A Disastrous First Meeting

"Ugh, I'm so tired...!"

The girl making her way back from training stood well under a hundred and sixty centimeters—small enough that a stranger might have sworn she was still in middle school. The Victoria Academy uniform on her back, however, and the frankly overwhelming chest straining against it, made a very different argument. It was as if every last drop of her growth hormone had packed up and moved to her bust; the result was wildly out of proportion with her petite frame.

She had just finished mana training in a private room. Lucy was the same rare breed of maniac as Lee Ho-yeon, who had bolted for the training hall the instant the entrance ceremony let out.

As she was passing down the private-room corridor, a siren split the air, followed by a sharp hiss of escaping pressure.

"Huh? What? Is that an accident? Wait—"

One of the private-room doors along the hall she was walking began to slide open from the bottom up.

Fortunately, Lucy had actually read the training center guidebook they handed out at the entrance—the one nobody else ever bothered with—so she understood the situation at once.

Mana exhaustion during training!

If mana exhaustion set ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in inside a private room and nobody acted fast, it could turn life-threatening. That was why the training system flagged it immediately, dispatched a rescue team on the spot, and sounded a siren so that anyone nearby could administer first aid.

"Hey—are you okay?"

Smoke filled the doorway. She could make out a human shape and nothing more; there was no telling who it was. Lucy waved the haze aside with both hands and hurried toward the figure crumpled on the floor.

"Wait. Isn't this the guy who fell asleep at the entrance ceremony?"

It was him—the one who had suddenly dropped his head and dozed off right beside her during the ceremony, startling her so badly she had shaken him awake.

I thought so then, too, but looking at him now... he really is handsome.

The surprise at his good looks lasted only a second. Lucy dropped to his side at once.

"Hey! Come on, wake up!"

She patted his cheek, then patted it again. He didn't stir. Lucy decided she had to do something in the way of first aid.

The problem was that she had diligently read the guidebook and completely ignored the first-aid manual sitting right next to it. The only emergency procedure she actually knew was the CPR they had taught in middle school.

Doing something has to be better than doing nothing, right?

In truth, performing chest compressions on someone whose heart had not stopped was an extremely dangerous thing to do. Lucy did not know that.

She laced her hands together in the compression position, and her chest was immediately squeezed in between her arms, producing a thoroughly indecent silhouette. The girl holding the pose, however, was performing CPR with complete and utter seriousness.

"One, two, three, four, five, six..."

"Nn... nnh..."

"Oh? You coming around?"

The moment the man reacted, a rush of confidence hit her—she was doing it right. Lucy reset her hands for another round of compressions.

That was when his hand suddenly rose.

"Huh?"

She was so startled that even with a hand kneading her chest, she couldn't react in time.

Squeeze. Squeeze. Squeeze.

"Ky—KYAAAAAH!"

What just happened?

My mana had been gathering normally. Then the world spun, and the next thing I knew, two watermelons were swaying back and forth in front of my eyes.

I had only just clawed my way back to consciousness. Still half-dazed, I reached out on instinct, grabbed hold of those watermelons, and tried to pull myself upright.

Since when were watermelons this soft? No, that wasn't right... what was this?

Something this soft felt exactly like a woman's br—

"Ky—KYAAAAAH!!!"

A scream like tearing metal punched straight through my eardrums.

That did it. My head snapped fully clear.

I lifted my gaze above the soft watermelons and found a uniformed girl who looked barely old enough for middle school, staring down at me and trembling from head to toe.

Hold on. What was Lucy doing here?

She was mixed European, the older of the twin heroine sisters. The type who made friends at lightning speed from the time she was little, who collected people the way other people collected stamps, and who hit it off with the protagonist just as easily—which, ironically, made it almost impossible for anything more than friendship to take root. The original story needed the protagonist to pour himself into her, slowly dissolving that wall until she finally opened her heart.

And I had just detonated our first meeting.

"Uh... look, I'm sorry. I wasn't in my right mind, I—"

"Y-you... you bastard!"

Lucy's face had gone past a blush and straight into a full-blown inferno. Fire began to gather above her palm, knitting itself into an arrow.

"Wait, wait—it was a genuine accident! Just calm down for a second!"

"Perverts deserve to die! You criminal!"

If that thing hit me, I might actually die. I needed to move my mana and block it—except my mana refused to move.

"Room 402! The emergency alert went off in Room 402!"

"Right ahead! Hey—student! What do you think you're doing casting magic in here?!"

The rescue team arrived at the perfect moment, thank God. The training center's internal system must have flagged my condition as critical when I collapsed and sent them running.

"Help me! Please, help me! Over here!"

"Let go of me! I said let go!"

Lucy, who had been a heartbeat away from putting a fire arrow through my skull, was seized by both arms and pinned. The rescue officers had her by the wrists, but she was so short that the hold lifted her almost completely off the ground. She thrashed and kicked, trying to wriggle free, and all it accomplished was making the chest swaying in midair even harder to ignore.

In the game, once Lucy's temper blew a fuse, reasoning with her was a lost cause. The smarter play was to disappear for a while and apologize once she had cooled off. Luckily, she seemed entirely occupied with the officers restraining her, which meant she had forgotten I existed for the moment. Time to run.

"What is wrong with this student? We have an emergency patient here! Wait—where did he go?"

"He took off around that corner by himself a second ago."

"You moron, why would you just let him leave?"

"He looked... pretty fine, honestly..."

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"I said let go of meeee!"

"Aish. I am actually going to lose my mind."

Victoria Academy's emergency rescue officer began to seriously consider a career change.

"Mana exhaustion?"

So that was what I had gone through. Apparently it happened when you tried to force mana through a body that had almost none left inside it.

The game never mentioned anything like this. What an unfriendly world.

I had wanted to push myself to the limit, so I had wrung every drop of mana I could find. In that sense, I supposed I understood. I hadn't been in peak condition, either. Now that I knew the actual size of my mana pool, I wouldn't make the same mistake twice.

Of all the people to have my first screw-up in front of. Lucy. Goddammit.

I had gotten too excited—too caught up in the sheer fun of using magic. And my first and last mistake of that kind just had to happen in front of a heroine.

I needed more training, first of all. The immediate problem was that my mana vessel was far too small.

And then there's Lucy...

Lucy was one of the heroines of Academy Eroge. She was in A-Class with me, which meant I would be sitting across from her from the very first lecture tomorrow. After a disaster like that, the worry sat on my chest like a mountain.

I needed to do something. The honest truth was that there was nothing I could do right now. The highest-probability play was simply betting that she had forgotten I existed while she was busy wrestling the rescue team.

Ah, to hell with it. I would just have to trust in the protagonist buff.

Tuesday morning. First day of classes.

Victoria Academy was enormous. Each year had its own building, and everything from the mana lecture halls to the sparring grounds to the dining hall gleamed so extravagantly that just walking around was a pleasure. I took my time, committing the paths to memory, and eventually arrived in front of the first-year building.

Had to admit—"A-Class" sounded a lot cooler than "Class A."

"Hoo..."

Thump. Thump.

It was ridiculous how hard my heart was going over something like this. It was the same flutter I used to get as a kid, walking into a new grade and realizing none of my friends had landed in my class. Underneath it sat a thin, nagging worry: Am I actually going to fit in here?

I took one more breath, then opened the door with as much confidence as I could fake.

It felt less like a classroom and more like a university lecture hall. Clean white interiors, long desks rising in tiers the way they had at college. At the front stood a podium and a hologram projector.

The sound of the door brought every pair of eyes in the room snapping toward me. That kind of attention was supposed to flicker and die—people glanced, then went back to their business. These stares did not leave.

"Whoa, wait, hold on—what?"

"Who is that? He's gorgeous."

"I think I saw him on TV yesterday."

I couldn't just stand there, so I scanned the room at a reasonable pace and claimed the window seat at the far end of the middle row. The very back felt too much like a delinquent's perch, and the front row would draw the professors' attention for no good reason. The middle was just right.

Every desk had a hologram display built in. It looked like course materials would pop up in front of you whenever a lecture called for them.

Once I was settled, I looked around. Lucy and Rumi were sitting together in the very last row, chattering away.

They were identical twins. Unless you were their parents—people who had spent years studying them up close—you could stare all day and still struggle to tell them apart. Luckily, their hair, their clothes, and the way they talked did the work for you.

Lucy had dyed her hair blue and always wore a cardigan, doing everything she could to hide her figure. She had so many friends that unless she happened to be with Rumi, she was permanently surrounded.

Rumi wore her trademark—an innocent red ribbon tying back her hair—stuck faithfully to the academy uniform, and spoke in a soft, gentle register.

Lucy's affinity had cratered all the way to 1. That had to be lower than a pebble on the side of the road. It was worse than when I had checked yesterday.

Rumi's numbers looked ordinary, which probably meant Lucy hadn't said a word about me. I was still looking at their status windows when Lucy, mid-laugh at something Rumi had said, happened to meet my eyes.

The smile vanished from her face the instant she saw me.

Rumi, sitting beside her, had no idea what had just happened and looked thoroughly bewildered. It was cute enough that I wanted to keep watching—but I turned away at once.

Elise, top of the written exams, and Nam Da-eun, top of the practicals, were both in A-Class as well, but neither of them seemed to have arrived yet. I couldn't see them anywhere.

"..."

"Lucy, why are you acting like that all of a sudden? You're scaring me..."

I could feel Lucy's stare from the back row, her chest resting on the desk, eyes locked on me like a targeting reticle.

Rrrk—

Fortunately, the instructor chose that moment to walk through the door, and the attention that had been glued to me finally scattered.

A man in a black suit with his hair slicked straight back strode up to the podium and stopped.

"I'm Kim Jin-hyeok. Homeroom professor for Class A. Good to meet you."

The moment he finished, he swept his eyes across the lecture hall once and frowned, as if the view offended him.

"A lot of you look far too pleased with yourselves for the first day. You are cadets of Victoria Academy. I expect you to carry yourselves with rather more pride—and rather more dignity—than this."

He tapped the screen behind the podium with a baton, and an orientation briefing unfolded across it.

"Review the basic regulations and your timetables on the academy homepage on your own time..."

After a stretch of thoroughly tedious announcements, the words Group Assignments appeared on the screen.

"The foundation of being a Hunter is cooperation. Dungeon raids, villain subjugation, emergency deployments—no matter the situation, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠working with other Hunters is the core of the job."

He wasn't wrong. There was no prize for playing lone wolf.

"That is why a great many of Victoria Academy's courses are conducted as group work."

Tap. Tap. A group assignment list bloomed across the screen—combinations the academy's internal system had auto-sorted by entrance exam results.

"The teammates you have been assigned will apply across every subject. In principle, transfers are not permitted. You may be reshuffled based on next semester's grades. I do not want to hear a single childish complaint about not liking your teammates or not being able to work with them. Am I understood?"

The lecture hall erupted. Some students clearly hated their draws. Others had landed with close friends and were already throwing their arms around each other.

As for my group... oh?

Nam Da-eun and Rumi. Two heroines in the same group.