Volume 14: The Nine School Competition: Part 10

554 17 2
                                    

"All three made it through the qualifiers..."

Mayumi had returned to First High's tent, in wait of the results of the Speed Shooting qualifiers. It was only then that she had realized that she had left for quite some time. The Speed Shooting qualifier results had been waiting for her.

"You wouldn't say that the freshman girls are especially good this year, would you?"

Eight of the twenty-four players in the qualifiers would move onto the tournament, so having three of the eight in one school was unprecedented, both in the main and rookie competitions.

"Come on, drop the act," Mayumi called out.

She was met with a shrug in return, "So, how is Battle Board going?"

Suzune, though she had memorized it, went through the effort to take out her terminal and check.

"Two boys' races ended with neither passing qualifiers... As for the girls, one got through."

"Oh, so, only one of the boys is left, then." Mayumi murmured, frowning in a somewhat cute way, "Well, I'm sure Mitsui will pull through for the girls, after all, Ah-chan is trying her best for her."

"We may need to put a little more work into fostering our engineers, based on the results." Katsuto held a rather bitter look on his face as he read through the results on his personal terminal.

<><><>

Though the Speed Shooting quarterfinals would be held on four shooting ranges, the matches weren't going to be simultaneous. As three had come from First High, to make sure that multiple people from the same school wouldn't overlap, the times were altered slightly.

Still, compared to the semifinals, the time between each match would be short. With three girls from First High, Tatsuya was going to be pushed to his limits. Or at least he would, if was a normal magician, but this was Tatsuya. After defeating an organization almost single-handily, and, not to mention, also being the world-famous Taurus Silver, handling three girls' CAD's was nothing. The only problem would be managing his time.

"...Tatsuya? Are you all right?"

Though Tatsuya wasn't out of breath or anything, when he came running into the waiting room where Shizuku was, it looked like he was a little out of breath.

"I'm fine," he answered quickly, beginning to check her CAD for the last time before her match.

Shizuku began to stare at him as he checked through the device's monitor, looking for any abnormalities, to which there weren't. After making sure that it was perfect, he looked back at Shizuku.

"As you already know, this one is completely different from what you used in the qualifiers. Though the time is limited, if something is wrong, feel free to tell me, I'll do my best to fix it so you don't need to hesitate."

Shizuku took the CAD and positioned herself into her shooting stance. Once she pressed her finger down onto the trigger a few times, she looked back at Tatsuya, though not showing any form of emotion on her face.

"There's nothing wrong. In fact, it's so perfect it's scary."

She answered in the same confusing way that she had always done. Tatsuya looked at her for a second, trying to comprehend whether there was something wrong or not before stopping himself. Shizuku was the very one who told him that she would not lie after all.

"I see." Though he convinced himself that she wasn't lying, the tension on his face remained, to which Shizuku replied with a determined look, relaxing his face slightly.

The Irregular at Magic High School: Mayumi RouteWhere stories live. Discover now