by Yuu Miyazaki
Even Kirin had been surprised to see that the first time, she recalled.
Initially, she had been amazed at Saya’s high level and finely honed skill. Then, that her attacks were the same as Ayato’s—which was to say, the Amagiri Shinmei Style.
Her opponent growled and sparks flew fiercely as his falchion clashed with the Ark Van Ders. Saya clearly had him on the defensive, while she was calmly waiting for the right time. As stoic as ever, she executed one attack after another.
As the battle continued, the manadite of the Ark Van Ders shone brighter and brighter. Panic crept over the bald student’s face as he realized what was happening.
He attacked even more relentlessly, his blade clashing against the barrel of the gun. Neither Saya nor the Ark Van Ders budged an inch.
The instant the glow of the manadite reached its apex, Saya knocked the falchion upward with her fastest stroke yet and placed the mouth of the gun at the student’s gut.
“…Burst.”
The shock wave felt like a catastrophic earthquake, and the blast knocked the man to the opposite end of the stage. A booming roar drowned his scream as he slammed into the barrier, and his motionless body slid to the ground. Smoke rose from him as if he’d been burned to a crisp.
All of Saya’s Luxes had tremendous destructive power. Taking fire from one at point-blank range didn’t exactly allow an opponent to fight back.
“End of battle! Winners: Saya Sasamiya and Kirin Toudou!”
As the mechanical voice announced their victory, Saya turned toward Kirin and, without so much as a smile, extended her right hand. “…V for victory.”
The waiting room was well equipped, outfitted with enough showers to accommodate several people, since this building also hosted the team Gryps.
With their match over, Saya and Kirin were rinsing off.
Basking in the pleasant sensation of hot water, Kirin asked a question she had held in for a while: “So, it’s not simply that your gun is made of a hard material?”
“…Right,” Saya replied. “The high power output enabled by the LOBOS transition method is too unstable for a gun to withstand. So, as a way to regulate the output, part of it is diverted to a defensive energy field.”
In the stall next to Kirin’s, Saya was coarsely scrubbing her hair.
“That’s why you can exchange so many blows against a close-range weapon.” Still, Kirin felt that using the gun as a blunt weapon had to be outside its intended usage.
“…I couldn’t have sparred with Ayato without something like that,” Saya went on, as if she’d read Kirin’s mind.
According to her, she had developed the skill in order to help with Ayato’s training when they were children.
“So, you’re not a student of the Amagiri Shinmei Style.”
“Just monkey see, monkey do. Well, Ayato did teach me a little.”
Kirin tried to imagine Ayato and Saya as children—which was easy enough, since they probably were not very different from now. Despite the fact that she was only imagining it, the scene made her a little jealous.
“…But Ayato and Julis are late,” Saya remarked. The pair still had not arrived.
“They really are… But at least we had time to clean up,” Kirin said. They had no plans after their match, so they could just relax and wait.
“I’m getting out,” Saya said, shaking the water out of her hair like a small animal.
“Oh, Saya, you should dry off properly.” As Kirin tried to hand her a bath towel, Saya stopped and stared.
It would be more accurate to say that she was staring not at Kirin, but at her chest.
“Wh-what is it…?”
Kirin tried to back away, but before she could, Saya reached out.
“Eeek!” Kirin just barely managed to cover herself with one hand and knock Saya’s arm away with the other.
“Hmph,” Saya sulked.
“Wh-wha—What are you—?!”
On her guard, Kirin slowly backed away, but Saya closed in.
The fairly spacious shower room was still just a shower room. Kirin soon found herself trapped against a wall with nowhere to run.
Saya’s eyes gleamed with impure intentions as she waggled her fingers. “…It has been said since ancient times that kneading the breasts makes them grow larger.”
“That’s obviously wrong!”
Undeterred, Saya swiftly grabbed for her, but Kirin frantically whacked the groping hands aside. It almost looked like a sparring match. Kirin did have the advantage in close-range combat.
In the end, Saya, unable to lay one finger on Kirin, puffed out her cheeks in frustration. “…No fair.”
“I—I don’t think that’s…” Bewildered, Kirin wrapped her bath towel tightly around her body. “Anyway—You’ll catch a cold if you don’t dry off!”
As she opened the door to leave, an air-window suddenly opened.
It was the intercom for the waiting room. The video feed was one-way, so the visitor could only hear their voices.
“Sorry we’re late! Are you both still there?”
The air-window showed Ayato out of breath.
Beside him, Julis was also heaving her shoulders. “Damn those city guards. I never thought they’d be so persistent…”
Clearly, something had happened to them.
Julis and Ayato had access to the room, but that had been temporarily suspended while Saya and Kirin were in the shower.
And Kirin was only wearing a bath towel. She couldn’t greet them like this. “Um, we’re sorry, but could you wait a little—”
“Finally,” Saya interrupted. She called up the air console and promptly unlocked the room.
“Huh…?”
The door opened, so of course Ayato and Julis walked in.
“We’re really sorry. But we saw your match on the broadcast, and…”
“Honestly, I can’t believe it was so much trouble to get here…”
Each with one foot into the room, they froze in tandem.
Kirin, too, stiffened at the door to the showers.
Saya walked up to the two visitors as if nothing was awry and spoke with just a hint of pride. “…We won.”
What followed, needless to say, was that Saya received a lengthy earful from Julis.
It was the fifth day of the Festa, and they were at Sirius Dome.
“So…” Julis stretched out onstage and looked back toward Ayato with a faint smile. “The first match was all you. Now it’s my turn.”
“Got it. I’ll take it easy this round,” Ayato replied with his own regretful smile, and patted her lightly on the back.
“All right, here we are, just about to start the second day of the Phoenix! For today’s first bout here in Sirius Dome, we’d like to introduce a team who blasted straight through Round One—Ayato Amagiri and Julis-Alexia von Riessfeld from Seidoukan!”
“Round One was Amagiri’s show for sure. Let’s see how Round Two turns out. Looking forward to it.”
Hearing the familiar voices of the announcer and commentator, Julis focused on her targets for the match.
It was a tag team consisting of the thirty-seventh and fifty-fourth ranked fighters from the Queenvale Academy for Young Ladies. One girl wore her hair in pigtails, and the other in a single ponytail. They both had exquisitely well-proportioned features.
Opinions differed on which school was the strongest in Asterisk, but Queenvale’s reputation as the weakest was nearly unanimous. In the entire history of Asterisk, Queenvale had finished in first place in the overall Festa standings only once.
But their lack of prowess had little to no bearing on their popularity. In terms of the sheer number of fans, Queenvale had maintained a high standing since its founding. Queenvale did not concentrate on the overall score in the Festa, but rather viewed the Festa as a stage for highlighting the most attractive aspects of their students. Hence their popularity.
It was the only all-female institution of the six, as well as the smallest. It
had unique standards for matriculation, famed for its low rate of admission. Queenvale was an academy of goddesses who sought the ideal through beauty and strength.
“Good grief, those are some cheers,” Julis muttered as she activated the Aspera Spina.
As usual, the audience was loud enough to break the dome, or so it seemed. But most of the noise was clearly in support of Queenvale.
“Thanks, everyone!”
“We’ll give it our best shot!”
The two fighters from Queenvale beamed at the crowd, waving with both hands.
The girl in pigtails held activated twin-sword Luxes, while the one in a ponytail held a spear-type Lux. Contrary to their dainty appearance, they left no gaps in their defenses, and showed fine control over their prana.
Queenvale may have been the weakest school as a whole, but that had more to do with their practice of very careful selection, which resulted in rarely filling all the slots allotted to their school in the Festa. It did not mean that individual students were poor fighters.
Corroborating this was the fact that Queenvale’s top-ranked student had come in second at the previous Lindvolus tournament.
“Don’t you interfere, Ayato,” Julis said.
“I know.”
She stepped forward, composed and confident. The school crests declared the start of the match.
“Here we go!” The girl in pigtails was the first to make a move. She sliced at Julis, but Julis easily parried with her rapier.
“This is nothing compared to Ayato’s or Kirin’s swordplay,” she said to herself.
The girl with the ponytail jumped in with a yell, but Julis did not allow her to get close.
In the few weeks of her training, the area where Julis had improved the most was, beyond question, how she handled herself in close combat. She wasn’t yet good enough to hold her own when fencing Ayato or Kirin, but she could handle ordinary opponents with ease, even if there were two—just as she was doing now.
Although her main strength was long-distance attacks, her skills with the rapier had always been decent. She had been instructed in the basics from an early age.
“Take this!” cried the girl with the sword.
“Burst into bloom—Anthurium!”
The girl executed a sharp thrust, but a shield of fire instantly materialized to deflect it. She was knocked back with a scream.
“Oh—Are you okay?!” The one in pigtails rushed to her aid.
Julis took advantage of the pause to leap back, putting distance between them.
“Now you’ll see what I can do.”
Mana stirred around her. “O flames of Trocchia, fly over the castle walls and burn away the Nine Plagues…,” she intoned. Flames rose up and swirled to form around her nine fireballs in the shapes of delicate primroses.
“Burst into bloom—Primrose!”
At her command, the flames dancing around her like fireflies surged at the pair from Queenvale.
Unable to withstand the omnidirectional attack, the girl in the ponytail cried out as her crest shattered.
As her own emblem announced her partner’s defeat, the girl in pigtails dodged the fireballs and sliced them away one by one.
“Hah! This won’t take me down…!” she boldly declared, and cut down the last one, but—
“Blossom—Semiserrata!”
A magic circle appeared below the girl’s feet.
“Wha—?”
A fixed ability—which was to say, a trap.
Julis had used the fireballs to deftly lure the girl to that very spot.
An enormous camellia flower made of flame opened up above the girl as she stared, stunned, toward the sky.
“What even is that?!” In a panic, she began to run—but it was too late.
The flower of fire exploded on impact, engulfing her.
“End of battle! Winners—Ayato Amagiri and Julis-Alexia von Riessfeld!” the mechanical voice announced.
The roaring gust and whirling flames eventually subsided to reveal the girl lying on her back, unconscious.
“A-and there you have it—another one-sided match! This time, it was Riessfeld’s one-woman show! My, my… I can only say that there’s more to see from this pair! The Phoenix is, of course, a tag team tournament, but they have yet to fight together… What do you make of it?”
“Well, it’s a pretty effective strategy for not showing your hand as a tag team. And there is some precedent, so. But I was impressed with Riessfeld. Now there’s a clever fighter. Her ability is so versatile, she can respond to a wide range of situations. That’s a point in her favor for sure. Particularly that move at the end there…”
The keen-eyed commentator explained in detail how Julis had led her opponent into her trap.
“Not bad, I guess,” Julis said, letting out a short breath.
“Good work, Julis.” Ayato greeted her with a grin, raising his hand.
She returned the smile and met the high five, making a bright, pleasant slap.
“Honestly! Don’t they know when to stop? Just one stupid question after another…”
Returning to the waiting room after another dragged-out winners’ interview, Julis sank into the sofa with a sigh.
“Well, they’re just doing their jobs.” With a nervous laugh, Ayato turned on the kettle to make tea. “Oh, there was something I noticed in the match today…”
“Hmm?”
“Do you always do incantations with your spells, Julis?” He was thinking of the mystical lines she’d spoken before using her Primrose.
“Oh, that. Well, you know, it was just a little something I threw in for the fans. I hear that’s the sort of thing they love.”
“Huh.” This surprised Ayato. He had thought Julis would be the last person to indulge fans that way.
“No need to be so surprised. I know my role here. When I’m onstage, I can give them that much. Well, when I can afford to, anyway.” She shrugged. “What it takes to activate one’s abilities varies from person to person. In theory, there’s no need to vocalize or gesture, but some people need to go through certain motions. For my part, I don’t need incantations, but vocalizing makes it easier to image my powers.”
“I see…”
Julis sipped her tea and gave Ayato a pointed look. “Anyway, you name your techniques aloud, too.”
“Oh, that’s just an old habit. When Saya and I used to train together as kids, she told me it was cooler that way…and then it kind of stuck.”
“Hmm. So that’s why.”
Because he was forbidden as a child from sparring with other students, the only people who could help him train were Saya and his older sister. And because they could not do so at the dojo, they usually went up into the nearby hills and used low-level Luxes meant for self-defense.
Thinking back on it now, it was not very far removed from ordinary playing, which could have been why his father overlooked it.
“So, what do you want to do now?” Julis asked with a cup in her hand.
Ayato crossed his arms to think. “Hmm. Well, I’d like to go root for Saya and Kirin…but we wouldn’t make it in time, would we.”
“Yes, their match would probably be over by the time we get there.”
Saya and Kirin were not with them today, since they had their own fight.
The first round was held over four days, but the second round took two days, and the third round would conclude in just one day. So unless they were at the same arena or their matches happened to be scheduled at very different times, it was difficult to go watch their friends.
“B-besides, we haven’t eaten lunch yet,” Julis added stiffly.
“Oh yeah, you’re right.”
Due to the timing of their match, they had put off lunch. Ayato had not paid it much mind until Julis reminded him and the hunger came on suddenly. The human body works in mysterious ways.
“Well then, maybe we should stop somewhere for a bite…,” Ayato began, until Julis cleared her throat in an oddly
theatrical manner. “Julis?”
“Um… So, actually—the thing is… I did bring something today.” Julis went to the locker and retrieved a large basket.
“Oh… Did you pack us lunch?”
“Y-yes. Well, you could say that.” Bashfully averting her gaze, Julis pushed the basket toward him.
Ayato had spent many days off with Julis for training and other things, but he could not remember her doing something like this. Even at school, Julis tended to eat at the cafeteria—of course, students who packed their own lunches were in the minority—and she had never cooked or made food that he knew about.
Then it hit him. “Oh—Is this because Saya and Kirin made lunch the other day?”
Julis was competitive to the core, so maybe that had triggered something inside her.
“N-no, that has nothing to do with it!” she denied, going crimson. “I did this—on a whim! Yes, that’s it.”
“Oh, okay.” Ayato laughed. “Well, thanks, whatever the reason. I think I’ll dig in.”
“It… It’s very simple. Don’t get your expectations up too high,” Julis stressed.
Answering with a weak smile, Ayato opened the basket to find a row of adorably small tea sandwiches.
“Oh, sandwiches.” They were standard fare, like ham and lettuce, eggs, bacon. He picked up an egg sandwich and took a bite.
“H-how is it?” Julis asked with visible uncertainty.
“Mm. Pretty good.” This was no less than his honest opinion.
Ayato did not often eat sandwiches and had little basis for comparison, but it was the type of thing he liked. The black pepper was a nice touch.
“Oh—good!” Joy immediately spread over her face, but she turned away to hide it as soon as she noticed him looking at her.
“I didn’t know you cooked, too, Julis.”
“Well, something like this is easy enough.”
Even with her back to him, he could see pride straighten her spine.
She really could be very cute sometimes.
“Are you going to have any?”
