition is in the fall, and you could always be placed in Course 1.” She laughed as she said it, but her eyes were fairly serious.

Tatsuya responded with discouragement. “Even if I was chosen for the Thesis Competition, I could just wear my regular uniform, right? And I would never be placed in Course 1. There are no rules or precedents for it.”

Mari laughed again, her voice increasing in volume. “Precedent? You being here is unprecedented in the first place! There’s no precedent for a Course 2 kid like you, so you saying something is unprecedented obviously doesn’t mean anything. You should stop complaining about it and be the precedent. For the sake of the other underclassmen.”

“……” Tatsuya made a sour face.

Mari laughed again, amused. “Anyway, I’m going to talk to the leaders of the other schools. Want to come?”

“…No, I think Erika is looking for me at the moment.”

For just a moment, when he said the name Erika, he saw a flash of agitation in Mari’s eyes. He briefly thought about filing it away for later revenge, but he got the feeling things between them were a little too serious to use jokingly. He saw Mari off without a word.

“Huh? Where’d Miyuki go?”

Just as Tatsuya had expected, Erika brought Mikihiko along with her.

“She went over to our classmates. She’ll be at my room later, so I can introduce you then.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Tatsuya’s first sentence had been to Erika, while the second had been to Mikihiko. His reaction seemed more relieved than disappointed. “…I’m not going to force you or anything.”

“…Huh?” He didn’t immediately realize Tatsuya was talking to him, so it took him a moment to reply. “Oh, no, that’s not it! I am a little nervous, but…”

“Man, why do boys always want to look cool in front of good-looking girls?”

“Erika, you’re pretty good-looking yourself. Especially today.”

“Huh? Oh, stop that, you…”

“Anyway, as you were saying?”

After repelling Erika’s teasing with some of his own, he prompted Mikihiko to continue.

“Tatsuya, you’re…” he began, then shook his head tiredly and answered the question. “Well, I was just a little embarrassed at meeting her for the first time in this outfit.”

Tatsuya looked at what the two of them were wearing again. Mikihiko was in a white shirt and black vest, with a black bow tie. Erika wore a black dress with a poofy skirt and a white headdress on her head. Frankly, they looked more like a servant and maid instead of a proper butler and maid. “I don’t think it’s all that strange. That’s generally what hotel employees wear, isn’t it?”

The waiters walking around the hall were all wearing the same thing as Mikihiko.

“See? I told you you were being too self-conscious, Miki.”

“My name is Mikihiko.”

Their tones and expressions were the same as they had been for the other million times they’d had the same exchange. Mikihiko didn’t seem to like his current outfit very much. Maybe he didn’t appreciate dressing like a servant given how far back his family went.

“By the way, where are the other two?” He had to wonder why they were all doing a fake part-time job here, of all places, but he decided not to bring it up.

“What, you think Leo could be on reception?”

“I think he’s more than capable of doing something like that…” Tatsuya stood up for his friend in a somewhat reserved way, but Erika still looked like she was about to burst out laughing.

“Mizuki says she hates these clothes, too. Maybe she and Miki would be a nice couple.”

“My name is Mikihiko!”

“I got it, I got it!”

Mikihiko was getting pretty riled up, but Erika blew it off with a halfhearted response. Then she looked at Tatsuya. “And that’s why they’re both behind the scenes. Leo’s doing some manual labor in the kitchen, and Mizuki’s washing dishes.”

Tatsuya wasn’t absolutely sure what was “why,” but he felt like he got the picture. “They’re both good with machines, after all.”

“You’re right. Can’t judge either of those books by their covers.”

These days, moving things to and from storehouses and washing dishes wasn’t something usually done by people. Machines could do those jobs just as good as humans, down to the fine details. It meant the two of them must have been using the kitchen automatons to do it.

“I’m good with them, too! So why do I have to wait tables?!”

Mikihiko, however, perhaps because he was actually involved, didn’t understand like Tatsuya did—or, at least, wasn’t convinced.

“I explained this a hundred times! It was just a little mistake.”

“That doesn’t explain anything!”

“Okay, okay, stop yelling. It may be just be a part-time gig, but we’re still on the job. Look over there, some empty plates!”

“…You better remember this, Erika.”

Mikihiko left her with a parting threat and went to a table, though it didn’t seem serious to Tatsuya.

“Miki’s the one who’s gonna forget…” sighed Erika, with no other emotion than that in her voice or in her expression.

It struck Tatsuya, though, that it wasn’t all she had in mind. “…I don’t know what’s going on with you two, but can’t you go a little easier on him?”

Erika didn’t seem to understand what he was talking about for a moment, so she paused before answering. “…It’s not that big a deal. But I guess I sort of felt like venting. I know he’s bad at stuff like this, it’s just…”

“You wanted to make him mad?”

“I dunno. Maybe? He’s so uptight sometimes that just looking at him is irritating. I know he can’t smile for real yet, but he forgets to be mad sometimes, too… It seems more like delusion to me.”

“How nice of you.”

“Oh, stop.”

Tatsuya hadn’t said it as any more than something to keep the conversation going, but the denial he got in reply was unexpectedly violent.

“I told you I was venting, didn’t I? Neither of us is here today because we wanted to be. Our parents made us do it. If it looks like I’m being nice, it’s only because we feel sorry for each other.”

The obstinacy of her spirit showed itself for a moment in her attitude.

“…I’m not gonna ask. It’s not like I need to know. I’ll forget I heard anything.”

Tatsuya didn’t try to unravel its mysteries.

“I’m sorry—could you do that?” she said, not telling him off for his lack of sympathy. “…Hey, Tatsuya.”

“What?”

“You know, you’re…pretty cold.”

Despite what she said, she didn’t sound criticizing.

“…That came out of nowhere.”

“No, I’m thankful for it…I guess. You’re not too nice, so I can whine about stuff to you and it’s okay. You don’t take pity on me, so I don’t feel miserable… Anyway, thanks.”

The last couple of words were spoken so softly he almost didn’t hear them.

As he watched her head to a nearby table as though running away, he thought, I suppose everyone has their own problems.

The buffet party hall took up the entire floor of the hotel, and with four hundred strong present, they didn’t have the food all on one center table. There were large tables at the right, left, and center of each end wall and in the middle, for a total of nine tables. Food was being resupplied regularly to fill the stomachs of the growing children.

Every year, the students from each school would cluster around their own tables. But while it may have been all right for underlings (?) to sip at their drinks and nibble on their food by themselves, the leaders of each school didn’t have that luxury.

Miyuki, having been called away by Mayumi, left her classmates and moved around with the other student council members to exchange greetings with the student council members from the other schools, which doubled as a shrewd ploy to probe the enemy. From behind Mayumi and Suzune, she stole a glance at her brother, who was watching Erika leave.

She sighed. Not audibly, and not in her expression—she did so mentally.

Miyuki thought of Tatsuya more highly than anyone else did (with “Tatsuya” as the main subject there), but she certainly didn’t consider him to be perfect…though she did think of him as kind of superhuman. She knew her brother had no lack of weaknesses. One of those weaknesses was that he couldn’t seem to trust the good will others showed him. To a certain extent, he was too thickheaded to actually understand that goodwill, but more than that, deep down, he really doubted that others even had any goodwill toward him.

In a way, it was natural. Perhaps it was because he was never given love, the highest form of goodwill, by his parents. Instead, they had torn that very love from his heart and mind. Miyuki knew that it was basically a miracle that he responded to her own love.

Still, after his cute classmate (Erika, even from Miyuki’s point of view, was unarguably pretty) showed him feelings of attachment—perhaps she had already fallen for him—he just watched her go with a disillusioned stare. When she looked at him, she felt more pain than relief.

Miyuki didn’t think her brother knew she was looking at him like this, but maybe he noticed her eyes on him. But without a doubt, he wasn’t stopping to imagine how she felt right now…and that caused her more anguish.

And it was making her ever more irritated, too.

She’d need to put in a formal complaint with him before she let this go.

Being so thickheaded wouldn’t do her brother any good in creating harmonious personal relationships.

Yes, this was for his sake—it was tough love.

Beneath a ladylike, archaic smile, Miyuki made up her mind.

…He had to have picked up on someone staring. He may not have known whence it came, however.

Mayumi and the rest of the student council were currently smiling (at least outwardly) and having a pleasant chat with the school council from the one that could be their biggest rival—Third High. Behind them, some freshmen from the school were whispering back and forth to each other.

If they had been listening into their upperclassmen’s information war and analyzing it for strategies to use later, it would have spoken to how militaristic Third High was. Their seniors might have even choked up with tears over it. Unfortunately…

“Look, Ichijou, isn’t that girl super-cute?”

“Super…? What old-timey high school did you go to?”

“Oh, shut up. I’m not asking you. Come on, Ichijou, whaddaya think?”

“What are you so excited about…? It’d never work. A girl that pretty is way out of his reach. She’d never even talk to you.”

“Would you be quiet? Maybe not to me, but she might take a shine to Ichijou! He’s got good looks, great skills, and he’s really smart. Plus he’s an heir to one of the Ten Master Clans. And then maybe even I’ll have a chance at her.”

“You sound so pathetic when you act so proud…”

They were actually having a conversation along these lines…and who could fault them? They were high school kids.

“Masaki, what’s wrong?”

It was just that the male student in the middle of their circle wasn’t answering his excited compatriots. He was busy staring hard at the female student in question.

The boy was gorgeous, though perhaps dignified would have been the better word. His features fit right into the old “good-looking young warrior” mold. With his six-foot height, his broad shoulders, and his toned back…the Third High freshman, Masaki Ichijou, was, as his teammates suggested, popular with the ladies.

“…Masaki?”

Masaki turned to look at his dubious classmate. He was smaller, but still well built. “…George, do…do you know anything about her?”

“George” was a nickname. He was completely Asian in appearance, and his real name was purely Japanese: Shinkurou Kichijouji, with “George” coming from the end of his last name. He answered Masaki’s question immediately, without pausing to think. “What? Oh. Well, as I’m sure you can tell from her uniform, she’s a freshman from First High. Her name is Miyuki Shiba. She’s entered into Ice Pillars Break and Faerie Dance. Apparently she’s their ace.”

“Ack!” muttered Masaki Ichijou, ignoring his teammates’ exaggerated surprise. “Brains and beauty, huh?

Miyuki Shiba, huh…”

The boy called George looked at his friend with a mix of surprise and curiosity. “That’s unusual! You don’t usually show much interest in girls.”

The other students agreed.

“You know, he’s right.”

“The girls all come to Ichijou first. There’s no need for him to be greedy.”

“Ah, how indulgent.”

The conversation rapidly devolved into unpopular guys venting, but Masaki stayed silent, without responding. He just kept staring at Miyuki, averting his gaze now and again so it wouldn’t be too obvious. The enthusiasm in his eyes was alarming.

As the guest introductions began, the stars of the day stopped eating and conversing. In a bout of excessive seriousness, as high school students unfamiliar with the world are wont to do, they bent their ears to the voices of the adults.

Tatsuya was fresh out of people to talk to after Erika went back to work, so it was a thankful release from his boredom. It was a good use of his time just getting a look at the faces of the magic world’s celebrities, alternating and substituting for one another onstage. Some he was seeing for the first time, and some he’d seen only in images and videos. Of course, there were others he’d seen personally, and some he’d even shared rooms with in attendance at one function or another, despite never having exchanged words with them.

One among them in particular caught his attention: the eldest of the Ten Master Clans and referred to as the “Old Master.”

Retsu Kudou.

The creator of the Ten Master Clans hierarchy in this twenty-first-century Japan, and the one man thought to have been the world’s strongest magician for twenty years. After leaving the front lines—and taking his title of the strongest with him—he hadn’t shown himself in public very often. For some reason, though, he would always attend the Nine School Competition, and he was famous for it.

Tatsuya had never seen the man in person—only in pictures. He found himself excited at seeing such an important historical figure before his own eyes. With encouragement and applause, it was at last the old Kudou’s turn on the stage.

He would have been close to ninety years old. Tatsuya wondered how much of his famed magic power still remained. He wondered if he still even had the stamina to use magic. As he thought to himself, the master of ceremonies announced his name.

Tatsuya, along with every other high school student present, held their breaths and waited for the man to step up to the podium. And when he appeared there, Tatsuya forgot to exhale.

Under the softened lights was a young woman with golden locks clad in a formal dress.

There was a stir—Tatsuya wasn’t the only one shocked. Countless whispers flew back and forth at the utterly unexpected development. Wasn’t the old man Kudou going up to the stage? Why was there a young woman in his place? Had there been some sort of trouble? Had she been sent as his representative?

No, that’s not it.

He finally realized what was really going on.

This woman was not the only one who had appeared on the stage.

There was one old man standing behind her.

Their attention had simply been diverted to the pretty lady in her showy clothing.

Mental interference magic.

There was probably a huge spell covering the entire hall right now. By preparing something that had stood out, his “alteration” drew their attention away. It was so subtle you could barely even call it event alteration. No, it was a naturally occurring phenomenon. And though the spell acting on everyone present was a huge one, it was so faint and weak that it was quite difficult to detect.

So this is the magic of the man who was once the strongest—the highest, and the trickiest—Retsu Kudou, the “Trickster”…

The old man behind the woman smirked—had he noticed Tatsuya staring at him? It was the smile of a little boy whose prank had gone off without a hitch. At the man’s whisper, the lady in the dress quietly moved aside.

The lights illuminated the man, causing a huge commotion. Most people probably just witnessed Kudou appearing out of thin air. The man’s eyes once again looked to Tatsuya; he nodded in return so as not to stand out. Kudou’s eyes were glittering happily.

“First, I must apologize for the little trick I just played on you.” Even bearing in mind that his voice was coming over a microphone, it sounded unbelievably young for a ninety-year-old. “It was just a little sideshow. More a conjuring trick than real magic. And yet I noticed only five people who saw through the trick. Which means…”

He paused. All the high school students waited with bated breath, intensely interested in what the old man was going to say, and what he wanted them to hear.

“If I had secretly been a terrorist bent on massacre, blending in with the rest of the guests and setting up poison gas, or explosives, or what have you, only those five people would have been able to take steps to prevent that.”

The old man didn’t particularly raise his voice or make it sound more powerful. Still, the hall was now filled with a different sort of silence than before.

“Young scholars of magic, I will say this: Magic is a means, not an end. I played this little trick on you all so that you would remember that. The spell I just used may have affected a very large space, but it was extremely low in intensity. From the viewpoint of magic power, it was no more than a low-ranking spell. But you were all misled by that weak spell. You know who would be appearing here, but you were unable to perceive me.

“Polishing your magical skills is important, of course. You must always be vigilant in your pursuit to strengthen your magic power. However, I want you all to take this to heart: That is not enough by itself. Great magic that is used improperly will always be inferior to lesser magic that is used cleverly. When the Nine School Competition starts the day after tomorrow, it will pit your magic against each other—but more than that, it will compare how you use that magic.

“I look forward to what sort of tricks you can devise, young scholars of magic.”

The entire audience applauded. Unfortunately, it didn’t come all at once. Through the hesitant applause, Tatsuya clapped without ever letting the smile leave his face.

The perspective that the way one used magic was more important than the spell’s rank was a stab at the prevailing societal doctrine that power was king. Saying that magic depended on how you used it was, in essence, revealing magic as no more than a tool.

The old magician stood at the pinnacle of magic society, and yet advised them to go against the current trends of that society. Depending on your point of view, his attitude was outright irresponsible. He had enough influence to change magic society, after all.

If Kudou’s speech had been insincere, Tatsuya might have disagreed with him, too. But he showed the entire hall in a very easy-to-understand way. He had used magic as a tool in a manner Tatsuya couldn’t emulate.

so this is the Old Master.

Yakumo Kokonoe. Harunobu Kazama. And now Retsu Kudou. There were still magicians in this country he needed to learn from. And there were likely plenty of others he didn’t know about, too. This was something he couldn’t understand in an FLT laboratory.

At that moment, Tatsuya thought this:

Being a high school student was turning out to be unexpectedly exciting.

The banquet was slated for two days before the competition in order to give the students one day to rest. The technical and operations staff would be devoting themselves to the home stretch of their preparations, but each competitor was restoring their energies and spirits for tomorrow’s battles in his or her own way.

Still, the freshmen wouldn’t be competing until the fourth day of the competition. For them, excitement and adventure won out over nervousness. They were in high spirits despite themselves, as though it were a group field trip with classmates, which was only natural given their age.

Miyuki, Honoka, and Shizuku had come to Tatsuya’s room again that night after dinner to hang out, but they left soon after, since he was busy arranging activation programs. The main and rookie competitions had different schedules, so the freshmen were all rooming as pairs together. Honoka and Shizuku were in one room, with Miyuki’s roommate being Kazumi Takigawa from Class C. Kazumi had a pretty active disposition, though, and mostly spent her time with her club seniors, so Miyuki spent time in Honoka and Shizuku’s room often.

The hour hand on the clock (for some reason, all the clocks in the hotel were three-handed analog clocks) was just about getting to the X. Most of the upperclassmen who would be competing tomorrow had probably turned in for the night. In consideration, not only Miyuki, Shizuku, and Honoka, but also their teammates and the freshmen from other schools were discerning enough not to make a huge ruckus outside. Still, the young girls had too much energy to head for the peace of sleep like their seniors.

And when three girls are walking around at night, it generally meant they were talking.

There were exceptions, of course. From her outward appearance one might tend to think Miyuki and Shizuku were those very exceptions, but they were actually pretty normal in this case.

The topic, as it had been for a while now, was the competition. Girls didn’t talk just about fashion and romance. Of course, thinking that way bordered on flippancy.

As mentioned before, it was almost ten o’clock, but there was no curfew. So when there was a knock at their door, there was no reason to panic or get confused.

“Oh, I’ll get it.”

All three of them stood up, but Honoka was closest to the door, so she stopped the other two.

“Good evening—”

“Oh! Hello, Amy. Where’s everyone else?”

There was a short girl with impressive lustrous ruby hair peeking in through the open door. She was their teammate, Eimi Akechi. Four other classmates stood behind her, meaning most of the female First High rookie competitors were present.

“Yeah! Well, get this! There’s a hot spring here.”

She tried to figure out what her excited voice was trying to say, but couldn’t. “…Sorry, could you say that in a way I understand?”

Miyuki, though, seemed to understand what she meant. “Yes, isn’t there an artificial hot spring in the basement of the hotel?”

“Yeah! Leave it to Miyuki! So smart!”

“…I’m sorry, but I could do without the compliment.”

Eimi didn’t mean anything malicious or evil by it, but her airheaded praise gave Miyuki a headache for some reason. She pretended to massage her temples. Eimi looked at her and tilted her head, a little confused.

“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it. Anyway, as you were saying?” prompted Miyuki.

Eimi grinned innocently. “Right! I’m thinking we should all go to the hot spring.”

It sounded crazy—at least to Miyuki—and she exchanged glances with Honoka. She seemed to feel the same way.

The one who answered Eimi’s suggestion, though, was Shizuku, all the way from the back. “Are we allowed? This is a military base.”

This wasn’t your run-of-the-mill hotel. It was a base with a maneuvering ground for national defense forces. Shizuku was worried that they couldn’t go into any other room without prior permission.

Eimi, clearly not considering any of that, denied it, though. “We decided to ask, and they actually said yes. We can go in until eleven!”

“Good going, Eimi,” said Honoka, a little astounded.

“I guess all you need to do is ask!” Eimi’s response to what could have been construed as sarcasm actually sounded proud, though, and it had no effect.

“But don’t you need a swimsuit for this hot spring? That wasn’t exactly on my list of clothes to bring.”

“That’s okay, too. They said they’ll give us some towels and bathrobes.”

Eimi had already dealt with the practical problem Miyuki posed. With everything all set for them, none of the three had any reason to refuse. And, in all honestly, they couldn’t deny an interest in this hot spring, man-made though it was.

“Then we shall accompany you. We’ll get a change of clothes, so please go on ahead.”

Eimi nodded happily at Miyuki’s answer. “Okay! There’s no rush or anything.”

Miyuki waved her hand and saw her teammates off.

The big public bath underground had been reserved for First High’s freshmen girls. It wasn’t just empty—they had gotten it reserved for them especially from ten to eleven. The place was like a group bath, and was originally administrated as such. This was because despite the term big public bath, the underground hot spring could fit barely ten people inside at once. The bath was more of a medical facility, constructed to treat muscle pain and joint pain from training. It boiled the cold alkaline springwater that flowed underneath the hotel. Its main users were high-ranking military officials (and only the middle-aged commissioned officers, at that); it wasn’t built in the expectation that large numbers of sightseers would use it for recreational purposes. The doctor would specify a time for people to soak in the bath and nothing else, so there were shower booths for washing off with bathing suits or bathrobes inside.

It didn’t look like any other groups besides them had requested permission to use the place, though.

The women’s bathing robes were, bluntly, short white yukata without the belt. Their loose-fitting designs didn’t tighten anywhere so were perfect for using in the bath but also didn’t feel anywhere near as good or reliable as swimsuits.

“Wow…”

“W-what?”

The outfit would have been too embarrassing to show someone of the opposite gender, but everyone here was a girl, and a pretty familiar and trusted teammate, at that. Eimi’s sigh, however, caused Honoka the sort of embarrassment and caution a man looking would have given her. Without thinking, she covered her chest with her arms, for Eimi’s eyes were definitely looking there—straight at her breasts.

“I’m surprised. Honoka, you’ve got a nice body—” said Eimi, sidling up to her.

Honoka retreated, but soon ran into the wall of the bathtub.

“Honoka…”

“What?!” The impression coming from Eimi was a dangerous one, and Honoka nearly shrieked it.

“Can I undress you?”

“Of course not!”

Eimi’s eyes were sparkling. She was obviously just teasing her. The problem was, of course, the joke not having an acceptable punch line for Honoka. She looked around the room searching for help. Her teammates were all either in the tub or sitting with their feet over the edge. With one minor exception, they were grinning in the same joking way as Eimi was.

“Oh, it’s fine! I mean, you have big breasts!”

“That’s not the problem!!”

Eimi was still grinning, but Honoka clearly caught a glimpse of a dangerous light in her eyes—this wasn’t just a joke. “Shizuku, help me!” Unable to endure it, she called out for help from that one minor exception, Shizuku.

Shizuku stood up deliberately. “Well, why not?” she answered, walking out of the tub.

“Why?!” she shouted at her best friend’s betrayal.

For a moment, Shizuku looked down at her own chest sorrowfully.

“I mean, you have big breasts.”

With judgment passed, she left and walked into the private sauna.

Honoka’s scream rang out through the bath.

What on earth could be going on in there? wondered Miyuki to the splashes of water coming from the bathing room as she showered to wash herself off again. She had already gotten the dirt and grime off her in her own room’s bathroom, but nevertheless she followed the proper procedure, using the fully automatic shower booth, which some called the “human washing machine,” to wash her body (from the head down). When she was done, she put her arms through the sleeves of her bathrobe. She wrapped her long hair tightly in a towel, and then finally moved to the bathing room, in which the commotion had finally settled. When she entered, her bathing teammates all locked their eyes on her body at once.

“Wh-what is it?” she stammered in spite of herself, stopping. Nobody answered her, though. Not a single set of eyes peeled from her.

“No, everyone! Miyuki’s normal!” Honoka, her expression somewhat heroic, stood up from the bathwater and broke the silence.

“Honoka?” Miyuki would need more than that to understand what Honoka meant.

“No, don’t worry. Sorry. We were just a little fascinated.” That was the boyish, handsome voice of a girl named Subaru Satomi from Class D, who was sitting nearest to her, legs over the edge of the bathtub.

Miyuki suddenly realized what Honoka meant and why everyone was looking at her. “Wait… What are you talking about? We’re all girls,” she said hastily, her hand going to her inner thigh to pull down the short hem of the bathrobe. With her action, the room became pregnant with an odd tension again.

The thin bathing robe was clinging to her because of the moisture still on her from her shower and the steam rising from the bathtub, causing her feminine lines, including the pair of mounds on her springy chest, to appear distinctly.

Her pink, slightly flushed breasts tucked inside the front kimono lining.

Her slender, impeccably beautiful legs of dazzling white coming out of her short robe hem.

In Miyuki’s case, this bathing robe, while it exposed far less than a swimsuit, had a charm and beauty above even being stark naked.

“…We’re all girls… Yeah, I know, but…”

“How should I put it… Looking at you makes me feel like gender doesn’t matter.”

Before any more utterances could slide out, Miyuki gallantly put her foot down. “Geez! Please give the teasing a rest!”

Amid the hungry stares, she gracefully bent down and submerged herself in the bathwater. She sat with both legs out to one side and went down to her neck. The collar of her bathing robe swayed in the water, giving a momentary but clear glimpse of the nape of her neck.

Everyone present sighed. The current mood was no joke, no prank. If the situation continued on like this, Miyuki’s chastity might have been in danger.

That is, if Honoka hadn’t sat next to Miyuki with a sploosh to block her from the eyes of the spiders with a butterfly caught in their web. “Miyuki, don’t worry! I’m on your side! If you all don’t quit it, everyone here is going to have a nice cold bath in ice water!”

As soon as they heard that, their teammates turned quiet and they looked away. But even if their eyes were elsewhere, their attentions were still all on Miyuki. Despite so many young girls in one place, nobody spoke.

Miyuki, for her part, wanted to object to what Honoka said, but she felt that if she carelessly told them she’d never do that, it would break the precarious equilibrium they had at the moment, so she said nothing.

“…What’s wrong?” Shizuku, who had been holed up in the private sauna and hadn’t seen anything, asked simply, cutting into the stiff atmosphere in the bathing room.

The girls finally reacquired their collective sanity, as if the question had snapped them out of it.

Now that they had gone back to normal for the moment, the bathing room quickly filled up with lively voices. Girls’ conversational topics aren’t restricted to fashion and romance. Still, these girls liked fashion and romance as conversational topics, and their bath talk naturally turned to gossip about guys they’d seen at the party. They mainly talked about boys, but there was some talk about older men as well. Put in a positive light, there was an open-mindedness in the diversity of their tastes. Of course, as for the actual state of things, it went something like this:

“And the bartender at the drink bar was such a dreamy guy!”

“Wow… He was clearly in his forties. It’s all over if you start getting into old men…”

“I’d prefer it if you called him handsomely middle-aged. If you ask me, high school students are all children! Like, you can’t rely on them for anything, you know?”

“You think so? I think there are at least a few boys our age you can depend on. Maybe you’ve just had bad luck with men.”

“You’re right. Isori is pretty broad-minded, right? More importantly, he seems nice.”

“Nothing will come of falling for someone who already has a girlfriend, right? I mean, Isori’s girlfriend is actually his fiancée already anyway.”

“If we’re talking dependable, doesn’t Juumonji fit that description?”

“Well, in his case, he’s a little too dependable. Despite how he looks, he’s the heir to one of the Ten Master Clans.”

“Speaking of Ten Master Clans heirs, wasn’t there one from Third High there named Ichijou?”

“Oh, I saw him! He was pretty good-looking.”

“Yeah. I mean looks aren’t everything, but they sure are nice to have!”

…That was how the conversation was going. Then, suddenly, Eimi referred to Miyuki, who had recovered from her (mental) exhaustion before, now sitting at the end of the bathtub. “Ichijou from Third High? He was getting all googly-eyed at Miyuki, wasn’t he?”

Miyuki had been the one Eimi was speaking to, but she found herself unable to answer.

“Wait, really?”

“Could it be love at first sight?”

“It’s Miyuki! I’d believe it.”

“Wouldn’t it be weirder if a guy didn’t fall for her?”

“Maybe they’ve met each other before!”

Someone squealed.

“How about it, Miyuki?” asked Shizuku seriously—given her normal monotone, she always sounded really serious even if she didn’t mean to—in contrast with the shrill squeak.

Miyuki gave that an answer. “…If you’ll allow me to answer seriously, I’ve only ever seen Ichijou in pictures before. I didn’t even know where he was in the party hall.” The response, somewhat cruel and somewhat cold, might have brought Third High’s fighting forces down into a rut just from hearing it. The other girls waiting in anticipation all looked disappointed.

But there were always those who never got discouraged. “What kind of person do you like, Miyuki? People like your brother?”

Honoka reacted to Subaru’s question rather than Miyuki. Only Shizuku, who was sitting next to her, saw her whole body freeze up for a moment.

Extremely calmly, and with an expression consisting of both serenity and amazement, Miyuki answered. “I don’t know what you want me to say, but… He is my brother by blood, all right? I’ve never seen him as an object of romantic interest. And I don’t think there is anyone else like him anyway.”

Subaru and Eimi seemed clearly dismayed at the reply (though Subaru was being melodramatic).

Nobody asked about Miyuki and Tatsuya’s relationship after that.

Still, there were two girls in the bathing room that didn’t accept her answer at face value—both Honoka and Shizuku felt something more than “not seeing him as an object of romantic interest,” as she’d said.

After returning Miyuki and the others to their room—unaware that he would be talked about by the three of them and their teammates afterward in the underground artificial hot spring—Tatsuya started to work on arranging activation programs in the work vehicle.

“You should finish up soon, too, Shiba.”

He looked up at the voice and saw that there was only one other person still in there. “When did it get this late?”

The clock was about to change the date. Isori nodded with an androgynous smile. (As an aside, Isori’s clothing and hairstyle were both unisex, and Tatsuya suspected he might actually be making an effort not to look masculine.)

“The competitors you’re in charge of don’t compete until the fourth day, so I don’t think you should spend all your energy right from the start.”

“You’re right.”

Tatsuya was in charge of the freshmen girls’ Speed Shooting, Ice Pillars Break, and Mirage Bat events. This was both at Miyuki and her friends’ behest and because the freshmen boys (mainly Morisaki) didn’t want him. (Miyuki was entered in Ice Pillars Break and Mirage Bat, Honoka in Battle Board and Mirage Bat, and Shizuku in Speed Shooting and Ice Pillars Break.) He certainly had more legroom than the staff who would be in charge of students competing tomorrow. Kanon was entered only in Ice Pillars Break on the second and third days, but Isori was in charge of some competing tomorrow as well.

“Thanks; I’ll go get some rest,” he said, leaving the work vehicle behind him, not going so far as to suggest they both call it quits.

The midnight in the middle of the summer still hadn’t cooled off very much. It was just warm enough to walk around comfortably in a T-shirt.

Instead of going straight back to his room, as he wandered around the hotel grounds in casual clothing, he sensed a strangely tense presence. Like someone was holding their breath and looking around.

A thief? he thought at first, but he discarded the idea a moment later. Whoever was trying to hide their presence but couldn’t quite do it was more violent, more belligerent. Tatsuya opened his senses and accessed the Idea—the giant information body comprised of the information bodies of all things that existed.

Three of them. They’re…surrounding the hotel, just outside the fences disguised as hedges.

All three had handguns and small explosives.

Even outside the hotel grounds, they were already inside a military facility. The security at the base was by no means lax. Both man and machine kept watch for intruders and eliminated them. They’d have especially less mercy on those with weapons.

Not only had these intruders squirmed past the security; they also had explosives. Tatsuya didn’t have his CAD on hand, but he couldn’t just let them run free to do whatever they wanted.

Tatsuya silenced his footsteps and began to run. Then, his senses detected someone he knew approaching the suspicious people just like he was. The person’s stealthy movements were as good as his. The trespassers were on the other side of the fence from their starting positions—but Mikihiko would get there faster.

As Tatsuya ran, he assembled a support spell. With his specific spell and specific magic power, he could use that specific spell even without a CAD, and with the same speed and precision others could accomplish by using one—but only with this.

Mikihiko prepared to unleash a spell of his own. He wasn’t using a CAD. Tatsuya’s perception of the Idea came to him not as images, but as thoughts. Mikihiko had pulled out three long, narrow strips of paper—likely amulets. He wasn’t going to use modern magic; instead he would use old magic. As Tatsuya “sensed” him doing it, his psions flowed through his hands and into the amulets, constructing the spell.

Both modern and old magic interfered with the “information” incident to “existence.” They were fundamentally the same in that they overwrote events. The method and conditions for doing that overwriting were the only differences.

The magical system Mikihiko had activated didn’t form information bodies in his magic calculation region for this interference—in other words, he didn’t create a magic sequence. Instead, he appended information to the amulets in his hand, then used that as a medium to place the information bodies, now independent and without mass, which had separated from that “existence” and were now floating around the Idea, under his control. With that, he was constructing a three-layered spell by overwriting the phenomenon.

Compared to modern magic, which directly overwrote the information bodies incident to existence, or Eidos, this process lacked speed and freedom. However, it rarely resulted in resistance to the interference being performed. By limiting the events one alters, one could use magic of a larger scale than modern magic with less power.

With his ability to analyze magic sequences, Tatsuya understood all this in the blink of an eye.

And it made him feel anxious about Mikihiko’s spell.

He’s not going to make it.

The spell Mikihiko was using was taking too many detours, too many complex and pointless alternate routes. It meant that actually casting the spell was going to take too much longer to ignore.

Tatsuya set the intruders’ handguns as the target for his Dismantle.

Mikihiko had sensed the disturbance thanks to his training in magic.

Deep in the hotel courtyard.

He had left the building, gone near the hedges bordering its plot of land, and found a place away from the eyes of others to begin his daily training.

He attuned his senses with the spirits—abstract concepts of things such as wind, water, earth, and fire, which were separate from individual events—in order to practice the fundamentals of deity magic (spirit magic).

By modern magic interpretation, spirits were information bodies floating the sea of information separate from physical objects.

Those concepts themselves moved and changed the world of information, and the energy those concepts manifested combined to move and change the physical world.

It was said they could be measured as massless objects.

But by coming into contact with spirits like this, he felt for sure that they were real and existed in this world.

Not through logic, but by feel.

To him, spirits were always right there, each with its own will. By coming into contact with them, they would grant him many different experiences and observations.

As soon as he began his attuning practice, he “heard” people outside the plot of land the hotel was on.

At first, he put it off as people who had left the hotel on an errand, or soldiers on patrol.

But as the spirits’ cycle of informing him of their presence continued, he began to think they might be warning him.

He used his attuning practice to extend the threads of his senses in the direction the spirits were indicating.

And when those threads arrived at their destination, they found malice.

His face stiffened with tension.

He couldn’t immediately decide whether to call someone or deal with it himself.

Today, he couldn’t say for sure he could deal with any opponent. It frustrated him, but he didn’t have the confidence. He bit his lip and decided he should go back to the hotel and call for the soldiers on security.

Unfortunately, his emotional response didn’t agree with the logical decision.

Something that wasn’t logic was telling him it would take too long.

He got the feeling that his disquiet was the spirits telling him to hurry.

He burst into a sprint—not to return to the hotel, but toward the malice.

He was unsure.

If they were armed with handguns, he was unsure he’d be able to deal with them as he was now. Not many magicians could beat a handgun being pointed at them from right up close. If there was anything in the way, magic would have the advantage, since physical obstacles didn’t affect it. If he couldn’t use any cover, then it would be difficult to deal with the speed of a finger pulling a trigger.

But Mikihiko pushed the rational unease from his mind—it was cowardice.

He remembered what happened yesterday.

It was his father who had made him pretend to be a waiter.

Erika said it had been a little mix-up, but he knew the real reason.

Go to where you should have been originally.

That’s what his father had said to him the night before last.

His pretending to be a waiter was a means to realize that.

Mikihiko’s father probably wanted him to see all those of his generation who were standing in the spotlight, in order to get him back on his feet. Maybe he wanted to inspire him. But those words, and the way he was carrying them out, stuck in Mikihiko’s mind as humiliating.

Maybe, at the time, Mikihiko wanted to prove that he wasn’t a failure.

The lighting around him was dim, but as part of his family training, Mikihiko had practiced operating in the darkness. Even if starlight was all he had to go by, he felt no inconvenience.

Once he had approached the presence emanating the clear malice, Mikihiko produced a few amulets.

Three of them—one for each of the intruders. They’d probably noticed him, too. The overwhelming malice and hostility allowed Mikihiko to know there were three of them.

He couldn’t hesitate. The hostility was changing into bloodlust. If he hesitated, it was over. Shoot first, ask questions later.

Mikihiko filled the paper with magic and let loose a spell.

A light flashed in his hands, and as if to answer it, electricity began to gather above the intruders.

Within a second, the electric attack would hit them. But it wouldn’t take them even half a second to pull the trigger.

Tatsuya made a snap judgment and activated the spell he’d been preparing: Dismantle. The three handguns they held, in accordance with the alteration of the eidos, fell apart.

And a moment later…

…the little bolts of lightning created in midair struck the three of them.

“Who’s there?!” demanded Mikihiko, not at the three figures collapsed on the other side of the hedges, but at the magician who had supported him, and was now running up.

He already knew what had happened. His magic wouldn’t have originally made it in time—it was only thanks to another magician’s backup that he hadn’t been hurt. He had lost his former speed at magic, and it nearly spelled disaster for him in a real combat situation.

“It’s me.”

“Tatsuya?”

Tatsuya could see Mikihiko’s shock just by looking at him.

He didn’t stop after giving his curt reply, though, and leaped over the hedges in front of them.

He applied negative weight to himself with a self-weighting spell and crossed the seven-foot-high line of hedges.

Mikihiko watched him go over, dumbfounded, but then snapped out of it, pulled out a new amulet, and cast a self-weighting spell of his own.

When he landed on the other side of the hedges, Tatsuya was kneeling next to the fallen intruders.

“Tatsuya?”

The simple question was loaded with meaning.

Not even he himself knew what he meant by it.

“They’re not dead. That was some good work.”

Tatsuya seemed to have taken it as a question about the intruders’ condition. Or maybe he’d seen how confused Mikihiko was and chose the least offensive interpretation he could find.

“What?”

Mikihiko didn’t understand what Tatsuya was complimenting him for.

I would have been done for originally, he thought, torturing himself.

“A precise ranged attack against multiple targets from a blind position. The attack was made with the intent to capture rather than deal a mortal blow, and you pacified them all in one go. It was the best possible outcome.”

Tatsuya’s tone was so calm you could call it hard-boiled, and it told Mikihiko that his praise wasn’t mere flattery or comfort.

What Mikihiko couldn’t believe wasn’t Tatsuya but himself…

“…But my magic wouldn’t have made it in time otherwise. Without your backup, they would have shot me.”

…for what came out of his mouth was self-deprecation that beat his self-control.

“Are you an idiot?”

“…What?”

The curt ridicule Tatsuya blasted him with, though, cut any further self-torturing words from leaving his lips.

“If I hadn’t backed you up? That’s no more than a hypothetical situation. The fact of the matter is that your magic successfully captured these intruders.”

“……”

Mikihiko was completely taken aback by Tatsuya’s merciless ridicule and exposition.

“In reality, you had my backup, and in reality, your magic made it in time. Originally? Mikihiko, what exactly did you think things were like originally?”

“Well, I…”

“You weren’t basing this off of some idea like, no matter how many opponents there are, and no matter how well-trained they are, you could win without anyone’s backup, right?”

The shock hit Mikihiko so hard it felt like his heart flipped over. He knew just as well as Tatsuya how absurd an idea like that would have been. But deep in his mind, hadn’t he been thinking that exact thing?

“I swear… I’ll say it again, Mikihiko. You’re an idiot.”

“Tatsuya…”

“Why do you go to such lengths to reject yourself? What’s making you have such a low opinion of yourself? What is the problem, exactly?”

“…You wouldn’t understand even if I told you. And it’s not something I can change anyway.”

“No, you might be able to.”

Mikihiko had built a wall and hid behind it with that argument, but Tatsuya had just demolished it with a wrecking ball.

“What…?!”

This time, Mikihiko really couldn’t find anything to say. Tatsuya gave him a piercing stare.

“Mikihiko, you’re worried about how fast you can activate magic, aren’t you?”

“…Did Erika tell you that?”

“No.”

“…Then how…?”

“You have a lot of redundancy in your spell casting.”

“…What did you say?”

“I’m saying the issue isn’t your abilities—it’s the spells themselves that you’re trying to use. That’s why you can’t execute magic the way you want to.”

“How the hell do you know that?!” shouted Mikihiko.

He was so confused.

He was so enraged.

The spells he used were developed by the Yoshida family over countless years, aggressively implementing the findings of modern magic into their traditions of old magic, heaping improvement upon improvement.

After seeing it only once or twice, Tatsuya treated it like a faulty product, and that made Mikihiko angry.

Tatsuya had presented him with those doubts he’d been trying to ignore for so long, having rejected them as convenient fantasy, and that made Mikihiko confused.

“I can tell with these things. I’m not going to force you to believe me, though.”

But then Tatsuya used his calm tone to quell Mikihiko’s rage, spouting something that made Mikihiko even more disturbed.

“…What did you say?” he asked once again, though with a different intonation this time.

“I can understand magic composition just by looking at it. I can read and understand the information described in activation programs by looking at them, which allows me to analyze magic sequences.”

Tatsuya gave an unbelievable explanation in return.

At that moment, Mikihiko’s confusion reached a peak.

He’d never heard of any magician who could do that. If that kind of abnormality really existed, it would solve half the issues in modern magic.

“…Like I said, I won’t force you to believe me,” Tatsuya said again, as if to abandon it.

Mikihiko felt like he was implying that the rest was his own problem to figure out.

“Let’s leave it at that for today. We need to deal with these guys. I’ll keep watch, so could you go call security? Or do you want me to?”

Frankly speaking, Mikihiko was still unable to even fathom whether Tatsuya’s “confession” had been the truth or a lie, so he was thankful for the change in topic.

“Oh, I’ll go call them.”

“All right. I’ll wait here.”

Mikihiko activated his jumping spell again and disappeared behind the hedges.

Tatsuya, on the other hand, thought briefly on how to restrain the intruders, and decided to bury them in the ground. If he used Dismantle, it would destroy the dirt he’d need to put back in the holes, so he had to use Dismantle and movement-type magic separately. It was somewhat tiresome work to do without a CAD, but like his jumping from before, he had the magic sequences of simple spells entirely committed to memory, so he could execute them without a problem, as long as he wasn’t trying to trigger more than one at once.

Ironically, the virtual magic calculation region artificially created in him had been placed in his conscious mind. The benefit was that he could use the magic sequences easily since he had them right there.

I feel like I’m cheating.

Half of him felt like a victim as the other half of him used it as a convenient tool. He grinned scornfully at his lack of principles and went to activate the spell.

However, he didn’t need to.

Upon sensing the approach of someone he knew, he interrupted his casting. It didn’t take long for the person to say something to him.

“Pretty heartless advice, there, Specialist.”

“You were watching, Major?”

Tatsuya hadn’t realized Kazama was eavesdropping. It wasn’t enough to surprise him, though. Kazama had received instruction from Yakumo Kokonoe for far longer than Tatsuya had, and was the man’s best student. If Tatsuya wasn’t accessing the Idea, he’d have a lot of trouble detecting his presence.

He saluted roughly, and Kazama grinned and saluted in return. “Unusual for a person so apathetic toward others, wasn’t it?”

“I take issue with the term apathetic, sir.”

“Then were you overtaken by sympathy? The boy seems to have the same worries as you do.”

“I’ve already graduated from that level of worry.”

“So then it was out of remembering how you were before.”

“…Would I be able to leave these people with you, sir?”

Kazama had been grinning more and more evilly—to Tatsuya, his was the more heartless attack—and without a means of escape anymore, he tried his best to deflect the conversation.

Kazama, though, knew just as well there wouldn’t be any point in pursuing the topic any further. He stopped smiling and grew serious, then nodded at Tatsuya. “We’ll take them. I’ll inform base command myself.”

“I’m sorry to cause you the inconvenience, sir.”

“Nothing for you to worry about. You were forced to do extra work here, too.”

“Yes, sir. What could their objective have been?”

“Who knows? Shaking down petty criminals isn’t in our job description, but… These guys were more aggressive than they had a right to be. They were more skilled than we imagined, too. Tatsuya. You should be careful of stray attacks as well.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“Let’s sit down and have a nice talk. Tomorrow afternoon work for you?”

“That’s fine. If you’ll excuse me, sir…”

“Yeah, see you.”

The two of them parted, but not before their superior-subordinate expressions turned into acquainted, brotherly ones.