The Gate
Having confirmed my examination venue, I left the registration desk at once.
The grounds of the Fraussen Federal Magic University were immense. However large the buildings, and however many of them there were, no works of human hands could fill so vast a stretch of land. Most of the view across the campus was green—lawns and trees—and through it moved examinees walking alone, or little clusters drawn close to trade a few words of idle talk.
Once I set my hat back on my head and opened my umbrella, the gazes that had clung to me so stickily scattered, little by little, among the pattering drops. That my hair was physically hidden accounted for most of it. Not all, though.
Scarcely an hour remained until the examination. It was the hour when both the time and the leisure to spare a thought for outward distractions grew steadily short, and thanks to that I could make my way deeper into the university in relative peace.
How many minutes did I walk like that?
"So this is the place."
Two pillars of granite stood steadfast through the wind and rain. The Gate of Knowledge. At last I had come before it.
"......"
I stopped and looked up at the columns. Rectangular blocks of granite, twenty feet high—tall, if one called them tall, and modest, if one called them modest—symbols that even carried a certain plainness about them. And yet, for reasons I could not quite name, they felt to me like towers of learning risen all the way into the sky.
I did not seem to be the only one struck by that feeling. There ought to have been examinees who treated the Gate of Knowledge as mere ornament and hurried past, and yet the great majority paused once before it. I tried to guess why.
A great many students of the Federation, thanks to a well-ordered system of education, could walk the path of learning without obstacle, and had walked it. What is common, and what is taken for granted, loses its worth by the logic of economics. For the students of the Federation, then, a pure will to learn must have been a rather scarce thing—even among those confident enough to apply to the Federal Magic University itself.
As if he had foreseen as much, Jean-Pierre Ochelimet was putting the question again from the very threshold of the university.
Let those who would learn enter here.
Let those with no will to learn not presume to approach.
Are you truly here for the sake of learning? Are you of a mind to take up the keeping of knowledge handed down from the distant past?
"......"
Even the students who had been chatting in groups fell dead silent before those two lines. Then, like the sluice of a dam thrown open, a wave of them surged through the gate, and examinees began once more to pile up before the Gate of Knowledge.
A gate without bars. In every sense of the words.
It was while that silence which was not quite silence still held.
Plash—
Splash!
Two sounds of water rang out. While not a single person dared pass lightly through the Gate of Knowledge, legs shot forward at the same instant from the left of the crowd and from the right.
The foot that settled softly into a puddle, with that gentler sound, was mine. And no wonder. I had given my answer to the question eight years ago already. All that passing the gate required was reverence for the scholarship of magic, and so I took the first careful step.
Who would have thought there would be an examinee confident enough to pass the Gate of Knowledge in the very same moment—and splashing straight through the puddle without a shred of hesitation.
"Hah."
Once I had passed fully through, I turned my head toward the splash. As it happened, the one who had made it was looking my way as well, and we took in each other's faces at once.
The next moment, neither of us waiting on the other, we pointed and spoke.
"......The odd one from the restaurant?"
"Huh? The gray-haired theorist! I knew we'd meet again."
Black eyes shining with ambition between black hair that left the forehead bare. A handsome face, and somehow a brazen one. The memory of my first day rose up—the day I had only just arrived in Fraussen. There was no mistake. This was the man in the seat beside me who had asked whether light was a wave or a particle. The name had gone hazy, but that face I remembered for certain.
A strange reunion, after all of two months.
Beginning with the two of us who had passed the gate together, the students waiting behind poured through the Gate of Knowledge as well. The groups that had kept company clustered again to talk, and the examinees who had walked alone still made for the examination hall alone.
And somehow, there I was with the odd fellow from the restaurant.
"Werner. Gray-haired theorist."
I was on my way to the examination hall with Werner. When I had stepped out beyond the front gate that morning, I had never dreamed so strange a companion would fall in beside me. Quite apart from any wish of mine, the walk with him had begun. To think our venues would be the same.
"Lucky. I didn't want to sit the exam jammed in with nothing but those self-styled prodigies who balk at the Gate of Knowledge. Good thing you're here, at least. Theorist."
"It's Eugene."
"Is it. Gray hair."
"......"
One and the same, then. Still, say what one might, he seemed rather taken with me. I could not begin to make out why, but being able to start an acquaintance on goodwill is a considerably attractive thing. No need to shove him off on purpose. The way here had been steeped in more grim resolve than was healthy, and I had wanted a little air besides.
Werner did not disappoint. He launched straight into talk.
"I've no particular interest in your name."
"After you went and announced yours?"
"Didn't I say it, around when we parted last time? That we'd meet again at the magic university."
He might have, at that. Whether I answered or not, Werner pressed on.
"As you know, I am a genius, and a man meant to become the foremost experimental magic scholar in the Federation."
"I don't know that."
"What I'm saying is, I intend to take first place on this entrance exam, and with my head held high. And you? Statistically speaking—first place aside—the odds of you failing the entrance exam outright are extremely high."
"......"
"Gray hair. If you want me to call you by your name, pass with your head high and then demand it. No—I'll raise the bar. Try and take the top seat from me."
I was curious, purely and simply. Where on earth did confidence like that come from? When I kept silent, too dumbfounded for words, Werner put on a shameless smile.
"So if the two of us are going to exchange names properly, it will be the day the results come out. Well? Isn't that amusing?"
"Well...... it is amusing, I'll give you that. Anyway."
Letting half of Werner's sophistry wash past me, I glanced around. There was an odd air of people looking this way and murmuring. The grain of it was somehow different from the stares turned upon a barbarian bloodline. Between the hat and the umbrella, my ash-gray hair was not even particularly visible, which meant the attention was entirely Werner's doing.
So this one is no ordinary student either.
Taking a page from his manner, I shed the pretense and spoke.
"You. Seems your reputation is pretty bad."
"Ah, I'm rather famous among the Fraussen students."
"The good kind of famous?"
"The bad kind. I burned the laboratory at the school I attended clean to the ground."
Werner grinned, in the most literal sense of the word.
"Don't worry. There wasn't much in the way of flammables. Only...... there were quite a few metal compounds. The colors of the flames were wonderfully varied."
Ah.
Only then did the last words he had said to me at the restaurant come back. He was not simply dreaming of becoming an experimental magic scholar. He was a madman who hoped to become the experimental magic scholar who would lead the most dangerous experiments!
Around the time I reflexively put half a step between myself and Werner, we arrived at last before a building—an old and stately university hall, its roofline bristling with spires. It was large enough that even if every examinee lined up outside were herded in, there would still have been room to spare.
The Grand Hall. The examination venue for Werner and for me.
"So this is the Grand Hall."
"So it would seem."
We folded our umbrellas and followed the directions to our places. Some thirty minutes remained before the examination began. Anxiety beyond mere tension seemed to have settled over the students; gray hair and all the rest of it be damned, most of the examinees were busy either drilling their review notes by heart or sinking into meditation to steady mind and body.
"Werner. Where's your venue? I'm in Lecture Hall One."
"Lecture Hall Two."
I let out a breath of relief where no one could hear it. I had half a feeling that if we sat the exam in the same room, he would keep pressing me into a contest of wills. Fortunately, we were split.
Around then Werner stroked his chin.
"Hm."
"What is it?"
"Theorist. That hat of yours looks familiar somehow. Where'd you buy it?"
"It was given to me."
"Hmm. Well. Fine."
Amid the tense murmur we faced one another. Perhaps it was my turn to speak first this time.
"Let's meet again on the day the results are posted. I'll be looking forward to it. First place is mine."
"Haha! What did I say? An interesting fellow."
I turned my back without a second look. He was probably doing the same.
The eve was already over. The storm stood before my eyes now, and in the midst of that storm there was only one thing for me to do—to prove that the last two months, and beyond them the last eight years, had not been meaningless.
Tread. Tread.
Without hesitation, I walked into Lecture Hall One.
"......?"
"What. Gray hair?"
A few people glanced my way here and there. I paid them no mind. This was the examination hall. The answer to my worth would be given not by mouths, but by a pen and an examination paper.
"Now. Silence."
Thud. Thud. Thud!
Three proctors mounted the platform, carrying examination papers of staggering thickness.
"I ask silence of every one of you."
The proctor upon the dais—a professor, in all likelihood—stacked the papers atop it like a tower and put one question after another to the assistant proctors.
"How many have come?"
"One moment...... one hundred and twenty-two on the roll. One hundred and five are seated at present."
"Thank you."
The two assistants then moved to the side and the rear of Lecture Hall One, and the proctor left alone upon the lectern soon let a keen light come into his eyes.
"We shall shortly begin this year's entrance examination of the Fraussen Federal Magic University. All of you, take out your writing implements. And mark this—the Father of Magic is watching, so do not even dream of cheating."