The Last Applicant
“……Could you just call me Molly from now on?”
Simon looked at her with an awkward expression.
“I really shouldn't—you're royalty, after all……”
“Before anything about my status, I'm a necromancer of Kizen.”
Stepping forward as if she would not be moved, she placed a hand over her heart.
“Treat me as a fellow student of Kizen.”
“I-if you insist that much……”
Ahem.
Simon cleared his throat, unnecessarily embarrassed, and spoke in a drawling voice.
“M-Molly. So, um—what brings you to our club?”
“And please, no honorifics either!”
“O-okay.”
Only then did a bright smile spread across Molly's face.
“Actually, I'd like to join the Student Council President's clu— OOF!”
A club application form suddenly came flying from the side and smacked right onto her face.
“Stop putting on airs and just fill that out.”
It was Sasha, at the neighboring table, who had thrown the paper.
“……You!”
Molly snatched the paper down and flared up in anger—then caught sight of Simon beside her, went hah! and flushed red, partially hiding her face behind the application form.
“I-I'll go fill it out.”
“Sure, take your time.”
Molly scurried back to the neighboring table as if fleeing, picked up a quill, and began writing out her club application form.
But something was already written in the name field.
Applicant Name: LastTrainPrincess
“What is the meaning of this!”
Molly shot up from her seat, face burning scarlet. Sasha gave a little hmp and turned her head away.
“What's what?”
“You! How long are you going to torment me—?!”
“Quiet, first-years.”
Fitzgerald said it with a bleary look in his eyes. The two girls immediately bowed their heads with a hasty “Sorry” and returned to their application forms.
Scritch scritch.
Face still glowing hot, Molly drew two lines through the 'LastTrainPrincess' graffiti, then beneath it wrote out her own name in a script full of royal dignity.
Writing always makes me nervous.
Meanwhile, Sasha let out a long sigh as she moved her quill.
Having grown up an orphan in the Neutral Zone, she had never fully mastered the Continental tongue; until her enrollment, the Pentamonium side had drilled letters into her, hour after hour.
The biggest reason was fear—that if anyone at school found out she couldn't write, the kids her age would look down on her. Tacking the surname 'Andrasil' onto her name had been for the same reason.
Still, all that hard study had paid off. Just remembering how that LastTrainPrincess had sneered at her—“My, to think there's a human who can't even write!”—made her blood boil all over again.
Finishing first, Sasha brought her application form over with a quiet sense of pride.
“I just leave it here?”
Fitzgerald, still staring blankly ahead, nodded.
On the table, completed application forms were already stacked, slightly askew from the breeze.
As she tidied them up into some rough order—
Oh.
Sasha's brow furrowed.
Why is HE here again.
Applicant Name: Arthur Bleman
Sasha placed his application form on top of her own and walked over to Simon to ask what had happened.
“So, Arthur, huh?”
Simon snickered and pointed off to the side.
“He's been staring at it by himself for the past twenty minutes. Says he wants to join.”
Where Simon pointed stood a siren chimera, performing its trick—tossing balls with all six arms.
……Lame.
So Sasha thought.
Irritating.
So thought Molly too, who had followed to submit her form.
Then, as if reading their very thoughts, Fitzgerald's glinting eyes shifted—and the girls hurriedly averted their gazes.
Aaah.
Just then, a broadcast rang out across the club fairgrounds.
-Announcing. Club Season will end in ten minutes. All first-years, please return to your dormitories. Club members, please tidy up your surroundings.
Club Season was finally over.
Simon clapped his hands.
“Alright, all you first-years, back to the dorms. We'll go through the application forms and hold a short interview the day after tomorrow to pick our new members.”
“Yes, senpai!”
Sasha, Molly, and the students who had applied to join bustled away in a noisy crowd. Sasha waved.
“See you at the interview! Simon oppa!”
“Hey! I told you not to call the Student Council President like that—it's rude!”
Haha.
Simon laughed and waved the two of them off. Toto, still in his crossdressing getup, was trudging back with a look of utter exhaustion.
“Finally overrr. Just ten more minutes. All I had to do was survive ten more minutes.”
“Good work, Toto.”
Fitzgerald, still mired in despair, pushed up his glasses.
“……Simon, how could you, as the club leader, steal the words I was about to give our first-years.”
“Ahaha, sorry. It just slipped out.”
Rising from his seat, Fitzgerald gathered up the application forms.
A full sixteen sheets.
“Still, thanks to you and Dick we secured plenty of members, so you're forgiven. I can finally show my face to Senior Benya.”
“Yeah. Glad to hear it.”
Of the three days of Club Season, Fitzgerald and Toto had gathered zero members; it took Simon joining on the final day, plus Dick's consulting, to bring in all sixteen.
Fitzgerald flipped through the application forms.
“Three special-admission students.”
“Really? That's huge!”
Toto's head shot up.
“So our club's going to get stronger now?”
“This year, certainly. And—”
Fitzgerald lifted his head and gave Simon a rather disapproving look.
“There are a lot of girls.”
Simon only managed an embarrassed smile.
“However much overwhelming support you have among the first-years, the leader of this club is me.”
“I know, I know. Leader.”
“……Ahem, as long as you know.”
Fitzgerald set the application forms down.
“The moment the season ends, let's start cleaning up.”
Thud, thud—
That was when it happened. Someone was approaching the now-empty Mutant club booth.
The last applicant?
Toto, who had taken off his wig, quickly slapped it back onto his head, and Fitzgerald straightened his glasses and looked ahead.
Thud, thud—
Through the drifting wind, a boy with unnaturally, almost bleached-white hair was walking toward them.
All three pairs of pupils dilated at once.
Thud, thud—
The white-haired boy stepped into the booth.
And then—
Swish.
He laid the paper he'd pulled from his coat down on top of the stack of application forms.
“Joining.”
That was all he said. Then he rolled his eyes toward Simon.
Simon was flustered.
Why…… that guy?
Whoooosh—!
A violent gust swept through, and in an instant the boy's body was gone. The Mutant members stood dazed, staring at the application form left behind.
Applicant Name: White
-Effective this moment, Club Season has concluded. All first-years, please return to your dormitories immediately. We say once again. Effective this moment……
“W-wait a second! Is this even allowed?”
Toto said, pulling off his wig.
“White's a second-year!”
“……Strictly speaking, there's no problem.”
Fitzgerald rested his chin on his hand, his expression stiff.
“Second-years without a club do—rarely, but genuinely—join fresh during Club Season.”
He was right. Club Season was not strictly a festival for first-years alone.
And yet Simon's mood was unsettled.
From the very first moment they'd met at Moiran—
-Same department as him.
—to his entering the Summoning Department.
And now he was trying to enter the Mutant Club, the very club Simon belonged to.
……
His feelings were tangled in a knot of complexity.
The next morning, Battle Arts class.
“Huh?”
Dick's eyes went round as saucers mid-stretch, across from Simon.
“White applied to the Mutant Club?”
“Yeah.”
“See, see! I told you that guy's hiding something too! Something's off about him!”
It was Mayrin, stretching alongside Camibarez. She clasped her hands behind her back and bent forward, and the lightweight Camibarez swooshed up into the air.
“Is it really that strange, though?”
Camibarez spoke as her feet touched back down.
“White's a second-year, but he's a transfer student, so he doesn't have a club. Applying to join seems perfectly natural to me!”
“And yet.”
Mayrin released her hold and brushed back her sky-blue hair.
“At Moiran, White was in the Curse Department, but he specifically named Simon and declared he'd move to the same department. And now he's deliberately following Simon into his club. Don't you think that's just a little weird?”
“Hmmm.”
Dick fell into thought, his face grave—then, with a ah!, snapped his fingers.
“Oh, right. The rough outline's coming together. I've got it!”
“Peasant idiot. Say one more piece of nonsense and you're dead—”
“White was secretly a girl all along.”
“You MORON!!”
Mayrin picked up a stone and hurled it. Dick tilted his head back with practiced ease to dodge, and said,
“No, no—calm down and think about it. Why does White keep trying to follow Simon around? I mean, the guy's got that pretty, kinda androgynous face going on, right? Honestly, put a uniform skirt on him and he'd wear it better than Mayrin would—”
“GO DIE IN A DITCH!!”
“Ah! But there's literally nothing else that explains it, is there? If you assume White's a girl, everything he's ever done makes sense! Embarrassed, he shyly picked the Summoning Department—'Put me in the same department as him, please'—and now he's working up the courage to pick the same club as the person he likes!”
“Shut up and go pick out your own grave!”
While the two of them brawled yet again, Simon sank deep into thought.
Could he have been someone I knew in the past?
No. I've lived in Leshill, my hometown, my whole life—if White were from Leshill, there's no way I wouldn't recognize him.
“Hold on! Simon, let me give you the conclusion!”
Dick came rolling across the grass, dodging the stones Mayrin was throwing, and pointed a finger as he lay flat on the ground.
“Whether White's a girl or not, it's obvious he's approaching you with some kind of purpose.”
“How many times do I have to tell you to cut that crap!”
Mayrin hollered from behind him, but Dick breezily ignored her and pressed on.
“If you can't know the other party's purpose, then at the very least, don't let them carry it out as they intend.”
“……”
“Drop White at the Mutant Club interview, Simon.”
Dick said it with serious eyes.
“The way the adults have been hovering around him and all—it's obvious he's a dangerous one.”
The day's schedule had come to an end.
Simon, Toto, and Fitzgerald gathered in the Mutant clubroom for a strategy meeting.
“Earlier, in my capacity as 'club leader,' I went and spoke with Senior Benya.”
Fitzgerald sat down and pushed up his glasses. Simon gave a faint smile; Toto's face tightened with nerves.
“She said the clubroom is far too small, and seventeen members would be too many.”
It matched their own thinking, so Simon and Toto both nodded at once.
More members meant a bigger budget, which was nice—but with performance reports to write going forward, member retention and satisfaction mattered just as much.
Simon asked.
“Then what's Senior Benya's recommendation?”
“Six.”
Fitzgerald spread out his fingers.
“She said six would be the appropriate number.”
“Sounds fair.”
“Naturally, the orders of third-years are absolute—but the one who makes the decision is me, the 'club leader.'”
With a grave face, he raised one more finger.
“By my judgment as club leader, I have decided we will select seven members in the end.”
……Six, seven, what's the difference.
Simon gave a wry smile inwardly, but nodded readily enough.
“If that's the leader's will, I'll follow it.”
“Thank you, Simon.”
Bolstered by those words, Fitzgerald took a hearty sip of his tea and opened his eyes.
“Now, about the matter of White.”
At last, the topic at hand. Fitzgerald looked at Simon.
“Honestly, it unsettles me too. He named you and came into the Summoning Department, and now he's named you again and is trying to follow you into a club.”
“……”
“Whether we drop White or not, Simon—I'll leave that decision to you.”
So Fitzgerald, too, clearly considered White to be no ordinary matter.
Simon closed his eyes, deliberated long and hard, then spoke.
“Alright. Then let's do it this way.”