The Dragon and the Choice
There was a reason I—or more precisely, Ha-yan—had gone out of her way to drag these three students over to our side.
At first I'd been firmly against her unexpected suggestion, but the more I listened the more sense it made, and in the end I found myself agreeing.
Not that it had ever been a fight I was going to win.
Once I'd "lost" to Ha-yan and the three of them had watched her thoroughly scold me, the students finally seemed to start relaxing. Ha-yan looked a little mature for her age, which only made the three of them seem even younger in my eyes.
Especially the girls—they were genuine little kids. The guy was tall, sure, but his face was pure baby.
With me chased off again, Ha-yan properly launched into the conversation.
"Alright. Let's get to the point. You three. Honestly, you never thought you'd be selected as disciples, right? That's why you followed us all the way here."
"Yes, well... given who our competition is. If we'd gone home empty-handed this time, our parents would have thrown every resource they had at it, but... the outcome was already decided. With everything Cha Siu has shown so far... we never stood a chance."
The boy who seemed to be the leader of the three answered Ha-yan. Her lips curved into a smile that could almost be called wicked, and she began in earnest.
"Heh. You understand well. Since you're the ones we chose, I'll tell you this in advance—we, or more precisely Siu, have absolutely no intention of taking on any disciple besides me."
"Th-then what about that announcement? Kids all over the world are going crazy over it. We were lucky enough to follow you from the start, but I heard the others are competing like mad behind the scenes."
This time the blonde girl asked Ha-yan with a slightly flustered look. Ha-yan raised one hand to stop her, then continued.
"Think about it logically. If he actually intended to do that, would Siu—who hates showing his face—go out of his way to use such a bothersome method to pick disciples? One mana evaluation from Siu and he could gauge every mage's level in a single go."
"Ah. Um..."
"And honestly. You don't actually think I'd allow that, do you?"
As she said it, Ha-yan revealed her true power without holding anything back—something she hadn't done in quite a while.
Thankfully I'd put up a barrier of my own mana around the entire hotel room. Without it, that overwhelming mana was the kind those damn old codger mages living in Kyoto would have sensed immediately and come running.
Of course, that was only by human standards.
"Ah. Uh. Er..."
"Hic!!"
"Hup..."
Having witnessed Ha-yan's genuine power, the trio's faces went white as sheets. They stared at her with expressions not unlike the ones they'd worn when they first discovered me.
With me constantly in the spotlight of this society, Ha-yan beside me tended to get underrated. Hadn't I said it before? Her mana capacity and control were already top-class in the mage world.
Ha-yan reined her mana back in and returned to normal, but the trio seemed to have immediately abandoned all willpower as they recalled just whose junior disciples they'd been trying to become.
But then Ha-yan spoke again.
"That said—if we declared here, 'Oh, none of the kids appeal to us. We're canceling the whole thing,' how do you think the old fogies up top would react?"
At Ha-yan's question, the blonde girl answered this time.
"Ah, they'd probably say that's unacceptable. I don't think even our parents would take it lying down..."
"Right. The backlash would be enormous. There'd probably even be some lunatics muttering their complaints out loud."
At Ha-yan's words, the trio—who knew the mage world reasonably well—could only smile bitterly. It wasn't empty talk. If they hadn't known the inside story themselves, they would have voiced their own dissatisfaction.
"So. The method Siu and I chose is something different."
"Something... different?"
At Ha-yan's final words, the three poor souls each tilted their heads.
"Do those kids really seem okay to you? Shouldn't we meet some of the others?"
"They're good enough, aren't they? Decent family power, a moderate amount of ambition, and they know where to draw the line. You need that exact balance so they can handle any pushback that comes their way on their own. And among all those kids, they're the only ones who followed us purely through effort without doing anything weird. They showed real effort, didn't they?"
"Hmm. Is that so. Honestly, I still don't fully get human power structures and social maneuvering."
"You've been playing company CEO longer than I have and you're saying that?"
"There I'm the boss. If someone rubs me the wrong way, I can just crush them."
"Aigoo."
After teleporting the three students back to Kyoto Station, Ha-yan and I were discussing the rest.
I still didn't fully understand what she was doing and wasn't particularly thrilled about it—but what was I going to do?
If Ha-yan wanted it this way.
Reading my expression, she came over and naturally wrapped her arms around me from the front.
"Don't overthink it. Doing it this way makes it more likely that other people won't mess with us. If we react violently every time someone pokes us, they'll just keep poking based on our reactions. Siu, you don't want even more hassles than you're dealing with now, do you?"
"If they mess with us over hassles like that, I'll just crush them all—"
"Aigoo. Seriously. Stop saying things like that!"
Ha-yan pressed both hands against my cheeks and squished them hard. I scooped her up in one motion, toddled over to the bed, and plopped her down before asking,
"But aren't you really going to feel left out? One way or another, those kids have to come back to Korea with us, and I'll end up having to give them some magic lessons."
Ha-yan answered my question with a question.
"Is there any magic left for you to teach me? Other than planet-destroying attack magic."
"...."
I couldn't answer her return question. She was right—she'd already learned even the highest-difficulty spell, teleportation, from me, and among human-level magic there was nothing left for her to learn.
Given her mana capacity, she could probably manage lower-tier dragon magic, but that wasn't exactly everyday spellcasting. Dragon-level magic was basically nothing but overwhelmingly destructive attack magic, after all.
When I made a face that said I was thinking hard and coming up empty, Ha-yan spoke as if she'd known I would.
"That's how it is. And at my level, I could teach them myself instead of you, couldn't I? They're a year younger, but my magic is way beyond theirs."
"...That's actually a good idea."
In the end, every mess that had started because of my temper had been resolved in one stroke according to Ha-yan's thinking and Ha-yan's plan.
Yeah. This is why I love Ha-yan.
"We... didn't die, right?"
"Hwaaaaaah..."
"...Urgh."
Back at Kyoto Station via teleportation magic, the three of them—without anyone saying a word—naturally made their way to a bench in the farthest corner of the station and collapsed onto it.
Glancing around, the old-fogey mage contingent who'd been waiting at Kyoto Station for Cha Siu's party seemed to have finally given up and gone home.
Among the three, Teave was barely holding it together, but the two girls beside him looked completely drained. Lily had gone limp, her body sliding down the bench, while Silvi—nauseous from the pressure that had only just lifted—had rushed to the bathroom and come back looking half-dead.
For a while they sat there dazed, replaying everything they'd just been through. As they slowly recovered their wits amid the passing crowds, the first to speak among the trio was surprisingly Silvi.
Shaking her head to clear it, she said to the other two,
"But... when you think about it, didn't we just land an incredible opportunity? Regardless of the upcoming evaluation results, even if only a little, we get to go to Korea ourselves and receive that person's teaching."
"Is... that so?"
"She's right! This is the best possible situation for us! Except for the part where our mouths are sealed shut, that is!"
At Silvi's words, Lily and Teave quickly came back to themselves and realized what a massive opportunity they'd been given. But soon they fell into another worry.
"How many things did Cha Siu say we had to be careful about?"
"Three in total, right? Silvi, you remember them?"
"Mm. First—the fact that we just met at the Kyoto hotel is absolutely confidential. No one outside the three of us can know."
"Well, that one's obvious."
Teave muttered it lightly, but it was a given. Following them all the way to Kyoto had been an imposition in the first place. They'd basically just been bothering people who were on vacation.
And honestly, if they told their other friends, would anyone even believe them?
"Second—after selection, we have to come to Korea and live there, no exceptions."
"Isn't that obvious? Cha Siu isn't going to come to our countries."
On this point, Lily—who was from the country farthest from Korea—nodded as if it were only natural.
"And the last one... he said he'd tell us once we get to Korea. For now he just told us to stop following them around and rest until evaluation day."
At Silvi's final point, they finally looked like they could catch a breather, exhaling a mix of relief and lingering worry.
But there was one thing they were forgetting.
They were giddy and excited about getting to take lessons from that person—something they'd never even dreamed of in their entire lives—but the original reason they'd come to Japan...
As reality slowly crept back in, Teave's face turned ashen and he said to the other two,
"B-but shouldn't we hurry back and start preparing for the magic evaluation? We got this amazing opportunity—if we fail the evaluation and have to take the rest of the remedial classes for a month..."
"...H-hurry!! When's the next train back to Osaka?! Money doesn't matter! The Shinkansen is fine!!!!"
"Aaaaah!!! H-here! This train is the fastest!!"
"Tickets!! We need to buy tickets first!!"
With the burden of Cha Siu's pre-evaluation selection lifted from their shoulders, an entirely different mountain of pressure was descending upon them.
And let me say it again—the only person who thought the magic evaluation was easy was Lee Ha-yan.
For every other Apprentice Mage, it was a test you could prepare for all year and still have a hard time passing.
Ah. And for reference, that magic evaluation—
The rate of people who skip the remedial classes and pass on the first try is
a mere
thirty percent.
