Room 409
"Hello? Senior. Sorry to bother you when you're sleeping."
"……."
No answer came. Simon tried again.
"We'd like to share this room with you. Would that be all right with you?"
"……."
Silence again. Lena, who had followed them in, grabbed Simon's sleeve with a trembling hand.
"L-let's just go, Simon. That man is clearly—"
That was when it happened.
Between the folds of an open blanket, a pair of bloodshot red eyes was glaring at them. Dick swallowed hard, and Lena stumbled backward in fright.
"……Freshmen."
At last the blanket slid away, and a man rose to a sitting position with a rustle of sheets.
"Orientation day, huh…… So it's already that time."
He had a lean frame, but the muscles on it were placed with strange precision, and his eyes were razor-sharp. A vivid scar cut across his bloodshot right eye as if splitting it in two. Scattered across his bare torso were countless smaller scars besides.
A dangerous man.
That was everyone's first impression. When he narrowed his eyes, Dick and Lena each grabbed one of Simon's arms from either side.
"……Forget the 'senior' business. I'm a first-year too."
"Then…… Kajan, sir?"
"Just Kajan."
He swept his bangs back, and his ferocious gaze came into full view.
It was the kind of look that seemed ready to draw a blade and hack someone to death on the spot—the eyes of a boy who could not possibly be a teenager.
"I don't know how long you two will last at this school, but remember two things. First, don't meddle in my business. Second, don't make noise before I fall asleep. Once I'm out, dance, sing, do whatever the hell you want."
"……Oh! So that's a yes, then?"
"It's not a matter of permission. There are no empty rooms, so someone was going to move in either way."
Kajan lay back down and pulled the blanket over himself.
"……."
A short while later, his breathing evened out and he drifted off.
Simon and Dick exchanged glances and slipped outside. Lena, the last one out, closed the door carefully behind them.
"We'll take this room."
And so the two of them settled on Room 409. Lena asked with a worried face.
"Are you really going to be okay?"
"Yes, we'll be fine. He doesn't seem like a bad person."
Lena nodded and marked a check on her list, then slid the plaque bearing their names into the slot beside the door.
"Then Room 409 it is! If anything happens later—if that man ever does something terrible to you—please tell me right away. I'll report it to the dorm manager immediately and take action."
"Thank you for looking out for us."
After parting with Lena, Simon and Dick each claimed a spot and began unpacking. Dick took the bed near the door, while Simon chose the inner one, closer to Kajan.
The two of them made noise off and on as they unpacked, but Kajan slept like the dead, never once stirring. Only the occasional soft breath escaped from beneath his blanket.
"Is he seriously not waking up?"
Suddenly emboldened, Dick dropped his textbook on the floor.
It hit the ground with a resounding thud—and still Kajan slept on, oblivious to the world.
"……He really meant it when he said we could dance and sing once he was asleep."
"He doesn't seem like a bad person."
With their minds at ease, the two of them finished putting their things away.
"Simon! Let's go shower. I saw a bathhouse on the second floor on the way up."
"A bathhouse?"
Simon had never seen a grand public bathhouse before.
The facility could hold well over a hundred people at once, its floors and walls gleaming gold from wall to wall, with steaming hot spring water flowing into the great pool. Simon stood beneath jets of water that poured from the ceiling at the press of a button, then soaked his weary body in the bubbling heat.
"Ahhh, this is the life."
On the way out after their bath, Simon climbed the stairs with a towel around his neck and a drowsy, contented expression. Dick snickered.
"Never seen anyone gawk at a shower booth before. Where'd you grow up, on a mountain?"
"Close enough."
Simon answered, rubbing his wet hair with the towel.
"Heh heh, look, whatever your circumstances, could you maybe tone down the 'wow—oh wow—' while pressing the shower button? Word travels fast around here."
"Was I really that bad?"
"Beyond bad."
The two of them returned to their dorm room.
Kajan was asleep in exactly the same position, as if no time had passed at all. Outside the window, a pitch-black darkness had settled over the grounds.
Fresh from the shower and wonderfully relaxed, Simon sank into his plush new bed.
A sigh of pure contentment escaped him. It felt as though every happiness in the world lived in that bed.
"Ahhhh. I knew coming to Kizen was the right call."
At that, Dick chuckled.
"Everyone wants to come to Kizen. Of course, whether we get to stay here depends entirely on our grades."
"I heard this year's second-years are down to barely three hundred."
"That's right. Right now we're in the student protection period, so the professors are going easy on us. But soon enough it'll be expulsion for failing grades, expulsion for showing no promise, expulsion for breaking the rules. Life at Kizen is survival, plain and simple."
Dick laced his fingers behind his head and stared up at the ceiling.
"Just making it through first year is enough to get you into almost any organization you want. And if you fight through the insane competition and become a fully graduated necromancer…… then you're part of the mainstream of the era, someone who moves the continent itself. Practically everyone qualifies except actual royalty. Hmm, no, wait. Would a Kizen graduate even get a princess offered to him by one of the minor kingdoms?"
Simon snorted with laughter.
"You want to be a noble?"
"Not really. Sure, being a noble would mean no one looks down on me and life would be comfortable, but that's not my ultimate goal."
"Then what is?"
Dick shaped a coin with his fingers and held it up.
"This."
"……."
For someone who had simply said, in effect, 'I want money,' Dick's expression looked far too complicated.
But they had only met today, so Simon decided not to press any deeper.
While Dick sat lost in thought, Simon funneled his mana into the ring on his finger.
The ring turned jet-black, and Simon pulled the band like a handle. A subspace opened beneath the floor and a skeleton set from an Island Ratman popped out—the class materials he'd bought at Campbell Road.
"Oh! What—what was that? What was that just now?"
"A subspace."
Simon answered briefly and dropped down to sit cross-legged in front of the skeleton set.
He opened the case and lifted out the wrapped bones. Running his fingers over their surfaces and sniffing them, he found they were immaculately clean—clearly well sterilized. A bone assembly diagram was included in the case as well.
Dick made a face of utter disbelief.
"……Classes only ended today and you're studying again?"
"Just felt like it. I don't want to lose that feeling from earlier."
The showdown with Hector in Summoning class.
So much had happened all at once that Simon wanted to recreate that astonishing sensation one more time.
First, he poured Jet-Black into the magic circle inscribed on the skull and awakened the undead.
Click. Clack.
The skull clattered its jaw against its palate and came alive.
Undead born of summoning magic regard the wielder of the Jet-Black as their master.
Simon closed his eyes slowly and drew up his attunement with the undead. Countless threads of thought began to take shape in his mind.
Once again—this time, by my instincts alone.
Simon picked up bones number five, seven, and ten and fitted them to the skull. It was deeply satisfying the way the bones snapped into place at the slightest pressure.
He built the spine, formed the torso, and worked his way down to the legs. Dick watched with his mouth hanging open as Simon attached bone after bone without a single hitch.
"……Done!"
Thirty minutes later, he had recreated the irregular four-legged skeleton he'd assembled in class.
But unlike in class, it had taken far longer, and something seemed off about the legs—the gait creaked and lurched, far from natural.
The difference came down to focus and immersion.
Assembling a skeleton in a relaxed space, free of stress, simply didn't produce the results he'd managed in class.
Still, Simon decided to be satisfied with the fact that he had restored the work at all.
Cupping the undead's skull, Simon spoke softly.
"I'm sorry."
Then he tensed his fingers and collapsed the skeleton's body.
Crash!
The assembled bones burst apart in every direction, scattering onto the beds, the desks, the windowsill, even inside the closet. Dick jumped in alarm.
"What the hell? Why would you—after going to all that trouble……!"
Simon closed his eyes and drew up his concentration. Fresh sweat beaded down his newly washed hair.
Skeletons formed through summoning magic possess an inherent drive to restore their former bodies. The formal term is Restoration; in the field, some call it simply attraction.
Simon sensed the Jet-Black dwelling within each of the fifty-three bones scattered across every corner of the room.
Restoration!
The instant Simon's eyes snapped open, the bones scattered throughout the room took flight all at once, attaching themselves to the skeleton's frame with brisk, self-guided precision.
Building it the first time had taken thirty minutes. Returning it to its original form took all of fifteen seconds.
Simon exhaled the breath he'd been holding and opened his eyes.
"……Watching it again, that's still ridiculously cool."
Dick muttered under his breath with a hollow laugh.
The restored skeleton trotted over and nuzzled its skull against Simon's leg, fawning. Simon smiled and stroked the undead's bones.
Riding the momentum, he turned next to the standard, textbook assembly of an Island Ratman skeleton as laid out in the diagram.
Rather than simply following the diagram and matching the numbers in order, he questioned and pondered as he worked—why bone eleven had to come after bone ten, why the assembly order had hardened into this particular sequence—and wrote down every insight in his notebook.
This sequence was the orthodoxy that necromancers had refined over long generations. Countless trials and errors must have paved the road to it.
Every step had a reason; every step carried meaning. Each time Simon grasped one of those truths, a shiver ran through him, and he felt grateful for the knowledge and labor of all those who had come before.
Simon swapped bones twenty-five and thirty-one.
"How about that?"
He ran through a whole series of experiments. The skeleton, mid-way through flexing its arm, shook its head with a rattle of bone.
Even where human anatomy suggested a more rational choice, there were arrangements that were simply more effective for moving an undead body.
"……Hmmm."
Dick, who had drifted into a doze, rubbed his eyes and sat up.
"You're still at it? You've really gotten hooked on Summoning."
"Yeah. It's fun."
A smile played at the corner of Simon's mouth.
"I can't wait for the next class."
Dick yawned and climbed into bed, but Simon's night was far from over. He spread open his Summoning Primer and threw himself into serious research.
The fundamentals of the undead.
Simon was still thirsty for it.
The skeletons his father had used to aid the people of his territory.
The skeletons Lorraine had used to subdue the gangs.
Compared to those two, what was it that he lacked?
Clack!
Clatter!
Click.
He pondered, dismantled, and assembled again and again. The skeleton that had once taken fifteen seconds to restore now snapped back together in ten.
But then something changed. Something was different this time. As Simon passed his seventieth reassembly, blue-black Jet-Black flared to life in the skeleton's empty eye sockets.
Even in class, nothing like this had ever happened.
Ssssss.
The skeleton with burning eyes turned its head and looked at Simon.
"……."
Simon met the skeleton's gaze.
And so Simon's first day at the academy stretched on, deep into the night.