“Mi Xiaoliu.”
“Mi Xiaoliu!”
Two calls in a row, backed by a knock on the desk, roused the scrawny little boy who’d been dozing face-down on his desk.
The rest of the class turned to look, eyes bright with gleeful schadenfreude.
Sleeping in class was routine.
Getting caught sleeping in class was routine too.
But when a teacher could walk all the way from the front of the room to right in front of your face without a single person warning you, it meant either your deskmate was a rotten friend or you simply weren’t well-liked.
Or, of course, that the deskmate himself was one of those nobody liked.
As a transfer student, sleeping straight through the homeroom assembly on his very first day was hardly going to leave anyone with a good impression—even if the class’s whole opinion of homeroom assembly amounted to nothing more than “at least it’s not another boring lesson.”
“Are you feeling unwell?” The male school doctor in the white coat knit his brows.
Up at the lectern, the teacher set his textbook down without a word and waited for the doctor to deal with it.
When someone who practically only ever surfaced in the infirmary showed up in a classroom, it never meant anything good.
The boy stared silently at the doctor through the thick square-framed lenses that had barely fit into their frames, saying nothing.
A gaze empty of any emotion—hollow and clear, two words that seemed to contradict each other yet both fit him perfectly.
When he looked over, the doctor found himself taking an involuntary step back.
Not because of any unscientific nonsense like a shudder of the frame and eyes blazing with domineering menace.
During the enrollment physical, this utterly ordinary-looking boy had, like a madman, snatched the syringe needle out of the doctor’s hand and held its tip barely a centimeter from his own eyeball.
And before that moment, apart from being taciturn, nothing about him had seemed the least bit off—as if that sudden outburst had been no more than a passing whim.
Who isn’t afraid of a lunatic?
“He just ran an unbelievable thousand meters”—about six-tenths of a mile—”in a whole hour.
He’s so worn out he doesn’t even have the strength to talk,” the blonde girl with glasses in the coveted window seat answered the doctor in a sardonic drawl.
The words weren’t kind, but at that moment she was the only one willing to speak up for the boy at all.
The male doctor nodded.
It wasn’t corporal punishment that had put the boy through laps of the field.
Every incoming student had to undergo a physical covering every aspect of them, so the school administration could gauge each student’s physical condition, mental condition, and the strength and danger of their esper ability.
This particular transfer student was the single biggest problem student of the intake—at least, every teacher assigned to his physical was convinced of it.
He’d been left gasping for breath before finishing even half a lap on the field, had gotten only halfway through the rest of the fitness tests, and had flatly refused to cooperate with anything like blood draws, urine samples, or chest measurements.
If his looks and clothes hadn’t so clearly said otherwise, you’d have taken him for some pampered young master.
Anyone else this uncooperative would have had no way of enrolling at all—might even have been thrown into the containment facility.
But this esper happened to fall into the category with the lowest danger rating, no risk of losing control, and genuine value to medical research, and Federation law granted such people a certain degree of privilege.
“Your physical report is in.
Get more exercise once you’re back home—a strong body will do your ability some good.
And this.” He set a stack of examination reports down in front of Mi Xiaoliu, then produced a badge shaped like a red letter C.
“Since you won’t cooperate with the physical, we can only treat you as Danger Level C.
From now on you’re to wear this somewhere clearly visible whenever you go out.
Not wearing it, or wearing it somewhere out of sight, counts as breaking the law—and I imagine plenty of people would be happy to report you anonymously for the five-thousand-Mila reward.
I know I would.”
At the sight of that badge, the class finally withdrew their gleeful stares.
“Hey, man, why don’t we just head back and redo the physical?
It’s no trouble,” someone offered.
But the boy called Mi Xiaoliu paid no attention.
He quietly reached out and took the fist-sized red badge, nothing behind his glasses but bewilderment.
“If you want to take it again, you can come to the infirmary anytime.
Just ask for the infirmary’s little prince—Teacher Yan.” The doctor sounded resigned.
“The next physical is mandatory anyway.
Sooner or later you’ll have to do it.”
“Teacher Prince?” Mi Xiaoliu read the title aloud.
It was a voice that seemed not yet to have gone through puberty—yet its owner was sitting in a high-school seat.
“My surname is Yan.” The pimple-faced teacher answered flatly, then turned and left the classroom without looking back.
“…”
Ignoring the murmurs of the students around him, the boy lowered his head and stared in confusion at the report in front of him.
Name: Mi Xiaoliu
Sex: Male
Age: 13
Place of Birth: City of the Fallen
Height: 156 cm (about 5’1″)
Weight: [blank]
Vision: 800-degree myopia
Blood Type: [blank]
Ability: Self-Healing (self-reported; unverified)
Ability Level: [blank]
Mental State: Aggressive
Danger Level: C (provisional, due to non-cooperation)
…
More than half the fields were blank.
“Bro, you’re only thirteen?
No wonder you couldn’t finish the boys’ thousand-meter.
You skip a grade to get here?” The little blond kid at the deskmate seat to his right leaned rudely over Mi Xiaoliu’s shoulder to peer down at his information.
Rude as it looked, ever since Mi Xiaoliu had accepted that badge, this was the only person in the whole class who dared come near him.
“When he came by just now I called out to you, but you were dead asleep and wouldn’t get up.”
“…” Silence.
“Little bro, you’ll never make friends being this cold.” The blond kid snapped his fingers with a resigned air, and a faint little flame flickered into being from nowhere.
“Name’s Jim.
My ability’s Fire Ignition.
What’s yours?”
“I didn’t call.” The bespectacled boy finally spoke, at the same time leaning sharply back to dodge the little flame in the other boy’s palm.
For a flame no stronger than a cigarette lighter’s, the reaction was rather an overreaction.
“Master, he’s asking for your name,” a crisp, childlike voice piped up inside Mi Xiaoliu’s head.
“Name?”
“It’s the three characters on the first line of that sheet in front of you.
I mean the three after the colon,” the childlike voice went on helpfully.
“Mi Xiaoliu?” He took out the sheet and read out his own name, puzzled.
“Good name, but it’s a mouthful.
From now on I’ll just call you Old Six,” Jim decided cheerfully.
He was lying.
The name was awful.
“…”
“Old Six, those glasses are something else.
I always thought the kind so reflective you can’t see the eyes behind them only existed in anime.”
“Old Six, why aren’t you in middle school at thirteen?
Transfer students these days are wild.”
“Old Six, what’s your ability?”
“Let’s swap contacts.”
“Aren’t you curious who’s supposed to sit on your left?
That’s the school heartthrob.
Tons of girls want the seat next to him but never dare ask—and now you’ve gone and taken it.”
“…”
Right up until the bell rang, Mi Xiaoliu never answered him once.
Even through the ten-minute break he just sat quietly in his seat, head down, staring into space.
Rebuffed, Jim gave up and slumped over his own desk to catch up on sleep.
The pudgy teacher at the front kept a stiff face as he addressed the students.
He seemed to be a new one, and this was his first time in this class, so, as many subject teachers did, he’d opened his first lesson either by chatting to warm everyone up or by saying something unpleasant to establish authority.
This one had clearly chosen the latter—half the period spent talking with a cold face and cracking cold, unfunny jokes, and yet a few students down below would still oblige with a couple of laughs to ease the tension.
No troublemaker rose up to challenge him; almost everyone cooperated and listened quietly.
Everyone except Mi Xiaoliu, who sat head down without so much as glancing his way.
The sight made the portly teacher frown despite himself.
At thirteen, plenty of kids did like to put on a cold, aloof act—the so-called chuunibyou.
No bandages wrapped around his arm, no strange symbols drawn on it, so the case looked mild enough.
But Mi Xiaoliu wasn’t putting on any aloof act.
It was just that, to a brain currently about as blank as if it were plugged into the shared Malphite network, even the portly teacher rolling up a trouser leg to flash a stockinged thigh and throwing a wink his way couldn’t have stirred a flicker of feeling.
He hadn’t crossed over from another world, nor been reborn into this one.
His mind was simply blank—no memories at all, not even any memory of how he’d come to be here.
His examination report and personal details sat right in front of him, and he didn’t even know how to read them.
All he could do was follow the voice in his head, fumbling clumsily to pin the badge to his chest—and in the process he accidentally cut his finger on the pin.
The wound closed almost instantly.
Not a drop of blood spilled out.
“Let me introduce myself first.
I’m Sasha, the System sprite.
Master’s obviously lost his memory again—poor thing.”
The voice in his head was back.
“Times like these are exactly where I come in handy.
Master, please silently say the word ‘System.’ Silently means saying it in your heart, all right?”
Mi Xiaoliu did.
A cheap, third-rate browser-game interface materialized out of thin air in front of him.
Most of its functions were greyed out.
The only thing in the main menu that still had any color was the roulette wheel in the center.
Sasha: “Let me explain.
Ninety-nine percent of the prizes from the draw feature have been remade by me into Master’s own Memory Fragments.
The cost of drawing also comes from Master’s real-world money—it’s deducted first from your bank card and other digital balances, and only then from physical cash.
Master’s total savings right now are 3,999.85—”
Ignoring her, Mi Xiaoliu reached out and tapped the wheel.
The motion brushed the braid of the girl sitting in front of him, earning an indignant glare.
Three buttons appeared beneath the wheel: Single Draw, Ten-Pull, Draw All.
[System Note: On the first day after memory loss, draws are 80% off (20 Mila each).
Common-sense memories make up 90% of the pool.]
Mi Xiaoliu tapped Single Draw—no special reason, just that the option happened to be listed first.
He poked the girl in front of him in the nose.
Furious, she wanted to hit him, but the C on Mi Xiaoliu’s chest made her think better of it.
[Memory Fragment 10086: The heart is a vital organ.
If the heart stops beating, a person dies.]
Just one piece of common sense, and yet it filled him with a warmth that came from somewhere deep inside—a few grains more reassurance than blankness.
Like a game’s rookie receiving his first sword and finally seeing the attack button light up.
“Master, I’d suggest you first draw two thousand Mila’s worth, and save the rest—”
Having tasted a bit of sweetness, Mi Xiaoliu tapped Draw All.
Sasha: “??”
A wave of nauseating, chaotic dizziness slammed into his brain, and he couldn’t help clutching his head.
The classmates who noticed regarded him with the look one reserves for chuunibyou.
[Memory Fragments drawn…]
[Language and writing.]
[The police number is 110.]
[Money can be used to buy things.]
[Summer is hot; winter is cold.]
[A married couple’s wedding dates are, coincidentally, the very same day.]
[If a person is killed, they die.]
[Ability users (mutants) run the risk of losing control.]
…
[Current bank card balance: 19.85]
Filled up all at once—so full, so satisfying.
He’d gained a fair amount of common sense, including the entry [Ignoring someone who speaks to you is very rude], which described exactly the him of a moment ago, when he hadn’t responded to Jim’s words at all.
He hurriedly reached over and shook Jim, who’d just dozed off across his desk, awake.
Then he gave him a nod.
“Mm.
Got it.”
Jim: “???”
Is there something wrong with this transfer student’s head?
“Master!
How are you supposed to live with no money?!” Only now did Sasha, who’d been stunned silent for a good while, cry out.
Mi Xiaoliu opened his mouth.
It was only after he’d sunk every last coin into memory-drawing that he’d recovered the piece of common sense that “money is important.”
Just then, the portly teacher, who’d been ignored for so long, rapped the lectern with a cold face.
“I know I’ve just come to this class, and some of you with decent abilities might be feeling a little defiant.
I won’t name the student in the fourth row, second from my left as I look out—”
And then, right in front of that teacher, Mi Xiaoliu took out an obsolete button phone and dialed 110.
“I’d like to report a crime.”
A large sum of money, movement unaccounted for.
“…Student, why don’t the two of us both calm down a little?”
The portly teacher’s voice had softened considerably.