The cafeteria always felt like a letdown compared to the rest of the school. Most of the Nagoya Tower’s rooms were full of marvelous technology and overpriced furnishings. Then you reached the student cafeteria, where the food tasted like it had come off a conveyor belt and the decorations were spartan. I avoided it as much as I could, but I hadn’t found Kiyo in the food court upstairs, and she still wouldn’t respond to my calls.

Not that I was worried, mind you. A devil doesn’t…

Oh, to Hell with the pretense. I was concerned about her. I hadn’t seen her during the presentation that morning, or on the elevator ride up. I’d been too distracted by my newly discovered toy to notice at the time. Somebody that clingy suddenly de-clinging made me a tad paranoid.

She was probably just buried deep in a game, I told myself. She wasn’t sobbing in a corner somewhere or, worse, sneaking around under the cover of her magic. I’d confirmed the latter with my Mimic a few times on my way down. I didn’t glance for long so as to forestall another headache. It was a bit challenging to make out the individual points of light when I focused with so many wizards around, but I was confident I’d have noticed her pumping magic into her Death of Light affinity.

I did see Hiro and Yukiko, sitting across from each other on one of the long cafeteria tables. Yukiko read aloud from a textbook and when Hiro replied, she would use her gravity magic to lift bites of a dessert into his mouth. He had a hand over his eyes to prevent cheating. The sponge cake seemed to be more sponge than cake, but that smile wasn’t on account of the taste. The scene before me was so adorable that I wanted to vomit.

Naturally, I needed to spoil it. I snuck up behind Yukiko without her noticing.

“Next question,” she said. “How many fingers do goblins have?”

“Four! C’mon, Yukiko, give me a tricky one."

“Fine, that one doesn’t count. What species of mammoth did the Grim Horde bring with them from the other world? Is it the wooly or imperial mammoth?”

He scratched his chin thoughtfully. “That’s a trick question. They look like extinct wooly mammoths, but are a different kind that never existed on Earth, the infernal mammoth.”

“Correct! That makes nine points.” She raised a glowing finger and a piece of the questionable cake floated gently towards Hiro’s mouth.

“What does he get when he hits ten?” I asked.

Yukiko let out a surprised yelp, and the yellow missile zoomed right into Hiro’s throat. His eyes flew open and he braced himself against the table.

“Hiro!” Yukiko ignored me and raced to his side, but he put up his hand to reassure her.

After a lot of straining and a sip of water, he managed to swallow the morsel. “M-Magpie? Where did you come from?”

“England, mostly,” I said.

“Don’t be so blasé about that!” Yukiko stalked over, her hands on her hips. “Hiro was really in danger there.”

It was my turn to hold up my hands. “I thought I’d make you drop it, or hit him in the face. Is it my fault your aim is too perfect?”

“Page thirteen of the student handbook says to not interrupt a wizard while casting!”

I held up my finger. “Page sixteen restricts the use of magic outside of class. Or was it seventeen? I can never remember.”

“Twenty-three,” she replied without pausing. “I assure you that my use of Gravity Shift is completely within the rules. Don’t quote the manual at me if you aren’t going to quote it properly.”

“I concede,” I said, bowing theatrically to Hiro. “Let’s leave it up to the injured party. Hiro?”

“No harm, no foul,” said Hiro.

Yukiko sighed before sitting down. “You’re too forgiving sometimes.”

“I suppose it’s why he puts up with us,” I said, feeling a bit wistful. Back home, that could have led to a duel.

“Are you kidding? Think of how boring my life would be without you all. Especially you, Yukikins.” The translation must have been off again. I couldn’t see anybody calling the overly serious class rep a pet name.

She blushed, though. Maybe the translation fabricata was right after all? “Can we help you, Soren?”

“I don’t suppose either of you have seen Kiyo?”

Yukiko nodded. “She’s buried in some role-playing game.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Wait, how come you know that and I don’t?”

“I’ve started making wellness checks if I don’t hear from her,” said Yukiko. “She opened the door for me this time.”

“Wellness checks?”

She fidgeted with embarrassment. “The headmaster asked me to add that to my daily routine, after the way you two carried on.”

“Probably a wise move,” I conceded. On the one hand, that was a relief. If Maggie or Mrs. Perera were to call me into action, I wouldn’t have to evade Kiyo. Then again, it annoyed me that she wouldn’t answer her damn phone for me. “It must be one heck of a game.”

“Speaking of wellness checks,” said Yukiko. “Would you mind going to your club room to have dinner?”

I narrowed my eyes. “What are you thinking?”

“Somebody needs to check on her.”

“Check on who?” I asked, hoping they weren’t proposing what I thought they would.

“Mariko said she was up there,” said Hiro. “She kinda invited us all, but in a passive aggressive way.”

Yukiko coughed into her hand. “‘Come on up, not that you should bother,’ were her exact words.”

Hiro nodded. “Something’s wrong with her. It’s pretty obvious. She wouldn’t tell us before, though.”

“And you think that I’ll do better because…”

“Because for a womanizer with a penchant for stupid pranks, you’re surprisingly approachable,” replied Yukiko. “You’re a good listener.”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“I can’t find fault with anything you said, technically,” I said.

“Yukiko! We talked about choosing your words,” chided Hiro.

“What? He said himself it was right.” She turned back to face me. “Please, Soren? I’ll cover both of your meals.”

“Oh, very well.” I’d have been more eager, normally. I enjoy a certain amount of prying. However, I already knew the source of Mariko’s funk. It felt like reading the last page of a mystery novel first. I knew that if she felt like discussing her woes, I would be talking about Paul. Oh, well. I didn’t see an artful way out.

Soon enough, I was outside the sewing club’s room. My hands were full of our bagged dinners, but the door was open a crack. It was right around our normal club time, and the nearly deserted room seemed much larger without all of us in it.

Mariko sat at the round table in the center of the room, working on something intently. I realized she was drawing on a sheet of paper, her eyes occasionally darting over to something on her phone. The tip of her tongue was stuck out of her mouth, something she always did when she was focused. The woman had once had dreams of drawing manga before the Wizard Corps drafted her. I saw her picking up the hobby again as a good sign. She still looked bedraggled, but it meant she wasn’t wallowing after her blowup with Paul.

At least, that’s what I thought at first. Then I noticed that her right hand trembled as she drew. Before I’d met her, she had wasted her efforts on a comic about Hiro romancing her. Her craft elevated her work about the subject matter, which made it all the more tragic that she said she didn’t draw much anymore. It was a poor capstone to her career.

I frowned as I studied the pencil sketch that blighted the sheet. The image on the phone was the school’s witchy cat mascot. It was a simple image, designed to adorn school memorabilia and letterheads with a minimum of ink. There wasn’t a straight line or a smooth curve on Mariko’s page. I could have done it better, and I’d never so much as touched a paintbrush in my life.

I’m not sure how long I stood there studying her horrid draftsmanship. Something in Mariko snapped, and she balled up the paper and threw it right at me. It bounced off my face harmlessly.

“Come now, my dear, it wasn’t that awful.” I set aside the bagged dinners.

Her eyes widened as she finally noticed me. She shrieked in surprise and fell backwards out of her chair.

I chuckled as I went over to help. “It’s a good thing I wasn’t here to rob you!” She took my hand, and I couldn’t help but notice she trembled like a startled rabbit. “You need to work on your situational awareness.”

“Y-you need to work on knocking, Soren,” she retorted. “You aren’t a Magpie, you’re more like a nosy little mouse!”

“If I didn’t sneak around, I wouldn’t see so many interesting things,” I replied, grabbing the abandoned art piece. “I’m no art expert, but you don’t strike me as an impressionist.”

Mariko’s eyes widened, but she took a controlling breath and brought her clenched hands in front of her. “I felt like trying something new.”

“You seemed more enraged than experimental,” I replied. “It isn’t the first time I’ve seen you struggling with your art.”

“Experiments usually fail,” she said, avoiding my gaze. Her eyes settled on the to-go bags. “That smells… well, not good, but passable. Is it from the cafeteria?”

“Good guess,” I said. “It’s Yukiko’s treat.”

“How kind of her,” she said. “Why isn’t she here herself?”

“She was on a date with Hiro.” I decided it was best not to admit that I was there for a bit of interrogation.

“I see,” she said, her frown deepening. “I’m grateful that somebody dropped by. I’ll put some tea on for us. You can take a seat.”

I followed her instructions as she fiddled with an electric kettle in the corner. I scanned the room and noticed she had packed cardboard boxes full of the club’s yarn and cloth. “Doing a spot of reorganizing?”

“More like reprioritizing. I think the sewing club’s time has passed.”

“That’s a little abrupt,” I said. “When were you going to tell us members?”

Her face drooped. “Paulkins… I mean, Mr. Wilson was very firm about his resignation, and Hiro would rather be with Yukiko. I don’t see the point in it.”

“You once told me that your club wasn’t only a place to hook up,” I countered.

She shook her head. “That isn’t it. We all had our own problems. When the old game club folded, I wanted this to be where we could help each other. Hiro was getting over Yukiko leaving us. I thought I could be there for him, but he never saw me that way.” I saw the beginnings of tears forming at the edges of her eyes. “Rose told me about the trick you and the headmaster figured out, bleeding off her extra magic into batteries. It sounds like she’s getting control of her affinity, finally. Kiyo has you, and Yukiko has Hiro. Even Paul says he’s over his old knee injury that forced him out of the football club. You all don’t need me anymore.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, come now! Aren’t you being a little overdramatic? Breakups hurt, but they’re a fact of life.”

“That isn’t…” The teapot let out a high-pitched scream, giving her an out. She practically leapt at the chance. “The water’s done. Do you want any sugar in yours?” In her haste, she sloshed some of the boiling water on the counter, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“Be careful, Mariko. We don’t want another incident.”

“Another incident?” She cocked her head to the side.

“You know, like the lesson about magical resonance, when you zapped yourself? That must have hurt, though you seem to be okay now.”

She dropped a bag into each cup and added a spoonful of sugar I hadn’t asked for. “Oh, that? Don’t worry yourself. I’m fine.” She plastered a thin grin on her face as she brought the cups and the teakettle over on a tray.

“Choose a story and stick to it!” Mariko gasped and stopped short of the round table. “You’re offended that nobody showed up to keep you company, but you told us not to bother! You don’t want us to worry, but demand that we read your mind to figure out what’s the matter! What, pray tell, are we supposed to do?”

Mariko’s forced cheer evaporated, and her face contorted into a grimace. “Y-you can have a nice cup of tea, and we can talk about something else.” The tray before her shook, and water flowed down the sides of the teacups. “Anything else. Please. How is your pen pal in Australia?’

“Who the devil told you about Harriet?” My pulse quickened. Who had seen the coded letters from Fera? Kiyo had. Who else had she told? I wanted as few people aware of them as I could manage.

Mariko flinched at my outburst, and the teacups shattered as they hit the table. A wave of brown, boiling water flowed across the table, and I barely hopped away before it splashed my lap.

“No, no, no!” She bent over to clean up her mess. The metal teakettle was still intact, but in her haste, her fingers brushed the burning hot body instead of the handle. She cried out and dropped it again, spattering the last of its contents all down her front. She gripped her right hand close to her chest and fell to her knees, hissing in apparent agony.

I was at her side in a heartbeat. I tried to grab her wrist so I could inspect the burn. My feeble grasp of human healing magic could patch that up, at least. “Let me see that hand! Come on, woman, stop fighting me!”

She shook her head, straining against my grip. “No, please! I’ll heal it myself, just let me go!”

“Stop being ridiculous!” With a final pull, I won the wrestling match. Her right hand trembled so badly that I couldn’t inspect her properly. All I could tell was that her normally pale hand shouldn’t have been quite so red. Runes danced around my fingers as I prepared a basic first aid spell.

They faded as I lost my focus. My hand was locked around her forearm, and something felt off. Even through the black fabric of her uniform, the flesh underneath wasn’t as smooth as it ought to have been.

“How did you burn yourself there?” Mariko tried to pull away, but I was too strong for her. Why wouldn’t she let me have a look? That ought to have given me pause, but I had seen enough injuries on campaign to know that people in shock don’t behave rationally, and Mariko had hardly been in a rational mood before hurting herself. At least Mariko was easier to wrestle than an enraged orc. “Stop that, I’m trying to help!”

“Please,” she pleaded. She had stopped resisting, but her dark eyes looked deep into mine. “You can go. I’ll be fine. I w-won’t complain anymore, and I won’t bother anyone, just please, I don’t want anybody to see.”

Too late. I had already pulled down her sleeve. I couldn’t help but let out a gasp. All down her arm, starting a bit above the wrist, Mariko’s flesh was covered in ridges of dark red and purple scar tissue. It reminded me of a topographical map. Bits of her natural, healthy flesh formed white valleys between the angry mountain ranges.

The last of her fight faded away. She refused to look me in the eye. Her hand still trembled, which I now knew to be its normal state. Thinking back, I had never felt her hand be truly still. I had always ascribed her shakes to shivering or nervousness.

“Mariko… I had no idea.”

“Of course, you didn’t,” she sobbed. “That was the point.”

I guided her over to Kiyo’s normal seat, an oversized beanbag chair. It was the only place I could sit beside her without having to look at her directly, and I could tell she wanted nothing more than to hide. I set about healing the burns on her hand. Those I could deal with. The old scars that ran down to her elbow were beyond any human magician’s ability to heal.

“Please don’t try to heal m-my arm,” she said, her voice quavering. “It only makes it burn again.”

“I know better,” I said. “Tell me, have you ever fought the Horde?”

“No, of course not.”

“If you haven’t, then how did you possibly get Ruhspont cast on you?”