An irregular older brother with a certain flaw.

An honor roll younger sister who is perfectly flawless.

When the two siblings enrolled in Magic High School, a dramatic life unfolded—

In the year 2095 AD, many ports had been propelled into automation to actualize twenty-four-hour operating systems, running almost entirely without human intervention. All customs clearance happened during the day, while at night, the entry, loading, shipping, and departure of vessels were fully automated, with only cursory personnel on-site for security.

The decrease in human staff led to an overhaul of every port in the country. This refurbishing more strictly cordoned off free economic zones from urban areas—a countermeasure against undocumented immigration.

Late at night, when the port facilities were running themselves, vessels were only permitted to approach those bonded areas. Vessels that needed human assistance to berth would have to wait out at sea until morning, when manned operations resumed.

It was the middle of the night right now, so loading wharfsshould have been completely devoid of human presence.

But on this night, with the clock about to strike twelve, many were present on Yokohama’s Yamashita Wharf, waiting with bated breath.

“Illegal entrants have landed via a small freighter docked to loading zone five. All personnel, immediately proceed to loading zone five.”

After receiving the command over their short-distance radios, two plainclothes detectives began running, without even exchanging glances. Their expressions, however, contradicted each other.

“Sheesh. I told them it’d be over there.”

“This isn’t the time for complaining, Chief!”

“But, Inagaki…”

“Stop nitpicking and run!”

“I thought I was the one in charge here…”

“I’m older than you are.”

“Sheesh.”

After flippantly answering his subordinate, Chief Inspector Toshikazu Chiba sped up. He and the rest of security were at quay wall three right now, nearly half a mile from loading zone five. Normally, it would have taken at least two minutes to run there, but Chiba and Inspector Inagaki arrived in thirty seconds, trading banter as they went.

Normally, this wasn’t a speed regular people could achieve.

And these two were no regular people—they were magicians.

“I knew we wouldn’t have enough people.”

“What more can we do? Only detective-magicians can deal with magical crimes.”

“Even though…that’s not…exactly true…huh!”

Chief Inspector Chiba spoke as he caught his breath, even as he used a surge of energy to leap high into the air. Gripped in his hand was a straight wooden sword, about one yard in total length.

Fluttering through the air like a leaf, he passed above the trespassers, who were firing recklessly in three-shot bursts. His jumping power sent him flying in a non-parabolic curve without any footholds—thanks, of course, to magic.

His bewitching aerial mobility didn’t give the attackers time to line up their shots for support fire. He drove in a spiraling maneuver toward three magicians in the back line who were launching long-range attack spells. Using movement magic, Chiba was able to ignore gravity and inertia to slip by their spells. After landing, he began to trounce one after another with his sword.

On the other side of the crowd he’d jumped over, Inagaki used a pistol to gun down the shooters firing submachine guns.

Similar brawls had broken out in a few other places, but none were grave enough to require help. The two inspectors had wrapped things up, or at least close to it.

“Chief, we need to get the ship!”

“Wait—you mean me?”

“Stop complaining!”

Of the duo, the subordinate was clearly blessed with a far superior work ethic (or perhaps the superior lacked much, if any, of their own). Nevertheless, they were both at least taking things seriously enough not to sabotage the human-smuggling sting.

“Fine, fine. Inagaki, go stop that boat for me.”

“…If I do it, it might end up at the bottom of the sea.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’ll just be our manager who’s liable.”

“…I’m not sure why I expected you to take responsibility.”

Inspector Inagaki’s shoulders drooped in disappointment, but he loaded caseless rounds into his revolver with without hesitation. Then, he used his left hand to flick a switch on the grip’s bottom, causing the aim-assist mechanism attached to the top of the barrel to turn on and light up.

The specialized CAD embedded in the grip of his revolver-shaped integrated armament CAD then expanded an activation sequence.

He pulled the trigger, and in that same moment, the device initiated the magic program.

A metal jacket bullet, its trajectory stabilized and penetration strengthened using a compound movement/weighting spell, traveled along the program’s defined path, and pierced the small vessel’s stern as it was leaving the dock.

The gunshot echoed a few times as the bubbles rising from the stern began to calm. Inagaki had done nothing more than predict where to shoot based on the ship’s shape—but it had brilliantly gone right through the propeller gearbox.

“Wonderful,” praised Chiba, carefree. A clasp clicked open at his hands. His weapon looked like a wooden sword, but it was actually a sword cane.

With a white, coldly glimmering blade in hand, he jumped, as if trying to replicate the scene inYoshitsune Jumping Over Eight Boats.

As he landed on the vessel, he swung downwards and cleaved a metal-plated door leading to the cabin in two.

The hidden-sword technique known only to the school of Chiba, one of the Hundred Families: Zantetsu, metal cleaver.

The spell defined a sword as a singular entity instead of a mass forged from steel and iron, then moved it along a cutting path set by the magic program. The “sword” then acted like a blade of monomolecular crystal, slicing through anything in its way.

After another slash to clear an entry path, Toshikazu Chiba, eldest child of the Chiba and bearer of the family name, stepped into the ship.

“Thanks for your hard work, Chief,” said Inagaki, very obviously holding back laughter.

As the sky overhead began to brighten, Chiba didn’t bother to scold him for it. “Man, what a waste of energy,” he muttered.

The ship he’d so valiantly cut his way into had been, amazingly enough, totally empty. It looked like the band of illegal immigrants had escaped through a hatch at the bottom of the ship only a few moments ago; water was spouting from the open portal.

The boat had already been slowly sinking, but the improvements to its ventilation courtesy of Chiba had accelerated the process. Now it was completely below the surface.

“Doesn’t look like they’ve found the ones who escaped into the water yet,” said Inagaki, casting a meaningful glance at Chiba.

“Not like we don’t know exactly where they’re going…” replied the young man who’d almost gone under along with the ship. His shoulders sagged as he turned his back to the rising sun and gazed westward.

Chief Inspector Chiba was looking in the direction of something not far from the wharf: a shopping district in the prefecture of Yokohama that was famous nationwide. And in the backyard of one eatery, out of view from the main roads, there was a large well.

Beside it stood a young man dressed sharply in a three-piece suit despite the early morning hour. He was in his mid-twenties. A beautiful man—not due to an effeminate appearance, though. Instead, he possessed cool, almost noble features.

The well he stared at was for disaster prevention rather than drinking, and its mouth was blocked with a pump. Without any warning, part of the crib (the cylindrical enclosure of the aboveground part of the well) under the pump crumbled. Someone had punched out a section from the inside. From the resulting hole crawled out a man soaked head to toe in water. Then another, and another. Eventually, a total of sixteen men clambered out of the well.

The final person to exit, a middle-aged man, moved to stand before the fair-faced young man, watching with a reserved smile, and held up his hand in a salute. The younger man placed his right hand on his left breast and bent slightly at the waist in return.

“First, everyone, change into clean clothes and relax,” said the young man to them. “Breakfast has also been served.”

“Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Zhou,” answered the middle-aged man, not sounding very grateful.

The young man maintained his smile in spite of the disrespectful tone and led the pack into the building.

One week had passed since the inauguration of National Magic University Affiliated First High School’s new student council.

The students were taking their lunch break. Tatsuya had come to the school cafeteria with his friends from Class E. The previous administration using the student council room for meals had been Mayumi abusing her authority, in a way. She’d made the council room luncheon meetings customary little by little; Tatsuya hadn’t wished for it. Now that a new council was in office, he had them begin using the cafeteria again.

That automatically meant that Miyuki had started using it, too. Adding their mutual friends to the group, his daily routine had included a lively lunchtime ever since the beginning of October. Still, Tatsuya, Erika, Leo, Mizuki, and Mikihiko were in a different class, separate from Miyuki, Honoka, and Shizuku, so one group always arrived first to save seats for the other. Today, Tatsuya and the rest of the Class E circle were waiting for Miyuki and the rest of their Class A friends.

“I’m sorry for making you wait.”

“All finished?”

They’d waited about ten minutes. Miyuki’s group had contacted Tatsuya ahead of time to let him know they’d be a while, so when Miyuki still came up to him to bow and apologize, he brushed it off with a smile. It was also a signal—making it a big deal would attract too much attention, so she should sit down.

Honoka, though, winced for some reason. “I’m sorry, Tatsuya. It’s my fault we’re late.”

Ever since her confession that summer night they’d spent at the vacation house in Ogasawara, Honoka had a tendency to overreact to his unimportant words and expressions. Even though he realized that, though, pointing it out wouldn’t do anything. If she responded positively, he could just smile—even if it was a forced grin—but when she overreacted in a negative way, he started to feel like he was bullying her, which made him uncomfortable. Unfortunately, there was no silver bullet for this problem. The only thing he could do when she misunderstood something was to clarify himself. It was a passive approach, but it was the only road open to him; he’d given up on trying everything else.

“You don’t need to worry,” he said. “Everything’s confusing at first.”

She’s wincing because she thinks she offended me again, he thought.Do I really seem that intolerant to her? That was an unsatisfying answer, but still, he made sure to sound nonchalant as he soothed her.

“Yeah, nothing to worry about!”

“It’s only been a week, after all.”

Erika and Leo agreed, both showing unexpectedly (?) sincere consideration. After seeing everyone smile or say it didn’t bother them, Honoka finally stopped wincing and quietly sat down.

“Tatsuya, it actually isn’t Honoka’s fault today,” said Miyuki with a smile, backing Honoka up. “The staff room asked us to pull up records from two years ago on short notice. We left third period early, and we’ve been searching the database in the student council room ever since. Even Shizuku helped.”

Still, Honoka was steadily shrinking back in her seat for some reason. “But…Miyuki found it right away, and I didn’t know what I was doing…”

“I’m the one who took forever. If you were a turtle, I was a snail,” admitted Shizuku. She clearly didn’t mean anything cruel by it.

“Miyuki’s been using the system since April,” added Tatsuya in consolation, ignoring the innocent comment comparing Honoka to a turtle. “You just became a member, and Shizuku isn’t even part of it. Miyuki has more experience than you, so it makes sense that you’d be slow at it.”

As one might have gleaned, Honoka had been appointed a member of the new student council at its inauguration. The lineup now was Azusa Nakajou as president, Miyuki Shiba as vice president, Honoka Mitsui as secretary, and Kei Isori as treasurer. (In terms of actual authority, First High’s treasurer was more of an auditor, and it was a tradition to choose a student in the same grade as the president.)

Originally, Azusa had actually recommended Tatsuya for the vice president seat. He’d declined, of course, but someone had opposed the idea even more strongly: Kanon, the new chairwoman of the disciplinary committee. According to her, “without Shiba, we’d get no office work done.”

She’d said that in full view of both Azusa and Tatsuya, too. At the time, he almost couldn’t stop his jaw from dropping. He wasn’t in charge of the committee’s office work—he was part of the team that did the real jobs. In fact, the “real jobs team” was the only team that made up the committee in the first place. They were supposed to be splitting up the office work. It said so right on the control transfer contract Mari had given to Kanon. Tatsuya had typed it up personally and write-protected it, so there could be no doubt.

However, Azusa had readily agreed to Kanon’s insistence, and the two juniors’ “misunderstanding” brought Tatsuya to his wit’s end.

Regardless of his feelings on the matter, and although Azusa agreed, the new president still fought tooth and nail to get Tatsuya in the council. She didn’t say it out loud, but he was pretty sure she didn’t think she could control Miyuki without him there. Then again, she couldn’t leave Miyuki out either.

It had literally given him a migraine.

As a result of the negotiations that he had no say in, it was decided to let Tatsuya remain with the disciplinary committee until the end of the school year, then have him transfer to the student council when the new year started.

They never did ask his opinion on it.

…I’m getting another headache just thinking about it. His own remark of Honoka recently becoming a student council member made him remember those events last week, right down to the head pounding.

Feeling someone’s gaze, he looked over and saw Miyuki watching him, seeming slightly worried. Astonished at how astute his sister was, he silently indicated that nothing was wrong and started moving his chopsticks again.

“Tatsuya, are you there?”

At the sound of his sister’s voice calling him, Tatsuya, who had holed himself up in the archives on the second basement floor of the library after school, pulled out of his world of letters and numerical formulas back into reality.

“I’m over here, Miyuki,” he answered, looking up from his browsing terminal.

There was no wireless inside the archives. The barrier walls here attenuated most electromagnetic waves already, but they were also set up to block communications. These were intentional measures taken to prevent information leaks.

These archives stored documents and materials the school deemed unsuitable for publishing online: highly dangerous documents, depending on the intended use—like essays that departed too far from current mainstream theory and could negatively affect students. Such literature was transported from the National Magic University on physical media and placed in a closed database. As a general rule, the documents were free to use, but nobody was allowed to take them out. And, of course, they were all copy-protected, so nobody could secretly duplicate files to their own information terminal, either.

By nature, classes would almost never refer to anything in them. Using the archives suggested strange tastes—and not too many with strange tastes came here. On most days, a total of zero people used the facility. But for the past couple weeks, Tatsuya had been updating the archives’ consecutive usage logs.

Despite answering Miyuki, he made no move to leave his browsing terminal. Understanding, she walked over to him. “What are you looking at?” she asked as she came, not daring to peer at his display without permission.

“Literature regarding the Emerald Tablet.”

Miyuki’s question was reserved as always, like Tatsuya’s response was crisp as always. Others aside, he didn’t really have anything to hide from his sister. Besides, she was already well aware of his research goal.

“I believe you’ve been researching alchemical literature a lot lately…”

However, he hadn’t explained how his current research was related to that goal. Her confusion was only natural.

“Well, alchemical methodology isn’t what I’m after—I’m looking for properties and the recipe of the philosopher’s stone. Of course, some of the literature explains its very creation as alchemy’s end goal, so…”

“You’re not going to try…transmutation, are you?”

Transmutation—the changing of one substance into another—wasdeemed an impossible task in modern magicology. Flight magic was said to be equally impossible, but transmutation’s level of impossibility was, at least theoretically, on a different level. Miyuki remembered Tatsuya agreeing and saying that the practical possibility of transmutation magic was incredibly low.

“Not that,” denied Tatsuya, sure enough. He smiled. “The philosopher’s stone in its strict sense—in its definition as an elixir of life—is a catalyst used in magic for transforming base metals into precious metals. Since it’s a catalyst, that means the stone itself isn’t an ingredient of the process but rather a tool to activate the technique.”

“If ‘catalyst’ means what we use it to mean…then yes.”

“They say the spell to convert base metals into precious metals works by having the philosopher’s stone act upon the ingredients. If they could use transmutation with only a rock, without any other magical processes, then it follows that the philosopher’s stone has a way to store magic programs.”

“Store magic programs?” repeated Miyuki, her eyes widening in surprise.

Tatsuya looked back at her, no longer smiling. “When I was inventing flight magic, I figured out how to continuously activate gravity-controlling magic while changing the variables a little bit at a time. A lot of magicians tested the flight spell for me before it was officially commercialized, after all.”

In reality, that was why Tatsuya had open-sourced the flight spell’s activation sequence. The method was there, so naturally, they’d want to try it out for real. The fastest means was to have a device with its activation sequence preloaded on it. And as it happened, requests did flood in to FLT to test the flight device—not only from Japan but also from many other friendly nations, not the least of which was the USNA (the United States of North America, a federation created when the former USA absorbed Canada and Mexico). Under the pretense of trial monitoring, FLT had gotten loads of data on gravity-controlling magic from high-ranking magicians. And all of that data had made its way back to Tatsuya.

“I have a rough idea of how to use gravity-controlling magic to maintain nuclear fusion now. But if a magician has to always be there to cast the spell over and over again, there’s no point. The magician would just be a part of the reactor. It would simply change their job fromweapon tocomponent.”

The implementation of a thermonuclear fusion reactor using a terminate and stay resident gravity-controlling spell was one of the Three Great Practical Problems of Weighting Magic—and Tatsuya had just said that he had a rough idea of how to solve it. Even Miyuki had a hard time understanding everything Tatsuya talked about, but she perfectly understood what he wanted to say.

“Magicians need to be indispensable in its operation, but the system can’t confine them. Which means I either have to stretch out the duration of the spell’s persistence by a factor of days, or devise a method to temporarily store a magic program so that the magician doesn’t have to be present to activate it… I’m feeling around for both, but in terms of safety, the second method would be better.”

“And that’s why you’re researching the philosopher’s stone.”

Thinking normally, Tatsuya was speaking of pipe dreams; he knew that. So, when his sister nodded deeply, not doubting him in the slightest, he felt a little awkward. He abruptly changed the subject. “By the way, Miyuki, did you need something?”

The question was to cover his embarrassment, but in the end, it turned into some first-rate team play (more accurately, a nice backup).

“Oh, right! Ichihara was looking for you, Tatsuya. She says she has something to talk to you about regarding next month’s Thesis Competition.”

“Where is she?” That was all he needed to hear before closing his browsing terminal. He didn’t berate his sister for not telling him earlier; Tatsuya had been the one making small talk, so part of the blame lay with him. No amount of blame would turn back time anyway.

“The magic geometry preparation room. She says she’ll be waiting at Mr. Tsuzura’s desk.”

“All right, thanks. Could you return the archive key, Miyuki?”

“Yes, of course.”

He stood up from his chair and handed a keycard to Miyuki. She took it from her brother’s hands happily, like a puppy who was pleased someone was paying attention to her. Maybe he hadn’t complained or scolded her, sure. But he still had to grin at his sister’s utter lack of reservation—and objectively admit to himself that he was too soft on her.

Kazuo Tsuzura. In charge of online magic geometry classes and live instruction for Class 2-B at First Magic High School. For his main occupation, he was as a lecturer at the National Magic University, and his new appointment to First High was a temporary transfer of enrollment.

Though a young and unusually bright man who had made off with an associate professor position at Magic University, he took a very free attitude toward his research, and that had been his downfall. They’d forced him to stop by essentially telling him to come back when he had gained more experience as an educator.

But the man in question didn’t mind his “demotion” one bit. In fact, he seemed happy; he could now do whatever research he liked without worry. He was a teacher of some renown, taking everything at his own pace, and was wholly indifferent to the struggle of Course 1 and Course 2 students. He’d take anyone who showed promise under his wing—albeit without considering the student’s preferred pace.

He came from a main family in the Hundred Families, one of the Numbers, the first character of his surname meaning “twenty.” Like Isori, he came from a long line of scientists and researchers, and was a leading national authority on the interactions of event alterations from multiple spells. The combination spells Hattori prided himself on had bloomed thanks to Tsuzura’s instruction.

…That was the mental profile Tatsuya had of Mr. Tsuzura. As far as Tatsuya could judge from the data he had, he was unmistakably a weirdo. This was no mistake, either—and soon, he would get a firsthand glimpse of it.

When Tatsuya arrived, Tsuzura was the only teacher in the magic geometry prep room.

He probably makes them feel uncomfortable, Tatsuya thought. Every teacher selected for this school had superior talents. Most of them, of course, had some amount of pride in their own abilities. But compared to the genius who had obtained an associate professor position at the National Magic University in his twenties, they couldn’t help but lose confidence. The more someone relied on their own gifts, the more stress it tended to create when they encountered someone with even greater gifts. Tatsuya had experienced that before as well—though in abilities outside of magic.

Setting aside whether Tatsuya’s speculation was correct, the objective truth was that no other teachers were present in the room other than Tsuzura. Yet three people in total were waiting for him here: Tsuzura, Suzune, and Isori.

“You’re aware of the Magic Association–sponsored Thesis Competition at the end of the month, right?” After exchanging brief greetings, Tsuzura opened with this question.

“Yes, but I don’t know much about it,” confirmed Tatsuya with reserve.

The man nodded once. “The Thesis Competition is boring, unlike the Nines, so it would make sense a freshman like you wouldn’t know much about it. Even the number of people is different—compared to the Nine School Competition, with its big team of fifty-two people, the Thesis Competition only has three.”

He couldn’t help but be surprised at the teacher bluntly contrasting the numbers in front of others, but thinking about it calmly, writing a paper and presenting it didn’t need much manpower. If they needed people to make little tools for the presentation, they could just round up some helpers from the school. They didn’t need anyone else involved in writing the thesis itself. Too many chefs would spoil the stew. Three out of the whole school was fewer than Tatsuya had expected, but he decided it was appropriate.

“Allow me to get to the point. Shiba, would you like to participate in the Thesis Competition as part of First High’s team?”

Tatsuya couldn’t immediately react to that, which was to be expected; Tsuzura had given him almost no preface to soften the blow.

“…Me, sir?”

Tsuzura’s question was crystal clear, but Tatsuya couldn’t help but echo him.

The Magic Association of Japan–sponsored All-High Magic Thesis Competition. It was called “All-High,” but the only high schools that taught magic theory as part of their official curriculum were the nine affiliated with the National Magic University. In essence, the Thesis Competition was a stage on which those nine schools would compete. If the Nine School Competition was a matching of athletic abilities, then the Thesis Competition was the other half—a combat of scholastic abilities.

“Yes, you.” Tsuzura’s somewhat affected polite tone was probably part of his personality. He nodded theatrically. “Originally, we planned to have Ichihara, Isori, and Hirakawa from Class 3-C take part…but Hirakawa has recently fallen ill, and last week she suddenly notified us that she intended to drop out of school. We managed to convince her not to, but she’s in no condition to participate in the competition. And so, from all the people available, we decided on you.”

Hirakawa from 3-C—Tatsuya remembered that name. If he recalled correctly, the engineer for Kobayakawa, who had fallen victim to sabotage during a Mirage Bat match during the Nine School Competition, was a female senior named Koharu Hirakawa.

“But why choose a freshman, sir? Doesn’t the school have a screening meeting to select participants?” Tatsuya had finally remembered the application form for the Thesis Competition that had gone out over the school network at the beginning of June. At the time, he’d been in the final stages of developing the flight spell, so he had no time for anything else. And, in any case, he didn’t want to stand out given his current position. He’d ignored the application straightaway and forgotten about it.

“Preparing for the presentation is group work, so you’re a good fit for the job. Please ask Ichihara for the details,” answered Tsuzura presumptuously before hurrying out of the room.

But Tatsuya hadn’t said anything about accepting. The rumors about Tsuzura not taking a student’s individual pace into consideration appeared to be far from exaggerated.

Whatever the case, Tatsuya didn’t seem to have the option to refuse. Before hearing any of this, he figured the competition team simply wanted some help getting data for an experiment at most, but it seemed he had been a bit optimistic. Nevertheless, muttering to himself about it wouldn’t help the situation at all, so he turned back to Suzune for an explanation.

“I was the one who recommended you. I had the other substitutes decline,” said Suzune, suddenly dropping a bomb on his unstated question.

You…made them decline? he thought. “…I believe all the applicants have been toiling away, devoting no small amount of time in order to participate in the competition. I haven’t even submitted an essay for selection yet. I’d think a lot of people would be unhappy with my sudden appointment.” He knew he already stood out in a bad way; he really didn’t want any more of this whole business ofbeing forced to sow discord. “For example, how does the fourth person, after you, Isori, and Hirakawa, feel about this?”

“Sekimoto is no good. He isn’t cut out for this work.”

Tatsuya hadn’t been giving thought to any specific person, but Suzune wasted no time saying something that almost amounted to a personal attack. He decided it would actually evolve into defamation if he ignored it, so he asked, “By Sekimoto, do you mean Isao Sekimoto—the one on the disciplinary committee?”

“Well, yes…” said Suzune—even she decided it wasn’t good to state so bluntly, and she softened her tone at Tatsuya’s prompting. “He and I have very different goals.”

Isori continued for her: “Like Mr. Tsuzura said, three people work together on the thesis and the presentation. But if all three contribute ideas to the thesis, it won’t be coherent. That means you have to get one main writer and two helpers, and they divide the labor. Ichihara is the main writer for our school this year.”

Tatsuya nodded; Isori’s explanation made sense in a couple of ways. They did need to divide the labor—and he understood why Suzune, with the best theory grades in the senior class, was the main.

“In other words…I suit the theme of Ichihara’s thesis?” That’s where the conversation was headed, but how did they come to that decision? Tatsuya had never presented a paper—under his own name, anyway.

“My thesis is titled ‘The Technical Possibility of Gravitational Magic Program–Loaded Thermonuclear Fusion Reactors.’”

Suzune’s indirect answer to his question made his eyebrows raise a little.

“Yes—my research theme is the same as yours.”

The termresearch theme might have sounded like an exaggeration when applied to high school students, but she was right. One of Tatsuya’s goals was aresident gravitational magic program–loaded thermonuclear reactor. But he’d barely ever talked about it—it was mostly all still in his head…

“…I see,” he said. “You were the one monitoring us back then, weren’t you?”

“‘Monitor’ has such a negative connotation. Please take it as ‘watching in interest.’”

Not just watched—she’d probably eavesdropped, too. But he didn’t say that. Back in April, in the middle of the situation with the anti-magic terrorist intervention, when he’d met up with Sayaka Mibu for the second time in the cafeteria, he’d felt someone’s eyes on him but hadn’t tried to figure them out. As a result, he’d tacitly consented. He had no place to complain at this point.

“There are only three weeks until the competition. We decided that the only one we could add to our team this late was someone involved with the same research theme as us.”

“You…didn’t think I was just making things up when I talked to Mibu?”

“I try to have a sharper eye for character than that.”

She thinks pretty highly of me, he thought, giving a painful grin not only on the inside but on the outside as well. “All right. This isn’t without its merits for me, so I’ll assist you.”

That wasn’t just lip service—it really did have merits for him. He had a pure academic interest in how Suzune was trying to solve one of the Three Great Problems anyway. If he could use this as part of his own plan, then he would.

“What should I do, exactly?”

“First, I’d like to explain the Thesis Competition in broad detail. Isori, do you mind? I know none of this bears repeating for you.”

“I don’t mind. Go ahead, Ichihara,” said Isori, bowing a little.

Suzune nodded back, then took three portable blackboards off a shelf rack on the wall and handed one to each of them. Portable blackboards were a form of electronic paper with wireless data-transmission capabilities. Thin boards, the size of large report paper, made so conference attendees could hold them in one hand and read a document during smaller meetings that didn’t need big screens. They were full-color, of course, but text-only was generally shown in white, high-contrast characters on a black background; their color scheme was what had spawned the “blackboard” nickname.

Suzune set her information terminal on the portable blackboard’s holder and called up the Thesis Competition handbook. “As I’m sure you know, the Thesis Competition is where high school students go to present research findings in magic science and magic engineering. Rather than simply presenting the fruits of their learning, it gives students with no chances to present at academic conferences an opportunity to show their own research to the world. Not only are the team members frequently scouted by magic research groups, but also some papers even get recorded directly to the Index and go on to be used in universities and businesses.”

Tatsuya looked at the guide displayed in his hands as he listened to Suzune.

“The competition always takes place on the last Sunday of October. Its location alternates between Kyoto and Yokohama. Apparently, this is because the Magic Association of Japan’s headquarters is located in Kyoto, and their eastern branch, sort of a sub-headquarters, is in Yokohama. This year, the competition will take place at the Yokohama International Assembly Hall.”

Tatsuya flipped through his mental calendar. Thankfully, he didn’t have any plans for the last Sunday in October, the thirtieth.

“Participation eligibility permits those with recommendations from National Magic University–affiliated high schools as well as high school student groups that pass a preliminary essay selection. However, there have never been presenters without a recommendation. The rules say it’s open to anyone, which is why it’s called the ‘All-High Magic Thesis Competition’ but is nicknamed the ‘Magic High Thesis Competition.’”

She was in the middle of her explanation, but Tatsuya found himself overcome with surprise and unable to stop himself from getting aword in. “There haven’t been any groups without the recommendation?”

“…Shiba, for a normal high school student, writing a thesis and a presentation that goes a full thirty minutes is a lot harder than playing Monolith or Mirage.”

“Isori is right. Even for us, under normal circumstances three people would never be finished preparing without the help of the student council and club committee.”

Tatsuya was used to writing system specification documents, so he wondered about that claim, but kept his mouth shut.

“As a general rule, the theme can be whatever you want, with the obvious condition of staying within public morals. Two years ago, a student’s theme was developing spells to replace weapons of mass destruction, but they sent him home in the advance screening.”

“Sounds like one heck of a person…” groaned Isori next to him, eyes widening, evidently not having heard this before.

I know how he feels, thought Tatsuya. At the same time, he probably didn’t have any room to be criticizing that student given how he’dactually developed spells of mass destruction. But then, the self-deprecation in his thoughts brought a question to mind: “…Sent home in the advance screening? That means his thesis wasn’t publicized, right? If it was never publicized, how do you know about it, Ichihara?”

He asked it casually, but a somewhat awkward silence followed. Suzune made a sour face, like she’d accidentally swallowed a bug. Tatsuya was about to tell her she didn’t have to answer if she didn’t want to, but she sighed and spoke.

“…The thesis’s author was the student president of our school three years ago.”

…So even our school has crazies like that, thought Tatsuya, more impressed than disgusted by her admission. The Thesis Competition happened after the student council changed, and Suzune had been a member since the second half of her freshman year, so it wasn’t strange that she knew about the incident. And by the look on her face, there were plenty more tales of that past president’s deeds.

She cleared her throat. “There is precedent for it, so any presenters have to submit their final thesis drafts and presentation equipment—including spells—to the Magic Association beforehand.”

Isori nodded in agreement—probably because it was the first time he’d heard of the episode.

“The deadline is next Sunday. We’ll be sending it to the Magic Association’s Kanto branch, but we do it through the school. But given the time Mr. Tsuzura will need to check over things, we really only have until next Wednesday to finish.”

Even if they could do more work on the presentation after submitting everything, Tatsuya calculated that they didn’t even have ten days left before the thesis needed to be done.That’s pretty tight, he thought.But why have Tsuzura look it over? There are more-veteran teachers here that have worked on whole textbooks for magic education. He couldn’t voice his doubts out loud (since doing so would have been rude to Tsuzura), so he kept them to himself.

Isori, though, keenly picked up on Tatsuya’s misgivings and addressed them anyway. “Mr. Tsuzura is the one in charge of the selection process this year. There’s a lot to do—not only do you have to support the preparations for the competition when it’s outside your field of expertise, but you also have to set up all the magic experiments. It seems like they usually give the job to younger teachers.”

“He may be young, but Mr. Tsuzura is very capable. He’s taught us on a much deeper level than normal classes, so we should consider ourselves lucky.”

Especially for Course 2 students without the right to receive personalized instruction from a teacher—but Tatsuya didn’t say that.

They didn’t seem to notice it, either—that half the entire student body was composed of students who wouldn’t receive normal instruction, much less be taught “on a deeper level”—but he felt no reason to make them aware of it.

After that, Suzune listed off a few minor points and her explanation was finished.

Modern short-range public transportation was based on the idea of carpooling, having shifted from mass transport mechanisms to smaller numbers. This change had started thirty years ago and was nearly complete in metropolitan areas, having already spread to 80 percent of provincial towns and cities. In the remaining 20 percent of locations, no public transportation existed in the first place—people had their own cars.

When it came to short-distance commutes to work or school, devices to ferry many people at once, like linked trains and big buses, were now almost completely unused. It had been a long time since the days of middle and high school students using the same trains or buses to go to and from school together.

In almost all cases, Tatsuya went straight from school to the station, but occasionally he stopped by a café or a fast food place on the way. The road from the school to the station was about half a mile long, but the short route hosted many closely packed commercial establishments meant for students. There were not only eateries but also a myriad of bookstores, stationery stores, and clothing shops. Magic education–related goods were particularly abundant; the stores were patronized not just by First High students and faculty but also by a significant number of people on vacation.

The group of eight had just settled down at one particular café with a relatively orthodox appearance, one that they frequented enough to have started being treated as regulars there.

“What? Tatsuya, they picked you for the Thesis Competition?”

The group’s detour today had come about when Mikihiko had asked why Tatsuya had been called to the geometry laboratory. And, unable to wait for their food orders to arrive for the reveal, Mikihiko had asked again. Feeling that the hastiness was a side of his friend he hadn’t seen before, Tatsuya had gone ahead and explained the scene from earlier.

And that had been Mikihiko’s reaction.

Tatsuya had already mentioned it to Miyuki and Honoka before, when he went to get them from the student council room, but the other five, including Mikihiko, widened their eyes in perfect circles of surprise.

“But don’t they only pick three people from the whole school for the Thesis Competition?”

“I guess so,” answered Tatsuya lightly to Mizuki’s question. Their expressions were polar opposites.

“You guess…? You don’t feel anything, Tatsuya?”

Mizuki was dumbfounded, and Erika looked a little amazed as she made her own comment.

Next to them, Leo grinned in amusement. “Guess this much is only natural when it comes to Tatsuya, huh?”

“Almost no freshmen have ever gotten into the Thesis Competition,” Shizuku objected.

“But a fewhave, right? The faculty can’t just ignore a genius who can add new spells to the Index.” Leo, still smiling, objected right back.

“Don’t call me a genius,” warned Tatsuya, seeming genuinely bothered by it, not just embarrassed.

“You really don’t like being called a genius, do you…?” asked Honoka, mystified, neither sarcastically nor meanly.

“The word is too convenient,” answered not Tatsuya but Miyuki. Her brother just gave a pained smile at her response; he didn’t say she was wrong.

“But it’s still amazing!” insisted Mikihiko, blowing away the dark clouds that had begun to drift in, maybe worried about the dangerous mood. “Supernature picks up the winning thesis every year, and even the rest of the papers get into academic magazines all the time.”

Supernature was the name of a scientific journal in England known as the highest authority on modern magic topics. On the other hand, it tended to be authoritarian, not too friendly for high school students to read. But Mikihiko was not the only one who read it; Tatsuya, Miyuki, and Shizuku, and the other members in the group did, too, and they knew its name and status well.

“Oh, but… There’s not much time left, is there?” asked Mikihiko, now worried, a complete change from his excitement.

Tatsuya started to get suspicious at how extreme his ups and downs were today—maybe something happened with him, too. He didn’t let the suspicion show, though, and nodded. “Nine full days before we have to submit it to the school.”

“What?! But that’s right around the corner!”

“It’ll be fine. I’m just a sub, and they’ve been writing the paper since before summer break.”

Tatsuya smiled and waved his hand to soothe Honoka, who had gone a little pale in the face. The gesture made everyone thinkOh, right and breathe a sigh of relief.

“Still, this was very sudden,” remarked Miyuki, frowning. “Was there some sort of trouble?”

“Apparently, the older sub fell ill,” answered Tatsuya simply, still offering a smile. He hadn’t explained this before, but he didn’t need to hide it, either.

However, his simple answer wasn’t enough to fully satisfy his sister. “That is quite unfortunate, but it still seems too hasty.” The circumstances seemed convincing enough for her mind but not her heart. “I’m sure they chose you because you’re right for the job, since you could handle being made part of the thesis team right away, but…”

But Tatsuya’s substitution was already set in stone—and it was very much like Miyuki to think of a logical reason like that to convince herself otherwise. This time, it wasn’t necessarily an overestimation of him, but he thought agreeing unconditionally would seem too narcissistic. “That’s not it. If Ichihara’s research theme was something I didn’t know anything about, even I would have turned her down.”

Tatsuya decided to deal with it using his “smile and partially disagree” method. That wasn’t to say Miyuki was perfectly happy with this attitude, but while she was searching for words, someone else tossed a new question at him:

“Huh. What’s the paper about?” asked Leo, leaning forward with curiosity.

One girl did give Leo a cold look, clearly wondering if he’d even understand if Tatsuya told him, but both the questioner and respondent ignored her completely.

“The technical problems of thermonuclear fusion reactors run by gravity-based magic programs and ways to overcome them.”

“…I have no idea what that means.”

Of course, the questioner could only partially reply to such an intense, straight-man response.

“…That’s a pretty wild theme,” groaned Mikihiko, face sullen. “Isn’t that one of the Three Great Practical Problems of Weighting Magic?”

“Since they chose you, I thought for sure it would be a thesis on CAD programming,” said Mizuki, expressing surprise.

“Oh, me too!”

“Kei is one of the members, too… With that theme, I think the team would be amazing enough to win the whole competition for sure.”

Shizuku and Erika seemed to agree with Mizuki. His friends probably thought this theme was too much for Tatsuya—and for high school students in general.

Well, that was only natural. Implementation of a gravitational thermonuclear fusion reactor wasn’t one of the Three Great Problems for nothing. Tatsuya decided to smile along with them and worm out of the conversation.

It was only Miyuki who failed to partake in the calm smiles. She created one on her face, but it didn’t reach her eyes. She knew what research on aresident gravitational thermonuclear fusion reactor could mean—and she knew that her brother was most serious of all about it.

After splitting up with their friends at the station and returning home, the siblings found a city commuter in their parking place. They exchanged glances.

Tatsuya went up to the front door first and opened it.

Upon seeing the plain, unfamiliar pumps at the entrance, Miyuki stopped in her tracks, grimacing and sucking in her breath. Tatsuya gently put his arm around her shoulders. He stepped up onto the wooden edge of the entranceway with her, and then heard the pattering of slippers as somebody approached at a jog.

“…Welcome home. Friendly as usual, I see.” The words came at them, tinged with a teasing note.

Tatsuya immediately narrowed his eyes and slightly tightened his grip on his sister’s shoulders as she gave a start. “It’s been a long time since you came home, Ms. Sayuri,” he answered, his voice cold to match his gaze.

This time, the petite woman greeting them was the one to react. “Y-yes, well, it’s rather convenient to be closer to the office.”

“I get it,” Tatsuya said curtly to their stepmother (though the siblings simply thought of her as their father’s second wife—who hadn’t come back to the house in nine months).

Despite her homecoming, she had neither a room nor place to sleep here. After marrying Tatsuya’s father, they had been enjoying a married life as a couple on their own near the top of a high-rise apartment building that was a five-minute walk from Four Leaves Technology’s main office. She’d never stayed here since the union, and yet she still lived here according to the resident registration—so Tatsuya’s words had been pure sarcasm.

Seeing their father’s second wife losing her cool from such a trivial jab actually made Miyuki settle down and regain her calm. Tatsuya’s arm still around her, she turned and brought her face closer to her brother so she could snuggle up against him. The act was performed in complete disregard of others watching. Normally, even when they were by themselves, she never did anything this assertive—or immodest. She was purposely acting as though nobody was looking.

“I will prepare dinner immediately. Is there anything you would like to have, Brother?”

“I’d eat anything you make. There’s no rush, so go get changed.”

When her brother looked only at her to answer, without sparing so much as a glance to Sayuri, Miyuki giggled a little, superiority achieved. “I will. Please do tell me if you have any requests on what I should change into. I would wear any outfit if you wished it, Brother.”

“All right, don’t get carried away.”

He pretended to poke her, and Miyuki drew her head back and danced up the stairs to the second floor.

“Well then,” said Tatsuya to Sayuri—who was idly standing nearby—after Miyuki went out of sight, “let’s hear what you have to say.”

The unreserved manner of speaking made her frown a bit in displeasure, but nevertheless, she sat down across from Tatsuya in the seat he offered. “I feel bad for hurrying you, but I would like to finish while your sister is absent,” she said. “It seems both of you still don’t like me much.”

She must have felt it was pointless to keep up appearances; as soon as she sat down, her attitude became franker. Not caring that he was looking, she leaned back on the sofa and crossed her legs. She had the spirit of a scientist, wearing no ornaments or makeup and only a pantsuit, so he had no issues with where to look—of course, she could have been wearing a tight miniskirt and he wouldn’t have batted an eyelash.

“Miyuki doesn’t seem to. Her father remarrying within half a year of her mother dying would leave a bad taste in anyone’s mouth. She may look mature, but she’s still only fifteen.”

“…And what about you?”

“Such emotions mean nothing to me. That’s how I’m put together.”

“…Well, fine. Whether you mean that or not, I can’t do anything about it. But if you’re going to go that far, I’d like it if you heardme out. It may have been half a year for the two of you, but it was sixteen for me.”

Oh, right. She dresses to make herself look young, but she’s the same age as our father, thought Tatsuya, an idea sure to make an enemy out of all the women in the world.

Sayuri Shiba, formerly Sayuri Koba, had been in a romantic relationship with Tatsurou Shiba before he had married Miya Yotsuba. However, the obstinacy of the Yotsuba in their pursuit of high-quality genes had forced the initial two to separate. Tatsuya was aware of that, so he could somewhat understand wanting to complain.

But that was purely a problem between his father, his mother, and her—it was no business of the siblings. Considering their mother knew about their relationship during her lifetime, there was even less room for sympathy.

“In any case, what have you come all this way for today?”

Sayuri had unconsciously tried to postpone the subject; she caught her breath at the question but then managed to begin speaking naturally again. “…I’ll give it to you straight. I want you to help at the labs at the office again. And leave high school, if possible.”

“It’s not. If I’m not a student at First High while Miyuki attends, I won’t be able to fulfill my duty as her Guardian.”

An unreserved refusal to an unreserved demand.

“Even if you didn’t continue with school, another Guardian would surely be assigned to her.”

“Magicians are in short supply everywhere you look. Even the Yotsuba wouldn’t be able to find a replacement Guardian so easily.”

“You’re saying there are no escorts as talented as you.”

“When it comes to Miyuki in particular, that’s correct.”

This exchange was one they’d had over and over in the past.

Sayuri exhaled, giving a heavy sigh—one that didn’t look entirely fake. “The company isn’t flexible enough to let such talented staff goof off, you know.”

“It was never my intention to goof off. I’ve already contributed massively to the company’s profits this term. You’ve been flooded with flight device orders from the USNA Marine Corps, haven’t you? Those alone should increase profits over last term by twenty percent.”

Sayuri frowned in frustration. There was no room for objection.

Originally, FLT was known as a manufacturer of magical engineering–related tools and items, not of completed CADs. It had, without a doubt, been the success of the Silver model that caused the company to rise to fame as a CAD maker—in other words, Tatsuya’s merits. The recent flight device in particular was a groundbreaking product that some analysts predicted would launch FLT as the number one manufacturer of specialized CADs in the world.

These achievements must have made Sayuri jealous—she’d first joined the company as a researcher, then was reassigned to the management division after not producing many conspicuous results.

But even without those personal feelings, she had a reason she couldn’t say, “Okay, I see” and leave. “…Then could I at least get you to help analyze this sample?” she said, removing a large jewel box from her purse and opening it very carefully.

Inside was a single translucent orb with a reddish tinge.

“…That’s a Relic of the Ni no Magatama family.”

Among those pursuing magical research, a “Relic” referred to an “OOPart” with magical properties. Materials that couldn’t be judged manmade but that also were clearly not naturally formed were called Relics. For example, antinite, which caused Cast Jamming, was classified as a Relic.

Furthermore, true Relics—the Yasakani no Magatama, to name one—would never fall into the hands of scientists.

“Where did they excavate this?”

“I don’t know.”

“I see. A matter of national defense, then.” As a non-foreign manufacturer with top-class tech, FLT was often entrusted with military-related tasks. “You said ‘analyze’—I’m not undertaking the task ofduplicating a Ni no Magatama, I’m sure?”

Sayuri’s expression stiffened.

Tatsuya heaved a sigh. “How could you be so impulsive? These things are too hard for modern technology to artificially synthesize. That’s why they’re called Relics.”

OOPart was an abbreviation for “out-of-place artifact.” In other words, they were objects created in such a way that they surpassed the technical standards ofthe age from which they were excavated. It didn’t mean modern technology couldn’t reproduce them. A Relic, though,was too difficult for modern tech to reproduce, which is why it possessed the grandiose name in the first place.

“This job came as a firm request from the National Defense Force. We can’t refuse it.”

He could somewhat understand the management decision. It wasn’t just FLT—any businesses involved in magic essentially operated as usual until the government demanded otherwise. In other words, the magic industrywas the defense industry.

The only ones who purchased magic engineering products, including CADs, were magicians, who could use magic at a practical level. The market for them was incredibly tiny compared to other industrial goods.

Given the rarity of magicians, the small size made sense. Experts said that, in Japan right now, the total number of magicians who were in magic-related professions or magical study came out to be about thirty thousand. Even if all of them bought a new CAD every year, the domestic CAD marketplace would only contain thirty thousand of them during the year. While some actually went longer before buying a replacement, plenty of magicians owned up to five or six. However, that didn’t change the fact that the market was just too small.

Plus, because national policies promoted magic, magic-support devices needed to be made available cheaply. The retail price of CADs was kept low enough so that an average household’s income could support buying their child one as a gift upon entering high school.

This scale and structure certainly wasn’t an industry that could survive independently. Therefore, nations took expert assistance measures when it came to the magic industries. For example, Japan subsidized 90 percent of a CAD’s purchase cost. Their storefront prices were a tenth of the business’s calculated unit price. Japan also gave very generous grants to businesses’ research funds under the pretense of contract research. Even the tallest giants in the industry, like Maximillian and Rosen, couldn’t defy their respective governments. This was a fate shared by all players in the magic industry.

“But even the National Defense Force should know the reason behind the nickname Relic. They’d understand that if something was classified as one, it would be impossible to artificially synthesize. Why are they making such an unreasonable demand?”

Sayuri needed more than a short pause before composing an answer. “The Ni no Magatama seems to be able to store magic programs.”

But her answer, spoken with hesitation, had enough power behind it to break through Tatsuya’s careful expression. “Has that been proven?” he asked, only managing to make himself sound dubious through full mobilization of every ounce of acting skill he had.

But it worked, and Sayuri failed to notice how interested he now was. “It’s still supposition, but we have enough in the way of observational data for the military to act on.”

Tatsuya pretended to nod gravely. “If itis true, they wouldn’t be able to ignore it. I can understand that.”

Tatsuya’s goals weren’t only the ones involving the ability to store magic programs. If someone were to implement and popularize a system to store them, semi-perpetual magic devices would no longer be a dream. Forces with no magicians could be equipped with magical weaponry. If the Ni no Magatama had the ability to store magic programs, and if it could be reproduced in large quantities, the military would see a proliferation of magical weaponry.

But at the same time, it was important to the point that they couldn’t just accept the request and then come back with failure.

“Considering FLT’s current achievements, I wouldn’t think this is worth taking such a risk for,” Tatsuya said.

“The dice have already been cast.”

“Without any chance of victory?”

Considering their utter lack of know-how in reproducing Relics, the risks were too large.

Of course, Sayuri understood that all too well. “There is a chance. Your magic. With it, we can analyze it.”

Now that she’d made her intentions clear, Tatsuya chuckled. They didn’t need his intellect—they were after his unusual ability.

Just like they always were.

“Nothing is saying even my magic could duplicate it…but if you absolutely must insist, then please send the sample to R & D Section 3. I show up there frequently.”

And Tatsuya didn’t particularly mind it. He, too, was desperate for any clues regarding the storage of magic programs. But since his goal was that function, duplicating the physical Ni no Magatama was of secondary importance compared to the magic storage ability itself. Because of that, he wanted to avoid being manipulated by lab workers at the main office. Besides, the schedules for the main office’s laboratories tended to be packed, so it’d be inconvenient one way or another.

“…”

But the proposition wasn’t one Sayuri could accept. In her position, she needed to take FLT’s power politics into account. She couldn’t let R & D Section 3 have all the glory. Besides, as a more serious and more ridiculous reason, neither she nor her husband could let Taurus Silver—Tatsuya—have any more of an influential voice than he already had. Their main office’s labs could start with Tatsuya in its deliverance of results, but he had many sympathizers in Section 3—pretty much all of them were aligned with him, in fact—so even the other researchers’ achievements could end up being attributed to him (or so Sayuri suspected).

With no way to agree to Tatsuya’s requests, Sayuri bit down and made a sour face, as expected.

“Or shall I hold on to it for you?”

Tatsuya meant the suggestion as a way to help Sayuri, who was paralyzed by conflict. And it was, in fact, the deciding factor in her breaking free of the standstill.

“Fine, then!”

Unfortunately, though, it didn’t cause agreement but a breakdown in negotiations. Sayuri desperately wanted the main office—herself included—to be the one to achieve the Relic duplication. For her, Tatsuya mentioning that he’d hold on to the sample—in other words, do the research on its duplication personally—was preposterous. Of course, she’d come to him with an absurd proposal in the first place. Nobody had ever done this before. Right now, though, she lacked the composure to notice.

She stood up, her temper lost. “Yes, I see! It was a mistake to count on you for help!” She shoved the jewel case into her purse, quickly turned around, and rapidly headed down the hallway. Tatsuya followed at a steady distance, speaking to her in a businesslike tone as she put on her shoes at the entrance.

“You’re in possession of valuables. Shall I escort you to the station?”

“I will be quite fine by myself. I’m going home by commuter anyway!”

“I see. Please be careful.” Tatsuya bowed to her courteously, without showing any sign of offense at his stepmother’s stinging response.

“Miyuki?”

At Tatsuya’s call from the front door, Miyuki, who had changed into a one-piece camisole, timidly came down the stairs. Near her exposed arms, up her shoulders, and along the nape of her neck, was a tinge of crimson. Not, of course, from makeup, but clearly from shame at her previous behavior.

“Tatsuya, I…I’m sorry for doing something so childish.”

She was using the wordchildish, but her attitude made it seem like she meantdisgraceful. And yet, while clearly aware of that, Miyuki was still showing her skin like this. It seemed she was still subconsciously being influenced by her previous suggestiveness.

As she kept her eyes averted from him, Tatsuya stroked her cheek, then slid his fingers toward her chin. Then he used his index finger to tilt her jaw up.

Miyuki’s almost bewitchingly fair skin reddened from her chest to her shoulders. Under her smooth, silky hair appeared a young and lively beauty, scarlet at the eyes.

“U-um…”

Though having taken up a posture of embarrassment at the act—it seemed like he was going to kiss her—she didn’t take her gaze from his.

The fingers on her chin crawled back up her cheek. Miyuki absently closed her eyes, and…

“Nya?!”

…gave a short, muffled yelp.

“Wh-what are you doing?!”

“Scolding you,” said Tatsuya, grinning at his younger sister, who stepped back and glared at him, face red. (It was a natural reaction, considering he’d suddenly grabbed her nose.)

“I swear…you’re quite mean,” she pouted, turning a cheek to him.

After chuckling for a moment, Tatsuya’s face fell back into seriousness. “I’m going out for a bit. You make sure to lock up here.”

“Tatsuya?” said Miyuki, wanting an explanation, her own face drawing back in surprise at the out-of-the-ordinary command to stay at home.

“I need to go back up a woman who doesn’t have much of a danger sense.”

Tatsuya took off his uniform blazer and gave it to Miyuki as she scowled with displeasure. “…How much will they force on you until they’re satisfied?”

“Unfortunately, I can’t pretend I didn’t see this. Ms. Sayuri has a sample that could give a hint as to how to store magic programs,” he explained, elucidating the real reason behind his “backup” as he took off his necktie and handed it to Miyuki.

That seemed to make sense to her, but then her frown deepened. “If that is the situation, then I suppose you must. Please be careful.”

The conversation they’d had in the archives after school was fresh in her mind, too. She couldn’t hinder her brother’s goal out of hatred for their father’s lover. Without telling him not to go or saying it was unnecessary, Miyuki took Tatsuya’s blouson from the coatrack.

She put it on him, then Tatsuya removed gloves and a helmet from a storage box by the front door and put motorcycle boots on his feet. Then he gave a collected, polite bow to Miyuki seeing him off and said, “I’ll be right back.”

As she sat inside the self-driving commuter, Sayuri felt like Earth’s gravity had doubled.

To put it in clear words, what she felt was regret—she’d screwed up.

She thought she’d gotten accustomed to the negotiations that came with her move to the management division, but it hadn’t taken her very long to lose her temper. She was ashamed of herself and couldn’t help but feel depressed.

It was always hard for her to keep calm when talking to that boy. Her stepson.

And she knew why.

The fact that he was the son of her rival in love. His talent and achievements as a technical expert. That uncanny gaze, revealing no emotion. When he looked at her, she didn’t feel human; she started to feel like a target of observation, a mere object.

But what she did not yet understand was that this feeling was a reflection of people treating him like a tool to be used.

What she did know, however, was that she had to get him to cooperate by any means in order for this project to work. Now, because of her short temper, it had gotten a lot more difficult.

As she stared out the window, she heaved a sigh. Suddenly, she perked up, noticing the strange lack of traffic on the roads. Then she realized she hadn’t passed by any cars going in the other direction for a while now. This was a residential area, but it wasn’t that late yet.

The irritation in her mind changed to unease. She called up traffic information from the commuter panel. The traffic control center had been reporting that cars destined for the station were being routed through a detour to avoid an accident in the area.

In any case, now that there was a reasonable explanation, Sayuri sighed in relief.

As he followed Sayuri’s commuter car on his electric bike, Tatsuya also felt the traffic was too sparse. Voice information coming from his helmet’s receiver was telling him the same things as her commuter panel.

But he found no part of that to be a relief. He didn’t doubt the information itself saying the road was closed due to an accident. He’d watched Sanada and Fujibayashi team up to try to hack into the traffic control system once, so he knew how difficult it was to get into. Still, he wasn’t optimistic enough to believe there were enough simultaneous accidents jamming the roads to block off every single car on all the roads from his house to the station.

It wouldn’t be that hard to locate cars run by the traffic system.Commuters in particular, being part of the regional community-sharedtraffic body, always transmitted identification signals to prevent car thefts via hacking. The signals themselves weren’t kept especially secret. He’d been tracing Sayuri’s commuter from the moment he’d left the house.

And when his stepmother’s vehicle was finally in sight, he spotted another car, not under the traffic system’s control, tailing her at a close distance.

A warning blinked on the commuter panel. The message said a noncontrolled car was approaching from the rear.

Sayuri didn’t think much of it. Some people still liked to drive in this day and age as a hobby. Since she’d originally been in the tech field, she knew drivers like that always wanted to modify their car to turn the traffic control system off. If she worried about every noncontrolled car that ever came near, there’d be no end to it.

For now, she sat back in her seat and silenced the harsh alarm.

Seeing the black car accelerate, Tatsuya immediately revved his motor.

His motorcycle had the advantage in acceleration. Given his distance and their relative positions, though, the black car reached Sayuri first.

No sooner had it overtaken the commuter than it cut right in front of her, causing its collision-evasion system to kick in.

The commuter rapidly ground to a halt, and so did the other car.

Two men got out and ran over.

On the road, where surveillance cameras monitored every inch, this was an incredibly reckless move. The method would make sense if they were illegal immigrants; any citizen or legal alien could be immediately identified from the camera images.

Tatsuya turned his headlights as bright as they would go and pointed them at the two men as they tried to pry open the commuter’s door. He left them on as he got off his bike and ran forward.

A moment later, one of the men pulled out a handgun, while the other came at Tatsuya with his fist. On his fingers were brass rings, shining dully in Tatsuya’s motorcycle headlights.

Grating psionic noise was coming off the men.

Cast Jamming. Magic-obstructing waves created by antinite. One attacker to disable magicians, and one to finish them with a gun. It was an effective textbook tactic for dealing with a small number of magicians—but only if they were run-of-the-mill examples.

The gun’s muzzle pointed at Tatsuya. Right at his heart. The aim was precise enough that he wouldn’t fully dodge it even if he immediately tried to get out of the way, and he could feel a clear murderous impulse behind it.

But the man was never able to pull the trigger.

Tatsuya’s finger had initiated his own CAD before the other man’s could move.

The handgun broke into pieces and scattered across the road.

One of the men, or perhaps both, shouted something. Their tones were agitated, and given the distance he couldn’t make out exactly what they said. His ears did pick up the wordsCast Jamming, though; the attackers were probably surprised theirs hadn’t worked. Or maybe they were screaming about why the gun fell apart despite the magic obstruction.

Their argument wasn’t Tatsuya’s concern either way. It didn’t matter that they were preoccupied withunnecessary things. He wouldn’t change his plan of attack. He pulled his CAD trigger again.

The man who had been holding the gun gave a scream and fell sideways onto the road, gripping his thigh and writhing.

A moment later, the bruiser clutched his shoulder and staggered. Groaning wordlessly, he broke out into a sweat and fell to his knees, then passed out and toppled forward. His mind couldn’t stand the total destruction of skin, muscle, veins, nerves, and bones that had occurred inside his wound, which looked like it was made by a super-thin needle.

Localized disassembly of a human body via the dismantling spell Mist Dispersion.

What part of the body, when stabbed correctly, would inflict physical pain that exceeded a person’s mental tolerance? What part of the body, when shot correctly, could obstruct the mind’s control of one’s limbs? Tatsuya had a thorough knowledge of such matters, having used his own body and those of others for it.

He walked around the two fallen men and approached the black automobile. He kept his CAD leveled at the car, not attacking right away. If he carelessly damaged a hydrogen fuel car with compressed gas cylinders, he could cause a sizable explosion. The cars were normally fitted with safety mechanisms to hedge against such danger, but terrorist bombers used cars with those safeties removed. That was the way of the real world.

If Miyuki were present, he wouldn’t have needed to worry about combustion, but unfortunately, she was minding the house. To the right of the road was a somewhat large river, and to the left was a line of houses. Given the possible damage to the residences and the roads, he decided he couldn’t use such an aggressive method.

But that decision, to put it into harsh terms, was a kind of carelessness on his part.

Suddenly, he felt a killing intent aimed at him from above and to the right.

Partially out of reflex, he moved to dodge. Not a moment of delay or pause.

But even he couldn’t avoid an assassin’s bullet flying at a supersonic speed.

A burning pain shot through his chest.

The bullet pierced his left breast…

…and the impact sent his body careening.

The sniper had been incredibly precise. He’d just barely managed to avoid his vitals getting hit, but his lung had been shot clean through. The sound of the bullet came a moment later—it must have been pretty far away. Nevertheless, if not for Tatsuya taking evasive action, the bullet would have gotten him in the heart.

“Brilliant” was an understatement when it came to this sniper.

Tatsuya used the momentum of his fall to roll behind Sayuri’s commuter. The bullet wound had already healed. Normally, even fatal wounds would disappear in an instant thanks to his magic.

But that didn’t mean he felt no pain. He broke out into a cold sweat, feeling the intense aftershock of his pierced breast and penetrated back.

Right now, though, he didn’t have time to spare for his phantom pain. He estimated the enemy’s position again. Based on the direction and angle of the bullet, and the location of obstructing buildings, the sniper was somewhere in the cluster of commercial buildings across the river.

They were currently about a thousand yards away. Given the ease with which they hit a person at this distance and the small size of the hole in his back, the sniper was using pointed, full metal jacket rounds. The commuter’s frame was made of synthetic resins, so to such a weapon, it would be best to consider it not much of an obstacle, either.

And to make things worse, the sniper wasn’t using magic. If they had, he would have pinpointed them no matter what type of spell they used. But if the sniper wasn’t using anything but pure shooting skill, then the distance made them hard to spot, even given Tatsuya’s ability to perceive information bodies.

The two bodies lying on the road began to float up. The black car’s door opened, and the bodies were violently sucked inside.

Tatsuya didn’t try to stop it. Disabling the movement spell acting on the two men would have been easy, but eliminating the sniper threat came first.

He searched for the information bodies of the bullet that pierced him. Bringing his ability to analyze them to full operation, he began to read out the information inherent to the bullet.

The bodily fluids clinging to it.

His flesh’s resistance.

The wind.

Gravity.

Gas pressure in the chamber.

All the changes added to the bullet flowed into Tatsuya’s mind as compressed information. From them, he sorted through the original shooting position data and singled it out.

The process moved from the bullet to its trajectory, and from there to the sniper, going back through information, through the world’s memories, through time.

From the present to the past.

And…

…from the past to the present.

With the sniper’s location at the time they fired the bullet as a foundation, Tatsuya followed the memories of state changes written into the Idea—the information bodies of the world itself, recorded as information within all things.

It led him to the sniper’s current position.

Found you.

His mind’s eye fixed its sight on the sniper’s eidos—the units of information that distinguished the sniper from other events and entities within the world’s information.

He could tell the sniper was aiming at him again. The second shot hadn’t come yet because it was taking time to switch from anti-personnel piercing rounds for penetrating bulletproof armor to anti-object high-speed piercing rounds for penetrating an enemy behind an obstacle.

Tatsuya could see all of that—he had all the sniper’s physical information. Good fortune was the only thing he could call this as he pulled the trigger on his spell, which dismantled the sniper’s entire body.

About ten minutes after the black driverless car escaped, Tatsuya decided the danger had passed and stood up from behind the car.

He peered inside to see Sayuri unconscious. This didn’t concern him whatsoever—he had been fairly confident he knew her condition from seeing how the commuter never started up again. The airbags from above, below, the left, and the right had buried her in the seat like a package filled with cushioning. The system to secure passengers from accidents had been fully functional. She wouldn’t have even been shocked too much. The mental strain had probably been what had caused her to faint.

Sayuri was counted as part of the Yotsuba, albeit at the family’s very fringes, so she was supposed to have at least some tolerance to violence.

You’d think she was just an averagecivilian, Tatsuya thought.

After stowing the airbags, which had been developed to be reusable, he restarted the car in complete self-driving mode.

As the commuter began to slowly drive away, Tatsuya followed after it on his bike.

By the time they got to the station, Sayuri had regained consciousness. A bit pale in the face, sure, but she still had her composure. Of course, Tatsuya didn’t know what she’d been like right after waking up, since he’d been on his bike. After escorting her to the cabinet platform, she shoved the box with the Ni no Magatama into his hands. It seemed to Tatsuya to express how she felt—stubbornly and desperately trying to act tough.

Once he’d seen her off, he returned home and immediately headed for the telephone. He hadn’t used a mobile phone at the station because it could have been tapped, of course.

“…Don’t worry about the road cameras. We’re already handling them.”

“Thank you very much, Major.”

He had called the secret line to the Independent Magic Battalion’s headquarters.

Tatsuya needed to conceal his two positions—as a combat personnel belonging to the Yotsuba of the Ten Master Clans, and as a special duty officer of the Independent Magic Battalion. His top priority was stopping the road cameras from identifying him with their image data.

Tatsuya straightened and saluted Kazama on the monitor.

“Still, they were quite tenacious. You may not have been in an urban center, but firing a rifle in the city?”

“I won’t deny that I miscalculated, sir, but his skill was incredible.”

“You said he wasn’t using magic, right?”

“He wasn’t, sir. I have no doubt.”

Using a bullet-guiding spell always created a reaction in the form of an event alteration. Using a super-sense spell always carried psionic waves to the identified target. If he’d used magic, there was no possible way for Tatsuya not to notice.

Kazama knew of his perception as well as the next guy.“Hmm… Is it possible to snipe someone at night from one thousand yards away with only an optical scope?”

He looked down, possibly staring at a map of the sniping area. Tatsuya was no amateur when it came to sniping, but in terms ofgun-based sniping, Kazama was far more knowledgeable. Tatsuya couldn’t guess what he was wondering about, but he clearly noticed something just by listening to the story.

“…Only so many groups in the world can get their hands on such a skilled sniper. This may actually give us an easy clue as to who they are.”

“I’ll leave it to you, sir.”

The best defense was a good offense. If you disabled the enemy before coming under attack, you could keep your own attack hidden. For Tatsuya, now that they’d crossed blades, peaceful resolution—suchas not going after the enemy as long as they didn’t attack anymore—wasan impossibility.

“Hmm? Wait a moment… I just got a report. Looks like we found the car.”

The license plate on the black self-driving car had been hidden, but not well enough to fool the crime-prevention road cameras laid out on the streets. Since they knew exactly when and where the car had been, it was easy to pinpoint.

“Once we’ve looked into this, I believe we’ll deal with them—I’m sure you don’t mind, right?” Kazama said, looking for confirmation.

“My apologies for the extra work, sir,” said Tatsuya easily.

Personally chasing someone he’d let escape was a meaningless fixation, and one to which Tatsuya had no connection.

Dinner was quite a bit later than usual thanks to the unexpected street brawl, but Miyuki never even raised an eyebrow as she briskly set Tatsuya’s meal in front of him, wearing her busy, frilly, pink apron.

“Your apron…” he muttered aloud.

“Did you notice?” Miyuki smiled as she turned.

Miyuki frequently wore simple, mature designs. He didn’t know whether to call this “girlish,” but the apron was fanciful and cute, and one Tatsuya had never seen before. “Did you buy that earlier?” he asked.

Right before splitting up at the station the day before, Mizuki and Erika had dragged Miyuki into a variety shop for teens. Tatsuya had waited outside on a bench, but they’d left the store more quickly than expected. When asked what they’d bought, Erika kept saying it was a secret, so he’d never gotten an answer.

“Mizuki needed a replacement, so I bought one, too… Does it look strange?” asked his sister, a little uneasy, perhaps because it was so different from what she usually wore.

He could have just muttered a simple “yes,” but instead he looked closely at her attire again.

The apron’s length was about the same as a dress’s, like it was a two-in-one “apron dress.” A mini apron dress, at that. The frills, which looped around the shoulders and crossed in the back, along with the wide ribbon tied behind her waist into a bow, were cute, and her bare thighs peeking out from the hem were captivating.

Not something she could show other people, I think.

“No, it suits you very well. Enough to want to put it in my very own glass case and secretly adore it.”

When he put those feelings into words, they turned into a somewhat strange expression.

“Tatsuya…that seems quite abnormal.”

Her words alone might have been spoken with a sigh, but her expression made it very obvious she was trying to hide her embarrassment.

Tatsuya didn’t get involved with that, instead smiling and picking up his chopsticks.

After dinner was over, the siblings moved from the dining room to the living room. Tatsuya sat down on the two-person sofa as Miyuki placed a cup of coffee in front of him, then set down her own and sat next to him.

“By the way, what did that person want?” asked Miyuki, leaving a little space between them, legs together and hands on her lap, looking at Tatsuya obliquely, unable to entirely conceal her curiosity. “You mentioned she had a sample with the ability to store magic programs.”

“Well, I have to do some research to find out if that’s actually true.” He knew the question would be coming, and he had an answer prepared. “As always, she asked me to help.” Not that he’d prepared a reasonable-sounding lie or anything, though. “But this job seems interesting.”

“Will you accept it?” Miyuki was simply keeping the conversation going—she knew just from what she’d heard that her brother couldn’t possibly turn the job down.

“Things being what they are, I can’t pretend not to know. She gave me the sample, after all.” He looked at the end of the table where Sayuri’s big jewel case was sitting.

Afraid of more attackers coming to rob her, she’d forced Tatsuya to take it. She’d also pledged to leave things to R & D Section 3, so Tatsuya had no qualms with the situation.

“Is this the sample? The one that might be able to store magic programs?”

“Yeah.” As Miyuki silently asked what on earth it was, Tatsuya opened the box. “A Relic of the Ni no Magatama family,” he explained to Miyuki as she looked inside.

Miyuki covered her mouth with her hands and looked at Tatsuya, eyes wide. “Why would that person give you something like this?”

“It’s a military request. They wanted her to copy it.”

“But that isn’t reasonable…” Miyuki understood, though not as much as Tatsuya, what Relics were and how absurd an experiment to copy one would be.

“I’m sure the military understands that, too. They must think it’s still a challenge worth taking on.”

A magic program interfered with eidos (the bodies of information attached to events), temporarily rewrote those bodies, and carried out an alteration of that event in line with what was written in the magic program—that was how magic worked. For example, a sphere with a red surface would have the information “reflects mainly red light” and “shaped like a sphere” attached to it. If you used a magic program that said “reflects mainly blue light” to overwrite that information, the sphere would change color to blue. By overwriting the natural information with a magic program, the program’s information would temporarily become an event expression, aka “incident information.” The effect would last until the magic program disappeared and the original information took root again.

Though magic programs had the most important role in magic execution, simply storing a magic program didn’t amount to magic, as this example showed. But if you were in a state where yourown eidos were overwritten and you could store the magic program you used to overwrite them, you could extend the duration of the applied spell’s effects. If you could store a magic program as “incident information bodies” to replace the eidos originally held by an object, it was possible.

In other words, objects that could store magic programs could become objects to store magical effects.

Theoretically speaking, storing a spell that rewrote temperature meant that it was possible to maintain highs of hundreds of degrees or lows of negative tens of degrees without providing any energy. And if a magic program that overwrote movement speed could be stored, there was potential to create a pseudo-perpetual motion device.

“Just saving magic programs isn’t a substitute for magicians, but the ability to save magic programs is essential to mechanically executing magic. I’m not interested in whether the Ni no Magatama can be copied, but if it really can store magic programs, I very much want to uncover the system behind it.”

“I know you can do it, Tatsuya.”

At some point, Miyuki had gotten right up next to Tatsuya on the sofa. As she encouraged him with her soft voice, her face dangerously close, she softly rested her head on his shoulder.

Miyuki had two policies—to personally do as many chores as she could, and to never leave Tatsuya’s care to machines. She wasn’t obsessive enough to do the dishes by hand, though. She was still a student, and her list of things to do piled as high as a mountain. She had to pick and choose.

After leaving all the bowls and dishes to their HAR (home automation robot), Miyuki went to her desk.

Magic high schools still required the study of topics other than magic. They did not require exams on them; instead, they placed more emphasis on daily homework. Right now, she was working on her math homework. She found math difficult compared to other topics.

For some time, she’d been staring at a problem she just couldn’t solve, so she looked away from her display for the moment.

With the processing that powers modern computers with advanced interactive interfaces, one would never need to solve numerical calculations or anything unless you were someone quite deep in the field of mathematics. Still, mathematical thinking sometimes helped with putting together new spells, which is why her brother told her to take it seriously.

Miyuki gave a languid sigh. At times like these, she started to get jealous of her omnipotent brother.Maybe I’ll ask him to help… she thought lazily, before quickly shaking her head so hard it almost made noise.

Tatsuya would have gotten right to work on analyzing the Relic. She was already a bind on Tatsuya’s freedom—she couldn’t trouble him any more than that. The only reason he’d entered First High was because she had. At least, that’s what Miyuki figured.

It was true that you needed a magic high school diploma to advance to the National Magic University, but as with everything, there were exceptions. For example, those who accomplished academic significant deeds, like discovering a Cardinal Code, could gain entry regardless of whether they had a diploma or not. If he wanted, Tatsuya could be accepted right now, and Miyuki had no doubt he’d breeze through the entrance exams.

Miyuki knew he could only achieve his goal at a higher-level research institution like the university, and she understood this high school life was only a diversion for him. The reason he had to do it anyway was because he was Miyuki’s Guardian.

For the Yotsuba, Guardians were tasked with the protection of specific individuals, even at the cost of their own lives. A tragedy had once befallen a girl of direct descent, so they had chosen “combat slaves” to protect the Yotsuba bloodline.

On the surface, they were the same as bodyguards. However, given that bodyguards were temporary, Guardians were clearly a different concept. The Yotsuba didn’t decide someone was going to be a Guardian at birth, but once they chose one, the assignment never ended. Normal bodyguards who worked on a twenty-four seven system were no different, but Guardians had no right to quit the job. They could leave if the one they protected dismissed them, but until now, Guardians had all been Guardians for life.

Tatsuya could move with some freedom because he could carry out his guard duties even from a distance, as physical distance didn’t influence magic. They didn’t have telepathy linking them or anything like that, but Tatsuya was constantly using part of the unconscious region of his brain to observe her, with his sight that could perceive eidos. Well, it was less observation and more that he had a spell cast on her.

But even Tatsuya couldn’t use magic while asleep. The distance between them didn’t matter, but he still had to match her pace of daily life. Miyuki could match her own life cycle to Tatsuya’s during days off and extended breaks, but on school days, Tatsuya had to match Miyuki—in other words, match the school system’s cycle. Plus, even though physical distance didn’t affect magic, it was still easier to deal with various threats if nearby.

Still, this was all a result of Miyuki not releasing Tatsuya from his Guardian duty. If she did, she’d be assigned another Guardian, probably female and the same age. Because no matter how short the supply of magicians was, Miyuki was the strongest contender for succeeding as head of the Yotsuba.

Of course, Miyuki hadn’t wanted Tatsuya’s guardianship because of selfishness alone. The mission of a Guardian was of the utmost priority in the Yotsuba family. As long as he was assigned to her, they wouldn’t make him do other, more tedious things. They’d never make him play the bad-guy role, either. Nobody could criticize him strongly, whether it was their father or their father’s second wife.

They couldn’t force him to help them.

That was part of why she wanted him to go to the same high school as her—but she knew her dependence on her brother, her not being able to leave his side, was at the root of it.

She let out another sigh. She couldn’t have her way with her own heart, nor could she get any further with this homework.

Thirty minutes later, she decided that, well, she didn’t have to ask him forall the answers. She could just show him the ones she already had.

The next day, after school.

In order to get everything for the presentation together, Tatsuya went to the library. He really would have rather been focusing on his analysis of the sample (the Ni no Magatama Relic), but he couldn’t neglect (to help with) the Thesis Competition preparations.

Libraries these days were almost entirely digitized, with paper books making up only a slim fraction of available data. If he could view that data online, he wouldn’t have had to walk all the way here, but the stuff Tatsuya and the rest of the team needed was strictly controlled, inaccessible from outside.

And it was when he ventured into the reading room, looking for an open booth, that he stumbled across someone he knew coming out of one of the private rooms.

“Oh, hello, Tatsuya.”

“Saegusa, getting some autumn reading done?”

He’d last seen Mayumi about a week ago, so it didn’t warrant a typical “Hello, it’s been a while.” Instead, he replied with a harmless greeting.

At least, he thought it was harmless. Mayumi pouted a little, unhappy. “You know, Tatsuya…I’m a senior, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“Yes, I know that…” said Tatsuya, understandably confused at her saying something so obvious, as though it were incredibly important.

“High school seniors have university entrance exams, remember? I wonder why you didn’t consider that I might have been studying… Do I look that carefree?”

Mayumi’s explanation only made Tatsuya more bewildered. “…You mean, you haven’t been recommended yet?”

She had excellent grades, the position of student president, and she was even famous as a magical sporting athlete with numerous championship trophies. If that wasn’t enough for a recommendation, what was?

But her answer was already ahead—and to the side—of Tatsuya’s thoughts. “Huh? Tatsuya, you didn’t know? I refused recommendations. It’s an unwritten rule at First High that anyone with student council experience turns them down.”

“…That’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

“Only ten people per magic high school can get recommended for Magic University, after all! We have more people taking the exam than other schools, so we want to use those ten spots effectively.”

“So borderline students can get preferential recommendations?”

“You’re exaggerating a little, but…basically, yes.”

“That’s, uh…”

It made some sense, but he still felt like something was wrong with that. Mayumi didn’t look like she had any doubts, though, so he stopped himself from pointing it out.

Tatsuya’s stammering made Mayumi look at him askance, but her interest quickly flew in a different direction. “What are you here for, Tatsuya?”

It upset him that she made it sound like him being here was a surprise—he was a regular at the library, and certainly used it more frequently than she did—but he didn’t need to hide anything. “I’m here to get some things together for the Thesis Competition.”

“Oh, that’s right. Rin wanted you to help, didn’t she?”

…Help. Right… From someone else’s perspective, maybe it looked like that. Though it was a team competition just like Monolith Code, where individuals shined, one couldn’t see each member’s contribution to the thesis. It wouldn’t be strange to think of everyone besides the main presenter as a mere assistant.

“…Oops, we’ll just get in the way out here, so let’s go inside,” said Mayumi, gesturing to the small room she had just come from. “You were going to use it anyway, right?”

Holding the room like that was bad manners, but it wasn’t like there was a line outside the door. Tatsuya nodded without reservation.

Three people in the viewing room would have made it hard to move around in, but even two made it feel pretty cramped. Mayumi was small for a girl, but ever since last autumn, Tatsuya’s build had surpassed that of an average grown male. He wasn’t huge or anything, but his shoulders were wide enough to take up a fair bit of space when he sat. With him sitting in front of the terminal and Mayumi on a spare stool, their shoulders were pressing against one another.

All alone with a beautiful girl in a cramped room.

But even this situation would neither excite Tatsuya nor give him the jitters. Mayumi knew that from past experience. And as for considering herself a beautiful girl… Well, it was an objective fact, so she could leave that aside, too.

As Tatsuya used the terminal with practiced hands, not bothered at all that their shoulders were touching, Mayumi, feeling no irritation, disappointment, or paradoxical caution, resumed their conversation from before.

“I’m sure it was sudden for you, but I hope you do your best.”

“…It was certainly sudden.” The abrupt conversation without any prelude threw him off a little, but he managed to link it with the previous interrupted conversation and avoid askingwhat was sudden. “It isn’t something for you to worry about, though, is it, Mayumi?” he asked in reply, sounding pretty unconcerned, his eyes still glued to the monitor.

“Well, no. But for Rin, the theme this year goes beyond winning or losing in the competition.”

“Which reminds me—they didn’t ask you to be their substitute?”

“I wouldn’t be able to handle the topic. And I’m not very good at using magic continuously for complicated processes.”

Tatsuya felt like his question and her answer didn’t link up all the way, but Suzune had a thorough understanding of Mayumi’s strengths and weaknesses, so he decided to interpret that as Suzune having eliminated her from the list of candidates beforehand.

“Rin’s helped me out with a lot in the past, so it’s too bad I can’t help her in a time like this…”

It was hard to tell from her tone whether she was talking to herself or to him, and, not seeing any way to respond to her fading words, he ended up silently typing on the terminal, continuing to pull the data he needed.

“That’s why I want you to do your best here, Tatsuya. I think you’d be able to help her.”

“Does Ichihara have some kind of special attachment to the theme this year?” asked Tatsuya, less out of curiosity and more because that sounded stronger than mere encouragement.

“In a way, it’s the first step toward Rin realizing her dream.”

That answer didn’t tell him anything concrete, but he didn’t plan on asking any more about it. He felt Suzune’s dreams didn’t have much to do with him, anyway.

But contrary to his plans, Mayumi didn’t stop talking. “To elevate magicians in society. And not through political pressure, but through economic necessity. By making magic an irreplaceable factor in economic activity, magicians can truly be released from their fate of being born as weapons. A gravity-controlling, magic program–type thermonuclear fusion reactor would be a strong way to do it…is what Rin is always saying. Writing this thesis is the first real step.”

Tatsuya turned to her suddenly and stared at her, his eyes wide.

Mayumi winced. “Huh? What?”

“I’m surprised. Ichihara’s thinking the very same thing…”

“Huh? As you?” she asked, voice high and eyes wide.

He nodded, expression still shaken.

In truth, the idea of elevating magicians in society by having them supply economic benefits wasn’t originally Suzune’s or Tatsuya’s idea. Though it had few supporters, the idea had first been proposed over twenty years ago. But there weren’t even any signs of it happening yet. Even now, the primaryuse of magicians was for military goals. World affairs were in a lull right now, so cases of magicians being used as weapons had decreased.

Still, some said the development of magicians—not of magic—was, to this day, 90 percent for the pursuit of military objectives. And with things as they were now, it was bound to stay that way. Most magic they could put to use for people’s livelihood could be replaced with machines. Whether that be controlling temperature or accelerating objects—though you wouldn’t get as dramatic an effect as with magic, if something was necessary enough to social activity, you could more stably supply that with nonmagic technology.

There was no need to substitute it with magic.

There was no need to replace highly advanced automatic devices with magicians.

There was no need for magic technology to control or program those devices.

As long as magic wasn’t actualizing a technology that current science was unable to reproduce, the liberation of magicians through economic benefit was no more than an idealistic daydream.

On the other hand, a thermonuclear fusion reactor that ran off a gravity-controlling magic program wasn’t original to them, either. Research on nuclear fusion reactors had come to its limit fifty years ago, but now the research was on whether magic could realize it or not.

Unfortunately, that research was on the decline rightnow. Maintaining a continuous nuclear fusion reaction with gravity-controlling magic was deemed so difficult a technique that it was counted among the Three Great Practical Problems of Weighting Magic—and the solar energy cycle was, at the moment, providing more than enough energy toadvanced nations.

You could barely find anyone, at least now at the end of the twenty-first century, who discussed the connection between the elevation of magicians in society and the possibility of gravity-based thermonuclear fusion.

“I had no idea someone else with such an obscure idea was so close to me this entire time,” said Tatsuya, more out of actual admiration than surprise.

For some reason, Mayumi narrowed her eyes at him. “…Yeah, well, I’m glad the two of you are getting along.” Her tone of voice sounded cranky, too, not just her look.

“Well, I don’t think the issue has to do with us getting along…especially since our methodologies seem to be completely different.”

What is she sulking about? he thought, his reply a little defensive.

“But it’s the same concept, isn’t it? Tatsuya, is Rin the kind of woman you’re into?”

“What?”

“Shoulder to shoulder with such a beautiful girl, and you didn’t even think of doing anything. Well, I’m sorry for having such a childish body.”

What in the hell is she talking about? was Tatsuya’s undeniable impression.

First of all, just because people had the same research theme, they were more likely to end up as rivals than partners. And Mayumi was simply short—she didn’t have a childish body. Even he thought of her as having a mature, provocative figure.

There were so many misunderstandings he needed to clear up that he couldn’t even figure out where to start.

“…I’m not an exhibitionist. I wouldn’t make a move on a woman in front of surveillance cameras.”

Tatsuya must have been pretty baffled himself, because the first response he could think of was not a very appropriate one.

“Huh…?” His reply seemed suggestive but was actually just not well thought-out. Mayumi began to fidget, and her eyes started to wander. “Umm, then, what if there were no cameras or people? Like, if we had a hotel room to ourselves?”

“If you were making advances on me, I would accept without hesitation.”

With a clatter, the red-faced Mayumi and her stool both ran into the wall; it seemed like she was trying to get as far away from him in the cramped room as she could. That was when Tatsuya finally realized he had misspoken.

Repeatedly saying the first thing that came to mind had created a misunderstanding he could have avoided.

But he felt that making any more excuses would be digging a deeper grave. Deciding it was fortunate the conversation had ended, he looked away from her and focused on his data collection.

And yet Mayumi, whoappeared to have sensed danger, didn’t try to leave the viewing room.

Three nights after submitting the thesis to the school, as Tatsuya was processing some data on his personal workstation, he noticed their home server was under attack.

The attack was coming from multiple avenues simultaneously, meaning this was no amateur hacker. This was the work of a professional data thief. That meant they hadn’t coincidentally found his address—they’d aimed specifically for his house’s global address.

No matter how many times he fought it off, the attacks kept coming. They were being incredibly stubborn.I’ll have to change the address again, said Tatsuya to himself, sighing and booting up his tracer program.

The next day, during lunch break, Tatsuya was visiting the counseling room.

He was speaking to Haruka.

And, of course, talking about puberty problems wasn’t on his agenda.

“…However, they cut the connection in the middle. I wasn’t able to find the attacker.”

Haruka didn’t bother to hide her displeasure—or even pretend she felt differently—which wasn’t an expression very fitting of a counselor at all. But considering Tatsuya hadn’t come for counseling, and given their past experiences, nobody could unconditionally blame her.

“…And? Just so you know, I can’t do network tracing.”

Tatsuya almost laughed at the woman’s sullen voice, but he didn’t want her getting any angrier, so he didn’t let this show. “I know your field of expertise, ma’am. I don’t want to trouble you with that much.”

“Then what is it?” Caution crept into Haruka’s face. She’d learned to immediately be on her guard whenever Tatsuya said something that sounded reasonable—because there was always another side to it.

“I was wondering if you could tell me what you knew about groups that have been dabbling in secret information trafficking regarding magic lately.”

Seeing Tatsuya give her a forced, calming smile, the woman scowled. “…You know whatconfidentiality means, don’t you, Shiba?”

“Of course.”

“…” Haruka’s lips formed the beginnings of a word.

She probably wanted to say, “Are you kidding me?” he thought. He’d have been thinking the same thing. He still didn’t feel bad about it, though.

“…Since the end of last month to the beginning of this month, there have been numerous illegal immigration incidents in Yokohama and Yokosuka,” began Haruka, her voice sounding like one big sigh.

It wasn’t easy to cut off connections after already going along with one of his generous offers. It was an elementary method to build up information connections for those in the intelligence field. And to have it directed back to her… Haruka must have been regretting this bitterly.

“The prefectural police and the bay police are working together, but they haven’t found anything significant. At about the same time, manufacturers providing parts to Maximillian and Rosen have been meeting with a series of burglaries.”

Maximillian and Rosen were two of the top CAD makers in the world. In other words, they were targeting businesses related to magic device production.

“Do you mean to say it’s related, ma’am?”

“Given who we’re talking about, it’s nothing certain. Shiba, I think you should bring your thesis on physical media instead of putting it online.”

That last piece of advice was the only time her voice wasn’t tinged with carelessness. When Tatsuya tried to confirm her true intentions again, Haruka smoothly averted her eyes and looked at her desk.

The move implied she couldn’t say any more.

And Tatsuya knew by now when to withdraw.

After school, in the disciplinary committee room, Tatsuya was talking to Isori about the hacking attempt last night.

“…Did they do any damage?” asked Isori, leaning in worriedly.

“No, that much is fine,” replied Tatsuya with a wry shake of his head, putting his hands out in front of him. Isori would quickly change into a tall, androgynous, pretty girl, just with a swapped school uniform, so pressing closer to him like this, even if it had no meaning in terms of physical distance, didn’t make him very comfortable. Of course, he couldn’t let those feelings show, so he had to be careful not to lean back unnaturally. “More importantly, was your house all right, Isori?”

Isori gave him a blank look for a moment, then frowned and lowered his voice. “Do you mean the hacker was after…?” he whispered, his voice sounding oddly provocative.

I heard he worries about not having many guy friends, but I guess they don’t hate him—they just want to keep their distance… thought Tatsuya, though he said something else. “I looked at the commands they were using. They seemed to be after documents related to magical theory. Considering the timing, I can’t deny possibility of a connection to the competition.”

Actually, given the timing, there was one other factor that was highly probable, but he couldn’t be that honest about it. Besides, you could never be too careful.

Isori’s frown deepened, and he started to think about whether he’d seen any signs like that. “Not at the moment, anyway… Maybe you should tell Ichihara about it, too.”

“You’re right,” he agreed immediately, having already planned on doing so.

Then, a cheerful voice broke in: “Kei, here I am~,” it said in a way that might have a music note dancing at the end. Without waiting for a response, the person sat right down next to Isori, took his arm, and started acting playfully. It was, of course, Kanon.

“Tatsuya, I haven’t seen you in a while.”

That was Mari, who had come in beside Kanon. Her words nearly had a sigh attached because of Kanon’s behavior.

It was tricky for Tatsuya to say whether a dozen or so days was a “while” or not, but considering they’d seen each other every school day up until last month, maybe it was bound to feel like a long time. “Yes, it has,” he replied, standing up and offering his seat to Mari.

“Oh, why thanks,” said Mari with a grin, not trying to compromise, before sitting down.

A handsome woman as usual, he thought, answering, “You’re welcome” and bringing another chair next to her for himself.

“So, Tatsuya, how has Kanon been doing?”

A sudden, unexpected question. Well, maybe it was natural for the previous chairwoman to think about how the current one was doing, but he was pretty sure that wasn’t why she’d called him and Isori here.

“Mari?!”

But looking at Kanon’s panic, he began to understand why she’d asked.Such a charming junior-senior relationship, isn’t it? “I don’t patrol with her anymore, so I don’t know about that part of it,” said Tatsuya, deciding to learn from their relationship, charming as it was. “She keeps things very tidy and orderly. She’s especially good at getting rid of things. Though sometimes she gets a little too into it,” he explained in a monotonous, deadpan voice.

Mari and Kanon both fidgeted uncomfortably. Mari knew she was never any good at keeping things clean, and Kanon had made a few mistakes now, throwing out things they actually needed and confusing whoever happened to be looking for them.

In that way, Tatsuya hadn’t just been speaking about Kanon. Mari understood it as sarcasm, but Isori wasn’t her, and didn’t seem to understand that. Isori turned to Kanon and warned her, though only his words were strict (?), while his tone was soft. “…Shiba says things like that, but you have to do a little more paperwork by yourself, too, okay? Relying on me is one thing, but when I’m not around, you make him do a lot of it, don’t you?”

Kanon answered, “…But I’m bad at it. I think we just need the right people doing the right jobs.”

Her current sulking and fawning created a large gap between this and her usual imposing figure—the one that came out when Isori wasn’t around. Tatsuya and Mari saw that and grinned drily.

“…Well, let’s leave that discussion for another time,” said Tatsuya, who figured that was enough, prompting Mari to move on to the main subject.

“Yes, let’s. I actually wanted to talk about Thesis Competition security.”

“Security? Is the disciplinary committee going to be handling it?”

“Yeah.”

“Security” done by students at an event held outside school sounded odd to Tatsuya, but he was the only one who seemed put off by it. They probably did this every year.

“But not security for the venue itself. The Magic Association is assigning professionals for that.” Mari didn’t want to leave any misunderstandings up in the air, either, so she began explaining before Tatsuya asked. “What I wanted to talk about was personal security for the team members, and guards for the presentation materials and devices. The competition uses valuable material that only the people related to the university are privy to, after all. It’s pretty well-known among outsiders, too, so the competition members sometimes end up being targets of industry and university spies.”

It was such a timely topic that Tatsuya was a little startled. He knew this was possible, but honestly, he couldn’t keep himself from feeling surprised. “…Like trying to hack into their home servers?”

“Well, it is just a high school event… I call them spies, but I mean, I don’t think any small-timers could do something crazy, like infiltrate a network just to get a little bit of extra pocket change. At least, I’ve never heard of it…”

That would make sense, thought Tatsuya, mulling it over. In the modern world, simple unlawful access to a network was a serious crime. The theft of information in a network was given a heavier punishment than robbery. And the falsification of data was on the same level as attempted murder. Coupled with the strengthening in network security, cyber crimes weren’t worth it as a business for full-time criminals.

Which meant the attack last night must have been…

As Tatsuya’s thoughts were elsewhere, Mari approached the core of the subject. “What we need to watch out for are purse snatchers or people walking away with our things. Four years ago, one of the presenters on their way to the venue was attacked and injured. After that, the schools started assigning escorts to the participating members starting a few weeks before the competition.”

Thankfully, he snapped out of it before missing anything he’d need to ask her to repeat.

“That goes for us, too, of course. Escorts are selected from the disciplinary committee and club committee executives, but we honor each member’s personal wishes on who is actually guarding whom.”

“I’ll be the one to guard Kei!” interrupted Kanon, as though it were obvious.

Definitely charming, thought Tatsuya, but this time he managed not to let a dry chuckle escape.

“…Well, Isori has no complaints, so that’s decided. You’ll have an aide, too, of course…but, Kanon, don’t kick them away like some kind of horse, all right?”

“That was mean! I wouldn’t do that. I’m not a little kid.”

Seeing her cheeks puff out didn’t lend much credence to her claim that she wasn’t a little kid, but the other three non-kids politely ignored it.

“We’ll have Hattori and Kirihara guarding Ichihara.”

“The club committee chairman will be her personal guard?” asked Tatsuya flatly.

“He’s no match for Ichihara,” replied Mari with a mean grin. “Anyway…the issue is what to do about you,” she said, still grinning.

“I don’t need one,” he replied instantly.

Mari nodded, not trying to get him to reconsider. “Any guards we give you would just be warm-up catchers. And they’d probably just get in the way. I’ll tell Hattori what we decided.”

Tatsuya crooked his head to the side, belatedly noticing something. “By the way, why are you the one doing this, Watanabe?”

To supplement the part he purposely didn’t say, he was asking why Kanon, current chairwoman, wasn’t doing this, and why Mari, previous chairwoman and now retired, was bending over backward to coordinate the disciplinary committee and club committee.

“No real reason, to be honest…” she stammered.

Tatsuya arched an eyebrow slightly.Overprotective, I see.

Mari got the message and looked away awkwardly.

First High’s school store had a selection that far surpassed the average high school shop.

One could say the same for all nine of the magic high schools, but they had been compelled to expand by necessity so that students could easily acquire hands-on magic teaching materials difficult to find in regular stores.

It didn’t change that they were still school stores, however, and some things simply couldn’t be found there. When that happened, one needed to go out to buy them.

And while this, too, was a commonality among the nine schools, shopping districts that could only be called “castle towns” formed around the magic high schools, so students could buy nearly anything they needed that the school’s selection lacked—equipment, consumables, books, miscellaneous goods. That First High’s shopping district was especially well-stocked has already been touched upon.

The recording film for the 3-D projectors they were using for the Thesis Competition happened to be out of stock in the school store, so Tatsuya and Isori had come to a stationery store near the station to purchase some. With the day to submit their draft to the school coming up tomorrow, they couldn’t wait for the school store to restock.

“I didn’t mean to trouble the two of you with something a freshman could do by himself…”

They had already exhausted over half the journey there, but Tatsuya said this anyway for two reasons: one out of sincere apology for bothering his upperclassmen, and two, the stronger reason, out of being fed up with Kanon clinging to Isori without a care for who saw.

The grass was always greener on the other side, and it seemed the reverse was also true. Or maybe everyone else just sort of understood. Kanon was the only one flirting; Isori, for his part, made it look like she was being a little unmanageable, so at least he wasn’t beyond help.

Incidentally, Miyuki had remained at school. Kanon had a justifiable reason for coming—since she was Isori’s escort—but Miyuki couldn’t neglect her student council duties just because Tatsuya was stepping out for a bit. And she knew Kanon was going with them, so she was probably typing away in irritation right now.

“No, I’d feel bad leaving everything to you, Shiba. I want to check the samples anyway.”

And the preestablished harmony was that the generally earnest Isori would reply that way.

Tatsuya wasn’t about to send them away at this point anyway. It had almost been a complaint, so he didn’t get into an argument with them. Things stopped with him shutting out a creepy, suppressed, mezzo-soprano giggle from his sense of hearing. Once he decided to ignore it, he wouldn’t worry about it anymore. That was something he was glad he was able to do.

After another five minutes with their current pace, which kept slowing down, the three of them arrived at their destination. And there, too, Tatsuya finished his purchase right away, told Isori he would wait outside, and left the store.

As he finally got some alone time and was just feeling refreshed, he noticed a pair of eyes watching him. He didn’t remember anyone tailing them. Even with the annoying, stereotypical (?) high school lovers’ talk, he hadn’t stopped paying attention to his surroundings.

Still, though, it was such an easy-to-detect stare thatanyone would notice it, not just Tatsuya.

This store was on the shortest route to the station from school, basically right in front of the station. If you stuck around there, you could easily catch students on their way home. The person had probably been hiding out and waiting for him. They were physically hidden, but given how much hostility he still felt on him, the person clearly didn’t have anything friendly or peaceable in mind. But they were being too artless and crude about it compared to, for example, the sniper who had shot Tatsuya the other day, for him to actually be on his guard against them.

Just as he was wondering what he should do, Isori and Kanon exited the store, having finished their shopping.

“Sorry for making you… What’s the matter?” asked Isori immediately.

Tatsuya was astonished at his classmate’s sensitivity; his own face was not that easy to read at the moment. To prove it, Kanon muttered “hmm?” in confusion.

Isori specialized in stationary magic like delayed activation spells and conditional-activation spells, but his power of observation was something else—maybe he was actually better suited to perception magic than functional magic.

“Nothing. I think we’re being watched, that’s all. I was just…” He didn’t feel any real need to hide it, so he told Isori the truth. Unfortunately, he couldn’t get to the end of his answer.

“What? Is it a spy?!”

Right before Tatsuya could finish and say, “wondering if I should do something,” Kanon interrupted.

Loudly.

She’d basically just shouted to the scoundrel to run away, and as expected, he felt the gaze secretly watching him leave and the person’s presence grow distant.

But Mari hadn’t named Kanon her successor for nothing. She quickly asked, “Where?,” watched where Tatsuya looked, and took off at a run without hesitation.

“Kanon, magic—”

“I know! Trust me, Kei!”

He’d probably tried to remind herbecause he didn’t trust her, but Isori, who missed his chance to follow, and Tatsuya, who now had to temporarily serve as Kanon’s substitute, could only watch her go.

Kanon was both a top-class magician of her generation and a sprinter in the track and field club. She obviously didn’t have the leg power to compete evenly with top non-magician athletes, but an average high schooler, even a male one, wouldn’t get the better of her very easily.

As she dashed, her skirt flapping in the wind, she soon caught sight of a small figure running away. Andshe was wearing the same uniform as Kanon.

Though it caught her by surprise, it was Kanon’s motto not to worry about things and just do them. She had absolutely no proof this girl had been the one watching Tatsuya, but that didn’t slow her pursuit. Kanonfelt that it was her. She accelerated, trusting her gut.

She quickly closed the distance, and when she was just ten yards away, the girl looked back over her shoulder.

It was her actual face—no mask or sunglasses.

Kanon stared hard at the girl’s head, burning her briefly visible profile into her memory.

Her limiting her focus on a single point, however, hadn’t been anything the girl had plotted—just a coincidental gift. But regardless of her intent, it did create a hole in Kanon’s alertness.

Kanon noticed the small capsule the girl had dropped behind her only after she had turned back away from her—and the fact that the capsule fell between them.

Crap, thought Kanon. She reflexively stopped and shut her eyes. She tried to cover her face with her arms, but unfortunately, she wasn’t fast enough.

A brilliant light shone in through her upraised arms and stung her eyes through her eyelids. Several pedestrians who had been watching the chase scene in interest shrieked.

Leaving her left eye closed (the one she couldn’t cover), she looked with her right, which had avoided harm.

The girl had gotten onto a motor scooter to flee.

Kanon’s right hand flung over to her left arm. The bracelet that hung low on her wrist absorbed psionic particles, and it quickly expanded an activation sequence in accordance with the number Kanon typed in.

But before she could read it, it was destroyed by a psionic bullet that had gone around her body from behind.

“What are you doing?!”

“Kanon, don’t!”

It happened at exactly the same time. It overlapped between them as she turned back around and Isori yelled, running over.

Tatsuya was standing still behind Isori, his handgun-shaped CAD raised. Isori came beside her as she stood frozen in surprise at her fiancé’s reprimand. He was using his CAD as he ran, and had finished constructing a magic program. He aimed at the scooter, which had already taken off, and activated an emission-type spell called Road Extension.

The tires of the scooter, which had just begun to get away, began to spin fruitlessly.

No matter how much its motor spun, it didn’t go forward. The road went on in a straight line, but she couldn’t escape it. A labyrinth made of a single path.

The secret was to control the distribution of electrons between the tires’ points of contact and the road to bias the Coulomb force toward repulsion, bringing their coefficient of friction close to zero. In words, that was all the spell did, but it was actually a dreadfully technical spell that required a complex magic program.

Thanks to a spell that amplified the compositely emitted gyroscopic force, the scooter couldn’t fall to the side, either. Its tiny initial acceleration was eaten up by the electrostatic repulsion, bringing the girl’s scooter to a standstill.

She could no longer get away.

Isori, Kanon, and even Tatsuya thought so. It was reasonable thinking, a natural judgment. Common sense dictated she couldn’t get out of this situation.

But there was something they didn’t know.

This girl was a complete amateur when it came to fighting.

And the more an amateur gets cornered, the more nonsensical their actions become. Desperation attempts, one might call them—but that desperation leads to escaping seemingly inescapable situations surprisingly often.

The girl pushed a button covered with plastic to the side of her left handlebar. Normal scooters didn’t have a button there. To begin with, the covered button looked like it was used for an emergency bell. It was meant to be used a single time, and the button did, in fact, trigger a “disposable” gimmick that certainly seemed to be a onetime thing.

The back of the seat suddenly exploded.

Its cover flew off, and a double rocket engine within began spitting out flames.

The scooter immediately shot forward as though it was hit by something. The girl riding it was flung back, but she kept her hands tightly on the handles.

Tatsuya watched, speechless, as the girl and the scooter quickly grew smaller and smaller.

She hadn’t let go of the handlebars because she was wearing gloves for that very purpose.At least she thought that part through, he thought.

But cramming a liquid-fuel rocket under the seat wasn’t exactly what he’d callsane. Given the amount of fuel, estimated from the combustion duration, if worse came to worst and the scooter fell down and created sparks, she’d die in the explosion—and so would people walking nearby.

The fact that it even drove straight and stayed upright after being ignited by a rocket was a miracle. Normally, the sudden burst of acceleration would force person’s hands off the handlebars and they would be thrown off. If Isori hadn’t coincidentally applied that spell to amplify gyroscopic force, if the front wheel’s coefficient of friction hadn’t already been infinitely close to zero, that’s exactly what would have happened.

If Kanon’s spell had been the one to stop her instead of Isori’s, the scooter surely would have toppled over and caused a horrible tragedy.

“What is that girl thinking…?”

“I guess this means we were all lucky…”

Tatsuya seemed to think the same thing as his two upperclassmen.

After abandoning the modded scooter, the girl rolled into a boxy automobile prepared by a collaborator, her shoulders heaving.

Right behind her were spouting flames. She hadn’t imagined they’d be this terrifying. Hallucinations of her skirt, the back of her blazer, her hair, all burning, attacked her endlessly.

The station wagon’s driver remained silent. He had no comforting words to give her.

That was reasonable; they weren’t friends, just allies.

The girl hugged her shoulders. It was the only way she was able to endure. One girl, cowering motionlessly in a seat in a station wagon darkened by smoked glass.

Eventually, as her terror waned, the regret slowly rose, torturing her mind. She had reflexively fled when she was being chased, but now that she could think about it calmly, she didn’t have to.

All she was doing was watching.

Her guilt was taking away her ability to think straight, and she knew that. The very fact that she felt guilt caused her an unbearable anger.

She knew she wasn’t cut out for this sort of thing. Others knew her as an indoor type, and she’d never felt the need to change that. Because her dear older sister was the same way.

She looked up to her sister’s talents in academics, but she wasn’t as talented. Instead, she figured she would try to be an engineer and put her hobby of tinkering with machines to good use.

Then why am I going along with all these shady people? she asked herself.

The answer came back instantly, from inside her own mind.

She couldn’t forgive him.

She didn’t care about being rewarded for succeeding.

All she wanted was to see him mortified.

Suddenly, she chuckled. She just realized she’d gotten the better of him. There was no time to look out her rearview mirror, but surely he was watching in blank amazement as she made her clean getaway…

Her laugh was dark, masochistic, and tinged with madness. The more she laughed, the more it broke her.

Nobody in the station wagon, however, stopped her.

Inside an old building on the edge of Tokyo and Ikebukuro. From the outside, it looked like a general store management office. But in one room were tons of old computer monitors, tightly packed, with men staring fixedly at them, wearing whatever they pleased.

One of them, a middle-aged man, made a bitter face as he watched them—a screen monitoring the station wagon, showing a girl laughing maniacally inside.

“That girl—is this going to be all right?”

The man wasn’t worried about her body or mind. The girl had bungled this; they were only worried someone might track them down because of it.

“That car’s members were chosen by the great Zhou. No matter what happens, I don’t believe anyone will learn of our presence here.”

“The upstart mediator…” the man replied bitterly, imagining the person who had prepared this hideout for them. “How far can we really trust him?”

—He didn’t like it, but trusting him was all they could do. That was unmistakably what was running through the man’s mind.

“What about the Relic?” he said, suddenly changing the subject to get rid of the gloomy mood.

One of his subordinates at another monitor turned around and stood up. “There’s no trace of anyone taking it out of Four Leaves Technology, but its current location is unknown.”

“Hmph… Four Leaves, eh? Such an annoying name. No relation tothe Yotsuba, right?”

“Shì. We investigated them but found no evidence of a connection. Besides, magic-related businesses in this country frequently use ‘four leaves’ and ‘eight leaves’ in their names.”

“Blasted confusing,” spat the man in distaste, animosity, and irritation. Even so, a tiny bit of awe came through.

Hachou, or “eight leaves,” was favored as a name carrying two magical meanings: the four families and eight types of modern magic, and the Garbhadhatu Mandala, with the eight Buddhas at its center. However,shiyou, or “four leaves,” was used in a more secular way. The nameYotsuba of the Ten Master Clans was a sort of taboo among those who had anything to do with magic. If a Japanese business had a name containing some reference to “four leaves,” spy groups and criminal organizations would be wary of any possible connection to the Yotsuba family and hesitate significantly more before meddling. Taking the Yotsuba not saying anything on the topic as a good thing, many businesses used names meaning “four leaves” in an attempt to “borrow the influence of the tiger.”

It was mere child’s play, but its effectiveness couldn’t be understated. They themselves were spending a lot of time and effort to be careful of the Yotsuba right now. The thought gave the man even more reason to look bitter.

“…Keep watching Sayuri Shiba. Did you learn anything from going to her house the other night?”

A different subordinate answered him this time. “It seems a pair of siblings, children of her husband’s former wife, live there.”

“Was she trying to curry favor with her stepson and stepdaughter?” he asked, his face implying that was absurd. He asked another question, this one businesslike. “What do we have on those two?”

“Both are freshmen enrolled at the National Magic University Affiliated First High School.”

But that reply seemed to interest him. “Their names?”

“The older brother is Tatsuya Shiba, and the younger sister is Miyuki Shiba.”

“Tatsuya Shiba?” The name sounded familiar to him. He called the man watching the monitor on the station wagon.

“He is the revenge target of our on-site collaborators.”

“I see. A Magic University–affiliated high school… This might work out well for us.” The man let a chuckle slip, then looked like he was thinking for a couple of seconds, staring into empty air. Abruptly, he gave a new order: “Add activity targets to National Magic University Affiliated First High School. Get people from other jobs if you need to. And bolster our support of the girl.Teach her that the most effective way to get her revenge is to leak confidential information. Andgive the girl a weapon as well.”

After this string of orders, he finally turned to a young man with a large build. “Superior Lieutenant Lu.”

“Shì.”

“Take on-site command. If you find any stray dogs sniffing around, get rid of them,” he commanded before leaving the room.

Today was the day to submit the thesis, the presentation draft, and the presentation data to the school—but neither Suzune, Isori, nor Tatsuya liked procrastinating, so they’d already loaded the memory media for the submission the night before.

The reason they were still all here during lunch break was to go over things one last time. Not the contents, but just double-checking all the submission standards. After they split up and checked separate parts, Suzune would follow Haruka’s advice and give it to Tsuzura personally.

Once Isori finished doing his part of the work, he said, “I wonder if Ms. Ono said not to send it online because of what happened yesterday.”

“That could be,” acknowledged Tatsuya—who had already finished his work (he had the least, since he was a freshman)—quietly, so as not to disturb Suzune.

“After all, the easiest way to sneak into the school network is from inside the school.”

“Though it still wouldn’t be easy,” pointed out Tatsuya.

Isori shrugged as—with a few old-fashioned clacking keystrokes to the sound of the classic, mechanical keyboard Suzune used—she turned around.

“Was it really a student from here?” said Suzune, adding to the conversation as she finished her check and collected the submission.

“All we can say isprobably,” said Tatsuya.

“You could get a school uniform if you really tried, I suppose,” added Isori.

Suzune thought for a moment. “…You and Chiyoda can look at the student register, right?”

With Isori a student council member and Kanon the disciplinary committee chairwoman, both had the authority to view the student record database. The school blocked any intrusive information that had to do with student privacy, of course, but they could still check portraits and full-body shots.

“Kanon is the only one who saw her face…” said Isori. “All she got was a glimpse, so she couldn’t make a composite photograph. There are almost three hundred female students here… If we can’t narrow that down to a certain extent, we can’t figure out who it was.”

Isori wasn’t speaking of possibilities. Kanon had actually tried this morning before eventually throwing in the towel.

“Besides, essentially all she did yesterday was run away because we chased her,” explained Tatsuya. “Even if we knew who she was, all we could do is keep an eye on her. And even that might make trouble.”

Suzune and Isori both knew that. The student hadn’t done anything wrong—though using a flash bang to get away wasn’t completely without its issues—so if they started watching her, they could end up being the stalkers.

At this stage, all they could do was take a passive, cautious position.

Once he returned to the classroom, Tatsuya found Erika in his seat.

She was the first one to notice him. “Oh, you’re early today,” she said, standing up right away. Staying there would have been a shameless act, so a moment after he sat down, she sat on the edge of his desk instead.

He wasn’t sure if it was a plus or a minus.

Still, as Erika said, there was a little bit of time left in today’s break. Instead of going onto his terminal right away, he turned to Mizuki, specifically because she seemed anxious, and asked, “What were you talking about?”

Erika, however, was the one to answer him. “She says she feels someone watching.”

“Watching?” he repeated to Mizuki.

Mizuki nodded hesitantly. “Ever since this morning, I’ve been feeling unpleasant, like someone is watching me. Something strange, gazing at me from the shadows…”

“Like a stalker or something?” he guessed, that being the most natural example.

“What? Nobody would ever stalk me,” said Mizuki, shaking her head as though the notion were nonsense. “It wasn’t looking at me in particular—it was more like it had this big net ready…”

Her choice of words was vague. Was it the anxiety getting to her? Either way, Tatsuya could decipher exactly what she hadn’t said: “The eyes were targeting not a single student, but more than one, or maybe teachers, or some kind of object in the school?”

“Y-yes…it might…just be my imagination, though.” The lack of confidence in her attitude was partly due to her personality, but she also had no proof, so there was nothing that could be done about that.

“No, I don’t think it was your imagination, Shibata,” said Mikihiko as he walked over, filled with enough confidence to make up for Mizuki’s lack. “The spirits in the school have been noisy since this morning. Someone’s performing an onmyoudou ritual.”

Since Erika was sitting on Tatsuya’s desk, Leo had been sitting facing forward instead of backward like he usually was, but he turned around at Mikihiko’s words. “You talking about spiritual beings? Likeshikigami?”

Mikihiko nodded. “I can’t quite get a read on it, since it’s different from the techniques we use. But there’s definitely a caster somewhere searching for something.”

“But that’s not unusual, is it?” asked Erika.

She had a point, too. This was only a high school, but it had access terminals to Magic University, numerous precious books and documents, and many talented magicians teaching classes. They were constantly targeted by people after magic technology.

“Usually, once they get stopped by the defensive spell along the outer walls, they don’t try to poke their noses in for the rest of the day,” said Mikihiko, refuting her claim gently, which made his voice sound more confident. “But today they seem to be trying again and again, no matter how many times the barrier blocks them. Someone probing us isn’t unusual, but I know I haven’t seen anything this persistent since I started school.”

“…Mikihiko, you said it was a different technique than yours, right?” said Tatsuya.

“Yes, why?” he asked, face tensing, a serious concern in his voice.

“Do you mean it wasn’t a Shinto technique? Or a different kind from Japan’s old magic?”

Presented again with such casual words on such a heavy topic, Mikihiko’s face tightened. “…I don’t think it’s a Japanese technique.”

“Huh?” prodded Leo, eyes wide. “Does that mean it’s a foreign spy or something?”

“I guess so, huh?” added Erika nonchalantly. Their words contrasted, but it didn’t seem like there was much difference in what they were thinking.

“They’re being rather bold,” muttered Tatsuya.

“They’re doing all they want. What are our police for, anyway?” This time, Erika went after the police. But the way she said this made it seem she was less angry over public authority negligence and more irritated at a relative’s lack of difference.

Meanwhile, Tatsuya and Mikihiko both thought,Huh?

At around the same time, Chief Inspector Chiba from the Kanagawa Police—more accurately, temporarily assigned to the Kanagawa Police by the Ministry of Police—would have sneezed up a storm, except for the fact that it would have been cliché.

“…What’s wrong, Chief? You’re getting all googly-eyed.”

Inspector Inagaki, who was poking around the areas near the Yokohama Wharf where the illegal entry occurred, eyed his superior’s actions dubiously.

“Err, I just felt a chill all of a sudden…”

“Are you all right? Don’t start feigning an illness. We’re too busy for that.”

“Err, feign an illness? That’s, uh…” There was a hint of criticism in Chiba’s voice as well, but Inagaki had been kidding and wasn’t at all bothered. “…Inagaki, I think you need to pay more attention to the whole ‘rank’ thing.”

Inagaki gave him a cold look. The wordsYou’re one to talk were written all over his face, but he eventually said, “Anyway, are we finished asking questions? I don’t think walking around is going to get us any more witnesses.”

He was right. They’d been investigating the area for days, but they hadn’t gotten any proof at all regarding the illegal entrants. Chiba gave a cynical smile to his more-partner-than-subordinate. “They’re here,” he said. “They just don’t want to talk.”

“Chief, you don’t mean…?” The man’s lack of concern smelled like fire to Inagaki, who narrowed his eyes sharply.

“Hey, now. You’re scaring me.”

“You’re the scary one, Chief. What are you going to do?”

“Don’t worry, no unlawful investigation here. But you know what they say—you have to set a thief to catch a thief. I was just thinking of asking around the thieves’ den.”

After hearing Chiba’s plan, Inagaki’s face soured. “…Backstage deals are unlawful investigations, too, you know.”

“I think we can allow it here. We don’t have the luxury of saying things like that anymore.”

“Well…I guess so.” Inagaki nodded bitterly.

Without giving more time to argue, Chiba got into their undercover police car that they had suitably left in a paid parking zone. After seeing his partner get into the passenger’s seat, he started off toward a high-class residential area that housed a large concentration of foreigners.

The undercover patrol car with Chief Inspector Chiba and Inspector Inagaki in it eventually arrived at a café parking lot in the middle of Yokohama’s Yamate Bluff. After Chiba stopped the engine, Inagaki gave him a bitter look.

“Chief…breaks are good every once in a while, but weren’t we going to this ‘den of thieves’ you mentioned?” said the subordinate, looking at Chiba as if to wonder why he was suddenly slacking off.

Chiba looked back and pretended to be offended. “Thisis the thieves’ den.”

“What?”

But his superior left the car. Inagaki went after him, walking up as Chiba locked the door with a remote control, and looked toward the café again.

It appeared to be a calm place, completely normal. It had a cabin-like design, and its windows had double slatted shutters—but they were all open. Nothing about it seemed “secret” in the slightest.

“Well, calling the bartender athief would be rude,” said Chiba. “The bartender here has an amazing information network—and no criminal record, either.”

“…You mean they’re a big-shot? One we can’t get anything on?”

“Less a big-shot and more anartisan.” Chief Inspector Chiba gave a slight shrug and opened the door, on which the wordsRoter Wald were written.

It was already past lunchtime on a weekday, but the place was in a popular sightseeing spot, so there were quite a few patrons.

It wasn’t lively, however.

Whether it was because of the store’s atmosphere or the bartender’s personality, the patrons were all drinking from their cups quietly. The average age of the people there was high. Perhaps the idea of lots of tourists was a misconception—maybe the establishment had a lot of regulars.

Chiba sat down on the second bar seat from the end (Inagaki took the first), waited for the bartender to turn to them, then ordered two coffee blends.

The bartender here had the spirit of a craftsman. He’d never cut corners on visible jobs or invisible ones, and Chiba knew that well. He also knew he couldn’t make any conversation until the coffee came out. As he waited idly, he casually looked around the store.

Next to them on the bar was a half-empty coffee cup. The bartender hadn’t taken it back yet, so the person whose drink it was must have only been away temporarily.Such great coffee, letting it go to waste if it gets cold, Chiba thought idly. But the person sitting two seats over was only gone for a few moments, and soon came back while the chief was watching the cup.

The one who sat down was a young woman the about same age as him.

He turned back and sized her up out of the corner of his eye. At a glance, she wasn’t what many would call a “beauty.” Her clothing was average—a blouse and a skirt. But looking closer revealed good-looking features and a nice figure. It felt to Chiba that she was purposely wearing makeup that made her look plain.

After observing her that much, Chiba silently returned his gaze forward.

He mustn’t be scolded as incompetent.

The simple fact that he was trying not to stand out meant he couldn’t do any police questioning, either. And he realized what he was trying to do basically amounted to hitting on her.

Inagaki gave him a dubious, painful stare. The bartender, as silent as his sullen exterior would imply, poured their coffee without a word.

Chiba simply waited for his drink to come out.

Suddenly, he heard a low giggle. Moving only his eyes, he looked to see, as he had expected, that the woman was looking down, her shoulders moving.

“…I’m sorry. I thought you’d talk to me at some point, but you just kept staring right in front of you. Are you bad with women, noble son of the Chiba?”

Chief Inspector Chiba was dumbfounded. But not because he was surprised she’d guessed his identity right.

It wasn’t a secret he was the eldest child of the Chiba clan. But neither had he been aggressively putting his face in public. His younger brother was more recognizable, wasn’t he? The only ones who could tell that he was Toshikazu Chiba by looking at him were criminals, those in the police force, or people in very specific circles.

Namely those who lived in the world of combat magic.

“And you are…?”

“Pleased to meet you, Chief Toshikazu Chiba. My name is Kyouko Fujibayashi.”

This time, Chiba was dumbfounded out of pure surprise.

Daughter of the Fujibayashi family, distinguished for its old magic…and the granddaughter of Retsu Kudou, elder in Japan’s magic world. And here she was, giving him a worry-free smile.

Their group of eight hadn’t stepped out of the school gate together in a while.

“Tatsuya, are you done with your Thesis-Comp preparations?”

Though it had been a while for all eight of them, Honoka left schoolwith Miyuki every day because of student council work—meaning she took this route home with Tatsuya every day as well. But for some reason, this was the first thing she asked today.

“For now, I guess,” he said. “The small things are still left, like rehearsals, making the models for the presentation, tuning spells for the demonstration—things like that.”

“Sounds like a lot of work…” said Erika. “Oh, Mizuki, I heard you guys are helping make the models.” Erika was neither a member of the student council nor in a position on the club committee, but she seemed oddly informed. She peered at Mizuki, who had her hair in a ponytail today.

“Oh, yes, the juniors are,” said Mizuki. “I’m not doing anything, though…”

“We left all the model-making to Isori, so naturally the juniors would be the center of it,” added Tatsuya.

“Huh…? Then what are you doing, Tatsuya?” asked Leo, a question that could be considered part of the natural flow of the conversation.

“I’m adjusting the demonstration spells.”

“…I feel like that’s backward,” said Shizuku, saying what was on everyone’s mind.

“Really?” asked Tatsuya, tilting his head in confusion. “When it comes to making things, I think Isori is several levels better than me.”

“Well…Kei does seem more like an ‘alchemist’ than a ‘mage,’” agreed Erika with a wry grin. “Maybe he’s the right person for the job.”

“Alchemist? Like in RPGs?” asked Shizuku, puzzled.

“What would that make Tatsuya?” pondered Mizuki, her comment suddenly…

“A mad scientist, of course!” (Erika) “Those aren’t in RPGs.” (Shizuku) “Then maybe a hermit sage far away in the mountains that teaches you secret moves.” (Erika) “He’d be a pretty good physical fighter for a sage.” (Leo) “Maybe an evil magician secretly plotting to take over the world?” (Erika) “Why not just call him a demon king, then?” (Mikihiko) “Nah, he’d be like the last boss after you beat the demon king. The one who comes out and says he was totally the mastermind behind everything.” (Leo) “Why isn’t anyone suggesting he’d be a hero type?” (Honoka) “It’s fine, Honoka. I wouldn’t make a good disciple of justice.” (Tatsuya) “Might makes right, Tatsuya.” (Miyuki) “Wow. Straight from the mouth of the demon king’s little sister.” (Erika)

…leading to a lively conversation.

Even as they walked down the road making noise and having fun like other students did, Tatsuya never forgot to keep an eye out. When they came to the entrance to the road leading to the café they frequented, he turned around, careful not to look at the one he sensed tailing them.

“Want to stop by for a bit?” suggested Tatsuya, deciding to wait their shadow out with a detour.

“I’m in!”

“You’ll probably be busy again tomorrow, after all.”

“Yeah, let’s go get tea for a little while.”

Erika, Leo, and Mikihiko all agreed, each seeming a littletoo assertive—but the three of them probably had their own things to think about. Without mentioning how unnatural it was, Tatsuya opened the door to Café Einebrise.

Unfortunately, their usual two side-by-side tables with four seats each weren’t open, so the eight of them split up between the bar and the closest table. At the bar were Tatsuya, Miyuki, Honoka, and Mizuki. (In order of seating, it was Mizuki, Miyuki, Tatsuya, Honoka.) At the table were Erika and Shizuku near the bar, and Leo and Mikihiko facing them.

…From an outsider’s point of view, it would have looked like Tatsuya was being waited on by several beautiful girls in some kind of jealousy-inducing harem.

“Hey, welcome. You sure are a go-getter, aren’t you, Tatsuya?”

Actually, not only outsiders; even the manager, who knew enough about their relationships, still came at him with sarcasm from over the bar.

“I’m sure you’d be ago-getter, too, if you shaved your beard,” countered Tatsuya, purposely using the dead (?) term back at him.

“He’s right,” followed up Mizuki in her usual breezy (?) lack of reserve. “The beard isn’t doing you any favors. It makes you look old.”

“O-old…? No mercy today, Mizuki?” groaned the manager, stroking his gray beard—not a messy one, for he took good care of it. It was gray, but it didn’t age the man as much as she said. In fact, he looked young. He could have been thirty, or even a little younger.

Gray hair, both on the head and face, was a genetic predisposition. The manager was one-quarter North German. (The shop’s name meant “gentle breeze” in German, too, and it had been Leo feeling an affinity for it that led to everyone else frequenting it.)

Still, the only characteristic his ethnicity gave him was his hair color; his eyes were dark, and his visage was slender and Asian. He was a man of delicate, handsome features yet seemed to have some kind of complex about his face. He always kept his mustache and beard neat in an attempt to look manly—and it worked.

The group’s consensus was that the beard didn’t suit him, but the taste of his coffee made up for that and more. All eight of them naturally ordered it.

“Wow, you’re going to be in the Magic Thesis Competition?” said the manager as he boiled water in the coffeemaker siphon and after hearing why he hadn’t seen them in a while. “And you’re only a freshman. That’s amazing, isn’t it?”

That wasn’t entirely flattery. The manager had no talent for magic himself, but he did run a shop on the way to a magic high school, so he knew quite a bit about the world magicians lived in. Even Tatsuya often heard recent news from him that he hadn’t known about during the spare moments in which they had conversations.

“This year it’s Yokohama’s turn to host, right? My family lives there. Is it at the international assembly hall like it usually is? That’s right next to my old house.”

The manager continued to talk, even while pouring their coffee, which had accumulated in the flask.

“Where in Yokohama is it?” asked Mizuki as she took a tray of four coffees from the manager, having stood up to carry it to the table in the waitress’s stead.

“It’s a café named Roter Wald, midway across Yamate Bluff.”

“Your parents run a café, too?”

“Yeah. If you have time, give them a visit. Taste my father’s coffee and decide which one of ours is better. And don’t hold back—let me know!”

“Nice try, Mr. Salesman,” broke in Shizuku, who was bringing the tray back for Mizuki, causing laughs on both sides of the bar.

When Tatsuya was down to a third of his coffee, Erika downed the rest of her drink, returned the cup quietly to the coaster, and smoothly rose. When she did things like that, it couldn’t hide her upbringing.

“Erika?” asked Mizuki, looking up.

“I’m going to pick some flowers,” she replied, casually striding farther into the store.

“Oh,” said Leo a moment later, putting a hand on his pocket and getting up. “Sorry, got a call.” He walked out front.

Tatsuya moved his eyes away from Leo’s surprisingly polite act and looked at Mikihiko. He had a notebook (a small sketchbook, actually) open in his hands. “…Mikihiko, what are you doing?”

“Oh, well, I figured I should take a few notes so I don’t forget…” he said, not stopping his calligraphy pen to talk.

“Don’t go overboard; they’ll find us out,” said Tatsuya, narrowing his eyes at him. “Keep it simple.” He looked behind Mikihiko—not at his hands—then brought his cup to his lips, back to the bar, like nothing was wrong.

“Hey, mister, you want to have a little fun with me?”

Few people used this side street, but the sun hadn’t even set yet. When the man heard that, he nearly dropped his take-out drink. He turned around to see a girl in a ponytail, one whom he wouldn’t have hesitated or been underhanded to describe as pretty, at the entrance to the little road. The alley led to the back door of the café he’d been watching, and she stood within it, her hands behind her back and a smile on her face.

But as soon as he saw her, he grew impatient for a different reason. “What are you saying?” he said. “You should treat yourself better than that.”

“Huh? All I said was ‘a little fun.’ I wonder what you thought I meant…” The girl quirked her head to the side, her smile guilt-free.

He knew it—she was with the man he’d been tracking. “It’s not nice to tease adults. Go back home, will you? And don’t take any detours.” He couldn’t stop from mentally breaking out in a cold sweat, but he put his professional face on and continued to play the adult walking away after a child’s prank upset him. “It’ll get dark soon. There’s no guarantee you won’t be attacked by someone if you stay in a deserted road like this,” he finished, turning his back to the girl.

But he couldn’t take the next step.

“…Attacked—like by this guy, maybe?”

When he turned around, he found a well-built boy who had left the café, pounding his black glove–covered fists together, grinning.

“When you say ‘attacked,’ I assume you meant magically.”

Sensing danger behind the amused response, the man turned around again. The girl was in a combat stance now, holding a retractable police baton. Casually, she thrust out that hand.

In that moment, he felt an irresistible pressure coming from her. The kind where if he lost concentration even for a second, his knees would shake and he’d collapse…and he knew what this pressure was called.

The will to fight.

Not the will tokill someone, though—pure waves of simple fighting spirit.

“Scary… You’re really something when it comes to this stuff,” said the voice from behind him. He couldn’t be sure, since he couldn’t look over his shoulder, but he knew the boy there was baring his teeth and grinning.

“Help me, somebody! I’m being robbed!” shouted the man, deciding that if he wasn’t going to be able to flee, it didn’t matter how his backup plan made him look.

He was just as confident in his own strength. No matter how dexterous they might have been, he wouldn’t go down without a fight against a couple of fifteen- or sixteen-year-olds. Unfortunately, his current mission was the sort where he had to avoid any risks; having them turn hostile was bad for the plan.

“Whoa. No shame…”

“No, no. He was really quick to make that choice. I think that’s good, don’t you?”

The girl and the boy seemed subdued by his chosen method. Still, the girl kept her baton up, and the boy straightened and held up his fists.

…And nobody came to answer his cry for help.

“Oh, forgot to say…” said the boy. “It’s no use calling for help. Nobody’s gonna get close right now.”

“Theycan’t get close,” said the girl. “We put up a barrier using our awareness as the pivot—and you can’t get out of it without knocking us out, either.”

The man realized he hadn’t seen any other pedestrians for some time.

And he was made to realize another fact:

Only one option remained.

Belatedly, he tossed his drink cup aside and assumed an upright posture. Leaving his thin jacket on, he brought his arms up high, as if to guard his head—then wheeled around to Leo, bending his left arm out to a right angle and bringing it down to his stomach.

“Huh… The Hitman style from boxing, eh? Thought you’d at least have a weapon.”

“Just because he didn’t take one out doesn’t mean he doesn’t have one, stupid,” advised Erika, not wasting a moment, causing the man to tsk.

But he didn’t show any more impatience. He didn’t have time.

The middle-aged man who had given the pitiful shriek was now fighting intensely, and he quickly closed in on Leo. From his low position, the man bent his arm and flicked it at Leo like a whip. Bullet-like punches flew at the boy; the smooth, continuous string of attacks spoke volumes—this man was a wolf, not a sheep.

But neither Leo nor Erika felt surprise. Erika had gained powerful insight through training, and Leo had the instincts he’d been born with. They’d already figured out the man was really a wolf—or rather, a highly trained hunting dog.

What was really admirable was his speed. His power. And above all, how he displayed swiftness beyond physical boundaries yet showed no magical aftereffects whatsoever.

He threw dozens of punches in less than ten seconds, rattling the two guarding arms without giving time for counterattack.

And when they finally broke through Leo’s guard, one punch hit him in the face.

With apop like a balloon, Leo careened backward.

Not sparing the time to watch his achievement, the man pivoted on his heel. By the time he’d turned around, he’d already hurled a throwing dagger at Erika, using the force of his spin.

There was a dry, metallicclack.

Erika had knocked the dagger away with her baton. As her weapon moved from inside to outside, it created a hole in her defense. The man immediately reached out for a left straight at her face…

…before dodging the baton as it flew back faster than his fist. He pulled back, but not his fist—instead, he pulled his whole body back in a leap. But a moment later…

“Gah!”

…he took a shoulder tackle counterattack to the back and crashed face-first into the road.

“…Wow, that stings. This guy’s no ordinary human. Didn’t feel like a machine, either, so…chemical enhancement?” muttered Leo, who had performed the tackle from behind, rubbing his punched jaw and looking to the road with a merciless stare.

“…Yeah, well, you’re weird, too. That punch hit you square in the face, didn’t it?” answered Erika, more cautious about the man groaning and trying to get himself off the ground then her ally, Leo.

“Well, about a quarter of that is because I’m a magician with roots in a research lab. Not gonna lie and say my genes are a hundred percent natural,” said Leo with a painful grin to Erika’s sharp gaze, cruelly kicking the crawling man in the gut.

“Gurgh!”

“Behave. We’re not gonna take your life. We just want to know why you’ve been tailing us,” said Leo as he lifted one leg from the road. Erika, in the corner of his eye, looked exasperated at the somewhat indecent violence.

But the question had been clear. “…Wait… All right, I surrender…I’m not…your en’my an’way… Stomping at me for this…’s a little much…”

“Yeah, right. If you’d punched someone else, they’d have died, you know.”

“That goes…for you, too…” As the man coughed between words, he got up. “If my body wasn’t enhanced, that kick would have crushed an organ or two.”

The man’s talking became more fluid, as though the pain had waned, though he was still sitting on the road.

“If I didn’t think you were enhanced, I wouldn’t have done it.” Leo’s words weren’t repentant in the slightest. “And if you’re not our enemy, then give us the short version. We can’t exactly leave the barrier up forever.”

“Fine. I’d rather not draw attention, either.” The man heaved a resigned sigh.

“Then why not introduce yourself first? I’m sure you know our names already.”

“Jirou Marshal.” The man didn’t give Leo a yes or no, instead replying with a name that could have been real or fake. “I can’t go into too much detail about who I am, but I’m not with any government agency, domestic or foreign. And, as I already stated, I’m not an enemy of yours.”

“Which means you’re an unlawful agent.”

Once again, the man didn’t say yes or no to Erika’s conclusion.

“…And?” prompted Leo, rankled. “You won’t give us the truth if we asked who you are and where you’re from anyway, so tell us what you’re after, and what the situation is.”

“My job is to keep watch over magic high school students to make sure cutting-edge magic technology isn’t stolen by the East, and if any high tech that could be a military threat to the Eastis leaked, to deal with it,” explained the man who called himself Jirou in a businesslike tone.

TheEast was a term used two World Wars ago, and Leo and Erika knew that USNA intelligence and military operatives alike used it often, even today. But that didn’t prove right away that this man was related to the USNA. He could have been purposely using local terms to mislead them about his origin.

“I bet your employer, at least, isn’t related to Japan. Otherwise, why on earth would you be going through all this?” demanded Leo.

The man shook his head and sighed. “I knew Japan’s peacetime complacency was fixed, but to hear eventeenagers asking that…” he said. “The world’s military balance isn’t just a problem of one country. If Japan’s practical technology finds itself in the East, it could damage the West’s advantage. Both the Federal Soviet Republics, which has placed importance on improving magic programs themselves, and the Great Asian Alliance, which is diverting its resources toward reviving magic of previous generations over modern magic development, are very quickly starting to use Japan’s electronics-based magic engineering technology for military applications. It’s not just Japan, though—the USNA and various western European nations are both experiencing an increase in spies targeting magic engineering tech. Your school is one of the East’s targets, too.”

“Peacetime complacency? How many decades ago is this? We know there’re voyeurs hanging around. We didn’t let our guard down. We noticed you tailing us, didn’t we?” spat Erika, unappreciative of the man’s superior tone.

“I’m not a spy—I’m here to stop them,” the man said. “I’m not your enemy, and we have no conflict of interest between us.” He stood up from the road and made a show of dusting himself off.

He bent down to neaten the hems of his pant legs so politely it seemed sarcastic (and it probably was about 30 percent sarcastic) and then straightened back up—with a small pistol, small enough to hide in his palm, in his hand, its muzzle pointed directly at Erika.

“!”

“What isthis?!” shouted Leo.

“I didn’t use this before, but it’s proof I’m not an enemy.”

“…No, you justcouldn’t use it. It would have left too much evidence,” retorted Erika.

The man grinned. “That, too. Anyway, I believe I’ve said what I needed to. I’d like to clear out of here, so could you tell your friend to undo the barrier?”

His words and attitude were light, but his stance had no openings. Erika and Leo didn’t have a death wish—this wasn’t an adventure they wanted to go on.

Modern magic had acquired speed rivaling firearms through the advancement of CADs. That, however, didn’t mean they were faster. Not even necessarilyas fast. A gun only needed a trigger to fire a bullet and bore out a person’s flesh; modern magic needed a process—reading in an activation sequence and constructing a magic program. Magic had a higher degree of freedom than guns, superior power, and the ability to create a field to block bullets; it could make up for the speed gap to a certain extent. That was all. If a single shot could take a life, or put them out of combat, that “extent” in the speed gap was a decisive factor in determining victory. This was one of those times.

While Erika and Leo stood silently, Mikihiko, who must have been watching them with a spell, released the barrier he’d put up.

“…Then allow me to take my leave,” the man said. “Oh, right, one more thing: some advice. Tell your friends to look after themselves. And not to relax even when they’re at school.” Finishing, the man brought a small canister out of his jacket.

He pushed a button on the lid, then tossed it right in the middle of the triangle the three of them made.

Erika and Leo both jumped back.

With a soft burst, a thick, white mist exploded around them. They closed their eyes, but, realizing that the mist didn’t seem to be poison, opened them again.

But by that time, there wasn’t a trace of the man who called himself Jirou Marshal.

In café Roter Wald in Yamate, Yokohama, Chief Inspector Chiba and Fujibayashi were enjoying light conversation. Having taken a liking to him, though he didn’t know why, Fujibayashi was talking to him incessantly, so Chiba hadn’t even broached the topic of what he’d actually come here for with the bartender. She was a skilled talker, and Chiba was enjoying the conversation as much as she seemed to be. Of course, his partner Inagaki didn’t share this opinion.

Chiba had nearly forgotten about his original goal behind coming here, when an effervescent tone rang in Fujibayashi’s hands. It wasn’t loud enough to bother the other patrons, but Chiba could still hear it from the next seat over.

Fujibayashi took her information terminal from her purse and glanced at the message. A moment later, she returned it and gave Chiba a pleasant smile. Whenever she made an expression like that, it showed how pretty she was.

Despite his age, Chiba’s heartbeat increased.

“I’m sorry, Chief. I need to step away for a moment.”

Fujibayashi hadn’t looked at him suggestively or made any meaningful gestures—but Chiba still realized, without a reason, that the message had to do with herjob.

“…Yes, please do.”

She rose, bowed to him, handed a credit card to the bartender, and headed out to her electric coupe in the parking lot.

After climbing into the driver’s seat, Fujibayashi reached out and switched her control panel screen to information terminal mode.

Self-driving cars that used a palm-rest controller had no steering wheel. The controller served as an accelerator, a brake, a gearshift, and a steering wheel all in one, so that was only natural. The palm-rest type of controller was meant to bring out a more instinctual way of driving, but as a side effect of the vision-blocking steering wheel being absent, the entire dashboard in front of the driver ended up being one big control panel (a multipurpose display with both a console and an instrument panel). Depending on how you customized it, you could bring functionality and ease of use rivaling that of a home-use terminal into the car with you.

And as for Fujibayashi’s car, it had gone a step further—several steps, in fact, having all the functions of an actual information terminal in it. Enough to let the small coupe have processing power on the level of a battle command vehicle. Its communication functions were made to match, with high-sensitivity and high-output items on board. Add Fujibayashi’s own magic expertise to the mix and the car could exhibit enough electronic warfare capabilities to be called, without exaggeration, an electronic warfare vehicle.

“Tatsuya’s friends are quite the handful, too.”

That wasn’t her unconsciously talking to herself—those words were purposeful so that she could align a spell. Using the connection called Tatsuya as a guidepost, she overlaid the Idea information network with her electronic one.

“Mikihiko Yoshida. Former wonder child of the Yoshida… The child seems to be an adult now, but it would be nice if he paid a little more attention to the fact that he’s in a city.”

Names symbolized entities. Speaking names was a means of identifying them. With the name of someone familiar—that is, to whom one’s mental distance is short—as a reference point, she began to align her focus on the target using magic by saying aloud a proper noun, as well as the target’s actions and status.

“But even old magic gets recorded by the surveillance systems.”

Compared to modern magic, old magic—especially spirit magic, or magic of the type called SB magic—was said to be difficult for roadside surveillance cameras to capture. However, that wasn’t due to how hard it was to capture the magic itself but the difficulty in identifying who used it. The usage was always recorded, and Fujibayashi had been given the very urgent mission of falsifying those records.

Hushing up unlawful magic usage wasn’t her job, but she knew they didn’t want any unnecessary attention paid to Tatsuya or those around him. The more people related to him, the higher the possibility of them alerting her actual prey and causing them to stay away. In other words, Kazama and the others were using Tatsuya as bait…

…but that’s not enough to bother you, right?

That was all she said to herself before activating the rare skill possessed by the Electron Sorceress.

Jirou Marshal, unlawful operative from a certain country, utilized his enhanced leg strength to run about one train station away, then came to a halt. He’d been going as fast as a racehorse, so fast he ran the risk of standing out. But he hadn’t stopped just now because he’d decided he’d reached safety.

Just the opposite, in fact.

His running speed wasn’t something a normal human could match, no matter how much training they did. Yet something had been sticking right on his tail the whole time. He hadn’t seen what—or who—it was yet. Still, Jirou Marshal had no doubt that the “thing” following him was a person.

He knew without checking that it wasn’t the pair from earlier. He wasn’t senile; he would notice if the people he’d directly confronted had come after him. And being a solo operative, as usual, he didn’t have a team with him. If they’d dispatched him some unplanned backup, their first priority would be to notify him so that there wouldn’t be any friendly fire incidents. But he hadn’t received any such communications since starting his current job.

…Where?

Marshal looked down slightly and focused his senses, listening. He knew from experience that when people sensed the presence of another person, it was more than likely due to the solidity of sound. The one tailing—no, chasing—him would never show him or herself visibly. He decided the person must be hiding somewhere he couldn’t see, watching.

But his prediction was wrong.

Suddenly, he felt a presence that made him shudder, and looked up.

In front of him stood a man,not making a sound.

In hindsight, he’d blocked off the sounds coming from ahead of him. Something other than his five senses had alerted his body to the danger.

The man was Asian, with a toned figure. He wore gray exercise pants and a gray jacket, with a blackish tracksuit underneath, all quite plain. His face wasn’t especially handsome but not especially ugly, either. Without a doubt, he looked like a person you could find anywhere—but he caused Marshal to feel like he was staring down a wild beast that devoured humans.

Marshal knew the man’s face. “The Man-Eating Tiger…”

Not that he’d met the man in the past. This was the first time he’d seen him in real life.

“Ganghu Lu…”

The one whose name he’d just unconsciously muttered was someone at the top of the “Take Caution Around These People” file he’d been given at the beginning of the operation. Rumored to be the leader in the Great Asian Alliance when it came to killing in hand-to-hand combat, the ace of the GAA Army’s Special Covert Forces…

By the time he recognized that, there was already a gun in Marshal’s right hand, pointed at Ganghu Lu. His body, which had gone through countless hours of repetition training, had selected an action quicker and more precisely than he could think about it.

However, his finger couldn’t pull the trigger.

Before he could squeeze it, Ganghu Lu’s fingers were stuck in Marshal’s neck.

The man’s thumb penetrated his throat, and the gun fell from his hands.

Marshal watched the scene in a daze. When had his neck been pierced? No, before that—when did he get in this close? He hadn’t seen any of Ganghu Lu’s movements.

Before the pain, which had been overwritten with surprise, reached Marshal’s brain…

…his mind was painted over in eternal darkness.

Ganghu Lu slid his right hand out of the throat it was buried in.

His fingers were stained red, and yet there was surprisingly little blood loss.

Using his clean left hand, he removed a folded piece of paper from his inside pocket and neatly wiped down his right hand. After absorbing Marshal’s blood into the paper, Ganghu Lu threw it onto the corpse. As it fell, it unfolded into the size of a handkerchief, then stuck to Marshal’s body.

Then, the bloodstained paper erupted with a flame redder than fresh blood. The flame spurted to life in the middle of the paper, then became a ring and expanded.

Inside the ring was nothing. No cinders, none of the corpse’s clothing the paper had covered; none of the flesh, nor its bones. As the paper burned away, the flame began to spread over the dead man.

Then, the ring of firebegan to devour the corpse.

Ganghu Lu watched as the flames eventually vanished and the corpse disappeared, then turned on his heel.

Not a single person was anywhere nearby. No voices, no footsteps, nothing to indicate the presence of a human anywhere.

The only witnesses were the thoroughly destroyed roadside cameras.

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 operativewearing 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 itis 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 onlyone 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 firstor 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, tellingthem 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 makeeveryone 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?”

Tatsuyawas 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 termplacid 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 isnursing, notcombat.”

“…” “…”

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 okaythe 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’dhave 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 whothat man andhim 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 termthat 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-sidedfaith.

“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 theywanted 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 letthat 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.

The student cafeteria during lunchtime. Though this was technically a magic high school, the cafeteria was the same as other high schools, and didn’t differ very much from middle schools. (Perhaps, though, it would appear slightly different than a combined junior and high school aiming to educate children from society’s upper echelons.)

Here, numerous strains of raucousness overlapped to create a singular tumult.

But one part of the chaotic space suddenly took on a singular order. For a moment, a spot next to the entrance fell perfectly quiet before changing into something more cacophonous.

Though it was just one area of the vast student cafeteria, it was Miyuki, whose beauty seemed to be growing more refined lately, who wielded enough influence—or perhaps better stated ascontrol—to transform the mood in the air.

Drawing attention from every single person who passed her by (and not appearing to mind at all), Miyuki walked straight ahead and without hesitation to Tatsuya’s table.

“Thank you for waiting for me,” she said with a conscientious bow.

Tatsuya smiled and waved it away. Behind Miyuki, Honoka quickly bobbed her head while Shizuku bowed so slightly you’d have to be watching quite closely to notice.

It wasn’t an intentional pattern that Tatsuya’s group saved seats with Miyuki’s group coming to meet them. The reverse occurred rather frequently as well, at about a 60:40 ratio. However, virtually all patterns saw Miyuki going wherever Tatsuya was.

“Oh, Miyuki, you were here?”

“I just got here, Mizuki.”

Mizuki and Mikihiko had just returned from getting food.

“We’ll get ours now,” said Tatsuya, standing up as the two of them sat down, gesturing with his eyes to the newly arrived three.

With Miyuki, Honoka, and Shizuku in tow, Tatsuya headed to the serving rack, feeling a wholly different kind of stare piercing into him than the ones on Miyuki before.

When the four of them came back with their lunch trays, only Mizuki and Mikihiko were there to greet them.

“Are Erika and Saijou still registering for classes?” asked Honoka casually, not seeing the two of them anywhere. Still, it didn’t bother him that much. In their case, not all of them were present every day—for example, the last few days Tatsuya had been busy making stage props (more accurately, programming them), so he hadn’t been at the cafeteria for a while. (And Miyuki stayed with Tatsuya, as a matter of course.)

Given that modern class systems were in some ways flexible, each student commonly ended class at a slightly different time. Honoka’s question was no more than a “Nice weather we’re having today,” just a way to start up a conversation—however…

“Oh, I think they took the day off.”

Tatsuya’s unexpected answer made Honoka’s eyes light up. “Huh? The two of them?”

“Both of them at the same time, yes.”

Tatsuya quickly realized a misunderstanding (?) when Honoka’s eyes filled with anticipation. On top of that, he’d given a smirk, changed his phrasing a little, and nodded gravely as he’d said it.

“Surprising…or is it?” murmured Shizuku to herself, quirking her head to the side. Her tone was dispassionate, but her eyes were immensely curious.

“Wait, is it true?!” asked Mizuki, eyes widening.

“Mizuki, is there a point in asking us?” said Miyuki with a strained smile. Mizuki was their classmate, not Miyuki, so that only made sense.

“Oh, I guess so…” Mizuki’s eyes wandered, disconcerted, looking for help.

“…”

“…”

“…”

All four of the girls’ eyes gathered on Mikihiko, as though plannedin advance, and he gave a somewhat flustered response. “Huh? No, I don’t think they’ve been acting likethat…”

And Tatsuya dropped some more fuel on the fire. “Come to think of it, they went home together yesterday, didn’t they?”

As his friends started squealing, Miyuki directed an impassive stare at him. Her gaze was asking whether, by some chance, he was stressed out at the moment. He casually turned away from her.

“But really, I wonder why they’re absent today,” wondered Mizuki.

“You’re right,” replied Mikihiko. “Neither seems the type to suddenly fall ill…”

Once the contents of everyone’s trays had changed from food to post-meal tea, the “both of them home from school together” doubts, which appeared to have been quelled for the moment, revived.

“I want to say you’re exaggerating, but…” said Tatsuya, “I feel the same way. And it didn’t look like either of them was unwell yesterday.”

Mikihiko and Tatsuya both appeared to have come to the conclusion that they weren’t out sick.

“Of course, it could just be a coincidence…” said Honoka to Tatsuya.

Shizuku was the one to answer her, though. “It could alsonot be a coincidence.”

“Well, I guess so…” said Honoka, this time to Shizuku, possibility countered with possibility. “But were they good-enough friends for anon-coincidental event to happen between them?”

“I don’t think it would be strange if it did…” replied Shizuku, looking over to Mizuki and asking what she thought.

“Oh, umm, I think so, too,” she said, quickly agreeing.

“But if the two of them are together…” added Miyuki, tilting her head in confusion, “what on earth could they be doing?”

Mizuki’s and Mikihiko’s faces went bright red on a time delay.

“…What did you two just imagine?”

“N-nothing! Nothing at all.”

“Th-that’s right! Nothing!”

“…All right,” sighed Miyuki. Their reactions had been far too easy to read. She glanced over at her brother.

“Yeah, well…this is nothing more than an opinion with no proof, a guess based on speculation, but…maybe Erika is actually working Leo pretty hard right now.”

Tatsuya winked at her sardonically.

Miyuki giggled and smiled. “That does seem possible.”

Clairvoyance wasn’t a part of Tatsuya’s skill set.

But he could do something similar.

Just as physical distance didn’t directly affect magic, it didn’t directly impede one’s perception of the Idea, either. If a target in the information world could be singled out, then no matter how physically far away it was, there was a possibility to “see” it. For example, if someone could look at the moon through a high-magnification astronomical telescope and pick out a moon-landing vessel (or the remnants thereof), one could “see” the status of that moon-landing vessel. (No optical telescopes had high-enough resolution, though.)

But this time, he hadn’t secretly taken a peek at what Erika and Leo were doing—discovering what they were doing had been completely coincidental.

“Hey, it’s wrinkling again!” scolded Erika as the one she scolded curled up at her feet, clutching his head.

“Agh, that hurt… How many times do I have to say this?! Say something instead of doing that! What do you even think words are for?!”

“But you wouldn’t get it if I told you in words.”

“Sure, and punching me will make me get it…”

Leo’s protest tapered off and faded out.

One reason, of course, was that he was the student here and couldn’t behave too forcibly. More importantly, though, he felt disappointed in himself. He wasn’t getting the hang of this, no matter how many times he repeated it.

“Well…I guess so. Let’s take a break.”

Erika, though, didn’t think Leo was disappointing at all. She probably knew better than him how difficult acquiring a new skill was.

“Here you go.”

“Uh, thanks.”

Erika, in a dojo uniform like Leo, who had sat cross-legged on the dojo’s planked floor, offered him a drink, chilled but not too chilled, then assumed the traditional Japaneseseiza position (politely kneeling while sitting on her heels) in front of him.

“You were great at it when you had the mantle on, too… I guess it feels different?”

There was no ill will within Erika or what she said, but Leo scowled. “…The one from the competition?”

Results aside, for Leo, that outfit was a memory he wished he could forget. It was clearly connected to the skill he was learning, though, so he couldn’t pretend he had forgotten.

“It’s not like it stretched out nice and flat like an ironing board. Maybe it had a few tiny wrinkles, but it was still a perfectly good shield. And the fabric had a spell to support extending and expanding it, too.”

Erika, still sitting inseiza, put a finger to her chin and tilted her head. “Hmm… There should be a support spell in this one, too… Maybe it would be faster to ask Tatsuya after all.”

“We can’t.” Leo shook his head. “If we bothered Tatsuya with this, we’d be putting the cart before the horse. If thereis a spell applied to this, then I just have to figure out how to activate it.”

“…You’re such a boy,” said Erika, giggling despite herself.

Her smile was oddly charming, and Leo looked away, unable to even snap back at her.

Today was Saturday, but school wasn’t out. Magic high schools didn’t have five-day school weeks. Students still had all their classes (including practical training sessions), and yet Tatsuya had come to visit Yakumo’s temple this morning again. And this time, he had Miyuki with him.

As a matter of fact, Yakumo had been the one to invite them, asking if they wanted to test the modifications he’d made to the temple’s distance target practice area.

Not many places offered magic shooting practice with live ammunition. Tatsuya, who couldn’t use the school’s practice grounds (he couldn’t reveal his Mist Dispersion at school), was especially thankful for the chance to practice shooting somewhere close rather than having to go all the way to Tsuchiura.

Miyuki, unlike her brother, had no reason to conceal her abilities, but she couldn’t use the practice grounds as much as the students in clubs. And besides, the magic she specialized in involved more spells that coated an entire area than ones that pinpointed targets. That made it hard for her to devote much time to shooting practice, so Tatsuya had brought her along, saying it was a good opportunity.

The temple’s shooting grounds were spread out underneath the main building.

“…Eek! Take this!”

As expected, perhaps, the secretninjutsu users’ training grounds were somewhat different from their school’s facilities.

Miyuki, her inherent competitiveness on display, was breathing heavily, sweat dripping from her brow. She’d tripped several times, and the hair that she’d put up earlier was becoming loose in places.

The floor was a spacious square. Of the four walls, three—plus the ceiling—had dozens of holes, out of which targets appeared, one after another. (Not all four, since apparently being isolated in the middle of the enemy was actually an unrealistic scenario, and in real combat you would want to flee before that happened.)

To add to that, ten or so targets would appear simultaneously, and all of them were set up to hide again after one second. Just that made aiming a handful, but to make the job even harder, any shots she missed would be fired back as mock bullets.

Miyuki wasn’t letting the mock bullets hit her without resistance—she was blocking them all with magic—but juggling offense and defense had caused her to trip several times already.

“That’s enough!”

At Yakumo’s signal, the machines stopped, and Miyuki suddenly sank to the floor, an indication of how difficult this training facility’s menu was.

“Nice job.”

“Oh, Tatsuya… Thank you very much.”

Tatsuya held out a towel to her, and Miyuki reached for it gratefully. Instead of giving her the towel, Tatsuya took his sister’s hand with his free one and gently pulled her slender body off the floor.

“Ah…thank you.”

“You look unharmed,” said Tatsuya with a smile after giving his out-of-breath sister’s body, clad in a thin training shirt and spats that ended above the knee, a quick once-over.

The blood rising to Miyuki’s face wasn’t entirely due to the extreme exercise, but did Tatsuya really notice that? The answer never came out. His sister said “I’m fine,” and he just nodded curtly before proceeding to the center of the floor.

His attitude was curt, but no dissatisfaction could be seen in his sister. They hadn’t come here to play; if Tatsuya had been overly concerned about her, she would have chided him herself.

That didn’t happen, of course. Tatsuya briskly walked over, lifting his favorite CAD in front of his chest. A standby position, arms bent at the elbows.

The moment Miyuki left the floor, without any warning, the training course began.

Ball-shaped targets appeared on three walls. All of them, at the same time, turned to sand.

Tatsuya was in a shooting position now, right hand out in front. He had only pulled the trigger—pressed the CAD switch—once. Doing so had fired twelve targets with his dismantling spell.

Before there was time to breathe, more targets appeared, this time using the walls and ceiling.

There were twenty-four.

Not even bothering to aim at the one directly in front of him, he kept his CAD still and pulled the trigger.

Tatsuya twisted his body to avoid the fine plastic powder that fell on him. As he turned, he thrust his right hand overhead and squeezed the trigger.

As if to fill the gap caused by the crumbling spheres, more and more targets showed up. The frequency with which he pulled the trigger increased to two at a time, then three at a time.

Nevertheless, not one penalty bullet fired at him before the stock of targets ran out.

“Tatsuya, that was amazing!”

As the mechanisms stopped and Tatsuya lowered his CAD, Miyuki ran as if to jump onto him.

“Oh, dear. A perfect clear…” said Yakumo in mild astonishment, walking up from behind. “It’s still not hard enough?”

“This is the kind of thing I do best,” he replied. “I still only just barely made it, though. Who’s the one who thought up that evil algorithm? It was like it was hitting every blind spot.”

“I got the control program from Kazama, if that helps.”

“Ah, so it was Sanada…” groaned Tatsuya, thinking of the engineering officer’s face and how the Independent Magic Battalion’s most black-hearted expression hid behind his sociable smiles.

As Yakumo saw his pupil groan, only to soften his expression into a grin, Miyuki stepped between them, in front of Tatsuya. “Tatsuya, when did you increase your simultaneous targeting to thirty-six?”

But it wasn’t out of consideration for him; a significant portion of her action was out of the desire to express her own excitement.

“I believe three months ago, your upper limit was twenty-four.”

Miyuki was referring to the number of targets Tatsuya could aim at and use a spell on simultaneously. His specialized CAD was shaped like a gun, but spells didn’t fly out of the barrel. Multipurpose CADs didn’t even have a barrel to begin with.

Categorized into four families and eight types, the essence of modern magic was to overwrite information possessed by events, not to shoot a magical bullet at a target. Therefore, it could exert the same effect on one event or many, depending on how the caster specified the targets.

To do that, however, the caster had to define multiple coordinates at once, and that required parallel thinking. He also had to identify all the subtle differences between the events—after all, to use magic against several targets of event alteration like he had, you had to perceive each individually rather than taking all those targets and perceiving them as a single thing to be altered.

Up through the single digits, mostly anyone could acquire the skill depending on their training. Any higher than that and things needed a different talent than magic. Even increasing your capacity beyond that by a single target was considered very difficult. Miyuki’s sparkling eyes weren’tsolely due to the brother-complex filters she wore in them.

Tatsuya, though, smiled at her question and shook his head. “Well, they weren’t firing back—that is, they were set up to wait for you before shooting. In real combat, where enemies don’t wait, twenty-four is still all I can muster.”

“Please, you don’t need to be so modest. The training may be set up to wait for you to fire, but I can still only target sixteen at once. You’re amazing, Tatsuya.”

“All right, all right. Flattery won’t get you anywhere. You can use magic over a wider area than me,even when you’re always attentive to me, so you’re probably better than me at controlling it, too.”

“If we’re going that far, then actually, you can apply interference far more strongly and deeply than I can—isn’t that right?”

Yakumo grinned wryly at their enigmatic conversation and interrupted. “Come on, you two. The walls have ears, you know.”

The siblings exchanged glances that saidoops and then they both gave a similarly deceptive smile.

Tatsuya and Miyuki eventually left the underground practice arena to the veranda of Yakumo’s private living quarters.

It went without saying that Yakumo was the one who had brought them here. He would frequently treat them to tea after training, but he didn’t usually bring them to his quarters, instead favoring the main temple’s veranda.He must have something different from usual to talk to us about, thought Tatsuya.

“I know you both have school, so I’ll keep this short,” began Yakumo, right after bringing three teacups in and sitting down next to Tatsuya. “I believe you’ve come into the possession of something quite curious.”

Tatsuya didn’t have to ask to know he was referring to the Ni no Magatama. It was a surprise attack but not a shock. If this level ofverbal attack were enough to shake his composure, he couldn’t keep up with the priest.

“It was left in my care.” Though indirectly, Tatsuya plainly admitted to it. Feigning ignorance with this man was pointless; that had been made clear to him time and time again. Besides, Tatsuya knew perfectly well that Yakumo wasn’t the type to rejoice over pointlessly exposing someone’s secrets.

“You should return it as soon as you can. And if you can’t, then you need to move it out of your house and somewhere more appropriate.”

Tatsuya had expected Yakumo to give him a warning, but his tone of voice was tinged with an unexpected seriousness.

Tatsuya’s surprise gave way to tension. Instead of continuing as he was, Tatsuya adjusted his sitting position to face Yakumo diagonally.

“I hadn’t realized someone was targeting it.”

His words included a desire for confirmation, not quite believing that was the case. Ever since he himself had run into that trouble—and been hurt—when Sayuri was attacked, he’d been paying more attention to his surroundings than usual. However, aside from one slight annoyance, he hadn’t sensed any threat large enough for Yakumo to be concerned about.

“They’re creeping around very carefully. And they’re well trained.”

Yakumo’s answer, a warning about the enemy’s extraordinary skills, also hinted that he’d learned their identity.

“I’d ask who they are, but you probably wouldn’t tell me.”

“Well, the question wouldn’t becompletely futile.”

Yakumo’s response was truly insinuating, but Tatsuya didn’t hurry the man.

On the other hand, Yakumo, possibly surprised by Tatsuya not biting at the lure by this point, slowly continued. “Let’s see… Here’s another piece of advice. If you find the enemy, take care not to lose your sense of direction.”

“Direction…?” asked Miyuki dubiously.

Tatsuya silently considered the priest, wondering what his answer would be.

“Any more, and you’ll have to take out your wallet.”

Unfortunately, the man didn’t give him an answer.

With the priest’s dark smile before him, Tatsuya decided not to inquire any further.

The Thesis Competition was in one week and one day.

“Presentation backup” was a system that—it would not be an exaggeration to say—involved the entire school.

Most of the experimental equipment they’d use during the presentation was finished. Still, for the sake of more effective production and more reliable operation, they ran through one rehearsal after another, constantly reviewing and making improvements and adjustments.

Some were involved with putting together the demo equipment, some planned the onstage production, some instructed others on how to effectively support the presenters from the audience seats, some provided means of transportation and handed out food… Even the “indoorsy” students who hadn’t gotten a turn for the Nines were freely putting their talents on display.

Meanwhile, the more physically inclined students were also completely focused so they could reliably perform their own duties. A few of the heavyweights, for whom one wouldn’t normally consider preparation necessary, were taking initiative and pouring their energy into training for unlikely trouble.

The hill next to the school had been remodeled into an outdoor training area. Magic high schools weren’t prep schools for the military or police force, but since those were the things many students were after, there were a lot of shapes and sizes of such facilities, both indoors and outdoors.

In its artificial forest, for instance, Mikihiko currently lay hidden, watching his senior and training partner.

He was crouched under the shade of a tree while his partner was exposed in a spot unoccupied by trees. His imposing openness put pressure on Mikihiko, even though he wasn’t looking his way.

He was practicing against the club committee chairman, Katsuto Juumonji.

For the upcoming Thesis Competition, Katsuto had been made the commanding officer of the venue’s security team, which was composed of members from all nine schools. In addition to meeting the other schools’ representatives, he took the lead of his own training routines, raising the morale of the other students selected as team members.

Mikihiko had been chosen as a practice opponent thanks to his display at the Nine School Competition. Of course, he wasn’t the only one serving as Katsuto’s opponent. When this started, it had been ten versus one.

Within three minutes, seven had retired.

Mikihiko had only fired a few ranged attacks from afar, and despite never having been attacked, he was drenched in sweat.

A cold sweat.

…Maybe I got ahead of myself.

When he’d first been told about this practice, he’d nearly jumped for joy. He was a freshmanand a Course 2 student who wasn’t in any magic competition clubs. Being the Juumonji’s next leader’s training partner would have been difficult even if Mikihiko had been the one to ask for it.

Mikihiko had agreed without hesitation to Sawaki, who had brought the idea to him, vigorously bowing in thanks.

He knew Katsuto was far beyond anyone he could compete with, but he’d still wanted to fight with all his might and gain valuable experience.

Unfortunately…

I need to calm down. This is just a mock battle.

…he’d been telling himself that for a while now.

Katsuto was holding back, as he should have. None of the seven who retired had severe wounds. But that didn’t relieve the crushing pressure Mikihiko felt emanating from him.

Mikihiko was by no means weak-hearted. In fact, he was enduring Katsuto’s pressure well. Moments ago—three minutes, to be exact—a freshman of the Hundred, Igarashi, had caved under the pressure and launched a reckless attack that ended in him being taken out.

Mikihiko’s breath had become ragged before he realized it.

The volume of his inhalations and exhalations had, at some point, reached audible levels.

He immediately noticed it and quickly stopped.

Only two or three of those audible breaths would have made it out.

They should have been so soft you couldn’t hear them from a yard away, even indoors.

And yet Katsuto’s eyes locked straight on to the tree behind which Mikihiko was hiding.

A new layer of cold sweat broke out on his back. He forced himself to start breathing again and focused on his senses of hearing and touch.

He wasn’t bold enough to investigate with magic. He knew Katsuto had found him, but he wasn’t bold enough to expose himself. Peeking out from behind the tree was out of the question.

Instead, he listened carefully to the flow of air around him.

Through the cloth on his kneeling leg, he felt a slight vibration come through the ground.

That wasn’t enough.

His eyes read the slight changes in refraction that the agitation in the airflow caused, and his nose and tongue sensed the ratio changes in the chemicals mixed into the air.

Mobilizing his five senses, he began to rebuild the vague information from his sixth sense into reliable data.

Katsuto steadily stepped toward him, neither hastily nor overcautiously.

…Three, two, one—now!

After counting down in his head, Mikihiko slammed his right hand into the ground.

His psions followed the fuses running through the ground, pouring through a spell circle.

He had set up this conditional-activation spell before hiding behind the tree, and now, with the caster’s psi-waves as a trigger, it sprang into effect.

Four earth pillars erupted from the ground near Katsuto, surrounding him.

They were positioned in a square whose corners lay exactly southeast, southwest, northwest, and northeast; that is, earth, man, heaven, and demon.

A moment later, the ground on which Katsuto stood collapsed into the shape of a mortar.

Doton Kansei, an old-style spell whose name meant “earth-escape pitfall.”

It was not a spell for escaping into earth as its name would imply, but for covering the enemy in earth and sand and dropping an opponent into a hole, then using the distraction and trap to secure time to escape.

Against low-level opponents, it could also prevent someone from moving and allow the caster to capture them. Against Katsuto Juumonji, he’d be lucky if it did anything more than buy him time, and Mikihiko wasn’t arrogant enough about his own skill to think it would.

Not sparing any time to check if his spell worked, he bolted away from his spot.

His judgment was accurate.

Once the dust cleared, a circular hole in the ground was revealed, earth and sand piled up in a ring, and Katsuto himself without a speck of dirt on him.

His defensive spell had completely shut out Mikihiko’s attack.

Still, the screenhad forced him to let his prey escape from sight.

Katsuto grinned. Then, he stepped onto the ground—he’d been levitating slightly due to his wall’s repellent force.

To prevent accidents, and to provide help in case of emergencies during these magical mock battles, many monitors stood watch both inside and outside.

“Wow…”

Mari let out a noise of admiration as she watched the screen.

Mikihiko was a freshman, and yet he’d survived this long. His skill was praiseworthy. They’d seen during the Nines that he had excellent abilities, unconcerned with the Course 1/Course 2 system. But seeing him fighting for real like this again, his practical use of magic, rather than his unique magic skills themselves, stood out.

“He’s clever in a different way than Tatsuya,” said Mayumi to Mari. “So many interesting freshmen this year.”

Mari grinned wryly. “It honestly seems like there are more hopeful Course 2 kids than Course 1. That’s ironic.”

Mayumi smiled painfully as if to reprove her. “That’s not it, Mari. Course 1 still has more kids who are altogether better. This year, the ones with unique abilities are standing out, and they’re giving us the wrong impression, that’s all.”

Her remark struck Mari as likely. “I see.” She nodded, looking back at the monitor. “He definitely still seems useful compared to the other freshmen, though. Birds of a feather flock together, I guess.”

“The teachers were talking about how radically Yoshida has improved from his experience at the Nines, too. I hope we can continue to ride this wave…”

“Right, since he doesn’t seem like the type to take a leadership role.”

“Yes, he’s more the type to make lots of enemies, isn’t he?”

As Mari and Mayumi smiled drily at each other, the lookout system monitor showed Mikihiko driven into a dead end and putting up a desperate last resistance.

Preparations against unlikely problems weren’t only happening at school.

Leo had come here again today instead of school this morning, to the dojo of the Chiba family, one of the Hundred and known as the Sword Magicians.

For six hours, with lunch in the middle, Leo had been swinging a wooden sword and was dripping with sweat. The long, thick, metallic-corebokuto meant for practice swings would have even advanced practitioners groaning after three hours straight. Even Erika, who said mean things to him on a regular basis, couldn’t help but be astonished at Leo’s physical stamina and mental fortitude.

“All right, enough!”

At Erika’s signal, Leo let down his arms and, as one might have expected, exhaled deeply.

In front of him, she was wiping the sweat from her brow with a towel.

“You’re really tough, you know that? I mean, you’ve never had anykenjutsu experience before.”

Her words couldn’t exactly be calledpolite, but the usual teasing feeling in them was absent. She sounded honestly impressed.

Leo knew that, so he shrugged, somewhat embarrassed, then gave an intentionally brusque answer. “Even calling me a beginner would be too much compared to the others here. I’m normally swinging around ice picks and pickaxes, after all.”

“Ice picks, sure, but pickaxes…? What on earth does that mountaineering club of yours even do?”

“I think the same thing sometimes… Anyway, if I’m tough, that makes you just as tough, doesn’t it?”

As he said, Erika hadn’t simply been watching Leo do his practice swings. She’d been standing in front of him doing her own as an example. He’d been watching how she swung and then imitating it.

“The one I was swinging around was a light one. I’d have given up a long time ago if I’d been using yours,” she said, tossing thebokuto she’d been using to him.

He safely caught the sudden throw, then swung it with one hand to test its weight. Understanding and puzzlement appeared on his face. “You’re right, it is…but it seems so light you’d have trouble swinging it with both hands.”

“That’s where the skill comes in,” said Erika, without any modesty or affectation, putting the towel on her neck. As if feeling hot, she pulled off the front collar of her kendo uniform and fanned herself with it. He hadn’t seen anything untoward, but he looked away anyway.

She was being attentive and purposely not showing anything, so even if he acted suspiciously, she wouldn’t be embarrassed or alert. Having been his classmate for half a year, she knew that, despite his rough exterior, the boy was surprisingly pure-hearted and obstinate. Her impression was that he was the type, for example, to see the door to the girls’ locker room slightly open, and even if he knew nobody was around, he’d stubbornly pretend not to see it, and leave.

Of course, him averting his eyes so blatantly still made Erika feel a little awkward.

“…What are you looking at?” she asked, giving him a sullen glare.

“Huh?!” Leo reacted with unnatural confusion. “No, I, uh, wasn’t looking at anything!”

Seeing him so flustered made her feel embarrassed, even though she didn’t need to. Even Erika had enough girlishness in her for that. “I know you’re not looking at anything! I mean, don’t go looking elsewhere!”

“R-right. Sorry.”

An awkward air lurked between the two, but Erika wasn’t the sort to keep on fidgeting forever. “…We’re going to the next stage.”

Erika stared sharply at him, but that made Leo feel relieved rather than perturbed. “The straw sheaves were next, right?”

“Yeah. Follow me.”

Erika took the lead and brought him to a room with a wall of hard-packed straw stacks in a grid pattern. It was for training one’s blade alignment—swinging the blade straight in and straight out. The idea was to cut through and leave perfectly level surfaces behind. If you couldn’t do that, you couldn’t perfectly bring out the blade’s efficiency. This was an absolutely essential skill for Leo especially, since she was trying to teach him theUsuba Kagerou.

“Here. This is a real sword, so be careful, would you?”

This time, she obviously didn’t toss it to him. Holding the middle of the grip, she held out the unsheathed katana to him.

Leo took it with both hands, his right just under the guard and his left on the bottom of the handle.

“You know the process, right?”

“Yeah. The sheaves laid across their sides—first I cut the top one of the stack. When I do, I have to stop the sword from touching the second one. After that, I cut the second one, and then the third one. After I cut all five of them, I move to the next stack. I’ll do the stacks in order, from left to right.”

“Very good. I’ll be taking a rest in the back, so once you’re done with the right end, come get me.”

“What should I do with the katana?”

“There’s a sheath next to the door, isn’t there?” said Erika, pointing next to the entrance.

Leo had watched her take the sword out of it, so he didn’t actually need to check, but he looked that way just to show he was paying attention.

“Just put it back in there. The sheath will do the cleaning.”

The sheath cleaning the blade meant there was a feature inside the sheath that got the dirt off and spread oil on the blade. That was how Leo interpreted it, anyway. He responded with affirmation, to which Erika casually waved and left the room behind.

With akiai, he swung the naked blade down.

At first, he’d been getting it stuck in the middle or using too much force and cutting into the next level. On the last stack, though, he’d cleaved all the sheaves in two with one swing. That swing was the last one. He was finished with the task Erika had given him. It probably hadn’t even taken ten minutes. Leo shook his head.

It didn’t feel right—it was too easy. Since Erika said to get her when he was finished, he left the room. She’d mentioned she was taking a break, which meant she would have enough time to relax before he was done. At least, that’s what Erika must have thought. He’d taken no more time than it would to drink a cup of tea. He decided he must have done it wrong.

But he didn’t know what he did wrong. Erika had certainly misinterpreted his physical abilities, so no matter how much he thought, he wouldn’t figure it out. Fortunately, Leo didn’t commit the foolish act of wasting time thinking about it. He didn’t have the knowledge to come up with anything, so he figured that wouldn’t mean anything. Erika had told him to come get her when he was done, and though he didn’t feel like he was done, he decided to call her anyway.

He sheathed the katana as instructed and exited the practice room into a hallway, only to realize that he hadn’t asked where Erika would be.That was dumb even for me, he thought, mocking himself a little and glancing around to see if there was a HAR terminal anywhere. Unfortunately, he couldn’t find anything like it. Even if he had, who knows if it would have given him access privileges for private data? He quickly put an end to his search.

If he went back to the dojo, someone there would know where she was. He walked down the hall in the opposite direction from before, and conveniently enough ran into a young woman coming out of the central room. She looked like she was around twenty-five or twenty-six. She wore her calm-patterned kimono (Leo didn’t know what kind it was) with a natural grace; she could have been married or unmarried. She had a plain sort of appearance, but her attitude clued him in to the fact that she wasn’t a servant. And anyway, he was pretty sure there were no young, female servants in this estate in the first place.

“Oh, hello. You’re an unfamiliar face.”

Her relatively formal tone made Leo sure of it—she was part of the Chiba family. She didn’t look anything like Erika, but maybe she took after their mother, and this woman after their father or something.

“Oh…could you be the classmate Erika mentioned?”

She put familiarity into her voice, but it sounded obligatory and insincere to Leo. The sisters—Leo had taken to believing they were sisters—didn’t seem to be on very good terms.

“My name is Leonhard Saijou.” Of course, he wasn’t about to change his attitude just because they didn’t like each other. He realized putting on airs would just betray him. “Actually…Eri—Miss Chiba—told me to go get her when I was done with a task she gave me.”

He also had enough tact to be polite himself, but he almost flubbed it. The woman, thought to be Erika’s older sister, didn’t appear to mind it much.

“Where did she say she was waiting?”

She wasn’t minding the leaves—her eyes were on the trunk. A super-serious type, maybe, but Leo thought there was something else there. Not that he had proof, of course.

“She only said she was taking a break.”

“I see… Then she’s probably in the lounge,” said Erika’s sister (unconfirmed) as she took a small terminal from her kimono sleeve. After fluidly operating its touch screen for a moment, she said, “You can borrow this,” and offered it to Leo. “You just have to follow the path on here. This will open the door for you.”

“…Is it all right for me to intrude?”

“Erika was the one who told you to come get her, right?”

“Well, yes.”

He wasn’t entirely convinced, but he was, in fact, looking for Erika, so this did help. Having persuaded himself, he took the terminal, and Erika’s sister (unconfirmed) left him with the wordsTake your time—he didn’t know what she meant by that—and started heading back to the dojo.

“Man, this place is huge…”

He’d felt no lack of vacillation when he’d borrowed it, but now he was genuinely glad he had taken the portable terminal from the “sister.”

Still, the route to the lounge was incredibly difficult to grasp. It felt like—no, he was sure of it—he was being made to take the long way around, but he interpreted it as simply how the interior was arranged. In any case, after over five minutes of walking around, he finally made it to the door to the lounge.

He’d been given the okay to go on inside, but still, he held himself back. Erika wasn’t a family member, nor was she his girlfriend. She was just a classmate he happened to know somewhat well (even in his mind, he didn’t call her a “friend”).

He decided to knock first.

He got no response, so this time he called out. “Hey, Erika, you in there?”

Still no response.

“I’m coming in.”

Belatedly doubting she was actually there, he decided that if the room was empty, then he didn’t need to hesitate. He held the terminal in his hand to the reader next to the door.

With a classic electronic noise, the door unlocked.

Suddenly, sound emanated from the room.

Oh, so you arein there, thought Leo, opening thethick sliding door lacking a handle.

A shout of “Hang on a second!” came a moment later.

“…Eh?” came a dumb noise from Leo’s throat.

He didn’t realize he’d made the sound. But right now, he had no time to worry about that. The idea of moving even a finger, let alone closing his eyes, never made it to his brain.

The same went for the person he was staring at.

Erika was standing there, half-turned toward him, frozen.

This was the scene in Leo’s eyes:

Erika was in an unbecoming state, with only a bath towel wrapped around her. Because of her unnatural position, the knot at the top of her chest had loosened quite a bit.

At her hands was a massage chair that had fallen onto its back. She’d probably been lying on there until right before he’d opened the door.

Behind Erika, he could see a door with a proper doorknob. Leo finally realized the sliding door he’d opened had been an emergency exit.

The bath towel’s knot fluttered undone.

Time slowed to a fraction of its normal speed. No, this must have been his mind accelerating several times.

Erika’s hand quickly caught the slowly falling towel and held it against herself.

That finally broke the curse that kept Leo’s body still.

“Sor—”

“Creeper, lecher, Peeping Tom—close the door already, stupid!”

Before Leo could say sorry, a storm of abuse rained down on him so fast that Erika’s tongue could barely keep up with her thoughts.

He hastily shut the door, turned his back to it, and slid down to the floor.

“That spinster snake in the grass… I figured she was still my sister, I guess my thoughtfulness was misplaced…”

As Erika scattered curses and stomped on the floor, Leo, behind her, had a bright red autumn leaf stamped on his face. She’d demanded she get at least one punch at him, and he’d acquiesced, leaving him with that. She hadn’t used her fist, though, but her palm—not out of consideration for Leo having been a deceived victim as well, but simply because she didn’t want to hurt her fingers.

Leo didn’t complain once about the treatment. He believed this was entirely his fault. She’d been relaxing in the massage chair because she’d mistaken how much time it would take Leo to finish the exercise, but Leo opening the emergency exit without thinking first was a different problem. He had just barely avoided seeinganything important, but that didn’t seem to exempt him from responsibility. Deciding it would be best to go home for the day, he called out to her to apologize again.

“Erika?” “Leo.”

His voice overlapped exactly with Erika saying his name.

“Leo,” stated Erika again as Leo swallowed at her sharp gaze. “Forget everything that just happened.”

A natural request but still an unreasonable one. Nothing would make this easier than if he could forget by simply trying to forget.

“…But I’m sure that’s asking too much.”

But the “understanding” words that followed didn’t make Leo feel relieved; instead, he shuddered.

His premonition quickly became reality.

“I can’t have you remembering anything you don’t need to, so you have a lot more training in your future. Not just for theUsuba Kagerou but on the basics ofkenjutsu. All of them,” she repeated.

Maybe she thought that part was important. Erika filled him with such dread he couldn’t even get a word in.

“You’re staying here tonight.”

“…I only brought one change of clothes.” That response was all Leo could currently manage.

But even that Erika rejected.

“I can get you a change of underwear. Don’t worry, the dojo will pay for it.”

Even after the sun set, First High was filled with the energy of students rushing about. The school grounds were enveloped by tumult reminiscent of the last spurt before a campus festival. Magic high schools, crammed with normal high school education plus magic education curricula, had no school festival events. The yearly schedule had no room for them. Students participated normally in interschool sports and competitions, but school events where students overcame the barriers of clubs and grade levels to laterally create something did not exist, unfortunately. For magic high schools, unlike the Nine School Competition (the preparations for which were also done solely by those with superior practical skills), the Thesis Competition provided more opportunities for Course 2 students to be active as well, and during this time of year, everyone could fully enjoy excitement similar to a school festival.

The supply team, put together with female freshman volunteers from the cultural clubs as the main battle force, was going at full operation to match this last spurt. On normal days, they would have gone home a long time ago, but today, the girls were running all over delivering meals for dinner. Among their numbers was Mizuki, who belonged to the art club.

The sun set quickly in autumn, and this day in late October was no exception. The western sky, which had been dyed red until a little while ago, had been painted over in a gradient of lavender to dark blue. Looking at the outside scenery, for which the presence of night had grown completely strong, Mikihiko thought,It’s gotten pretty late, and sighed.

He’d been called in today to serve as former club committee chairman Katsuto Juumonji’s practice partner. Not one-on-one, of course. It was a ten-on-one mock battle, and he was one of the ten.

He hadn’t thought it would be over in one match, and he hadn’t wanted it to be, either. Ten Master Clans, Course 1 kids, it didn’t matter—Katsuto’s strength had burned itself into his eyes at the Nine School Competition. Mock battle though it may have been, he wouldn’t be able to get many opportunities to have a contest with someone so powerful. He understood Katsuto’s strength and his own weakness from experience—and that in itself made the time valuable. Mikihiko had used this chance to attend the mock battle with the enthusiasm of greedily gathering knowledge of how to fight with modern magical fighters.

And as he’d hoped, they’d fought in five mock battles, and he’d been crushed by Katsuto five times. As he lay on the ground (or being made to lay there), gasping for breath, his heart and mind were satisfied by the fulfilling time he’d expected. After Saturday’s half day of classes ended, it was 4:30 in the afternoon whenhe finished being Katsuto’s training partner. So that he wouldn’t vomit during the training and embarrass himself, he’d only eaten a few simple supplements for lunch, and now he was understandably starving. Just as he’d been squinting at the radiance of the sun in the far west, he muttered, “Time to go home.” When he got up, he heard the command that break time was over.

Katsuto was going to be the commanding officer of the venue’s security team, made up of members from all nine schools, so it had been Sawaki, who had taken over command of First High’s security team in his place, who had delivered the command. Mikihiko had stood reflexively, spurred by Sawaki’s enthusiasm (washed away by it, actually) and had ended up participating in their later coordinated training as one of the criminals. It had been an hour since then. The security members were still training, but all the freshmen called as practice partners had been relieved. (The juniors still weren’t allowed to leave.)

After changing out of his mud-stained training gear and into his school uniform, Mikihiko headed for the second gymnasium (nicknamed “the arena”), where the security team was doing hand-to-hand combat practice. On the surface, he had helped them, but Mikihiko was clearly the one to benefit most. He wanted to thank them for that. He was planning on just giving them a quick thank-you and leaving so he wouldn’t get in their way, but…

“Yoshida, you too. Go have something to eat before you leave!”

Once again, Sawaki had caught him. They had clashed with the meal-delivery team.Bad timing, thought Mikihiko. It was mostly only juniors left in the arena right now. Not to say the freshmen selected for the security team were absent, but unfortunately, most of them were people Mikihiko had only just met today. Hewas hungry, though. In that sense, it was actually good timing. But eating in this group, he thought, would not only make the food hard to taste but also upset his stomach.

His mind raced as he looked for the words to decline. But as soon as he started thinking of a countermeasure, he felt an odd stare of anticipation mixed with relief on him. Normally, anticipation was paired with unease, but the emotion he could read from this gaze was clearly one of relief. Letting his curiosity get the better of him, he stole a glance back toward where it was coming from. But as soon as their eyes met, the girl he was close with (or thought he was close with) turned her face away in a fluster.

Then, Mizuki, who had immediately looked away from him, directed an awkward smile at him. He was quietly shocked.

Unable to work out an excuse to escape because he was preoccupied with Mizuki—though it looked like any excuse would have ended up the same way—Mikihiko was engulfed by the people sitting in a circle.

It seemed this was the last stop for their deliveries, and the girls on the delivery team were sitting politely and taking sandwiches out of lunchboxes on their laps (the boys had sandwiches plus rice balls with filling). Or maybe they had just sympathized with the hopeful eyes of the filthy, all-male security team. As evidence (?) of this, the girls, before sitting down on the tatami mats of the small gymnasium—now a judo hall—went around pouring tea for and handing out napkins to the boys sitting in the ring.

Mikihiko sat down when the delivery team’s bonus service was about to end. Pulled into the circle by force, he sat down inseiza on the tatami, then obeyed the educational guidelines that immediately came to mind and sat in a more natural position. A moment later, a girl kneeled next to him and handed him a wrapped meal. He didn’t need to look again to see who it was. He’d been following her out of the corner of his eye.

“Thanks, Shibata.”

After Mikihiko’s sincere thanks, Mizuki made an exaggeratedly bashful face. The lips of several upperclassmen (mostly girls) pulled up into a smile of amusement, but nobody made any remarks. They were students of the elite First High, and they knew how to be moderate. After all, careless banter would end the spectacle, wouldn’t it?

Mikihiko and Mizuki, though, didn’t notice the vortex of bad motives. Neither had the time. She’d sat next to him without thinking much of it, but she didn’t have the bravery to speak up to a boy with all these upperclassmen around, even if he was a classmate. Mikihiko, for his part, wasn’t bad at talking to girls, given the abundance of female students at home (a trend shared among any Shinto-type old magic families), but thanks to Mizuki getting spectacularly red in the face, he started to feel strangely conscious of her and was unable to find the right chance to say anything.

As a result—it bred a very “first-love couple” mood, extremely innocent and heartwarming to those who watched. And right now, girls weren’t the only ones watching over them with warm (or lukewarm) gazes. Even the martial arts boys, who one would think disconnected from this sort of thing, noticed the subtle air floating about. The moment a cliché situation happened—like Mizuki pouring Mikihiko more tea, accidentally touching his hand, and getting flustered and drawing it back—silent murder and silent applause would fly about in equivalence from the entire circle of people.

Having come this far, though they didn’t know others were having a good time at their expense, the pair began to realize something was going on; they were both sensitive enough to realize it. When they did, the eyes on them they’d disregarded began to feel uncomfortable. It was especially striking in Mizuki’s case. Her restless, fidgety attitude slowly grew stronger until eventually, she said, “Umm, I, well, need to,” which he didn’t really understand, and stood up—or tried to, anyway.

Incidentally, in modern Japan, the practice of sitting on tatami mats had long since died out. The average lifestyle now involved sitting on chairs, and Japanese people accustomed to sittingseiza were limited to people in martial arts practices, certain other practices like tea ceremonies, or religious practices—those with special training. However, the generally accepted thought of girls having to sitseiza had survived to the modern day, and most of the girls on the delivery team were sitting that way as well.

The upperclassmen, though, were secretly using magic to make themselves lighter. Once you were a junior, even if you were in Course 2, spells like this that didn’t especially need speed or precision were possible to trigger without a CAD. Of course, it would take anywhere from ten to thirty seconds for effects to appear, and sometimes the older girls would fall silent in order to reapply the weight-decreasing spell. The male students were aware as well, and wouldn’t speak to a girl who suddenly grew quiet.

But for Mizuki, a freshman and a Course 2 student, doing such a thing was still impossible. In fact, she didn’t even know a trick to make yourself lighter with magic when sittingseiza existed in the first place. In addition, she had no relation to any practices that would need her to sit on tatami…

“Whoa!”

…and her legs had gone utterly and completely numb.

A moment after rising, her legs got tangled, she yelped, and fell. Mikihiko instantly reached out but couldn’t quite make it in time. Though he managed to get up to his knees and stop Mizuki’s upper body, it was all he could do to brace himself so they didn’t fall over together. He didn’t have the time to read much into where he was grabbing or supporting.

In any case, after completely absorbing the momentum of the fall, he sighed in relief, opened his eyes, and saw the back of Mizuki’s head in front of him. That meant he had his arms clasped around her from behind. And then he started to wonder—what was the soft, voluminous feeling in each hand coming from?

Mikihiko wanted to stop thinking right then and there. His thoughts, however, betrayed him, and he ascertained what his hands were grabbing. Mizuki’s frozen mind rebooted at the same time he realized the situation he was in right now.

“…?!”

“I-I-I-I’m sorry!”

Mizuki gave a voiceless shriek and twisted her body away. Mikihiko hastily let go. Her hands went to the tatami, and she quickly realized that in her crawling position, her rear end was pointed right at him, and panicked even more. Forgetting her legs were numb, she rose, turned around, and then fell backward. Because of the string of forced movements, her skirt flapped pretty far up. Her legs, wrapped in leggings, became visible up to a fairly high part of her thighs. Then, with quicker motions one couldn’t imagine from a regular girl, she sat back down on her knees, but with her legs apart and hands between them to hold down her skirt hem. Her face was already red, but it was getting so much brighter it was like she was burning. Tears formed in her eyes, and when she rose again, without falling, she ran out of the gymnasium.

“What are you daydreaming for?! After her, Yoshida!”

As Mikihiko watched Mizuki leaving in a daze, an upperclassman girl he didn’t know the name of scolded him.

He hastily stood up, went for the door, turned back to the shoe cubbies, put on his shoes, grabbed a pair of communal sandals for Mizuki—who had run out in just her leggings—and dashed outside, under the starry sky, searching for her in the distance.

Today was Sunday, but Tatsuya still had to go to school. Not for remedial classes—but because the Thesis Competition was in a week, and naturally, he had to prepare for it.

But right now, he was on his jumbo electric bicycle, heading in an entirely different direction from the school. His sister, wearing a matching bike outfit, had her slender arms around his waist, and her soft chest pressed against his back.

They weren’t on a date. Nor were they on a leisurely Sunday ride.

They were headed for the Four Leaves Technology lab to return the Relic sample at Yakumo’s advice. Of course, they weren’t returning it to the main office’s lab but to R & D Section 3, where he worked under the moniker Taurus Silver. He’d planned to include them in the analysis work, but he’d gotten an agreement out of Sayuri when she gave him the Relic, so there was no problem (probably).

They didn’t use public transportation because they were being cautious of another attack. It took about an hour at full speed to get to the lab. Using public transportation would send them on a significantly roundabout route, so this way was far shorter. It wasn’t a long-enough ride for Tatsuya, who was physically trained, or Miyuki, who could always use inertial control, to need a break. Nevertheless, when they left the urban areas, Tatsuya stopped his bike at a café that was open early.

He gestured for the dubious Miyuki to enter, and they sat down at a window-side table and ordered only drinks (they’d just eaten breakfast at home) before Tatsuya finally answered his sister’s unspoken question.

Tatsuya put his elbows on the table, folded his hands in front of his mouth, and quietly said, “We’re being tailed.”

“What?!” replied Miyuki, barely managing to keep her volume under control. “I didn’t realize… A car? Or a motorcycle like ours?” she whispered, leaning forward.

The waitress blushed and looked away, her eyes still fixed on the siblings. She was pretending not to see, but Miyuki didn’t have the time to be prying into her reasons. (In fact, she didn’t even notice the suspicious behavior in the first place.)

“A raven.”

Miyuki’s eyes popped open at the simple answer, and it took a moment for her to understand. “…A familiar…?”

“Yeah. A compound one, too.”

Of the surveillance systems that used disguised animals or birds were bird- or animal-shaped robots, machines implanted in birds or animals, old-style spells applied to birds or animals, and compound-form birds and animals.

A compound form was a temporary substantiation of spiritual energy.

That only applied to their appearance, though; their forms were constructed on a foundation of psionic particles underneath light reflection–controlling illusion magic. By using weighting, acceleration, and movement magic—or fields that granted the same effects—one could make them seem like physical creatures.

Creating a compound form sounded like more trouble than it was worth, but it had its advantages. Constructing a medium for the spell to act on, then making it visible and touchable, let the caster more easily visualize commands to alter the spell’s operation.

“…Then the magician isn’t from Japan. Where could they be from?”

Spells to create compound forms only appeared in old magic. The nickname “compound form” was something modern magic scientists had given it upon analyzing the old spells.

And, as Miyuki said, techniques using compound-form familiars were a thing of the past in Japan. And what familiars the old-style castersdid use commonly lacked actual form—practically all of them, in fact.

The waitress brought them coffee and milk tea. Tatsuya didn’t speak until she walked away. That waiting time ended up with him silently staring at Miyuki, further inflating the employee’s misunderstanding, but he was neither aware enough to notice it nor sensitive enough to let it bother him.

“I don’t know that much,” he finally said. “Mikihiko might have been able to say.”

Tatsuya moved their cups to the side and took his sister’s hands in his.

That caused a quiet commotion around them, and he finally realized that others were looking at them. Still, pulling his hands back out of embarrassment felt like losing, and he had to hold them anyway. As his sister made a face that would cause a misunderstanding for anyone, Tatsuya endeavored to keep his own expression serious—though that had the exact opposite effect on the rubbernecks—and whispered to her.

“We can’t lead it to the lab,” he said.

“…”

“Miyuki?”

“Huh? I, umm, right, yes, you’re right.”

As her eyes glazed over even more, Tatsuya wanted to hold his head in his hands, but he forced the impulse away with willpower. “This is the compound form’s position.”

Tatsuya converted the position of the compound form he’d “seen” into psionic signals, and sent them through their touching palms and into Miyuki, deep into her mind, where her magic-calculation region resided in her unconsciousness.

When executing magic, a magician inputted the alteration target’s coordinates into his or her magic-calculation region as a variable. This variable was an encoded image that each individual magician created in his or her own mind, so normally, magicians couldn’t share them. As a result of the Yotsuba’s unique magic technology, however, Tatsuya and Miyuki could exchange these psionically encoded images through physical contact.