My First Fan
My suspicion that I might not actually be a fresh academy student thankfully faded away quickly. Part of it was thanks to how skillfully I changed the subject, but mostly because the lecture content—useful for improving our skills—was far more important and interesting than pointless gossip.
"To put it a bit more precisely, a magical girl's skill level is determined by how freely and effectively she can handle and utilize the Kernel, the core of magic. Naturally, the basic Core you get right after becoming a magical girl won't let you push your abilities to their absolute limit and use them at 100% efficiency. That's why you have to customize the Core to suit yourself."
In short, it meant taming the tool to fit the user. The Core a girl receives upon becoming a magical girl is a generic tool completely unoptimized for her body condition, mana quantity, maximum mana output, or circuit state. That's why the Magical Girl Academy teaches by adjusting students to the basic Core. Customizing a Core creates different environments for each student, which can cause errors in spells that should work normally or even lead to rampages. In a one-to-many class like the academy's, they had no choice but to teach uniformly without discrimination... though it's a shame. That's both the academy's weakness and its limit.
Back when I was in another world, not Earth, I'd also struggled with this. We couldn't keep teaching with the basic Core if we wanted to raise magical girls' levels. Over there, they solved it by building the next stage of educational institutions after the academy... but that was only possible after time had passed and know-how accumulated. On Earth, where the concept of magic has existed for less than ten years, it was hard to implement. A regrettable reality.
"Like I said earlier, Core optimization is too advanced a concept for you to worry about yet. For now, it's enough to just understand the importance of the Core. Just remember this one fact: 'Magical girls handle magic through the Core.' Haaah."
"If you can handle the Core well, you can use magic properly..."
"The C-Core is the most... important thing..."
Watching the class president and Miju absorb my teachings filled me with pride. Yeah, being an educator is a job you can't do unless you feel this kind of reward. The chick students followed the lesson better than I'd expected, and I felt satisfied. It was a feeling I hadn't experienced in so long that my perpetually drowsy body felt confused. That was how precious and valuable this time and this emotion were to me. Even though it hadn't been my choice at first, I was glad I'd taken on the tutoring job.
"Th-Then since we can't customize our Cores yet... does that mean we just have to handle the basic Core well?"
"That's right. Correct answer. Good job, so I'll give Mijeong a praise sticker."
"A-All right! I got a praise sticker from Jihye!"
"No, Jihye... it's not Mijeong, it's Miju. And Miju, why are you so happy about getting a praise sticker?"
"Because... it's a gift from Jihye."
"A praise sticker... is a gift?"
The class president stared at Miju—who was delighted to receive the sticker from me—with an expression that said she couldn't understand at all. I felt the same way. It was just something I'd said offhand... I hadn't expected such a good reaction. Maybe I should start handing out praise stickers to Miju more generously from now on.
"To handle the basic Core well, you need to understand its internal structure and characteristics, but since this is your first time, I won't go into detail today. Right now we need to look at why the mana preparation stage is important, so I'll keep the explanation simple and focused on that. Haaah... I'm starting to get tired."
"Huh... it's already been almost an hour."
"Really? You're pretty good at teaching, Kim Jihye."
Come on, class president. Who do you think I am? I've been the president of the Magical Girl Association in Magica and a hero who saved the world from monsters. Handling something like this is easy. I continued the explanation.
"Contrary to what you might think, it doesn't take long for magic to manifest. Once the magic circle is properly drawn, it completes in an instant. But when you actually try to use magic, it doesn't come out quickly. The reason lies in how the Core operates."
More specifically, the time it takes to construct magic is measured in nanoseconds, but the time it takes for the magic to activate is measured in seconds. Why is that? The answer is mana.
"Mana isn't consistent. In its natural state, it's chaotic and irregular. The Core can't handle mana in that disordered state. So you have to align the mana in a specific direction. When there's little mana, it doesn't matter, but the more mana there is and the stronger the magic power, the exponentially longer it takes to align. That's why magic circles are drawn and completed quickly, but it takes a long time for the magic to actually activate."
It's no exaggeration to say that mana alignment accounts for more than half of the casting time. Especially with high-level magic, the amount of mana required is unimaginably large, so it takes far longer than beginner spells. In that situation, what happens if you align mana inefficiently during the preparation stage? The time increases by a square factor—or even more—compared to the optimal method. A spell that should take one second could take five minutes, let alone one.
"Once the Core can interpret and handle even chaotic mana, mana alignment becomes unnecessary... but that's nearly impossible, so you have no choice but to focus on how to align mana as quickly as possible. That way, you can activate magic even 0.1 seconds faster."
I stopped there. That was enough progress for today. Teaching too much wouldn't mean anything if the students couldn't keep up. Checking the clock, it was already 5:21. The lesson had gone well over the planned hour. Come to think of it, I'd been talking nonstop for an hour and a half. No wonder my tongue felt dry and my throat was parched. My body was also reaching its limit. I should go to bed early tonight. I'd better let my little sister know in advance.
A yawn I'd been holding back during the lecture came rushing out all at once.
"Haaah... I trust you roughly understand now why teachers emphasize the mana preparation stage..."
"I get it. I didn't realize the reason the preparation stage among the three elements of magic activation is so important had to do with how the Core works."
"D-During regular class they just skim over it... so I'm really glad I got to learn these details, Jihye."
The students' feedback was very positive. My strategy of not diving too deep into advanced material and just quickly skimming the important parts had worked.
"Well, that's it for me... I'm too sleepy to continue. I'm going home."
"Thanks for today, Jihye. And thanks for teaching me too."
"J-Jihye! Th-Thanks for accepting my unreasonable request... To be honest, it was like a dream. Getting taught by you like this."
Miju's words of thanks were as peculiar as ever. If what she said was true, then she'd already achieved her dream. I wanted to tell her to dream bigger, but that felt too much like an old man lecturing, so I held back. Well, everyone has different dreams.
"...You two are staying to train after this?"
"Yeah. I think we should. We can't just not use what we learned from you today."
"M-Me too. That, and thanks to Jihye's lesson, I... I feel motivated now..."
The class president and Miju seemed determined to keep training in the practice room. Since they lived in the dorms anyway, staying late wasn't a problem. My special tutoring had clearly sparked their motivation—their eyes were shining with an unusual intensity. Eyes full of passion. I could feel their strong desire to test out what they'd learned as soon as possible.
But kids... I still haven't taught you how to align mana quickly, you know? Unfortunately, they couldn't immediately apply the knowledge I'd given them.
"But since you don't know the method yet... I'll give you an assignment. You've been using Shield magic for a month now, so you're used to it, but try using Shield magic without consciously attempting to align the mana. Something's bound to happen. Your assignment is to think as much as you can about why. Easy, right?"
"Um... J-Jihye. How do you not align mana?"
Miju asked me an unexpected question. I'd assumed she'd know since she'd gotten used to Shield magic... Maybe I'd overestimated her. The class president beside her also looked like she didn't know.
"Then that's also an assignment. Figure out how to deliberately fail at mana alignment too."
"Isn't that too much work?"
Too much work? Hah. All of this would become their flesh and blood. The class president complained, but I ignored it.
"...Anyway, just do it. I'm really going home now. Haaauuuaaah."
After saying that, I left the training room. On the way out of the building into the open air, tears streamed down from my constant yawning, but I didn't care. Even though I was full of fatigue, I'd also been full of satisfaction. If I kept teaching them, how much more would they grow? With a small sense of anticipation quietly building in a corner of my head that was usually filled only with drowsiness and exhaustion, I walked on. The sunlight after school felt warmer than usual.