What the Hell Is This Body

What the hell.

I don't want to open my eyes. I don't want to get up. I don't want to do a single damn thing.

Sunlight slams without mercy into ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠my shut lids, and some asshole's car horn piles on to beat the hell out of my eardrums.

All right, all right. If I get up, that fixes it, doesn't it?

"Hngyaaaah—"

Huh. My body feels a little lighter...

...

"AAAAH?!?"

Shit.

I feel about twice as light as I ought to. I can sense every single strand of hair brushing my earlobe, and my balance seems to have tipped forward, just a touch.

"Nnngh..."

My vocabulary has been smashed to pieces. Past the wording I've gone full female, goddamn it, I cannot think of a single phrase that captures this bizarre, higher-dimensional wrongness.

Where's the mirror.

Irises somewhere between violet and blue. Hair white and downy-soft, soft enough to be a little uncomfortable. Shoulders sleek enough, and curves you could clock with the naked eye in a single glance. So this was what it would feel like if a pretty girl from a game crawled out through the monitor.

Then why was that pretty girl showing up on the far side of a mirror, and not an LCD?

Nice, I'll give it that. The problem is my head hurts like an absolute bastard. Not the kind of throb you get because the situation is ridiculous. This is the physical sort, something stirring my brain from the inside out. The feeling right after starving for twenty hours, or forcing myself to stay awake by dumping too much caffeine before bed — that much I'm used to. But the sensation of two brain-corals boiled, mixed, crammed together, flash-frozen, and then jammed into my skull? That pain I had never felt once in my entire goddamn life.

So is the rest of me fine?

Like hell.

I'm confused as shit, and I don't even know how to say it. It feels like I forcibly stole the seat inside this pretty girl's flesh, and the soul that originally owned the body is clinging to me, begging. Whenever I try to do something ugly, it's like she grabs my arms and legs and screams without a sound: please act like a proper pretty girl. Asking why it's her body is pointless. It is her body.

Mm.

Well. Until I die, the soul called me is what people are going to see and judge inside this body. The things I couldn't even bring myself to try out loud, I put off for the moment.

I put them off.

Phone. I'd left it on the desk.

I had, right?

If it's in here, does that mean I can't touch my phone until right before bed? I am confused beyond belief. It feels like my brain is being dyed over by the owner of this flesh. They're my memories, except they aren't... How am I supposed to phrase this bullshit so anyone could buy it?

A pastel-purple phone case with a few stickers stuck to it. A design that belongs in an anime, goddammit. A clear case is the one true orthodoxy and the only truth, and yet.

Hah.

Light. Way too light. Drop it like this and it's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠way too easy to—

Nyah.

Goddamn it.

Thud.

Whoa.

It didn't fall.

A handspan off the floor. The phone hung there as if it had frozen in place. Nothing was suspending it. It was just floating. I had about half a second to wonder what kind of ghosts-snacking-on-washed-rice nonsense this was.

...Excuse me?

I pinched my cheek. It hurt. And it was pointlessly soft. Once more. Soft. I went for a third, and the body threw up a rejection. Whether she hates acting cute, or she despises me — the pervert soul sitting here savoring a body that isn't his — it's probably the latter.

Kind of sad.

Hey, I'm the one who got screwed. Why do my knees pull together on their own the second I try to squat?

Crazy woman.

Anyway, that isn't the point.

Hah.

Looks like an ordinary phone.

One more time.

Again.

Again.

Well.

Amazing, sure, but the principle was simpler than I'd expected. Stare at it hard enough and you understand it fast. Two force-type spells, used at the same time. One adds the inverse vector of momentum to cancel the falling motion, and the other, according to the distance from the center of mass to the surface—

Goddamn it, what about that is simple?

No — my brain had definitely taken it in as basic magic.

Ah.

This kid was a filthy little talent monster.

Enviable bastard.

No, wait. Think about it, and she'd have every right to be pissed as hell too. Born into a body that had everything, only to get her seat stolen by some unemployed bum who can't do anything but get in the way.

If you're mad, you should've set a password.

The hell is this thing?

Right. So.

Who are you. Let's have a look.

It's locked.

On the phone.

I don't know it — and while I'm still thinking that, my thumb moves first. Six digits. Without looking. I didn't press them. Seriously. Either the fingers remember, or she opened it for me. If it's the first, that's creepy. If it's the second, I can go ahead and lock in my view of her as a crazy bitch a little harder.

Rhea.

Pretty name.

...Is there nothing on this phone?

Not a joke. There really is nothing.

Contacts. Mom. Dad. Two school teachers. Done.

The messenger is a single office app with a painfully uncool design. The most recent chat is from three weeks ago.

Jesus Christ.

If I'd had this face, I would've sunk into a dignified, serious contemplation of how to get famous and freeload my way through life. My awe at the jaw-dropping waste of talent committed by this body's owner, Rhea, lasted about one second.

...Huh?

Wait. An academy?

Goddamn it, isn't this place a modern fantasy?

And besides. If it's the kind of academy I know, you go there and you're screwed, right?

...That's what my head thought.

My head.

My heart is pounding. Every other sound around me seems to cut out all at once. Anticipation. Flutter. Desperation. Getting into an academy feels that good? A place where you might drop dead without warning, any day?

Ha.

I opened the mail.

...

...

"H-hyeeet..!"

Ah, goddamn it, you crazy bitch. For real. Spitting a line this artificial and this dogshit out of my own mouth is enough to make me pathetic. I hate this so much.

Calm down.

I said calm down.

Fuck.

I can't.

The corners of my mouth won't listen. I'm so happy the smile won't stay hidden. Why? My feet are kicking the blanket. I don't understand a bit of it; I'm kicking because I just want to kick.

Am I crying?

I know which feeling the tears are coming from. Liberation, relief, comfort, a sense of having achieved something. So why are those feelings showing up? I'm walking into hell.

My head keeps sending warnings and blaring the siren. It's an academy. I'll have to tank attack after attack with the force of a war. If I go, I die. My body doesn't even pretend to listen. All it wants is to dive into bed this instant and fall into a long, comfortable sleep.

...Is it really that good?

What I hate more is that I understand. My head is a wreck. Countless snarled emotions, every last one of them sharp and distinct. Only the cause and effect between the situation and the feelings makes no sense at all.

It's awkward.

I slept.

More precisely, I got dragged along and put to sleep. About twelve hours. I opened my eyes. Same ceiling. Same hair. Same light body.

Not a dream.

All right. Let's sort this out.

One: this place has magic. Two: I am Rhea. Three: Rhea got into the academy. Four: people die at the academy.

The fourth is my guess. The evidence is the hundreds of novels I read in my past life. I figure that's plenty.

Right. I should actually check.

Ordinary.

Food poisoning.

No articles about a building getting blown away. No explosions. No missing persons, and no forbidden experiments.

Cut the bullshit. No way. Or maybe, because it's a top institution, they sink a fortune into image control too.

Ding.

Goddamn eureka.

Submit that, and I can save my life.

I opened it.

Name, applicant number, reason.

Reason.

Don't wanna die.

...I got that far, and then it hit. A feeling like my heart dropping straight down. An emotion that's hard to put into words — that particular surge you get when life forces you to give up something precious.

Yeah. I get it.

Click.

Since it's come to this, learning the stuff once might be all right. Magic. If it's magic, even dying ought to be one clean hit, so it probably wouldn't hurt. Probably.

Probably?

Even so, I felt I ought to go in knowing what I was walking into. More precisely, not me. Me. This goddamn awkward feeling shows no sign of leaving.

So this damn gallery exists in another world too. Familiar enough.

What the hell.

And that's the featured post.

Genuinely, disgustingly impressive. The world changed, the system changed, and the organism called human is still sitting around forming a line.

Morons.

...But where did Altair go?

I scrolled the comments. For a long while. It glitched once in the middle and I had to scroll all over again, the piece of shit.

The end.

A place nobody is interested in to begin with. Third-rate academy fits it pretty well.

One more.

Pick an academy because it's closer?

How the hell does this place even run?

I looked through ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a few more. I get the gist. It isn't a bad place. Not so bad it deserves to be ignored. It isn't a place worth bragging about, either. If someone asks, the conversation ends at "Ah, that place." Just somewhere nobody cares about.

...So she was that happy about getting in, huh?

Ah.

So this is stuff you're supposed to get done ahead of time. A world where even magic comes with Studying Ahead. This sucks. With the I, II, and III stuck on them, they look like textbook titles too. Roughly the vibe of vacation homework.

Why.

My fingertips are cold. A sensation like my heart has dropped out from under me. It's unmistakable. This is, without a doubt, the feeling of I am completely, utterly fucked.

It isn't my emotion. I'm not thinking anything. So why?

A memory comes. Something that feels like I already knew it, and yet I'm hearing it for the first time.

A booklet on the homeroom teacher's desk.

On the strength of that one line, the homeroom teacher was "the teacher who knows magic" at school. They even got called up to speak at the entrance ceremony.

The sign on the neighborhood repair shop.

When a phone's fall protection broke, everyone went there. That guy had opened his shop on those two lines.

Finish one, and you're someone who's studied. Finish two, and you're someone who makes a living off it.

Look at the list again.

One, two, three... eighteen, nineteen, twenty.

Before enrollment.

I don't think this kid did any studying ahead.

I'm screwed.

Mm.

I'm screwed.

Mm.

Should I run?

The renunciation form is still in the inbox. My heart sinks again.

Okay. I won't submit it.

Then there's only one thing left.

I grind. Goddammit. I don't want to die. Honestly, this face is too good to waste on croaking.

Stop smiling whenever you feel like it, you bitch.

"...Pfft..."

A hollow laugh was all that came out. Fifty-two minutes. The first unit of one subject out of twenty. Tears come. This time, they're mine.

Play.

It's slow.

It's slow?

How did you take the speed limit off again?