Practical Exam (1)
“...!”
Before I knew it, I was staring down at the pocket watch resting in my palm.
The minute hand had already slipped ten minutes further back than before.
“W-wait a second...! When did you even—!”
She was still reacting exactly the same way as last time.
Watching her, a strange sense of dissonance washed over me.
“You...”
“...Huh?”
“Just what are you...?”
Regression.
It didn’t make sense.
Hadn’t the second law of thermodynamics and the principle of causality already proven that reversing time was impossible?
...
Come to think of it, I could guess how the thermodynamics problem had been solved.
The pocket watch itself already possessed the power to ignore the second law of thermodynamics.
“I-I have no idea what you’re talking about. Give it back. That’s...!”
“Something a precious person made for you?”
“Wh-what?”
“Fine. I’ll give it back.”
I tossed the pocket watch back to her.
From what I’d just seen, keeping it myself wouldn’t do me any good.
After the remaining ten minutes stored in the watch had been spent not long ago, the hands had settled on 12:18.
And they had stayed frozen exactly like that.
As far as I could tell, this pocket watch was no perfect perpetual-motion machine.
The claim that the device was broken seemed to be true; it apparently needed some kind of resource supplied to it.
And Darwin’s instincts—honed by absorbing countless magical beasts and living creatures as she grew—whispered that this was something far beyond what I could handle right now.
“Yeona.”
“Y-yes?”
“You’re on humanity’s side, right?”
“W-well, of course...?”
I nodded at her answer.
Yeah. That was enough.
Whether she was a regressor or whatever else, it wasn’t my business.
Snatching away something someone else had worked hard to create just wasn’t my style.
Judging by how she had saved the cruise ship full of students from the magical beasts, she didn’t seem like the type to prioritize social collapse or personal gain.
Someone who valued my own safety above almost everything else would probably be better off leaving the pocket watch in her hands rather than taking it myself.
“B-but... Yeona? My name is Yeon-woo...!”
I released her hand and left the room at high speed.
Now that I had learned most of what I needed about her, I had no further business with her.
If I’m lucky, I’ll run into her again during the practical exam.
Until then, a temporary goodbye.
And so the final day aboard the cruise ship passed.
Bwoooooom—!
The ship’s horn blared across the entire vessel.
At last, after five days of travel, the ship arrived at the island where Sirius Academy’s entrance examinations would be held.
I opened my eyes in the lodging Sirius Academy had arbitrarily assigned me.
Today was the long-awaited day of the practical exam.
Once the practical was over, the interviews would follow immediately, making this, in effect, the final day that would decide who entered Sirius Academy.
“Ugh, the sunlight.”
I frowned, unable to endure the scorching rays.
The island sat near the equator.
Even though it was winter, stepping outside like this could genuinely put my life at risk.
Was this how a vampire felt standing before the sun?
With solemn reverence I applied sunscreen, then opened the black parasol I had brought along.
The moment I stepped outside like that, I felt people’s eyes on me.
Most of the people on this island were Sirius Academy entrance candidates.
Bodies strengthened by mana treated the equatorial ultraviolet rays as nothing, walking around with bare skin fully exposed.
If I tried that, I would genuinely foam at the mouth and collapse.
For someone with a sunlight allergy like me, simply walking these streets with nothing but a single parasol for cover—no roof overhead—was already a serious challenge.
I headed straight for the practical examination grounds in that state.
The interior of the exam site was fairly empty.
Partly because I had arrived so early, and partly because the facilities themselves were on an extraordinary scale.
A facility that can hold hundreds of thousands of people... Only Sirius Academy could pull something like this off.
Just what was Sirius Academy thinking, making hundreds of thousands of people take a practical exam?
Once the practical began, the exact method would be revealed.
“Let’s see. The zone I’m supposed to go to...”
The system had assigned me a practical exam zone.
Consulting the map, I made my way to the designated area.
What I found was a massive sparring arena.
Inside the facility large enough to hold thousands, several staff members were sorting students by department.
“Hero Department applicants, this way please!”
“Assist Department applicants, come here and take one of these each!”
I approached the staff member handing out items to the Assist Department applicants.
“Assist Department applicant?”
“Yes. Here’s my ID.”
I turned the electronic device the man handed me over in my hands, examining it.
“This is...”
“Just hold onto it for now. There’ll be an explanation later.”
“Understood.”
I found an empty seat nearby and sat down casually.
As I waited, I began to feel people’s gazes on me from all around.
Hm? What’s this about?
I hadn’t done anything particularly attention-grabbing, so I was still wondering what was going on when voices from nearby reached me in full detail through Darwin’s hearing.
“Whoa... she’s seriously pretty. Like a model out of a photo shoot.”
“Should I try talking to her? Maybe she’s into me and’ll give me her number.”
“Wake up. You drunk? That’s why I told you to cut it out last night. We’ve got to get into the academy this year.”
“Is she an albino? Weird.”
Languages from all sorts of countries mixed together in my ears, but Laplace converted them in real time into a language I could understand.
Hmm... so they’re just impressed by my looks?
True enough, compared to others my age I was quite pretty.
I hadn’t realized it when I was younger, but at this level I could probably make a living just doing photo shoots.
Since academies didn’t admit people based on looks, it made sense that I would stand out to them.
I feel like I could use this somehow...
But any strategies like that would have to wait until the contents of the practical exam were revealed.
After waiting quite a while, people gradually began filling the practical exam grounds.
When the place was nearly full, a staff member took the microphone and stepped onto the platform beside the sparring arena.
“Good morning, examinees. I’m Michael, your host for today’s exam.”
The man who called himself Michael was a muscular giant.
“As you know, Sirius Academy systematically cultivates talent and contributes to global security by dividing into the General Department, Hero Department, Military Department, and Assist Department. To that end, Sirius Academy has a distinctive feature that sets it apart from other academies—namely, the practical exam.”
As he spoke, nearby staff began dividing the Hero Department students into various groups.
“The General and Military Departments will take their practical exams in a different format from the Hero and Assist Departments. However, since heroes and assists are inseparable, they will take the first practical exam together.”
“First...?”
“We have assigned you to teams via the electronic devices distributed earlier. Please gather at the location of your team’s flag.”
Since I still had to take the practical, I headed toward the flag of the team I had been assigned to.
The moment I arrived, I saw ten heroes and five assists, including myself.
“Are you by any chance that teammate...?”
“Ah, yes. That’s right.”
“I’m Kaede, from Japan. And you are...”
“I’m...”
While I was chatting with the woman who had spoken to me, another person cut in between us.
“I’m Joseph Valois, from France.”
“Ah... yes, hello.”
“Ahem, I don’t usually say this myself, but... have you heard of the Valois family? We’re fairly well-known...”
Valois? Where’s that?
He was a complete stranger, but it seemed better to at least pretend I knew, so I asked Laplace to look it up.
A prestigious French house, huh...
Something like the Wittelsbach family?
“Ah~ of course I know. One of France’s great houses, right?”
“Oh, then this will go quickly. If it’s not too forward, I’d like to get your number...”
The moment I heard him, I sighed inwardly.
It wasn’t anything special.
Getting hit on for my number was something I had experienced more times than I cared to count over the ten-plus years I had lived in this body.
There had even been times when people approached me even after learning I was a middle-schooler, which had been a real headache.
By now those people were probably sightseeing the ocean from inside oil drums filled with concrete.
“Is this a pickup attempt?”
“Ahem... rather than a pickup, I was thinking we could get to know each other...”
Normally this would have been the moment I cleanly drew a line and moved on.
But then a rather good idea struck me.
“Hm? Something just arrived on the device?”
“What’s this? First practical exam... sparring?”
The content that had arrived on the electronic device concerned the method for the first practical exam.
After receiving a rough summary through Laplace, I thought for a moment and approached Joseph.
“Joseph?”
“Y-yes?”
“There’s a condition for giving you my number... How about it? Want to give it a try?”
I looked at him with eyes curved into a gentle arc.
This would work perfectly.