[36] A Bridge That Cannot Be Crossed (3)
'Sorry. We have to eat too.'
The boy squeezed his eyes shut and cast a teleport toward Shirone.
If they collided, fatal injuries would be unavoidable.
"Ugh!"
A frightened groan escaped him, but the blow he'd braced for never came.
When he opened his eyes, Shirone was still at his side.
'He changed direction.'
Avoiding was better than dying together, but giving up distance meant the win was out of reach.
The girl and the boy fell with satisfied expressions, and Mark seized Shirone's lead.
'Damn...!'
Shirone, whose compulsive need to repeat the teleport had been broken by the earlier evasion, grit his teeth and focused to raise the tempo of his teleportation.
"Weren't those kids moving weird just now?"
A voice came from the advanced students.
"I felt it too. Maybe they got tangled trying too hard? They wouldn't actually try to collide, would they?"
"No, they did it on purpose."
Students from Class Five turned to look.
The thin, metallic voice belonged to Merkodain Iruki of Class Five.
He was the one who had given Shirone advice earlier in the Image Zone—bony, with uneven eyes and jagged teeth.
"How can you be so sure? In a case like that you might have a hunch, but unless you were involved, you wouldn't know."
Iruki spread his palm and rapped his fist against it as he spoke.
"One person blocks the lane while another strikes from the flank. It's a brilliant tactic to jam both the instantaneity of teleportation and its spatial leap at once. If Shirone hadn't dodged, the match would have ended right then. Of course, if it were me I'd calculate the equations of motion and slip out at a hair's-breadth timing."
The classmates turned their attention back to the testing field.
'What a smug bastard.'
Meanwhile, as the gap between Mark and Shirone widened, Shirone grew increasingly uneasy.
Three hundred and fifty meters remained.
At the halfway point, all the other participants except Shirone and Mark had been eliminated.
'I won! I won!'
As soon as Mark was certain he was first, a chill ran through him.
Nothing blocked his way, and despite casting nearly forty teleports he felt no fatigue.
'I'm different today. I'm the one who will pass!'
Thoughts of Class Five's rapid promotion, envious classmates, and the humiliation of Class Six seniors flashed through his mind.
"Ha ha ha! I'm first!"
Mark pushed the tempo of his teleports, and the gap with Shirone widened even faster.
'Then—'
Shirone's rhythm suddenly quickened and the ripping sound of teleportation echoed like drumbeats.
The students' excitement hit a fever pitch.
"Shirone's catching up! This is the turning point!"
"Mark! Faster! Faster, faster!"
Then Mark's vision changed strangely.
The bars of the Uncrossable Bridge bent in geometric curves and lunged toward him at terrifying speed.
If a single toe caught, broken bones would be the least of it—his center of gravity would collapse and he'd tumble.
-Warning. Warning. Activating Uncrossable Bridge mechanism. Level 10. Level 10.
The advanced students froze.
"Level 10?"
The Uncrossable Bridge's maximum difficulty.
Even the upper classes in the advanced division had never seen the bars warp into such a monstrous form.
"What on earth is going on? How did the mechanism suddenly activate?!"
The teachers were thrown into confusion.
Not only had the safety locks been disengaged, the highest-difficulty trap had been triggered.
"Where's Teacher Sade? He went to the engine room!"
"Principal, what do we do? The advancement exam—"
Alpheas clicked his tongue as he stared at the twisted bar about to crash down on Shirone and Mark.
He knew what resolve students brought to graduation exams and usually preferred to respect their will, but Level 10 on the Uncrossable Bridge was different.
'This test has no discriminating power. Kids at their level can't get through it.'
Alpheas said bitterly.
"Cancel the exam and deactivate the mechanism."
No sooner had he spoken than a beam of light shot up into the sky above the testing field.
Shiina had gone to find Sade in the engine room.
* * *
Meanwhile, unaware of the situation on the field, Sade angrily puffed as he approached the engine-room door.
"Damn it! Whoever did this will pay!"
No sane staffer would disable the mechanism—students were the likely culprits.
"Who the hell—!"
He yanked at the doorknob, but it clicked; it was locked from the inside.
"You bastard!"
Opening his Spirit Zone, Sade sensed someone sitting with their back to the door inside.
He sparked a heat aura in his hand.
"Open up. I'm going to cast Fire Strike. If you don't open, I'll blast you."
"It doesn't matter. No—please, do it, teacher."
It was Maria's voice—unexpected.
She wasn't his assigned student, but she had attended the school before Sade was posted there, so he wasn't mistaken.
"Maria? What are you doing?"
"I'm sorry, teacher. Don't forgive me."
"Open the door. At least show your face and we can talk."
"I'm going to be expelled now, aren't I? Or will I go to prison?"
"No, Maria. I don't know your circumstances, but I'll listen. Just open the door."
"It doesn't matter. I don't want to live. I just want to die."
Sade extinguished the flames.
"Hah. Fine. If you don't want to come out, then don't."
Given Maria's recent behavior, it was clear she wasn't thinking straight; breaking the door down would be pointless.
Sade leaned back against the iron door and looked up at the sky above Alpheas School of Magic—the same sky he'd found tiresome in childhood.
Not ordering her out had calmed Maria down a little.
"Teacher."
"What?"
"Do you hate me?"
"I don't hate women."
It was one of Sade's odd little beliefs, distinct from simple fondness.
"Why is the world so unfair?"
"Hah! You don't like unfairness? It's rare to be born as pretty as you."
"Teacher, you—called a genius mage—don't know what it's like to have no talent. Even if you want to do well, despair comes first. It feels like nothing will ever work. Do you know how hopeless that is?"
"...I do."
Maria turned her face toward the iron door.
"Teacher?"
"I graduated at twenty-two, so I've been a teacher for four years now. When you entered school I must have been in the graduating class. You know I'm from here, right?"
"Yes."
"Think back. Have you ever heard anyone say a student named Sade attended this school?"
She realized she had no memory of it at all.
Even Shirone, who had been the subject of gossip as soon as he enrolled, was an unusual case.
"No. Never heard of him."
"That's to be expected. My grades were mid-to-low, no talent, no influential family—I was always out getting into fights. Whenever I moved up a class I still ended up spending the full two years for it. In the graduating class I fell three years behind. Ha! Compared to you my situation probably looked a bit better, though."
Sade pictured Maria's sulky face as he spoke.
"But in the end, isn't it the same? Unless you're going to be the best, everyone gets broken eventually. I was the same. I made it to the graduating class but failed the exams again and again."
"But how did you—"
"Become a respected teacher? It's all luck. I can say I did my best, but I didn't do as much as others, and I got tired of clawing to beat someone else. Then one day someone told me this."
Sade remembered the words.
"They said I couldn't win the competition because I didn't want to win."
Maria mouthed the words quietly.
"Maria, you don't have to beat anyone. If you love magic, that's enough. There are people in this world who don't want to compete—people like me."
The ten-year-old girl who'd entered school for love of magic was a wreck nine years later.
"After I met that person, my life changed. Thinking back, it's kind of bizarre. To say something like that after becoming a teacher."
"Was that person your teacher?"
"Yes. Principal Alpheas—my master."
Maria whipped her head around.
"What? The principal?"
"After that day I became his official disciple and received private instruction. A tremendous privilege. Thanks to that my life opened up. Being taught by a famed mage on the continent—even a scruff like me got called a genius. How's that? Aren't you jealous? Life is luck. Luck! Ha ha ha!"
Maria fell into gloom again.
"What I'm trying to say is the world is unfair. Some are born with talent, some hurl themselves into competition like bulldogs. But even people with no talent who hate competition—people like me—sometimes get miracles. That's why people keep hope, right?"
Sade brushed off his clothes and turned away.
"Miracles can come to anyone. It's a waste to give up now—you've already spent too much time. Try a little longer. Just a little."
Maria buried her face in her knees.
"Should I spend my life waiting for a miracle that may never come? What if it doesn't? Then what happens to me?"
"What are you talking about, Maria?"
Sade placed his hand on the iron door and smiled.
"Look— a miracle already came to you now."
Tears welled in Maria's eyes.
"Try again with me. I may not have surged ahead, but don't judge yourself yet. Maybe you were unlucky. Maybe the method was wrong. School lessons aren't efficient for everyone. Let me have another shot at teaching you. I'll make you a mage."
Maria covered her face with both hands.
"Teacher, really? Can I do it too?"
"You can. If magic means everything to you, you should never have to give up."
There was a clunk. Maria opened the lock with swollen, red eyes and hurried out, shouting.
"Teacher! Hurry—the mechanism... the mechanism is—"
"Huh? Mechanism?"
Even a seven-hundred-meter leap wouldn't take that long with teleportation.
By now the test should be in its final stage; with no news so far, Sade assumed the teachers had handled the exam safely.
At that moment, a flash fell with a sharp crack, betraying his hope.
"Teacher Sade! What are you doing right now?!"
Shiina barreled in, eyes blazing with a mix of anger and urgency.
She'd been about to grab Sade by the collar when she spotted Maria and froze.
"Maria? What are you doing here?"
Sade asked.
"Why? Is something wrong?"
Shiina shouted again.
"Quickly, deactivate the mechanism! The Uncrossable Bridge's difficulty has been set to Level 10!"
"What?"
So they hadn't just turned off the safety—they'd set the highest difficulty?
Recalling Maria's words, Sade realized it was true and scrambled back toward the engine room.
At that moment another streak of light bent and dove in.
Etella, who had just teleported in, spotted Shiina and Sade and sprinted over, breathless.
"Teacher! It's terrible, it's terrible!"
Because a massive trap really had been activated, Shiina was white with fear.
"Why? Do you mean there's been an accident—?"
Etella shouted, still shaken.
"Shirone... Shirone!"