Enrollment Arc, Part I

by Tsutomu Sato

  “All right already!”

  Before Erika’s ragged breathing, and with the air of pondering a profound philosophical problem, Tatsuya bent his head to the side.

  “You seem quite tired. Are you all right?”

  “…Tatsuya, you’ve definitely been told you have a bad personality.”

  “Actually, I have.”

  “Was all that a lie?!”

  Erika hung her head dejectedly.

  It took a bit to improve her mood, but he managed to do it before he drew any odd stares—and before she drew any observatory glances or jeering stares—and returned to his patrol.

  And he wanted to leave within five minutes.

  He had no choice but to admit he’d underestimated this business. —Not admit to anyone in particular, though.

  In all honesty, he had made light of it, thinking that despite Mari using the term chaos, it was still only high school clubs trying to recruit people. But it was nowhere near that simple.

  Now that he’d seen it, he fully understood the need for people to control it. Even ten people or so wouldn’t have been enough for this.

  Between the tents filling up the schoolyard, a crowd had formed. Beyond the crowd was a wailing Erika, who could no longer escape. Her demeanor was fairly smart, too, but she couldn’t seem to oppose violence in numbers. …Though Tatsuya himself was acting as though he had promptly slipped away and was watching from afar, so he didn’t quite have room to talk.

  Of course, he could hardly say with finality that this outcome meant that Tatsuya was quicker on his feet than Erika. That was because compared to him, Erika was being targeted by overwhelming numbers of people.

  Tatsuya was on the taller side for a new student, but he was on the thin side. At a glance, he seemed boring, and his eyes were sharp, but not sharp enough to stand out very much. Add to that the fact that he was a Course 2 student, and not many people had their eyes on him for recruitment.

  On the other hand, Erika was pretty enough to stand out quite a bit. And in contrast to beauties like Miyuki, to whom people would hesitate to touch with their hand, let alone make a move on her, Erika was the type where you wanted to reach out for her even though you knew you’d get burned.

  The long and short of what happened was…

  …that Erika was being swarmed with club recruitment offers.

  The fact that she was a Course 2 student presented no obstacle in this case. (Though Erika would say that it wasn’t helping her at all.)

  They were most likely looking for a mascot or a billboard character, and the ones waging war over her were mostly nonmagic sports and exercise clubs.

  She was at the center, and they were swallowing her up.

  Tatsuya couldn’t see what was happening on the inside of the crowd—but they were probably grabbing her shoulders and pulling on her arms, or clinging to her from behind in a scramble for their prey in behavior that, even if they were the same gender, would still be construed as sexual harassment. He could guess that things were reaching a point where he couldn’t let it go once he got an almost bloodthirsty feeling drifting from it.

  But Erika was more persevering than he thought. Tatsuya had escaped on his own—abandoning her in the process—because he figured she’d be able to force her way out pretty quickly.

  You couldn’t hold Erika down just because you did a little bit of regular physical activity. Tatsuya had no doubts about that. The skill with which she had knocked away Morisaki’s CAD was certainly not something a freshman or sophomore could learn.

  The ones directly swarming her were female upperclassmen. He wasn’t surprised that there were no rude male students trying to get their hands all over a girl’s body. Even if they were one or two years older, Erika’s strength would make it simple to break free of girls’ arms and run away—at least, that was what he had predicted. Unfortunately, their being weak girls appeared to be working against her. Erika had decided not to use more violent methods against them.

  But just as he was thinking he should probably go and get her out of there, he heard her voice.

  “Hey, watch where you’re touching! St-stop…!”

  What he heard was, though lacking a bit of seductiveness, definitely Erika’s scream.

  It looked like things had gotten too real to be a joke anymore.

  Tatsuya manipulated the CAD on his left arm, and as soon as he finished preparing the magic program, he kicked off the ground.

  The ground shook—of course, it was far more than the vibrations that could be created by his own kick.

  That vibration amplified the magic program he had formulated and gave it a vector.

  The vibrations transmitted from the soles of their feet to their bodies wouldn’t be enough to make them pass out. He couldn’t fire such powerful magic with his strength.

  But their bodies were shaken from underfoot, and the students forming the crowd lost their sense of equilibrium without even realizing it.

  Tatsuya plunged into the throng.

  The upperclassmen who he pushed through easily fell onto their backs.

  He shoved his way through both boys and girls and reached the center of the crowd without much trouble.

  He split through the final wall made up entirely of female students—

  found the person he was looking for—

  and grabbed hold of her arm.

  “Run!”

  That was all he said before he pulled Erika’s left hand and dashed away.

  Pushing his way—no, slipping like magic—through the crowd, Tatsuya escaped into the shadows of the schoolyard.

  He let go of Erika’s hand, which had been connected to his, looked back, and that was when he finally noticed the disastrous situation she was in. Her hair was badly tousled, one of the sides of her blazer was practically coming off, her brand-new uniform was all wrinkled, and she held her completely untied necktie in her right hand.

  With the necktie disconnected, the breast of the uniform was exposing her ever so slightly. She must have been holding it down while they were running, but just as she looked down a bit to fix her clothes—that was when Tatsuya’s gaze happened to look that way.

  “Don’t look!”

  She probably noticed that he’d turned around when her down-turned eyes glimpsed the direction of his feet. Erika spoke immediately, but just before being yelled at, Tatsuya had already averted his face and body.

  “…Did you see?” Erika asked, her voice making it easy to imagine how red her face was.

  “……” But Tatsuya couldn’t immediately devise an answer for her.

  He should probably say he didn’t see anything. That would be the smart way to handle this.

  However…

  Her chest, ever so slightly tanned and yet still retaining its original paleness.

  The distinct lines of her collarbone.

  Even the beige color of the lace decorating the edges of her bra had been burned into his memory.

  “Did you see?”

  The sound of clothes rustling had ceased, so he deduced she was finished fixing herself.

  At the same time, the change in her tone of voice told Tatsuya that his moratorium had expired.

  Now that it came to this, he should at least let her punch him one time. Even if he bore no fault at all, he needed to show that sincerity—as a man.

  —As he had such escapist thoughts (because he couldn’t say he was completely without fault. At the least, he was at fault for leaving her there in the first place) Tatsuya slowly turned around.

  Thankfully, there was no voice stopping him. If she still hadn’t finished getting her clothes in order, improving the situation would become hopeless.

  He saw Erika, whose collar was buttoned all the way up, and her necktie was tightly around her neck, and secretly felt relieved. Come to think of it, if she’d had it buttoned all the way up to begin with, things might not have ended up so disastrous. Tatsuya thought that having compromised herself by undoing her top button
and loosening her necktie had made the damage worse.

  But he only thought that—he didn’t say it.

  “I saw. I’m sorry.”

  There was no way he could say it when faced with the red hue lingering around her eyes.

  Erika glared harshly up at him. Her cheeks reddened again, probably because her embarrassment had come back. Her clenched fist was trembling, probably because she was enduring her shame.

  “…Stupid!”

  Her hand didn’t come flying at him. Instead, he took a hit right to the shin.

  Erika kicked him in the leg, then spun around to turn away from him.

  She began to briskly walk away. Tatsuya followed her without a word.

  He couldn’t see from here, but she was probably tearing up.

  His shins were so built that they could withstand an oaken sword hitting them.

  Her boots were made of a flexible material, and not even strengthened at the toes, so she doubtlessly hurt herself more. But if he showed any consideration for that, it would only invite further attacks.

  He had his hands full just trying to pretend not to notice her unnatural gait.

  Although tents filled the schoolyard to capacity, that was just the schoolyard—in the exclusive fields, the clubs that normally used them were putting on demonstrations.

  It was the same in the gymnasiums.

  When they walked over to the second small gymnasium, nicknamed the arena, they found the kendo club giving a martial arts demonstration.

  —Erika’s head had long since cooled down. She’d known from the start that she was just venting. The fact that Tatsuya never said a word to try to excuse himself had produced results. Although he did think it was too soon for her to mumble “It’s so humid” and loosen her necktie and undo her topmost button again in order to battle the heat.

  The two of them looked down on the kendo demo from the observation area set up in the hallway three meters up the wall of the small gymnasium.

  “Hmm… So there’s a kendo club, even though this is a magic high school,” said Erika casually to herself.

  “Doesn’t every school have at least a kendo club?” asked Tatsuya, also casually. Actually, maybe it wasn’t a question so much as an idle statement to keep the conversation going.

  But Erika stared at his face fixedly for no short period of time.

  “…What?”

  “…I’m surprised.”

  “At what?”

  “That there was something even you didn’t know. And most people experienced in martial arts know, too.”

  Tatsuya got a little worried upon hearing Erika’s remark. “Do I really look like a know-it-all?”

  “Huh? Um, no, not that. It’s just, you have that kind of air about you, like you know everything.”

  “That kind of air? …I’m a freshman like you, Erika. Well, whatever. Anyway, why are kendo clubs unusual?”

  “R-Right. We are both freshmen… It feels a little weird to call us alike, though… Umm, so about kendo clubs. Magicians and people who want to be magicians almost never do kendo at the high school level. Instead of kendo, magicians use kenjutsu, which has sword techniques that incorporate spells. There are a lot of kids who practice kendo up until around elementary school to learn the basics, but the kids who decide they want to be a magician during junior high school pretty much all drift over to kenjutsu.”

  “Huh, I see… I had thought kendo and kenjutsu were the same thing.”

  “I’m really surprised!” said Erika.

  “Tatsuya, you look like you have so much skill in martial arts that use weapons, and yet… Oh, I got it!”

  “What’s the matter?” This time Tatsuya was surprised—why was she suddenly raising her voice like that?

  And Tatsuya wasn’t the only one paying attention to her now that she did that so suddenly, but Erika herself didn’t notice it. She answered his question with a face that said she understood and an expression that said it made sense.

  “Tatsuya, you’re thinking that incorporating magic into weapon techniques is just what you’re supposed to do, don’t you? No, maybe it’s not only magic. Fighting spirit, and prana, and stuff like that—you think you’re just supposed to complement physical techniques with them, don’t you?”

  “Are you not supposed to? Your muscles aren’t the only thing that moves your body, are they?”

  From Tatsuya’s point of view, what Erika had said was abrupt and obvious.

  Erika nodded to herself at his reply and response. “It may seem totally natural to you, but…for normal athletes, that’s not how it goes.”

  “I see.”

  That was an indirect way of saying it, but Tatsuya finally realized that there seemed to be a gap between his knowledge and common sense.

  “By the way, maybe we should settle down soon and observe?”

  This time it was Tatsuya’s turn to make Erika understand the gap in her awareness.

  She followed his meaningful gaze and finally noticed that the volume of her voice was drawing attention to herself.

  Erika gave an ingratiating smile and silently looked down at the floor.

  The first-stringers’ exhibition match was quite impressive.

  Among them, he took particular notice of a sophomore girl’s demonstration.

  She wasn’t very big, even for a girl—her build was about the same as Erika’s—but she was fighting evenly with bigger male students twice her size.

  She didn’t use power. Instead, she was parrying their strikes with flowing technique.

  And it seemed like she still had more energy left.

  Tatsuya thought that she was the perfect good-looking sword fighter to use in an exhibition match.

  Most of the spectators found their gazes stolen by her skills.

  But here, too, there was an exception.

  And right next to him, at that.

  At the same time the girl delivered a brilliant strike that looked staged and bowed to her opponent…

  He heard a dissatisfied snort from beside him.

  “You don’t like this very much, do you?”

  “Huh? Yeah…”

  She didn’t appear to immediately realize she was being asked something, so there was a moment before Erika’s reply came.

  “…I mean, look at how boring it is. She knows exactly what her inferior opponent has, and she acts all tough and spaces herself out, and then takes the point, as planned. It’s not a match. It’s just a staged fight.”

  “Well, you’re right, but…” Tatsuya naturally began to smile. “It’s to advertise, so isn’t that normal? There are a lot of pro athletes famous for putting on real sword battles, but a seriously real sword battle wouldn’t be something to show to others, right? A real battle between experts is essentially a death match.”

  “…You’re pretty calm.”

  “Aren’t you just too worked up?”

  Erika turned away from him, her face displeased.

  But that expression of hers was a sort of show itself.

  Erika probably thought of her ostentatious movements and spacing neglected the true art, that it was dishonest—and she was angry about it.

  But when Tatsuya pointed it out, she seemed to get even angrier.

  She probably wouldn’t ever barge in on them, but she could possibly do something close to it. Tatsuya decided to ward that possibility off and urged Erika to come out with him.

  Or rather, he tried to.

  Right after they had left the observation zone and approached the entrance to the gymnasium, a stir of a different sort than canvassing came to them from behind.

  They couldn’t hear it very well, but they knew people where arguing over something.

  He looked beside him, and Erika looked back up at him. Her eyes were brimming with curiosity.

  The first one to force their way through the ring of steadily-getting-more-excited people was Erika. Tightly gripping Tatsuya’s sleeve.

  Tatsuya, too, approached the ce
nter of the clamor, pulled along by Erika.

  People frowned at them as they split through the crowd—the power of Erika’s insincere smile was a big reason they didn’t get into a fight over it—and they managed to make it to a spot where they could see what was happening.

  They saw a male sword fighter and a female sword fighter confronting each other.

  The girl was the one from the duel before—in Erika’s words, the one who was staging the fight. Her body armor was still on, but her helmet was off. She was fairly pretty, with semilong, straight black hair that left an impression. With her skills and her looks, she was probably the perfect person to draw in new members.

  “Hmm. Tatsuya, you like people like her?”

  “No, I think you’re cuter.”

  “…It doesn’t make me happy when you say it monotone like that.”

  As she glared at him displeased, the skin around her upturned eyes was tinged with red.

  “I’m not used to it.”

  “…Geez!” She continued to mumble about something or other, but she didn’t seem to want to take further issue with it, so Tatsuya moved on to the boy.

  He wasn’t that big—probably smaller than Tatsuya—but his whole body was lean, like a coiled spring. He was holding a shinai, the bamboo sword used in kendo, but in any case he didn’t have any armor on.

  Tatsuya considered grabbing someone nearby and asking them what was going on, but there was no need.

  “There’s still more than an hour until the kenjutsu club’s turn, Kirihara! Why can’t you wait that long?”

  “I’m surprised, Mibu. You can’t show the greatest strengths of the kendo club to newcomers playing with novices like these. I just thought I’d help you out a bit!”

  “You forced your way in here to pick a fight?! I can’t believe you just used the word help. If the disciplinary committee knew about the violence you displayed toward your upperclassman, it wouldn’t just be your problem anymore.”

  “Violence? Hey, now, Mibu. People are gonna misunderstand. He was wearing armor and I used a shinai. I just knocked him in the face a bit. Even if he had been a kendo club regular, it’s nothing to get your panties in a bunch over. And he was the one who attacked first, remember?”