Chapter 5

In the cafeteria, where they had all met up, Miyuki was surprised by Erika’s sour expression.

“Erika, is what happened yesterday still bothering you?”

Right up until they’d parted at the station, Erika had been severely frustrated at how they’d been outsmarted at the very end by what appeared to be an unlawful operative from the USNA intelligence department. She didn’t speak of it, but her attitude made it evident. For someone who usually hid her true feelings behind a mischievous smile, her demeanor had been very frank, but seeing it prolonged into the next day was even more unusual.

Erika’s answer was half yes, half no. “Oh, him getting away with it isn’t bothering me.”

Her using the expression “getting away with it” made it obvious that she wasn’t being honest about how she actually felt, but as she implied, that didn’t seem to be the only thing.

“What he said bothers me…” she admitted. “We can’t be safe even if we’re in school? Are the students in danger…?”

It didn’t seem like Mikihiko, Honoka, and Shizuku understood, having been removed from what happened in April, but Tatsuya and Miyuki guessed right away what was nagging at Erika.

During that incident, Sayaka had been used by a foreign operative wearing the mask of a terrorist. She still hadn’t completely gotten over that yet.

“Well, I want to pass on a repeat of something with such a bad aftertaste as much as you do,” offered Tatsuya, who knew and understood, in consideration for Erika’s feelings. “But they haven’t done anything yet, so we can’t just search for them and catch them, right?”

“I guess that’s true, but…”

The peevishness in her voice was an expression that she wasn’t fully convinced. But it looks like I got her to quit the detective act, thought Tatsuya. All things considered, Erika wouldn’t likely be described as softhearted, but it was a different story when her close friends were involved, even if they weren’t necessarily directly affected.

“But if we’re always on the back foot, that puts us at a disadvantage, doesn’t it? Things will work out one way or another if they come in and start punching people, but if it’s a thief or a burglar…”

“We can’t let that be the only thing that bothers us…”

After Leo and Mikihiko expressed their qualms in sequence, Tatsuya smiled and shook his head. “Nobody walks around with data on their terminal, so there won’t be any physical theft. Besides, it’s strange to worry about bag snatchers in school, isn’t it? I mean, I can’t say the odds of hidden photography are zero, but that applies to everything, not just the competition. If someone wants to steal data inside school, the fastest way would be to fish around in directories with low security. I personally try not to be that dumb. Maybe you’re just letting the shady words of a suspicious person confuse you.”

“I guess…but I don’t think that guy was the same one who was using that spell to search us yesterday. We need to be careful of that, so I think we should stay vigilant.”

“I know that.”

Despite having voiced an objection to Tatsuya’s explanation earlier, Mikihiko seemed convinced for the time being.

As for Erika and Leo, they appeared to still have something to say but were unable to find the words to argue.

Unlike the Nine School Competition, where the representative team had fifty-two members, the Thesis Competition had only three. The numbers were so different that even comparing them seemed meaningless.

Nevertheless, the Thesis Competition was regarded as equally important.

One reason was because it was a real arena for all nine magic high schools to vie for supremacy. The schools that didn’t do well in the Nines would be especially excited at the prospect of a revenge match.

One other reason could be that the Thesis Competition directly involved far more than just the three students chosen for the team.

The biggest difference among the All-High Magic Thesis Competition and the speech contests and research conferences familiar to non-magic high schools was that the Thesis Competition included a demonstration of the findings during the presentation.

Thesis presentations would include live demonstrations of magic, using magical equipment, on the stage. They would be models meant only for that presentation, but paper models wouldn’t mean anything. Competitors either worked magic in real life, or simulated doing it—that was the contest’s defining feature.

It was common to see students designing magical equipment and producing systems to assist spell casting, the creation of control software, as well as bodies to load that software into it. Then targets (if those were required) were manufactured, testers and support personnel found, and even people to erect shields to handle event safety: When the competition rolled around, not only the tech and art clubs but also the purely theoretical clubs and anyone with high grades and practical skills would be mobilized, all to push for their school’s success at the actual event. Incidentally, a greater number of people were involved with the presentation than the Nine School Competition.

With the event taking place the Sunday after next, work was proceeding not only after school but also during allotted hours in the school day, under the pretense of self-production and self-practice. The whole building was abuzz—no, a-clatter—with the clanging of machine tools and the rattling of magic usage. Prototypes and instruments crowded together across the campus, and some girls had volunteered to organize a drink-and-snack delivery team for the students hard at work. The group even had to use a 3H, a Humanoid Home Helper, owned by the robot research club.

“Oh, found him!”

In the middle of the tumult was the one Erika was searching for.

“Heeey, Tatsuyaaa!”

As she waved her hand and shouted, Leo turned his whole body to the side to pretend he didn’t notice. Mikihiko kept behind her at a tricky distance of two meters, also looking away. Both of them were pretending they didn’t know her.

“Erika, we can’t get in his way…”

Mizuki, who wasn’t as shameless as Leo, couldn’t help but tug on her friend’s sleeve, even knowing it wouldn’t do anything—and it didn’t.

When Erika walked up, unruffled, Tatsuya, who had paused in his work, just gave a pained smile, like he didn’t have any other choice. However, there were others in the middle of an experiment who scowled at her, of course.

“Chiba…could you, like, read the situation here?”

One of those scowling was Kirihara, present on guard duty.

“Huh? Saya, you’re watching, too?”

But Erika answered—or rather, one-sidedly talked to—Sayaka, who was standing next to him.

“Look, you…” said Kirihara, exhausted.

“Eri…” Sayaka smiled painfully. Still, Kirihara didn’t fly into a rage—maybe that meant he’d started to grow up.

But Tatsuya, seeing not just Kirihara but also his other upperclassmen at the end of their patience, beat him to the punch. “You don’t look like you’re here to watch, Erika. Need something?”

“They wanted Mizuki’s help with something, so I was going with her.”

Erika looked willful and selfish, but she wasn’t stupid. Sensing by his tone of voice that he was warning her, she answered simply, without wasting any breath.

I see, thought Tatsuya, turning his attention to Mizuki, who was busy bowing to her seniors in the art club.

“Erika, come over here.”

Seeing a chance—though it was odd to call it such—Miyuki reached out from the side and brought Erika inside the ring of onlookers. Sayaka, too, left Kirihara and went next to Erika as the operation test of the magic equipment, forced to take a temporary break, resumed at Isori’s signal.

“What are they testing over there? It looks like a giant light bulb.”

Supported by a pedestal and four arms was a clear sphere 120 centimeters across. She was right: At a glance, it looked like an oversize light bulb. Of course, by this time, light bulbs had all but disappeared from the average household, so Mizuki gave her a confused look when she heard the word, tilting her head to the side.

“It’s the cold plasma generation device for the presentation.”

Miyuki knew what a light bulb was, but she wholly ignored the joking part and answered Erika’s question.

“Cold…” repeated Mikihiko. “Would you be talking about cold fusion?” Like Leo, Mikihiko had been maintaining his stance as a complete stranger, before those words surprised him and he forgot what he had been doing before. (Also, Mikihiko had never gotten away from using formal speech when talking to her.)

Erika, too, seemed to have gone through her science knowledge, and a moment later a question mark popped up over her head. “Thermonuclear fusion is a reactive type, and apparently you don’t necessarily need super-high temperatures for it.”

“…”

“…I’m sorry, Yoshida. I don’t understand much about it myself. You should ask my brother about it later,” added Miyuki, seeing Mikihiko give a blank look.

He simply shook his head in response.

Erika was speaking in hushed tones with Sayaka and throwing meaningful glances Mikihiko’s way, but Miyuki smiled (with her lips only, not her eyes) and quickly put a word in. Leo had been watching the test device silently from the beginning, eyes sparkling with curiosity.

Now that they had an unintended silence, Isori signaled to Suzune. Suzune then poured psions into the big desktop CAD Tatsuya was monitoring. A much more advanced spell-support mechanism than the small CADs they carried on their person began to run, and a complex magic program consisting of many layers of processes activated.

Hydrogen under high pressure turned into plasma, and the detached electrons collided with the luminescent glass to give off light. This phenomenon was more simply performed by running high voltage through certain gases, but what they had was a high-level spell that split off those electrons without supplying any energy, then defied electromagnetic attraction to move only the electrons to the outer parts; controlling the spell required a sustained event-altering force.

“So it is a light bulb.”

Fortunately, Erika’s rude murmur was drowned out by cheers of “We did it!” and “The first step worked!” from nearby people. Even looking at others, Leo clenched his fists in front of him, Mikihiko folded his arms and nodded, and Sayaka jumped and clapped her hands. (The exception was Miyuki, who merely smiled quietly as though success had been predetermined.)

The glass vessel maintained luminescence for ten seconds. As the light faded, excitement waned. This was because they’d created only one of the big props; there were plenty yet to assemble. The helpers who were gathered around the test began going back to their respective stations. As they did, Erika noticed Sayaka staring at one of them.

“Saya, what’s the matter?”

“That girl…”

What she got in response wasn’t an answer but her talking to herself.

“Wait, what’s wrong?”

“Hey, Mibu?!”

Sayaka suddenly started running, and Erika and Kirihara got off the marks after her. A moment later, Leo followed. Miyuki watched them, eyes wide, then realized Sayaka was chasing a female student with pigtails.

“Wait right there!”

Hearing a halting voice right behind her, maybe figuring she couldn’t compete in speed, the female student stopped in the grassy courtyard.

She turned around. “What is it?” she asked, voice hard. Impudent, depending on how you heard it.

“Are you a freshman?”

The First High uniform didn’t differ among grade levels. Sayaka’s question was based on her features and constitution.

“…Yes. You’re Mibu, a junior, right?”

“Yes. Sayaka Mibu, from Class 2-E. Course 2, just like you.”

The only difference in uniforms was the presence of the emblem. It distinguished between Course 1 and Course 2 students.

“…I’m Chiaki Hirakawa, from Class 1-G,” the girl said reluctantly.

Sayaka heard footsteps stopping behind her—Erika and the others had caught up. They had probably heard her introduction just now. In fact, Kirihara muttered “Hirakawa?” back to himself. Sayaka hadn’t heard the surname before, but he must have.

Of course, the reason Sayaka couldn’t let this freshman go wasn’t because of her first or last name; it wouldn’t have mattered if she’d heard it before or not. She didn’t have time to be worrying about things like that.

“Hirakawa, the device in your hands… That’s a wireless password breaker, isn’t it?”

Chiaki Hirakawa’s face paled. She quickly hid the portable terminal behind her.

“Hiding it won’t help. I’ve used the same device before.”

The girl’s eyes widened.

A password breaker was a piece of password-stealing malware made into hardware form. Contrary to its name, it didn’t stop at password authentication—the device could automatically disable all sorts of authentication systems and steal information files. It could only be used for criminal purposes. Which meant if Sayaka had used it before, then…

“…That’s right. I was a spy’s pawn, too, once.” Sayaka’s face twisted into a pained expression, but she kept her eyes on Chiaki as she spoke. “Let me warn you. Cut ties with them now. The longer you go along with them, the harder it will be for you afterward.”

“…What do you care how hard it is for me?” she asserted brusquely, turning her back to them. An unapproachable refusal.

But that was far from enough to make Sayaka flinch. “There’s no way I can leave you be!” she yelled, voice firm and eyes firmer, at the now-aggressive girl. “It’s been six whole months, and sometimes I still start shaking and can’t stop. Sometimes I accidentally bite my lips so hard they bleed, or make a fist so hard my nails cut into my skin.” She was actually shaking as she spoke. “I don’t know who you’re going along with right now, but I can say this for sure: They don’t have your interests in mind. Not one bit. They’re just using you as a disposable tool!”

There was a truth to Sayaka’s words. This was no debate in theoretical ethics—this was real life.

But the hatred lurking in Chiaki’s heart was deeper rooted than Sayaka thought. “I know that!” she shouted defiantly, turning a hateful glare on Sayaka, who caught her breath. “Of course mafias and terrorists wouldn’t care about the people they use. You joined up with them without even knowing that? Excuse me for sounding rude, but how old are you?”

Her dry, ridiculing words told Sayaka that this freshman wasn’t like her. Sayaka had a goal she strove for—but she didn’t know how to achieve it, and that’s how they got her.

The girl was right. Sayaka had been a helpless child. She wasn’t about to deny that. But the girl before her still didn’t seem any more adult than her.

She wanted something so badly that she was willing to cooperate with criminals to get it. But what would she do when she did? Go back to her high school life like nothing happened? Or would she remain a member of the criminal organization? Sayaka felt like she was purposely ignoring what would happen in her own future.

It seemed to Sayaka like she was just stubbornly refusing everything others said.

“Abandoning yourself won’t get you anything, and won’t leave anything behind!”

Still, Sayaka couldn’t help but say something. She was sure, from experience, that sometimes you needed to force someone to stop even if they didn’t want to.

“You wouldn’t understand. I’m not helping them because I want something.”

But what she got in return was, naturally, another firm rejection. Sayaka dimly knew the girl wouldn’t respond to their attempts to persuade her. She’d been the same way. Persuasion could come later. If they let her get away now, she’d never come back to this side. That considered, Sayaka made up her mind—she might have to get a little rough.

“Kirihara?”

“Got it.”

Kirihara immediately understood Sayaka’s signal. Unfortunately, neither of them had a weapon, but neither seemed worried. This freshman had no understanding of martial arts or hand-to-hand fighting. Both of them had eyes enough to see that. It would be easy for the two of them, together, to capture her.

Objectively speaking, Sayaka’s and Kirihara’s judgment was correct.

That is, had their opponent not been carrying a weapon.

Somebody much worse than terrorists or the mafia was using Chiaki.

The moment Sayaka and Kirihara stepped forward, Chiaki threw a small capsule at them.

“Get down!” shouted Erika, the first one to notice it.

The two of them reflexively covered their eyes with their arms.

A brilliant flash made it through their arms, penetrated their eyelids, and burned into their eyes. If anyone there had retained their eyesight during the flash, they would have noticed that Chiaki’s eyelids were painted black. Masquerading as mascara and eye shadow, the shielding paint protected her from flash bangs.

Chiaki pointed her right hand at Sayaka. Spring-loaded darts shot out of her sleeve.

Erika, who had successfully blocked the flash by crouching and covering her eyes, knocked the long, spindly darts away with a tree branch as she stood up.

As the darts split apart, a thin, purplish mist began to spread from them. Erika instantly discarded her weapon, shoved Sayaka out of the way, and covered her own mouth with her blazer sleeve.

Kirihara, who hadn’t completely recovered from the flash bang, took in a gulp of the smoke, now dispersed enough to be transparent. Suddenly, he swayed, then dropped to his knees.

Nerve gas?! Erika though to herself in frustration, not opening her mouth. The girl was more meticulous than they’d thought. Since they couldn’t carry CADs in school, she couldn’t use Acceleration magic very well. They had a numbers advantage, but the handicap given by a weapon was just that large. And if they didn’t know what kind of weapons she had up her sleeve, they really couldn’t act carelessly…

…but one man present wasn’t bound by this logic. Leo had dropped down onto the grass (having taken Erika’s warning literally), but just now began dashing savagely toward her.

Chiaki shrieked at his intensity. She hurriedly aimed her right hand at him. Either there was more than one gun for the trick darts, or she had a different projectile hidden in there.

Whatever it was, nobody ever saw it.

Because Leo had suddenly vanished from Chiaki’s sight.

She paused, petrified, and a moment later took a severe impact to the waist, pushing her over while leaving no way to resist. She hit the back of her head, and passed out.

“…Did I overdo it?” asked Leo over his shoulder, having tackled Chiaki with both hands.

“Maybe…” said Erika. “Anyway, would you get up already? It basically looks like you’re trying to rape her.”

“You…! That’s not what this is!”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, I know.”

Erika looked down with a tired face, though her eyes were the definition of serious. They weren’t watching Chiaki, who remained on the ground, but Leo as he stood up. She looked like a professional gambler sizing up a thoroughbred at a derby.

Kanon, having heard the commotion (as the disciplinary committee chairwoman) and run to the nurse’s office, where she saw the unconscious freshman on the bed and the junior couple getting treatment, sighed.

After hearing what had happened from Sayaka, she sighed again. “You overdid it…”

Kirihara and Sayaka must have felt as if Kanon, normally a train on a rampage, telling them they overdid it, was undeserved. Still, their opponent had hit her head, and was still unconscious from it, so they couldn’t find the words to object.

“Anyway, what the heck did she do? From what you told me, she was just in possession of an illegal electronic device. But she didn’t actually use it illegally or break any school rules with it.”

There was no way to object to that indication, either. Not for Sayaka, who was always earnest and serious, or for Kirihara, who didn’t exactly have a silver tongue.

That, though, wasn’t enough to make everyone present apologetic. “I think possessing an illegal hacking tool is grounds for catching her,” challenged Erika.

Kanon leveled a sharp stare at her. “…The problem is that they went too far. Crime and punishment have to be balanced.”

“Hey, I mean, I didn’t try to catch her because I wanted to punish her. We were just trying to rescue a school friend from the hands of dirty adults.”

“Do you always knock people out to rescue them? She hit her head hard.”

“What were we supposed to do? She brought out hidden weapons and everything. I don’t see why I have to get hurt just because I want to save someone.”

Kanon and Erika glared at each other.

Sayaka started to panic a little at the volatile mood, but the nurse here, who was in a position to scold both of them right off, wasn’t trying to mediate, so she couldn’t find the right moment to say something.

“Anyway, Chairwoman Chiyoda, we’ll leave the rest to you.” The one to speak was Leo, who had been standing to the side. “Let’s go,” he said to Erika, gesturing with his head that they should leave the room.

“Wait, what’s your problem?” said Erika angrily, changing her target to Leo.

But this time, it didn’t evolve into a stare down.

Leo gave only a momentarily exasperated glance at her, then turned around. “The rest is the disciplinary committee’s job. I don’t know about you, but I’m good just knowing none of this bothered Tatsuya, Mizuki, or Mikihiko.” Then he started to walk away.

“Would you wait?!”

Erika chased after Leo, also leaving the nurse’s office.

As the voices of the noisy freshmen (with at least one of them being very annoyed) disappeared down the hall, Kanon regained some of her calm.

She looked at the freshman lying on the bed again. Her face spurred Kanon’s memory, but there was no way for her to be sure, since the girl was unconscious. Instead, she turned to look at the nurse.

“Anyway, give me your honest thoughts—how is she?”

The nurse, Satomi Asuka, answered her with a placid smile. “There’s nothing to worry about. I didn’t find anything wrong with her brain or bones. She should wake up soon enough.”

Asuka had a specialized healing-type ability that allowed her to visually detect biological emissions and identify abnormal spots on the body. The ability let her deliver more precise diagnoses just by looking than most precise examination instruments in hospitals. If she said the girl was all right, it meant they could rest easy.

“Then, I’m sorry to bother you, but could you contact me when she does?”

“Sure. Oh, but if she runs away, don’t complain to me, okay? I don’t have any combat abilities whatsoever,” answered Asuka, smiling pleasantly.

Kanon grinned and nodded. “You would never let a patient out of your sight, Ms. Asuka.”

Then, she escorted Sayaka and Kirihara, whose treatments were complete, out of the nurse’s office.

Kanon was the disciplinary committee chairwoman, but right now, she was also Isori’s bodyguard.

The bodyguard system for the Thesis Competition assigned multiple bodyguards to a single target. There was one other junior bodyguard for Isori, but Kanon wasn’t about to foist this duty onto somebody else.

That was why she’d returned to the schoolyard, where the experiments were being conducted, without waiting for the freshman, who she had to question, to wake up.

And once again, that galling underclassman of hers—basically Erika—had caused some trouble. For whatever reason, one of the male students was watching her with a dangerous expression. Erika was ignoring it, looking away and almost whistling in feigned ignorance.

Feeling a headache coming on but unable to pretend she didn’t see, Kanon grabbed the nearest disciplinary committee member and asked him. “Wait, Shiba, what the heck’s going on over there?”

Tatsuya was a member of the committee Kanon led, but more importantly, right now, he was one of the representative members for the Thesis Competition and involved with the experiments’ progress.

Currently, he was one of those being guarded, and for a bodyguard, even if she wasn’t assigned to him, addressing him while he was busy typing away on a keyboard would have been out of the question. Kanon didn’t seem to be conscious of that, though.

Sure enough, Miyuki raised her crescent eyebrows behind him, but Tatsuya didn’t seem particularly offended. He stopped scrolling down the screen and turned. “It appears Sekimoto isn’t fond of Erika and Leo loitering around.”

After looking at the situation again, he was right—Sekimoto, not Erika, was the one gathering annoyed stares. Kanon sighed and went over to the arguing pair.

“…Sekimoto, could you tell me what the problem is?”

There was no term limitation for disciplinary officers. As long as a member didn’t voluntarily quit, they’d be part of the committee until they graduated. Mari and Tatsumi had resigned when the student council changed, but Sekimoto was still a registered member. He was the only senior currently in the committee.

“Chiyoda… Well, it’s nothing important. I was just being cautious—they weren’t picked by the disciplinary or club committee for this, so I don’t want their loitering to cause a problem for you.”

Though it wasn’t in Kanon’s character to do so, she wanted to put her hands over her face. Her unmistakable thoughts right now involved why her senior wanted to make trouble on purpose.

“…For the sake of next year and the year after that, there’s no reason to stop freshmen from watching the experiments,” she said. “If they’re getting in the way of our bodyguard duties, the bodyguards will handle it. You weren’t nominated for the job this year, so would you be so kind as to leave this to us?”

Sekimoto narrowed his eyes, but Kanon turned to Erika without giving him time to object. “And could the two of you go home for the day, too? What happened before could be viewed as four-on-one violence, depending on how you look at it.”

Kanon was trying to save the situation while things were still hazy. Erika smiled coldly at her. She knew this was only a makeshift way of doing things, but seeing Erika smile like that made the blood go to her head. Still, if she exploded here, it would only make the situation worse.

As Kanon gritted her teeth, Erika casually turned her back. “I’m gonna get going. Tatsuya, Miyuki, see you tomorrow.”

“…Yeah, I’m getting out of here, too. Later, Tatsuya.”

After the two freshmen readily withdrew, Kanon sighed in relief.

Just then, her terminal vibrated, notifying her that she had a message. After checking it, she wandered away from Sekimoto, who still seemed to have something to say, and back to the nurse’s office she’d just come from.

“Oh, Kanon, wait!”

Isori, who had been focused on monitoring the data coming from the measurement instruments with his terminal, quickly rushed up behind her. He was abandoning his post in the middle of the experiment, but nobody found fault with him.

Sekimoto gave an interested stare at Isori’s display, which he hadn’t closed—before a hand reached out from beside it and shut the terminal off.

“Ichihara.”

“I’d thought you had no interest in practical themes like this.”

Sekimoto turned away, his expression sullen. Suzune answered with a poker face that gave nothing away.

“…I still think that we should be more focused on improving foundational theory and spells themselves, like with Cardinal Codes, but it’s not like I have no interest in applications.”

“I don’t recall making light of foundational theory. We actually need more scrupulous inspection of foundational theory than research of theory for the sake of theory so we can mitigate the risks that come from practical implementation.”

“Inspection and research are different. Research is creation. Just inspecting things won’t get us anywhere.”

“There is no value in theory that isn’t useful. Theory exists so it can be made into something practical.”

“It may not seem useful now, but research into foundational theory will bear more fruit in the future.”

“Bearing more fruit in the future isn’t grounds to reject the small advancements being made right now. The future is built on top of the present.”

Both seniors argued calmly—but also stubbornly. As Tatsuya watched surreptitiously from across his monitor, he became convinced.

She’d already explained once that Sekimoto’s rank in the Thesis Competition’s selection committee hadn’t been fourth, but second, right after Suzune. Still, Suzune’s almost hostile rejection of when she’d told him that had left an impression.

At the time, Tatsuya had been a bit mystified as to why Suzune seemed to be so stubbornly against Sekimoto being part of the team, but now he knew such an attitude was only natural when their fundamental viewpoints differed so much. And as far as Tatsuya could see, Sekimoto felt the competition more strongly. Tatsuya got the impression that he still felt like the other boy was more fit for the team.

At times, too much pride led to a loss of the restraints normally provided by reason. Sugarcoating her arguments probably wouldn’t make Sekimoto back down. As far as he could tell, it was hard to think this would be the end. Sekimoto’d take more direct action next time—that was for certain. Whether that action would be legal and peaceful he had no proof of.

—I just hope this doesn’t turn into trouble—

With a powerful hunch that that wish wouldn’t be granted, Tatsuya still couldn’t help but wish it anyway.

Leo left the school gates and silently followed Erika.

Even so, for him, it didn’t feel like they were going home from school together. For all intents and purposes, there was only one road from the gates to the station. He simply didn’t have any urgent matters that would have made him pass her by. And Leo thought it was the same for Erika, too.

They were just walking in the same direction, and their paces just happened to be the same, too.

“Leo?”

So when she suddenly called his name, he stopped out of surprise.

Erika had stopped, too. “Do you have time today?”

He didn’t immediately understand the question, so he stood there dumbly for a moment. Erika spun around. Her skirt fluttered into the air, but Leo’s eyes were glued to hers.

Those eyes without a speck of softness.

Those eyes without a hint of mischief.

Her eyes were painted with a steel-blue vigor, looking like they could slash into him at any moment.

“Do you?” she asked again, short.

That broke the curse on Leo. “…I don’t have anything going on, really.”

“Then come with me.”

She spun on her heel again and started walking away at a brisk pace. Leo followed at the same speed, still silent. Visually, it was the same as before.

But the nuance had changed completely.

Upon Kanon waiting for Isori and entering the nurse’s office, Asuka, the one who had sent the text, greeted them with a placid voice. Still, considering she was physically holding down a struggling Chiaki, the term placid went out the window.

“Ms. Asuka…what happened to not having ‘any combat abilities whatsoever’?”

This was not the first time she’d asked that question even though she knew the answer.

“Please, this is nursing, not combat.”

“…” “…”

Kanon was not the only one to stare at her unintentionally, and she also wasn’t the only one to purposely not point that out.

“Umm…” she began. “I’d like to hear what she has to say, so would you relea—err, have her sit down, please?”

“Sure.” Asuka’s smile deepened as if to praise her tact in quickly rewording her request. She sat Chiaki up.

Kanon felt a slight chill at what could have happened had she said what she originally intended.

As if to sweep that away, she shifted her gaze to Chiaki, now upright, shaking her head a bit.

“Were you okay the day before yesterday?” asked Kanon.

Chiaki blinked her eyes wide open before hastily looking down to hide her face. She must have only now realized the one chasing her near the station had been Kanon.

“First then, now today…” she continued. “You sure are reckless. If you’d made one little mistake, you would have ended up badly hurt.” There was no sense of interrogation in her voice. In fact, it sounded gentle. “But it’s escalated too far for me to stay quiet and watch. You haven’t done anything yet—which is exactly why I have to stop you.”

This was Kanon overextending herself. Now that she’d been named disciplinary committee chairwoman, a sense of duty to rehabilitate underclassmen had blossomed. If she hadn’t been given that position, then considering her natural hasty temperament, she would have forgotten about any sense of obligation rather quickly.

“You said earlier to Mibu that you weren’t doing this because you wanted something. Why were you thinking about stealing data?”

But despite this newfound commitment straining Kanon to the limit, it appeared to resonate with the person it was directed toward.

“…Stealing data wasn’t my goal. My goal was to overwrite the magic equipment program for the presentation and make it unusable. That’s why I borrowed the password breaker.”

“You wanted to make our school’s presentation fail?”

Underneath her controlled, considerate expression, she seethed for a split second. Of all the things, she was trying to ruin Isori’s big moment (by Kanon’s subjective viewpoint). She was being truly tolerant today.

“That isn’t it! I didn’t want them to fail or anything!”

But Chiaki’s response wasn’t quite what Kanon had expected. Kanon had been tightening her shoulders so she wouldn’t explode, but this felt like a letdown. The surprising words and Chiaki’s attitude seemed honest. Kanon, at least, felt Chiaki was telling the truth.

“…I hate to say it, but that man would easily recover from that,” said Chiaki. “He has enough skill. But if the program broke right before the event, he’d have to start panicking, even if just a little. He might even have to pull a few all-nighters in a row, and then get sick, hopefully. I just wanted to make him sweat!”

“You’re doing all this to annoy him…? Thankfully, this didn’t turn into anything major, but depending on how it went, you could have been expelled from school, you know.”

“I wouldn’t mind that! As long as I can scare and frustrate him! I can’t forgive him for only ever getting the good deals…!”

On the bed, Chiaki began to sob.

Kanon, face perplexed, turned to Isori. He’d been listening to them from a few steps away. He nodded to Kanon and sat down on a stool next to the bed.

“Chiaki Hirakawa…” he said. “You’re Koharu Hirakawa’s younger sister, right?”

Chiaki’s shoulders, which had been caved in and trembling with sobs, now gave a different kind of jolt. Isori, who had been on the Nine School Competition’s technical staff, of course knew Koharu Hirakawa, who had also been part of the engineering team. “You think it’s Shiba’s fault your sister ended up like that, don’t you?”

Isori had been present during the incident that had eventually caused her to quit school, so he’d immediately figured out who that man and him referred to.

“…Isn’t it?”

What came softly out of Chiaki’s mouth was an execration.

“He could have prevented Kobayakawa’s accident, but he didn’t. He didn’t try to save her, so my sister felt like it was her fault…”

Isori gently placed a hand on Chiaki’s shoulder, but she smacked it away. He looked at his hand, then spoke again, his voice tinged with bitterness. “If Shiba is at fault for that accident, then so am I,” he said. “I didn’t notice the trap. That goes for all the other people on the technical staff, too. Shiba isn’t the only one responsible.”

This wasn’t simply a way to defend Tatsuya. The senior Kobayakawa still hadn’t recovered her magical capabilities after the falling accident during the Mirage Bat match in the Nines. As one of the staff members present at the time, Isori felt regret and responsibility.

“Please, don’t make me laugh.”

But Chiaki, her face still down, ridiculed his feelings. Kanon, angry, stood up, but Isori held her back with his hand.

“My sister didn’t know, either,” said Chiaki. “There’s no way you could have, Isori. But he could have noticed it. That person said so, too. But he didn’t do anything because it didn’t have anything to do with his sister!”

This time, Kanon looked at Isori with a worried expression. Isori was making the same face. Neither of them could understand Chiaki’s words, her attitude. It almost sounded like she was praising Tatsuya. They even thought they could see a yearning in her. They were so confused by it that the term that person slipped right on by them.

“He can do anything, but he never acts first… I’m sure he’s doing it to make fun of people he thinks are incompetent.”

Isori answered Kanon’s look with a silent shake of his head. Isori sort of knew how Chiaki felt. When people were betrayed by something they believed in, they would feel even deeper hatred toward the enemies they’d already been fighting. Even if that belief was entirely based on a one-sided faith.

“He can use magic just fine,” said Chiaki, “but he was lazy on purpose to be put in Course 2. And now, I’m sure he’s trampling all over everyone’s pride, Course 1 and Course 2, and gloating about it!”

“Okay, okay, that’s enough.”

As Kanon and Isori stood speechless before Chiaki’s hateful, irrelevant condemnation, the nurse interrupted her speech in a voice lacking any semblance of tension. “Doctor’s orders. Chiyoda, could you continue this tomorrow?”

“Ms. Asuka…”

“I’ll give her to a University-affiliated hospital to keep overnight,” she said. “I’ll contact her parents, so the two of you should go back to your preparations. There’s not much daylight left, right?”

Kanon seemed to want to argue with Asuka’s request, but Isori stopped her, and they both left the nurse’s office behind them.

Erika sat next to Leo in a two-person car.

Alone with a girl in his grade in a tiny vehicle. Even Leo, who put food before fairness and fights before flowers, couldn’t help but feel a little conscious about it.

He knew it was just Erika, but it was still a little uncomfortable. Maybe if it had been someone else, it would have been less so.

Objectively speaking, Erika was a rare beauty. Whether because of her looks or her fondness for martial arts, even her casual posture, with her elbow on the window frame as she stared outside, she seemed attractive. Plus, he thought he caught a whiff of something sweet. Unable to candidly look at her, given that he was sitting next to her, but unable to ignore her outright, his eyes ended up drawn in for glance after glance. Leo had quickly begun to regret taking her up on her invitation without asking where they were going first.

The silence was amplifying his discomfort, but fortunately it didn’t last for very long.

“…Don’t you think it’s too simple?”

“What is?” he said to the sudden question, secretly relieved he managed to answer in a normal voice.

“Yesterday, we get a warning about unknown foreign spies infiltrating, and today we find a student with a tool that spies use,” said Erika. “And the whole thing was so shabbily put together, like they wanted us to find her.”

“Shabby… I mean, I feel like it was pretty troublesome.”

“Stupid. Catching her was the only hard part. She was walking around with a hacking tool in broad daylight. Can you believe how careless that was?”

“Amateurs, right?” decided Leo.

“Yeah…” she answered vaguely, nodding. She didn’t seem convinced.

“What’s wrong?” Erika was being unusually inarticulate, and Leo realized she felt something that couldn’t be settled with a joke or levity.

“It isn’t over…” she stated. “She might have been sent to feel things out.”

“As a decoy to make us let our guards down while the real ones are somewhere else?”

Right now, her silence meant yes.

“…And you wanted me to play detective with you to smoke them out?”

“Hah, no,” denied Erika.

Leo felt more relieved than angry. It seemed like this alone time in the narrow space was making his mind malfunction.

“I don’t expect you to do any brain work.”

“Say that again!” Of course, he still couldn’t let that abuse go.

“You and I aren’t cut out for brain work, right? We can just leave that stuff to Tatsuya.”

But after she turned the same abuse upon herself, he found it hard to argue.

“We have a more fitting role than doing something that doesn’t suit us,” she said.

This immediately clued him in on what she was thinking. Their thought patterns really were similar—though both of them would have vehemently denied it. “Bodyguards, then.”

—The enemy was after things related to the Thesis Competition. They didn’t have to go through the effort of smoking them out—they’d come voluntarily once the competition got closer.

“We’d be doing less defending and more counterattacking, though.”

—They just had to lie in wait for them.

“Whoooo, you’re a scary woman… You want to use Tatsuya as bait?”

—If nothing else happened, then great.

“Tatsuya wouldn’t die even if you killed him.”

—And if they did attempt something, Tatsuya wouldn’t go down without a fight.

“Ha-ha, you’re right.”

—All they needed to do was concentrate all their efforts on squashing the spies’ necks.

Leo and Erika had reached an agreement—not a verbal one but one on a second sound channel.

A low menacing laugh echoed through the small interior.

If Tatsuya had heard their exchange, he might have announced he was breaking off relations with them. Fortunately (?), he wasn’t here.

However, the laugh ended suddenly. “But there’s something we still need in order to do this,” said Erika, her expression turning hard.

“What’s that?” Leo asked honestly, surmising it was something serious.

“Leo, you have first-class potential as a foot soldier. In battles using pistols or knives, I think you could outclass Hattori and Kirihara.”

The sudden, unexpected high praise, rather than making him happy or suspicious, confounded him.

“In terms of potential, Miki’s pretty up there, too. But you’re probably better than him in visible battles.”

But it only took a few seconds for his brain to restart. “…And? Potential—that means you’ve got a problem with my current abilities, right?”

Despite Leo’s sharp counter, Erika nodded, not particularly surprised. “I said there’s something we still need, right? You don’t have a finisher.”

“A finisher?”

“A finishing move, a killing move. Whatever you want to call it. A skill that will always bring down an opponent. Something to make the opponent feel really threatened. Something that just having would put you at an advantage, even if you didn’t use it. You don’t have one of those.”

“…And you do?”

“Yes. I need my personal broom for it, but with it, I have a secret sword technique that could crush an opponent with certainty.”

“Huh…”

“You don’t have a skill that will kill an opponent for sure, right? Depending on how you tuned and used that Mini-Communicator Tatsuya made, it could be a pretty lethal weapon, but it doesn’t have the sharpness to be a real finisher.”

The cabinet moved to a low-speed lane. They were approaching their destination.

“…I guess I don’t have any skills that assume I’m trying to kill someone.”

During the April incident, Leo had been put in the rear guard, and hadn’t actually fought any Blanche members. Unlike Kirihara and Erika, he had no real experience with violence of the sort that could rend flesh and break bones.

“Are you prepared to learn one?”

Erika’s gaze pierced through Leo’s eyes.

“Are you prepared to bloody your hands? Because that’s probably the sort of enemy we’re up against. And maybe it doesn’t have to be us to do the job. Maybe our teachers, or our upperclassmen, or even Tatsuya would do it for us. But if you want to get involved for real, instead of just watching from the sidelines, I think you’re going to need the resolve to kill or be killed.”

“That’s a dumb question.” Leo’s eyes never once looked away from Erika’s as he answered, simply and clearly.

The cabinet decelerated, slid into the station platform, and stopped. Erika opened the door and stepped down onto the platform. Leo exited after her, then smelled salt water in the air. He knew they were somewhere quite close to the ocean, near the border of the Kanagawa prefecture, before looking at the name of the station.

Erika stopped and turned around.

“Then I’ll teach you one.”

Backlit by the sunlight over her shoulders, she spoke.

“The secret sword technique, Usuba Kagerou, the Antlion. A perfect skill for you.”

The sun had long ago set, and the road home to the station was lit by street lights.

Today, instead of Leo and Erika, Kanon and Isori were with the group.

“…I see. So that was her motive.” Tatsuya nodded, looking convinced after Kanon fairly reluctantly told him what she knew about what was going on.

“But why?!” Honoka fumed. “She’s just hating you because of a misunderstanding!”

“Or maybe she’s venting,” said Shizuku next to her, puzzled, clearly having trouble understanding. None of this was convincing to either of them.

“She probably couldn’t help but vent…”

“I’m sure she loves her older sister… That doesn’t mean we can approve of what Hirakawa was trying to do, but I think I can understand her feelings a little.”

In contrast, Mikihiko and Mizuki gave words mixed with sympathy. Tatsuya was deeply interested in the brilliant difference in impressions between the Course 1 and Course 2 students. He didn’t let on that he found it amusing, of course.

“But if that’s all it is, there doesn’t seem to be a problem with leaving her alone,” he said—not giving his impressions but rather what they should do now.

Kanon and Isori both looked at him askance.

“You know you’re the one being targeted, right?” asked Kanon, less worried and more mildly astonished.

Tatsuya shook his head, apologetically for some reason. “Yeah…this harassment was meant for me, and I got you mixed up in it. But I won’t make any trouble for you. It’ll take more than a password breaker to get through our security.”

“Well, we’re having the robotics club help and keep an eye on all the equipment, not just the system security, so I don’t think we have to worry, either…” said Isori, eyebrows knotted—and even that expression came off as troubling (seductive?), annoyingly enough. “But if she knows hacking won’t work, she could always escalate things, right? If her sister is the cause of this, I think talking to her and having her change her mind is the best solution…”

Tatsuya still shook his head. “Let’s not get Koharu Hirakawa involved in this,” he said. “They may be sisters, but she’s not related to the incident, nor is she responsible.”

Hirakawa (the elder) was, at least, related in the sense that she was the cause of her sister’s rash behavior. But Isori found himself in admiration at Tatsuya for declaring that she wasn’t.

“Wow. I guess you can be kind sometimes,” said Kanon, not teasing him but genuinely surprised.

Casually hiding the now-irritated Miyuki from his upperclassmen’s sight, Tatsuya shook his head again, twice as firmly as before. “It’s because I feel like it would get needlessly complicated. And besides, the younger Hirakawa sister isn’t the only one to be running around nearby of late.”

Kanon’s, Isori’s, and Mikihiko’s faces suddenly tightened, and they glanced around.

They couldn’t spot anyone suspicious, but Isori and Mikihiko picked up on a slight fluctuation in the fields—unintentional psionic ripples.

“…Do you want a bodyguard after all?” asked Kanon, realizing Tatsuya wasn’t just being paranoid, and responding to the fluctuations spreading through the air and the fluctuation in Isori’s expression.

“No. Without someone with Saegusa’s level of perception, it would be too hard to catch them.” Implicitly saying there was nobody they could give the role to, Tatsuya shook his head for the fourth time.

Not an Ikebukuro multi-tenant building nor an upscale Yokohama Chinatown restaurant, but something in the middle: In a private room in a certain traditional Japanese restaurant in Shinagawa stood three men. Two formed a pair, consisting of a man in his forties and a younger one of twenty-five or twenty-six. Together, they faced another man in his twenties.

“I sincerely apologize. I hope you didn’t have to wait long.”

The singular man had just arrived. Along with his words, he struck an apologetic appearance. Nevertheless, there was almost no subservient impression, and his polite demeanor, coupled with his handsome features, gave off a noble air.

“Not at all. We only just arrived as well.”

The older man’s response included the appropriate platitudes, but his attitude was haughty and curt. He wasn’t vulgar, but others might have characterized him as boorish. Of course, the man would surely brush off any claims that he was unrefined or thoughtless. And the final person, looking more virile than his age in his mid-twenties would imply, sat still, not motioning to speak.

“I’d like to get right to it, Mr. Zhou,” said the older man to the newcomer. “The girl seems to have slipped up.”

“I understand your concerns, Your Excellency Chen.” The young man, Zhou, reacted mildly to the overbearing protest. “However, we have not told her anything about our identity. I don’t believe there is any danger of an information leak.”

“Really, now?” replied Chen upon hearing the confidence in Zhou’s tone, directing a searching gaze at him. “You’ve set her up quite well as your helper.”

“Children that age are genuinely passionate. They would rather speak than listen—to show their own worth, to have others look at them. It’s a phase of wanting to be understood rather than wanting to understand.” He smiled thinly. “Because of that, we had her tell us quite a few things.”

Chen looked at him, slightly uncomfortable. But when he spoke, no unpleasant feelings were left in his voice of warning. “If you say so, Mr. Zhou, then it should be fine. Just take care of any ‘one-in-a-thousand’ chances.”

“I understand. I plan to visit her in the near future to check on her.”

After Zhou bowed politely, Chen looked at him with satisfaction, then shook the bell on the table.

Zhou noticed the young man next to him, Ganghu Lu, casting a sharp gaze in his direction, but it did nothing to change the indistinct smile on Zhou’s face.