Now I Know Your Level
"Bag... pens... wallet... Good. All set."
I gathered what I needed and straightened my clothes, working out every wrinkle and crease until I looked presentable. My hair... hardly needed arranging.
The mirror wasn't a large one, and yet the girl reflected in it was so small that her whole body fit inside the glass.
...Why won't this body grow? Being small had its advantages, and I didn't mind those. But when I thought of the heights of the children who'd shared my class yesterday, I couldn't help sinking into a gloom. The tallest had looked twice my size, and even the shortest still cleared me by a full head....
"Tch."
I clicked my tongue. What couldn't be helped, couldn't be helped. Better to spend the time on some productive worry than to waste it fretting over this.
With everything ready, I woke Nero last of all.
"Hey. Get up."
"Hnyaaang... what's the matter, nyang? Why wake a cat who's sleeping so well, nyang......"
"Up. You've got work."
"...Master, do I really have to patrol, nyang? I wandered the alleys nearly all night, and I didn't see so much as a speck of anything strange, nyang..."
Nero must have been truly exhausted; he yawned with his mouth stretched wide. Tired from patrolling all night... wait. Hadn't I put Kuro on the night patrol?
"Where's Kuro?"
The cage was empty. I'd sent him out to patrol last night, and he still wasn't there—which meant he was either still at it, or he'd bolted. One of the two.
"If I catch him this time, I really am frying him..."
"What, you were already up?"
At the flutter of wings I turned, and there was Kuro perched on the windowsill. I nearly fried him on the spot, but I am a merciful master. I could at least hear one last excuse.
"Last words?"
"...What bullshit is this, all of a sudden? This body has been working hard, and has only just returned."
"......You worked? Then why was Nero the one out patrolling at night?"
"Patrol? Does one call it a patrol, spending all last night strutting the market street and trading cute little acts for snacks?"
"You damned birdbrain!!!"
Nero launched himself at Kuro in an instant, a movement worthy of a true predator. Any lesser creature of the ground would have been finished on the spot....
"Hmph. A four-legged beast, fit only to crawl upon the earth."
Kuro spread his great wings at once and flapped up to the ceiling.
"Catch me and you're dead, nyang!!!"
"Do it, then, if you can."
"Do both of you want to die by my hand?"
"......"
"......"
"Both of you. Back where you belong."
Nero returned to the bed, and Kuro to the inside of the cage. A little time passed.
"Kuro. Anything strange?"
"There was not."
"Truly?"
"Indeed."
He wasn't lying.
"All right. Then you're working tonight as well."
"...And yet, why do any of this?"
First Nero, and now Kuro too? Was patrolling really such a chore? He was the one who'd said he was sick of being shut up in here. All I'd asked was that he step outside, get a breath of fresh air, and run a patrol while he was at it....
"You never know what might happen. There's always that one chance in a million."
"That is needless worry. Everyone within these grounds has already had their identity confirmed, and should the worst come to pass, there is a barrier. Why carry on like this alone?"
He had a point. I'd thought it strange myself. Dozens of Intelligence operatives were stationed in here alone; getting in required a thorough identity check; every wand was confiscated so that magic couldn't be used; and there was a barrier laid against that one chance in a million. So why go out of their way to send me here?
I still didn't know. But one thing was certain. Ria—and beyond her, the imperial house—would never have stuffed me into the Academy without a thought behind it. Sending an asymmetric asset like me not to the capital, but to an Academy far removed from it, was a loss.
A remote belongs within reach of the hand, where it can be used at once. That is only natural.
"They must have something in mind."
And so, to Kuro's question, that was the only answer I could give.
"Just hold on a little longer."
"...Understood, nyang."
"Well. It is preferable to being shut inside this narrow cage."
"Thank you. Both of you."
That was when it happened. A sudden pounding—someone knocking at the door.
"Miriel? Don't tell me you're still asleep!?"
Mariella.
Ah—when had it gotten so late? If Kuro and Nero hadn't been making a fuss, I'd have been out the door already...!
"I-I'll be right out!!"
I answered as I grabbed the bag I'd already packed, undid the lock, and turned the handle.
"Take care, Master, nyang."
"...Yeah. I'll be back."
I opened the door. I hated the Academy, but I ought to meet it with as open a mind as I could. Decide in my heart that I hated it, and I might lock myself inside that prejudice and fail to make a sound judgment.
So what kind of classes were waiting for me? I was rather looking for—
—ward to them? As if.
Class was a nightmare. Part of it was simple boredom—I already knew all of it—but there was worse.
"And so, using the formula I introduced a moment ago, this is a graph mapping the flow of mana. Compare it with the magic circle beside it, and you can see that the shapes are quite similar."
Unverified theories, delivered as if they were settled fact.
"Um... so, if you look at page twenty-two of the textbook..."
Mumbling, and nothing but reading from the book.
"So when we compare the mana conductivity of these two substances... the conductivity is identical, which means we can consider these two alloys to be composed of the same metal."
There was even a professor explaining something flat-out wrong.
This was a lecture? This was the Academy...?
The second professor was a problem of teaching, but the other two were a problem from before teaching even entered the picture. This couldn't possibly be all right...??
"Ugh......"
"...Why are you sighing with your plate in front of you?"
"Mariella, you didn't notice anything strange...?"
Each class ran for an hour, with twenty minutes of break in between. Three classes and two breaks later, it was lunch.
Mariella twirled her pasta with elegant precision and brought it to her lips. The motion was so thoroughly aristocratic that I found myself wondering whether pasta had always been so refined a dish.
"The lectures... aren't they far too low-level?"
"You think so...? The second lecture, Introduction to Basic Magic, did feel very much like someone merely reading the textbook. But anyone at the level to enter the Academy would already know the material, so the professor likely chose to refresh our memory rather than conduct the class with any particular passion."
"Well, I don't especially mind that one. But no matter how I think about it, third period was too much."
"You mean Basic Alchemy?"
I nodded.
"Why? I liked it."
"...What?"
Impossible. Betrayed.
Anyone else, perhaps—but I had thought Mariella, of all people, would understand.
"You listened to that and didn't notice anything strange...?"
"Strange?"
Fork clicked against plate. Mariella stared straight at me with those violet eyes.
"What was strange about it?"
I explained. Earnestly. What the problem was, and precisely where it had gone wrong, examples and all.
"...From your perspective, Miriel, it may well have been a rather unpleasant lecture."
That was Mariella's answer once she'd heard me out. The vagueness of it stung a little. To say it might have been unpleasant from my standpoint was to imply that, for anyone else, it might not have been unpleasant at all.
But that lecture had been unmistakably bad...?
"But it is Basic Alchemy, isn't it? You and I know enough to tell that the professor was wrong, but for students who are truly learning alchemy from the very beginning, I think it would be fine."
"Everything has to be built up one step at a time, after all."
She added that, and lifted her teacup to her lips.
Hearing it put that way, it almost sounded right. Explain complex numbers to someone who doesn't even grasp the idea of a negative number, and they won't understand a thing. Which would mean that, at a first-year's level, what he'd said hadn't been wrong.
"And the next class—wouldn't it be all right to look forward to that one?"
"Ah......"
I rifled through the timetable in my head. The next class was probably...
"Theoretical Magic, wasn't it?"
"Yes. Professor Edward's lecture."
A faint note of pleasure colored Mariella's voice. Was it really that good? For me, it was the subject I looked forward to least.
No—in a certain sense, it might have been the lecture I was most eager for.
Let's see just how good he is.... The moment he says anything even slightly off, I'll bury him in ques—
"...Are you thinking something strange right now?"
"What? Ah, n-no, I'm not...!?"
Mariella's silent stare burned, and it snapped me back to myself.
Right. Fire off question after question, and all the attention would land on me. I could always settle it later by sending an anonymous letter to his office. No need to pick a fight during class. In the lecture, I'd keep quiet—so quiet no one could tell whether I was even there. Still as a dead mouse.
Surely nothing would happen.
"Then this problem... you there, white hair. Miriel."
"...Yes?"
Me?
Why?