Club Promotion Street
The long street designated for Club #109 was packed with people. It was a decent-sized road cutting straight through Arecibo, but the biggest reason was clearly that some kind of event had kicked off. Still, it didn’t look like a well-practiced affair—clumsiness was on full display everywhere. It made me wonder if they were even doing this right. The spots assigned to each group felt completely meaningless.
The sky that should have been clear was crowded with anti-gravity cars buzzing back and forth. The actual roadways, meant for wheeled vehicles, were overflowing with pedestrians. Sidewalks meant for walking were crammed with hastily assembled booths. And naturally, behind every booth stood people in trendy outfits doing their best to catch the eye.
I tilted my head up slightly and scanned the banner strung across the road above.
CLUB PROMOTION STREET
This is where various clubs promote themselves!
Last year the event hadn’t started until mid-March. This year the schedule had apparently gotten tangled, so it began in early March. Club Promotion Week.
The hip-looking people behind the booths were, of course, the club promoters.
I slowly walked the line of stalls, taking them in one by one.
A perfectly ordinary board game club, the kind every university had. Their outfits reflected that—more normal than hipster.
A club wearing ridiculous giraffe costumes and swinging wooden swords. They didn’t exactly scream “hunting club,” yet their booth was surprisingly crowded.
A club that looked like it would be good at measuring water temperature. I had zero desire to join, but I was morbidly curious what kind of madness would happen if I did.
“My eyes!”
“Get lost, you crazy bastards!”
“Go away!”
“The pony freaks have finally lost it!”
Men and women alike were dancing around in pony costumes and showing off pony magic. Everything was so painfully awkward that it hit the uncanny valley hard. Maybe that was why no one stood anywhere near them. In many ways, it was a mercy.
“Mari would probably like that one.”
A booth covered in Halloween-style ghost makeup. It might be worth remembering for Cheon Mari’s sake… but then again.
“Wait, would she explode?”
On second thought, that would be a huge nuisance for the club. I’d be lucky if she didn’t start a coup against the club president while claiming she was the true owner. I mentally erased the club from my mind so I wouldn’t accidentally mention it in front of her.
I turned to look at the booths on the opposite side.
“Yeehaw!”
“Green environment! Love the Earth! World Tree, you son of a bitch!”
“True eco-friendliness means Germans and Shareltea people dying!”
“Burn Germany and all of Shareltea! Kill every last World Tree follower!!!”
“If you love the Earth and the environment, join the ‘Green Peace Club’ right now! Our goal is the total annihilation of the entire Shareltea planet!”
Some very strange environmentalists. They had even tied a sapling—I had no idea where they got it—to a cross and were burning it in real time. Protecting the environment by burning trees. If a normal person came up with that idea, their brain would blue-screen in horror. In that sense, these people were remarkably strong-willed. Their mentality was similar to Mari’s, but at least they hadn’t completely lost their minds.
“Still, the fire show is pretty entertaining.”
While I stood there watching blankly, one of them with blood-red eyes scanning the crowd spotted me.
“Hey, silver-haired friend over there! Your eyes are sparkling. Want to join our club and become one of our ‘eco-warriors’?”
In other words, they were asking if I wanted to sign a contract and become their magic-Genghis-Khan. Unfortunately I wasn’t exactly an Earth-loving activist. And I definitely wasn’t a pony person either.
I quietly slipped away in silence. I even broke into a jog in case they decided to chase me.
After moving like that for a few minutes, I was still on Club Promotion Street but far enough away that I felt safe. I looked around again.
That was when a heavy hand landed on my shoulder.
I thought the crazy Earth lovers had finally caught up.
“Wait, isn’t this Mr. Kang Sian?”
“Huh? Kaia?”
The muscular mage. Kaia Mitchell was standing there.
It was quite the interesting coincidence. I never expected the person who crossed the finish line with me in first place to be here on Club Promotion Street.
“So you joined a club even before the semester started…”
“Yup! There was a club that fit me perfectly, so I jumped right in!”
I hadn’t expected her to be working as a promoter in her first year either.
Following Kaia’s lead, I headed toward the booth for the club she had joined.
Arthur C. Clarke — Highly trained muscles cannot be distinguished from magic.
Behind the sign, mages were proudly showing off their self-loving physiques. One of them looked at me and made a puzzled face. It was the expression of someone staring at a person who didn’t seem like a mage at all.
“Kaia, who’s this guy?”
The woman finished flexing, walked forward, and gave me a quick once-over before scratching her head.
“Boss, remember that story I told you right after I joined?”
“Hm? Which one?”
“The one about the placement test where we took first place.”
“Ah, right. I remember. You said the team leader dragged everyone along by himself, right? His identity was kept confidential so almost nobody knows, though.”
“This is the guy. He was the team leader who got first place.”
“Huh?”
The moment she heard “placement test first-place team leader,” her entire expression changed. She looked me over again. Something new must have clicked, because she suddenly grabbed both my hands.
“Oh my, such an honored guest in a humble place like this…! We have to treat you to something!”
What was so special about getting first in the test? She suddenly fell into a panic and started fussing. I repeatedly turned down her kind offer, telling her it really wasn’t necessary.
“No, I’m seriously fine. You don’t have to—”
“How could we keep our dignity if we did nothing for an elite who took first place? Of course we have to treat you right!”
Unfortunately, the club’s circumstances weren’t great for offering proper hospitality. The chairs and items they pulled out from the corner were all in terrible condition.
“What the hell? Why are all the chairs like this?”
“We did a strongman show this morning…”
“Why are the books we were going to hand out in this state?”
“We did a book-tearing performance…”
“Ah.”
Not a single thing was intact. I looked around for anything else they could offer, but everything seemed to have suffered some kind of disaster.
“This is… I’m really sorry. If I’d known, I would have bought coffee or something in advance…”
“It’s okay, it’s okay. I only came because I was curious what kind of club Kaia had joined.”
The moment I said that, her expression changed again. The woman who seemed to be the club president flexed muscles that looked capable of firing Magic Missile (Physical) and gave me a sparkling gaze.
“Then… would you be interested in joining our club…?”
“I’m not.”
A firm cut. I had no intention of joining any club yet. Besides, a magic-focused club like this simply didn’t suit me.
“Ugh…”
“I have some personal circumstances.”
“What kind of circumstances…?”
“I have very little mana, so I can’t use magic properly.”
The sorrow of mana impotence. Even if I joined a place like this, all I’d get out of it was exercise. And once they learned that the person who took first place was actually mana-deficient, their disappointment would probably be huge.
Yet her face filled with shock instead.
“You got first place even though you don’t have enough mana?”
“I was lucky, that’s all. My teammates, including Kaia, all did great too.”
“No way… no matter how lucky you were, how could you possibly…”
The president kept staring at me with disbelief. But I had nothing more to say. Whether she believed me or not was up to her.
Fortunately, she was a realistic person. Her pale face relaxed and she let out a regretful sigh. I smiled lightly so she wouldn’t stay too down and spoke.
“Instead, if I meet any promising new mage freshmen later, I’ll let them know about this club.”
“Oh, really?”
It was just something polite to say. I’d probably forget in a few days, but it was the courteous thing to do.
“If you don’t believe me… oh, right. Could you give me your number?”
“My number?”
“If I get close to any good mages, I can just call and connect you, right?”
It was a full-of-holes excuse, but the president took it seriously. As soon as I received her number, I called it right away.
“Kang Sian, please don’t forget.”
“Ah…! Thank you!”
She kept looking at my face while thanking me. Maybe it was my imagination, but her tone sounded much more polite than when we first met. Well, at least the hostility was gone.
I continued the conversation with them in a much lighter mood. By the time the ice cream had entered the realm of manslaughter, a voice cursing me reached my ears.
“You son of a—@#$@#$@#─”
At first I thought it was an auditory hallucination. But the longer I stood still, the louder the voice grew and the closer it came. The moment suspicion turned into certainty, the voice was practically shouting right beside me.
“Hey, you bastard!”
When I reflexively turned around, a faintly familiar face came into view.