“You did it! Fourteen and a half seconds, Allen! You finally broke into the quarter-minute rankings!” Al declared, brandishing the stopwatch he’d borrowed from Fey—Class 1-A’s very own magical craftswoman—for all to see and sparking off a round of cheering from the male population of the group.
“Hell yeah!”
“That was amazing, Allen!”
“All hail Allen Rovene, the king of sliding!”
“Boys... They’re impossible to understand,” Fey said with a sigh, eyeing said boys—who were currently preparing for the next time trial—bemusedly. “What could they possibly find enjoyable about such a thing?” Shaking her head, she took another sip of tea.
Even just attempting to conquer Allen’s slide took a great deal of courage; actually completing it also required delicate control over one’s magic and movements. Of course, Fey and the other girls had already completed a run of the course without going out of bounds and were now enjoying afternoon tea on the terrace in front of the cabin. Unlike their usual gatherings, however, they had no fancy cookies or cakes to accompany their tea, only the snacks they’d brought. Unfortunately, the range on offer consisted of salted caramels so briny they made one’s mouth pucker, high-calorie chocolate of which the only discernible flavor was “extremely sweet,” and other similarly disappointing tidbits.
“Honestly! I think I’ve lost years off my life just trying to keep up with Allen’s whims... I assumed he had his own reasons for being so set on us coming to the snow, but he’s just making it up as he goes along again!” agreed Kate, nibbling on a piece of chocolate with a grimace. She was exhausted—they all were. Sliding down the course was difficult enough, but the return journey wasn’t any easier. With no way to safely get their snowshoe-esque skis down to the bottom of the slope afterward, they’d had to forgo wearing them for the uphill treks, instead shuffling through the deep snow in their regular boots. This had unsurprisingly been an uphill battle in a quite literal sense of the word, and had left even the elite Academy students utterly drained.
“Well, I think I kinda get what he’s trying to do...” Stella mused. “The faster you’re moving, the harder it is to maintain precise mana control—we all know that. You can use Strengthening Magic to boost your speed, but your magical manipulation suffers in return. But with Allen’s slide, our bodies are basically moving on their own, right? I didn’t get it until I tried it for myself, but...” She shrugged. “It’s a way to let us experience the kind of magic people much more talented than us can use. He must have been planning it for a while—I mean, he knew exactly how he wanted it to look, you know? There’s no way it was just some random idea he came up with on the spot.” She folded her arms behind her head and rocked backward in her chair, the picture of confidence. “In other words, it might have seemed like a random whim, but in reality, everything’s been planned out for a long time—just like always.”
Upon hearing this, Alice—the sole Class 1-B member of the group—turned pale. “I didn’t...” She suddenly stood up, sending her chair skidding across the icy pavers. “I’m going to take another turn!” After downing her tea in one large gulp, she turned and ran toward the slope.
Jewel giggled daintily. “How in the world did he come up with such an outlandish idea this time, I wonder? Oh, Allen... I fear I’ll never understand him.”
They all turned to look at the slope once more, just in time to see Pisces arrive at the starting point.
“I’m not gonna lose to you, Allen! Behold—my secret weapon!” Pisces cried, waving a silver serving tray (assumedly pilfered from the cabin’s dining room) above his head.
Allen, who’d just completed the return trek himself, grinned. “Using tools to enhance your speed, huh? No wonder you’re doing so well in the Magicar Club... No, you can’t go down like that, Pisces. You’ve gotta go headfirst,” he said confidently. The suggestion was based on a vague recollection of Olympic skeleton racers from his previous life, though of course he didn’t explain that to Pisces.
“Are you serious, Allen?! No way!”
“Dead serious! Look, if you go down feet first, you’ll definitely fall off midway! Or something... Anyway, hurry up! Can’t you see the line behind us?”
Pisces groaned. “Is this what you meant about ‘the tortoise becoming the hare’ or something? Ugh... Okay, I’ll do it. Watch me, Allen! Here I go!” With that, he threw himself onto the tray and shot off down the course. As it turned out, the addition of a tray both increased one’s speed and reduced their resistance drastically, and Pisces went flying out of the course at the very first corner.
“Pisces!” Jewel was already reaching for her scepter when she saw Pisces emerge from a deep drift and clamber to his feet as though nothing had happened. He tilted his head toward the sky, and then—
“That... That was awesome!” he yelled.
The spectating boys burst into laughter.
“I want a go! Pisces, lend me the tray!”
“There’s gotta be more, right? I’ll go look!”
“What was all that crap about earlier? Tortoises don’t even have hair!”
Jewel sat back down, smiling wryly, and took another sip of tea.
Fey grinned. “Boys... They’re all idiots, aren’t they?”
The other girls nodded in unison.