Yuto opened his eyes.

He saw a white ceiling instead of a bloodred sky. There was no sound of flowing water or rustling reeds. Instead, murmurs—and groans and screams—came from all around him.

He was in Maria Academy’s great auditorium. Having earned his admission, he had returned here from the virtual space.

Yuto was lying on the floor. He could feel the chill of the marble beneath him. Something stirred beside him, and he turned to find Flokiro lying there, back in his small, unevolved form.

“We’re back.”

With those brief words, Yuto pushed himself up. His entire body felt heavy. He had not fought in the virtual space with his real body, so he had no physical wounds, but the mental exhaustion remained.

Footsteps approached. Yuto turned toward the sound. A tall, bearded man was coming toward him.

A gaunt old man with snow-white hair swept back. The academy’s headmaster, who had stood on the platform at the entrance ceremony, came to a stop beside Yuto.

“Congratulations on being the first to pass.”

The headmaster’s voice was gentle, but Yuto did not respond to that gentleness.

Instead, he glared at him for a moment, then looked around the auditorium.

Students lay scattered throughout the spacious hall. Most lay quietly. They were still taking the exam in the virtual space.

Others had returned to reality but remained unable to get up, staring blankly at the ceiling. Some sniffled quietly; others sat on the floor and sobbed openly. They had desperately wished to enter Maria Academy, only to fail.

And then there were others.

“Aaagh! Aaaaaah!”

Some students were screaming in agony. One writhed on the floor in convulsions. The student’s arms were not bent at unnatural angles, but their mind still felt the pain of both arms being twisted.

“Ah... Aaaah! Aghghgh...”

A girl clutched her head, twisting her body. Yuto remembered her face. She was the last girl, the one who had aimed her staff at him even as her entire body broke apart.

Four students still felt every bit of their pain despite having returned to reality. All four had had their bodies seized by constellations and been forced to attack Yuto, denied even death. The pain they had experienced remained intact in their minds, spreading to their real bodies.

“Calm down! You’re not dead. Your arms are still attached!”

Professors approached the convulsing students, and light flowed from their staves to envelop them. It was magic meant to calm them. Wrapped in that light, their convulsions gradually eased, but did not stop entirely.

“Ugh... Uuugh...”

Groans continued to escape the students’ lips. Magic was not all-powerful. It was particularly ineffective against trauma. The convulsions that had seemed to be subsiding began again.

Their eyes rolled back and foam frothed from their mouths as they thrashed in invisible agony. Not a drop of blood flowed from one student’s nose or ears, yet the student clutched their face in both hands and howled.

“My face... M-my face...!”

“My stomach... It’s burning inside. There’s something in my stomach!”

The pain existed only in their minds, but the sensation of the constellations’ aether piercing their bodies and burning their organs in the virtual space remained all too vivid. In the end, several professors gathered around each student and cast spells simultaneously. Only then did the screams stop.

The pain had not disappeared. They had merely been forced to sleep so they could no longer scream.

Yuto watched for a moment, then scanned the rest of the hall.

Some students sat quietly huddled up rather than convulsing. Their eyes were all steeped in the same terror as they looked at him.

They were the students Yuto had killed in the virtual space. Students whose necks his sword had severed, whose chests he had pierced, whose heads he had crushed. They, too, remembered every sensation of the moment they died.

“Ugh...”

Someone groaned. It was one of the boys who had cornered the girl at the cliff. The instant his eyes met Yuto’s, he turned away. A few of the others glared at Yuto with anger and hostility, but that did not last long either. In the end, every student avoided his gaze.

“Headmaster.”

There was neither joy at passing nor gratitude for the congratulations in Yuto’s dry voice.

“Do you believe this exam is right?”

The headmaster’s expression changed at the question. His gentle smile remained, but something flickered beneath it.

Yuto gestured with his chin toward the students who had stopped convulsing and fallen asleep.

“The constellations seized the students’ bodies and used them like puppets. They forced them to fight while subjecting them to the pain of broken bones and burning organs. And now, even after returning to reality, they’re convulsing at the memory of that pain.”

His voice was calm, but without warmth.

“There will be lasting effects. Their minds have suffered deep wounds. And it isn’t just them. Every student who took this exam will carry mental scars, large or small.”

Those who had failed remembered the sensation of dying. Those who passed would remember the sensation of killing someone. Even the feeling of violence without accountability or guilt, experienced in the virtual space, would be etched into their minds.

“Did you know this would happen? Did you know, decide it was right, and hold the exam anyway?”

The headmaster looked down at Yuto in silence for a long while.

“I knew.”

His smile changed. It was bitter and self-mocking, nothing like the gentle smile with which he had offered his congratulations.

“This year’s admissions are unprecedented at Maria Academy. Even last year, we did not summon so many students to take an entrance exam like this.”

“...”

“This unprecedented exam was held because the constellations wished it.”

The headmaster’s gaze turned toward the sleeping students and those whose faces were clouded with the pain of death and a sense of loss.

“I knew what sort of exam it would be. The professors and I prepared it, after all. But... to think they would intervene so directly...”

He paused, then shook his head.

“No, I did anticipate that they might intervene to this extent. If they had no intention of interfering, there would have been no need for an exam in this form.”

He looked at Yuto again, his bitter smile deepening.

“When the constellations wish it, how could a mere human like me defy them?”

Yuto looked into the headmaster’s eyes. He sensed no lie. What lingered in the old man’s eyes was self-mockery and helplessness.

“Are you saying that even the headmaster of Maria Academy is ultimately just a human who acts at the constellations’ bidding?”

Yuto knew the answer. Headmaster of Maria Academy and a mage celebrated throughout Callisto though he might be, in the eyes of the constellations high in the heavens, he was merely a human, little different from the students lying there. The same was true of every being living on the continent of Callisto.

Even Yuto, who had been called a hero, had been nothing more than a toy for the constellations to play with as they pleased, then break and discard whenever the mood took them.

“You would be disappointed if I answered yes.”

The headmaster let out a long sigh.

“I will answer honestly. Yes, I cannot defy the constellations. The very office of headmaster of Maria Academy exists by their permission.”

Yuto said nothing. Sharing his silence, the headmaster looked around the hall. Students were waking with screams. Even now, slaughter was in full swing inside the virtual space.

“But...”

After watching those students with bitterness in his eyes, the headmaster turned back to Yuto. Something other than self-mockery and helplessness now shone in the old man’s gaze.

“For someone like me, who cannot defy the constellations, what you showed today was... deeply impressive.”

The headmaster smiled.

“A boy raised in the slums, without a contract with a constellation, shattered their divine authority head-on and refused to retreat before students they controlled. Even when a constellation unjustly froze your score, you fought to the end and won your admission.”

His voice gained strength.

“How many people in this world are unafraid of the constellations and openly reject them? To think such a student would come to Maria Academy...”

Yet his eyes held an emotion different from the admiration he voiced. Something deeper. A look Yuto had seen time and again in his previous life.

Hope.

Though the headmaster said he could not defy the constellations, the sight of a human who did not fear them standing before him gave him hope.

“It isn’t that I don’t fear the constellations,” Yuto said.

“It’s simply that what I saw today... was something I could not tolerate.”

Yuto rose unsteadily to his feet. At those words, the headmaster smiled with satisfaction and extended a hand to him.

“Let me say it again. Yuto, congratulations on passing. You are Maria Academy’s first new student this year.”

There was no applause. The students eliminated from the virtual space stared at Yuto in disbelief, their eyes refusing to acknowledge him.

Eyes steeped in terror. Eyes filled with anger. Eyes blank with loss. From above all those varied gazes came the sound of applause.

Levian Marigold. She had been waiting upstairs for Yuto’s return, and now she was clapping with a radiant smile. As she applauded enthusiastically, she lightly stepped on Elun’s foot beside her. Elun shot her a glare, then began clapping as well.

With the young lady of the prestigious House Marigold applauding so enthusiastically, the current students upstairs began to join in. Yuto’s status and qualifications had to be set aside. Whatever else might be said, that pauper was indeed the first of a thousand prospective students to be granted admission.

“At an ordinary year’s entrance ceremony, we would have the new students’ oath, introductions to the faculty, and an address from the headmaster.”

The headmaster looked around the auditorium with another wry smile.

“But it seems we have quite a wait before all hundred places are filled. If you wish, I could introduce the professors and deliver my address to you first.”

“I’ll decline.”

Yuto chuckled and looked up at Levian.

“I’ll count our conversation just now as your address. And I’m already familiar with the faculty. I do know an upperclassman here, after all.”

More than that, Yuto had attended Maria Academy in his previous life. He remembered every one of its professors.

“If I don’t have to wait here until a hundred students wake up, may I go to the dormitory ahead of them and rest?”

“Hmm, you have my permission. I’ll inform the dorm supervisor. It’s a modest privilege for the first student admitted, but... you may choose whichever vacant residence you like in the dormitory.”

The headmaster glanced at Levian before asking,

“You won’t need anyone to show you the way, will you?”

“No, I won’t.”

“Prince Shiro told me about the girl beside Levian. Princess Shirin’s attendant, and your younger sister, I understand.”

Shiro had said it at the Marigold banquet: he would provide an “appropriate” explanation so that the academy’s higher-ups would not interfere with Elun.

'The lie about her being my younger sister certainly is appropriate.'

Thinking that, Yuto nodded.

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“The royal siblings of Ristal seem to have taken quite a liking to you over the Belkain affair. Or are you particularly fond of your younger sister?”

“Well, my sister doesn’t want to leave my side, so the prince and princess offered their help.”

“Ordinarily, using royal privileges in this fashion would be problematic... but we have agreed to accept her, so there is nothing to be done. Still, Yuto, siblings though you may be, your sister entered this academy as Princess Shirin’s attendant. She must not forget her duties. That means she must live with Princess Shirin, as befits an attendant.”

“What if my sister says she wants to stay at my residence?”

“What reason would there be to keep an attendant who does not fulfill her duties?”

“I understand.”

Of course that would be the answer. Yuto nodded and turned away.

[“Yuto. Since when was I your younger sister?”]

Elun’s icy voice rang through his head as he stepped out of the auditorium.

'That’s what you are here, so you can call me your big brother from now on.'

[“I will never call you that.”]

Elun’s reply was one of utter revulsion.