Team Registration
Early morning. As always, I rose from bed at the appointed hour.
Growing muscle meant building it fiber by fiber, and crafting each strand by hand was out of the question — so I had resolved to take up morning exercise instead. Holed up in my room as I'd been, even what little muscle I once possessed had withered away to nothing, and if all my years of experience had proven anything, it was that stamina had never been my strong suit.
So there I was, dripping with sweat through my exercises, when I heard Ella stirring awake. The moment she emerged and realized she had risen later than I had, she couldn't hide her mortification to save her life. Left to her own devices, she would clearly agonize over it all day, so I hurriedly assured her it was nothing and left the room just as I always did.
And yet, in a routine as ordinary as ever, something felt different. From the corridors deep inside the Academy all the way down the path to our classroom, not a single quiet spot remained. It was hard to believe this was the same place that had once brimmed with aristocratic poise. Everyone had gathered in twos and threes, deep in conversation — and for the most part, the topic was one and the same.
"Hey, you — join my team..."
"Think you'll come to ours..."
"Come on, let's team up..."
At the Academy, the Midterm Evaluation was mandatory for every cadet, with each year assessed separately. Once the professors announced the theme, the students prepared for it accordingly — and since cooperation was permitted, teaming up was the norm. Hence the contest now underway, everyone jockeying to rope the most promising talents into their teams before anyone else could.
Naturally, not a soul approached me. A few had caught on to what I could do during the last duel, but plenty of cadets still chalked it up to luck — and no matter how you looked at it, what was I, a boy with no house behind him, to outweigh the Academy's regard on strength alone? Not one cadet believed I could. So no one came near me at all, which suited me fine; I'd long been more at home working alone than dragging around a pack of mediocre teammates.
I was still turning all this over, wondering how I might see the Midterm through on my own, when the front door rasped open and in walked Oliver, the professor in charge of Class 1-B.
"Professor? What brings you to our class?"
"Ah — that would be because your homeroom professor has been kept away by personal matters."
"I'll be handling today's Midterm announcement at short notice, and from the next session another professor will be along."
The professor's been swapped out, has he? No complaints here — the old one did nothing but bellow, and I'd never thought much of him anyway.
"In any case — setting that aside — I shall now announce the theme of the Midterm Evaluation."
"F...Finally!!"
"I heard the seniors last year got team duels for their theme?"
"And the year before that was Gate clearing."
"P...please, let it be something easy..."
Every head in the room bent toward Professor Oliver, hanging on his word. He let the silence stretch, drawing out the moment with what seemed like deliberate slowness — and then he opened his mouth.
"The theme of this Midterm Evaluation is Survival."
Survival? Where? How? From what, exactly?
It was a theme that bred a hundred questions at once, and with every face in the room wearing the same doubt, Oliver carried on.
"The Academy holds possession of a private island."
"For this Midterm Evaluation, you will be surviving there — for as long as you can manage."
"Naturally, that island is home to monsters, to say nothing of the poisonous flora."
"Your assessment will rise and fall with how long you last under those conditions."
"The professors will be observing throughout, so there is no need to worry for your safety — and fighting between cadets, for the record, is not forbidden."
And with a closing remark to the effect of well, roughly that's the shape of it, Professor Oliver opened the floor to questions — whereupon the cadets' hands shot up as though they had been waiting for exactly that.
"Is there anything that counts as foul play?"
"None. Do whatever it takes. Just survive."
"Are there grounds for losing marks?"
"Striking anyone registered to your own team, or any attack intended to kill a fellow cadet, will be sanctioned."
"How are we to know whether the other cadets are still alive?"
"Each of you will be issued a clock at the start. It will display the number of cadets still surviving."
Question after question came flying at Professor Oliver, and he answered each one without a beat's delay, as though reading from a script. Some cadets chewed over the answers with furrowed brows; others preened as though nothing in the world could touch them; and still others were already craning about, no doubt eager to get word out to someone.
Before long, having watched the room's reaction, Professor Oliver scratched his head and added the last of it.
"Ah, and one more thing — team registration opens a week from now. See to it that you've finished recruiting your teammates by then."
With that, he pulled open the same door he had entered by and was gone again just as quickly.
A week to recruit teammates, then... Given that much time, surely I could talk one person into joining me. Even I would struggle to dodge every last cadet in a crowd that size and still come away with a top score — but with even a single teammate at my side, wouldn't the weight pressing down on me lighten by exactly that much? A week was long enough to persuade someone, one way or another.
And so Jenison set his mind to the question of who would make a fitting teammate.
Honestly? I had made light of it.
I'd assumed I could scrape together a teammate without even trying, figuring I'd find one easily enough among the others braving the evaluation solo — so I hadn't given it much thought.
But there was one thing I had overlooked: in aristocratic society, reputation is bound fast to one's house, and nobody volunteers to team up with a commoner whose name has already been dragged through every gutter it could find.
And so I — a commoner now, in fact and in name — set about hunting for anyone willing to form a team with me, and by great difficulty managed to find exactly one person.
Lianna.
The girl who had agreed to play the victim of my harassment at the Academy in exchange for my support. With me having walked out on my family, there was nothing further left for her to scrounge off me — and yet, perhaps because she counted my offer as a kindness, she accepted it more readily than I'd expected.
When I asked why she had agreed so easily:
"I... it's just... I felt so guilty..."
"Guilty about what?"
"That I couldn't... do anything about the rumors spreading through the Academy... or hold the people back... after you left your family..."
So that was what she'd been fretting over. A more tender-hearted creature than I'd given her credit for. The cadets' harassment she could endure well enough — but no amount of personal effort was going to stop a rumor once it took wing, was it?
"Don't dwell on it. I'm fine."
"Uuh... are... are you really?"
"I am. Besides, I did bully you, after all."
"S...still!! It was never even that bad... and sometimes you helped me."
The helping part was true. My own brand of bullying had never gone beyond insults and toying, but the abuse handed down by the lackeys who once flocked to me had been genuinely vicious. They made off with her uniform or smeared it with filth, and they insulted her right out in the open — practically daring the whole crowd to listen in.
Every time, guilt over her would seep into me, and I began helping her on the sly. If her uniform went missing, I would quietly buy a fresh one and slip it back where she would find it; when a crowd gathered to jeer at her in public, I would take the temperature of the room and smother the whole thing before it could catch fire. That sort of thing.
In any case, it seemed to me that a man making the offer I had and then pulling stunts like those was nothing but a hypocrite, so I had tried my best not to let it show. I just never imagined she would notice.
Was that why she had accepted my offer?
Whatever her reasons, a teammate with sharp instincts was no bad thing — and so I took her onto my team.
The surrounding cadets, however, seemed to have picked up on none of it. The moment they spied the two of us together, the rumors came circling back through the Academy — that I had resumed tormenting her, that Jenison had taken to dragging a girl around by the wrist, and so on and so forth.
Lianna naturally tried to set the record straight, but the cadets decided she must be held under my thumb by some blackmail or other, pitied her all the more for it, and glared at me twice as hard.
Paying their stares no mind whatsoever, we entered the Student Council together to file our team registration.
The first thing we saw upon stepping inside was the rest of the council members. Each clutched a share of paperwork, and every last one of them wore dark circles deep enough to sink a ship. They fixed those eyes on me with the air of people who had just witnessed something no one should have to see — which was, frankly, a little unnerving — but then a man who appeared to be the vice president asked my business, and only then did I collect myself and state it.
"What's your business here, young master Delinquent?"
"I've come to form a team, together with my teammate here."
"...Teammate? Someone actually joined your team?"
"One has, as it happens. Here."
I introduced her to him, and before long, wearing a look that said he had seen through everything, he turned to her and tried his hand at conversation.
"Look, I don't know what kind of hold he's got on you, but if you'd rather, we could—"
"That is a rather rude thing to say, Vice President."
What did he think he was saying to my teammate? She was someone I had gone to proper, painstaking lengths to recruit — a genuinely valuable addition.
His words cut off mid-breath; whether he took offense at the interruption or had simply been born to it, he plastered arrogance across his face from ear to ear and pressed on.
"...Team registration is handled by the Student Council President alone."
"Then where might I find the President?"
"Further inside. Go on."
Ushered deeper within at his direction, we came upon a room so fine it announced itself from the door handle outward — marked, apparently, none too subtly, as the Student Council President's office. Having deposited Lianna and me there, the vice president returned to his own work, and I knocked on the handsome paneled door.
"I would like to register a team, Madam President."
"...Come in."
Whether she recognized my voice I couldn't say, but there was the briefest hesitation in her reply. I did not wait on ceremony; I opened the door and stepped through.
The figure of a woman signing documents met my eyes. Blue hair spilled down her back, all but enveloping her slight frame. Her hands bore the calluses of a pen held far too many hours. Her eyes were cat-slit — not cold, precisely, but sharp enough to prick. And her chest carried a presence that stood in stark contrast to those willowy arms and legs.
Daughter of the wealthiest family in the Empire. President of the student council that was, if one were honest, the true power behind the Academy. And the younger sister of Albert — the closest thing I had to a friend. Though the two of them shared far too little in common to pass for twins.
Unlike his voice, which had been warmer than anyone's, she looked up at me with eyes a shade too cold.
It was Sophia Iris, the Student Council President.