The Story Twists Out of Shape
With such a huge crowd gathered, the last thing I wanted was to stand out — but the moment I touched the magic stone, my rank would blaze to life in indigo, one tier below Mika's violet. I already knew it was coming, and yet a faint thread of tension still ran through me. Some small, traitorous part of me wondered if I might actually fail.
The instant I laid my hand on the stone in silence, a brilliant radiance bloomed around us, and my mana color began to climb through the spectrum. Red, then past red to orange; orange gave way to yellow, yellow to blue. One color after another flared in sequence until, at last, an indigo light settled over the magic stone — exactly as expected.
So it went according to plan.
I moved to pull my hand away, but for some reason, the stone kept glowing.
"Huh?"
The indigo deepened into violet. Then the violet flared back into red — and then to yellow again. As if the artifact had glitched, the colors cycled over and over without pause. Refusing to settle, the stone churned through every hue at once, as though blending them all together — until suddenly, it stopped shining altogether.
Instead, it vomited up the darkest, most unpleasant aura of black, and the gem's color clouded over like a jewel drowning in ink.
"Black?"
"What's going on here?"
Every applicant around me — myself included — stood frozen, faces plastered with a giant question mark. Even Lufia, who had been running the measurements, could only stare back and forth between me and the magic stone, her expression openly incomprehension.
"You passed... I think?"
I couldn't make sense of it either. The plot of the story I knew — the one stored in my memory of the anime — had bent out of shape yet again. Black? Nothing like this existed in my recollection. Indigo. Indigo was what was supposed to appear, full stop.
"Uh... well, the stone reacted, so you did pass, but we'll need to report the mana level to the teachers. Honestly, this is a first for us too, so..."
Lufia couldn't hide her flusterment at the unprecedented situation, and her explanation trailed off into nothing. By the time I shuffled over to the line where the kids who'd scraped through by the skin of their teeth were standing, Liria was already greeting me with a face-splitting grin.
"PWAHAHA! Anyone can see you barely squeaked in. Dead last, aren't you? It's not like the magic stone could be broken, right?"
"I guess not."
Her cheap little jab didn't even register. This girl had no idea how tangled and migraine-inducing my situation had just become, which meant she wasn't worth the breath it would take to answer.
That's twice now.
Twice since I'd arrived at this academy, events had diverged from what I remembered. Was it because of me? Because I wasn't the original Serena — because someone else had taken up residence in her body?
No matter how hard I turned the problem over, no answer came. All that remained was the plain, suffocating fact that I had no choice but to adapt to this world. Irritation boiled up in me at the thought of things refusing to go according to plan.
Ever since my killer days, any deviation from a plan had made my senses fray at the edges, like a anxiety disorder kicking in. I'd once lain awake half the night, uneasy and sleepless, just because I hadn't finished my daily routine.
"Haha! Trash is trash, I guess. Miracles don't happen twice. You should've seen your face when the violet turned red — I nearly died. Admit it, you were hoping a little, weren't you? Right? Weren't you?"
"Shut up."
Genuine killing intent poured out of me before I could stop it. The moment my blade-sharp gaze locked onto hers, Liria flinched, a flicker of alarm crossing her face — and then that insufferable mouth of hers flapped open all over again.
"H-hah! You? Threatening me? Fat chance that works on me!"
She was a lost cause. Not once in her life had she ever truly felt killing intent, which meant she couldn't even begin to grasp what was about to happen to her.
—Thwack.
For those who don't understand words, the whip is medicine. In a heartbeat, I channeled mana into my fingertip and jabbed the base of Liria's skull. It was a strike that could easily have caused serious injury — which was precisely why I'd deliberately used only my pinky finger.
Liria crumpled like a puppet with its strings cut. To everyone watching, it would look like she'd blacked out for no reason at all. Ah. Finally, blessed silence.
"KYAA! Someone fainted!"
At Liria's collapse, the kids shrieked one after another and scrambled to find the student council staff. Before long, Lufia checked Liria over and calmed the crowd down.
"Don't worry — if a magic stone absorbs too much of your mana, you can black out temporarily. That's all this is."
Lufia said this as she turned Liria onto her back. And just like that, I slipped past the whole incident without a soul suspecting it was me.
"Everyone, let's head to the classrooms. The older students will tell you your class assignments."
Where Lufia pointed, a group of executives who appeared to be the student council stood waving us over.
I shoved my churning thoughts to the back of my mind and let myself be swept up in the streaming crowd of children.
"Let's go together!"
Who knew how long she'd been there — Mika appeared behind me, seized the back of my collar, and doggedly trailed along. Suit yourself, I thought, and kept my eyes forward. The moment the class assignments were posted, everything would be decided anyway.
"Black? The magic stone turned black?"
A girl who looked to be about high school age wore an expression of flat disbelief as she listened to Lufia's report.
"I don't believe it either, ma'am. But I saw it with my own eyes. Every color seemed to fuse together, one into another — and then, before we knew it, it had all turned black."
The high school girl tapped the desk in front of her twice with a finger, thinking.
"I'll need to meet this student myself. What was her name again?"
"Serena Silphiel, ma'am."
"Understood. You're dismissed."
"Yes, Headmaster."
Alone, the high school girl turned to gaze out the window and murmured quietly to herself.
"Serena Silphiel... If that report is true, then perhaps a new wind is about to blow through this place."
"Alright — your class assignments will be out shortly. Classes were organized by mana rank, so keep that in mind."
The moment the fresh-faced middle school girl finished speaking, the children instantly broke off into clusters and launched into chatter about the entrance exam. An age group that was physically incapable of staying quiet for five seconds. The kids who'd only just discovered their own mana were strutting around showing it off, as if having magic at all were some earth-shattering accomplishment.
"Hey! Are you, like, nobility?"
"Could you always use magic? Violet rank is seriously amazing!"
"Tell me too! Tell me your story!"
The innocent little things began gathering one by one around Mika, who had proudly claimed first place in the entrance exam. Well, of course they did. Scoring top marks at admission was the first stepping stone to becoming the magical girl every little girl dreamed of being.
As the crowd swelled around her, I drifted naturally out of Mika's orbit. Something told me that if I stayed by her side, the story I knew would only tangle itself further.
Thankfully, not one of the kids spared a glance for me — the girl with black mana. I'd always preferred being alone anyway, so this suited me fine. If I'd been judged indigo, I would've been right there in the thick of that circus with Mika.
Still — the story cannot derail any further than it already has.
We were only at the very beginning of the story, which was the only reason I could write this off as a minor incident. No confrontation with the demon beasts yet, no casualties.
...Ah. Except Liria. One casualty.
Well. Let's let that one slide. Consider it within the margin of acceptable collateral damage.
"The class assignments are out!"
As soon as one kid shouted it, every head snapped toward the assignment board. In an instant, the children clustered around Mika stampeded over to it as well, and Mika — abruptly left standing alone — sagged with relief, wearing the unmistakable expression of "finally, freedom."
"Mika! I'm in Class A!"
The girl who'd been glued to Mika's side spotted her own name beside Mika's and was so overcome she started bouncing up and down on the spot. The crowd of bodies blocked my view of my own class, but I didn't need to look. B class, guaranteed. Different classes, different lives — I genuinely could not have cared less.
Then Mika, who'd been squinting at the board to confirm her own A class, suddenly went wide-eyed and turned to look straight at me.
That's an ominous face.
"Serena! We're in the same class!"
"...What?"
Her words hit my already-overloaded brain like a bolt from the blue, frying what little remained of my processing power. Me and Mika, the same class? By rights, high-ranked Mika should be first of Class A, and Serena — next tier down — should be first of Class B...
No way.
Because my rank never showed up as indigo?
Wearing a face of pure disbelief, I shoved through the kids and stared at the assignment board.
Mika Kaerin
· · ·
Serena Silphiel
There was no mistake. My name sat exactly where I feared it did — dead last on Class A's roster.
I stood there like my soul had been sucked out of my body, staring blankly into the middle distance, while beside me Mika beamed with the radiant, uncomplicated joy of a puppy whose favorite person had just come home.
"Serena! Let's be really close friends from now on, okay?"
At Mika's cheerful declaration, a sizable fraction of the children's attention swung onto me. Curiosity and jealousy warred in their eyes, every one of them wearing the same silent question: "Who is this girl, that the top rank wants to be friends with her?"
I already hated this.
Only moments ago I'd been counting the magic stone's black light as a blessing that would keep me unnoticed — and now I caught myself cursing it. Nothing in the world was less welcome than an arrow of stray gossip flying straight at my face.
Amid the chaos and clamor, the student council executives herded the children off toward their respective classes. Three classes, eleven kids each — you'd think that would be manageable, but herding a pack of eight-year-olds was clearly no trivial task.
Mika stayed glued to my side, grinning ear to ear at her good fortune, while my mind had already half-checked out.
Calm down. Keeping your composure in exactly this kind of situation is the mark of a professional killer, isn't it? My judgment ran cool and rational; my actions, emotional. Clinging with both hands to my composure as it tried to flutter away like a startled bird, I forced myself to think through what was coming.
The future had been rewritten. If things kept going like this, everything I knew would become worthless. I could only hope for no further changes — but the moment I'd walked into Class A, the die was cast. That much was certain.
If Mika and I had never grown close, maybe things could have stayed on course. But as things stood — as things now stood...
Everything would change. Without exception.
Letting out a long, deep sigh, I set my feet toward Class A.