The speech ended without incident—no jeers, no scattered protest, not even the faint mutter of disapproval I'd half-braced for. And just like that, Evelyn Valemont became the newest member of the Student Council, sworn in under the freshly invented title of Vice Informant.
Principal Arkwright had been the one to kick things off, standing at the podium with the practiced ease of someone who'd given a hundred speeches before this one. But once the introductions were done, she stepped back and let the moment breathe, offering little beyond a few perfunctory words. I got the feeling she understood exactly what this arrangement did for Evelyn—giving a disgraced noble's daughter a legitimate foothold to stand on—and had decided, wisely, not to crowd it.
After that, the rest of us filed toward the classroom—all except Shirohana and her attendant. Shirohana peeled off partway down the corridor, offering only a clipped "I have some family business to attend to" before she and Celestria vanished around the corner. Both of their expressions had gone taut in a way I didn't much care for, a seriousness that sat strangely on Shirohana's usually unreadable face.
Still, I didn't dwell on it. She was nobility; family business could mean anything from an inheritance dispute to an actual coup. Not exactly my department. Not yet, anyway.
*****
We took our seats, and before the instructor arrived, Marcus leaned over from behind and tapped my shoulder. I had a decent guess why.
I turned to find him watching me with a look that was equal parts hopeful and anxious.
"Ah—you do remember that promise, right?" he asked, his voice pitched somewhere between hesitant and desperate.
I understood immediately. He was probably worried that now that I had an official informant on the council, his usefulness to me had quietly expired.
"Of course I remember," I said. "Though all you ever told me was that we'd do it—you never actually mentioned when or where. I've been waiting on that part."
"Ah—oh—ha, I forgot," Marcus said, a sheepish laugh escaping him as he dug through his bag. He produced a well-worn notebook, flipping through dog-eared pages with the frantic energy of a man trying to locate something he was fairly sure he'd written down somewhere. He stopped on one page.
"How about after class, up on the mountain—the one with the big tree?"
"Hmm... I don't mind, but why there specifically?"
"That's because—"
"Okay, everyone, take your seats." The instructor swept in before Marcus could finish, and the words died in his throat.
"I'll tell you after class," he whispered instead, ducking back into his seat as the room settled.
In front of me, Reinhardt was already asleep, head bowed just enough to look studious from a distance. I decided not to wake him.
Up at the front, the instructor paced back and forth with a textbook in hand, expounding on some formula or other. Mid-sentence, his eyes flicked sideways—just for a moment—landing on Reinhardt's slumped form. Without breaking his explanation, he conjured a short rod between his fingers, chalk-white but clearly not chalk, and flicked it toward Reinhardt with the casual precision of a man swatting a fly.
Reinhardt, eyes still closed, caught it between two fingers—mid-dodge, no less—and flicked it away to the side without so much as a change in breathing. Then, with an enormous yawn, he straightened in his seat, book conveniently open in front of him as though he'd been diligently following along the entire time.
Half the class turned to stare. Reinhardt turned his gaze back at them, unimpressed and faintly murderous, and every one of those stares found somewhere else to be within the second.
The instructor, for his part, didn't react at all—just kept explaining, though his eyes drifted back to Reinhardt every so often, weighing something I couldn't quite name.
*****
By the time class let out, we gathered our bags and made our way onto the academy grounds—me, Marcus, with Reinhardt trailing behind, and, unexpectedly, Evelyn too.
I stopped mid-stride.
"Um—Evelyn-san, why are you following us?"
"Well... um... since I'm a member of the student council now, I thought I should... come along too." She fidgeted with the strap of her bag, gaze dropping somewhere around my collar.
There isn't any actual work for her yet, I thought, but sending her back alone would look needlessly cold, especially now, when half the school still eyes her like she might be contagious.
...Ah. Come to think of it, I didn't have any particular need for Reinhardt this afternoon either.
"Reinhardt," I said, "why don't you show Evelyn around the council's work? Let her watch what you do—she might pick something up."
Reinhardt's face fell into open displeasure, his eyes cutting toward Evelyn with enough weight that she flinched back half a step. I held his gaze until he relented with a put-upon sigh.
"Fine, fine. Understood." He turned and started toward the council building without waiting to see if she'd follow. She did, a little afraid, trailing a careful few steps behind him. Marcus and I split off toward the mountain trail.
A few students shot Evelyn dirty looks as she passed—old habits dying hard—but one glance at Reinhardt's expression sent them scattering before they could do more than glare. Evelyn walked on in silence, eyes fixed somewhere near the ground, saying nothing at all.
*****
"So," I said as we set off, "what was that about—the reason we're doing this experiment in that exact spot?"
"Ah, right, I never explained." Marcus adjusted his bag strap, already a little winded despite the gentle incline. "I've been tracking old mana traces for a while now, and I found something strange out there—an unusually dense concentration, way higher than it should be. Since this skill needs a lot of concentration and a careful balance between inner and outer mana, I figured a high-density spot might make it easier to manage."
We kept climbing, the path steepening as we went. Marcus, it turned out, had roughly the physical stamina of a soaked paper bag—he was gasping for air within the first ten minutes—but there was something almost admirable in how doggedly he kept pushing forward anyway. Whatever he lacked in physical conditioning, he more than made up for in stubborn enthusiasm.
"By the way," I said, hauling him up over a jut of stone, "it doesn't seem like you went hiking all over creation looking for a place like this. So how'd you actually find it?"
"Ah, well, for that..." He gave me a sheepish, slightly guilty smile. "I paid a few people with sensing skills to go looking for me."
Of course he did. I decided not to ask how much that had cost him.
The rest of the climb passed in comfortable quiet, and I let myself enjoy it. There's a kind of beauty in nature that people can never quite manage to replicate—something indifferent and unbothered, entirely uninterested in whatever petty concerns a person might be carrying. Birdsong drifted between the trunks, shadows shifted lazily beneath the branches, leaves danced and murmured in the breeze, and clouds drifted overhead without any particular hurry. For a little while, none of it asked anything of me. I found something close to peace in that.
Marcus, on the other hand, was clearly not sharing the experience—he trudged along a few steps behind, wheezing like a bellows with a hole in it.
We reached the destination just as I was fairly sure he was about to collapse, and, true to form, the second his feet touched flat ground, he did exactly that, sinking down with his hands on his knees.
I glanced up. The clear sky I remembered from that morning had thickened into a low, grey overcast while we weren't looking, the light gone flat and colorless above the treeline.
*****
Meanwhile, some distance away, Principal Vivienne Arkwright was walking with enough barely restrained irritation in her stride that Instructor Ashrune, trailing a pace behind her, had wisely decided against saying anything at all.
They reached her office, and she shoved the door open harder than strictly necessary, dropping into her chair and yanking a stack of documents toward her with the air of a woman spoiling for something to take her frustration out on. Ashrune made a cautious attempt at the sofa—one step, then two—before Vivienne's glare, delivered without so much as looking up from the page in her hand, stopped him cold.
Message received. He retrieved his bag from the table instead.
"Well, then—I have a class, so..." He offered a quick, formal bow and let himself out, closing the door with the particular gentleness of a man who valued his continued employment.
Vivienne exhaled slowly once the latch clicked shut, her eyes drifting off the documents in her lap.
Well, yes—Katsuhito had announced Evelyn's new position and created it out of thin air without so much as asking her first. But it had ultimately saved the girl from being cast out entirely, so maybe—maybe—she could let this one slide.
...Though she probably should be more irritated about it than she was.
She turned back to her work, and for a while, the familiar rhythm of paperwork swallowed the thought whole.
Some time later, she sat back and closed her eyes with a long sigh. The out-of-order feeling hadn't quite left her, no matter how much ink she put between herself and it.
Eventually she gave up trying to out-work it, straightened the documents into a neat stack, and stood.
I need a change of pace. A walk through the streets, maybe.
She gathered her things and left the office behind.
The streets were lively in the unhurried way only a clear afternoon could manage—vendors calling out prices, someone haggling good-naturedly over the cost of dried herbs, laughter drifting from somewhere she couldn't quite place. Ordinary. Comfortable. Exactly what she needed. She felt the tension in her shoulders easing with every step, the noise of everyday life doing more for her nerves than an hour of paperwork ever could.
A small café caught her eye as she wandered—maybe she could steal a quiet hour there.
She'd barely gotten close before her gaze snagged on a woman seated at one of the outdoor tables, and the woman's gaze snagged right back on her at the exact same moment. Both of their expressions cracked into matching surprise—the particular, delighted shock of running into an old friend by pure accident after entirely too long apart.
"Long time no see, Vivi—" Iris Evercrest started, already halfway out of her chair.
"Ah, it's been a year." Vivienne settled into the seat across from her, something in her chest loosening for the first time all day.
A pause, comfortable rather than awkward.
"So—how's the job going? Information Department, right? Any promotions yet?"
Iris let out a long breath and picked up her coffee with the weary motion of someone who'd had this exact conversation with herself many times already.
"You know how long I've been trying to transfer from Survey into actual Investigation. It's been a full year, and I'm still stuck at junior rank, doing nothing but organizing paperwork." Her expression sank into something dejected, the light going out of it for a moment.
Vivienne let out a short laugh despite herself. "Well, most official work is like that, honestly. Even I have things I'm trying to work toward, and most days I'm just as buried in documents as you are. Nothing glamorous about it."
"Yeah. My senior actually said something similar—that 'a lot of boring work piles up into something spectacular eventually,' or some other line he probably thought sounded clever."
"Ha. Well, he's not wrong."
"Oh, speaking of—" Iris leaned forward, and something shifted in her expression, exhaustion burning off into a bright, restless excitement. "I actually got my hands on some pretty big information, and I'm looking into it myself right now. If I can trace it back to the source and put together a proper report, my name's finally going to mean something up there."
"'Big information'?" Vivienne felt something cold settle in her stomach, the old worry for her friend rising fast. "Is this an approved investigation? Does the department know you're doing this?"
"Eh—nah, it's not an official assignment. I'm doing it on my own. Why do you ask?"
"Where did you even get this 'big information' from?"
"Ah, I overheard a couple of seniors talking about it. When I looked into it myself, it turned out to be real."
Vivienne sat back slowly. This isn't sounding good at all.
"Then—what exactly is this information?"
"Ah, sorry, can't tell you that part. Can't leak anything I picked up through the office."
"Fine. Then at least tell me how you got it."
"Umm... well..." Iris's smile turned a little sheepish, a little proud of herself. "I secretly listened in on two seniors talking in their office. With my sensing skill. Just looking for a little spice, honestly." She said it with the unmistakable air of someone expecting a laugh rather than a lecture.
"What—" Vivienne stared at her, genuinely dumbfounded. "You do realize you'll be punished if they find out you eavesdropped, let alone that you're now investigating it on your own? Sensing skills are already rare enough that I can count on one hand how many people I know who have one. How does an office full of classified information leave someone like you just... wandering around unsupervised?"
"Ah—calm down, calm down. And don't talk about me like I'm some kind of wild animal that got loose." Iris laughed, a little nervously. "Besides, they only know I can use sensing skills—not the actual extent of it. So if it ever comes up, I can just say I stumbled onto the case separately and was confirming it before reporting in properly."
Vivienne slumped back in her chair, suddenly exhausted just from listening. She picked up her coffee and took a long sip before speaking again.
"Even so—how does a department handling classified material fail to properly assess the abilities of its own staff? That's already rare enough to warrant careful monitoring."
"Ha... you worry too much." Iris checked her watch, then sat up straighter. "Ah, I should get going—I want this wrapped up before my leave runs out." She gathered her bag and waved down the server to settle the bill.
"See you around."
"Ah—see you." Vivienne watched her go, that same uneasy feeling refusing to loosen its grip on her chest.
She sat with it for a moment, then made up her mind. She paid quickly, activated her concealment skill, and slipped out after Iris—unaware that Iris's sensing skill outmatched her concealment several times over.
*****
Iris moved through the streets without any apparent awareness that she was being followed, and Vivienne kept pace behind her, drifting in and out of alleys, occasionally trailing from the rooftops above.
In truth, Iris had sensed her the moment she started following—but she said nothing, did nothing, gave no sign at all. Let her think she hadn't noticed. It was easier that way.
They passed through the market district, down a string of narrow alleys, through quieter residential blocks, until the buildings thinned and the border checkpoint of the kingdom came into view.
The border? Vivienne frowned. Why out here?
Iris presented her identification at the checkpoint. As she did, a man approached from where he'd apparently been waiting—broad-shouldered, hair pulled back in a long, straight tail, a heavy double-edged sword strapped across his back.
"You're the one who called for a guard?" he asked.
"Ah, yes, that's me." They exchanged a brief greeting.
While the checkpoint official processed her identification, Iris pressed a pouch into the man's hand. "Half now. The other half once the job's done."
"You're clear to go through," the checkpoint official said, waving Iris on.
The hired guard pocketed the money and hefted his sword onto his shoulder. "Well then. Let's get moving."
The two of them passed through the gate and out beyond the kingdom's border.
Vivienne swore under her breath. Her concealment skill wasn't strong enough to slip past a checkpoint watched by someone with proper sensing ability—not without tripping an alarm. I don't have a choice.
She let her concealment drop once Iris had put enough distance between them, then approached and presented her own identification openly.
Beyond the gate stretched open plains, rolling out toward the distant treeline where forest and mountain began, crossed by a network of roads splitting off toward different kingdoms and villages.
By the time Vivienne cleared the checkpoint, Iris and her hired escort were already climbing into a hired carriage. Vivienne broke into a run, following on foot as it pulled away.
The carriage veered off the main road early, cutting instead toward a stretch of wild, untended forest. Vivienne, keeping her distance, couldn't help but wonder why anyone would choose that route over the perfectly serviceable road running parallel to it.
The carriage rolled to a stop at the treeline.
"This is as far as I go. There's a caution marker posted right there, too," the driver said, gesturing toward a weathered sign half-swallowed by underbrush.
Iris and her guard climbed down, paid the driver, and watched him turn the carriage around without wasting a moment.
"So, what now? We continue on foot?" the guard asked, eyeing the dense treeline with obvious reluctance.
"Doesn't look like we have much choice."
"Fine. But I'm charging extra for this."
"Yeah, yeah, no problem." Iris's voice carried a strange mixture of irritation and barely restrained excitement as the two of them pressed into the forest, the air thickening around them the deeper they went.
This is definitely not looking right. Vivienne's hand tightened around the hilt of her sword as she followed them in, the sky above beginning to churn into the same heavy grey that had settled over the mountain miles away.
*****
Back on the mountain, Marcus and I were getting set up for the actual experiment.
I pressed my palm against the trunk of the tree and let my focus narrow, sinking into the slow work of sensing outer mana while balancing it against the flow of my own. The moment I started syncing the two together, the strain hit—first in my head, then spreading down through my chest, my arms, my spine. Something dim stirred at the very edge of my perception, and I poured everything I had toward pinning it down.
From the outside, I probably looked like I was having some kind of fit. Marcus, to his credit, didn't say a word or move to interrupt—he'd warned me himself that any disturbance would shatter my concentration, so he just watched, tense, tracking my condition without touching me.
Whatever I'd sensed kept swelling, and the strain climbed with it. I squeezed out every last reserve of endurance I had left, chasing it—and for one unbearable second, it seized my senses whole, an overwhelming pressure that swallowed everything else. Then it broke, and I snapped back into my body hard enough to drop to my knees, breath ragged, vision swimming at the edges. For a moment I genuinely thought I was going to black out.
Before Marcus could even reach me, instinct took over—my hand found my own chest, and recovery mana I'd been quietly practicing flowed out on reflex, steadying me from the inside. Marcus arrived a half-second too late to do anything but hover, panicked, clearly having no idea what to actually do with his hands.
It took a while, but I climbed back to something like normal, using his shoulder for support before finally standing under my own power. One last deep breath, and I pulled myself together.
"So—" I started, ready to tell him what I'd sensed.
That was when I felt it. A presence—there and gone in an instant, close enough to make my skin crawl, followed immediately by a sharp, stabbing pain lancing through my skull.
My balance gave out for a second. Marcus caught me again, out of pure reflex fear this time, even though I honestly didn't need it.
"Katsuhito, you alright?" His voice cracked with worry.
"Ah—yeah, I'm fine. Thanks." I straightened up on my own again.
I gave him the full rundown—what I'd felt, what it did to me—while he scribbled notes at a furious pace.
"Hmm... my formula isn't supposed to produce a sensation like that," he muttered, half to himself. "And you said you never even properly sensed the formula itself from the outer mana, which means it's one of a few things. Either what you felt was just a fragment of some skill that had been used there before, or it's strain from the boundary between inner and outer mana with no real cause behind it, or—" he paused, frowning, "though this is far less likely—the skill used there was an activation-type, and you accidentally tried to trigger it the wrong way, so it resisted, or countered you outright."
He fell quiet for a moment, chewing on the thought.
"I think I'll need to modify the formula—maybe rebuild parts of it entirely. For now, though, let's head back." He said it already half-lost in his own head, calculations clearly running behind his eyes as we started down the mountain.
I couldn't shake the feeling that something was still with me. It lingered at the edge of my senses for half the walk back before finally, quietly, fading away.
*****
Meanwhile, back at the student council building, Reinhardt sat hunched over a stack of supply reports, pen scratching irregular lines across the page while Evelyn watched from the sofa, taking careful notes of her own.
The numbers weren't cooperating. He tapped the end of his pen against his temple, working through a calculation that refused to balance no matter how many times he ran it.
Tch. Guess I'll have to bother Celestria for help again once she's back. The way she looks at me whenever I get something wrong is going to give me an ulcer someday.
Head already full and patience wearing thin, he glanced up—only to find Evelyn staring at him with the unblinking focus of someone studying a rare specimen through glass. It set his teeth on edge.
"Ah—so, sorry, sorry!" Evelyn stammered, flinching back the moment his irritated gaze landed on her.
He held the look a beat longer before she dropped her eyes again, and, apparently deciding he'd had enough, stood and headed for the door.
"Whe—where are you go... going?" Evelyn asked, half-rising as he pulled the door open.
"Making tea. You want some?"
"Sh-should I ma... make it? For... for both of us?"
A pause.
"Nah. Don't trust you with it." He was already halfway through the door when he stopped, glancing back with a narrow, unreadable look. "You. Come with me."
"Me? Wh... why?"
"You think I'm leaving you alone in a room full of important paperwork?"
Evelyn glanced around the room—at the stacks of reports, the ledgers, the sealed correspondence—and seemed to arrive at his logic on her own. "Ah. I... I see." She rose and followed him toward the kitchen.
She hovered near the doorway while he worked, and something about watching him made her forget, briefly, to be afraid. Because for someone with a permanent scowl and a talent for making first-years flinch on sight, Reinhardt made tea with an almost startling gentleness—measured, deliberate, each motion precise in a way that felt completely at odds with the rest of him. Evelyn simply stared, transfixed, the way one might watch a large predator do something unexpectedly delicate.
He turned, tea in hand, to find her still frozen in the doorway.
"Oi."
"Ah—ah, sorry!" She scrambled out of the way, and the two of them carried the tea back to the council room.
She settled onto the sofa and watched him pour two cups rather than one.
"Um..." she started, then immediately shrank back under the flicker of his glance. "Ah! Sorry—sorry, but... I wanted to ask why you're pouring two cups?"
"Why—didn't you want one too?" He paused mid-pour, glancing at her with something almost like surprise at the question itself.
Evelyn blinked at him, caught off guard all over again by how thoroughly his actions kept contradicting everything she'd assumed about him.
"Oi. You want tea or not?"
"Ah—ah, yes. I want some."
He finished pouring and set one cup down on her side of the table before settling into the seat across from her, close enough that their eyes could meet over the rising steam.
They drank in silence for a moment. Evelyn found she liked the taste more than she'd expected.
"So," Reinhardt said, setting his cup down and fixing her with a look sharp enough to make her sit up straighter, "what do you actually think of Katsuhito-sama?"
"Wha—what do you—"
He sighed, cutting her off before she could spiral into more stammering. "I'm asking whether you see him as an ally. An enemy. A friend. A senior. Pick one."
"Ah... I see." She relaxed slightly, exhaling. "Well... it would be a lie if I said I didn't hold some level of wrath toward him. At first."
Something in Reinhardt went briefly alert, his posture straightening a fraction.
"But after actually meeting him—being around him—I got confused about my own feelings, honestly. I couldn't fit him into any single category. I didn't sense much ambition from him, and he doesn't seem particularly hungry for status or recognition, either." She paused, choosing her next words carefully. "He was kind to my face, but I could feel a thread of bloodlust under it too—like he'd have killed me without hesitation if I'd met some condition I couldn't see. But when he was with Shirohana-san, or Marcus-kun, or me, on other occasions... there was none of that. Nothing at all. He's not exactly kind, but he's not cruel, either. Sometimes he feels like some strange mix of a cat and a wolf."
She considered a moment longer.
"But if you're asking me to just answer plainly—I'd say ally. Or, maybe, someone I'd like to call a friend, eventually."
Reinhardt let out a slow breath, some of the tension leaving his shoulders as he set his cup down. "For now... that's probably enough to know." He stood, gathering the reports he'd abandoned, and settled back into his work.
Evelyn watched him, faintly confused by how little reaction he'd actually given after asking something so pointed.
"...For what it's worth," Reinhardt added, not looking up from the page, "I agree. Cat and wolf. That's about right."
*****
Deeper in the forest, Iris walked a step behind her hired guard, who scanned the trees around them with the tight, controlled anxiety of a professional trying not to show how uneasy he actually was. She found herself studying the plants at their feet instead—ordinary-looking, and yet not. This kind of undergrowth belonged in old-growth, deep forest, not this shallow strip of trees barely a few hours out from the capital.
Stranger still: how had no one noticed this before?
She was still turning the thought over when she stumbled over an exposed root, and the guard's arm shot out to catch her before she hit the ground.
"Careful, will you." He released her and kept walking without waiting for a response.
"Ah—sorry."
"Evercrest-san." His voice had dropped lower, his eyes still fixed on the trees. "Are you feeling that? Something getting stronger the further in we go?"
"Heh... nah." Iris drew a little closer to him despite the denial, arms wrapping around herself. "Though... it is getting creepier. And the mana density's starting to feel almost suffocating." Her eyes darted between the trees as she spoke, betraying the fear behind her forced casualness.
"Should we turn back?"
"Nah—nah, this is exactly where things start getting interesting." Her expression flickered between fear and excitement, unable to settle on either. "A place like this, appearing out of nowhere—if I don't get my promotion out of this, I can at least publish it as an independent report."
The guard glanced up at the canopy overhead, exhaling slowly. "Well. I hope I get to read it, then."
They pressed deeper, the light dimming with every step until the forest around them had gone the color of a bruise. The guard's hand had found the grip of his sword and stayed there.
They rounded a massive boulder rising out of the undergrowth. As they passed it, the guard's foot came down on a fallen branch, and the sharp crack of it splitting echoed through the stillness.
Something turned toward the sound.
A creature had been perched atop the boulder, unseen until that exact moment, and its head snapped around at the noise, its gaze locking with the guard's in an instant that seemed to stretch far longer than it should have.
It attacked before either of them could react, closing the distance in something closer to a blink than a step. The guard barely got himself between it and Iris in time, his sword coming up to meet the strike as the creature slid past him.
He turned, sword raised, tracking it as it came to a stop a few feet away—and only then did he get a proper look at it. A body of unbroken black, limbs too long, no nose, no mouth, nothing where a face should be except two round, burning red eyes staring back at him with an attention that felt disturbingly deliberate.
He never even saw the strike that cut his sword clean through. One moment it was a full blade held up between them; the next, half of it was on the ground, and what remained in his hands had been reduced to something barely larger than a dagger.
His hand shook. He forced it still, forced his grip tight around the ruined hilt, and drew one steadying breath.
"Evercrest-san, run!" He threw himself sideways, carving out an opening, sword raised against a thing that had already proven it barely needed to try.
Iris scrambled to move, breath tearing out of her in ragged gasps. The guard lunged in from the side, aiming to buy her whatever distance he could—
—and the creature dodged the strike without seeming to register it as a threat at all, ignoring him entirely to lunge past toward Iris instead, one hand extended, aimed to run straight through her.
The guard spun back toward her, desperation twisting his face—
—and a figure dropped between them out of nowhere, sword flashing up to knock the creature's arm wide before the blow could land. The creature was thrown back by the impact, skidding hard before catching its balance.
"Tch. So I really can't use my mana out here either." The figure's voice carried quiet frustration as she landed, sword still raised, planting herself squarely between the creature and the woman crumpled on the ground behind her.
Iris had collapsed where she stood, shock robbing the strength from her legs. The guard stared, torn between relief and disbelief.
"You actually came..."
"Vivienne Arkwright," Iris breathed, staring up at the figure now standing over her.
"So you noticed I was following you." Vivienne didn't turn fully—just enough to glance back over her shoulder—before locking her eyes back on the creature, which hadn't moved, hadn't looked away, its red gaze fixed and patient.
"You—guard." Vivienne's voice was low, controlled, every word deliberate. "I'm putting Iris in your hands. For whatever reason, I can't use my mana or my skills properly out here, which means I can only buy you a little time. Take her and run. Don't look back."
A long breath. Silence stretching taut between them. Her grip tightened on the sword.
"Go," she snapped, already moving, closing the distance as the creature lunged for Iris again. The guard didn't waste the opening—he scooped Iris up and bolted back the way they'd come, running like the forest itself was on fire behind him.
Claw met blade in a shower of sparks that lit both combatants' faces for half a second in the gathering dark.
"Where do you think you're going... monster." Vivienne shoved the creature back with a sharp twist of her blade, forcing distance between them.
It landed the retreat as a backflip, planting its feet and launching itself immediately toward the fleeing guard.
Vivienne surged forward to cut it off—
—but the creature feinted, changing direction mid-stride, using a nearby tree trunk to redirect itself entirely, landing directly in the guard's path before she could close the gap.
It cut his leg out from under him before she'd covered half the distance.
He went down hard, Iris tumbling from his arms as he hit the ground, his face contorting into something between shock and despair as he stared down at what remained of his leg.
"You bastard—" Vivienne's voice cracked with fury as she closed in, sword raised, bearing down on the creature now watching them all with those same patient, burning eyes.
Before she could reach it, the creature threw its head back and let out a piercing, unnatural shriek, arms spread wide, and the force of it hit her like a physical wall—she had to plant her free hand against the ground just to keep from being thrown off her feet entirely.
By the time she'd steadied herself, the creature had settled back into its low, coiled stance, gaze fixed on her—except now a faint black aura clung to its edges, curling off it like smoke.
She never saw it move. One instant it was in front of her; the next, it was behind her, faster than anything it had shown before, and she barely managed to twist away in the sliver of time she had.
Its hand was already reaching for her throat when a fox-eared figure dropped between them out of nowhere, closing the distance in an instant, and drove the creature backward with a single strike of her fan—hard enough that the boulder behind it shattered on impact.
The creature picked itself up slowly, stared at the newcomer for a long moment, and then simply turned and melted back into the darkness of the forest, gone.
The figure turned to face Vivienne, fan still open, one hand raised to hide the lower half of her face. Behind her, Iris was barely upright, leaning heavily against a tree, and the guard had slumped down against another trunk, breathing hard. All three of them stared at her—shock and relief tangled together on every face.
"Yukimori!" Vivienne's voice came out sharp with disbelief.
Shirohana only smiled behind her fan, calm as though nothing at all had happened.
"I saw you all heading this way, so I got curious."
*****
Several days passed in the wake of the incident.
No one had died, in the end—small mercy as it was—but the guard lost his leg regardless, admitted to the hospital the same night. He wore an expression of quiet despair for every hour of it, the kind that didn't ease no matter how many times the healers assured him the surgery had gone as well as it could.
Iris, still half-shaken from everything she'd seen, gathered what courage she had left and reported the incident to her superiors—only to be met with a curt dismissal and a formal warning against taking matters into her own hands again, along with the none-too-subtle threat of demotion if she leaked any further unclassified information. She stood there afterward for a long moment, unable to process what had just happened or why, before finally turning and walking out of the office in a daze.
Whatever spark of enthusiasm she'd carried into that meeting didn't come back out with her. In the days that followed, she grew quieter, more obedient, the restless excitement that had defined her fading into something duller and far more careful.
Vivienne, for her part, processed the whole affair faster than most—and settled, in the end, on watching and waiting. She tried, gently, to comfort Iris in the aftermath, but backed off before long, worried that pushing further would only make things worse. On the surface, she seemed to be handling it better than anyone else involved. Underneath, she couldn't quite scrub the image of that creature's red eyes out of her mind, no matter how hard she tried.
As for Shirohana—
She didn't seem any different at all.
*****
Today started like most days had lately—up with the sun, through the usual morning routine, out the door with a habitual "see you later" tossed over my shoulder to no one in particular.
I took my time on the walk to the academy, in no hurry to trade the quiet outside for the noise of the classroom. For several days now, nothing unusual had happened—no fresh murders, no cryptic threats, no shadowy figures lurking where they shouldn't be. I found myself hoping, with more sincerity than I usually allowed myself, that it would just keep going like this for a while longer.
Partway there, I stopped at the fountain along my usual route and settled onto a nearby bench, bag set down beside me. The water burbled steadily behind me, birds traded calls somewhere overhead, and thin clouds drifted across a sky lit gold with early sun. Around the square, the everyday noise of the city rolled on—vendors calling out prices, someone haggling with more enthusiasm than the situation warranted, people hurrying past on errands, others simply wandering, a knot of gossiping women, a pair of old men arguing amiably about nothing in particular.
It was, in short, exactly the kind of peace I'd been missing.
I pulled the book I'd been meaning to read out of my bag and settled in, letting myself get absorbed. Whatever the writer was doing with the pacing, it worked—I lost track of the world around me completely, and by the time I resurfaced enough to check, several chapters in, I realized with a small jolt that I'd blown well past the time I'd meant to leave for the academy.
I was reaching to close the book when a hand caught it from behind, stopping the pages mid-fall.
"Hmm... so this is what the writer's actually going for." The voice came from directly behind me, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
I turned to find Shirohana standing there, hand still resting lightly on the cover, and my heart gave a hard, unpleasant lurch. I hadn't sensed so much as a flicker of her concealment—not a trace—which meant either she'd snuck up on me while I was completely absorbed, or she'd been using her concealment while standing in plain sight the entire time. Knowing her, probably both.
"Though," she continued, tapping one finger against her chin in mock contemplation, "I think the writer's jumping to conclusions here without nearly enough grounding in how reality actually works."
"You can't exactly argue with the patterns he's drawing his conclusions from, though, can you?" I answered before I'd fully thought it through, engaging with her point instead of asking the far more obvious question of what she was doing behind me in the first place.
"I take your point. But can you really say that what you don't yet know can't possibly be true?"
"Hmm... you've got a point there, if I actually think it through—" I caught myself mid-sentence, the realization landing a beat too late that I'd been swept along into the current of her logic without noticing the water rising around my ankles.
"That's not—" I shook myself back to the actual question. "What were you even doing behind me? How long were you standing there?"
"Hmm." She considered this with an infuriating lack of urgency. "I was reading along with you. I've been there since you opened the book—maybe."
That "maybe" did not sound trustworthy in the slightest. But something about the easy, candid way she said it—and the smile that came with it—threw off whatever irritation I'd been trying to muster, leaving me with nothing sturdy to actually be annoyed about.
...I gave up.
"Were you also headed to the academy?" I asked instead, tucking the book back into my bag and pulling myself to my feet.
"You could think of it that way," she said, already falling into step beside me as we started walking.
Why does she always have to make her answers into riddles.
*****
By the time the academy gates came into view, I spotted Evelyn off to one side of the path, crouched down and feeding the stray cat that seemed to have adopted the place as its own personal territory. Students streamed past through the main gate around her, and she wore an expression of quiet, uncomplicated satisfaction as she watched the cat eat, entirely unbothered by the foot traffic.
I decided to let her be and headed for the council building with Shirohana instead—today's agenda included a full report collection from every council member, which meant I needed to get there and start organizing things before the pile grew any larger.
We'd just passed behind her when Evelyn noticed, gave the cat a quick goodbye, and jogged over to fall in step with us.
"Good morning, President, Vice President," she said, a little breathless from the jog.
"Good morning," we answered, more or less in unison, as Shirohana flicked open her fan with a practiced snap.
We reached the council building and were most of the way to the meeting room when raised voices reached us from inside.
"Like I keep telling you, if you'd just use this method, your work would go a lot faster."
"It's just—it's damn complicated, is what it is."
"Fine, then let me walk you through it in more detail."
"Ah—wait, hold on, this part—"
"Would you two be quiet? You're both impossibly loud!" Celestria's voice cut through as I pushed the door open, revealing Marcus and Reinhardt hunched over a spread of scattered papers, mid-argument.
Celestria spotted us over their shoulders and her tone did an immediate, seamless about-face.
"Ah—good morning, Shirohana-sama, Katsuhito-sama, Evelyn-san."
"Ah... good morning."
Marcus and Reinhardt broke off their dispute at the sight of us, hastily straightening the papers between them into something resembling order.
The meeting itself moved quickly. Reinhardt and Celestria handed over their reports on the council's budget, supplies, and general standing; Shirohana and I reviewed them together, stamped our approval, and filed them properly. Marcus and Evelyn's report on academy affairs came next, and once I'd looked it over, I filed that one separately too—it would need the principal's final sign-off before it went anywhere else.
Short as the meeting was, we still had to hurry once it wrapped—apparently there was some kind of important announcement scheduled right after class. We gathered everything into order and headed off to our seats before the instructor arrived.
From the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Evelyn settling into her own seat, a few rows apart from the rest of us. Some students still kept their distance out of habit, but the outright hostility from those first few weeks had mostly faded—no more of the pointed glares or muttered comments that used to follow her down the hall. Small progress, but progress all the same.
Ashrune walked in shortly after.
"Okay, everyone, take your seats, and keep the noise down if you can manage it," he said, dropping his things on the desk and launching straight into the lesson.
*****
Class ran its course, and the bell rang out its usual signal.
"Ah—don't leave your seats yet." Ashrune held up a hand before anyone could start packing up. "We've got an important announcement coming through." He reached up and switched on the speaker mounted above the board.
"Everyone, listen carefully all the way through. If you've got questions afterward, come find me."
A beat of static, and then the Principal's voice filled the room, crisp and measured.
"Next month, the academy will be holding a mock battle. First, students within the same year will form teams of twenty. Team composition is permitted to draw from different class groups within the same year, so long as all members share the same year level.
"Teams will then compete within their own year, eliminating one another until a single team remains standing per year. Once each year has its surviving team, those teams will face one another in a series of mock battles between years.
"In addition, the Student Council will field a separate team of its own—six members total, drawn exclusively from current council membership. Although every member of the council currently holds first-year status, this team will be entered directly into competition against the fifth-year teams.
"That concludes the announcement for now. Further details will follow in due course."
The speaker clicked off, and silence rushed in to fill the space it left behind. Then, one by one, heads turned—Marcus first, then Reinhardt, then Evelyn craning around from her seat a few rows over—until most of the student council in the room was looking straight at me.
I was still somewhere in the middle of processing all of that myself.