The Acceptance Announcement
Tan-tan ta-da-dan~ Tan-tan ta-da-dan~ Ta-da-da~
“Haaah... Hoo...”
[Have you awakened?]
“Yeah... Turn the alarm off for me.”
[I shall prepare your meal.]
“I’ll go wash up.”
I stepped into the shower, finished rinsing off, and got ready to head out. After pulling on the clothes I had laid out the night before, I walked over to the dining table, where a single robotic arm was whirring busily as it prepared breakfast.
“What’s that?”
[Fried rice. I have acquired a robotic arm capable of cooking, yet the culinary data accumulated thus far remains insufficient. I am afraid I cannot offer anything particularly impressive. My apologies.]
“It’s fine. That’ll do.”
The robotic arm Laplace was using was one of the more recent developments. It still sat at a price point too steep for widespread commercial use, and the software itself had not advanced far enough to handle more than a limited range of dishes, so few people bothered buying one. Of course, I had Laplace.
Right now her cooking skills are pretty mediocre—she’s just following the built-in programs—but if I keep putting her to work, she’ll get better.
The thought of putting the most advanced AI in human history to work making meals made my mouth water. I finished the passable fried rice, then rose from my seat.
“I’m heading out.”
I was taking my communicator with me anyway, so it wasn’t as if we were truly parting, but I said goodbye out of habit and stepped outside.
After walking for quite a while, I finally reached a place packed with people.
“Hmm... She’s not here yet?”
Julia, whom I had arranged to meet, was nowhere in sight, and I wondered whether we had somehow missed each other.
[Shall I attempt to track her phone’s location?]
“No, it’s fine. I’ll just call her.”
Tracking someone’s location without their permission felt thoroughly rude, so I reached for my phone instead. At that exact moment, Darwin’s keen sensory organs picked up the presence of someone slowly approaching from behind.
Hm? Julia?
She was creeping toward me with exaggerated care, clearly trying not to be noticed. To me—equipped with ultrasonic detection cloned from bat-type monster DNA—it was a completely pointless effort, yet she still seemed to believe she hadn’t been spotted.
Trying to surprise me, is she?
I considered how to respond, then settled on something rather amusing. Pretending I still hadn’t noticed her approach, I kept my eyes on my phone. Before long she had drawn right up beside me and raised her hands.
In that instant I used Darwin’s power to erase every feature from my face, then spun around without warning.
“Kya—kyaaaah—!”
The moment our eyes met, Julia forgot all about startling me and landed hard on her backside.
“E-Egg face...!”
“It’s me. Me.”
I looked down at the thoroughly flustered Julia with mild exasperation and restored my face to normal. Only then did she realize who had startled her; she stared up at me with an expression of pure disbelief.
“W-Why would you scare me like that all of a sudden?!”
“You were the one who tried to scare me first, young lady.”
“I-I was trying to scare you first?!”
“If you’re going to startle me, you might want to put a little more effort into it. Honestly, that attempt just now was pretty half-baked.”
“H-Half-baked...? Me...?”
“Yes.”
“H-Half-baked?! I never noticed when I did it to other people...! W-Wait a second! That’s one thing, but why are you using formal speech? I clearly told you to speak casually...!”
“Huh? I’ve been speaking casually this whole time?”
“U-Uuuugh...!”
Julia puffed her cheeks out like a balloon, then abruptly turned her back on me.
“Fine! Just follow me! We’re going to check the scores.”
“Got it~”
“Tch! I haven’t seen you in ages and you’ve only gotten more slippery...!”
We pushed our way through the dense crowd of people.
“What time is it right now?”
“Just a second...”
[It is 8:56.]
“It’s 8:56.”
“Huh? Come on, don’t just make up a time... Wait, really? You didn’t even look at your phone—how do you know that precisely?”
“Actually, I have the ability to tell time with nothing but my biological clock...”
[...]
“What? For real?”
“No?”
“...”
“Well... anyway, four minutes left... no, three now?”
“Yeah, looks like it...”
At nine o’clock today, Sirius Academy would announce the final acceptance results on the big screens. You could check online as well, but that came a little later, so throngs of people had come outside to learn their fate ahead of time.
“How about you? Think you’ll hit the goal you were aiming for?”
“I don’t know... At first I was shooting for overall top rank, but... I’m not so confident anymore.”
Meeting the Hero and the regressor had probably hit her hard. Looking at Julia’s abilities with cold objectivity, she was a formidable force capable of fighting a delaying action against an A-class monster, yet she still fell short when measured against those two.
Iris the Hero was on a level where she could probably go toe-to-toe with an S-class hero, and her growth rate was simply unmatched by anyone. Completely off the charts. No matter how powerful Julia’s innate abilities were, and no matter how hard she worked to improve, there was nothing she could do about that.
And the regressor? Honestly, if you set aside that pocket watch, Julia looked like she could win. Strip away the sword as well, and even ordinary upper-tier students might have a decent shot. Or maybe not quite that far. Her unique ability still hadn’t been revealed, and her martial skill didn’t seem inferior to anyone present, so I couldn’t be certain. But once she had the pocket watch and the sword in hand, the picture changed completely.
Skill-wise she’s somewhere between Julia and Iris. The gap with Julia doesn’t look huge, but...
The problem was the pocket watch. She rewound time at every opportunity, so unless the opponent’s win rate was a perfect one hundred percent, defeat was inevitable. She must have used it a few times during the exam, too. I had watched the second hand jump more than once while it should have been still. That had to be the moment she activated it. From Julia’s perspective—unaware of any of this—it was only natural to feel inferior in all sorts of ways.
“Seo-hyun, what about you?”
“Me...? I don’t know...”
Probably not as high as people might think. I had nearly tanked World History on the written exam, and I had been eliminated at the end of the practical. Considering I had deliberately destroyed property, I was just grateful I hadn’t been disciplined.
“Oh, it’s 8:59.”
“Hey, it’s coming out! It’s coming!”
“Please, Kamisama! Let me pass this year!”
The moment the clock hit fifty-nine, the noise around us spiked noticeably.
“Looks like they’re about to reveal it.”
“Yeah. Twenty seconds left.”
Even the chattering crowd fell quiet once only twenty seconds remained until the announcement. Under that crushing tension the results finally appeared, and the entire area erupted in gasps and cheers.
1. Yeon-woo Lee: Hero Department
2. Seo-hyun Wittelsbach: Assist Department
3. Youmin Zhuge: Military Department
4. Julia Wittelsbach: Hero Department
...
8. Iris Russell: Hero Department
...
49. Joseph Valois: Hero Department
...
“I’m... second?”
“Fourth, huh...?”
Julia and I locked eyes. Losing the top spot stung, but the first-place finisher had almost certainly solved the problems already knowing the answers, so this was effectively the same as taking first.
Why, though?
First, the document screening. That hadn’t been a real problem. I had taken a year off school, but my grades before that had been top-tier, and I had even won a few academic competitions. I hadn’t entered them on purpose—things just sort of happened—and somehow I walked away with prizes. That should have offset the penalty for the year-long gap. Besides, the document screening wasn’t that important to begin with.
Next, the written exam. Aside from World History, I expected to have done quite well on the other subjects. There hadn’t been a single question I didn’t know, so as long as I hadn’t made careless mistakes it should have been a perfect score. Moving on.
Then the practical exam. I was certain I had scored full marks on the first practical, and while I hadn’t survived to the very end of the second, I had racked up plenty of points. I had spent six solid hours hunting kids, sometimes taking down dozens at a time, so failing to last until the finish wasn’t a major issue.
And the interview.
That one... what did I even say?
I remembered talking a lot, but the actual content was a blank. Maybe because I had been completely out of it at the time?
“Thinking about it, second place doesn’t seem all that unreasonable...”
Come to think of it, I had lived pretty hard. How many people could drop into a world without a single connection and climb this high? I could treat it as a small reward for the effort. Honestly, I still didn’t fully understand it myself.
Yeah. Let’s just leave it at that.
Good enough was good enough.