Midterm Evaluation (2)
Once the Midterm Evaluation was underway, the professors called together the cadets of their assigned classes. Their assistants moved down the ranks distributing bracelets, each one handed over with the same stern warning: losing the bracelet counted as elimination, so guard it carefully. Then, team by team as each finished its preparations, they began filing through the portal that linked to the island.
With the professors' instructions finally wrapped up, I set off to find Lianna. I figured I'd at least run a check on what she'd brought.
She wasn't the sort of person who faded into a crowd, so I found her faster than I'd expected. The problem was the knot of cadets standing around her. Judging by the look of distress on her face, they were not friendly company. Curious what exactly they were saying to her, I drifted closer under cover of the surrounding noise — it was loud enough that I had to get within arm's reach of her before I could make out the conversation at all.
"Like I said, I already told you no."
"A passably pretty face, and haughty with it — I like you even more!"
"..."
Piecing her scowl together with the content of the conversation, the picture was clear enough: the ringleader and the pack that had gathered in his wake were courting her. She was refusing desperately, her whole body broadcasting her disgust — but the self-appointed leader didn't appear to register a single word of it.
So. What was I going to do about it?
Do about it? Nothing. Stand back, watch, and step in once the whole farce had run its course. I had no intention of stirring up friction with yet more cadets and taking on needless risk. Besides, this couldn't drag on forever — dawdle too long and the professors would come over to hurry us along.
Having settled the matter, I slyly thumbed a light onto my cigarette.
'Ugh, seriously!! I can't stand the sight of him!! This man!!'
That was the sentiment Lianna swallowed down in her heart — barely managing, all the while, to keep it from spilling out of her mouth. But if this situation dragged on much longer, she wasn't at all confident she could hold it in.
And small wonder. There was the man in front of her, who — despite her having said, repeatedly, that she wanted nothing to do with him — had brought his gang along to surround her and was pressing his ardent suit. A man who had introduced himself as Derek, second son of the Viscount house of Ruben, and promptly demanded that she become his wife. And the smug look plastered across his face as he simpered in the tone of a noble "granting mercy" to a commoner — she couldn't stand a single inch of it.
His body was slathered in rolls of fat like a pig's, and his face was a stretch to call handsome by any measure. And yet he seemed genuinely convinced that becoming his wife was happiness itself, and that she would, naturally, accept.
Which she had, of course, refused at the outset. She didn't judge people by their looks — but it was a stretch to classify as sane a man who demanded marriage from a total stranger.
Even so, he would not retreat. He kept doggedly enumerating everything about her that pleased him, and by the time she'd grown sick of it and tried to slip away, several cadets who looked to be his gang had already taken up positions around her.
Struggling to smother the urge to plant her fist in that persistently courting face, she sent a silent distress call, with all her might, toward the one person who might be out there looking for her.
'If it's Jenison, he'd be looking for me to prepare, wouldn't he...?'
'When are you coming...!!'
'Has he still not found me...?'
Still firing off distress signals no one could possibly hear, she whipped her head away from Derek's face as it loomed in close — and there, nearby, she finally spotted him.
Leaning there, leisurely puffing away on a cigarette.
At first, she was relieved. She'd believed he would pull her out of this.
But no matter how much time passed, all he did was keep smoking.
'What are you doing...!! Jenison!!'
When he still showed no sign of moving first, she sent a signal of her own — gestures that to any onlooker screamed hurry up and save me.
His expression remained supremely indifferent.
Lianna knew that expression. She'd seen it often enough on the cadets inside the Academy — mostly at the training grounds. The look the waiting cadets would send toward whoever was mid-drill. The face that went hand in hand with the words, when is this going to end.
The moment she recognized it, she got angry — a little, but genuinely. They'd become teammates, after all; working together had lifted her guilt toward him, and somewhere along the way she'd even started to feel like they were friends. And now, with his friend so obviously in distress, he was going to spectate from a distance and make that face!!
So thinking, she abandoned all hope of his help and set her mind to extracting herself from this spot — and promptly hit upon a foolproof plan. A way to walk out of this situation unscathed and land a blow on Jenison in the same stroke.
"Lord Derek."
"Oh, yes! So you've finally made up your mind to become my wi—"
"No!! I have something I need to do!"
Having made her refusal unmistakably clear, she bolted straight for Jenison. She seized his arm and pulled it in against her chest. The arm's owner, for his part, wore an expression of spectacular bewilderment, and at the sight of that dopey face, Lianna smiled once more. The kind of smile no man alive could resist falling for.
"I'm sorry, Lord Derek."
"Y-you — what is the meaning of this!!"
"I have business with this gentleman now. Alone business. So if you'll excuse us."
With that, she clutched his arm and started to run — leaving behind her, in that spot, a pig whose face had gone scarlet with rage.
"Hah... hah..."
"Whew... you can let go of my arm now."
"Ah! S-sorry!"
Completely played. Like it or not, it had been a situation guaranteed to drag every eye in the vicinity onto us. I just never imagined she'd resort to a move like that.
I'd known she'd noticed me ages ago. Gesturing at me like that, right in my direction — how was I supposed to miss it? But there was no real need for me to step in, so I'd ignored her, hoping the whole thing would wrap up quickly. Revenge in this particular form had not been on my list of possibilities.
So what did I look like to that cadet, I wondered. Judging by his expression the moment she took my arm — probably the villain who'd stolen his woman. Which was, honestly, hilarious. Lianna had turned him down any number of times. Wasn't the man who kept pressing his suit after all that the truly unsightly one here? But then, if he were capable of thinking that way, he'd have stopped confessing in the first place.
Either way, his fury would come down on me or on Lianna — which meant we'd done nothing but pick up one more useless enemy heading into the Midterm Evaluation. Thinking that far, she became insufferable all over again. She should have refused him flat and left the spot immediately. What on earth had that stunt even been?
So musing, I channeled my grudge into a knife-hand and smacked her square on the crown of the head.
The instant it landed she clapped a hand to the spot and shot me a glare — then remembered what she'd just pulled, and her eyes darted elsewhere in a hurry.
"...It already happened. I'll think about it later. So... what did you bring?"
"Ah! This!"
Beaming with pride, she fished something out of her bag and held it up for me to see. What she presented, with the radiant expression of someone unveiling a great treasure, was a perfectly ordinary rock.
"...A rock?"
"Yep! With this I can use Transmutation however I like! It's such a simple structure, it barely takes any mana!"
"...Rocks exist on the island too, you know."
"...Ah."
Apparently that far hadn't occurred to her; her groan reached my ears, and before long I was pressing a hand to my forehead.
To be fair, it wasn't purely a bad choice. Of all things, stone had the simplest structure, and it was light — she could throw it and transmute it in mid-flight. But it offered no clear-cut advantage to speak of. Bluntly put, there was no chance in hell the island lacked rocks, and if she was going to pack anything, food should have come first. If anything, hauling stones at the expense of other supplies was the bigger loss.
Watching the wrinkles deepen on my face, she insisted she'd brought other things too, and began pulling out provisions — food, potions, and the like. The rock still displeased me immensely, naturally, but there was no repacking now. Thanks to the earlier standoff, we were bound to be later than the other cadets, and since the evaluation wouldn't begin until every last cadet had arrived, the professors' stares were currently pinned on the two of us alone. Drag things out any further and we might even take a point deduction, so we decided to depart as we were.
"Do you remember what we have to do the moment we arrive?"
"Uh... yeah! You mean gathering food, right?"
"That's right. Correct answer."
Our goal, naturally, was to survive as long as possible and score well — which made securing food non-negotiable. The island was home to all manner of animals, and the trees bore fruit besides. But the more cadets committed to lasting the distance, the higher the demand for food climbed, and sooner or later there simply wouldn't be enough to go around. Which meant we had to gather food first, and hold out on the assumption that every last bite would need rationing.
She seemed to have taken my words to heart, because her bag was stuffed to the brim with the provisions she'd airlifted in. I could make most cooking implements myself, after all — which meant that much more room for food.
So we shouldered our packs once more and made for the portal. By the time we arrived, the other cadets had all gone on ahead; those still remaining stood in line, filing into the portal one by one. The professor caught sight of us and waved us over in an unmistakable hurry-up gesture, and so, our names checked off the roster, we too stepped toward the blue-glowing surface of the portal —
It was the instant the world's scenery turned inside out.