Show Them What You Can Do

Nakajo Azusa seemed to be experiencing the respectful treatment of a junior student for the first time. Her petite face wore a satisfied expression.

"Oh, right, President, the rehearsal's about to start. We should get going!"

"Ah, right."

"Sorry, Koushu. The auditorium's just ahead. Go on without me!" Saegusa Mayumi gave Kudo Mitsunobu an apologetic smile.

At last, she remembered that she still had important things to do. She pointed out the auditorium to Kudo Mitsunobu, then hurried off with Nakajo Azusa.

As she left, Nakajo Azusa had also taken quite a liking to this respectful junior student, and made a point of saying goodbye to him.

"Never mind. I'll take my time getting there."

Kudo Mitsunobu glanced at his watch. There was still plenty of time before the opening ceremony.

When he entered the auditorium, he found that quite a few students had already taken their seats in the spacious hall.

There were still plenty of empty seats near the front, but not a single Course 2 Student was sitting there. Kudo Mitsunobu had no desire to stand out.

He wasn't afraid of anyone picking a fight with him, but he didn't want to deal with trouble on his first day, either.

He found an empty seat among the Course 1 Students and sat down, closing his eyes to rest.

"Next, the new student representative will give an address: Shiba Miyuki."

Kudo Mitsunobu had planned to keep his eyes closed and rest until the opening ceremony ended. He hadn't come straight from the house he'd bought that morning.

Instead, he'd gotten up early and traveled from the Kudo Family's main residence, so he was a little short on sleep.

Besides, the opening ceremony held no special meaning. It was just a bunch of people taking turns coming up to say a few meaningless things.

But the steadily growing chatter around him as the new student representative took the stage still made Kudo Mitsunobu open his eyes.

Of course, he hadn't been interested in this so-called new student representative. After all, if he'd taken the final practical test, there was no way the representative could have been anyone else.

It would have been him, Kudo Mitsunobu.

But the moment he opened his eyes, he knew he'd been wrong. He was intensely curious about the girl standing onstage.

Don't get the wrong idea. It wasn't that he was interested in her because of her looks. He was curious about her very existence.

The girl was too exquisitely beautiful, with perfectly symmetrical features and ideally proportioned figure. She looked like a finely crafted doll.

That was right—a doll.

Her beauty couldn't be a product of nature. No one could give birth to a person this perfect.

This girl was exactly like him.

At first glance, Kudo Mitsunobu had recognized her origins. She was a modified individual among magicians, and yet her level of completion surpassed even the standards of modern magical engineering.

Modified individuals were magicians whose magical aptitude had been enhanced through the manipulation of their genes. But they all shared one trait.

Though scientific methods gave them stronger aptitude than ordinary magicians, they all had very short lifespans.

He knew his own situation best. If he hadn't been someone who'd crossed over from another world, the Kudo Mitsunobu he'd replaced would have been frail all his life, constantly bedridden for no reason, and certainly wouldn't have lived past thirty.

That was why his grandfather, Retsu Kudou, had considered the whole thing utterly unreasonable, and could only attribute Kudo Mitsunobu's abnormality to a gift from heaven.

But Kudo Mitsunobu knew that what had happened to him was impossible to replicate. And now here was Shiba Miyuki, another exception. How could he not be curious?

"Which family's creation is she, I wonder?"

Kudo Mitsunobu pondered. He suspected Shiba Miyuki was the result of research conducted by one of the Ten Master Clans.

He hadn't even considered any other magical family. It simply wasn't possible—not because he looked down on them, but because the level of magic within their families could never have reached that point.

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Chapter 4: Show Them What You Can Do

"Wasn't I placed in the same class as Shiba Miyuki? That's a little disappointing." Kudo Mitsunobu sat in the classroom, listlessly looking around the now-empty room.

He'd been looking forward to being in the same class as Shiba Miyuki. That way, he might have been able to figure out which of the Ten Master Clans she came from.

But things hadn't gone his way. Shiba Miyuki was in Class A, while he was in Room C.

Still, there was nothing he could do about it. His entrance exam scores hadn't been very good, after all.

"Sorry to keep you waiting again, Koushu. I'm really sorry!"

Of course, there was a reason he was still sitting in the empty classroom after school.

"Senior Saegusa, don't you think it's a little inappropriate for the two of us to be sitting here alone?"

Kudo Mitsunobu really couldn't understand it. There were plenty of rooms where they could talk things over. They could even have gone to a café outside. He couldn't imagine why Saegusa Mayumi had brought him here.

The long, narrow room had only one small chair, just big enough for two people to squeeze onto.

Their bodies were pressed together as if glued in place, leaving not a sliver of space between them.

A girl's distinctive, delicate fragrance lingered around Kudo Mitsunobu's nose.

"And if you're going to be this shy, don't pick a place like this!"

The blush on Saegusa Mayumi's face hadn't faded at all since she sat down with Kudo Mitsunobu.

He wasn't a native of this world, and he wasn't the sort of hopeless innocent who'd blush for ages just from holding hands with a girl.

But looking at Saegusa Mayumi, Kudo Mitsunobu couldn't imagine she was the carefree sort, either.

"Koushu, I came to talk to you about joining the Student Council."

Saegusa Mayumi still had a blush on her face as she spoke. But had she turned her volume all the way down?

Kudo Mitsunobu grumbled to himself. It was only because he was a magician with decent hearing that he could make out her words.

If an ordinary person had been there, they'd have heard nothing but the buzzing of a mosquito.

"Join the Student Council?"

"Isn't the new student representative the one who gets to join the Student Council each year? What does that have to do with me?"