Chapter 9
The first-years are the only students at Luminous who take something called the ‘Second Ability Assessment’ between midterms and finals.
The reason being, apparently, that newly admitted students may have failed to demonstrate their true abilities because of nerves.
Anyway, since it is also an exam taken after they have properly begun learning magic, the Second Ability Assessment often assigns tasks of fairly high difficulty for a first-year exam.
In my case, we were put in teams of four and tasked with escaping, within the time limit, a labyrinth personally created by Teacher Levan.
“Something the teachers subtly emphasized?”
“Yeah, anything.”
The underachiever went “Hmm,” and fell into thought.
She thought hard for quite a while, even rolling her eyes upward, then shook her head with a beaming smile.
“Nothing.”
‘……Right, of course not.’
I hadn’t expected anything, honestly. There was no way an underachiever who couldn’t even use Darkvision would have noticed the teachers’ subtle hint.
I replied halfheartedly, “I see,” and lowered my gaze to the notice in my hand. Lia sat on the edge of the bed and tilted her head.
“There’s nothing to worry about, is there? Everyone says it won’t be a big deal.”
“Your classmates say that?”
“Yeah. They say even the teachers aren’t expecting much from the Second Ability Assessment anyway.”
“……Oh, really?”
Well, the students who hung around with her were probably at a similar level.
Whether they were first-years or third-years, bottom-ranked students probably all felt the same indifference toward exams.
“So, unde… Lia, you’re not planning to prepare separately, right?”
“Yeah. We don’t even know what kind of task will come up.”
Lia nodded as though it were obvious and changed the subject.
“That aside, what did you and the Secretary talk about all afternoon?”
“……Nothing in particular.”
As expected, it wasn’t a pleasant topic. Who would have thought that my normally kind sister could give me such a cold look….
The only consolation was that my sister hadn’t formally raised the matter with the school, but looking at it another way, that meant she still harbored a personal grudge against me.
[The Friesna family never forgets a favor or a grudge.] Something Father used to say like a catchphrase felt especially vivid today.
“It took you that long over something so trivial?”
“It’s none of your concern.”
“Sheesh~ There you go grumbling again~”
The underachiever reached out without hesitation to hug me.
“I mean it.”
I swiftly dodged her touch and rose from my seat.
“Where are you going?”
The underachiever looked up at me without a hint of embarrassment despite her failed attempt to grab me.
I walked toward the wardrobe and answered indifferently.
“To bathe.”
Then I opened the wardrobe door naturally, only to freeze when I found the inside still completely empty—not even a single towel.
‘Ah… right.’
……Surely she hadn’t gone her entire life without taking baths, right?
I slowly closed the wardrobe door and turned toward the underachiever.
“Where are my underwear and pajamas?”
At times like this, honestly asking was the best option.
Even if she thought I was strange for a moment, I could just make up an excuse about my memory being hazy because of a mana seizure.
“Huh?”
As expected, the underachiever tilted her head with a puzzled expression.
She blinked twice without a word, then pointed to her own wardrobe.
“I put your clothes in my wardrobe with mine, remember? You never had pajamas in the first place.”
“……What?”
“[…What?]” Why are you suddenly acting like that?”
The underachiever shrugged and said,
“We decided to keep them in my wardrobe together because it would be a waste of deodorizer and dehumidifier. Don’t tell me your memory’s gone fuzzy again because of yesterday’s mana seizure?”
“Ah… right, we did.”
Rene and the underachiever really did seem to be poor.
I recalled the premium dehumidifying mana stone worth ten gold coins in the wardrobe in my room and approached the underachiever’s wardrobe.
As expected, unlike Rene’s, it was packed with all kinds of clothes, including uniforms.
‘……Flashy.’
Looking more closely, I saw the clothes inside the wardrobe neatly arranged by size.
I bent my knees, pointedly avoiding looking at the bra whose cup was nearly as large as my face, and reached carefully toward the bottom shelf. My hand found a pair of soft underwear.
‘……Pink.’
It was a strange feeling I couldn’t quite put into words. Including the frills attached to the side, its appearance was almost as if it were making fun of me.
‘This is driving me crazy… seriously.’
Even so, I couldn’t go to bed without washing up. My body had been beaten by Egg and dragged across the floor all day, after all.
I sighed, stuffed the pink underwear into my pocket, then picked up the black cotton T-shirt and shorts lying on top, presumably to serve as pajamas.
As I stood up, I suddenly met the gaze of the underachiever, who was staring intently at me.
“What is it?”
“It’s just that you seem a little different today.”
“What do you mean, different?”
I shrugged and headed for the bathroom. The underachiever scratched her head awkwardly and gave me a wave. “See you when you get back~”
“……”
I finally reached the bathroom. In the large mirror, Rene’s terribly exhausted face was reflected.
Looking at it now, I realized anew that Rene looked unusually young even for a first-year.
With a sigh, I brushed up my bangs, and the little girl in the mirror sighed and brushed up her bangs in exactly the same way.
‘How much longer am I going to have to live like this….’
A day, a week… yes, I could endure about a month. When I was young, I had once spent two whole days as a crow because of one of my sister’s pranks.
But if it lasted a year, ten years, or even my whole life… I couldn’t possibly imagine living in this form.
To forget everything and live as Rene… the effort I had built up all this time as ‘Evan’ was simply too great.
‘Dad… Mom….’
A surge of emotion rose in my throat, as though tears would spill at any moment.
I bit down hard on my lip and lowered my head.
I clenched my fists and drew ragged breaths, then finally squeezed my eyes shut and swallowed my sorrow.
‘Right. Crying won’t solve anything.’
I forced myself to pull it together and headed toward the toilet. I lowered my pants, bent at the waist, and let out a short sigh.
Then, just as I was about to strain… a strange sense of wrongness came over me.
“……Ah.”
I looked down. It was smooth—in more ways than one.
I barely managed to clamp down with my pelvic muscles and shut the half-open dam, then hurriedly sat down. Only after hearing the stream diminish could I finally breathe a sigh of relief.
And then, just a few seconds later…
“Fuck….”
A sob welled up, and then my tears finally spilled over. My life was unbearably miserable.
The emptiness I felt now wasn’t simply because my reproductive organs were gone. This was the absence of everything I had lived for until now. It was the feeble sound of water helplessly denying everything I was—Evan Friesna himself.
“Hic….”
Even sadder was the fact that even the sobs bursting out of me in despair didn’t sound like ‘me’ in the slightest.
It was a true spiral of misery.
The louder I cried, the more uncontrollably my sorrow grew. And the more my sorrow grew, the more violently I cried.
“Waaah….”
I couldn’t even bring myself to cover my mouth. I simply pressed a hand to my chest and let the surging anguish pour out.
It was a cry of resentment toward the world that had inflicted all this misery on me—a declaration of ‘my’ existence, shouted from the emptiness where everything had disappeared.
Just then… the bathroom door burst open with a bang.
“R-Rene?!”
It was the underachiever, her face deathly pale.
She looked down at me sobbing on the toilet, then gasped in surprise and pulled me into a tight embrace.
“It’s all right, everything’s going to be okay. It’s not anything serious.”
I didn’t know what she meant by that… but humans are simple animals, and merely hearing those words somehow put me at ease.
“Waaah….”
Forgetting my embarrassment, I clung to Lia. When I buried my face in Lia’s soft breasts, the sensation of her patting my back accompanied the slow subsiding of the whirlpool of misery that had seemed as though it would never stop.
“……Are you feeling better now?”
After my sobs had subsided some time later, the underachiever finally let me go and asked softly.
I silently nodded. The underachiever then bent her knees to meet my gaze.
“You were really startled, weren’t you?”
Startled by what…? Unable to understand what she meant, I merely stared blankly at her black eyes.
The underachiever continued with an innocent smile.
“But it’s okay. Every girl goes through it.”
“……?”
I felt as though I were sinking deeper and deeper into a maze. The underachiever placed a hand on my head, then let her gaze slip down toward my… lower half.
Then she said carefully,
“That’s… um, well. Rene, it’s proof that your body has begun preparing to become a mother….”
“Get out of here right now!!!”
I must have been crazy. To think I’d expected comfort from an underachiever like her.
The underachiever let out a vacant “Huh?” and only finally left the bathroom after I kicked her huge butt with all my strength.
※※
“I hope we end up in the same group, right?”
“……Yeah.”
On the day of the Second Ability Assessment, the first thing Ms. Justina, the head of our year, said to the first-years gathered on the athletic field was exactly what I expected: ‘The Second Ability Assessment will be conducted as a group assignment.’
‘The school will assign the groups, as expected.’
They always called it random, but there was no way they would place first-years with such extreme differences in ability into truly random groups.
I glanced discreetly back at Kairos, who had been making me uneasy for some reason.
The new student, who had been staring intently at Ms. Justina, immediately turned toward me, perhaps having sensed my gaze.
‘…….’
I looked away as if I hadn’t noticed. That student was perceptive, all right.
Of course, if I ended up in the same group as Kairos, a high score would be practically guaranteed, but this was ‘Rene’s’ score, after all. There was no need to obsess over getting a high score.
‘Besides, I’m still uneasy about getting involved with Kairos.’
I looked up at the platform where Ms. Justina was calling out the students’ names one by one, praying with all my heart that Kairos wouldn’t be in my group.
Once roll call was over, Ms. Justina stepped back. The principal, who had been watching us with a solemn expression for some time, immediately took her place.
“And for the top scorers on this examination, the Ministry of Magic has prepared a special reward.”
The principal brought up something intriguing as if he had been waiting for the chance. The students, including the underachievers, began murmuring, “A reward?”
‘From the Ministry of Magic?’
I, too, waited for what came next with considerable interest.
The principal waited a moment for the murmurs to die down, then slowly opened his mouth.
“It is an invitation to a banquet hosted personally by Mr. Ludwig Friesna, Luminous’s illustrious graduate, the school’s honorary chairman, and the Ministry of Magic’s youngest vice minister. We hear he has prepared not only career counseling but also various additional prizes, so I ask all you new students to prepare thoroughly and give the examination your very best.”