A Headache (2)

Amon Vincent brought his mana into bloom for the first time near the end of his twelfth year.

Naturally, nobody in the family thought it particularly surprising, Amon least of all. For anyone born a Vincent, that step went without saying.

With his parents’ money and rank behind him, he entered Everforce Academy without a hitch. Not long afterward, though, he ran into the greatest crisis of his life.

The trouble came from the academy’s own operating policy. Rather than improving the quality of its teaching, Everforce Academy’s board of directors had poured its effort into weeding out the students who showed no promise, and the yardstick for that screening was none other than the “Circle.”

The Circle matters a great deal, since it decides the total volume and the output of a mage’s mana. Whether a Circle opens, however, depends on all sorts of things, and individuals differ enormously, which makes it a poor measure of potential.

Even so, led by its board and its Dean, Everforce Academy pushed the policy through with the Circle as its grounds, setting a target Circle grade for each year and forcibly expelling every student who fell short.

Amon was no exception.

When he missed the target set for him, “Reach the fourth Circle by the end of your third year,” the academy served him notice of expulsion on the spot. For Amon, who carried the expectations of his house on his back, the blow was tremendous. In the end he re-enrolled at Kestral Academy, where his uncle held a teaching post, in what amounted to running away.

Amon had hoped for warm comfort and encouragement. What he found in his uncle Graham’s eyes instead was cold contempt mixed with disgust, and far from looking after his nephew, Graham made a habit of ignoring him even in private.

After all, someone who had become a stain on the house had no right to hold his head high.

That’s why.

Amon slowly opened his eyes. The ceiling of his room, spotless without a speck of dust, filled his vision.

That’s why I have to see this job through, whatever it takes.

Bring Leonard Felix under the family’s control. This was the first and last chance at a comeback he had been given, and failure was not an option.

— Knock, knock.

The knock came just then. Amon pushed himself up from the bed where he had been lying and, perched on its edge, spoke.

“Come in.”

At his word, a first-year student opened the door and stepped into the room, glancing warily around.

That one?

Jace Impersia, one of the stooges Amon had planted near Leonard. Jace looked nervous and anxious and hung back for a good while, until Amon, exasperated, spoke first.

“You’re here, so say what you came for.”

At that, Jace answered in a small but distinct voice.

“Erm, there’s something new I have to pass on about Leonard Felix…”

“What is it?”

“Right. An outing to Everton has been arranged for Friday lunchtime.”

For a moment nobody spoke. Amon stared at Jace in disbelief, then asked again.

“That’s all?”

“Ah. Well…”

“I said is that all!”

His patience gone, Amon shot up from the bed and glared, and Jace, frightened, stepped back without meaning to.

“You could at least have found out the route they’re taking, or something… Damn it!”

— Crash-bang!

Amon’s kick sent the chair flying, and it landed a hair’s breadth from Jace’s toes. Amon himself had ordered every last trivial scrap passed on to him, but right now he was too on edge to remember that.

Amon panted for a moment, caught his breath, and spoke to Jace, who stood trembling and at a loss.

“…Get out.”

“Y-yes?”

“I said get out.”

The words were barely out before Jace bolted through the door without a moment’s hesitation. Left alone in the room, Amon turned where he stood, collapsed onto the bed, and groaned like a man at death’s door.

Goddamn it.

If it had not been Graham’s order… No, if the matter had not been bound up with the family, he would have turned down a job this tiresome and this unsavory without even hearing it out. But Amon had no real choice.

Be that as it may… an outing, is it.

He was used to making a strong impression and had no gift whatsoever for patience, for holding on and building a connection step by step. Realistically, he had only one chance.

A strong impression calls for a stage to match. An outing, with fewer eyes watching and the situation and mood his to arrange as he pleased, would be the perfect moment to make contact with Leonard Felix.

Even so.

Amon got up quietly from the bed and tapped one spot on the wooden floor with his heel. One of the floorboards lifted slightly, revealing a hidden compartment. Inside lay a little money, a few important documents, and a single bracelet with an ominous energy rippling off it. Without a word Amon took up the bracelet and shoved it inside his coat, then put the lid back and hid the compartment away.

I ought to have at least some insurance.

“At this rate we’re going to be late for the showing.”

“Could you go just a bit faster, please!”

A week later, Leonard was formally issued an outing pass and climbed into a carriage bound for the Everton town center. The carriage rolled past the outdoor practice grounds, laid out like a forest, and out through the main gate, and the vast streets of Everton opened up ahead.

Perhaps because the students kept urging the driver on, they reached the center of Everton in a bare ten minutes. They had a schedule worked out in advance, so the moment they were down from the carriage they set off at speed, dragging Leonard this way and that by the wrist.

“Er, I don’t really know what it is we’re about to do, but is it something we have to see?”

After a long walk Leonard put the question cautiously, and the students glared at him as though he had uttered some forbidden word that must never pass anyone’s lips. Even Leonard flinched.

“The kid doesn’t get it.”

“If you don’t get it, cut the chatter and just follow.”

“So you’re a genius, so what?”

“…”

What on earth did that last one have to do with any of this?

Unable to put up any proper resistance, Leonard let the students “escort” him along, half by force, and all the way to the theater he kept cursing in his head: “No respect for your elders,” “You’ve wasted your whole life.”

What is that?

Leonard looked at the poster pasted up on the outer wall of the gaudy theater building and narrowed his eyes to slits.

Clearer than ever, through a triple compound crystal lens! The very latest high-definition image stones for projectors — a feast for your eyes!

The poster was full of phrases whose meaning escaped him. Walking past it with no idea what was going on or how, Leonard was swept along by his classmates until he found himself seated in the audience ringing an enormous circular stage.

“It’s starting!”

A tremendous light burst out of the image stone set at the center of the stage. In the blink of an eye a sphere-shaped image rose into the air, and the audience quietly held its breath.

“…”

Culture shock.

The term names the shock a person feels on meeting something entirely different from their own culture, or a new way of living. No other word described so exactly what Leonard was feeling at this moment.

Wow. That’s insane.

Dozens of auxiliary projectors installed all around the stage threw out light and sound of every kind, breathing splendor and life into the image. Even Leonard, who had kept up an air of indifference at first, was sitting dumbstruck by the time the film was about halfway through.

An image stone is a special, rare crystal that can record, in real time, any situation or scene one wishes to preserve. On the battlefield, image stones had served well as tactical maps, for taking in the terrain at a glance and drawing up operations. But they were priced accordingly, and they could hold so little footage that they were rarely used outside special purposes. Using them to make eye candy on this scale did not come close to paying for itself.

And yet some madman out there had actually gone and done it.

…No. Maybe there’s plenty of profit in it after all.

Leonard cast a quick glance around him. A ticket into this theater had cost about two gold, neither too cheap nor too dear, a subtly well-judged figure. And if theaters scattered all over the Empire drew an audience this size every single day…

To think an amusement this tremendous was sitting barely ten minutes away by carriage.

Was thrift really that ingrained in him? To exaggerate only a little, he was close to doubting his whole life. What was more, for something he had privately looked down on as children’s fare, the film was not bad. No, it was outstanding.

The plot was a good-triumphs-over-evil story of the most standard kind. A mage bitten by a mysterious ancient spider gains the spider’s power, dons a mask, and ranges across the whole Empire as a vigilante of unknown identity. But the actors’ performances, the staging of the scenes, and the film’s various special effects were fine enough to make even the obvious clichés entirely forgivable.

“Well? Good, isn’t it?”

“How was it?”

The film ran long, and the moment it ended the students demanded his verdict in triumph.

“It was good.”

“Huh? Really?”

Leonard admitted it so simply, against all expectation, that one of the students pressed him, bewildered. Leonard raised his bowed head. His eyes were shining bright and clear, the exact opposite of when he had walked into the theater.

“Mm. I’m going to save up and come back for certain.”

Seeing Leonard press his lips tight and promise himself a next time, the very students who had dragged him to the theater were the ones thrown off.

“R-right.”

“Glad you liked it, I suppose…”

The students looked a good deal more relaxed once they were out of the theater, most likely because the film, the one thing with a fixed showing time, was behind them and their schedule had room in it now.

“All right, what shall we do next?”

“Staffs! Let’s go and look at staffs.”

“Why do boys love staffs so much?”

The girls muttered it in disbelief, but Leonard understood exactly how the boys felt.

A staff is practically the symbol that proves you are a mage in your own right. Yet first- through fourth-years, whose ability is still raw, are forbidden to own a personal staff, and even fifth-years only get the use of the academy’s communal staffs until graduation. Under those conditions, it was hardly unreasonable for a first-year to cherish fantasies about staffs.

“The market you lot want to go to is over by the staff-maker’s workshop anyway, isn’t it? Let’s walk together until we split up partway.”

“…Fine.”

The girls had no particular objection, it seemed, and readily agreed to the boys’ proposal, so they all set off.

Come to think of it… a staff, is it.

Leonard clenched and unclenched his fist. Perhaps because by his own reckoning only a few weeks had passed, the feel of the staff he used to carry still lingered in his hand, exactly as it had been.

It had a hell of a feel in the hand.

Worked past its limits to the very end, Leonard’s staff had been smashed to pieces a bare few hours before he lost his life. He had wondered now and then whether things might have turned out a little differently had the staff been sound, but in truth there was no point dwelling on it.

“Leonard, what are you doing standing there! Hurry up!”

“…Huuh?”

In that moment of distraction a fair gap had opened between him and the others. Leonard came to himself belatedly and tried to follow, but in an instant a tremendous crowd surged in and cut him off from them.

“Hey! Hey, you!”

“Are you there?”

The students’ voices reached him from here and there.

“Leonard! Don’t be late — be at the meeting point by half past five! Got it?”

The crowd had swollen so much that every attempt to force his way into a gap only pushed him back the other way. In the end the students must have given up on regrouping with Leonard too, because after that last call, nothing more came.

“Oh, hell.”

Well, there was nothing for it now, was there? For a moment he thought of using magic to force the people aside, but he dropped the idea at once. Since things had turned out this way, he might do better to go and explore the town center to his heart’s content instead.

Just as he turned and set off in the exact opposite direction from the students, a strange sensation brushed against Leonard’s nerves.

Hm?

For the briefest instant the space around him blurred and rippled like a mirage. The flicker was so momentary that ordinarily nobody would have noticed it, but Leonard caught the “anomaly” with ease.

Illusion magic.

Someone was artfully manipulating how many people were visible, narrowing the routes open to him. Why on earth? And so out of nowhere, at that?

Which bastard is it?

Leonard concentrated and spread out detection magic, and his net caught someone approaching with their presence masked by magic. Whoever it was seemed to have no idea they had been detected.

Behind me.

When Leonard turned to look, a big student came into view, striding toward him with a yellow collar fluttering.