It was done by lottery.
The instructor handed out folded slips of paper. A number was written inside. You would not know until you unfolded it. Those with the same number would become partners. When Minjun received his slip, he did not expect anything special. He only had to check who he would be paired with. Whoever it was, they would complete the assignment together.
He unfolded the paper.
It was number 7.
“Number 7.”
A voice came from beside him. Minjun raised his head.
It was Chloe Armand. She was holding her own slip of paper. The same number. Chloe was looking at Minjun’s slip as well. Their gazes overlapped once, then parted.
Chloe looked away first.
Minjun folded the paper and put it in his pocket.
“It’s a lottery. It doesn’t mean anything.”
And yet, strangely, he repeated those words twice.
As the groups formed inside the practice room, Minjun naturally looked for Sylvia. Which group was she in? Which side was she seated on? Sylvia was in the area opposite him. About five meters away. She was standing between two other students. She was not holding a file. That was the only difference.
After confirming that, Minjun went to his own place.
Today’s assignment was resonance magic.
The instructor explained. Two people would each cast magic and make the spells cross in midair. When they crossed, there had to be no interference. To make them cross without interference, positioning was important. The most effective position was back-to-back. Two people standing facing opposite directions, sending magic straight ahead from their respective fronts.
Back-to-back.
He took that position with Chloe.
There was about ten centimeters of distance between their backs. They were not touching. But within that distance, he could feel Chloe’s body heat. Warmth transmitted through the air. Isabel’s back detected it. Not across her whole back, but first somewhere below the shoulders, between the shoulder blades.
“My senses are sharper because I’m in a state of readiness for magic output.”
Minjun explained it that way. It was a rational explanation. The theory books also said that bodily senses heightened in the state just before using magic. So the reason this warmth felt so distinct right now was because of that. It was an explanation he could accept.
They were close enough that their arms almost touched. In a natural posture, there seemed to be barely a centimeter between Chloe’s elbow and Minjun’s. It was not as if they absolutely could not touch. Physical contact sometimes happened during practice. But both of them maintained that one centimeter.
Chloe did not move.
Minjun did not move either.
The instructor gave the signal to begin.
Minjun concentrated. It was better than yesterday. Light began to gather in his hand. A red aura collected at his fingertips, then flowed toward his arm. This time, he controlled it. So it would not burst like it had in Episode 6. With steady output.
In that state, he heard Chloe breathing.
To be precise, it was less the sound of her breathing than a change in its rhythm. Her inhalations were shallower than usual. Her exhalations lasted a beat longer. Minjun felt it less with his ears than through the changes in the air behind his back. When Chloe exhaled, that air came close to his shoulders.
Chloe must have been concentrating too. When one raised magic output, breathing changed. That was something he knew in theory. The instructor had mentioned it before as well.
That was the right explanation.
There was no other explanation.
The instructor walked around and checked. He said Minjun’s light was stable. He said Chloe’s was stable too. When the two lights crossed in the air ahead of them, there was no interference. He called it a clean resonance. Then he moved on to the next group.
Minjun maintained his concentration.
He could feel his heart beating slightly faster. His breathing had also grown a little shallow.
“It’s because of the magic output. High-intensity practice burdens the body.”
That was correct. Isabel’s body seemed to be structured so that her pulse rose when she produced magic output. It had been similar last time. The body was reacting.
He felt a gaze coming from five meters away.
Minjun turned his head slightly.
It was Sylvia. She was in the middle of practicing with her own partner. Light was coming from her hand. Her movements continued. But her gaze had come this way. Even from five meters away, he could tell. That gaze was lingering somewhere between Minjun and Chloe.
Minjun looked over.
His eyes met Sylvia’s.
Sylvia looked away first.
That was strange. He had never seen Sylvia avert her gaze first. In their three meetings, she had always been the one to look until the end. Someone who never stopped observing. Someone who took out her file and recorded things. Someone who, if she saw something, would always write it down.
But now, she lowered her eyes first.
She did not take out her file either. She simply continued practicing. She turned her gaze toward her partner, then sent her magic into the air ahead again. As if nothing had happened.
But Minjun had seen that moment. From five meters away, he could not tell what expression Sylvia had worn in that brief instant. If he had been able to, he would have understood more.
Minjun watched her for a moment, then faced forward again.
Chloe’s light was burning steadily. It met Minjun’s light in midair, crossed it, and parted. There was no interference. The two lights passed through each other as cleanly as if they were transparent.
The warmth behind his back remained the same.
Until the practice ended, Chloe did not speak. Neither did Minjun. It did not feel awkward. Rather, there was a certain weight to it, as if words would have touched something they should not.
The final signal rang out.
The lights went out. The students began to break formation.
Chloe turned around.
The warmth disappeared from his back. Minjun was briefly conscious of the empty space. He had tried not to be conscious of it, but he already was.
“Residual sensation of body heat after the end of magic practice. A physiological phenomenon.”
Chloe said, “Good work.” Briefly.
Minjun said, “Yeah.”
That was all. And yet it sounded like enough. As if no other words were necessary.
Chloe picked up her bag. She slung the strap over her shoulder. She looked at Minjun once. Her expression seemed as if she might say something, but she did not. She simply gave a light nod.
Minjun nodded as well.
Chloe walked away.
Minjun watched Chloe’s back for a moment. Her chestnut-brown hair swayed in the direction she was moving. Her figure passed through the practice room door and out into the corridor.
Five meters away, Sylvia was gathering her bag. Without taking out her file. She exchanged a few words with her partner, then left first without looking this way even once.
Minjun saw it.
Today, she had not written anything in her file. She had looked this way, then lowered her gaze, and she had not taken out her file. Both were firsts.
Minjun still did not know what that meant.
The practice room emptied. The last students passed through the door. The instructor finished tidying up and left as well. Minjun stood there alone for a moment.
The inside of his hand was still slightly warm.
It was residual heat after magic output. That was the right explanation.
---
The road back to the dormitory was quiet.
Minjun walked with one hand in his pocket. The other simply hung at his side. That sensation left inside his hand after magic practice was still there. It was neither warm nor cold, but something like the feeling of a place something had passed through.
Today, he had stood back-to-back with Chloe.
The distance had been close. According to the practice regulations, that arrangement was correct. It was the method by which their magic outputs crossed. It was regulation. It had been according to the rules.
Chloe’s shoulder had been behind Isabel’s shoulder. They had not touched. There had been space. Through that space, their body heat had passed between them. When Chloe inhaled, that heat changed. When she exhaled, it changed again.
“So this is what magic channeling is like. Body heat gets shared.”
He thought that.
There was no way to confirm whether that was a characteristic of magic channeling or not. He could not ask the instructor either. He decided to simply categorize it that way.
Sylvia had not taken out her file.
He did not know why that fact kept lingering in his mind. He should have felt relieved that there was no file, but instead, it bothered him even more. If the file was there, he was bothered by whatever might be written in it, and if the file was not there, he was bothered by the fact that it was not there.
“Either way, it gets on my mind.”
The corridor lights came on. Only then did he realize the sun had set.
Minjun did not stop walking. The dormitory door was ahead of him. He went inside. The corridor was quiet. His footsteps echoed.
He no longer found it particularly strange that those footsteps belonged to this body.
That was adaptation.
---
Chloe thought about today’s practice in her dorm room.
She had stood back-to-back with Isabel.
It had been the regulation arrangement. Since it was magic channeling practice, that posture was necessary. Neither Isabel nor Chloe had chosen it. It had been assigned.
But when Isabel took her place and turned her back toward Chloe, Chloe held her breath. Isabel’s silver hair had flowed down over her back. Seen up close, the way the light moved across that silver hair was different. Not a single strand of silver hair lay in the same direction. Every one was angled slightly differently.
Chloe had been looking at it from behind Isabel.
Isabel did not know she was looking. In a back-to-back posture, she could not see. Chloe knew that, and still, she kept looking.
When the practice ended, Isabel straightened first. Her silver hair moved, tilting briefly toward Chloe before returning to Isabel’s back. A scent brushed past her. It was not sweet. Cool and clean.
Chloe remembered it. Not because she decided to remember it, but because it simply remained.