The third period of the morning was math. Qiluo propped her textbook up on her desk, using her mechanical pencil to sketch out magic circuit diagrams in her notebook. Outside the window, the sky was a pale blue with thin, wispy clouds, and the rhythmic sound of the track club running drifted over from the sports field.
Suddenly, her detection array flared at the edge of her consciousness. One mid-tier Erosion Body and several low-tier ones. The mana fluctuations were concentrated on the other side of the hill behind the school building, so close it felt as if they had timed it perfectly with the school bell.
The temporary communication frequency card on her left wrist began to grow warm. Night Sakura’s voice bounced into her mental channel with her usual cheerful tone: “Hello, hello, hello~ Can you hear me~ One, two, three, one, two, three~”
“Lightweaver, Lightweaver, please respond if you hear me. An Erosion Body spawned on the hill behind Tachibana High School. Kohinata and Amamiya are already on their way. You have class today, right? Can you slip out?”
Qiluo drew a deep line on her scratch paper with her pencil. She couldn't exactly stand up and say, “Teacher, I'm going to go fight an Erosion Body, I'll be right back.”
“...No,” she replied through her mental channel.
“What a shame. We'll handle it ourselves then. Amamiya said she's in great shape today, and Kohinata got the bandages off her leg. Oh, by the way, Boss told me to tell you! This battle is basically the Wings of Freedom's first public appearance. We're planning to leave a mark at the scene, and there will be an official statement afterward. If you don't come, you won't get a share of our debut.”
“Not going.”
She thought the conversation would end there, but Night Sakura only grew more excited.
“Aw, even that doesn't tempt you? Come on, come on~ Just tell your teacher you're not feeling well, and you'll be out in no time~”
“You are so annoying!”
“...Qiluo?”
Rei's voice came from diagonally ahead. It was hushed, mostly drowned out by the squeak of the math teacher's chalk on the blackboard, but Qiluo heard it.
She looked up, meeting Rei's round eyes. Rei was tilting her head, looking at her with her eyebrows knitted together and her lips slightly pursed. The tip of her mechanical pencil was pressed against the edge of her textbook, having already poked a small dent into the corner.
“...What's wrong? You look so pale. Are you not feeling well?”
Qiluo looked at her. In this world, Rei was the first person she had met who was nice to her without needing any reason. And now she was about to lie to this person. Although she had told many lies before, this time felt different.
“Rei,” she said softly. “My stomach suddenly hurts a lot.”
“Huh? Your stomach? Do you want to go to the nurse's office? I'll go with you—”
“No need. I can go by myself.” Qiluo pushed herself up from her desk, her movements a beat slower than usual. As she pushed her chair back, the legs made a slight scraping sound against the floor.
Rei wanted to say more, but the math teacher had already noticed the commotion. Adjusting his glasses, he asked, “What's wrong, Tian Gong?”
Rei answered for her, “She's not feeling well and wants to go to the nurse's office.” The teacher nodded and let Qiluo leave.
Qiluo walked out of the classroom. The hallway was quiet, save for the distant sound of another class reading their English lesson in unison. Instead of heading toward the nurse's office, she turned down an old, rarely used corridor that led to the back of the gymnasium.
Faded club posters were plastered on both walls of the old corridor. The fire door at the end was left unlocked year-round, with a yellowed “Do Not Open Except in Emergencies” label stuck on it.
Pushing the door open with her palm, she entered a storage room filled with the smell of old gym mats and disinfectant. Half of the basketballs for the afternoon gym class had already been moved out. She quickly crossed the room to the back door. After confirming there was no one and no surveillance cameras around, she pressed her right hand to the magic crystal disguised as a contract crystal on her chest.
Warm white light spilled through her fingers, rapidly spreading along the contours of her body. White hair, red highlights, a light white skirt, and threads of light silently sliding between her fingertips.
Night Sakura’s voice bounced back into her mental channel. This time, her tone was clearly stifling a laugh: “Did you just fake being sick?”
“...Shut up.”
“Aww, how did you fake it? How did you fake it? Stomachache or headache?”
“Stomach.”
“Classic. But if you went to the nurse's office for a stomachache, what if the nurse goes looking for you later? Won't your cover be blown if you're not there?”
Qiluo landed on a pine tree at the top of the back hill, spreading the five fingers of her right hand as threads of light silently slid between them. “Then let it be blown. Once I leave the classroom, there's no way I'm going back the same way anyway.”
She decided to write about today's events in her combat notes tonight under her identity as Lightweaver. The title would be: “How to Slip Out During Class While Fooling the Only Friend in Class Who Would Worry.”
Kohinata had already charged into the battlefield, her fighting style completely different from what Qiluo had seen before. With the bandages off her leg, her agility had doubled. She wielded a hammer as a weapon, each strike landing precisely on the weak joints of the Erosion Bodies. Amamiya covered her from the flank, her close-combat movements clean and decisive, her twin kodachi slicing a path of destruction through the Erosion Bodies.
The core of the mid-tier one was cornered by Kohinata and Amamiya in a pile of debris, just as it was preparing to release erosion spores. Lightweaver's threads of light shot down from the hilltop, forming an interception net that caught all the spores before they could disperse, then tightened. Covered by the net of threads of light, Kohinata charged at the core and cracked its shell with a single hammer strike.
Lightweaver leapt down from the top of the pine tree, landing on a piece of concrete debris at the edge of the waste pile. The threads of light slowly gathered between her fingers, sweeping the shredded remains of the Erosion Bodies aside.
Amamiya sheathed her twin kodachi behind her waist and held out her hand to high-five Kohinata.
She was about to ask Night Sakura if this was all there was to their debut.
Before she could speak, everyone simultaneously sensed a rapidly approaching mana fluctuation. Lightweaver looked up to see a dark blue afterimage slicing through the sky from afar.
Okay, now here was the problem. Lightweaver was standing in the middle of a pile of Erosion Body remains, the threads of light in her right hand not yet fully retracted.
Mingyue stood at the edge of the debris pile, her scythe held horizontally in front of her. Nuomi squatted on her shoulder, its tail held completely straight. Snowrealm landed behind her, the silver glow at the edge of her ice-dust light curtain looking even colder under the midday sun.
Her other self was also floating beside Snowrealm.
Kohinata gripped the handle of her hammer tightly, Amamiya's fingers pressed back onto her hilt, and Night Sakura was still joking in the channel: “They arrived just in time! Just in time to take the guest seats for our debut.”
Mingyue's gaze swept over the shredded Erosion Body remains littering the ground, over the hammer in Kohinata's hand still stained with black mist, over the twin kodachi behind Amamiya's waist that were not yet fully sheathed, and finally landed on Lightweaver.
Lightweaver stood at the very front of everyone, the threads of light in her right hand not yet fully retracted, her warm white short hair blown by the wind to cover half her face.
“...Lightweaver,” Mingyue's voice trembled as she uttered the name.
Her fingers moved away from the edge of her scratch, slowly sliding down until they stopped on the handle of her scythe. “You used to act alone. Now, those behind you—what is going on?”
When she said “what is going on,” her tone pitched up slightly at the end, as if she were leaving herself some room for “maybe they're just a temporary team.”
But her eyes had already read the entire answer. Kohinata's hammer was wrapped in purple tape matching the color scheme of Night Sakura's mask, Amamiya's scabbard was engraved with the crooked wing emblem of the Wings of Freedom, and Lightweaver stood among them, standing there as if it were only natural.
Qiluo had two choices right now. First was to tell the truth: I joined the Wings of Freedom, today is our first public appearance, and you arrived just in time for our debut. Second was to tell a version that didn't sound as much like the truth but sounded gentler. Both options meant she would have to admit to Mingyue that she was no longer alone.
“Wings of Freedom,” Lightweaver spoke, her tone sounding like she was talking to a stranger. “We officially begin public operations today.”
Rate on N.U.
