The Literature Club

Tuesday, clear skies.

Huo Lin and Hayate's schoolbags were a little heavy that day. They had PE, so they had packed a change of clothes.

"Will you be okay in PE?"

When Hayate asked her that, Huo Lin was still a little groggy.

"Okay? What do you mean?"

"Come on, wake up."

She really wasn't feeling very alert. She yawned again, having gone to bed rather late the night before.

After learning disguise and voice-changing magic, Huo Lin had started looking into other spells.

The world of magic was wondrous and profound, and to Huo Lin, who was still only a beginner, its appeal was practically endless. Having already experienced the thrill of being high in the sky, she had developed a keen interest in flight magic.

She had spent the whole previous evening studying how to fly like a mage.

She could simply use brute magic power to lift herself in a form of "Brute-Force Flight"-shooting into the sky with a bang, then dropping back down with another bang, tracing a parabola. But that wasn't nearly elegant enough, nor did it let her enjoy the pleasure of flight.

She would much rather be as light and nimble as a swift.

According to the Book of the Night Sky, all of this would actually be very simple if she had a Device to assist her. She wouldn't even need to learn it.

The magical world had a history stretching back thousands of years, and millennia of development had long since produced a complete set of tools. As long as the user supplied magic power, a Device could provide excellent assistance. All kinds of spells were encoded into its underlying logic, so there was no need to learn their principles or theory.

She could practically use them whenever she wanted.

What she was doing now was like writing code from a basic programming language while everyone else already had a complete operating system that could run things with a click.

The Book of the Night Sky was itself a Device. Unfortunately, it was broken and out of control, making it completely unusable.

Besides, its master wasn't Huo Lin, but Hayate. It constantly drained Hayate's magic power, which had previously left her paralyzed.

So Huo Lin had plans of her own.

Her short-term goal was to familiarize herself with magic and learn a variety of spells, laying a foundation.

Her medium-term goal was to obtain a Device of her own. As for how to get one, she hadn't figured that out yet. She would deal with it when the time came.

Huo Lin yawned again. They had already reached the school gates.

"Anyway, tell me if anything comes up. I'll help."

But Huo Lin didn't think there was anything she needed Hayate's help with.

The first period was Japanese. Huo Lin had her textbook open, but she was also writing and sketching in a notebook, devising flight magic that suited her. As for the teacher's questions, she could split her attention and answer them all perfectly well.

There were many kinds of flight magic. Wind, lightning, light, metal-all these attributes could enable flight. It mainly depended on the mage's own strengths, and the Device would construct the corresponding spell.

Huo Lin's magic power, however, was pure magic power, without any distinction between attributes. That also meant she was free to choose whatever she preferred.

As far as preferences went, she liked wind best.

Soaring freely as though riding the wind through the void, with no knowing where she might come to rest. That was the flight magic she envisioned.

By the time the bell rang, she had finalized her flight spell. In the end, it was only basic magic, nothing particularly advanced. It was just right for a beginner.

The next period was PE.

The boys had already started changing in the classroom.

Huo Lin put her hand on a button of her jacket, then stopped.

She finally realized what Hayate had meant by "Will you be okay in PE?"

Although she had disguised her face, that was only an optical deception. Her body was still a girl's body.

Nine-year-olds hadn't developed much yet, but there were still differences. If she really took off her uniform, the differences in her frame and build would show.

Neither she nor Hayate was old enough to need a bra yet, but the little cotton undershirts they wore underneath were also made for girls, protecting their soon-to-develop chests from chafing.

She could imagine what would happen if she took off her uniform in front of everyone.

But with her current identity, she couldn't exactly go into the girls' changing room either.

Huo Lin looked toward the front row. Sure enough, Hayate was watching her with an expression that said, "You've finally woken up."

Hayate came over with her change of clothes.

"Grab your clothes and come with me."

"Where?" She wasn't going into the girls' changing room. They would think she was a pervert.

Without leaving any room for argument, Hayate had already pulled Huo Lin out of the classroom.

"We just need to find an empty classroom."

Oh, right. It's that simple. Staying up late really is a bad idea. My brain's practically turned to mush. What an idiot.

"If we try the clubrooms, there should be people in the music room and the home economics room..."

While Hayate was still considering which rooms might be empty, Huo Lin already had an idea.

"Let's go to the Literature Club. There shouldn't be anyone there at this hour, and I have the key."

As president of the Literature Club, Huo Lin always kept the clubroom key with her.

The two crossed the courtyard.

The Literature Club was in the Old Schoolhouse. Along with the Flower Arrangement Club, the Tea Ceremony Club, and a few others, it was one of the quieter clubs, far from the noisy classroom building.

The Old Schoolhouse was still fairly sturdy overall, but it inevitably felt a little dilapidated. It was said to date back to the Taisho era, which would make it at least eighty years old.

The building was older than the school itself. Apparently, it had once been a private Western-style mansion.

There had been plenty of mansions like this during the extravagant Taisho era. But through the decades of war that followed, their owners had either gone bankrupt or simply died, leaving the buildings abandoned.

When the school was built on the site of the Old Schoolhouse, it hadn't demolished the building, instead using it as school premises.

The Literature Club was on the ground floor. Huo Lin and Hayate arrived at its door.

Huo Lin stopped outside, but didn't immediately unlock it.

"What's wrong?"

"There's someone inside."

"But isn't the door locked?"

It was indeed locked, but there was also someone inside. Huo Lin could sense them clearly. Now that she had magic power, she was no longer limited to her five senses; she could perceive things through magic as well.

This wasn't detection magic in the usual sense, but an instinctive use of magic power.

Huo Lin had a pretty good idea who it was.

She inserted the key into the lock and opened the door.

A girl in a school uniform sat inside, her long, jet-black hair woven into a three-strand braid that fell over her shoulder all the way to her waist.

The Literature Club's window stood open, making it easy to guess how the girl had entered. She was perched in a crouch on a chair, a pose that couldn't be called ladylike from any angle. Her pleated skirt looked as though it might reveal too much at any moment, yet it faithfully kept everything above the strip of bare thigh concealed.

The girl was reading with intense concentration, but her mouth was chewing, as though she were snacking.

"Amano, you're eating books again!"

Amano was a fifth-grader, one year above Huo Lin, and also a member of the Literature Club.

Like a hamster caught by its owner, her eyes widened in fright. Only when she saw Huo Lin did she relax.

"Oh, it's you, President. Don't scare me like that." As she spoke, she noticed Yagami Huo Lin staring at the book in her hands and immediately defended herself. "I bought this book myself! It doesn't belong to the Literature Club!"

Amano Touko was a book-eating monster.