Fion Seregal (1)

Leonard was carried off to the academy infirmary, yet he woke the next morning perfectly sound, as if nothing had happened at all.

The healer made a great show of threatening to strap him down if it came to that, but he still had a good many examinations left to sit, so he had no choice but to leave the infirmary early.

Then, with the rest of the examinations safely behind him, he was just about to head back to the dormitory when someone called out.

“Felix!”

It was Professor Louis, who’d run into him in the corridor and stopped him there.

“I heard you’d been discharged for good. Are you really all better now?”

“Uh, yes. They checked me over and said there wasn’t anything seriously wrong, either.”

“That really is a relief.”

He looked genuinely relieved at the answer.

“I’m sorry. I went too far.”

Then Louis laid out the truth plainly. There were nobles who wanted Leonard Felix’s ability verified, and Louis had had no choice but to answer them. Only now did Leonard understand the whole of it, and he nodded.

“Thank you for telling me honestly.”

At that, Louis’s face turned serious.

“…Tell me, do you remember anything about what happened yesterday?”

He meant that strange phenomenon that had risen out of Leonard’s body. He’d dug through every book with even the slightest bearing on it, but no such case was recorded anywhere. If it was something that could harm the boy’s health, it needed a close examination at once.

“Yesterday?”

Leonard scratched the back of his head for a moment before he answered.

“Hmm, I’m not sure. I remember the part where I was fighting you, Professor, but as for what happened at the end…”

“Anything at all will do. If something comes back to you, tell me, whatever it is.”

“Even if you put it that way, I really don’t know.”

After repeating the same answer over and over, Leonard seemed to catch on to something at last, and he asked with a grave look on his face.

“Did I fail the exam, by any chance?”

“What? No! Absolutely not. As if that were possible.”

Where in the world was there a professor vicious enough to crank up an exam’s difficulty on a whim and then hand out a failing mark on top of it? Professor Louis broke into a cold sweat and waved both hands.

“In any case, if any problem at all comes up, come to me immediately. Understood?”

“Yes, I’ll do that.”

Something about it was thoroughly suspicious, but the boy himself said he couldn’t remember, so there was no pressing him further. Professor Louis gave Leonard a light pat on the shoulder and soon went on his way.

“Phew.”

Once the professor was out of sight, Leonard let out a sigh.

As if he could have forgotten.

He remembered perfectly clearly how he’d moved through the whole examination, and even what he’d been doing at the end when he lost consciousness. He just couldn’t confess that to Professor Louis.

Because.

I could never say I passed out from using beastkin magic — not if I died and came back to life.

A chance to go head to head with a professor didn’t come along often, and it was a fight where winning or losing hardly mattered. So he’d flung the technique out on impulse, in the spirit of trying everything he had, and he’d never dreamed it would knock him out that badly.

Then again, he hadn’t learned it directly from anyone. Long ago he’d met a beastkin by chance, and he’d done no more than watch that magic over the beastkin’s shoulder and copy it. Seen that way, a result like this was only natural.

I knew it. You don’t go carelessly doing things your body isn’t suited for.

Humans have only so much mana, but the beastkin can draw nature’s mana to themselves almost without limit. If Leonard could only imitate that “feel”, he too could fight with infinite mana at his back.

Yet a human already holds his own mana inside his body, so there’s no room to take in mana from outside. Solving that would take some innovative shift in thinking.

If I’m going to be ready for the fight that’s coming, I need a powerful weapon.

He was in the middle of these thoughts when Johan came into the room, drenched in sweat, and started at the sight of Leonard lying on the bed.

“So they let you out. I heard you passed out in the middle of the exam. What on earth did you get up to with Professor Louis?”

“We had a one-on-one duel. And I lost.”

A duel with a professor. It wasn’t even surprising anymore. Johan looked at Leonard in disbelief.

“Something’s off about the way you said that. Don’t tell me you’re actually disappointed you lost?”

“Why shouldn’t I be?”

“Why not…? Well, your opponent is a fifth Circle mage and an attack magic specialist on top of that. Of course you lost.”

At that, Leonard spoke up.

“Sunbae. You shouldn’t take losing for granted. I don’t care if your opponent is a professor. Once you’ve squared up to someone, you have to fight like you mean to smash them to pieces.”

What kind of crap was that? Johan just shook his head without a word.

“Anyway, the break’s coming up. What are you going to do?”

At Kestral Academy the summer break was short and the winter break long, so a fair number of students spent the summer at the academy and went home to their families over the winter.

“What about you, Sunbae?”

“I’m staying here.”

Johan’s expression darkened a little.

He couldn’t know the reason, but as a condition of treating Johan’s illness, Leonard had forbidden all contact with his family. That naturally meant letters, and it meant seeing them over the break as well.

“I’ll stay too. There’s nothing waiting for me at home right now anyway. And I have to keep your illness in check for you, Sunbae.”

“…I see.”

“I’m hungry. Let’s go get dinner.”

Leonard snapped his fingers.

A few days later.

“…Hah!”

It was Kestral Academy’s women’s dormitory.

Fion Seregal, perched on the edge of the bed reading a long letter, finally let a sneer burst out of her. A great deal of it was still unread, but she crumpled the sheets mercilessly in her fist all the same.

“Of all the preposterous nonsense…”

Unpleasant memories, buried under the busyness of academy life, came creeping back. Fion bit her lip, and she was just about to hurl the letter at the wall in a fit of temper when a voice came from the door.

“Fion—”

It was Victoria, her roommate, poking her head in through the narrow gap. Perhaps she was worried at the sight of Fion panting with that fierce look on her face, because she asked carefully.

“Are you… all right?”

Fion realized the crumpled sheets were still in her hand. She cleared her throat and hid them behind her back.

“Of course. Nothing’s wrong. Anyway, what’s up? Did something happen?”

“The exam results are out, apparently. Let’s go check them together.”

Fion sprang to her feet at once. It felt as if only turning her attention to something else, anything else, would shake off this clammy mood.

The two of them left the dormitory and took the forest path to the academy’s main building, but the place was already packed with students. Fion fought her way through the crowd to the noticeboard and searched hard for her own name.

“Hurry up and get out of the way!”

“If you’ve seen it, back off a bit!”

The third-years had already finished checking, so the space before their board was fairly quiet, but the first-years were even shoving one another to get to theirs first.

“What’s with all the noise…”

Fion frowned and looked over at the first-years. Beside her, Victoria gave a wry smile.

“Go easy on them. They’ve probably had a rough time of it with this exam.”

“Why?”

“I mean the new kid who came in this term. Having to compete in the same year as someone like that would weigh on anyone, don’t you think?”

His magic had bloomed when he was only nine years old. On raw specs alone, Leonard Felix had a talent handed down by heaven itself, and as she recalled, the academy had been in quite an uproar over him for a while.

“Oh, come on! Does that even make sense?”

“Is this for real?”

Just then the first-years crowded around the board let out a groan all together. Fion, mildly curious now, took Victoria by the hand and pulled her along.

“Now I’m curious. Want to take a look?”

At the first-year board she spotted Leonard’s name about halfway down the list.

His written score was 7 out of a possible 10. It wasn’t bad, but next to his reputation it was an ordinary score with nothing remarkable about it.

The problem was his practical score.

“Full marks on the practical?”

The other students, only now checking Leonard’s score, stood with their mouths hanging open. Victoria seemed just as astonished. She tugged at the sleeve of Fion’s uniform again and again and whispered.

“That’s the first time I’ve ever seen my uncle give anyone full marks.”

Professor Louis oversaw the entire first-year practical, and when it came to his own subject he was notorious for being even stricter than Professor Amanda of alchemy. As if to prove it, every other student’s score hovered below 5 points.

“Hey. Isn’t this… a bit much?”

“He’s just playing favorites because the kid’s a genius, that’s all. And this exam was held behind closed doors, wasn’t it? Who knows what went on in there?”

Fion overheard the first-years talking behind her and gave a quiet snort. Professor Louis was strict, true, but he wasn’t foolish enough to play favorites with anyone.

Still, it was obvious why the students were running Leonard down. Envy and jealousy of an overwhelming talent were at work, and so was the fear that if the gap grew any wider, the worth of their own existence would suffer. All of it at once.

Still, that’s impressive.

She hadn’t given him a thought until a moment ago, but hearing that he’d taken full marks on the practical stirred her interest. Fion began comparing the other names and scores on the first-year board against Leonard’s.

“Excuse me. Just coming through~.”

Just then the mood turned restless. Fion tilted her head and looked back, and she saw someone working their way toward them through the crowd.

“Phew, there are way too many people.”

The ones who squeezed out of the crush were none other than Leonard and Johan.

“Whoa, he’s here!”

“Why is that one even here…?”

With the academy’s two most famous people gathered in one place, every student’s attention locked onto them. But Leonard, one of the two at the center of it all, paid the stares pouring over him no mind and stepped up to the board.

“…”

While Leonard ran his eyes over the board, Fion stood right beside him, unable to move and unable to stay, and so she just stood there. If she took even one step away now, she felt, the eyes fixed on the two of them would turn on her.

“Fion, Fion!”

“Huh?”

“Over here, quick.”

Luckily, Victoria calling her name gave her a natural excuse to slip away. As Fion went off after her, Leonard took his eyes off the board for a moment and looked back at her retreating figure.

Fion?

He’d never heard the name, and this was the first time he’d seen the face. So why did she feel so powerfully familiar?

Sometimes a single judgment made on instinct leads somewhere better than ten reasonable deductions, and Leonard was not one to dismiss instinct lightly.

“Excuse me.”

He called over a student loitering nearby, and the student started on seeing who had spoken.

“The student who just left. Do you happen to know her name?”

“Huh? Ah, no. I don’t know.”

“Anybody! Does anyone know the name of the student who just went that way?”

The question came out of nowhere, and the students could only look at one another. Then at last one of them spoke up.

“I can’t really remember the name, but a third-year, I think?”

“Thank you!”

At that answer, Leonard shot off like an arrow to the board two along. The color of her uniform had told him her class, so all that was left was to comb the board for her full name.

“Hey, where are you going?”

“Fion… Fion… Ah.”

Leonard ignored Johan’s call and scanned the board in a frenzy, and before long he found the name “Fion Seregal”.

But his delight lasted only a moment.

I definitely know this name. But how? From where?

It wasn’t from this life, at least. From his previous life, then? Leonard clutched his head and groaned over it for a good while, and then something flashed through his mind like a bolt of lightning.

“…Don’t tell me?”