About thirty minutes after I contacted Amber and told her to get to the address I’d specified immediately.
“Wow, it really is a prison…”
“Long time no see, Jade!”
Two female students came down the stairs and greeted me, their expressions sharply contrasting.
Amber looked terrified, and Dia looked delighted… was how I should take it, I guess.
“You got here faster than I expected.”
“We flew here with magic!”
When I’d been kidnapped, it had taken them a bit longer, but it seemed they’d flown here by the shortest route, so they arrived even earlier than I’d expected.
To think clicking your magical power on and flying was faster than a car. Modern technology would weep.
“Well, more importantly.”
I immediately grabbed Amber by the hand and led her to a nearby cell.
“Wait, wait, wait! Why are you trying to throw me in prison the moment we meet?!”
“You more or less saw this coming too. Give up and go in quietly.”
Even if it was a prison, the toilet and shower area had all been covered with curtains, so there wasn’t anything to be embarrassed about.
“…You’re quite bold. To think you would remodel Brilliant’s detention facility as you pleased.”
“They kidnapped me twice. They can at least let me have this much.”
Amber looked around inside for a moment, then voiced the fundamental question appropriate to the situation.
“Why did they even build something like a prison underground?”
“It is a detention facility made to isolate those who rebelled against Brilliant or plotted ungrateful schemes.”
“Eeh… That sounds terrifying just hearing about it.”
At Ruri’s kind explanation, Amber’s complexion darkened slightly. With torture devices like something out of a historical drama lined up nearby, that was probably only natural.
“Even so, isn’t this going too far? Studying during the day and studying at night too?”
“You little… Back when you said you wanted to go to school, I busted my ass to get you transferred in, and then you went and got a failing grade. I spent days stuck to you helping you study, and then you even failed the retest. Grumble, grumble…”
“Ah, he’s seriously pissed.”
“Anyway, during the day you’ll take supplementary lessons at school, and at night you’ll study here. The next retest is about a week away, right?”
“Wa—!”
It was obvious she was about to say, Wait, so I quickly brought a finger to her lips.
“If you pass the test, I’ll let you out properly. It’s not like I’m saying I’ll lock you up for the whole vacation.”
This was ultimately for Amber’s own good. It was a little forceful, but we had the promise we’d made a year ago, so she shouldn’t have any real complaints.
“But… I don’t feel like studying the whole time in such a cramped place.”
“Why wouldn’t you? You think Korea’s passion for education—classes from eight in the morning to six in the evening, night self-study until ten, then sending kids to cram school to force more studying into them—looks like a fucking joke?”
“That name comes up every time, but what kind of country even is it…?”
“The country I used to live in.”
During vacation, it was even common to be shut up in cram school and made to take summer intensive courses. It was so brutal that quite a few kids dropped out along the way, though.
‘Compared to that, this should be relatively easy.’
I picked up a textbook from Jewelry Academy and roughly flipped through the pages.
In this world, it seemed language arts, math, and history were the major subjects.
‘Well, magic is more mainstream than science and technology, so I guess they don’t really teach it at school.’
In any case, the priority right now was to bring Amber up to around average. At the very least, enough for her to get sixty points in every subject.
But she still hadn’t given up, apparently, and continued making excuses.
“Even if it’s summer vacation, I’m busy with all sorts of things, you know? So, um… Ah! There’s Silver Order work too!”
“Silver Order? Was there a company like that?”
“…Lady Dia, you need not concern yourself with it.”
No matter how cornered she was, I had to wonder about exposing our identities when there was clearly an outsider right beside us.
“I just told Lady Lapis, and she gladly gave permission. She said you can skip work for the time being, so just make sure you take care of your own business.”
“Y-you told my sister?”
For someone who was basically an executive in an evil organization to fail a test was probably close to disgraceful. Not only the boss, but the other executives, Chrys and Citrine, also backed my opinion, saying there wouldn’t be any particular problem.
“Um, Jade? I mean, I was a little angry too, but… isn’t locking her up in prison still a bit much?”
“Hear, hear! Dia-chan is saying that too!”
“You be quiet.”
“Yes, sir.”
I understood how Dia felt well enough. If I heard that a friend was locked up in a place like this and being forced to study, I’d be worried first too.
If she had failed after doing her best, I wouldn’t have brought this up. Rather, I probably would have comforted her and told her she’d worked hard.
But despite receiving help from me and Dia, this girl hadn’t done her best. Far from it—
“Amber, starting around five days ago, you were acting all smug, saying you basically understood everything.”
“……”
“Even when I asked if you were okay, you told me not to worry because you were the type who was strong in the real thing, then lay in bed tearing into potato chips. Didn’t you?”
“……”
“And you even ate the pudding I’d carefully saved in the fridge to eat on a special day—”
“I get it, so stop! It’s scary, so please stop!”
She was practically on the verge of tears as she clung to my pant leg and desperately made me stop talking.
Dia and Ruri were also looking this way with expressions that said this was hard to cover for.
“Tch.”
I still had a mountain of things left to say, but pushing her too hard would be a bit much, so I decided to calm down for now.
“…It’s even scarier when you suddenly shut up and click your tongue.”
“You went through the trouble of enrolling, so you should graduate. Since it’s vacation anyway, let’s build up your basics so you never get a failing grade again.”
“Ugh.”
In the end, Amber shut her mouth and took a pencil case out of her bag.
***
And so, Amber’s special training to break through the retest began once again.
While they were at it, Jade and Diamond decided to help her with not only math, the subject she had failed, but every subject where her score had been barely passing.
“Let’s see. Which nation moved north in the year 896 and expanded its sphere of influence over the Coral Continent?”
“Umm, the Eastern Zernia Empire!”
“So close. The Eastern Zenir Empire.”
Her days consisted of learning the basics in a special classroom set up for supplementary lessons during the day, then repeatedly reviewing in the prison at night to improve her practical skills.
Of course, they did not neglect taking care of her health either, such as making her get enough sleep so as not to strain her eyes, or giving massages to loosen her stiff body.
But Dia still seemed unconvinced, and she approached Amber to speak to her.
“Amber, are you really okay? To think he’d actually lock you up in a place like this and even make you study…”
She, too, had not forgiven Amber for failing the retest, but that did not mean she had intended to force something this extreme on her.
However, the person who should have been having the hardest time unexpectedly reassured Dia with a look of fulfillment.
“I’m really okay. Are you worried about me, Dia-chan?”
“Mm-hmm. Even if he is your boyfriend, I thought this was too much.”
“Boyfriend? Ah~ Right, that was the setup…”
Amber muttered those words in a small voice that could not be heard.
Back when Jade had been kidnapped to the Brilliant mansion, she had once confidently pretended to be his lover in order to get him out.
“Well. Getting scolded was a little scary, but I was also a little happy that he was treating me seriously.”
“…Treating you seriously?”
Naturally, there was no lie in those words. Even if the time they had spent together was short, the two of them should have come to understand each other well enough thanks to that series of incidents.
“You can feel it more than you’d think. That this person is really looking at me properly.”
“……”
At Amber’s words, Dia looked over at Jade, who was making a late-night snack in the kitchen set up in the corner.
Recently, he had been coming to this prison every day for Amber’s sake, bringing nutritionally balanced lunchboxes or meals.
“Of course I’m grateful that he makes food for me, but he even studies the parts he doesn’t know himself and explains them to me, right? That makes me a little happy, I guess… Rather than being ignored, it’s much better to have someone stick with you persistently, even if it’s a little annoying.”
“Hmmm.”
Having someone worry about her sincerely and look straight at her. To Diamond, it was an unknown sensation.
Of course, she too knew the feeling of being cherished. The president of Brilliant and his secretary were good parents who indulged their cute daughter’s whims.
But devoting that much care to another person should have been impossible for an ordinary human.
That was why Dia ended up feeling a little envious of the relationship between the two of them.
“In the first place, I was the one who said I wanted to enter the Academy and study, so now that it’s come to this, I can’t exactly run away from it.”
“Ah, that’s right, Amber transferred in during our first year. I’d always wondered about that, so that’s what happened!”
As they were in the middle of chatting about Jade like that, it was not long before the man himself approached with a late-night snack.
“Come to think of it, what happened to Ravi? I heard she filled in her answers one row off and took the retest with you.”
“…She passed in one go and was immediately exempted from supplementary lessons.”
“You should get out next time too.”
As she watched her senior say those words and hand her a cup of warm coffee, Amber suddenly thought to herself.
Because of the retest, her time to play had decreased, but a fulfilling vacation like this did not seem so bad in its own way.