Enrollment Arc, Part II

by Tsutomu Sato

  Just from what Tatsuya had seen this past week, there was no truth to the statement that clubs unrelated to magical competition were being unfairly oppressed by the school. It was true that the school provided various forms of support to competitive magic clubs. However, that was part of their advertising to make them look better as a magic high school, done from an administrative perspective.

  In his view, this girl was making this fervent speech because she couldn’t tell the difference between her not being given preferential treatment and her being given the cold shoulder.

  However, that proved to be too hasty a conclusion. “I can’t stand even my sword skills being scorned just because I can’t use magic very well. I can’t endure them being ignored. I won’t let them deny everything I am just because of magic.”

  Her tone was unexpectedly strong. The emotion in it was beyond conviction, closer to deep-seated delusion—that’s what Tatsuya felt.

  Perhaps feeling uncomfortable at Tatsuya’s steady, serious stare, Sayaka cleared her throat and repositioned herself. “The noncompetitive magic clubs have all decided to be allies. We got a lot of people who agree even from outside the kendo club. We’re planning to create an organization separate from the club committee and announce our thoughts to the school at some point this year. I would like you to help as well, Shiba.”

  “I see…” He’d thought her more the idol type, but she was a true warrior woman. He smiled at how mistaken his impression had been.

  “…Are you making fun of me?” It seemed she’d mistaken his smile.

  He felt like leaving her misunderstanding alone would mean she wouldn’t bother him in the future, but he went and said something he didn’t need to anyway. “That’s not what I meant. It was just funny how I thought wrong about you. I thought you were just a pretty girl who does kendo—I misjudged you…”

  The second sentence was spoken half to himself. Ever since enrolling, there had been attractive girls appearing one after the other, each with one or two quirks. He actually felt like laughing loudly about having unconsciously hoped this one would be a normal, pretty girl.

  “Pretty…” Perhaps because his awareness was directed inward at that time, Sayaka’s mutter, her face flushing with red, and her suspicious fidgeting all passed him by.

  “Mibu?”

  “Wh-what is it?”

  Still unaware of it, and suppressing an urge to smile, Tatsuya set his face again. Sayaka’s voice in reply had been somewhat flustered, but he didn’t show any signs of thinking about it. Then, he said something that was really unnecessary. “After you tell the school what you think, what are you going to do?”

  “…Huh?”

  The student council that day was quite different from how it used to be, and not even two weeks had passed.

  First, the dining server had absolutely no part to play anymore. With Mari and Miyuki making their own lunches, Mayumi began to do so as well. With no past records, her skill made everyone a little anxious, though Mari was the only one actually worried. But she had gotten through the easier stages at a passable level, and now she was having fun changing up the kind of food she brought.

  And there were more members now. Azusa usually ate with her classmates unless someone said something to her, but lately, people had been saying something every day. They invited her for a selfish reason, an absurd one—in any case, an illogical one: The ratio of freshmen to seniors in the room was unbalanced. Her personality wouldn’t let her turn them down, though she’d probably accepted reluctantly.

  On the other hand, the ratio of boys to girls was one to four. If balance was an issue, then this was a bigger one. They didn’t seem to treat it as a problem.

  “Tatsuya?”

  “Yes, Chairwoman?”

  In the middle of a lunch with those same members, Mari addressed him from across the table. (The positions at the table had Tatsuya seated next to Miyuki, with Mari across from him and Mayumi across from his sister, and Azusa next to Mayumi.)

  Mari had tried to nonchalantly strike up a conversation, but there was no hiding the heckling in her smile. And even that expression looked good on her. “…Is it true you were topping Mibu, the sophomore, yesterday in the cafeteria? Conversationally, I mean.”

  Tatsuya was grateful he’d already finished eating. If something had been in his mouth, it would be everywhere right now. “…You’re an adolescent lady, too, so I don’t think you should use immodest terms like topping.”

  “Ha-ha-ha, thanks. You’re about the only one who treats me like a lady, Tatsuya.”

  “Is that so? Your boyfriend must not be much of a gentleman if he doesn’t treat his own girlfriend as a lady.”

  “That’s not it! Shuu is—” Mari broke off and held her tongue, her expression implying she wished she hadn’t said that.

  “…” Tatsuya stared at his superior—well, the student who held a higher position in a high school committee, anyway—with an expression that was literally empty.

  “…”

  “…”

  “…Why aren’t you saying anything?”

  “…Should I be making some sort of comment?”

  Mari glimpsed bouncing, thick, wavy black hair out of the corner of her eye. Extremely reluctantly, she slid her gaze to the side.

  And as expected…Mayumi had her back turned, and her shoulders were shaking. Mari gave her a pointed glare, then quickly looked away, returning her gaze to Tatsuya. “…So is it true you were topping Mibu from the kendo club?”

  It looked like she wanted to treat all of that as though it hadn’t happened. Tatsuya looked next to Mari; Mayumi stopped her stifled laughter and shrugged in an exaggerated manner.

  —That was that, then. He decided to follow their house rules. “Like I said, I don’t think you should use terms like topping… I don’t want you teaching such vulgar terms to my sister…”

  “…Excuse me, Tatsuya? You do know how old I am, right…?” argued Miyuki reluctantly but modestly, her voice low. Tatsuya shot her a look of apology and immediately dropped it.

  Once again, silence was the name of the battle. If this were a shogi match, the current player would be changing up their strategy.

  But these house rules…meant that, unfortunately, it was Tatsuya who needed to change things up. “…That is not true.”

  “Oh, really? We have some witnesses who saw Mibu getting embarrassed, and her face getting bright red.”

  Tatsuya suddenly felt a chill drift over from the seat next to him.

  “Tatsuya…? May I ask just what it was you were doing?”

  It wasn’t just his imagination; the temperature in the room was dropping physically and locally.

  “M-magic…?” Azusa’s mumble was tinged with fear.

  Modern magic was the natural progression of supernatural ability research. Basically, modern magic, in an underlying sense, had succeeded the so-called characteristics of “supernatural abilities.” The biggest difference between old magic and supernatural abilities was whether or not some non-thought process was required to activate it. This was the fundamental reason modern magic didn’t absolutely need CADs, too.

  At the same time, modern magic wasn’t equivalent to supernatural abilities. Normally, espers could only use a certain type, or at most a few types, of strange powers. Modern magic had systematized and organized these so-called supernatural abilities. By introducing magic programs and activation programs, the tools for constructing magic programs, into the activation process, modern magic made it possible for people to use magic of dozens of types—even hundreds in some cases.

  However, modern magic had a tendency to subdivide itself too thinly, and differing supernatural abilities that would be broadly measured under the same scale would end up in at least twenty or thirty different types. Despite that, modern magic was overwhelming in its versatility.

  Modern users of magic, or magicians, used a plethora of magic through the medium of magic programs. The execution of magic used by t
hese magicians, then, was adjusted to suit their own mental processes.

  Magicians who were close to being espers and specialized in specific magic could activate magic through thought alone, without clear intent. Ones who used dozens of different types of magic, however, normally couldn’t use magic accidentally.

  It is true that magic programs are processed by the unconscious part of the mind, but that was only because the caster was making a deliberate choice. There was absolutely no chance they could formulate and execute magic programs wholly unintentionally.

  If one of those magicians skilled in many types of magic could also activate their abilities unconsciously, that would be…

  “That’s quite impressive phenomenological influence…” murmured Mayumi. Tatsuya smiled drily. Even the now-abandoned supernatural abilities worked the same way to affect reality: by manipulating eidos, bodies of information that accompanied events. While magic running loose was proof of inexperience, it was also proof of superior talent.

  “Calm down, Miyuki. I can explain. First restrain your magic.”

  “I’m so sorry…” Miyuki lowered her eyes out of embarrassment and slowly caught her breath. The room temperature stopped decreasing.

  “Guess you don’t need an air conditioner in the summer.”

  “Midsummer frostbite is nonsensical, though.” Mayumi’s joke seemed more to buy herself time to regain her own calm than to lighten the mood, but Tatsuya brushed it off. “It seems Mibu’s inciting opposition among the students to the disciplinary committee’s activities,” he said, wrapping things up. Both Mari’s and Mayumi’s faces clouded. “But is it actually true that you get people in trouble on purpose for points? I know I didn’t see anything like that—at least, not this week.”

  “I didn’t, either. I could only look at where things happened over a monitor screen, but judging from how out of control it was, the actions taken by disciplinary officers actually seemed fairly tolerant.”

  At the siblings’ suggestions, Mayumi’s melancholic expression deepened. Mari shook her head and spoke. “Mibu is mistaken. Or maybe she’s just biased. The disciplinary committee is a completely honorary post; there’s no merit to being on it. Competition results might boost someone’s seminar grades, but there’s absolutely nothing like that here. You might gain some reputation just from being a member, but that doesn’t even leave school walls. It’s not like the student council, where being a member means you’re seen highly even after graduating.”

  “…But it’s also true that it has a lot of power at school,” added Mayumi. “The disciplinary committee team actively maintains order here. If you were a student unhappy with how things are around here, they might look like a group of hound dogs abusing their power to you. Or, more accurately, someone is setting things up to make it seem like that.”

  Tatsuya couldn’t help but be surprised. Things seemed to go a lot deeper than he realized. He asked the next natural question. “Do you know who it is?”

  “Huh? Um, no, it’s not really that easy to find the source of rumors, so…”

  “…We could stop it if you found out who the culprit was, though.”

  For Mayumi and Mari, though, the question had been unexpected. Mayumi’s remark had been a slip of the tongue. Tatsuya looked her dead in the eye—she immediately looked away. This was the first time he’d seen her so clearly disturbed. “I wasn’t asking the identity of the underling at the end of things, spreading these false half-truths. I was asking about who’s controlling things behind the scenes.”

  He felt his arm get tugged twice. He looked over to see Miyuki pulling at his sleeve, behind the table so others wouldn’t see. She probably wanted to tell him he was overstepping his bounds, but Tatsuya didn’t feel like backing down. His mind reproduced the image of the male student who’d attacked him with magic, then run away. He mentally zoomed in on the white wristband, its edges lined in red and blue, on the student’s right wrist.

  “An organization like Blanche, for example?”

  Their unrest changed to shock. Mayumi and Mari both stiffened. Azusa watched them, her eyes wide; it didn’t look like she’d been informed of the details.

  “How do you know that name?”

  “It’s not like it’s top secret information. There are apparently some press restrictions on it, but you can’t suppress every little rumor that springs up.”

  For Tatsuya, the fact that Mayumi was this surprised was what surprised him more.

  Blanche was an international anti-magic political organization. Their ideals were to oppose the current political system in which magicians were given special treatment by the government, as well as to eliminate societal discrimination based on magical ability.

  But there was no truth to magic users being given special treatment by the government in this country in the first place. In fact, in reality, there was a lot of criticism of the government and the army for their inhumane treatment of magicians and of the way they used them as disposable tools. The country, though, couldn’t avoid the necessity to make up the difference in the quantity of troops it could mobilize with quality, considering a certain neighboring country had the highest population in the world.

  Military officers and administrative officials who were also magicians certainly received higher pay than those who were not, but that was no more than a reflection of how much work they needed to do. It was no more than the price the nation paid for wearing down their souls with overwork.

  Most anti-magic organizations conducted antiestablishment activities based on criticism of a reality they’d made up themselves. Among them, Blanche engaged in some of the most radical militant activities. This country supposedly protected freedom of political activity, so they were neither reined in nor oppressed. However, antiestablishment movements could gradually and easily slip into criminal acts—and in reality, there were multiple precedents of anti-magic groups conducting terrorist acts.

  Currently, Blanche was representative of the kind of organization the public security bureau watched very closely.

  And the color of the wristband worn by the student who had failed to dig out the ground beneath his feet was white, with one red edge and one blue edge—the symbol of a branch organization of Blanche called Égalité. The two organizations hid the fact that they were directly connected, but Égalité did actually operate under Blanche. The fact was, to those who knew, that they were no more then an outward-facing billboard for Blanche to attract youths fed up with the political situation.

  They didn’t know exactly how many people had become part of it. That student from before could possibly have been the first one. But the fact they had gotten not just a simple sympathizer, but one of their agents into the students likely meant they had secured a foothold at First High, otherwise it wouldn’t have been possible.

  “Trying to hide parts of it will only lead to bad outcomes, though… Oh, I’m not criticizing you, President, I’m just saying our government has managed this poorly.”

  Despite Tatsuya’s consolation in the form of an excuse, Mayumi’s expression didn’t clear up. “…No, you’re right, Tatsuya. It’s true—there’s a group that sees magicians as enemies. It would be better to spread correct information, including how unreasonable they are, than to hide their existence altogether along with the inconvenient agitation that seems so natural. We could be taking effective steps…but we’re avoiding—no, running away from facing the problem.”

  She actually seemed like she was blaming herself. “You don’t have much of a choice.” His dismissive tone, therefore, came off as fairly cold. “This school is a national institution. We’re just students, not government employees—at least, not yet. The student council is involved with operating the school; of course it would be held tight to the policies of the nation.”

  “Huh?” With a flat voice, unable to connect those words together in her head, Mayumi faltered for a moment, and Tatsuya looked at her.

  “I mean that as the president, you ha
d no choice but to keep it a secret,” said Tatsuya, looking away from her uncomfortably.

  Mari gave him a playful grin. “Wow, Tatsuya. You’re pretty nice once in a while.”

  “But he’s the one who put the president in that situation in the first place…” Azusa muttered blankly.

  Mari immediately picked up for her. “Pressing someone like that and then supporting them, huh? The tactic of a gigolo. He managed to coax Mayumi, too. He’s got skill!”

  “W-wait, Mari, stop being weird!”

  “Your face is red, Mayumi.”

  “Mari!”

  The student council president and disciplinary committee chairwoman began to tease each other.

  Tatsuya was looking in the wrong direction, his face feigning innocence—pretending not to notice his sister’s cold stare upon him.

  “All right… It’s getting late, so we’re going back to class. Let’s go, Miyuki,” said Tatsuya to Mayumi and Mari, still jostling each other, and rose from his seat.

  Miyuki had been displeased, but he had brought her around with all sincerity, placating her. Azusa, who had watched it, had turned bright red and fled to the console in the corner of the room, but that was no concern of Tatsuya’s.

  “Oh, wait just one moment, Tatsuya,” said Mari. “Okay, stop it, Mayumi, stop it already. We need to be serious now.”

  “…We will carefully deliberate upon this matter after school today.”

  “All right, all right… You’re more tenacious than you look… Tatsuya, what is your answer going to be?”

  “I’m the one waiting for an answer, so I’ll decide once I hear it.”

  Sayaka had been unable to answer the question he’d posed to her yesterday in the cafeteria.

  —After you tell the school what you think, what are you going to do?—

  She just started making confused, unintelligible noises after that. She couldn’t put together a response. So Tatsuya had given her some homework: He told her that when she figured it out, he’d listen to what she had to say again. “Based on what I just heard, this isn’t something we can just let be.”