The Sorcerer’s Receptionist: Volume 1, page 3
part #1 of The Sorcerer’s Receptionist Series
Our competition would be decided based on how hard we worked in our studies, not just on luck. If the gods truly existed, this must have been a test made for me.
There is no way I’m going to lose to him.
I overheard some girls talking. “Ah ah, how uncivilized. At this rate I’ll never be able to get any closer to the Prince. Not that I care,” said one of them.
“Which is it? Do you care or not?!” said a girl next to her.
“As if you could ever get close with the Prince!” the other girl shouted back.
The third prince of Doran is also a student in this classroom. His name is Zenon Bal Doran. If Rockmann could be called a pretty boy, the Prince is like a man’s man. With black hair and black eyes, even his eyebrows look manly. Make no mistake, both of them have nice faces, but if I had to say which I preferred, it would be the Prince. His closely-fitted black military outfit makes him look gallantly dashing.
Perhaps this is a Golden Age of aristocrat kids or something, but this year it would seem that quite a few powerful families have children beginning school here, so the girls are practically screeching with excitement.
Not that I’m a part of that nonsense.
The Prince who’s the focus of all the commotion sits in the seat in front of me. The Prince’s fans, unlike Rockmann’s, tend to admire him from a distance. When your object of admiration is a prince, it must be rather difficult to just go up and talk to him. And I’m not sure if blondie here next to me is his guard or something, but he’s always with the Prince.
Even those who didn’t know the two of them that well would think them to just be normal friends from the way that they make casual conversation with each other. What a prince and a commoner actually talk about with each other isn’t that interesting, as it turns out, so I couldn’t recall much of what they ever said to each other.
I overheard yet another girl talking. “What’s up with that girl? She’s next to Sir Alois; the least she could do is make some conversation.”
“She’s the one who really needs to learn her place, in my opinion.”
Dammit, I will be the one laughing at you all someday!
Just you wait!
＊ ＊ ＊ ＊
It’s been half a year since I came to this school.
My lessons here have been rather fulfilling, and as someone who wants to study a lot, I am quite grateful for that.
It’s not just one teacher who teaches us. Different teachers instruct us in their own specialties in a very easy-to-understand manner, and more than that they all know their specialty extremely well, so they always answer questions, no matter how detailed they might be.
Yeah, I’m really glad I entered this school.
“Morning, Nikeh.”
“Morning, Nanalie. Your hair is all a mess. A girl should pay more attention to such things!”
She takes me over to the white washbasin and begins brushing my hair. Compared to me, who’s just rolled out of bed, she’s already gotten dressed for the day. Her yellow one-piece dress is quite bright.
I look at her face in the mirror. “Thanks.”
This commoner girl, Nikeh, is one of my roommates in the dormitory. She has pretty blond hair, and she’s more “beautiful” than she is “cute.” But it seems like she actually wants to be called cute, because she usually has her hair done up in two pigtails.
No matter what she looks like, that part of her is cute, in my opinion.
We were awkward around each other the first time that we met, but as six months passed we naturally began to feel more at ease with each other (after all, we are sharing a room). Now we’re almost at the stage where we’re friends with all of the other commoner kids at school.
Just like how we don’t change classrooms or seats for all six years at this school, it seems like we won’t be changing rooms or roommates either, and so I am quite relieved to be able to get along with her. As you might expect, because we’re both commoners we have a connection to bond over, and while our classrooms may be different, we both share the same goal, or something like that.
It of course goes without saying that our goal is to “overthrow the aristocracy.”
All of us commoners place our hands over our hearts and affirm that solitary goal, as firm and unwavering as the northern star.
“What’s this, Nikeh is playing dorm mother againnnn?”
The other girl who shares our room, Benjamine, comes over to the washbasin, running her hands through her beautiful, wavy red hair.
She’s the kind of girl that shows a lot of skin. You can see quite a bit of her legs, only barely covered up by some green cloth draped around her waist. She looks like an older sister, and that’s how she feels to me. Her legs are slender and she’s pretty.
We’ve been spending our time together in this one room ever since we entered the girls’ dorm. In the dorm, the aristocrats are separated from the commoners, and so me, Nikeh, and Benjamine are all, of course, commoners.
But just because we’ve been separated doesn’t mean our rooms are any different. There are other aristocratic girls in the same building and on the same floor as us, so it just seems like they don’t have the commoners and aristocrats room together.
I think it’s the right thing to do.
“Nanalie, instead of spending all of your time studying, it’d be better if you practiced being more feminine.”
Benjamine, shut up.
“Anyway you two, we need to hurry if we’re gonna eat breakfast in the Great Hall.”
“No way, is it already that time?”
I remove Nikeh’s hands from my head upon hearing that.
“But I haven’t finished combing,” she complained, but I ran my fingers through my hair and felt like it had become nice and smooth enough for me to be satisfied. My hair’s not completely black—it has some dark brown mixed in with it—but thanks to Nikeh’s efforts it had become nice and shiny.
The best things to have in life are friends who have all the skills a woman should have.
“Mmmmm, delicious.”
We walk over to the Great Hall.
The only reason it was called the “Great” dining hall was because it was large. During breakfast time, a lot of students from different grade levels mixed together here, from the senior sixth years to us first years, so it was the perfect size to hold so many people.
The food was served buffet style, where you could take what you liked, put it on your plate, and then sit wherever you wanted. The dining tables were the standard rectangular shape, but no longer than three tails (one tail was approximately the length of an adult man’s arm), and several were lined up nicely.
We piled rice and vegetables on our plates and sat at an empty table near the doors of the Great Hall. The ceiling was made up of glass panes, so we were able to see the sky above the island quite clearly. The spaciousness of it all was wonderful.
“Benjamine! I picked that out!”
“It’s because you eat so slow that it always turns out like thiiiis!”
“You thief!”
“Hey, quit spitting all over me!”
I take some of the fried bunny-bird and stab it with a sharp utensil. It’s one of my favorite foods. A “bunny-bird” is what we call the blue birds with long ears. The reason their feathers are blue is because they used to be hunted quite fiercely by humans and other animals, and so in order to be difficult for predators to spot, they evolved to be the same color as the sky. Or so it’s said.
Must be tough being a bunny-bird. They had to turn that color just to survive. But when their meat is this deliciously juicy, they’re rather hard to pass up.
“You got it on my clothes!”
“Oh, sorry.”
“Nooooo, my clothes...”
Some of the grease from the bunny-bird had gotten onto Benjamine’s green waistcloth. Straight across it, quite cleanly, plop plop, it’s stuck on there. It’s rather artistically done, if I do say so myself.
“Now what are you going to do? This was freaking expensive, you know”—is what she doesn’t say to me with any sort of furious expression. She instead becomes more and more crestfallen, losing all of her previous energy.
Perhaps this might be something she does get angry about, but it’ll take time for her to do so.
“Why’d you wear clothes you were so concerned about getting dirty to somewhere like this in the first place? If you care about getting dirty, you should come to eat wearing just whatever.”
“How could you say such a thing, Nikeh? That’s rather heartless.”
“Oh no, Benjamine, I’m really sorry. I’ll learn a spell later that’ll remove that stain and take care of that!”
“Ha. No need to go that far.”
There are no uniforms at this school. All we have are our student IDs. All of us commoners do, of course, pay for our own clothes, and wear whatever we feel like. Nikeh is always wearing a short, one-piece dress with a round collar, and I only wear single-layer clothing with a belt that looks similar to hers. Benjamine, on the other hand, not only wears fancy stuff, but wears something different every day.
Benjamine is always telling me that I lack any sort of “sex appeal” in my outfits, but seeing as “sex appeal” isn’t necessary for studying, I really am not paying any mind to that sort of stuff... I don’t care about it at all, I swear.
“Oooohhh I will definitely learn that cleaning spell, OK!”
After all, we are all still only twelve years old. What’s the point in worrying about how we look?
Well, I suppose for the aristocrats it’s different. How you dress reflects the status of your house. But Benjamine has already seemed to have found someone that she likes, and so because of that, I think she’s paying careful attention as to her appearance. It’s all rather amusing to watch.
“Oh look, it’s Naru!”
A silver-haired boy passes by the corner of our table. Benjamine’s eyes are absolutely sparkling as she excitedly calls out his name. Nikeh, watching her, rolls her eyes as she remarks on Benjamine’s behavior.
“You talking about Satanás again? You really like him, don’t you?”
If we’re talking about who Benjamine likes, it’s this boy Naru. It seems like it was love at first sight for her, as if when they first locked gazes with each other she instantly felt the tremors of fate (or so Nikeh told me).
“Satanás, huh...”
Benjamine’s crush, the silver-haired boy. That boy’s name is Naru Satanás.
He’s the other commoner in my class.
He’s the first one to find out his magic type in class later that day.
“Up until now I’ve taught you standard offensive and defensive magic, but starting today I’ll be having you learn combat magic according to your elemental affinity, or magic type.”
The instant the teacher said that, everyone in the classroom broke out in whispered conversation.
“He said magic type—he means the six types of blood, right?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
We had all thought this was to be a normal theory lesson and not a practical one, so the sudden shift threw us off balance.
“Within the general field of magic exist six schools. Right now I am going to pass out the ‘Tricks and Tips of the Six Colors,’ so open your books to the section I tell you to.”
The teacher used levitation magic to float dozens of textbooks all at once, each one flying to a different desk. The magic made the books’ pages flap in the air like butterfly wings, and the one that came to me shut itself with a snap before slowly coming down to rest on my desk.
I look at the textbook that’s come to rest right in front of me. There was a picture of a rainbow bridge on its cover. But in front of the bridge was drawn the Devil, or some other creepy creature, and so the book simply looked creepy. I think they could have put in a little more effort to make this book more approachable. I don’t really want to touch that cover.
Having said that, I still have to get on with my studies, so I quickly open the book to the designated section. I saw that the title of the section was “The Six Blood Types.”
“These are the six blood types. I’m sure everyone has heard of them before. The ‘bloods’ refer to magical power. Our magic is in our blood; it’s blood itself. You know that, right? As long as we are alive, as long as we have blood flowing through our veins, there will never come a time when we can no longer use magic. In the textbook, it talks about the six different types: Fire, Wind, Water, Ice, Earth, and Lightning. Each and every one of you belong to one of these six types of magic.”
Our teacher stretched out his hand and from his fingertips I could see sparks of electricity flashing.
“My magic type is Lightning. As such, the only form of combat magic I can use is lightning magic.”
To summarize what the teacher said, “magic types” were essentially the basis upon which our fighting styles were decided. The combat magics that we had learned up until now had been things like paralyzing an opponent, materializing swords and sending them flying towards our opponents, or materializing defensive barriers—all rather tame spells. To be perfectly honest, if you studied, you were able to do the spells. They weren’t difficult.
But with these “magic types,” there were spells that could only be used by those who belonged to that class. If you didn’t have blood in that class, you wouldn’t be able to use that form of magic, no matter how hard you worked. If I was a Lightning type and I tried to learn Water combat magic, as long as I still had Lightning-type blood, I’d never be able to use Water combat magic. It would have been futile to try to learn it.
That’s what magic types basically were, but I was still rather surprised that less than half a year after starting school here we’d start learning this type of magic. With all the other spells we had to learn, I had figured we had another year before we started learning type-specific magic, but here we were.
“I don’t think any of you know your elemental affinity yet.”
Light is still flashing from our teacher’s fingertips.
Yes, we still don’t know our own magic types. Our parents and other adults know how to determine one’s elemental affinity, but there’s a rule against teaching children that spell. Apparently their reasoning is that it’s dangerous for children to know their type without knowing how to properly use that type of magic.
If I had continued studying normally at a village schoolhouse, I wouldn’t know my magic type until I turned eighteen years old. For people who took on jobs that didn’t place much importance on one’s magic type, there wasn’t much reason to know, after all. There wasn’t any particular inconvenience that came with not knowing, and there was no point in possessing a weapon that one had no use for. Standard combat spells were thought to be enough.
But people like us, the students who came to this school, were different. Not only was the absolute maximum power of magic necessary to succeed, we also had the motivation to learn it. The aristocrats and those who would become sorcerers placed even more importance on learning elemental magics. After all, they would be the ones fighting the demons.
I just want to become a receptionist lady, but still.
“Professor, would it not be correct to say that Water and Ice are identical types?”
Lady Maris is once again wearing a rather classy dress today. She does have a serious and hard-working personality, so if the whole Rockmann situation wasn’t a thing, I’d actually quite like her. But she makes a point of singling me out, just because I sit next to Rockmann, and is always digging at me and making me out to be an idiot, so I really can’t deal with her.
If I liked him it would be a different story, but to have all that done to me despite the fact I don’t even like him is quite irritating.
“They may seem to be similar, but they are not the same. To put it simply, the main difference is whether they are able to instantly manifest as solid or not.”
That’s how the professor answered Miss Maris’s question. It would seem that they are, in fact, different things.
“Alright then, starting now, we are going to check everybody’s magic type, one by one.”
And upon hearing that, the entire classroom broke out into conversation again. But unlike before, this time it sounded like there were a few who were excited about the prospect.
Yeah, I’m one of those who is actually a little excited about this. I mean, my magic type is, like, something that I could legitimately call an uncharted territory.
“First... Satanás, come up front.”
“Me, sir?”
“If I always called on someone sitting at the end of the front row, they’d constantly be called on, no?”
The commoner boy named Satanás, with some hesitation, stood up from his seat.
The professor’s right. The front row students, usually the ones on the right side, are often called upon. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call those seats the least popular places in the entire classroom. I had usually sat somewhere in the middle of the classroom back in my days at the village schoolhouse, and with every seating chart change I had successfully managed to avoid sitting in those seats.
But sometimes the teacher had felt like saying things like “Hmmm, today let’s start from the center,” so I was never able to let my guard down.
“Alright, let’s do this.”
“Yessir.”
“Stretch out the arm of your dominant hand and spread your fingers, palm facing the ceiling. Then bend your middle finger inwards.”
Satanás faced the professor as they stood in front of the lecture podium.
“Once you’ve bent your finger in, concentrate. Then, say ‘semeion.’”
“Se-?”
“Semeion. It means ‘sign.’”
Our professor put his hands on Satanás’s shoulders to reassure him. “It’ll be okay,” he said, and then drew his hands away to watch him.
“Semeion.” (Flower of the Sign.)
