Encounter with a Fiery Princess Page 4

  Rare manadite crystals of extraordinary purity were also found—urm-manadite. Orga Luxes used these crystals as their cores, producing output beyond comparison to normal Luxes. While they could bestow special abilities similar to those of Dantes and Stregas, they were also known for being difficult to wield.

  The vast majority of Orga Luxes were controlled by the integrated enterprise foundations, but a few were entrusted to Asterisk schools for the purposes of data collection.

  “There are people who don’t care for Orga Luxes. Of course, you’re not required to use one. And some of them can cause, well, side effects of a sort—we say they come with a ‘cost.’ What do you think?”

  “Isn’t there a compatibility rating or something?”

  Whether or not an Orga Lux could be wielded to its full potential depended greatly on the user. Rumor held that an Orga Lux had a will of its own and would select its user accordingly.

  “Yes—in fact, that is the most important factor. The standard here at Seidoukan Academy is eighty percent compatibility. Even if you find a weapon that you like, you will not be allowed to use it if your rating is any lower than that.”

  “I see…” Not that Ayato was completely uninterested, but going through all of that sounded like too much of a hassle. Anyway, he might not even meet the required compatibility rating.

  As Ayato stood there thinking, he noticed the uncertain look on Claudia’s face.

  “Is something the matter?”

  “Well, I wasn’t sure I ought to tell you this, because I’m still trying to confirm it… But there’s something suspicious about the Orga Lux lending records.”

  “What about them?”

  “Naturally, the usage of any Orga Lux equipment is strictly supervised. The records of who took out which one and when are collected along with the battle data. But we identified one instance of an Orga Lux having battle data when there was no record of it being taken out for use.”

  “You mean…someone used it without permission?”

  “Or they altered the lending records. That would be the more likely explanation. Those records are kept in the Matériel Department’s computer bank, while the battle data is accumulated in each weapon’s urm-manadite core. And there is still much we don’t understand about the latter, so it might be that they tried to alter it and were unable to do so.”

  “Let me guess—the data is from five years ago.”

  “Precisely.”

  Ayato sighed heavily. “Then I’d really like to take a look.”

  At this point, he could infer the likelihood that his sister had once used the Orga Lux in question. Whether or not he would be permitted to use it, he at least wanted to see it with his own eyes.

  “Very well. I’ll contact you later with the details. In the meantime, please use this.” Claudia held out a Lux activator. “It’s an ordinary blade-type Lux. I’ve taken the liberty of calibrating it to your personal data, but please take it to the Matériel Department if you need any more adjustments made.”

  “Great, thank you. Wait, that reminds me…” Seeing the activator, Ayato remembered that he had been borrowing a Lux this whole time—the one that spectator had tossed to him before the duel with Julis. “This isn’t good. How do I return it…?” He took it out and inspected it, but there was no name written on it.

  She laughed gently. “Oh, it’s quite all right. The school will supply any weapons and equipment a student might need.”

  “Really? That’s…pretty generous.” Luxes of a caliber to be used in actual combat were not cheap. Still, the cost was probably just a drop compared to the ocean of profits brought in by the Festa.

  “Oh—I just remembered one more thing.”

  “Yes? What is it?”

  “You were saying something earlier about the last technicalities to take care of for my transfer?”

  “Oh yes. About that—” Claudia started, but her mouth closed mid-sentence. She seemed to be lost in thought and then looked all around her.

  “…Something wrong?”

  “Oh no! Not exactly…” She waved it off, but something clearly had her acting differently. Her cheeks were flushed as if with a fever, and she cast her gaze downward. “Um… Er, let’s see— Would you mind closing your eyes for a moment?”

  “Huh?” What kind of paperwork required him to close his eyes? That went through Ayato’s mind, but he closed his eyes without thinking on it too much. He heard the chair squeak, then after a pause—

  “Gotcha!”

  A faint impact struck him in the back. He was a little surprised, but it didn’t hurt. In fact, it felt soft… .Too soft.

  “Wha—?” He had a guess as to what had happened. Opening his eyes tentatively, he saw two graceful arms wrapped around his midsection. He was being embraced from behind.

  “Wh— Hey! C-Claudia!?”

  Her only reply was a mischievous laugh.

  Something with overwhelming mass and unparalleled softness was pressing against his back. If one were to describe it with onomatopoeia, jiggle or squish would certainly be appropriate choices.

  Flustered, Ayato decided that he was being teased again. If that was the case, he should try to act undaunted and respond calmly. The operative word being try.

  But there was a faint whisper from behind him…

  “At last… We meet at last.”

  Her voice seemed so fragile, so helpless—the vulnerability of an irrepressible emotion. Against that candor, his cynicism dissipated like mist.

  “Claudia…?” he said, but no answer came.

  He wondered for a moment if they had met somewhere before, but he couldn’t recall it. And there was no way he would forget such an exceptional girl. After they stood like that for a while—though it wasn’t really that long—she smoothly released him.

  “Ha-ha. Just kidding. Did I surprise you?”

  Ayato turned to see her smiling as if nothing had happened at all. Caught off guard, he lost the chance to ask her what she’d meant. “Well…anyone would be surprised if someone hugged them from behind out of nowhere.”

  “Oh—please don’t get me wrong. It’s not as if I do things like this to everyone I meet. Actually, I’m very reserved.” She put her hand to her mouth, and Ayato couldn’t discern from her tone how serious she was.

  “So, now what?”

  “Yes?”

  “That…couldn’t have been the last technicality, right?” He changed the subject, trying to get back to the reason why she’d brought him here in the first place.

  “Oh, that. That was a lie.”

  “…You lied?” Ayato’s mouth hung open.

  “A crime of expedience, you might say,” Claudia said without a hint of shame. “You’ve officially been part of this institution for a while now. Not a single technicality left. That was simply the most effective way to bring that scene to a close. Julis is earnest if nothing else, so I knew that she wouldn’t continue a duel in breach of the rules.”

  “Wait, but…”

  “Would you rather I hadn’t stopped her?”

  “Um…” He had no response.

  “How do you suppose things would have turned out if you two had continued? Neither the school nor I would want that.”

  Ayato could see what she meant by “blackhearted.” He wasn’t sure just how black her heart was, but the student council president who stood before him was much more than she seemed. The vulnerability she’d shown only seconds ago had already vanished without a trace.

  “It’s almost time for class now, so let’s wrap this up, shall we? Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if anything comes up. I’ll do my best to be of help.”

  Even after all that, the smile on Claudia’s face as she saw Ayato off was unquestionably beautiful.

  “Yeah, so, this is the new scholarship student, Ayato Amagiri. Be nice, ’kay?”

  Rather perfunctory as introductions went. A bit of consideration or empathy would have been nice, Ayato thought, for a transfer stud
ent worried about fitting in to his new class. He cast a sidelong glance at the woman standing next to him. But Kyouko Yatsuzaki, the homeroom teacher of Grade 10, Class 3, only jutted her chin at him slightly, as if to say, “You’re next.”

  She was slender and tall, with sharp eyes…mean eyes, actually, would be a more accurate description. Her manner of speech and demeanor were not teacherly at all, and to phrase it bluntly, she was somewhat vulgar.

  What stuck out the most about her was an object she held: a baseball bat with nails driven into it. Ayato could see that it was well seasoned. It was an item that invited conflicting feelings—on one hand, he was very curious about the dark red stains on it, and on the other, he really didn’t want to know at all.

  “C’mon, I don’t have all day,” she pointed out.

  “Oh yes, ma’am. Uh, I’m Ayato Amagiri. Hi.”

  Ayato managed no more than that brusque introduction himself, so maybe he wasn’t one to judge.

  His classmates regarded him with various expressions. Some intrigued, some completely disinterested, others inspecting, and still others cautious…

  One girl turned her gaze on Ayato with a very complicated look indeed, but he could understand that.

  “So, your seat… Oh, there we go. There’s an empty desk next to your friend who plays with fire. Take that one.”

  “Wh-who are you saying plays with fire!?” At Kyouko’s words, the girl—that would be Julis—stood up with her face flushed bright red.

  “Heh-heh. Who else would I be talking about, Riessfeld? Can’t believe you put on a show like that first thing in the damn morning. If you were challenged, that’d be one thing—but it’s kinda not the time for a Page One student to be starting fights willy-nilly. This isn’t Le Wolfe, y’know.”

  With a small angry sound, Julis reluctantly took her seat in the second to last row. Beside her were two adjacent empty seats.

  “Who knew we’d be in the same class?” Ayato remarked as he sat down next to her.

  “If this is a joke, it’s not funny.” Julis ducked facedown on the desk and sighed heavily. Not the warmest of welcomes.

  Undaunted, Ayato tried again. “We had an eventful morning, but…I hope we get along better.”

  Julis looked at him from the corner of her eye. “I owe you a debt. At your request, I’ll do something to help you once. Other than that, you won’t get the time of day from me.” Then she turned decisively away from him.

  …Okay, then.

  “Oooh, rejected.” From a seat behind him came a voice that was half-sympathetic and half-teasing.

  Ayato turned to see a boy with a friendly smile on a strong-lined face, holding out his hand. “Well, it’s the Princess, after all. What can you do?”

  As Ayato offered his own hand, the other boy shook it gladly and vigorously.

  “I’m Eishirou Yabuki. I’m your roommate, or so I’m told.”

  “Roommate? Oh, you mean in the dorm?”

  “That’s right. Most of our housing is double occupancy.”

  “So you had the room to yourself until now? Sorry to cut your space in half.”

  “Don’t worry about it. The more the merrier, I say.” Eishirou was one cheerful young man.

  Ayato couldn’t be sure when they were sitting down, but Eishirou seemed to be a full head taller than him. He carried himself like a boy, but his build and expressions seemed very much grown-up. The rather conspicuous scar on his left cheek only added to his contradictory charm.

  “Anyway, if I’m going to be sharing my room, I was hoping it’d be with somebody interesting.”

  “…Um, I’m not that interesting, though.”

  “Oh, come on. You dueled a Page One the morning of your first day, and then you jumped the Princess in front of a whole crowd. No need to be so modest.”

  For his part, Ayato didn’t have an iota of intent to be modest. He could have spent an hour explaining himself with regards to those events, but it would appear that rumor had beaten him to it, and a certain impression of him had already infiltrated the student body.

  And indeed, no sooner was homeroom over than a small crowd formed around Ayato.

  “Hey, Amagiri, isn’t it a weird time of year to transfer? What’d you do at the school you were at before?”

  “So why were you dueling the Princess in the first place? I can’t find any intel about that at all!”

  “No, no, no—we want to hear about the romance! That intense overture! C’mon, tell us! Did you fall for her in the middle of a duel? The pangs of forbidden love?”

  “Hold on! Forget that garbage—tell us how to beat the Princess! How were you dodging those attacks?”

  “He’s right. To be honest, I never thought you’d last that long.”

  On the other hand, some were much more callous.

  “Hah. Isn’t it obvious? The Glühen Rose was holding back!”

  “True, true. His movements, his reaction time—totally mediocre by this city’s standards. At that rate, he’ll never make the Named Chart.”

  “How is he a scholarship student? Do our scouts need their eyes checked?”

  On and on.

  This repeated at the end of every class period, so that by the time school was out for the day, Ayato was completely drained.

  “Whew…”

  The late afternoon sun poured into the classroom where he was flopped listlessly in his seat.

  Eishirou tapped him on the shoulder. “Long day, huh? Must be hard being that popular.”

  “Well, I was able to pick up some things, though.”

  “Oh? Like what?”

  “For starters, I’m not the popular one—it’s Julis.” Ayato glanced at the desk next to his and shrugged his shoulders theatrically. The inhabitant of that desk was long gone, having left the moment class ended. “None of them are interested in me. They just want to hear about the guy who dueled Julis. Right?”

  “Ooh, very perceptive!” Eishirou applauded, giving him a most approving look.

  “But then, wouldn’t it be easier if they just asked Julis herself?”

  “Yeah, easier said than done. She’s not exactly easy to talk to, you know?”

  “Now that you mention it, she doesn’t seem very approachable.”

  Still, remembering her smile as she clutched that handkerchief to her, Ayato couldn’t imagine that she was the type to spurn any and all human contact.

  “Well, I don’t know why,” said Eishirou, “but the Princess keeps people at more than arm’s length, that’s for sure. Besides—”

  “Oh, wait. I feel dumb asking this now, but is ‘Princess’ her nickname or something? Everyone seems to call her that.”

  “Um, well, sort of, but…she’s also a real, live, literal princess.”

  “Huh?” Ayato couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. “A princess…like, a fairy-tale princess?”

  “Yup. The kind that gets cursed by an evil witch and awakened by a kiss from a prince, gets offered in marriage for political purposes, comes from a magical kingdom, gets attacked by orcs and tentacles. A princess.”

  Ayato thought something was a little off about the last part there, but he could understand what Eishirou meant to say.

  “You know how after the Invertia, places all across Europe started reverting to monarchies? Well, I guess for an integrated enterprise foundation, it must’ve been convenient to have figurehead royalty around while they took political and economic control. Anyway, she’s the first crown princess of a country called Lieseltania. Her full name is Julis-Alexia Marie Florentia Renate von Riessfeld. That’s in the registry of European royal families.”

  “Wow… You sure know a lot about her.”

  “Well, it’s my business. I’m in the newspaper club.” Eishirou grinned triumphantly.

  “But why is a princess fighting in a place like this? Don’t princesses usually sit around being graceful?” Ayato wondered, recalling how he was nearly burned to a crisp that morning. True, she had elegance, dign
ity, and style all in spades, but her will to fight seemed just a bit excessive.

  “Now that, I don’t know. I’d love to ask her myself, actually.” Eishirou nodded in earnest and added to himself, “That’d be front-page material for sure…”

  Then he went on, “Of course, seeing as she’s that pretty, and strong, and a princess to boot—no one would leave her alone. She came to this school last year, and if you think what you got today was bad, that was nothing compared to the Princess Fever. Before you could blink, she had a crowd of people around her, bombarding her with questions.”

  “I can picture it.”

  “And then, what do you think she told ’em? ‘Pipe down! Shut up! I am not a spectacle to be gawked at!’”

  “I can picture that, too.”

  “Well, most people backed off after that, but there were some who didn’t like her attitude. So a bunch of them challenged her to one duel after another—and she took them all down. Before anyone knew what was happening, boom, she was a Page One.”

  That only seemed natural. Ayato knew, from having faced her in battle, that Julis possessed considerable skill. He couldn’t imagine there were many students stronger than her, not even here in Asterisk.

  “And there you have it. A princess holding herself so aloof that everyone backs away from her. There aren’t many around now with the guts to face her head-on and speak to her.”

  “Huh… But then, does she have any friends?”

  “Not a single one. That I know of, anyway… Sorry. Hold on a sec.” Eishirou held up one hand to pause the conversation and pulled the lightly vibrating mobile device from his pocket. “Hey, what’s up, chief?”

  An air-window popped open to show a woman in a short bob who immediately launched into a diatribe. “Don’t you ‘hey-what’s-up’ me! I told you I needed that proof from you first thing this morning! What the hell are you doing?”

  “Oh, my bad! Something else came up this morning—”