Your Stars Look Wrong, Don't They?

When Fran arrived a little early at the place she had arranged to meet Lai, she only waited a short while before Lai showed up.

Fran was a little surprised. "What a coincidence. I got here early too, and there's still some time before we were supposed to meet."

Lai smiled and said,

"No, I saw in the stars that you had arrived, so I came down."

"The stars can do that too?"

Fran became even more interested in the club visit ahead. This seemed rather different from her Star Gazing Art.

Fran followed Lai into a building. A chestnut-haired woman in a shirt and green coat sat at a table, watching them arrive.

"This is Haya, president of our Night Sky Reading Club."

Looking at Haya's face, Fran found it somewhat familiar, as though she had seen her somewhere before. Yet she clearly remembered never meeting her, so the original owner must have known her.

Haya looked at Fran as well. She studied her for a long while, as if recalling something, then said,

"This is the one you mentioned, the girl who got completely absorbed in the starry-sky painting during Art Appreciation."

"Yes, her name is Fran."

"Oh, Fran. Then it really is her."

Lai seemed to realize that their president might know Fran, and she asked curiously,

"President, do you know Fran?"

"Of course. She left quite a deep impression on me."

A smile curved Haya's lips as she continued,

"When I was an assistant instructor for Arithmetic Class, I was very impressed by her arithmetic skills. Very few Apprentices got so many assignments wrong."

Holy shit. Fran was beginning to admire the original owner. How had she managed to do so many things and be terrible at every one of them? She was practically an ignoramus, ruining Fran's reputation.

Lai's face reddened slightly. Under Fran's puzzled gaze, she said something inexplicable.

"Even if she might be bad at arithmetic, what if she learns quickly when it comes to Astrology Spell?"

What did that mean? Why did arithmetic seem to be connected to learning Astrology Spell? This was nothing like what she had expected.

Fran had thought Astrology Spell was the sort of magic used for prophecy and divination. Why was mathematics involved now?

"I never said she couldn't learn Astrology Spell. Come on, let's test exactly how talented she is."

With that, Haya rose and headed deeper into the building, with Fran and Lai following behind.

After going up one floor, Haya opened a specially decorated door. The room beyond was pitch-black, as if the light outside could not reach it. Fran could not even see the floor.

"Whoever's in the back, close the door."

Lai voluntarily took the rear and closed the door. Then Haya opened another door along the passage, and Lai closed that one behind them as well.

After passing through three doors, the three of them finally arrived in a room filled with faintly glowing decorations.

The surroundings were still extremely dark. Fran could barely see her own fingers, and she was close to being unable to tell which of the other two was which.

"All right, wait here. I'll activate the device."

As Haya reached toward a corner of the room, Lai seemed to notice Fran's confusion and explained,

"This is a special room made for our club. It allows us to observe the stars even during the day. Those three doors were meant to block out the outside light."

Fran knew the stars were still in the sky during the daytime; sunlight was simply too bright and obscured them. It seemed perfectly reasonable for another world to have magic that let people observe the stars during the day.

After a click, the surroundings gradually brightened. Fran followed the source of the light and looked overhead.

Above them was a circular dome, and countless tiny lights gradually emerged across it, slowly forming a starry sky.

Fran was very familiar with this starry sky. Wasn't this the sky she looked at every night?

After discovering that she could foresee the future through the stars, she had paid close attention to this skill, spending half an hour looking at the sky every night before bed.

Yet the results had greatly disappointed her. Since then, she had never again seen visions of the future like she had on the first day.

Even her proficiency only increased by one point per day.

"Come here. Stand here, and look at the sky while referring to this paper."

Fran took the paper and looked toward the indicated spot. Only then did she notice many circles on the floor, apparently meant to help with positioning. The spot where she stood was one such circle.

Fran carefully examined the contents of the paper. It described a method of measuring one's current position by observing the locations of the stars.

At the same time, it contained an extremely complicated mathematical formula with seven or eight pieces of information that needed to be substituted into it.

Fran stared at it for a long time, trying to figure out where to begin. The other two quietly waited beside her without speaking.

Fran gradually sorted out how to use the formula. Just as she was about to begin, she glanced at the starry sky above.

Normally, according to the paper, she was supposed to observe the starry sky from different angles and determine her position based on the changes in perspective. That was what Fran had planned to do.

But when she gazed at the stars above, a feeling arose naturally within her: There was no need to make this so complicated. Just write it down directly.

She took the scratch paper Haya had just handed her and wrote, "316.4; 70.8."

Then she said directly,

"I'm done."

[You used the stars to complete a measurement. Star Gazing Art proficiency +4]

Only after saying that did Fran snap out of her daze and see the stunned expressions on the other two's faces.

Haya took the paper and glanced at it, then looked at Fran with a complicated expression before taking out another sheet.

"Calculate how far this location is from us."

The page contained several images of the starry sky, hand-drawn with only the necessary information retained. Fran found them pleasant to look at, free of distracting details.

After Fran briefly examined the three images, that feeling surged up again, and she directly wrote down the coordinates.

After looking at them, Haya stared at Fran in shock.

She was witnessing a miracle in astrology. How could someone directly determine the coordinates without changing position or observing from multiple directions?

When Fran had first written that string of coordinates, Hana had thought Lai and Fran were working together to fool her. The second sheet had been meant to confirm whether Fran could truly calculate the coordinates.

Haya understood that this method of measurement had two principles. The first was the user's affinity with the stars. Moving only a few steps on the ground could not possibly cause the stars in the sky to shift position.

What the user saw were changes in the stars caused by themselves—the stars telling them their own location.

The second was arithmetic. Every user's perception was different, and arithmetic standardized those perceptions, making them possible to communicate and exchange.

So Fran had simply stood in place and made the stars shift their positions for her? This display reminded Haya of a student her mentor had once mentioned, someone who had since become a Formal Mage. That student had been the same, able to determine coordinates just by standing still.

"Please, you absolutely must join our club."