Encounter with a Fiery Princess Read online

  She really is the fair and just type, Ayato thought.

  Although she didn’t quite look ready to forgive him, she nodded firmly. “Even I can understand that it was a force majeure situation.”

  This was really nothing like the handkerchief incident. Ayato had just enough time to act—not to think about it. Prana could heighten the body’s physical defenses, but it wasn’t enough to protect against a sniper attack.

  “So, let’s just say that I owe you a debt,” Julis told him.

  “A debt?”

  “Yes. Simple enough, isn’t it?”

  A debt certainly was simple enough to understand, but it felt a little impersonal to Ayato.

  “You really never change, do you?” said Claudia with mild exasperation. “I think your life might be easier if you were a little more honest with your feelings.”

  “Mind your own business,” Julis retorted. “I’m honest enough as I am, and my life is perfectly fine.”

  “Oh, then your search for a tag team partner must be going smoothly?”

  “Um… Well…” Julis awkwardly lowered her gaze. She didn’t want to say any more, but she was too easy to read.

  “The Festa entry deadline is in two weeks. You don’t have all that much time.”

  “I—I know that! I’ll find someone!” Julis whirled, her shoulders tight with anger, and headed back to the dormitory.

  “Oh, dear.” Claudia followed Julis with her eyes like a mother watching a petulant child stalk away.

  “Ahem, so in that sense, we could say that the previous century was an era of unmitigated disaster. But the meteor shower known as the Invertia in particular caused great harm to the entire world on an unprecedented scale. Meteorites rained down for three days and three nights, forcing the world into upheaval. Considering the deterioration of existing nation-states and the rise of integrated enterprise foundations; the subsequent changes in ethical values; the emergence of a new race of human beings, born from the mana carried to Earth by the meteorites—that is, those like you, the Genestella; the field of meteoric engineering, which developed out of mana research, and the resulting explosion in technological advancement; and so on… We must conclude that for better or worse, the Invertia was a single event that completely altered the course of human history.”

  Walking down the hallway, Ayato could hear an elderly teacher lecturing his class.

  “The mainstream view, according to the most recent academic theories, is that the Invertia did not consist of ordinary meteors. No astronomical observatories detected the shower in advance, nor were the aerosols that should have been generated on impact observed. Now, what this means is that…”

  Even a minute of listening to the teacher’s slow, monotonous voice was a powerful soporific. Peeking into the classroom, Ayato was not surprised to see that more than half of the students were slumped over their desks.

  “You have classes this early, ma’am? Even before homeroom?”

  “Yes. Although that one is a remedial class.”

  “A remedial class first thing in the morning…” This was going to be rough.

  “Well, after all, our school philosophy values the might of both pen and sword. I do hope you take it to heart.” As she led the way to the student council room, Claudia turned back to give Ayato a soft smile.

  Unlike the girls’ dormitory with its classical facade, the main buildings of Seidoukan Academy were modern high-rises with an open-air feeling. Three buildings—college, high school, and middle school—surrounded a spacious central quad. The high school, having the largest student body, occupied the largest building.

  “Oh, by the way… You and I are in the same year, Ayato, so you should feel free to speak to me more casually.”

  “Huh? Miss Enfield, you’re a first-year student, too?” It was hard to believe, given her calm demeanor. “Wait. If you’re the student council president, then…”

  It was June now. The school year began in April, so if she was a first-year student like Ayato, it had only been two months since she began high school. Ayato was not entirely clear on the process of selecting a student council president, but he would imagine it was difficult for someone to attain that office in such a short time.

  “Oh, I’ve been president since I was in middle school. This is my third year in office,” Claudia said as if it were nothing, while they walked down a glass-walled corridor brilliant with sunlight.

  According to her, the student government was not divided up into middle school, high school, and college councils, but rather consisted of one student council that oversaw the entire academy, consisting of students from all levels.

  “I see…”

  “So please, just call me by my name.”

  “Okay. Got it, Miss Claudia.”

  “Just Claudia will do.”

  “But we only just met…” With Julis, they seemed to have skipped right past formalities, but normally Ayato had a hard time being so casual with a girl who had introduced herself just minutes ago.

  “It’s Claudia.”

  “But, um…”

  “Clau-di-a.”

  “All right… Claudia.”

  She was much more forceful than she looked. Once Ayato gave in and called her as she’d asked, she smiled with her eyes.

  “Then you’ll have to just call me Ayato, too. Or it’ll feel weird.”

  “Very well, Ayato.”

  “You don’t have to keep speaking so formally…”

  “Oh, no… This is simply a habit of mine. Please pay it no mind.”

  “A habit?”

  “Yes. I’m actually quite blackhearted, so I always endeavor to at least present myself as polite and affable. And now I can’t speak any other way.”

  Claudia smiled as sweetly as a doting mother, which didn’t match up at all with her words, so it took Ayato a few moments to grasp them.

  “…Blackhearted?”

  “Oh, like you wouldn’t believe. My heart is at least as black as a piece of dark matter…stewed, charred, jammed into a black hole, and topped with blackstrap molasses.”

  That does sound awfully black, thought Ayato.

  “Would you like to see?”

  “Huh?”

  No sooner had she posed her question than she began to pull up her blouse.

  “Hey! Wait, what’re you—?”

  Claudia exposed her gleaming pale midriff, and Ayato averted his eyes. Obviously, what she’d been describing about herself wouldn’t be visible.

  “Just kidding. What an adorable reaction I got out of you.” Claudia playfully covered her mouth as she laughed. Ayato had totally fallen for it.

  “…Here we are. Please, go on in.”

  They had arrived at the student council room on the top floor of the high school building. In fact, all the rooms on this floor had something to do with the student council.

  The security system read Claudia’s school crest, and the door opened. The room inside, however, did not appear to contain anything very relevant to student government.

  A set of leather lounge furniture sat on a sepia carpet. The walls were adorned with painted views of the campus from a distance. The window was so enormous it seemed like a piece of sky, and in front of it was a heavy wooden desk. This place could have been the office of a giant corporation’s CEO.

  Claudia took her seat behind the desk as if she were quite accustomed to it, then clasped her fingers and let out a deep breath.

  “Now, let’s do this properly… Welcome to Seidoukan Academy, Ayato. I hope you enjoy your time here.” She gazed intently at Ayato for a few moments, then spun her chair around and turned her eyes to the scene outside the window. “And…welcome to Asterisk.”

  Following her gaze, Ayato looked down at the metropolis spread out below with its orderly, perfectly shaped streets. The artificial city, floating atop an enormous crater lake, consisted of a central urban area in the shape of a regular hexagon and the six schools that protruded from each vertex like th
e bastions of an old fortress. Overall, the city’s shape resembled that of a snowflake, which must have given the place its official name: Rikka, an old poetic word in Japanese that described snowflakes as six-petaled flowers.

  A broad avenue ran from each school, meeting in the center, to the school on the opposite corner of the hexagon—the lines forming an asterisk. This became the more popularized name, perhaps because the meaning of the Japanese word was not immediately apparent to the highly international student body.

  “You transferred here on a special scholarship, and we at Seidoukan Academy have only one hope for you: victory.” Claudia kept her gaze on the city while she spoke. “Beat Gallardworth, best Allekant, drive out Jie Long, overpower Le Wolfe, and defeat Queenvale. That is—win the Festa. If you do, then our institution will grant whatever wish you might have. Any wish at all within the realm of earthly possibility.”

  “Umm…” At a loss, Ayato scratched his head and knit his brows. “I’m sorry, but that’s not really what I’m interested in.”

  The school—or rather, the integrated enterprise foundations that stood behind each school—truly did have that power. The might of the IEFs far surpassed that of nations, which were now little more than lines on a map, and the rule of law bent easily before them. Money, power, fame, as much as one could wish for, would be ripe for the taking.

  It would be fair to say that roughly half of the students gathered in Asterisk were here to pursue such dreams. As for the other half—they were Genestella who had nothing else to do with their strength. They wanted to test themselves, to fight with everything they had for once in their lives. And this was the only place in the world where they could unleash their powers with no reservations.

  Ayato belonged to neither category.

  “Yes, I’m fully aware that you have no interest whatsoever in those matters. I also know that you previously declined a scholarship offer.” Claudia paused and swiveled her chair again to face Ayato. “However, our school’s performance at the Festa in recent years has hardly been commendable. Last season, we finished in fifth place. Queenvale took last place, but considering that part of their strategy is to completely ignore their own rank, we might as well have finished last. We will do whatever it takes to break out of this sorry state of affairs, and to that end, we must acquire every promising student we can get our hands on.”

  The Festa was a broad term referring to a set of events—three categories, in fact, one taking place each year. The tag team doubles competition, Phoenix, took place in the summer of the first year; the team competition, Gryps, in the fall of the second year; and the individual competition, Lindvolus, in the winter of the third year. Points were awarded in each competition to the best performers and their schools, with the total results calculated at the end of the Lindvolus. A full “season” of the Festa was a three-year cycle.

  And as Claudia had just mentioned, Seidoukan Academy’s performance had been faltering for several seasons running.

  “Students have the right to participate in the Festa three times. This is actually fairly limiting—even the most outstanding candidates can participate only three times. To be honest, I can’t say that our school’s roster is very deep.”

  Students were eligible to register for the Festa from ages thirteen to twenty-two—a span of a decade. With few exceptions, they were free to choose which Festa events they would participate in. For instance, some would fight in each competition of a single season and leave their schools in three years, whereas others would take nine years to compete only in the Lindvolus.

  The more talented students a school had, the better. Which was why each school employed a number of keen-eyed scouts to gather fighters from across the globe. Tuition exemptions, living subsidies, equipment, and material support—while the specific amenities provided by each school varied, scholarship students were the ones specially singled out and invited.

  “Why invite me on a special scholarship in the first place?” said Ayato. “This is going to sound like I’m just being humble, but I really don’t think I deserve that level of treatment.”

  “That’s understandable. You were a complete unknown, and to tell the truth, our scouts raised some fierce objections when I put in your name.”

  “You mean—you nominated me?”

  Students scouted out to be awarded scholarships were typically those who excelled in lower-level tournaments affiliated with the Festa or other competitions. Stregas and Dantes were exceptions, but compulsory national registration left them no escape from the scrutiny of scouts.

  Ayato, meanwhile, was no more than the son of a swordsmanship dojo long in decline, and he had achieved nothing of significance in tournaments or anywhere else.

  “Yes, and I pushed through your candidacy,” she crowed. “I was never happier to be student council president. Three cheers for authority!”

  “…That’s pretty assertive.”

  “If you had turned us down, I would have completely lost face. I’m so glad you had a change of heart.”

  “Well, I didn’t exactly have a change of heart…” As Ayato hunched his shoulders, Claudia narrowed her eyes.

  “Then why come to this school?”

  Ayato said nothing. And then suddenly, with a deadly serious look, he leaned in with both hands on the desk and stared straight into her eyes.

  “Claudia, is it true that my sister was here? Haruka Amagiri—was she here?”

  “Hmm, well. Regarding that…” Meeting his gaze unflinchingly, Claudia raised her index finger. “There’s only one thing I know that might be relevant. Someone deleted the data on a certain female student who had once been enrolled in this school.”

  “Deleted it…? Is that even possible?”

  “Under normal circumstances, no.”

  “Not even for a student council president?”

  “The power of my office isn’t absolute. But as for those above me… Well.” Claudia gave him a knowing smile.

  Ayato’s expression didn’t break. By that, she could only mean the integrated enterprise foundation.

  “There’s no record of that student ever participating in the Festa, and she was never listed in the Named Chart. It’s not clear whether she ever attended this school at all. It was only five years ago—her classmates and teachers would still be here. And yet not a single person remembers her. I’m not sure what can be done.”

  “What if the Festa records were altered, too?”

  “Impossible. That would mean deceiving all of Asterisk itself, along with the billions of Festa fans around the world. The Festa is broadcast live worldwide; the Named Chart is publicly available online and constantly updated. In this city, even spontaneous duels get picked up by the media in the blink of an eye. Videos of your duel with Julis are probably all over the Net already.”

  “But then—”

  Cutting him off, Claudia entered something in the mobile device by her hand. An air-window interface opened up in the space between them, displaying an image of a single woman. Ayato’s eyes went wide.

  “This is the only piece of data I was able to recover. She matriculated here five years ago, then left after half a year for personal reasons. Her name, her date of birth—there’s basically nothing left of any information that could identify her.”

  But this was more than enough for Ayato. It was her. There was no mistake.

  “How did you get this, Claudia?”

  To recover data, one has to know that something was deleted to begin with. But she had just told him that there was no record, nor human memory, of this student’s existence. So how did she know?

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you that. Do you not believe me?”

  “Oh— No, that’s not what I mean,” Ayato replied hurriedly. As student council president, she probably had her sources of information. He was grateful to her for at least letting him know that she couldn’t tell him.

  “Now, this is my personal opinion, but…regardless of the particulars,
I doubt she’s still at this school. If she is the reason why you came here…” Claudia apologetically trailed off.

  But Ayato regained his usual laid-back demeanor and shook his head. “No, it’s okay. Thank you. But I didn’t come here to look for my sister.”

  She looked at him inquisitively and repeated her earlier question. “Then why did you come to this school?”

  “Umm…” He crossed his arms and gave it a few moments’ thought, then answered with a short laugh, “If I have to have a reason… To find out what it is that I have to do, I guess?”

  “Such a vague, formulaic answer.”

  “Huh, it is? I thought I’d managed to sound like a student.”

  Claudia laughed softly. “You’re not so innocent yourself, are you?”

  She seemed to think that he had dodged her question. But Ayato had meant to answer sincerely, in a sense. Maybe he really could find out here what he had to do. If my sister was really here…

  “Oh, that’s right!” she exclaimed with a clap of her hands. “I nearly forgot to tell you something important… The scholarship students at our school have several special privileges beyond exemptions in tuition and various fees. One of those is priority in the use of an Orga Lux.”

  “An Orga Lux? You mean the ones that use special manadite?”

  “Yes, urm-manadite.”

  The meteorites that had fallen to Earth in the Invertia contained a previously unknown element known as mana and a particular ore known as manadite. Manadite was found to be composed of crystallized mana, and in recent years, methods had been developed to artificially manufacture it (although synthesized manadite was lower quality).

  Research into mana and manadite had spearheaded a new field of science called “meteoric engineering,” whose crowning achievement were the Luxes—mana-transforming weapons that used manadite in their cores. Once activated, they assembled the elemental blueprint embedded in the manadite’s memory and generated blades (or projectiles) of concentrated mana.

  Lux technology was superior in many respects to conventional weapons—power output could be adjusted at will, the activator fit in the palm of the hand, projectile-type Luxes required no stock of ammunition. With all the advantages in usability, most small-scale weapons produced today were Luxes. And Luxes had become so commonplace that low-power versions were sold for personal protection and as children’s toys.