Thanks to that tactic, the students were no longer inclined to be lazy. Some of them did try to run away, though.
Working in constant silence, the students fighting on the front lines of the paper sea had all grown hopeless—except for Shilto, who was enjoying herself, and Reyes, who carried on in her disinterested manner.
But one among them simply couldn’t stop his mind from turning: Kunon.
Kunon was thinking. He kept doing so even after being zapped several times. Regardless of whether it was insolence or tenacity that drove him, he just kept thinking.
Was there really no way to escape this misery?
No—Kunon knew there wasn’t.
In the end, he simply didn’t have enough credits. He couldn’t afford to run away. With his credits at stake, he had no choice but to participate in the cleanup.
That meant his best hope was finishing the sorting as soon as possible. And so he needed an efficient organization method.
The simplest solution was probably to get more people to help. But since most of the documents that needed sorting contained other people’s confidential information, that wasn’t an option, either.
The students of Building 11 had all agreed to share their reports with one another after realizing they could no longer keep them secret. But that was a choice made out of necessity. They would never have done so otherwise.
“Bael,” Kunon called out to his senior, who was sorting papers nearby.
“Shhh. Don’t talk to me… We’ll get zapped again.”
Bael’s reply was quiet. The mere act of talking was enough to earn a punishment; it was like they were in a work camp. Their current situation was surprisingly similar to one, in fact.
“When do you think we’ll be done if we keep working at this pace?”
“Shut up. You’re going to get us zapped.”
It seemed that Bael’s will had already been broken.
Kunon certainly understood why. The lightning was quite powerful. The pain, shock, and heat were fascinating and unlike anything Kunon had experienced before.
When the sorting work was over, he really wanted to talk to Shilto about her lightning magic. But that would have to wait.
He had wanted to pick Bael’s brain, but the older boy had been broken by their strict supervisor.
With no other choice, Kunon went back to thinking by himself.
It was now day five.
Kunon, as always, was still thinking about document sorting methods and ways to differentiate between documents.
A few ideas had come to mind. However, he knew even before attempting any of them that they would be difficult to implement. Simply put, he’d written them off as obvious failures from the start.
Kunon had used A-ori and A-rubu in all sorts of ways up to that point, but he’d never used them to sort documents.
Though he hadn’t experimented much with either A-oruvi or A-eura yet, he was pretty sure neither spell would prove useful. He couldn’t think of a way to use them that made sense.
“Now!”
“Run! Hurry!”
“Shilto! Runners!”
“When will you learn? You can’t escape my lightning.”
Auuughhhhh!
Kunon kept thinking.
Escaping Shilto was impossible. He needed those credits, so giving up was impossible, too.
And yet, an efficient way to sort documents simply would not materialize in his head.
Nevertheless, he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Perhaps, in a way, getting lost in thought was Kunon’s own little way of escaping.
It was now day seven.
All the while, Kunon was constantly thinking. And at last, he hit upon a single idea that was not so easily dismissed.
It came to him upon hearing the screams of his fellow prisoners.
Two of their number made regular escape attempts. Several times a day they tried to run but were zapped and brought back by Shilto. One was a boy, the other a girl. Kunon didn’t know whether they were a couple.
Instead, what grabbed his attention was the difference in their shrieks. The tone, the way they yelled, the length of the screams—it was all different. In other words, the sound varied from individual to individual.
It was possible that the effects of the lightning also differed between men and women, but that wasn’t what Kunon felt like investigating at the moment.
The key was individuality. When it came to documents, maybe that would correspond to paper size…?
Many of the notes scattered around the room were on the inexpensive standardized sheets the school provided. Anyone who applied would receive them. That meant probably around 90 percent of the documents in question were the same size. Sorting them that way wouldn’t make things much easier.
The variously sized notes and memos could be separated out, but those were only notes. They were sad little scraps of paper whose purpose was served as soon as they were turned into clean, finished documents. Efficiency-wise, sorting out just the notes wasn’t very meaningful.
And anyway, they had already been at it for seven days. Due to Shilto’s hard work, progress had reached approximately 50 percent. The end was in sight.
In spite of himself, Kunon tried to find some hope in that thought but quickly retreated to the bleaker places in his mind.
They were only halfway done. With his sanity restored, he realized they would still be sorting for another week or so. It was too early to be optimistic.
He turned his thoughts back to individuality.
Kunon thought and thought. What individuality was there within this sea of documents? If he could figure that out, maybe he could come up with an efficient sorting method.
It happened on day ten.
“This is it…”
After hours of endless, desperate thinking, Kunon finally arrived at an answer.
He was holding a document. It was a single page from an experiment report about using magic to make beverages that paired well with meat dishes. Kunon was intrigued by the topic as a bacon lover, but he set his interests aside for the moment.
He did so because of the handwriting on the document.
The page was written in a rather distinct hand that Kunon couldn’t decipher at first glance. Reading it properly would require focus. At the same time, he tried to look at the paper as little as possible, since he would be zapped if he was caught staring at it.
However…
This was it—the solution. The answer Kunon was searching for had been there in his hands the whole time.
“Sorting by letters… If I can do that…”
There was a way.
Separating the papers by size was inefficient, but if he used letters…
One of the compound versions of Kunon’s A-ori spell—one from his arsenal of original variations, in other words—was used to trace fixed shapes.
The concept was similar to his magical perception, which allowed him to read books via touch. Typically, using that method, he couldn’t get a clear reading of anything that wasn’t close enough to feel with his hands. And so when he wanted to parse words and pictures within a reasonable distance, he traced over the surface with water.
The water contained some of Kunon’s magic power. Using his awareness of that power, he could identify and therefore understand what the water was tracing. Essentially, it was water-assisted magical perception.
For days and days, as he toiled and suffered, Kunon had thought about how he could achieve his goal of sorting the documents. He hadn’t been able to come up with anything, but he kept clinging to the possibility—probably because he knew that, somewhere in his head, there was a solution with potential.
He didn’t need to separate the notes based on their paper. He needed to focus on the writing.
Writing was unique. Given letters as idiosyncratic as the ones in front of him, Kunon would, at the very least, be able to distinguish them from other people’s handwriting right away.
He wouldn’t really know if it was possible until he tried it, but… But if he could, then this nightmarish sorting task would be over in no time.
He wanted to test the idea immediately.
“Shil— Nng, yeow!”
As Kunon turned to make his case to Shilto, she zapped him.
He yelped in his own characteristic way.
“Why aren’t your hands moving? We’re finally nearing the end. Don’t get lazy now.”
Kunon knew there was sense in her words. But, he thought, as faint white smoke wafted up from his head and clothes, you could at least hear me out first.
“Sort them via magic?”
Kunon got zapped three times, but he did eventually get Shilto to listen to his idea.
“I should be able to do it in theory,” he said.
He smelled vaguely of smoke, but the odds of success looked favorable.
“But isn’t it a bit late? I’m pretty sure we’ll be done in just a couple more days.”
“Don’t you think that’s a little uncalled for?! No matter how lovely a lady you are, possessing both severity and kindness in equal measure, there are some things you shouldn’t say!”
“I…I see…”
The only thing on Kunon’s mind was bringing his time as a conscripted laborer to an end as quickly as possible. For someone to deny him that was unconscionable!
He wasn’t looking at how much work was left. He didn’t want to see it. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t see it anyway.
By now, Kunon was eager to pounce on anything that would help them finish sooner, even if it was only by half a day.