Sasha walked around the school, trying to find the siblings. As she did, there were 2 other girls walking behind her.
"Who are we trying to find and why? You haven't told us yet!" The first girl, the one with long, brown hair and round glasses, asked first.
"Yeah could you please tell us why?" The second girl, one with very bright yellow hair, asked as well.
"It's nothing important. I just need to make sure they're both doing well.
Waking around campus, she couldn't find neither Shu nor Kaede within the sea of students. Since it was lunchtime, the school became something close to a mess. Everyone was doing their own thing, with even some students even using their magic to fight each other. It was prohibited to use your magic within the main buildings due to safety precautions unless you got permission, so many students would either fight in very unorthodox areas or would use the arenas to do so.
The two girls next to Sasha were friends that she'd made during one of her classes. They'd started to talk out of boredom and were already comfortable with hanging out with each other. The girl with glasses was Saori Maki, and the yellow haired one was Maya Kazamaki.
"If you want to tell us later, it's okay. I want to go get something to eat, so I'm going to walk to the cafeteria." Saori told them, her walking away in the process.
"Wait for me, Saori! I'll see you later, Sasha!" Maya ran to catch up to Saori.
"Oh, okay then. See you later!"
And now, Sasha was alone again. She would've called either Shu or Kaede if she could've, but they'd somehow forgotten to exchange their phone numbers.
"Where could they be…?"
She began walking around the area outside of the main building, but still nothing.
Since she didn't know where they were, she simply decided to instead go somewhere she hadn't been to yet: the library.
* * *
The academy's library was incredibly big even compared to a regular college's. She opened the door and for the first time, saw it from the inside.
It was as big as the outside was.
The center of the first floor had a vast number of tables for the students' use. But what really got her attention were the sides of the floors, including the first.
If you stood in the center of the library and looked up, you would see the ceiling. The only floor that had a center was indeed the first. The other 5 floors were only on the sides, but they were still a sight to behold. As Sasha stood, she could see the plethora of bookshelves from each floor. She went to take the elevator to the second floor. Once she reached it, she looked around and couldn't help but be impressed.
Next to the elevator, there was a guide as to what books of what type and genre were in each floor.
"So, this floor focuses on history books…I see."
She walked around the bookshelves and as she did, she noticed someone in front of one of them, trying to get a book that was a bit too high up for her.
"Oh, let me help you!" Sasha grabbed the book and handed it to the all but familiar young girl.
"Oh, thank- Oh, hey Sasha!" The girl was none other than Kaede herself.
"Hey, I've been looking for you and your brother. Speaking of, where is he?"
"Oh, he's in the top floor. He wanted to look in the fiction section."
"Oh, I see."
"Hey, isn't this library impressive?! So many books here, and way more tables than I thought!" Kaede pointed towards her right, showing Sasha that there were even more tables in the farthest sides of the floor than in the center.
"This library's really nice. Hey, I'm going to look for your brother, so you go and have fun."
"Okay then! See you later!"
Sasha walked back to the elevator. As she did, she noticed that on the wall right across the entrance was a librarian, behind her being a curtain that she assumed was where the other books were situated at.
She entered the elevator and reached the top floor, the guide saying that this was the fiction floor.
She continued to walk around this floor, noticing from what she could tell that this floor had the most students on it.
After walking around a few minutes, she finally found him in 1 of the bookshelves.
"There you are, Shu!"
"Huh?! Oh, it's you Sasha. You startled me." He responded.
"So, what brings you to this section?"
She noticed that Shu was currently in the Slice of Life novels section.
"I'm just looking out of curiosity and boredom."
Something that was very interesting was the popularity of genre in the Magic Side. In the Normal Side, the most popular genre of books was Fantasy, but in the Magic Side, it was the exact opposite, the most popular genre being Slice of Life. This was due to the existence of magic. Since magic exists, most authors thought that it was sort of redundant to write about it. Shu himself mostly read books detailing concepts about magic, but he'd had the thought of checking out a regular novel for once.
"I never took you as one for reading novels, Shu."
"I usually don't, but I think it's an interesting change of pace, you know?"
He continued looking until he said: "This one looks interesting."
He took out the book and looked at it. It was volume 1 of a Slice of Life series (obviously) with some apparent Romantic elements within in. The title was a sort of stupid one: "I Fell in Love with an RPG Nerd and Now I'm Falling Into that Rabbit Hole".
"What the hell is this title?"
"I've never seen anything like it before…"
As Sasha said that after his question, he analyzed the book. The cover featured a cute girl with a school uniform sitting on the ground with what seemed to be gaming equipment around her. The book wasn't that long, it being around 150 pages or so. It had a few colored illustrations and the beginning, and a few black and white ones scattered throughout the book. He went through the pages and read a bit of the words, also looking at the illustrations.
"I must say, though, that these illustrations are very nice."
He showed them to Sasha, herself being impressed. "Oh, they really are."
This type of book feels familiar, for some reason… Shu said in his own head.
Either way, he was sort of interested in the book, so he decided that he was going to rent it. For that, he had to go with the librarian. When he told this to Sasha, she decided to follow him there.
Once they were there, Shu did feel kind off nervous that he had to show the book to the librarian.
"Let's just hope that they don't judge me for it. I mean, they have this book here for a reason."
Sasha simply nodded to his comment.
The librarian came out from the curtain behind the desk and asked them: "Can I help you?"
"Um, yeah I would like to rent this book." Shu showed her the book and she responded with "Very well."
The older woman took the book and typed something into the computer and wrote something into the inner cover of the book.
"Here you go." She extended her arm with the book in her hand. "You have 2 weeks to return the book. For every day after that that you don't return it, you'll have to pay 20 Cil for it.
"Ah, okay. Thank you!"
The librarian smiled at his thanks and entered the curtain once again. Once Shu and Sasha turned around and started walking to one of the vacant tables in the middle, Shu told Sasha: "I wonder what's inside that curtain…"
"It's probably just more books or something of the sort."
"Maybe…"
The two of them were sitting on the same table, with Shu reading the book he'd rented 15 minutes ago and Sasha browsing her phone.
"Do you need anything, Shu? Anything at all?"
"Sasha, I'm alright. Don't worry so much it's okay."
"I'm sorry. I just want to make sure."
They were both currently whispering as they had been the entire time they'd been in there. It was a library, after all.
As they did their own thing, Kaede sat down with them. "What are you two up to?"
"Hey, Kaede. Nothing, just reading a book I rented."
"Oh cool. I was just looking around the history section. They have a lot of interesting books there."
"Do they, now?"
"Yep!"
"Very interesting. Hey, so what do we do now? I mean, there's still a long time before our next class." Shu wondered.
"Oh, don't you know? On Mondays, we only take the 5 main classes. During or after lunchtime, we're free to leave, if we want to."
"Really? That sounds great. But in that case, do we just go to our dorms? I don't want to just stay in my dorm for the remainder of the day."
"Yeah, me neither, brother. What can we do?"
In that moment, Sasha thought of something.
"Oh, I have an idea!"
Without noticing, she might've said that a bit loud, causing people to say "Shh!"
"Sorry." She began to talk in a low voice. "I have an idea."
"What is it?"
"What if we go eat in a restaurant or something at night?"
The siblings thought about it, but then Shu responded.
"You know what? That sounds fun."
"I agree! But at what time, though? And where?"
"How about 7:00? We can go eat in the city itself; we can go to Alie."
"Yeah, let's do it. You alright with going, Kaede?"
"Of course!"
"Perfect. Oh, and before I forget…"
"Hm?"
"How about we exchange phone numbers? I was trying to find you two at lunch, but I couldn't. Just to make it easier for all of us."
"Oh, absolutely."
Shu and Kaede took out their phones and gave Sasha their numbers, with Sasha giving them her own.
"So, it's settled. I'll send you the location later!"
For the remainder of lunchtime, they stayed there, either talking or doing their own thing. Kaede did eventually return to looking at the variety of books the library had to offer.
Once she was done 20 minutes later, they walked to the school's entrance, many other students doing the same they were.
They said their goodbyes for now and went their separate ways, each going to their respective dorm room.
* * *
Within an unknown room in an unknown location, there resided a figure wearing a black suit alongside a dark blue tie, standing behind a long desk with around 5 or so people typing in various computers.
But the most important thing was rather what resided above them; a giant number of small, orange screens being projected onto an already giant screen.
The figure stood there, watching every perspective of the Battle Test at once thanks to Akio's magic.
He mainly watched all these perspectives for 2 main reasons. The first was simply for the sake of entertainment. Who wouldn't enjoy watching people fight against each other with many different types of magic.
The second, however, this being the true reason, was one that was very peculiar. He stood there watching all the screens until the person on the left corner of the desk called his attention.
He walked towards him with perfect precision. "Yes, what is it?"
"I think we might have found what you need."
The person pointed toward the screen, showing a specific fight between two students: one that enrolled and one that didn't, of course.
"Take a look at this."
The person zoomed the screen and pointed to what he wanted to show: a certain something that stood out even in the world of magic.
The figure stood still, completely shocked. "That's the…" He grinned. "We found it."
"And that's not all. Look at this." He changed the fight to show another fight that was being spread through the faculty due to the winner's type of magic.
"No way. Impossible…" The figure couldn't help but laugh. What was the coincidence that there were 2 students with what he desired?
"Do we give them both the uniform?"
"You know what? Don't. Only give it to the first one. The second one, leave her be."
"But that's going against the rules!"
"And so, what? I'm going to be the one to do it. I refuse to let the other six know about this. They mustn't know."
"Understood."
The figure walked away from him to the door the let outside. "If there's anyone who's going to do this…it's me."