Johan Jenkins (2)

“…What?”

For the first time, Johan, who had given off nothing but a razor-edged air from start to finish, let his bewilderment show.

“You. Do you even know who I am?”

Johan shot him a dubious look as he asked, and Leonard rattled off the answer as if he had memorized it in advance.

“Of course I do! You’re the young lord of the Jenkins house, and one of the handful of people at this academy who really count when it comes to ability. Getting to learn something from a Sunbae like you — isn’t that an honor?”

The students’ faces went slack with horror, their mouths open in soundless screams.

Stop it, you lunatic!

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

Johan 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, then dropped his voice so low that only Johan could hear.

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

Arcane magic is a higher magic born from combining two or more natural elements, such as fire, water or lightning, and its effects vary endlessly depending on the order and the ratio in which those elements are combined.

Any noble house worth the name holds at least one arcane magic of its own as a matter of course. Among them, the arcane magic of the five great houses is something very special, because so many years of labor went into making 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, merely showing someone arcane magic was hardly a problem. The combinations of elements behind it were so complex and so subtle that no amount of watching would reveal the principle, not in a hundred lifetimes.

Even so, Johan had not the slightest wish to grant the request. He just did not care for Leonard, who had come out with an offensive demand the very first time they met.

“Get lost.”

The answer was merciless, and something close to disgust sat in Johan’s glare.

“The arcane magic of the Jenkins house is not a sideshow. I won’t have it treated like some cheap trick for anyone to gawk at whenever they please.”

The students held their breath. They had been wondering what the first-year had said, and of all things, he had asked for that…

Huh?

Leonard was thrown. Somehow the mood was turning sour on him. Why had he got a reaction like this? All he had wanted was to get a little closer… His mind raced.

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

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

Damn it all.

What good had it done him to be an Archmage in his past life? It was no help at all when he actually needed it.

“Let’s leave it there.”

Professor Mark, who had kept quiet until now, stepped between the two of them, sweating. He watched Johan’s face warily, then spoke in the gentlest tone he could manage.

“Before this sours for no good reason… all right?”

This was the proud second son of one of the five great houses. 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, in the same breath, chattered away about their brand-new piece of gossip.

Thanks to Professor Mark, the duel came to nothing. The students, robbed of their spectacle, drifted back to their own places, but not one of them gave the lesson his full attention.

“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 whole hour gossiping and laying odds on a fight that never happened, and the exchange lesson simply petered out.

“…What are you doing here, Sunbae?”

“That’s my line.”

That afternoon, Johan dragged his worn-out body all the way back to the dormitory and came face to face with Leonard, who stared at him in disbelief.

“This is my room, though.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

The room he had just walked into looked rather different from how Johan remembered it. Someone’s luggage now sat on the bed on the opposite side, which had stood bare before.

“That explains it. When I moved in on the first day I did think there was an awful lot of luggage with no owner — so those were your things, Sunbae!”

Leonard, coming in after him, snapped his fingers as though it had just dawned on him. The academy must have assigned Johan a roommate while he was away.

“Then where were you staying until yesterday?”

“…A friend’s room.”

With that, Johan opened the cupboard. Bottles of mana potion were packed tight in its depths, and as Johan swept them into his backpack, Leonard smiled bitterly.

At the academy, where drinking was forbidden, students often used mana potion in place of alcohol. Raise the mana concentration in the blood past a certain level and it stimulates a particular part of the brain, bringing on a languid euphoria.

All a potion really does, though, is stir the blood meridian into raising mana output for a while. Take it for too long, or more than the body needs, and the user risks a burst blood meridian and death, or never being able to use magic again.

In fact, every year a fair number of students died from overusing mana potion.

“Staking your life on a moment’s pleasure — doesn’t that strike you as a bit of a waste?”

At Leonard’s words, Johan’s busy hands stopped dead.

For Leonard to go out of his way to put it like that, he had to know already what Johan meant to use the mana potion for. But how could a commoner who had only just arrived at the academy know that?

Johan forced the odd sense of wrongness aside.

“What is it you want to say?”

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

“No.”

The refusal was flat. Johan had already made it clear in front of the other students that he gave no quarter to youngsters, so there was no reason to go showing off the 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 cocked his head, none the wiser, and Leonard went on.

“Here’s someone from the Jenkins house, of all houses, stuck in a backwater like this, rotting away. That doesn’t suit 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.

Leonard had touched a nerve. Johan glared at him with murder in his eyes, then slowly opened his mouth, and the voice that came out was like a beast’s growl.

“…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 could have asked where they were going, but he followed Johan out without a word of complaint. All the way down the dormitory stairs and on to wherever they were headed, neither of them said a word.

When they reached an empty lot near the dormitory, the two of them opened up the distance between them as a matter of course.

“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.

This brat really was odd, in a way he could not quite put his finger on. To satisfy his own curiosity, he would turn over anyone’s sore spots without a qualm, and he seemed to feel not the slightest guilt about it.

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

“Indigo Frost!”

The duel began without warning.

Johan fired a beam of ice, and Leonard dodged it and ran straight at him. 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 quietly formed a thin sheet of ice across the dirt.

“Icicle!”

In the blink of an eye, a swarm of icicles rose into the air. Their blunted tips made it clear enough that killing was not the aim, but even so, the spell packed considerable power. Had he forgotten this was a duel?

Leonard stared at him in disbelief, but Johan paid him no mind and launched the icicles.

“Not a chance!”

— Crunch!

Leonard chopped with the side of his hand and smashed the icicles to pieces. He stamped his raised foot down to shatter the sheet of ice, then charged straight at Johan.

“If this is all you’ve got—!”

“Khh!”

Knocking magic aside bare-handed wasn’t enough, and now he was closing in instead of backing off? Leonard defied all common sense, and Johan was appalled.

— Krzzzt!

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

— BOOM!

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

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

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

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

But…!

Johan weighed it briefly, then clenched his teeth and wrapped his whole body in his own mana. Leonard paused his attack and stepped back a little, and Johan eyed him 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 hesitated in alarm, Leonard’s palm came out of his blind spot and lashed against his barrier.

— KA-BOOOM!

With a huge detonation, everything in front of Johan’s eyes went black.

“?!”

He must have blacked out for just a moment.

When he came to, he was lying in a heap on the ground. His ears rang, and his limbs would not obey him, like a puppet with its strings cut.

A concussion.

What? What just—

Through his blurred vision he saw Leonard walking toward him. Sensing danger, Johan instinctively tried to cast Mana Drain, but a sudden fit of dry heaving seized him.

“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, a face gone pale. Barely five minutes had passed since the duel began, and 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 every physical ability evenly across the board, from mana output to plain muscular strength. Had Johan 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…”

Johan gave no answer. Leonard went down on one knee and met his eyes.

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