The Gate
Fame and honor come in many kinds, and they are by no means confined to individuals. The same held true of student society in Fraussen. Even among groups far smaller than a nation or a city, the scramble to claim prestige was in full swing.
The method of reckoning that honor was simple.
Which school sent the most freshmen to the Federal Magic University?
Fraussen had four institutions of secondary education in all, and every year they released thousands of graduates into the world. True to a city that was the birthplace of magical scholarship, no small number of those students hoped to enter the Federal Magic University, and so the question of which school had produced how many new magic students circulated each year among the faculty as a minor piece of gossip.
When exactly the matter had overheated was difficult to say. What was certain was that, so long as the number of admitted students remained on record as a statistic, it was bound to happen sooner or later. Perhaps it is simply human nature, faced with anything that can be quantified, to line people up in a row.
From some moment onward, not only the teachers but the students of all four schools joined in, and they began ranking the schools according to how many freshmen each sent on to the magic university. Each bore a long and lofty official name, but everyone simply called them the First, the Second, the Third, and the Fourth.
Examinee No. 1217, Eva Torricelli, was a student of the First School, counted far and away the finest of the four. The year before, it had produced no fewer than one hundred and fifty-five successful applicants to the magic university—a figure that pressed the other three schools down without the slightest effort. Eva was a prodigy who ranked within the top five of that illustrious school, so it was only natural that the hopes of friends and teachers alike should gather around her.
"Miss Eva. You're certain to pass!"
"The First School's prestige will rise higher still. Ah..."
"Eva, our future top admit! Eva, our future top admit!"
An ordinary student, crushed beneath expectations so heavy, might well have grown anxious instead.
"Everyone? There's Lord Ochelimet's statue, off in the distance. I can see the future quite clearly—ten years from now, a statue of me will be standing right beside it!"
Eva Torricelli was the exact opposite. How could she feel anxious? She had only to turn every one of those expectations into fact.
Sending her distinctive, gleaming golden-blonde hair flying in a bright cascade, Eva turned to look behind her. Seven close friends gazed at her with admiring eyes. In their hearts, no doubt, they were already walking the grounds beside the top-ranked entrant to the magic university. Eva was confident she could make that dream real. Wearing a self-assured expression, she declared:
"Come on. To the examination hall!"
Among the clusters of examinees, one unusually large group began to move.
Unfortunately, their triumphant advance was halted sooner than anyone had expected.
"Wh-what is this?"
A crowd was blocking the way ahead. The Gate of Knowledge flanked the great boulevard on either side, and before its majesty everyone had stopped where they stood, producing a severe bottleneck. Eva bit lightly at a fingernail.
"This isn't what I pictured..."
The night before, as she was drifting off, she had imagined it: herself among the shabby examinees, radiant, passing elegantly through the Gate of Knowledge. And what was this? The weather was cold and overcast, rain had turned the ground to mud, and the press of bodies made it impossible even to get through.
"E-Eva. What do we do?"
"Cutting across the lawn in a situation like this would look bad... I suppose we'll just have to wait a little."
Her friends offered a word or two apiece. But sinking into disappointment here would hardly be like her. Even beneath an umbrella she tossed her golden hair and answered.
"We push through."
And so a band of First School students began to wedge themselves into the crowd. Fortunately the others were too busy staring at the words carved into the Gate of Knowledge, and Eva soon reached the very front of the throng.
"I'll be the first to pass through...!"
She was on the verge of stepping lightly through the Gate when her foot stopped short. Looking around, she found some twenty examinees drawn up in a line abreast—and not one of them making a move. No. Was it that they could not move? Only then did Eva lift her head and look the Gate of Knowledge straight in the face.
Let those who wish to learn enter here.
Let those with no will to learn draw no nearer.
For a moment, she faltered.
Am I truly passing through this gate because I wish to learn? Or is it only so that I might be admired?
She was still hesitating, just beginning to call back the scholarly ardor buried somewhere in her chest, when there came a light splash—and then a heavier one. The lead had been taken from her.
The examination venue was the great hall, and once their path split from the students testing elsewhere, Eva's group was reduced to six in all. Watching the crowd disperse as well, each person heading for their own room, she felt reality slowly settle in. The exam would begin soon. She felt anxiety seeping up from somewhere inside her, little by little.
Even with ability safely inside the passing range, one slip could mean failure. A year of her youth, dear as blood, would vanish. If that came to pass, it would be nothing she could dismiss as mere humiliation. She was keeping a tighter rein on herself, her mouth shut, when a voice utterly at odds with the grim atmosphere reached her.
"I didn't want to sit the exam jammed in with nothing but those phony geniuses who freeze up at the Gate of Knowledge. Lucky you're here, at least. Theory boy."
"I told you, it's Eugene."
Eva frowned slightly and tracked the sound.
"As you know, I'm a genius, and the man who will become the Federation's foremost experimental magic scholar."
"I don't, actually?"
Two men walking side by side. Eva recognized the black-haired one among them.
"So that one really is sitting the entrance exam, I see."
"Miss Eva. Someone you know?"
"Yes, well. I'm sure you've heard the name, at least. Werner, of the Fourth School."
"...Whoa. I'd only ever heard the rumors."
At the mention of the name, her five friends showed they knew it too, each of them frowning or looking startled. His notoriety was that great.
The Fourth School. For five years running it had never once escaped last place in the number of freshmen sent to the magic university—the worst of the schools. And within that Fourth School, where fistfights were said to break out at all hours, the man who had nothing whatsoever to do with violence, and who had made himself infamous across all of Fraussen through eccentricity alone, was Werner.
Right after enrollment, he had carried out an explosion experiment on the athletic field. He would casually array chemicals classed as deadly poison across his own desk in the classroom. And then there was the incident a year ago, when the Fourth School laboratory burned to the ground. That last, especially, was the chief source of his infamy. Students and teachers alike had all fled, while he alone stayed behind, spent five minutes admiring the fire his own mistake had started, and then put it out himself—or so the story went.
"He's simply mad. They say he's good at his studies, but how good can the top of the Fourth School really be?"
Inwardly wishing Werner failure, Eva let the matter drop. What caught her interest instead was the man beside him. Had there ever been anyone Werner might call a friend? He was a person worth watching; there was no harm in confirming who he was. Under that pretext, Eva studied the man's back right up until they reached the great hall. It was most certainly not for the sake of appreciating a fine build and a well-trained physique.
And so, after threading a swelling crowd, anxious muttering, and Federal Magic University staff circulating with examination papers in hand, Eva Torricelli arrived at Auditorium One of the great hall—the room where she would sit the exam.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
"Distribution of the examination papers is complete."
"Thank you."
Voices carried. More than a hundred people filled the vast space, and yet the only sounds were the second hand of the clock, the proctors' conversation, the draw of breath, and the beating of her own heart.
The papers, laid face-down, were like a field of snow no one had ever trodden. To some, a playground where they might show off their ability to their heart's content—and yet if someone were buried beneath that snow, not a trace would show. The principal questions, twenty-one in all. Eight sheets of paper. As Eva newly grasped the weight of that sheaf, her heartbeat spurred itself harder, and at the same moment the proctor on the platform checked his wristwatch. In the chill silence, his mouth opened.
"The entrance examination will now begin."
A flutter of paper. One hundred and twenty-two examinees turned their sheets over as one. Some began from the front; others employed the tactic of starting with the subjects they trusted. A contest of leaving graphite footprints across a field of white had begun.
Scratch, scratch, scratch—the solutions ran down the page. Someone stopped; someone else rustled a sheet. Eva shut out every external stimulus and gave herself wholly to her own paper. Five questions of arithmetic, finished. Seven of algebra; the highest-difficulty problem cost her a little effort, but she finished that too. World history, grammar, and the like she dispatched in under ten minutes.
"Haaah..."
She steadied her breath for a moment and checked the time. The Federal Magic University's entrance examination required every question to be solved in succession, without a break. It invited stress, and at the same time demanded rigorous management of the hours. Fortunately, the moment was just right. Not fast, but not late either.
Eva took up her pencil once more and worked straight through introductory calculus, introductory physics, and introductory chemistry, all the way to the high-difficulty questions. The standard had risen from previous years, but in the end she managed it. Even this much, assuming no mistakes, was already a passing score. A good deal of time still remained. About an hour—time that could fairly be called allotted entirely for the highest-difficulty problems. As if to prove the point, a considerable number of examinees in Auditorium One had already set their pencils down.
They fell into two kinds: those who could not solve the hardest problems, and those who had already reached the passing line and saw no point in trying. But Eva was aiming for first place. She rallied herself, lifted her pencil again, and barely managed the final problem in introductory calculus. She had solved it, yet she had no confidence the answer was right.
Slowly, she raised her head. Nearly every student in sight had put down their pen, though some thirty minutes still remained. She had heard that, owing to the entrance examination's peculiar distribution of difficulty, this happened every year. More than a few examinees had slumped forward into sleep, or were endlessly spinning their pencils. And when Eva turned the pages and confirmed that the highest-difficulty problems in physics and chemistry were absurdly monstrous, she set her pencil down with a satisfied tap.
Nineteen of the twenty-one questions, solved. If they were all correct, it was a score with which she might aim for first or second place. Even if a few were wrong, it was a score that would put her over the passing line without fail. With this, the renown of the First School was destined to rise still higher.
That was when it happened.
Eva Torricelli saw him. Thirty minutes before the end of the exam, in the seat directly before the lectern: the back of a man writing as if he were locked in battle with the paper itself.
A long brazen toll, as if the bell meant to ring through the whole of the campus. With it, the proctor declared:
"Time is up! Come now, all of you—set your pencils down."
Most of the students had put theirs down long ago, so it was accomplished in short order. Collection of the papers. A count. The proctor's permission. Only after a procedure of about ten minutes did the examinees at last regain their freedom.
"It's ooover! Damn it!"
"Hey, hey. What'd you put for calculus number two? 2π? Not 3π/2?"
"I'm screwed."
"...*sniff*"
A hundred-odd examinees shot up from their seats at once. A few stood out, pouring out curses or secretly wiping away tears, while the greater part heaved deep sighs and left the hall. A girl from the First School, letting out a similarly heavy sigh, tapped Eva on the shoulder.
"Miss Eva. Let's go."
"...All right."
Contrary to her words, Eva stood near the exit and looked back into the hall. Auditorium One, its seats emptied in an instant. And yet only one person remained. Directly before the lectern, the ash-gray-haired man was still seated, breathing hard as he stared up at the ceiling. The corner of his mouth was curved so faintly it was hard to tell whether it was a smile. His reddened right hand had frozen in the shape of a fist that was still gripping a pencil.