Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei - Volume 11 - Visitor Chapter (III)

by Sato Tsutomu

  With the redirected flow of conversation, a relieved atmosphere that could not quite be concealed arose — Mayumi was dissatisfied with this weakness — and Hirofumi answered.

  "We go to Sasebo at the end of this week; I heard that the ship departs Friday of next week."

  As for Mayumi, while she was preoccupied with her unhappiness, she did not forget to learn the details.

  "Those are certainly quick arrangements... Well, please take care. We will await your safe return."

  Impeccably disguised behind her cat’s mask, Mayumi leaned forward in her seat.

  "Thank you."

  Mayumi turned her gaze to her own toes and considered that they were probably done with her.

  "Before we leave to go to the front, could we have Mayumi-san’s assistance…"

  Hence when she heard Hirofumi say this, it was a little difficult for her to control the speed with which she looked up.

  "My assistance?"

  While implicitly expressing the opinion that ‘there is nothing I can do for you’, she deliberately tilted her head in a childish manner. Her rock-like classmate would probably pay it no mind and her mature — she would call him ‘impertinent’ — underclassman would see through it and look at her with pretended boredom, but Hirofumi quit trying to conceal his unrest and let his eyes water.

  "No, rather than assistance, we want you to lend us your insight."

  However, it didn’t work on Mio. Was it because her effect was predictably weaker on her own sex, or maybe because Mio looked so young herself, that she saw her as an ‘older woman’.

  "Mayumi-san has already been informed, which will make this a quick conversation. We don’t have enough time for a preliminary investigation."

  "That’s true. I understand."

  Mio appeared distressed to her core, with her hand on her cheek. Certainly, her speech and manner invoked some feeling that she was an older woman. Nevertheless, the impression that she was a child overreaching herself was strong — she roused amusement rather than interest. However, that did not make Mayumi relax; she concealed her wariness as she agreed with Mio.

  "Magic is resisted by magic. Magicians by magicians. That, I think, is surely what we have in common."

  Hirofumi continued; receiving his sister’s support(?), his calm had returned. By ‘in common’, he unquestionably meant between Japan and the Great Asian Alliance. With that interpretation, Mayumi waited for his next words.

  "I will be accompanying my sister; the other side has undoubtedly realized this."

  Mayumi concurred with Hirofumi’s statement and displayed her agreement. In the first place, the Japanese side had no intention of concealing Mio’s deployment; besides Mio and Hirofumi’s full identities, their membership as officers deployed in war and capabilities were well known. So under the circumstances they were expected.

  In order for a checkmate to be effective, you had to let your opponent know about it. In other words, a secret weapon is not good material to get your adversary to negotiate a compromise.

  "The other side understands it is at a disadvantage in naval combat with Nee-san’s Abyss. Therefore, we anticipate a counter attack combining aerial combat power with magic."

  The Movement type-Strategic Class Magic ‘Abyss’ was a magic capable of creating a spherical depression capable of extending from a few tens of meters to several kilometers. Vessels caught within the magical zone at sea slide down the steep walls of water, tumbling about; then, upon cancellation of the magic, are swallowed up by massive waves as the sea returns to a horizontal plane. The hemisphere can be created up to a kilometer in depth, easily catching submerged submarines as well.

  If the distance between the two adversaries was too close, the water movements could cause damage to one’s own side as well. The Strategic Magic Mio possessed, with its great range, could be called the natural enemy of naval power.

  However, at the same time, Mio’s ‘Abyss’ was completely powerless against an air force. She couldn’t invoke it without a continuous water surface, and to use it on land, she had to know beforehand that there was a subterranean source of water she could use — there were various conditions for its use.

  With the enemy’s battle formation that Hirofumi spoke of, she had no other option.

  "The air forces will be left to the JDSF; we must think of how to deal with the magicians."

  This was also a fact she could not dispute.

  In form and substance, the magician community headed by the Ten Master Clans within Japan — whether they were magicians attached to the government, attached to the military, or attached to a civilian institution, modern magicians or sorcerers of ancient magic — were self reliant. The magicians who would probably be accompanying the military were included in that ‘we.’

  "Mayumi-san, did you see our magician allies repulse the enemy and enemy magic at Yokohama? I would like you to tell us about the aspects of the enemy magic you saw and the effective magic that was used against it."

  Actually, this was a difficult, dangerous question. She did not doubt the necessity of providing information and she would not refuse to do things she could not refuse to do. —That was how it was.

  "...Even though I saw enemy magic, I was always in the rear, and the only time I actually crossed swords with them was when I was attacking from a helicopter."

  Actually she had directly contributed to the destruction of a tank twice, but Mayumi was not intentionally lying. It simply had not left an impression.

  He did not doubt Mayumi’s words; however, Hirofumi was not satisfied with her answer.

  "Then you were assisting with the civilian evacuation until the end."

  By ‘civilian,‘ he meant the non-magicians. Magicians were recognized as a special existence; usually Mayumi felt sorry for both sides of the narrow view that people that weren’t magicians were powerless. However, this was not the time to point that out.

  "Til the end would be wrong, but... while I was waiting for the copter, students from my year and below held them off."

  "Then can’t you introduce us to these people? The First High School students who actually fought against the Great Asian Alliance's magicians."

  When Hirofumi said it, right away he came to mind. The mature, impudent, yet reliable underclassman. The first year who changed a gigantic truck into dust, was encased by glittering psions, and used a miraculous healing method.

  Nonetheless, immediately afterward, nearly simultaneously, the recalled words ‘National Secret’ paralyzed her tongue.

  "Mayumi-san?"

  The faltering Mayumi was being examined by Mio’s suspicious eyes. Mio was not the only one looking at her suspiciously. Hirofumi — and anyway her father — were looking at her with doubt, and Mayumi recognized their impatience.

  "Ah, no… that’s right. If you visit the Juumonji family, I think you will hear a thorough report."

  "Do you mean Katsuto-kun..."

  Hirofumi was by no means an unpleasant person; naturally he was a nice boy, but Mayumi had felt for some time that actually meant a little too agreeable.

  She knew Hirofumi felt inferior and competitive with the boy two years younger than him and understood it to be natural. However, at this point in time, she didn’t feel displaying jealousy was all that praiseworthy.

  —Not only that, but letting a younger female discern it.

  The ‘passable’ grades she had put for him on one sheet of the report card in her heart were all insincere.

  "The others, who should be useful... would probably be the Hundred Families’ Watanabe Mari, Isori Kei, and Chiyoda Kanon. I will contact them all for you."

  "Please do."

  Well, if all you do is find fault with your associate, you will not feel good either.

  Mayumi gave them the names and promised to set up the meetings in a businesslike fashion.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Afterward, she called Mari, Kei, and Kanon right then and there (Katsuto wasn’t home), she set u
p appointments with all of them and, along with her father, saw the Itsuwa siblings off.

  Mayumi really wanted to sigh when they left, but peeping at her father’s face told her it would be a little while before she was set free.

  "Mayumi, I want to talk a little; you don’t mind do you?"

  As she had expected, just as she returned from the hotel sized porch to the entrance hall you could probably dance in, Koichi called out to Mayumi to stop.

  "Let’s talk in the study."

  He quickly walked away without waiting for an answer.

  Koichi presented an outward appearance of an elite businessman of the middle of the last century. Anyone would say his health was fragile — his face was more sociable than dignified and the tone of his voice was gentle to match that, but like all the other heads of the Ten Master Clans, no member of his family would disagree with Saegusa Koichi.

  And it was not Mayumi’s style to take a meaningless rebellious attitude. While wearing a long-sleeved stiff one-piece that she normally wouldn’t wear, Mayumi trailed after her father’s back.

  The study had a classic bookcase, a massive desk, and a single leather chair. Koichi promptly sat down, forcing Mayumi to listen to her father’s words while standing. Since this is what he always did, Mayumi was not bothered by it.

  "There were no first year students in the list of names you gave, Mayumi."

  Koichi broached the subject with his daughter who was standing about two meters away from him without preliminaries.

  "Didn’t I hear that the daughter of the Chiba Clan and the second son of the Yoshida Clan played an active role?"

  Mayumi murmured ‘Raccoon[13] Dad’ in her head. Koichi’s physique was more fox than raccoon and more wolf than fox, however, Mayumi was confident that her father couldn’t tell what she was thinking from her outer appearance.

  "Despite that, they are still first years, so I didn’t think they could explain things well to Hirofumi-san and Mio-san."

  (Nevertheless, he probably got the details from Nakura-san.)

  While watching her father murmur 'I see,' Mayumi thought that. In general, this is the same as the harsh ‘cross-examination’ she received just yesterday; his persistence was more hunting dog than raccoon, she cursed in her head.

  "However, didn’t they make unthinkable great strides for first years? Especially that girl who also played a very active role in the Nine Schools Competition—"

  "You mean Miyuki-san?"

  "That’s right, Shiba Miyuki-kun."

  She felt as though the frames of the lightly tinted glasses he wore for show were emitting a sparkling light. These spectacles were supposedly to conceal the fact that his right eye was a false eye; however, because they didn’t contain any special gimmick for doing so, Mayumi had her doubts about that.

  "She seemed like a very excellent girl. A vice president in the newly seated student council and, if all goes properly, she will become student council president like you, Mayumi."

  "Yes, she’s a very excellent child. In addition to being a very beautiful child."

  "Oh, that’s what she looks like in Mayumi’s eyes?"

  "Do you mean even from a female’s perspective? Yea, I think Miyuki-san’s beauty is obvious to either sex."

  Koichi’s lips twitched a little.

  No trace of lust could be seen in the left eye inside the glasses.

  Such a thing especially sparked Mayumi’s wariness.

  "Be that as it may… managing to use magic of such high degree of difficulty as ‘Inferno’ and ‘Niflheim’... I’d like to meet her once. Can’t you introduce her to our family?"

  "Aaah... I’ll have to ask about that."

  "That’s right, couldn’t you ask about that for me? Come to think of it, I’m fairly certain that Miyuki has an elder brother? Didn’t you say that he helped you out Mayumi, at the Nine Schools Competition? This is a good chance; I will give him my thanks at the same time — it would be good if you invited both of them."

  The polite smile would not let her read what was going on in his head. The tinted lenses would not let her catch the anticipation in his pupils. —However, she had known him since she was born. She was already eighteen years old — their relationship was no longer one where only one side found the other transparent.

  (This was what he was aiming at...!)

  Certainly, Mayumi had made Nakura promise to keep the secret in the helicopter. The episode concerning Tatsuya’s special magic hadn’t reached her father’s ears.

  However, she didn’t think he had not told him anything.

  She was not that optimistic.

  Nakura was a sly old fox — he had probably given his employer hints without breaching his agreement to keep it secret, and her father, who was a veteran of countless battles, would be able to acquire much information from that.

  Her father was suspicious of him — Shiba Tatsuya.

  Additionally, it seemed to be about ‘something’ unknown even to herself.

  Within Mayumi, the desire to find out also smouldered, but even now, the feeling that she should avoid touching this mystery was still stronger.

  She unconsciously feared touching this mystery would destroy their current relationship.

  "I’ll try asking..."

  It took everything she had to make that answer.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  The head of the Saegusa Clan secluded himself for a while in the study, looking at the desk, when the small sound of a knock on the door caused him to look up.

  "Enter."

  The door to the study was different from the door to the reception room; it didn’t have a speaker built into it. According to common sense, a quiet sound like a whisper shouldn’t pass through the massive door and walls from the hallway.

  However, the knock didn’t repeat and the door opened without a sound.

  The one who entered was an elderly man with carefully brushed white hair, Nakura the butler.

  "Your report?"

  The question was a little too fragmentary, but Nakura walked closer as his master indicated and respectfully offered a memory card.

  Koichi set the paper card with the data printed in a detailed pattern on the micrometer level into the scanner and called up the decoded document to the wide display on the desk.

  "The 101 Independent Magic-Equipped Battalion... bothersome. Certainly, this is the unit the Yotsuba are zealously approaching?"

  "It seems they are in frequent contact, but their goal is unknown."

  "I think there is only one reason we would have for contacting the military?"

  When Koichi said ‘we,’ he wasn’t limiting himself to the Saegusa Clan or the Ten Master Clans — he meant all the magicians in the country in general.

  The magicians of this nation did not want status. The Ten Master Clans endorsed by the nation were prohibited from acquiring ’formal’ political power.

  Instead, there was administration, the military, the police and the financial world; in various aspects, the ones who held political power needed the sponsorship of magical skills to continue their personal power base. To not be treated as disposable tools, to be tools that continued to be used, they had made themselves indispensable tools and had risen to the position of servants who manipulated their masters. For this purpose, ‘to be able to continually be used’ by them, it was necessary ‘to become necessary’ and temporary alliances were needed.

  In order to gain that, ability was not enough.

  A sharp sword produced a fear in the wielder that its blade would be turned against him. The temporary alliances were relationships of mutual trust that they would not be betrayed.

  If a magician had contact with the military, then it was to acquire and maintain that trust; less with the aim of constructing that relationship than to solidify it. Such thinking was, for someone who understood the position of magicians, common sense.

  However, Nakura did not nod agreement with his master’s words.

  "The commander i
n chief, Major General Saeki, established the Independent Magic-Equipped Battalion with the aim of having a magic-equipped military force independent from the Ten Master Clans. The commanding officer, Major Kazama, was known as a person who disapproved of the Ten Master Clans when commander-in-chief Kudou retired from military service. However heretical the Yotsuba Clan is, I think that it would be difficult to win over his battalion."

  Koichi raised his brows at Nakura’s words.

  "...That’s the first I’ve heard of this."

  "That’s because the Independent Magic-Equipped Battalion did not touch the Saegusa Clan’s interests."

  The question of 'so why do you know about this' was not drawn out of Koichi’s mouth.

  'For the sake of this investigation' was the only excuse he would receive. Besides, even though the man had served him for a long time, Koichi did not think of Nakura as a member of the Saegusa. And that was surely the same for that man as well.

  "...So then, why do the Yotsuba remain in contact with the Independent Magic-Equipped Battalion?"

  His question was on a different matter. And immediately after he asked it, Koichi had an answer from himself.

  "Perhaps it is as Danna-sama thinks."

  Nakura did not have any mind reading skills. Koichi didn’t have any such skill either. Nevertheless, without making certain, Nakura was confident that Koichi had made the same conjecture he himself had.

  Koichi took the card released from the scanner between his index and middle fingers and lightly flicked his hand. The paper card he let fly flared with light before instantly burning up.

  Before he disposed of the ashes in the wastebasket, Nakura bowed and turned his back.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  At the edge of the Saegusa mansion’s extensive grounds, there was a long, narrow, rectangular, cube-shaped building. This simple but not rustic building was the Saegusa family’s private shooting range.

  Even if it’s called the Saegusa family’s, the range was actually built for Mayumi. Five years before, when Mayumi took her first trophy in a national level tournament, it had been built in commemoration of that.