Aozaki Aoko rudely shoved open the infirmary door, her gaze sweeping the room with the sharpness of a blade. The space was sterile and pure white, like an empty hospital ward stripped of all humanity.
The school nurse was nowhere to be seen. Not a single shadow lurked in the stillness. Yet, beneath the silence, if one listened closely, the sound of slow, steady breathing drifted through the air.
A cold premonition twisted in Aoko's chest, even as the heat of her simmering frustration flared hotter.
Following the faint rhythm of that breath, she strode past the first two beds near the door and stopped in front of the third, a thin curtain hanging over it. The sound was unmistakably coming from there.
"...Tch."
Without hesitation, Aoko yanked the curtain open in one swift motion.
At that instant, a pair of dark eyes locked onto hers. The boy lying in the bed stirred, already roused by the force of her intrusion.
"Aozaki Aoko. What are you doing here?" His voice was groggy, heavy with sleep, as though dragged from some half-dreaming haze.
"Of course it had to be you..." Aoko pressed her hand against her face, her expression stiffening with visible irritation.
"Weren't you the one who called me here?"
Her tone was laced with suspicion, and her sharp gaze swept the room again, probing, wary, as if daring some hidden trick to reveal itself.
"Oh... right. I was half-asleep."
Ryoji groaned, smacking his forehead as if to knock loose the remaining fog.
"Sorry. Didn't sleep much last night, so I must've dozed off before you came."
He glanced at the round clock on the wall.
Nine o'clock.
That wasn't a nap anymore, that was oversleeping. No wonder his head felt so heavy.
"You think you're the only one who didn't sleep well?"
The moment he mentioned fatigue, Aoko's temper spiked, her glare sharpening like drawn steel.
Her arms crossed tightly over her chest as she loomed above him. A sharp gust stirred, catching her long hair and sending it whipping wildly through the air, her presence like that of a vengeful spirit pressing down with suffocating weight.
"You didn't sleep well either?"
Ryoji blinked, eyebrows raised in mild surprise, then simply patted the empty space beside him on the bed.
"Then you can join me. Don't worry, I'll protect my chastity."
Creeaak!
Aozaki Aoko's fists clenched so tightly that her knuckles cracked audibly.
Hard.
Her fists had completely hardened.
'Protect your chastity? From who?'
'Don't tell me, from me?!'
'Are you insane?!'
She wanted to scream every insult she knew straight into this idiot's smug face. But she swallowed it down.
And it was not out of consideration for appearances, no. Aoko wasn't the type to pretend civility for something so trivial. She held back for only one reason: in any battle worth fighting, the first move must always be calm, absolute, decisive.
"I heard from Reines-sensei that you had work matters to discuss with me?"
Her voice was flat, but the vein twitching on her forehead betrayed her temper.
"Oh, that?" Ryoji tilted his head lazily. "Just an excuse. Honestly, I wanted to get you out of your house. I don't even know where you live, and figuring it out would've been annoying."
Aoko inhaled sharply through her nose. Then, without a word, she stepped back several paces, her eyes fixed on Ryoji with a glare that could kill gods.
"What the hell?" she hissed. "You planning to start a fight here?"
Come then.
Fight me.
In that moment, negotiation evaporated. She had no further interest in trading words with him.
"...Eh?" Ryoji blinked, utterly confused. "Which part of what I said makes it sound like I want to fight?"
But Aozaki Aoko's body spoke for her. Every muscle was drawn taut, her stance fierce, her aura blazing with hostility. This was no idle threat.
How baffling.
"As far as I know," Ryoji continued carefully, "I haven't done anything to provoke you, right?"
'This guy…'
'He truly had no idea.'
Three times now Aoko had nearly lost her composure, her anger boiling so hot it made her chest heave. Yet miraculously, she restrained herself again, forcing a deep exhale.
"Those Familiars last night, don't tell me they weren't wiped out near my house."
"You mean those Black Birds?" Ryoji froze, his easygoing tone breaking. "Wait... those things were yours?!"
"Of course." Aoko's glare deepened, her voice cutting sharp with venomous sarcasm. "This is sacred land under the Aozaki family's jurisdiction. Don't tell me you don't know that among Magi, trespassing on another's territory is the greatest taboo?"
"..."
Ryoji fell silent, his expression unreadable.
In Aoko's eyes, his silence was damning. She was convinced she had cornered him, the truth lay bare, and the next step could only be combat.
A real fight between Magi.
Aoko's heart pounded.
'Can I win?'
For a fleeting instant, doubt crept into her thoughts. This would be her first battle against another practitioner of Magecraft, her first true contest on equal footing.
A fight where hesitation meant death.
But she crushed that hesitation in the next heartbeat.
Win or lose no longer mattered. The enemy stood before her, and so she would fight!
Her only regret was not consulting Alice before storming out of the house. Who could have predicted she'd be cornered into battle so suddenly?
"...Is that actually a rule?"
Ryoji finally looked up after a long pause, his tone caught between confusion and lazy curiosity.
"Hah?"
Aozaki Aoko blinked, incredulous. "Are you mocking me?"
"No, I'm serious. I tried to recall, but... I honestly don't remember that particular taboo existing."
Ryoji waved his hand casually, looking far too sincere to be joking.
The TYPE-MOON world was notorious for one thing: its hopelessly fragmented lore. Rules contradicted or overlapped with each other, different systems coexisted awkwardly, and somehow it all tangled into one giant, maddening framework.
At best, Ryoji remembered only the big names and flashy backstories. The fine print, the obscure technical rules? Buried somewhere in the dark corners of memory.
"Re... recall?"
Now it was Aoko's turn to falter.
She and Alice had spoken at length the night before. Everything pointed toward Ryoji being a skilled Magus. And yet something was off.
She had asked around the school and town in the last two days. Every account matched: Ryoji had grown up here. He was no stranger dropped in under a veil of Magecraft.
Which meant, no Suggestion.
Suggestion, the art of weaving cognitive interference, could bend perception to pass off the unreasonable as natural. But not even the greatest of Magi could veil an entire town with Suggestion without leaving cracks.
And more importantly, Alice, her Witch of a roommate, would never have allowed such a brazen intrusion to slip past unnoticed.
That left only one conclusion: Ryoji was truly native to this place.
So then how in the world did someone like him, rooted here, mundane and unremarkable by all accounts, end up as a Magus?
"How did you learn Magecraft in the first place?" Aoko pressed, suspicion carved into her frown.
"To tell you the truth," Ryoji said without hesitation, spinning the tale he had rehearsed for years, "when I was a kid, I met an incredible Magus, an old man. He unlocked my Eight Extraordinary Meridians."
Aoko stiffened. "Eight Extraordinary Meridians... you mean Magic Circuits."
"Ohhh, so that's what they're called?" Ryoji widened his eyes as though struck by sudden enlightenment.
"What kind of old man was he?"
"Mm... white hair, white beard, face lined with wrinkles. Always in a black gentleman's suit."
He conjured the image smoothly from memory, an image burned into him for over a decade: that hateful old man whose likeness had once been etched into the Kaleidoscope Mystic Code.
(End of Chapter)
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