The Afterstory
"Follow the staff's guidance and maintain order as you enter!" "Any injured students?!" "Have all the Magic Department students gathered? Check immediately if anyone's missing!" "He claims he's from the Magic Department but says he can't use magic!" "Knight Department professors! Just two of you, please lend a hand!" "Professor! I've brought one of the Magic Department students!"
After the appearance of the semi-translucent wyvern, presumed to be a cheap knockoff of the transparent dragon, the faculty mobilized in full force. True to the fantasy world's specialty of always showing up fashionably late, they sprang into action to clean up the mess.
They split into teams to search for students, checking for injuries, potential aftereffects, and anything else that might pose a risk. Every available resource was poured into prioritizing the students' safety above all else.
"Thank you so much! Thanks to these two defeating the black mages' test subject—"
"No."
"...Pardon?"
"This guy did everything. I didn't do a thing."
Loxia Astra pointed at me with complete indifference, as if the professor's sincere gratitude meant nothing to her. The head professor of the Magic Department had bowed his head in genuine thanks, but she simply stated the facts in her usual blunt tone.
"Stabbing the magic-nullifying wyvern in the neck, finishing it off, and extracting the magic stone. That was all him. I did nothing."
"I-is that so...?"
"Yeah... it's true, I guess."
It was true that I'd done most of the work, but hearing someone else suddenly sing my praises felt incredibly awkward. The professor immediately grabbed my hand and poured out endless words of gratitude. He mentioned that the academy would provide compensation, and the empire itself would reward me for destroying the black mages' creation. He even offered his personal thanks as a fellow mage. It all sounded like some template I'd seen a million times before, so I just kept nodding along.
An incident breaks out during the exam, students clean it up, and afterward they receive rewards and gratitude. I understood the thanks well enough, but my mind was elsewhere.
Rui's going to be okay, right?
Rui. My best friend. Sure, he's technically an adult man, but after seeing the state he was in earlier, I couldn't help but worry. And since he's my only real friend at the academy, the concern hit even harder. With so many faculty members out searching for students, he'd probably be found soon, but still...
Loxia's comment about how he'd looked at me in fear kept nagging at me, leaving a strange discomfort in my chest. Even as I followed the professor to where the students were gathering, my head was filled with nothing but worry for Rui.
"Just grow up healthy, damn it..."
I let out a deep sigh while fretting over him. That's when it happened.
"A-Ashen..."
"...Rui?"
Through the crowd, I spotted that familiar navy-blue hair. Thankfully, he looked far more stable than before. But why is his face so red?
His cheeks were slightly flushed, as if he hadn't fully recovered yet.
"...You okay?"
"Y-yeah?"
"Your face is pretty red. Are you hurt? Coming down with something?"
"N-no... it's not that."
"Really?"
Aside from the flushed face, he seemed much better. Maybe Loxia had been right—staying put and waiting for him instead of chasing after him had been the correct choice.
"I was worried, you idiot. You ran off like a mouse that saw a cat. I thought something was seriously wrong."
"Sorry..."
"No need to apologize. Anyway, I'm glad you seem to be doing better."
"Ugh..."
"What? What's wrong?"
"Nothing..."
"...?"
Wasn't he getting better? He still looked pretty sick. If he keeps acting like this, it's going to be a problem.
He wasn't some lovesick high school girl. If he kept behaving this way, it would be hard to treat him like usual. I hoped he'd return to normal soon.
About a year after Ashen had taken Rui in.
"Rui, did you know?"
"Huh?"
"Mom says she's looking for someone to be my personal attendant."
"Personal attendant...?"
"Basically someone who stays by my side all day and helps with everything while I go about my life. Hmm, maybe that's too hard to understand. Pretty much someone who helps me out from morning till night."
"...All day?"
Ashen had suddenly brought up the topic of personal attendants in front of Rui. As a boy with the mind of an adult from Earth, he simply couldn't think of anything else to talk about with his friend. He'd mentioned it without much thought, but Rui—who had already spent a year in the Serdis household, living as a servant by Ashen's side—took the words very seriously.
"M-Madam...!"
"Yes? What is it, Rui?"
"C-can I be Ashen's personal attendant? Please!"
"Oh my?"
That very day, Rui went to Ashen's mother and begged to be made his personal attendant. The Countess of Serdis had always found Rui adorable, but she could only respond with a troubled expression. The reason was simple.
"Personal attendants are supposed to be the same sex as their master..."
"...What?"
"You're a girl, dear."
"Ah..."
"Ashen seems strangely convinced you're a boy, but I've bathed you myself. Unfortunately, personal attendants cannot be of the opposite sex..."
"T-then...!"
"Yes?"
The reason was precisely because they were the opposite sex. A personal attendant was meant to be a reliable support, always at their master's side, functioning as a perfect assistant. But when a man and woman spent that much time together, romance often blossomed. That was why noble families had an unspoken rule that personal attendants must be the same sex.
The Countess had been gauging Rui's reaction carefully, but—
"Then I'll just be a boy! I can act like a boy in front of Ashen!"
"...Pfft!"
Seeing Rui's desperate determination to stay by Ashen's side even if it meant living as a boy, the Countess finally burst into laughter and nodded. The Count of Serdis had also known about Rui from the beginning and initially opposed the idea strongly. But between Rui's earnest eyes and his wife's persistent requests, he eventually gave in with great reluctance.
And so, within the Serdis family, a meticulous plan to hide Rui's true gender began—one that Ashen alone would never know about. The family provided compression bandages to flatten her chest and all the other necessary items. For a very long time, Rui lived as a boy in front of Ashen.
That was enough. For someone who had once been nothing but a back-alley orphan, it was more than she could ever ask for. Even though they were childhood friends who had spent the most time together, the gap between them was enormous. And since Ashen only saw Rui as a boy...
Rui hid her feelings for a very long time. She never planned to reveal them in her entire life.
Not until she regained her memories and realized she was a transmigrator.
After regaining her memories, she was different.
With the crossdressing heroine attribute, there might be a chance...
She recalled that this world was a romance fantasy novel and thought about which heroine became the official wife.
These things usually work by dropping subtle hints little by little, then hitting hard at the decisive moment. The impact is huge that way...
She remembered just how powerful the crossdressing heroine trait could be.
The childhood friend title is a bit of a hindrance... but I'll have to work around that.
If the other party were an ordinary person from this world, it might be different. But since Ashen was also likely a transmigrator or reincarnator, the crossdressing attribute would definitely work.
Having made up her mind, Rui went to find Ashen. The fragments of memories floating through her head and the headaches that felt like they were stabbing her brain had all returned to normal.
"A-Ashen..."
And so, Rui—the one who had regained her memories as a 'transmigrator'—approached Ashen for the first time.
"Ah..."
They ended up going to eat pork cutlet, a dish considered man's food.
...Wait, why?
She had clearly resolved to act differently this time. So why did everything feel exactly the same as usual?
And worse.
"Huh? Why is she here again..."
"...Lunatic—Ashen."
Why had Loxia Astra shown up again? The academy was closed for the day, so they'd simply come to a nearby restaurant. Just eating in the same place as Loxia was enough to foretell some massive incident, but the biggest problem was something else entirely.
"You were about to call her a lunatic just now, weren't you?"
"Ashen... you remembered my name."
"Stop changing the subject."
"You came to eat with Ruiwin again."
"It's not Ruiwin, it's Rui... Wait, I told you to stop changing the subject!"
In the original story, Loxia had fallen into a coma after being hit by the magic-nullifying wyvern, while Ashen—the Rank 3 who had been overshadowed by two geniuses—barely had any presence. So why did these two look so close?
"..."
"Sigh... At least I'm pretty normal compared to them, right, Rui?"
"..."
"...Rui?"
"This pork cutlet is really delicious."
"Don't tell me you're dodging the subject too?!"
With a rather unpleasant feeling in her chest, Rui violently sliced into her pork cutlet.
"You're not even eating it..."
"It just looks good, okay?"
-BANG!
"What are we supposed to do about this?! All the time and effort we poured into that wyvern...!"
"Not to mention most of our funds..."
"Damn it, maybe we should have taken over that grilled fish place run by the faction that tried to overwrite us last time."
"Stop talking nonsense! What about recovering the wyvern? Its body contains a significant amount of the Authority of Deletion. At the very least, we need to retrieve the magic stone..."
"...It was taken."
"What?!"
In a damp, dark underground chamber where light never reached, figures in ashen robes held a meeting steeped in confusion.
"That Authority represented years of work! What the hell were the ones responsible for recovery even doing?!"
"...We've lost contact. And that can only mean—"
"That damned fool! They must have been captured and Erased!"
"Exactly. We can't risk them revealing our information."
"Haa... O Erased One... what are we to do..."
Regardless of age or gender, those gathered in one place were black mages who worshipped The Erased One. In order to kill Loxia Astra—one of humanity's greatest weapons—they had poured every ounce of the Authority of Deletion into creating a mutated wyvern. As a result, most mages within the exam forest had been rendered powerless by the wyvern's ability to Delete magic.
But before it could even kill a single target—
"That crazy bastard..."
Before it could kill even one person, the wyvern had encountered some lunatic and been destroyed. The losses were catastrophic, forcing the black mages to scramble into an emergency meeting.
And just as their heated discussion reached its peak—
-Creeeeak.
With the sound of a door opening, bright light flooded into the basement.
"Ugh...! Hey! Didn't you learn to open the door carefully?!"
"Haa... Is this a new recruit?"
"How are they even training the new ones these days..."
The black mages grumbled at the violation of their rules and the blinding light. But then—
"Wait, that's not just light—"
They were swallowed by a horizontal pillar of light and turned to ash in an instant.
The one who had slaughtered every last black mage in the basement in the blink of an eye was Revia Gloria. The current Rank 2 of the Magic Department... and the one who had 'become' Rank 1 in the original story.
"Don't interfere. I'll be the one to take her down."