Enrollment Arc, Part II

by Tsutomu Sato

  Tatsuya’s “revelation” had only just begun, but the one who had asked for the explanation, Erika, went “Huh?” and interrupted.

  Her expression was asking him how he knew that, but he thought it was something one would naturally notice at first glance. Both the action she’d shown when they were facing Morisaki and her CAD’s form itself led him to easily guess the style she preferred with CADs. He ignored Erika’s slightly exaggerated reaction and continued his “revelation.” “So I thought that maybe you couldn’t smoothly access the kind of classroom CAD where you put both hands on the panel.”

  “So by putting her hands on top of each other, you made it so she was only contacting it in one place…” Mizuki nodded in admiration. She wasn’t the only one giving him that look, though.

  “Using only one hand would have worked, too, but I figured you’d get more pumped up if you put your hands on top of each other. In other words, it was all in the attitude.”

  “…I get it. You played me like a fiddle, Tatsuya.”

  Erika gave an empty grin.

  Her sudden exhaustion was very comic-like, and it caused everyone else to smile.

  “Yeah, I kind of don’t care anymore… Oh, right. Did you use the same CAD as this in Class A?”

  “Yes,” said Miyuki, nodding, not bothering to hide her aversion to it.

  That piqued Erika’s curiosity. “Hey, just curious, but could you try it out here so I can see what kind of time you get?”

  “What? Me?” responded Miyuki, pointing at herself, her eyes growing wide.

  Erika nodded unnaturally deeply.

  Miyuki used her eyes to ask Tatsuya.

  “Why not?” he nodded, giving a dry grin.

  “If you say so, Tatsuya…” she responded hesitantly, indicating her understanding.

  Mizuki, who was closest to the machine, set up the scale.

  Miyuki placed her fingers on the panels as though she were going to play the piano.

  Measurement began.

  The excess psions flashed…

  …and Mizuki’s face froze.

  Impatient with her friend not announcing the results, Erika read out the results.

  “…Two hundred thirty-five milliseconds…”

  “What…?”

  “Crazy…”

  The facial-muscle petrification infected the others as well.

  “That’s amazing, no matter how many times I hear it…”

  “Miyuki’s processing abilities are close to the limit of human reaction speed.”

  The students from A class sighed to themselves as well.

  Her brother was the only one who wasn’t surprised. The girl in question frowned, unsatisfied. “I suppose that’s as good as it will get with an old educational one like this. Give it up, Miyuki,” said Tatsuya.

  “I simply cannot bear it… I cannot stand needing to take in an activation program like this, with so much surface noise and not a hint of polish or sophistication. I truly cannot display the full extent of my abilities without using a CAD that you have adjusted, Tatsuya.”

  “Don’t say that. I’ll negotiate with the president and the chairwoman on the school side of things to try and get the software switched out with something a little more usable.”

  Tatsuya softly stroked Miyuki’s face, which was twisted in both sullenness and sweetness, like a small child.

  Like always, despite the display, nobody went after them.

  Not for the showing of her real abilities, and not for the words exchanged between the siblings.

  Given the profound difference, it was absurd to even think about being jealous.

  Tatsuya lazily watched the students coming and going in the cafeteria after school. There was an air of awkwardness about, perhaps because it was used by many of the new freshmen. From what Mari had told him, the school cafeteria saw its highest utilization rate right after school started. As they got used to it, they would find hangouts in rooms, courtyards, and empty classrooms, and stop coming as much. Well, they’re not running the place for profit, so they probably don’t care about having fewer guests.

  The coffee on his table had already grown cold. He’d been placed into the reverse situation as yesterday. The only part that was the same was that he’d been the one invited this time. Tatsuya was currently waiting for Sayaka to hear her answer for her “homework.”

  There was an annoying gaze watching him, following him around, but he didn’t take any particular action from his end. He was confident that if he cared enough, he could find who was spying on him, no matter what tricks they used to hide him-or herself. However, the cafeteria was an open space, so even if he caught the culprit, he knew they’d just feign ignorance. Rather than fruitlessly reveal his own intentions, it would be wiser to wait quietly and pretend he didn’t notice.

  Fifteen minutes from the agreed-upon time, she finally showed up.

  “I’m sorry! Were you waiting?”

  “It’s all right. I got your message.”

  He wasn’t lying to make her feel better. His terminal had received a message to the effect that she’d be around ten minutes late. It had come five minutes before they were going to meet, though, so it didn’t give him any time to change his plans. Tatsuya was patient, however—ten or twenty minutes barely even counted as waiting for him.

  “I see, that’s good… I wouldn’t know what to do if you got mad and left.” Sayaka heaved an exaggerated sigh of relief.

  It seemed like she was in her “cute girl” mode again today. She’s been putting on this performance for a while. What does she think I’m into? wondered Tatsuya.

  “What’s wrong?” She sounded confused.

  It looked like his thoughts had shown in his movements. “It’s nothing important. Sometimes you turn into a cute girl, and I was feeling the gap between that and when you’re holding a sword.”

  “Oh, come on… Stop teasing me.” With a hint of fluster, she turned her eyes away.

  Was that an honest response, or was it an affected act, too? He couldn’t tell. Unfortunately, his probing had fallen through.

  “I’m sorry,” he apologized with a smile. This was his own act. He didn’t have much confidence in it, though.

  “Geez… Shiba, deep down you’re a womanizer, aren’t you?”

  “Well, I’m not a magician. Not yet, anyway.”

  He put his cooled coffee to his lips and slowly turned around. He wasn’t trying to look away from Sayaka as much as he was glancing at the shadow peeking out from behind some decorative plants.

  “Watanabe…” Sayaka noticed the shadow a moment later, too. Her voice was too soft, though, so it didn’t reach the ears of the one she’d spoken the name of.

  “’Sup, Tatsuya?”

  Mari was the first one to speak. But that was clearly a challenge; if he hadn’t clearly looked over there, she probably would have passed by with a look of indifference—if that wasn’t the case, then she wouldn’t have tried to keep out of sight.

  “I’m not slacking off.”

  Mari gave a pained grin to Tatsuya’s response. He actually meant “I’m not on duty today,” but she found it difficult to decide if it was a joke or if he was acting rebelliously. “I didn’t come to give you a warning as the chairwoman or anything. I just happened to be passing by.”

  But thanks to what he had said, Mari’s appearance had stopped feeling unnatural. And Mari, who could get with things on the spot like that, was pretty impressive.

  “Sorry, it seems like I interrupted something. I apologize, Mibu.”

  “No, you didn’t…” Sayaka’s voice in reply and her expression had stiffened up a little at Mari, maybe out of nervousness from being addressed by an upperclassman. Or maybe it was antipathy toward the disciplinary committee.

  Tatsuya, for whatever reason, felt like neither of those was quite accurate.

  His impression was strengthened by the powerful gaze she fired toward Mari’s back as she left.

  “About the ot
her day…”

  Once Mari had left the cafeteria, Sayaka broached the main topic herself. Tatsuya had been late in doing so, since he was thinking things like I was the one who asked and I can’t believe she’d come to check up on me… and Was she keeping an eye on something else?

  “At first, I thought just telling the school what we thought would be enough.” Her arms twitched—maybe she’d clenched her fists under the table or something. “But I realized that wouldn’t be enough, after all. I think we should demand reform in how the school treats us.”

  Right to the point was Tatsuya’s impression. Was she serious, or was it a bluff to draw him in? If it was a bluff, it had the opposite effect. “When you say reform, what exactly would you like to be changed?”

  “Well…everything about how we’re treated.”

  “When you say everything, you mean classes, for example?”

  “…Well, that, too.”

  “The main difference between Course 1 and Course 2 is the presence of an instructor. Given that, are you asking for more teachers from the school?”

  That was impossible. The national school policy was a direct result of there not being enough adults who could use magic at an effective level in the first place. The two-course system was, in a way, a plan created in full knowledge of the drawbacks in order to secure a supply of magicians and magic engineers.

  “I don’t plan on going that far, but…” As expected, he received a stammered denial in reply.

  “Then is it club activities? Aren’t the kendo club and the kenjutsu club allotted the same amount of time to use the gymnasium?” As far as he’d looked into it yesterday, the days allotted to the kendo and kenjutsu clubs—surprisingly enough—were distributed equally.

  “Or is it a budget issue? It’s true that magic competition clubs are given bigger budgets compared to other clubs, but I believe budget distribution based on club achievement isn’t unusual to see even in normal high schools.”

  “Well that’s… That may be true, but… Aren’t you unhappy with it, Shiba? You’re superior to Course 1 students in every way aside from practical application—like magical theory, general subjects, physical fitness, and skill in actual combat. And yet just because you’re bad at application, you get looked down on as a Weed. Isn’t that frustrating for you?”

  Her desperate, vehement argument made Tatsuya feel a little irritated. His dissatisfaction and resentment had nothing to do with how she felt. If she was the one who wanted to change things, then why wasn’t she talking about herself? “Of course I’m not happy with it.”

  But he—

  “Then…!”

  “But there is nothing I really want to have the school change.”

  —spoke of his own feelings.

  “Huh?”

  “I never expected all that much from a school as an educational institution.” It was no more than a piece of a fragment, but they were his true thoughts. “I don’t need anything more than the ability to view private documents and materials you can only look at from places affiliated with the National Magic University, and to gain the right to graduate from Magic High School.”

  Sayaka’s face froze up at his detached—even to himself—statement.

  “And I certainly don’t plan on blaming the school for the childish nature of my classmates for using hurtful slang prohibited by the school.”

  At first, those words appeared to be criticizing the mistaken elitism of the Blooms looking down at the Weeds, but in reality, he was blaming Sayaka’s own weakness for trying to make her own dissatisfaction the fault of someone else.

  “Unfortunately, it would seem we do not share a common position on this.” With that, Tatsuya rose from his seat.

  “Wait!”

  He turned around to see Sayaka looking up at him with a pale, clinging gaze, still seated—maybe she couldn’t get up. She wasn’t glaring—it was a look of pure sincerity and desperation. “How…can you think so rationally about it? What on earth do you have to support you?”

  “I would like to make a gravity-controlled thermonuclear fusion reactor a reality. Studying magic is no more than a means to that end.”

  Sayaka’s face blanked out. She probably hadn’t understood what she’d just been told.

  The actualization of a gravity-controlled thermonuclear fusion reactor was one of the so-called Three Great Practical Problems of Weighting Magic, along with the realization of multipurpose flight magic and the realization of a pseudo-perpetual motion device by inertial infinitization. It was far too big a project for a Course 2 student to suggest as a future goal.

  And Tatsuya hadn’t said what he did because he wanted her to understand. Without bothering any more with Sayaka, he turned back around.

  A week passed without incident.

  His disciplinary committee patrols saw none of the ambush-like attacks from the recruitment week, and as Mizuki prophesied (?), everything was mostly peaceful. Finally, Tatsuya had gotten his hands on his quiet high school life—or so it seemed. It was, in hindsight, no more than a momentary tranquillity.

  It was right after classes ended, just at the start of what could be called “after school.”

  Students who had club after this were going to their lockers to change or grab their things, and those who had brought in tablets and paper notebooks were grabbing their bags from the sides of their desks. Those who did neither were casually getting ready for the trek home, each in his or her own way. That was when it happened.

  “Attention all students!”

  A loud voice just short of howling burst from the speaker.

  “What the hell was that?!”

  “Would you calm down already? You’re basically yelling yourself!”

  “…I think you should calm down, too, Erika.”

  The many students still in the room were busy being confused.

  “—Please excuse me. Attention all students!”

  Once more, this time a little awkwardly, they heard the same line from the speaker.

  “They must have messed up the volume control,” muttered Tatsuya lowly.

  Erika keenly picked up on his words and immediately went for the jab. “Uh, I don’t think this is the time for witty jokes.”

  Mizuki found herself unable to actually say, “That goes for you, too, Erika” aloud.

  “We are a coalition of the willing who aim to abolish discrimination at school.”

  “The willing…” muttered Tatsuya cynically after hearing the assertive voice of the male student from the speaker. Judging by what he’d heard last week in the cafeteria, this broadcast hijacking was for the treatment reform demands that Sayaka had talked about. He couldn’t help but wonder, though, just how many examples in all of history there were of members who were part of political organizations voluntarily becoming a “coalition.”

  “We hereby declare our desire for negotiations on equal terms with the student council and the club committee.”

  “Hey, shouldn’t you, like, go?” Erika expectantly asked Tatsuya, who was sitting and looking at the speaker. She probably hadn’t heard his unfriendly murmur, though.

  “I suppose so.” He didn’t say that her attitude was imprudent; what she’d said had been reasonable. “They’ve obviously misappropriated the broadcasting room. The disciplinary committee will—” At the exact moment he spoke, a message arrived on the portable terminal in his pocket rather than on the information terminal fixed on the desk. “Oops, speak of the devil. I should get going.”

  “Oh, okay. Be careful.” Mizuki’s voice trembled with unease as Tatsuya rose from his seat and turned away from them. Suddenly concerned, he turned around and scanned the classroom. Some of his classmates were sitting and some were standing, but not many looked like they were about to leave the classroom. There were few others who were bemused like Erika or curious like Leo. Most of his classmates looked anxious, unable to decide whether they should just get home.

  “Oh, Tatsuya!”

  “Miy
uki, you got called here, too?”

  “Yes, by the president. She told me to go to the broadcast room.”

  Part of the way there, he met up with Miyuki and they headed toward the broadcast room. They weren’t moving very quickly, however.

  “Could this be Blanche’s doing?”

  “We can’t be sure of what group is behind this, but they would certainly do this kind of thing.”

  They were still talking about it as they arrived in front of the broadcasting room together. Mari, Katsuto, and Suzune were already there, as well as others from the disciplinary committee’s and club committee’s active units.

  “You’re late.”

  “Sorry.”

  He returned the superficial reprimand with a superficial apology and started coming to terms with the situation.

  The broadcast had stopped, likely because they’d cut the electricity. They probably hadn’t gone inside yet because the door was barricaded. The culprits who trapped themselves inside must have gotten hold of a master key somehow.

  “This is clearly a criminal act, isn’t it?” They let the ends justify the means—model activists.

  Tatsuya had been talking entirely to himself, but Suzune didn’t hear it that way. “That’s right. We must respond carefully so that we don’t set them off any more than this.”

  “I don’t have much faith that being careful will cause them to listen to reason,” put in Mari immediately. “We should devise a quick solution, even if it means getting a little rough.”

  Their difference in opinions appeared to put them at an impasse. It was an incredibly clumsy way of dealing with the emergency.

  “What do you have in mind, Chairman Juumonji?”

  Looks filled with surprise turned on Tatsuya at his question. Even Tatsuya had wondered if he’d stepped out of line as he’d asked it, but he figured it was better than staying in this deadlock. It must have meant that he was no adult, either. And this wasn’t a situation in which they could ask an adult to intervene.

  “I’m thinking we should respond to their demands for negotiation. We don’t have many clues in the first place. Firmly arguing against them may allow us to eliminate future worries.”