Johan Jenkins (2)

“…What?”

For the first time, Johan, who had been nothing but sharp edges from start to finish, let his bewilderment show.

“You. Do you even know who I am?”

He asked it with a doubtful look, and Leonard rattled off the answer as if he’d memorized it in advance.

“Of course I do! You’re the young lord of the Jenkins house, and one of the few at this academy you could count on one hand for sheer ability. To learn something from a Sunbae like you — isn’t that an honor?”

The students’ faces went blank with horror, and they let out silent screams.

Stop it, you lunatic!

Of all the people to go poking at, why that one!

Johan only gave a slight shrug.

“…Well, flatter me all you like, but there’s nothing in particular I’ve got to teach.”

“Oh, there is.”

Leonard broke into a grin and dropped his voice so low that only Johan could hear.

“You’ve got the Jenkins house’s arcane magic, haven’t you.”

Arcane magic.

It was a higher magic made by combining two or more natural attributes, such as fire, water and lightning, and its effects could branch a thousand ways depending on the order and the ratio in which the elements were joined.

Any noble house worth the name held at least one arcane magic of its own as a matter of course. Yet the arcane magic of the five great houses was something special, because so many years and so much labor had been packed into it.

“What? I didn’t catch that.”

“What did that first-year just say?”

While the students muttered in confusion, Johan found himself frowning.

“If by any chance you’re asking how it’s cast…”

“Oh, come on, as if I’d do that. I just want a look at it, that’s all.”

In truth, just showing someone arcane magic wasn’t much of a problem in itself. The combinations of elements behind it were so complex and so subtle that no one could grasp the principle by watching, not in a hundred lifetimes.

Even so, Johan had no wish at all to grant the request. He simply didn’t like Leonard, who had come out with a rude demand the very first time they met.

“Get lost.”

It was a merciless answer, and the glare Johan turned on Leonard held something close to disgust.

“The arcane magic of the Jenkins house is not a sideshow. I won’t stand for it being treated as some cheap trick to be watched whenever anyone pleases.”

The students held their breath. They’d been wondering what had been said, and of all things, he had asked for that…

Huh?

Leonard was thrown. Somehow the mood was turning sour on him, and he couldn’t see why he’d got a reaction like this. All he had wanted was to get a little closer… A thousand thoughts went round in his head.

Come to think of it, how did kids this age go about making friends again?

The moment he got that far, Leonard’s breath caught. In his past life he’d been far older than his classmates, and he had no memory at all of making a friend worth the name.

Damn it all.

What good was it to have been an Archmage in his past life, if it was no help at all when he actually needed it?

“Let’s leave it there.”

Just then Professor Mark, who had kept quiet until now, stepped in between the two of them in a cold sweat. He read Johan’s face, then spoke in the gentlest tone he could manage.

“Before things turn ugly for no reason… all right?”

This was the proud second son of one of the five great houses, so would he really back off meekly? Fortunately, Johan turned his back on Leonard without any particular complaint.

“Wow, that was nearly a disaster.”

“Did you see Johan’s face?”

The students sighed with relief and, at the same time, chattered away about their fresh piece of gossip.

With Professor Mark’s intervention, the duel came to nothing. The students, robbed of their spectacle, went back to their seats, but not one of them was really paying attention to the lesson.

“If a fight had broken out, who do you reckon would’ve won?”

“Johan, obviously. They say that first-year’s a genius, but nobody’s actually seen him do anything…”

In the end the students spent the time gossiping and guessing who would have won the fight that never happened, and the exchange lesson fizzled out and ended.

“…What are you doing here, Sunbae?”

“That’s my line.”

That afternoon.

Johan, who had dragged his fatigue-worn body all the way back to the dormitory, came face to face with Leonard staring at him with eyes full of disbelief.

“This is my room, though.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

When Johan opened the door and stepped inside, the room looked rather different from how he remembered it. Someone’s luggage had taken over the bed on the opposite side, which had been bare until now.

“That explains it. On the first day I did think there was an awful lot of luggage in here with no owner — so it was yours, Sunbae!”

Leonard came in after him and snapped his fingers as if something had just dawned on him. It seemed the academy had assigned Johan a roommate while he’d been away.

“Then where were you staying until yesterday?”

“…A friend’s room.”

With that, Johan opened the cupboard.

Packed tight at the very back were bottles of mana potion. As Johan swept them into his backpack, Leonard couldn’t help a bitter smile.

Drinking was forbidden at the academy, so students often used mana potion in place of alcohol. Once the mana concentration in the blood rose past a certain level, it stimulated a particular part of the brain and brought on a languid euphoria.

But all a potion really did was activate the blood meridian to raise mana output for a while. Take it for longer than was needed, and the blood meridian could burst and kill the user, or leave them unable to use magic ever again.

In fact, students who died from overusing mana potion turned up often enough every year.

“Putting your life on the line for a moment’s pleasure — doesn’t that seem like a bit of a waste?”

At Leonard’s words, Johan’s busy hands came to a dead stop.

If he had gone out of his way to put it like that, he already knew what Johan meant to use the potions for. But how could a commoner who had only just arrived at the academy know that?

Johan pushed the odd sense of wrongness aside and asked.

“What is it you want to say?”

“I’d like to pick up where the exchange lesson left off.”

“No.”

It was a flat refusal. He’d already left the students with the impression that he was merciless and gave no quarter to the young, so there was no reason to go showing off his arcane magic now.

“I can’t make sense of it. Why are you so desperate to see my magic?”

“Hm… Because that’s the only way I’ll know for sure?”

Johan tilted his head at words he couldn’t make sense of, so Leonard went on.

“Someone from the Jenkins house, of all houses, out in a backwater like this, rotting away in a way that doesn’t fit the name at all. Wouldn’t anyone think something’s off?”

A meaningful smile rose on his face.

“So it’s one of two things. Either you’ve fallen out of the house’s favor, or else… there’s some other problem.”

In that instant, Johan’s face twisted into something terrible.

It seemed Leonard had touched a sensitive subject. Johan glared at him with murder in his eyes, then slowly opened his mouth, and the voice that came out was like a beast growling.

“…So long as I don’t grant that ‘favor’ of yours, you mean to keep on digging. Is that it?”

“Naturally. Isn’t that obvious?”

At that, Johan set the backpack down.

“Let’s step outside.”

Leonard might well have asked where to, but he followed Johan out without a word of complaint. All the way down the dormitory stairs and on to wherever they were going, neither of them spoke first.

When they reached an empty lot near the dormitory, the two of them naturally put some distance between themselves.

“The format is a one-on-one duel. Do you know the rules?”

“Yes. It ends on the spot when one side is knocked out or admits defeat, right?”

Johan let out a displeased grunt at the answer.

There was something odd about this brat that he couldn’t put his finger on. To satisfy his own curiosity he’d turn over anyone’s sensitive business without a qualm, and he didn’t seem to feel the slightest guilt about it.

He needed to be stamped down, thoroughly, once and for all.

“Indigo Frost!”

The duel began without warning.

Johan loosed a beam of ice, and Leonard dodged it and came running forward. The sight of his opponent closing the distance instead of opening it threw Johan for a moment, but he calmly readied his next spell.

“Hm?!”

The moment Leonard put down his next step, his foot slid out sideways. Johan’s first spell had struck the ground, and the cold spreading from it had at some point laid a thin sheet of ice across the dirt.

“Icicle!”

In the blink of an eye, a mass of icicles rose into the air. Their blunted tips made it clear that killing wasn’t the aim, but even so, the spell’s power was considerable. Had he forgotten this was a duel?

Leonard stared at him as if he couldn’t believe it, but Johan paid him no mind and launched the icicles.

“Not a chance!”

— Crunch!

Leonard swung the edge of his hand and smashed the icicles to pieces. Then he drove his raised leg down into the ground, shattered the sheet of ice, and charged straight at Johan.

“If this is all you’ve got—!”

“Khh!”

He wasn’t content with batting magic aside bare-handed, so he was closing the distance instead of opening it? Leonard’s behavior ran past all common sense, and Johan was appalled.

— Krzzzt!

The Blue Stripe Leonard fired flew off in a straight line, but just before it could land, a barrier Johan threw up blocked it. Leonard paid that no mind either and went on casting.

— BOOM!

Leonard’s fist drove into the barrier with such force that even Johan, standing on the far side of it, staggered.

Now I see why he didn’t back down from the duel.

The look in Johan’s eyes as he watched Leonard changed a little.

An ordinary first-year would have been beaten long ago, yet Leonard was doing the opposite, tearing about full of fight. Johan had caught the word “genius” in passing afterward, and it seemed the word had been right after all.

But…!

Johan weighed it for a moment, then clenched his teeth and covered his whole body in his own mana. At that, Leonard broke off his attack and stepped back a little. Watching him, Johan asked with a puzzled look.

“What are you doing?”

“Something struck me as strange, that’s all.”

In that instant Leonard vanished from Johan’s sight. While Johan faltered in alarm, Leonard’s palm came out of his blind spot and slammed against his barrier.

— KA-BOOOM!

There was a huge detonation, and everything in front of Johan’s eyes went black.

“?!”

It seemed he’d lost consciousness for just a moment.

When he came to, he was slumped in a heap on the ground. His ears were ringing, and his limbs wouldn’t obey him, like a puppet with its strings cut.

A concussion.

What? What just—

Into his blurred vision came Leonard, walking toward him. Sensing the danger, Johan instinctively went to trigger Mana Drain, and a sudden fit of dry heaving welled up.

“Gweugh! H-how…”

“Because it’s a shock delivered straight through the medium. One or two barriers aren’t going to block that.”

Leonard, already within arm’s reach, looked Johan slowly over.

Ragged breathing. Cold sweat pouring down like rain. And on top of that, a face gone pale. Barely five minutes had passed since the duel began, so for his condition to have worsened this visibly was strange.

“Why aren’t you using it?”

“Wh-what—”

“The arcane magic, I mean.”

The arcane magic of the Jenkins house, “Reinforcement,” raised physical ability evenly across the board, from mana output to plain muscular strength.

If Johan had used it, the fight would have lasted far longer than it had.

“You’ve fought me now, so you must know. Without the arcane magic, Sunbae, you can’t beat me. And if you knew that and still went ahead…”

There was no answer. Leonard went down on one knee and met Johan’s eyes.

“Could it be that there’s something wrong with your body?”