by Tsutomu Sato
“The virtual kind isn’t suitable for reading, so…”
Anyone could tell at a glance that his terminal was something he was experienced with, so he didn’t ask any unnecessary questions in return.
He had replied with what was almost an explanation, because he thought being too curt would end up disadvantaging his younger sister more than himself. She was the representative of the newly matriculated students, so there was no doubt she’d be chosen to the student council.
His calculated answer, however, only served to deepen this upperclassman’s admiration.
“So you prefer reading to watching videos. You grow ever more unusual by the second. I appreciate printed materials more than images as well, so I’m rather happy to hear that.”
They did live in an age where virtual materials were preferred to text, but book lovers were still far from exotic. She seemed possessed of an almost unusually sociable personality—even when her tone of voice and word choice were growing more informal by the second.
“Ah, I do apologize. I’m the student council president of First High, Mayumi Saegusa. It’s written with the kanji for seven and grass. Pleased to meet you!”
She threw in a wink at the end, but her tone of voice was far from mysterious. With her gorgeous looks combined with her shapely body (despite her short stature), she had an alluring air that male students who had just entered high school couldn’t help but misunderstand.
And yet, after hearing her introduce herself, he found himself wanting to scowl.
One of the Numbers…and Saegusa, at that?
Ability in magicians varied wildly based on genetic disposition. The family you’re from was deeply important when it came to your merit as a magician. And in this country, it was customary for the families that possess exceptional blood for magic to have numbers in their surnames.
The Numbers were the lineages of magicians who had superior genetic predisposition, and the Saegusa family, with the character for seven in its name, was one of the two in Japan currently considered to be the most powerful. And this girl, who most likely was part of the direct bloodline, was this school’s student council president.
In other words, she was an elite among elites. It might not be a stretch to say that they were polar opposites. He suppressed a bitter murmur at that, somehow managing a friendly smile as he introduced himself.
“I’m—ahem. My name is Tatsuya Shiba.”
“Tatsuya Shiba… Ah, so you’re that one…” Her eyes widened in a show of surprise. Then she nodded somewhat meaningfully.
Well, after all, she probably means “that” dropout who can barely use magic, despite being the older brother of the top new student, Miyuki Shiba. He chose to politely remain silent.
“Rumors about you are the talk of the teachers, you know.” Mayumi giggled, not appearing to be bothered by Tatsuya’s silence.
He figured the rumors were because of how different he and his younger sister were. Strangely enough, though, he didn’t sense any of that sort of negative emotion from her. Her giggling held no nuance of scorn. Her smile only conveyed a positively friendly optimism.
“Your average across all seven subjects on the enrollment exam was 96 out of 100. The particular highlights were magical theory and magical engineering. The average score on those two subjects for those who passed didn’t even come up to 70, and yet you scored perfectly on both, including the essay sections. They say that such a high score is unprecedented.”
That sure sounded like frank praise, but Tatsuya decided he was only imagining it, because, after all—
“Those were my grades on the written test. They only go as far as the information system.”
A Magic High School student’s value was not based on his test grades but on his practical ability scores. Tatsuya indicated his left breast with a pained but friendly smile. There was no way the student council president wouldn’t know what he meant by that.
But in response, Mayumi smiled and shook her head.
Not up and down—but left to right.
“At the very least, I wouldn’t be able to emulate such amazing grades. I score fairly highly on theoretical subjects, too, but I don’t think I could get the amazing score you did on the exam, even if I got the same questions as you!”
“Time is short, so… If you’ll excuse me,” Tatsuya told Mayumi, who still looked like she had things to say. He turned away from her without waiting for a reply.
Somewhere in his mind, he feared her smile, and feared her continuing to talk to him like this.
He wasn’t sure why, though.
Since Tatsuya had spent time talking to the student council president, more than half the seats in the auditorium were already filled by the time he entered.
The seating was not generally assigned—students were free to sit in the front row, the back row, right in the middle, on the sides, or wherever else they wanted.
Even in modern times, schools followed the old tradition of announcing who was in what class before the entrance ceremony, then seating the students by class. In this school, though, you wouldn’t find out what class you were in until you were issued an ID card.
Therefore, the room didn’t naturally split up by class.
There was, however, a clear rule governing the distribution of new students.
The front half was for the Blooms—the Course 1 students. The students with the eight-petaled emblem on their left breast. The new students who could enjoy the full curriculum the school had to offer.
The rear half was for the Weeds—the Course 2 students. The students with unadorned fabric on the pocket on their left breast. The new students who had been allowed to enroll and who would be treated as substitutes.
All the students may have been new freshmen starting school today, but they were evenly split between front and back based on the presence of that emblem—regardless of the fact that nobody was forcing them to do so.
Guess those who feel discrimination the strongest are those on the receiving end…
That was certainly a kind of wisdom to live by. He didn’t feel like daring to go against it, so he found an empty seat near the middle in the back third of the room and sat down.
He glanced at the clock on the wall. Twenty minutes left.
Communications were restricted within the auditorium, so he couldn’t access his literature sites. He’d read through all the data saved to his terminal countless times anyway, and taking out his terminal in a place like this would be a breach of etiquette.
He tried to imagine his sister, who was probably going over her final rehearsal at the moment…and shook his head a little. There was no way she would be struggling right before the event.
In the end, without anything left to do, Tatsuya slid deeper into his cushionless chair and closed his eyes.
He was about to let himself fall asleep like that when somebody addressed him.
“Excuse me, is this seat open?”
He opened his eyes to check, and sure enough, it had been directed at him. As her voice had implied, it was a female student.
“Go ahead.”
He was slightly dubious about why she would want to sit next to a male student she’d never seen before when there were plenty of other seats left. The seats themselves were fairly roomy, too, leaving aside how comfortable they were, and the girl in question had a narrow build (note: in terms of width, anyway, if not depth), so it wouldn’t inconvenience Tatsuya at all if she were to sit next to him. In fact, it was a better deal than a sweaty ball of muscle staying there.
With that in mind, Tatsuya nodded amiably. The girl bowed her head, thanked him, and sat down. Three more girls came in one by one and sat next to her.
I see, thought Tatsuya, convinced. It seemed the four of them had been searching for a place where they could all sit together.
Are they friends? Seems unusual that four of them would all pass the exam to get into this difficult school, and that they’d all be Course 2 students, though
t Tatsuya. He felt it wouldn’t be as strange if at least one of them had better grades. —Though it didn’t really matter to him.
He didn’t have any further interest regarding his fellow freshmen who had coincidentally sat down next to him, so he redirected his gaze to the front. But then she addressed him once more.
“Excuse me…”
What could it be? She was clearly not someone he knew, and it wasn’t that his elbows or feet were getting in her way. He didn’t want to brag, but he had good posture. He didn’t think he’d done anything to warrant objection. He crooked his head in confusion.
“My name is Mizuki Shibata. Pleased to meet you,” came the unexpected self-introduction. Both her tone and appearance were timid. He knew you couldn’t judge a book by its cover, but she didn’t seem the type to appeal herself to others—so he decided she was probably forcing herself. Maybe someone put a foolish idea in her head. Like Course 2 students needing to help each other out, since we already have a handicap, or something along those lines.
“Tatsuya Shiba. Pleased to meet you too,” he replied, with the softest attitude he could muster. A look of relief passed through her eyes behind her big lenses.
Girls wearing glasses were fairly unusual in this day and age.
As a result of the proliferation of orthoptic therapies starting around the mid-twenty-first century, the myopia condition was rapidly becoming a thing of the past. As long as you didn’t have a fairly severe congenital abnormality in your eyesight, you didn’t need vision-correcting tools. And if your eyesight did need correcting, contact lenses you could wear for years at a time without causing physical harm were also readily available.
Reasons to actually wear glasses came down to simple preference, fashion reasons, or…
…pushion radiation sensitivity.
Just by turning a bit, he could tell that her lenses weren’t angled. At the very least, she wasn’t wearing them to correct her vision. And from the impression he got, she probably didn’t like them for their fashion value—he naturally thought she was wearing them out of some kind of need.
Pushion radiation sensitivity was a predisposition, a condition in which you saw too much. People with it could see pushion emissions without trying to, and they were unable to concentrate and make them go away. It was a type of perception control failure. But it wasn’t an illness, nor was it an impediment.
The person’s senses were just too sharp.
Pushions and psions…
Both were metapsychological phenomena—as was magic itself. They were observable particles that didn’t fall under the category of fermions, particles constructed from matter, nor bosons, which created reciprocal action between matter. They were nonphysical particles. Current science believed that psions were particles that gave form to will and thought, while pushions made up the emotions created by will and thought.
Though unfortunately, that’s all at the hypothetical stage.
Normally, psions were the particles utilized in magic, and modern magic’s systematized techniques placed emphasis on controlling them. Magicians started out by learning psion manipulation techniques.
The light from pushion emissions affected the emotions of those who saw them. One theory said that was why pushions were the particles that made up emotions. Because of that, though, pushion radiation sensitivity tended to easily disrupt a person’s mental balance.
The method of preventing this was, fundamentally, controlling one’s sensitivity to pushions, but those who couldn’t do so were assisted by an alternate, scientific means. One of those means was to wear glasses with special lenses called aura coating lenses.
Pushion radiation sensitivity actually wasn’t an unusual condition for a magician to have. Sensitivity to pushions and sensitivity to psions were generally positively correlated, so it was thought that extreme sensitivity to pushion radiation was just something that many magicians—who consciously controlled psions—needed to deal with.
But symptoms of the level where one needed to block the pushion radiation with glasses at all times were indeed unusual. It would be one thing if she just had less than the normal ability to control them, but if it was because of an extremely strong sensitivity, then that would cause Tatsuya problems.
It’s probably backward for her, though.
Tatsuya had been keeping a secret to himself.
A secret that, if witnessed normally, would be incomprehensible. He didn’t need to worry about it being seen in the first place—but if she had special eyes that could perceive pushions and psions in the same way as visible light, she might notice it by sudden chance.
—He would probably need to act with more caution than normal when around her.
“I’m Erika Chiba. Nice to meet you, Shiba!”
“Same here.”
His thoughts was interrupted by the voice of the girl sitting next to Mizuki.
But the interruption was also a well-timed relief. He had been staring at Mizuki unconsciously the whole time. She looked like she was about to burn out from shyness, but he hadn’t realized it.
“But this is kind of a funny coincidence, isn’t it?” Unlike her friend, this one didn’t seem shy or scared around strangers. Her short hair, bright hair color, and handsome features amplified the impression of her being an energetic, lively person.
“What?”
“I mean, we have Shiba, Shibata, and Chiba, right? It’s kind of like a pun, isn’t it? I mean, not exactly, but still.”
“…I see.”
It certainly was not exactly a pun, but he understood what she was trying to say.
Even so, Chiba…meaning “thousand leaves.” Another one of the Numbers? I don’t think there was a girl named Erika in the Chiba family, but it’s possible she’s part of a branch family…
As he mused about it, the girls talked about how she was right, and how it was funny. Their laughter was somewhat out of place here, but it wasn’t enough to draw any chilly stares.
After the two remaining girls across from Erika gave their introductions, Tatsuya found himself wanting to indulge his trivial curiosity. “Did the four of you go to the same junior high?”
Erika’s answer, however, was unexpected. “No, we all just met a little while ago.” She giggled, as though Tatsuya’s expression of surprise was cute, and continued to explain. “I wasn’t sure where to go, so I was having a staring contest with the directions board. Then Mizuki came up to me and we started talking.”
“…The directions board?”
That’s strange, though, thought Tatsuya. All of the information for the enrollment ceremony, including where it was to take place, had been distributed to every new student. If you used the LPS (local positioning system) that came standard on portable terminals, then even if you hadn’t looked at the directions to the ceremony and even if you didn’t remember anything, you wouldn’t get lost.
“The three of us didn’t bring our terminals, see…”
“Well, it says on the enrollment brochure that the virtual kind isn’t allowed!”
“I barely made it in the first place, and I didn’t want to have people staring at me already during the ceremony, you know?”
“I just happened to forget mine.”
“So that’s what happened…”
Honestly, though, he wasn’t convinced. This is your own entrance ceremony, so you could at least make sure you know where it is happening. Those were his honest thoughts, but he didn’t give voice to them.
No need to create meaningless discord, he thought prudently.
Miyuki’s address was, as predicted, fantastic. Tatsuya didn’t have the faintest belief his sister would stumble over something as insignificant as this, though.
It had contained a handful of fairly risky phrases, like “everyone is equal,” “united as one,” “even outside magic,” and “integral,” but she wrapped them up well. He didn’t feel so much as a hint of accusation in any of it.
Her attitude had been stately, bu
t also fresh and modest. It went well with her uncommonly good looks, and she stole the hearts of all the boys there, freshmen and upperclassmen alike.
It would certainly be lively around her starting tomorrow.
But that, too, would be the same as always.
For one reason or another, Tatsuya’s fondness of Miyuki was enough to be called a sister complex when compared to societal convention. He wanted to go congratulate her right away, but unfortunately, the postceremony time was used for distributing ID cards.
They hadn’t created cards for everyone ahead of time. Instead, they would bring their normal identification there, and their school data would be written to a card on the spot. The process could be completed at any of the windows, but that, like the seating in the auditorium, created a natural wall.
Miyuki would probably—no, definitely—ignore that part, but as the representative of the incoming freshmen, she had already been conferred with a card anyway. And now there were tons of guests and student council members crowding around her.
“Shiba, what class are you in?” Erika asked him, unable to conceal her excitement. They had all moved to the windows as a group, with Tatsuya receiving his ID card last. (In other words, he was pretending to care about the “ladies first” thing.)
“Class E.”
“Yes! We’re in the same class!” She jumped for joy at his response. It was a bit of an exaggerated gesture, but…
“I’m in the same class, too.” Mizuki looked excited, too, but she didn’t make the same over-the-top movement. Maybe this was normal for new high school students.
“I’m in F class.”
“I got G class, huh?”
But that wasn’t to say that the light responses of the other two were any less enthusiastic. The important part was that they were in high spirits from this event—entering high school.
This school had eight classes per grade, and twenty-five students per class. And up until that point, it was equal.