The moment he reached the Proving Ground, Blade realized how different the atmosphere was from the junior class.
First, there weren’t as many people. Before, he’d always had tons of students clamoring around him, but now the area was nearly empty. The entire class consisted of a dozen or so students.
Next, nobody here was wearing a school uniform. They all got to choose their own outfits, and they were so colorful, he bet he could find every hue in the rainbow if he looked hard enough. Blade had grown accustomed to the monochrome uniforms, and he felt it would take his eyes a while to adjust to this new scenery.
One more thing: Several students immediately spun around whenever Blade looked at them, like they had eyes in the back of their heads. Of those, he stared hard at one girl in particular. She was the “blue” member of this colorful troupe, sporting a blue cape and partially hiding her lips with a blue scarf. Her face was expressionless, and while she had stopped looking at Blade a while ago, he couldn’t help observing her. Not that he was super curious about her or anything. It was just one of those idiosyncrasies you adopted as a Hero—or rather, an ex-Hero. If someone looked like a tested fighter, Blade couldn’t keep his eyes from wandering over to them.
The next person he took an interest in was a girl clad entirely in red…
Hang on a minute.
“That red girl…”
He remembered her. And as he stared at her impertinently, it became clear she remembered him, too. Her face, already scary, grew even more peeved. She immediately stormed across the Proving Ground arena, stomping angrily as she made her way toward him.
“Why are you in the senior class?!” she asked menacingly, demanding an explanation. This was Earnest Flaming, someone whose name Blade had memorized back on the day of his transfer.
“Oh, um, I’m in this class starting today.”
He picked up the plate hanging at his chest and showed it to her. She grabbed it, all but seizing it from him, then flipped it over.
“Ughhh…”
She was pulling on it so hard that Blade began to choke.
“Instructor Grateau, Instructor Morrigan, even Instructor Thane… I can’t believe it. You bribed Instructor Aster, too?!”
“Bribed?”
“Of course,” she said arrogantly. “There’s no way you went from C to A in just a few days.”
“Well, I kinda did.”
“And besides…” Earnest placed a hand on her curvy hip. “This is an honorable academy with a long history. One only the truly strong may attend. Someone as sloppy, slapdash, and unmotivated as you could never be admitted here. All this, just because His Majesty recommended you… I don’t know what kind of trickery you used, but mark my words, I will expose it to the world!”
The king’s the one resorting to trickery, actually. And I’d be over the moon if she could expose him for me. If she could punish him, too, that’d be even better.
As Blade listened to Earnest, he realized that her problem with him mainly had to do with his perceived lack of enthusiasm.
“Hey, I’m motivated,” he said.
“What? How?”
“I wanna make friends.”
“Huh?”
Blade was a normal person now, and so he wanted to make a hundred friends. That was his dream.
“C’mon, introduce me to some people,” he continued.
He glanced around the arena. There were a dozen or so people in the senior class, and all of them looked interesting, to say the least. But Earnest saw Blade’s attitude as insincere, and it riled her. He saw her begin to shake, just before she totally lost her temper.
“Listen to me!” she shouted, rage flowing from every pore. “I’m trying to pick a fight with you!”
Finally, she was being honest. She’d just admitted that what she wanted was to get up in his business and goad him into snapping back at her. So she was aware of it.
“Yeah, I’m listening.”
As Blade took in his surroundings, he placed a hand on Earnest’s head. This made her turn even redder. She hadn’t been patted on the head since she was five.
“Don’t pet me!”
She drew her sword and swiped at him with her full strength. Blade leaned to one side to dodge its trajectory. For him, it was a completely unconscious movement. He hadn’t even noticed that she had attacked him, much less that he had evaded it.
“Huh? Who’s that?”
His eyes were focused somewhere faraway. There, standing ahead of him, was the blue-clothed girl from before.
“Which one?” Earnest asked, fixing her hair. Between Blade’s hand and her potentially lethal slash, the bun she normally pulled her hair back into had come apart—and the idea of people seeing her with her hair down embarrassed her.
Meticulously fixing her hair, Earnest asked again, “Who do you mean?”
“Her! The blue girl.”
“Oh… That’s Sophie.”
Sophie, apparently sensing their gazes, glanced back at them.
“She sure is strong.”
“Well, she’s certainly not weak. She’s in the senior class, after all.”
Earnest’s face reddened a bit, and she seemed a tad self-conscious as she spoke. Her hair was all back in place now, and she resumed her usual scowl. She had redonned her mask.
“I want to make friends in this class, too. I need a second one!”
Blade was back to badgering her. He seemed almost like a child.
“Your second? Who in the world is your first?”
Earnest looked puzzled. There was no way anyone here could be friends with this cheating, back-door-using alleged “student” of—
“You,” Blade said, pointing at a spot around Earnest’s chest.
“Wha—? What? What?!” She put both hands up in a protective pose as she stammered. “…What do you mean, me?!” she asked, face reddening.
“Well, I know your name.”
“Huh? What are you, stupid?”
Earnest was astounded. This idiot thought knowing her name meant they were friends?
“Oh, right—thanks for guiding me to the chancellor’s office. I forgot to thank you earlier.”
“W-well, that was no big deal— Wait, no! Never mind that! Do you have some kind of death wish?!”
Before their squabbling could degenerate any further, someone approached. They both turned to see Sophie standing right beside them.
“Earnest… New recruit… The instructor’s calling for us to assemble.”
Until they heard Sophie’s quiet voice, neither of them had noticed her presence at all. Earnest stopped cold, looking embarrassed like she’d made a mistake. She had grown so distracted by her fight with Blade that she had let someone approach her without realizing. She only had herself to blame. In contrast to her shame, Blade looked genuinely impressed.
“I am Blade!” he said, greeting Sophie with a bright, carefree smile. It was the exact same thing he had said to Claire, Yessica, Clayde, and Kassim in the junior class.
“……”
Sophie met his greeting with silence. She seemed nonplussed as she looked back at him.
“I am Blade!” he repeated, just as before.
“He wants your name,” interjected Earnest. She was afraid he might repeat the greeting indefinitely if she didn’t intervene.
“Is that an order?” Sophie asked with complete seriousness.
“This is kind of how she is,” Earnest explained to Blade.
“I am Blade!”
But the boy wasn’t giving up. Earnest, however, was ready to throw in the towel. She had seen enough.
“…Sophie.”
The light, whisper-like sound came from behind the girl’s scarf. Earnest looked back at her, shocked. It was the first time she had seen Sophie do anything without being ordered.
“Sophie! Great! I am Blade! Nice to meet you!”
Blade reached out with one hand. Sophie looked at it blankly. Apparently, a handshake was going too far. Or more likely, she didn’t even know what the gesture meant.
“Hey!” shouted another classmate. “We gotta assemble!”
At that, Blade, Earnest, and Sophie walked toward the instructor.