Enrollment Arc, Part II

by Tsutomu Sato

  “—I’ll leave things to you.”

  “At this point, I can’t even imagine what you’re leaving for me to do.”

  “Whatever you can—I don’t mind.”

  “How vague. Are you expecting something from me or not…? Well, if that’s your condition, then I’ll accept the task.”

  This wasn’t something they could just let be—that wasn’t just lip service. If the anti-magic organization was going to stop at just targeting the system itself, he didn’t need to take the initiative. However, their antiestablishment activities were violent, steadily making targets out of individuals in symbolic positions. He couldn’t discard the possibility that Miyuki would be targeted, since she had enrolled as the leading student and was now part of the student council. He was sure she would never lose out to some terrorists who could do nothing but skitter around in the shadows all day, but there was the worst-case scenario to think about.

  “I’ll do whatever I can,” he said in acceptance, voice cool. He and Miyuki, who gave a small bow from behind him, went to the door and left the room.

  Mari muttered to herself, “That’s probably how we’ll get the best outcome, after all.”

  Given how the disciplinary committee duty worked, Tatsuya didn’t need to show up to the headquarters every day. Even the chairwoman normally hung around the student council room upstairs. The members elected to it were all the cream of the crop, each violent and uncompromising. Such people tended to neglect clerical work and tidiness, so because no one stayed there for very long, the room had been left to utter dilapidation.

  Before Tatsuya’s achievements during the club recruitment week, he had—reluctantly—established a firm position as the one person in the disciplinary committee with any clerical skills. So, despite not actually being on duty, he’d gotten a call for help from Mari regarding the activity reports of the club recruitment week, that oh-so-bloody battlefield. They hadn’t been organized in the slightest…though it wasn’t so much help as Tatsuya just doing it all himself.

  It had not been his intention to fall into this situation. His plan, at the time of his enrollment, had been to use his after-school time to browse the private, university-owned research documents and materials that you could only view with specific terminals in the National Magic University and the magic high schools affiliated with it. And yet here he was, doing this and that, going here and there, getting none of his research done.

  I suppose I’ll finish up these incident reports… he figured to himself with a sigh, knowing how unproductive it was. First he needed to meet up with Miyuki, so he went to log out of a terminal, having completed a different task—and just then, something happened.

  A notification appeared on the display that he’d received an e-mail. The timing was too perfect. The school’s crest was attached to it. That meant it contained instructions that a student wouldn’t be able to refuse, or an official notification e-mail. He couldn’t just ignore something like that. He hadn’t gotten far up out of his seat, but he sat back down and opened it up.

  Displayed in the “sender” field was the name Haruka Ono.

  “Sorry for calling you out so suddenly!”

  “It’s all right, ma’am. I didn’t have anything urgent to do.”

  They were in the counseling room. Haruka had given the standard apology, her smile not showing any regret at all; Tatsuya had given the proper response to it, not really meaning it.

  In truth, he found this summoning to be a pain. He wasn’t in a hurry, but he had promised to help Mari. Sending an e-mail to notify her wouldn’t have been enough, so after apologizing to her profusely over voice communication, he ended up getting even more work to do than he’d planned.

  He’d had to cancel walking Miyuki home, too. She seemed unaffected on the surface, but he’d already gotten a headache thinking of how he’d try to improve her mood when they got back to their house. Besides, he had nothing he wanted to talk to a counselor about anyway.

  “So have you gotten used to the high school life?” asked Haruka, popping a standard question, whether or not she knew of his actual feelings on the matter (he was pretty sure she didn’t).

  Tatsuya’s answer, though, was far from standard. “No, ma’am.”

  “…Is there something worrying you?”

  “I have a lot more to do than I thought I would, and it’s hard to focus on my studies, ma’am.” On the supplementary sound channel he was telling her that she was wasting time, and to quit the small talk and get to what she needed to say.

  Even if she didn’t hear any of that nuance, she seemed to still understand that he wasn’t in a very amicable mood. She gave a vague smile, somewhere between a dry grin and a friendly one, then made a display of recrossing her legs.

  He got a glimpse of her sensual thighs covered in thin stockings from under her short, tight skirt. There was nothing to obstruct their gaze between the chairs they sat facing each other in.

  Modern etiquette discouraged the exposure of skin in public places. Female students were no exception—they all wore thick, opaque tights or leggings under their skirts. That was the school’s policy. Even leaving aside how mature the girl was, this was a stimulating sight he didn’t see very often at all. (Incidentally, even those styles that didn’t show any skin at all could be worn comfortably during the summertime, thanks to advancements in fiber materials.)

  “…What’s wrong?” asked Haruka playfully to Tatsuya, who was unconsciously staring and unable to peel his eyes away.

  He quickly averted his stare and would have given a disordered response—“Going by the present dress code…”—but Tatsuya’s answer was a tad different from the norm. “…I believe your outfit is too stimulating, Ms. Ono.”

  “I-I’m sorry!”

  There was no arousal in his eyes—in fact, they seemed cold and observing, and his tone gave the impression of a light criticism. Haruka, flustered, got her legs into a more modest position and sank back into her seat.

  Inducing unrest in someone was the universal technique for taking the initiative. Haruka had chosen this kind of clothing to that end. But this freshman (Tatsuya) would only reply with an expressionless gaze.

  She couldn’t figure him out. She was unable to gain the initiative, and it confused her.

  “In any case, why have you called me here?” Despite trying to clamp down on it, his voice betrayed a tiny bit of irritation. And it was doubtful even that wasn’t part of his own act.

  He might have been going on just sixteen years old, but she wasn’t trying to make light of him. She knew normal means wouldn’t work against him, and that’s exactly why she’d attempted to use sex appeal, a method she wasn’t used to. Unfortunately for her, it looked like she had to give up on that safe, roundabout plan.

  Having made up her mind, she once again faced Tatsuya. “I came here to request your assistance, Shiba, with our work.”

  “Our work, ma’am?”

  She knew of his intelligence, even if only from the entrance exam. Nevertheless, his reply went straight for the vitals, putting her more and more on guard. “Yes—the counselors’.” She had the brief sense that he was seeing right through her. Right now, though, her only option was to keep pushing with her “counselor work” charade. “The tendencies of students tend to change by the year. For example—you use ma’am and sir quite frequently, don’t you? It wasn’t too unusual to hear while such a percentage of students in magic high schools desired military posts, but common use of those terms first spread among the other students after our victory three years ago at the Defense of Okinawa. Changes in the social climate bring about changes in student mentality as well. Especially after a big incident’s happened—the ways they think and feel about things and themselves change to the point where you couldn’t believe they were all the same age.”

  She paused for a moment, gauging the boy’s expression. He didn’t seem disturbed in the slightest. In fact, he seemed like he was listening to things he was already
aware of. “So every year, we pick around ten percent of the new students and have them undergo continued counseling. It’s so that we can get a good grasp of the student mentality each year and conduct the best counseling we can.”

  “I would be a guinea pig, in other words, ma’am?” His words easily summed it up. She didn’t sense any of the negative emotions that he should have shown, like anger, indignity, or distaste. “If that’s all it’s for, then I’ll assist you, ma’am—but what is your real objective?” he replied with a faint smile.

  At that moment, Haruka needed to use all her might to suppress her bewilderment. “…Do you think I’m concealing my real objective? That’s upsetting. I’m not a harpy, you know.” Her tone was light and jocular to the last—and was more to keep him from realizing she’d lost her calm than to placate him.

  “I believe I’m a bit too unique to use as a sample, ma’am.”

  “I see. I’m of the same impression—that you’re not quite a normal freshman. That’s why I want you to help us, though. You might be the first instance of someone breaching the walls between Course 1 and Course 2 students, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be the last.”

  “…I’ll accept that, then, ma’am.”

  Haruka was relieved—it seemed like she’d talked him down for the moment. He didn’t seem completely convinced, but unraveling stubborn minds like his was where counselors displayed their skill, she told herself. —Ignoring reality somewhat, that is.

  “I regret making you feel like you can’t trust me because of my inexperience, Shiba… In any case, may I ask you a few questions?”

  “Yes, go ahead, ma’am.”

  She knew he was being cautious of her, but they didn’t have all the time in the world here. In order, she presented the questions she’d prepared beforehand to Tatsuya.

  Counseling was a profession to which privacy was crucial. Protecting the confidentiality of clients was the cornerstone of their professional ethical code. That meant when faced with someone confiding in them, they would ask the person questions in order to solve their issue and never leak any of that to a third party—but in this situation, where Haruka was the one to ask him for help, she wouldn’t be able to set foot into his private life. Consequently, the topic of her questions was limited to what had happened at school since his first day.

  And after Haruka had finished listening to Tatsuya himself briefly talk about the troubles he’d had since starting school, this was her reaction:

  “…Thanks. I’m surprised you’re still okay. With that kind of stress accumulating, it wouldn’t be odd for a person to have a mental breakdown,” she said in some admiration, her expression doctorial.

  She actually had a medical license, and she specialized in mental health—that’s why Tatsuya would call her a “doctor,” but he thought she was listening to what he had to say as a counselor.

  “From a medical standpoint, you might be right, ma’am. Exceptions spring up in any aggregate data set, though.”

  At Tatsuya’s remark that clinical data was always a by-product of statistical processing, Haruka looked away in embarrassment.

  Her eyes wandered for a few moments, but she then noticed Tatsuya glancing at the old-fashioned (read: behind-the-times) wall clock—he was doing it so that she would notice, of course—and quickly looked back at him. “Right, that was all I wanted to ask for today… By the way, may I ask you one thing that isn’t directly related to counseling?”

  “What is it, ma’am?”

  “Is it true that Mibu, the sophomore, asked you out?”

  “…That really doesn’t have anything to do with counseling,” said Tatsuya, not bothering to hide his amazement.

  Haruka hurriedly continued. “If it was Mibu, I would have an interest… I can’t talk about the specifics, though.”

  “It would be a problem if I heard about things private to others. Just where on earth did you hear such a groundless accusation?”

  “Groundless…?”

  “Yes, ma’am—is there something wrong?”

  “No, it’s nothing… Well, truthfully speaking, if you had been of the mind to start dating her, there was something I wanted to ask of you. But if that isn’t how you feel, then don’t worry about it.”

  “I already said all the nonsense about her asking me out was groundless, ma’am. Anyway, where did you hear about that?”

  She purposely averted her eyes from his at his repeated question. “I’m sorry—it’s a confidential matter.”

  He didn’t pursue the point any further. “Then I will get going now, ma’am.” Instead, he got up and headed for the exit, not waiting for a reply.

  “If there’s anything bothering you about Mibu, you can talk to me anytime.”

  There was something like conviction in Haruka’s voice as she spoke to his back—a conviction that something that would bother him would happen. Tatsuya had no interest in what that might be, but he also didn’t stop and turn around. He didn’t have the sort of innocent charm to let a pointless curiosity lead him into a trap.

  After dinner, as Tatsuya was in his bedroom at his console, a voice came to him from the other side of the door.

  “Tatsuya, it’s Miyuki.”

  Practically speaking, Tatsuya and Miyuki were the only ones who lived in this house. It was plain as day who would have been knocking at his door without her needing to name herself, and he didn’t need a name if he heard her voice, either.

  Still, though, at every turn, Miyuki always announced herself like this. As though trying to imprint her name into Tatsuya’s mind. As though she were afraid he might forget it.

  “You can come in,” prompted Tatsuya without looking away from the display. From the door, the console was embedded in the side wall. As he read through lines of text, scrolling at high speed, he glimpsed the figure of his sister in his peripheral vision.

  “The cake you bought for us has arrived… Shall we have some tea?” There was hesitation in her invitation—probably out of a sense that she didn’t deserve her brother’s needless consideration in this particular case.

  For Tatsuya, if a cake was all it took, it was a small price to pay—but her modesty was another one of his sister’s charms. —Not that just anyone could bring it out of her, though.

  The cake has arrived was a phrase that would have been quite limited in usage a hundred years ago, but the expression was used on a daily basis in today’s world. Advances in physical distribution systems had turned the term baggage into a dead word. You could get even small things like cakes delivered for free. Of course, for the stores, creating and shipping the product upon receiving the order had two merits: not needing to keep extra goods in storage, and the turnover rate of customers. The service was weighed upon a scale of minimized shipping costs.

  “I’ll be right there,” he answered, saving the displayed information into their home network’s shared directory.

  Tatsuya’s washed down the not-too-sweet cream left in his mouth from the chocolate cake—Miyuki’s favorite—with coffee he’d had her make more bitter than usual, then switched the living room’s display to data-viewing mode.

  “…Is it all right if I see this as well?”

  Tatsuya hadn’t finished eating either or anything, and Miyuki was going at an even slower pace. Nevertheless, his calling up a data file clearly meant that he wanted to show something to her. “Of course,” he said. Despite that, she had still asked for confirmation first, and upon his affirmative reply, she settled back into her seat. “It may not be a topic suited to family entertainment, but it seems like you’re not going to avoid getting tangled up in this, so I figured we should share information sooner rather than later… No, it’s nothing to sit at attention for.” His sister had put down her fork and sat up straight, and he waved away the action as unnecessary. He gave her a dry grin, which she answered with a slightly embarrassed one, and picked up her fork again.

  “Open cabinet name Blanche.”

  He couldn’t bring a
full keyboard out onto the living room table with all the food laid out. Tatsuya didn’t like it very much, but he used voice commands to bring up the files containing his findings one by one on the display.

  “That’s the anti-magic activist political society that came up during lunch, right?”

  “They call themselves a civic movement, though. Behind the scenes they’re a prime example of a terrorist group. And there doesn’t seem to be any doubt these terrorists are moving around in the shadows at school. There is a group called Égalité—a branch organization of Blanche—and during my activities as disciplinary committee officer, I actually saw a student who I believed to be part of it.”

  Tatsuya’s words caused Miyuki surprise, and she cocked her head to the side. “At Magic High School—a student of Magic High School?”

  “I can understand why you’d find it hard to believe,” nodded Tatsuya deeply, indicating that he empathized with her bewilderment. “People who believe that magic high schools, not just First High, will help them with their magic are all coming to study magic. Whether it’s for their own sake or for another’s is a separate issue. A student of a magic high school rejecting magic is no more than a self-contradiction.”

  It was a perfect and complete contradiction, and that was all. For Tatsuya, magic in the eyes of society labeled him negatively in some respects, but as someone who studied and researched magic, he didn’t feel like he wanted to reject it.

  “It’s obviously strange when you think about it… But the obvious doesn’t work, so the strange people run rampant.”

  “…Why is it like that, I wonder?”

  “If you try to think about it using normal logic, you’ll get trapped in a maze. So instead of thinking about it logically, you have to think about it on a concrete, individual level. The first point that needs to be addressed is that despite them waving their flags of anti-magic beliefs in the air, they don’t outwardly reject magic.”