Sometimes, I wondered; what was the point of high school education? Or rather, why was it so inefficient? Sure, a lot of it was about subjects that should, by all intents and purposes, be common knowledge, like basic chemistry, geography, or physics. However, there was another end of the spectrum, where things like algebra and many of the artsy subjects resided. Sure, those are going to be incredibly important for someone who would continue to study mathematics, or programming, or try to become a composer, but for someone like me, what difference would it make in my life whether I could plot a sine curve, or read a music sheet?

I continued to internally grumble about this, and many other things, as I made my way down the stairs while dodging the occasional absent-minded placeholder coming my way. Lunch break just started, and I was on my way to the nurse's office, as per Peabody's request. I could've just Phased over, but I figured that abusing my ability too much would eventually weaken its impact, so after handing some pocket money to Snowy for her lunch, I used the traditional locomotion appliances colloquially known as 'legs' to carry me to my destination. A novel concept, I know.

But back to my opinions on the education system: So, as I was saying, algebra was—

"Ah, Leonard-dono!"

My internal fermenting of my very nuanced opinions came to a halt the moment I was greeted by a certain someone waving at me from the other end of the hallway. I expected that once she got her 'cover' as a teacher, Rinne would change her outfit at least a little, but there she was, still dressed in the same dark purple pantsuit and black Chelsea boots as usual. Hell, she even had the 'purified' Onikiri strapped to her back, and while I grant that it didn't immediately look like a sword at a glance when wrapped up in its shroud, the fact that nobody had any reaction to it told me that our placeholder schoolmates still had a long way to go until they reached full sentience.

As she hurriedly made her way over to me, the students in the corridor parted like the Red Sea in front of her, yet once she came to a halt, she remained silent like a grave, even after I raised my brows to prompt her. I almost wanted to ask why she called out to me if she had nothing to say, but I suppressed the urge to be an ass and instead I just cleared my throat and properly greeted her.

"Hello, Mountain Girl. Is everything all right?"

"Yes. Certainly."

I waited for her to continue, but she was only awkwardly shuffling her feet, so I had no choice but to initiate small talk myself.

"How are you doing? Does the job agree with you?"

She gave me an odd look for a second, but then her eyes suddenly lit up and she nodded. Three times in a row, in fact.

"Yes, Leonard-dono! It is an honor to be Leonard-dono's retainer!"

"I didn't mean that. I was asking being a teacher."

"Ah, that? Rinne apologizes." She gave me a shallow bow, and then she pondered for a while before telling me, "Rinne has no complaints about the work. The children are all really nice to Rinne, and training their young physics is fulfilling."

"That's not the right word, but I'm glad to hear that you're enthusiastic all the same."

"Yes. Don't worry, Leonard-dono! Rinne will make sure to use the opportunity to rec… reconno… reconnassscout. Rinne will scout the school grounds for any threats, every day!"

"You do that," I uttered a tad wearily. I already explained to her that she didn't really have to do that, considering the School was still on high alert and had its security upped anyway, but she insisted that as my 'personal retainer', she had to ensure my safety and make sure that every threat was eliminated from my environment. In the end, I left it up to her, and ever since then, she'd been patrolling both the school grounds and my neighborhood whenever she had the opportunity. Still, I wanted to temper her a little, so I told her, "Just make sure you still do your job as a PE teacher."

"Leonard-dono doesn't have to worry!" Her declaration was followed up by a small, maniacal, and decidedly familiar grin, which made me worry anyway. "Rinne promises to train all the younglings with uncomprehending devotion! The sweat shall flow like rivers and no fat shall escape Rinne's judgment!"

"Don't overdo it either," I warned her, not even bothering to try and correct her verbiage. Honestly, I was getting used to it at this point. That said, after seeing her continue to act like that whenever she was getting excited, I couldn't help but conclude that Onikiri's 'corruption' might've had less to do with her weirdness than I initially believed. At least she was now channeling it into more productive activities, but it still made me recognize the wisdom of the proverb 'The more things change, the more they stay the same'. "Anyhow, since you called out to me, does it mean you need me for something?"

Mountain Girl's grin was immediately replaced by an uncomprehending look, followed by the similarly uncertain words, "No? Rinne only saw Leonard-dono and wanted to talk."

"Oh. Well, there's nothing wrong with that…"

Mountain Girl nodded in agreement, and I suddenly felt a little foolish, so I turned to my right and gestured for her to follow after me.

"I have to go to the nurse's office, so why don't we talk on the way there?"

"Is Leonard-dono injured?"

Rinne's voice was tinged with a hint of genuine worry and she inspected me from head to toe. Strangely enough, the placeholders once again automatically parted around us, something that never happened when I walked around on my own.

"No, I just have something to discuss with the Nurse." After saying that, the conversation once again came to a halt, so I combed my memories for a casual topic we could discuss in public like this, and it didn't take long to find the obvious one. "So, what's your opinion on the school cafeteria?"

I expected an instant answer, but instead she remained silent for several seconds.

"Rinne is troubled by the existence of such establishment."

"Troubled?" I repeated after her, and she gave me a huge nod in return.

"The variety and quality of food presented makes Rinne unable to choose, yet eating all of them would lead to a grave imbalance in internal energies that would interfere with performing Rinne's duty as Leonard-dono's retainer. It is truly exaspre… exasper… Annoying. It is annoying."

"You sound exactly like someone I know, save for the energies-bit," I mused aloud, and to my surprise, she immediately got what I meant.

"Leonard-dono must mean Joshua-san. He introduced Rinne to the menu."

"Let me guess; he gave you a lot of recommendations."

She nodded once again, and I couldn't help but realize that the saying 'Birds of a feather flock together' also had more than a pinch of truth in it.

On the rest of the way, I listened to Rinne talking about which dishes she wanted to try, and even if she didn't tell me beforehand, I would've recognized Josh's fingerprints on her selections without a question. The truffles and the lobsters were a dead giveaway.

Once we reached the nurse's office I bid her farewell and even gave her some pocket money on her own so that she could try some of the stuff she was salivating over. I mean, if I had to be her boss, I might as well pretend to be a benevolent one. That way it will be easier to rope her into all kinds of exploitative and dangerous business later while I would secretly twirl my mustache and evilly chuckle in the background. It was only because of that, not because of her rumbling stomach or the wistful look she had on her face while thinking about food. Definitely not.

But putting my totally fake generosity aside, I knocked on the door in front of me, and it was immediately answered by a jovial 'O-ho-ho!', which I interpreted as an invitation.

"Hello, nurse," I greeted the only occupant of the room, and Peabody immediately rose from his chair the moment he noticed me.

"O-ho-ho? Welcome, Leonard! I'm glad to see you are looking…" At this point he faltered as he took a closer look at me, and concluded the sentence with a much less upbeat, "…maybe not as well as I first thought?"

"I'm just a little tired at the moment, don't mind it." My casual dismissal apparently wasn't convincing enough, so I quickly closed the door behind me and forcefully cleared my throat in preparation for changing gears. "I was told you were looking for me. Something about a healer, I think?"

"O-ho-ho… Yes, yes I did. How embarrassing."

That wasn't the reaction I was expecting, so I cautiously asked him, "What do you mean by 'embarrassing'?"

The portly nurse took a deep breath and exhaled it in a painfully long sigh before he finally looked me in the eye and explained himself.

"I told you that I had an acquaintance that could treat your injury. I contacted him and he agreed to come to the island, and I even convinced Amadeus to make an exception and let him through the lockdown. I wanted to tell you the good news as soon as possible, but I just received news that he couldn't make it."

"Did something happen to him?"

"Not him personally, but just a few hours before his flight, there was a fire in his office. He is a certified private orthopedist, you see, and because of this there is now a police investigation and an insurance dispute, so he can't leave the country in the foreseeable future."

"That's… a shame," I uttered somewhat indifferently, though my mind was already brimming with ideas of what just happened.

"Yes, a shame indeed. On the bright side, at least nobody got hurt."

"That's fortunate. That said, I presume this means that he can't help me with my injury."

"Not in the foreseeable future, no. I must apologize for getting your hopes up, only to disappoint you."

"No need to do that," I said with a smile, though I was tempted to also add that I couldn't be disappointed if I wasn't expecting anything to begin with. Still, getting my hand fixed without any hassle would've been nice, but I knew better by now.

"O-ho-ho! You are very understanding!" I thought this was the end of the conversation, and I was just about to excuse myself, but then Peabody turned around all of a sudden and picked up a fancy black envelope from his desk. "Now look at this old head of mine! I almost forgot to give this to you!"

"And what's this?"

On closer inspection, I noticed that while it had no address or sender written on it, the envelope had a series of softly glowing golden patterns on both sides, surrounding a crest in the middle. It was depicting a stylized magical circle with a triangle in the center, and on the edge of the circle I could make it a couple of words written using angular runic characters.

"It is an invitation Meister Gowan asked me to deliver to you," the nurse explained as he handed it over to me, and true to his word, I could feel that there was a rigid, playing-card-sized object inside.

"Meister?" I blurted out as my higher brain functions debated whether I should open the envelope now or later, and Peabody seemed to find my question really amusing.

"O-ho-ho! It is a title reserved to the most outstanding individuals among the artificers within the Assembly's jurisdiction. Meister Gowan is one of the most respected members even among this small group. Why, if he wasn't, there was no way an outsider like yourself could gain admittance to their famous Symposium!"

"So… the Symposium is a big deal after all," I mused, and the way the nurse kept chuckling at my expense was answer enough. "Sure, pile more pressure on me, why don't you?"

"Pardon?"

"Never mind." Saying so, I opened the letter, and inside I found two things: a rectangular metallic card with my name engraved on it using glowing cursive letters, and a single hand-written page informing me that, due to the circumstances and everyone's busy schedules, the Symposium would be held on this Wednesday, starting at four in the afternoon. In other words, the day after tomorrow.

"O-ho-ho! I've heard this year's Symposium would have a surprise guest speaker. I thought it would be arch-mage Saahira, but could it be you after all?" When I nodded, the rotund man let out another grating chuckle and even went as far as to pat my back. "O-ho-ho! To think Leonard's talents would be so multi-faceted! I can't wait to hear how you performed."

"I just hope I won't embarrass myself too badly."

My response only earned me another laugh, so I quickly pocketed the envelope and bid my farewells.

"Thanks for the delivery. Also, don't worry too much about the healer. Unforeseen accidents like that happen all the time."

Peabody only gave me a grandfatherly smile that I found a touch disquieting, so after some obligatory small talk about how his nephew and his android companion were doing under my care, I quickly excused myself and left the infirmary. Once outside, I took a deep breath and collected my thoughts. So, as it turned out, this Symposium thing was more prestigious than the friendly artificer originally implied. That meant I really had to kick my game up a notch if I wanted to appear professional enough for the occasion. I already had a couple of fun and baffling enchantments to show off to the crowd, but I only made half of them at this point, so I probably had to rearrange my nightly schedule to finish up the rest. I'll probably have to skip my nightly training time with Brang for the next two days, I reckoned.

As for the healer, I had a slight suspicion about what happened, but I didn't want to jump the gun yet. While I told the nurse that such accidents could happen to anyone, the fact that it happened to someone who could potentially fix my hand with this exact timing certainly raised a couple of red flags.

However, before I could ponder on the issue, I noticed that a small group was heading right towards me. It was quite conspicuous, since by this point most of the students in the corridors either went back to their classrooms or to the cafeteria to have lunch, so the four guys marching in lockstep towards me stuck out like a sore thumb.

"Leonard S. Dunning!" the guy in the front addressed me, and for a moment I blanked out. I mean, was this seriously the first time anyone used my middle-name gag unironically? And it was Mr. Bedhair of all people?

By the way, yes, the four guys were the annoying, borderline criminal fanboy brigade from my class, namely Mr. Bedhair, Mr. Spiky, Mr. Crew Cut, and Mr. Bowl Cut. I honestly had no idea what their real names were, nor did I care enough to find out. I think one of them was Steve, but as to which one, I didn't even have the foggiest clue.

Anyhow, while I had all of these thoughts running through my head, the four of them remained perfectly silent and motionless, so I could only utter a mildly alarmed, "Yes?"

The moment I did that, the group formed a semi-circle around me and boxed me in against the wall next to the door of the infirmary, which immediately raised the confused ringing of the alarm bells in my head up a notch.

"What do you guys—?"

Before I could finish my question, Mr. Spiky raised a hand a pointed an accusative finger at my nose, followed by an outraged, "What is your relationship with Miss Yamako?"

"Miss who?" I uttered in surprise before my brain could catch up, but once it did, I immediately corrected myself. "Ah, you mean Rinne?"

"Yes, we mean Miss Yamako, the new PE teacher, and the new goddess of the school," Mr. Crew Cut delivered his piece of exposition exactly how I expected him to do, and his bowl-cut 'colleague' immediately followed it up after him.

"We have credible witnesses claiming you have addressed Miss Yamako using intimate terms on multiple occasions!"

"Now tell us! How did you get so close to Miss Yamako already?" Mr. Bedhair challenged me, and I couldn't help but exhale a long, drawn-out groan.

Let's backpedal a little and let me try to explain what's going on. As it turned out, Rinne didn't have a proper surname due to some silly traditions regarding the Kage clan and the person carrying Onikiri and all that jazz, so she decided to adopt the name 'Rinne Yamako' while working here. The fact that 'Yamako' literally meant 'mountain child' didn't escape my notice, but at this point I was so used to people running around with weirdly meaningful names that I couldn't even muster the effort to give a damn. More importantly, aside of her new surname, we also came up with a cover story for her, and so I immediately proceeded to recite our agreed-upon backstory to the four creepers.

"Rinne is my cousin, second removed, who recently came to the island."

"So you are relatives. That's good," Mr. Crew Cut stated, but then he crossed his arms in front of his chest and added, "But what about the seventh goddess?"

"Can't you people talk in a way I can actually understand what you want?"

"We naturally mean the youthful and adorable young girl wandering the campus, Sahi!" Mr. Spiky exclaimed, and by this stage of the conversation I had no choice but to gently massage my temple in preparation for an incoming idiocy-induced headache.

"Who else could it be?" Mr. Bowlcut added with a theatrical swoon. "Her innocent yet playful countenance and her exotic looks have already earned her a steady following among the freshman demographic, and even the higher grades aren't immune to her charms!"

"So tell us why, oh why, is such a pure, angelic girl following someone like you around!?" Mr. Spiky cried out in the kind of deep yet at the same time oddly wooden lamentation usually reserved to community theater productions of Hamlet.

"Just to make sure we are on the same page, are we talking about the same Sahi? Young, brown, kinda tall for her age?" The four of them nodded in unison, and before I knew it, yet another sigh escaped my mouth. "I have no idea what you guys are talking about. She's the granddaughter of the principal's guest, and since Ammy is his granddaughter, he asked us to look after her. That's all."

My on-the-spot excuse seemed to work, as the four amigos shared an overt glance between each other, and even Mr. Spiky stopped pointing at me.

"Does that mean you are not attempting to seduce her?"

"Don't even joke about that."

The answer made them all pause for a long moment, right until Mr. Bedhair uttered, "But if Amelia was asked to take care of Sahi, and she is also approaching other members of our class, wouldn't that mean she would get exposed to the despicable Joshua Bernstein as well?"

"It is a possibility we must prevent at any and all cost!" Mr. Crew Cut exclaimed, and the other three nodded in perfect unison.

"Great, you do that. That said, if that's all you wanted to know, would you mind if I go now?"

"Not so fast, Leonard S. Dunning!" Mr. Spiky stopped me in my tracks by pointing a finger at me the third time in a row. "We have something much more important to discuss beyond mere suspicions of your character!"

"Yes! It is a matter of great importance not just to us, but to all boys in this school!" Mr. Bowlcut added, and I could once again feel the onset of the headache coming.

"This is about the school festival, isn't it?"

"Indeed! We are glad to see you're quick on the uptake," Mr. Bedhair proclaimed and struck a weird pose with his hands. "The upcoming school festival is a once in a lifetime opportunity in our adolescent lives, and one that must not be squandered!"

"For too long has the day been dedicated to couples, walking around hand in hand and whispering sweet nothings at each other in front of the rest of us loners!"

"Our needs and wants have been ignored for too long, and our day of reckoning is—!"

"Okay, I get it! Stop with the speeches, and just tell me what any of this has to do with me!"

My interruption made the four creepers share another glance between each other before they huddled even closer to me and Mr. Crew Cut explained their agenda in a really loud faux-whisper.

"You might not be aware of this, but your word carries influence in our class."

"It does?"

"Certainly," Mr. Crew Cut nodded and continued with, "Your choices can easily influence the girls around the abominable Joshua Bernstein, and through their popularity, you could influence the choices of the rest of the class."

"We want you to leverage this power for the sake of all young men, not just in our class, but in the entire school!"

At this time I breathed in long and deeply, braced my brain cells for the inevitable WTF moment, and once I felt decently prepared, I asked, "So what exactly do you want me to do?"

"We want you to vote on our proposal for holding a beauty pageant during the school festival!"

Mr. Bedhair's proclamation was… much less terrible than I expected. I mean, it was still dumb, but not nearly as dumb as it could have been. But then…

"It will be a swimsuit pageant!" Mr. Crew Cut added with sparkling eyes.

"With a mud-wrestling competition for a tie-breaker," came the next step from Mr. Bowlcut on this stair of 'what the hell', culminating with, "Of course we are going to have to ensure a tie, but so long as we can infiltrate our trusted comrades among the vote tellers, it's something we are prepared to see to fruition."

"So, Leonard! Can we count on your support?"

All four of them were giving me looks filled to the brim with expectation, so I quickly answered with, "Sure, I'll think about it," just to get this whole situation over with.

"Marvelous!" Mr. Bedhair all but yelled out in his excitement, and a moment later, the whole group was already walking away from me, with the final words of, "Thank you for your cooperation, but remember, we are watching you."

"Yeah, we don't need another Joshua Bernstein in this school," Mr. Crew Cut added in a… threatening voice, I think? Let's call it that.

Anyhow, five seconds after that, the four amigos already disappeared from sight, leaving me tired, annoyed, and just a little bamboozled. I mean, what kind of school would even allow swimsuit mud-wrestling as an attraction in the first place?

Though again, I'm not going to lie, I could technically understand their motives, even if they were horny, juvenile, and maybe more than just a tad creepy. I mean, if I tried to imagine Judy and Elly mud-wrestling, I could certainly understand the allure, even if it wasn't a fetish of mine. Not that it would ever happen even if it was. I mean, unless I dropped some veiled hints and they decided to do it on their own to mess with me, like when they dressed as maids, so it was really important I wouldn't accidentally show interest in this kind of thing. Even if imagining my girlfriends, covered in slippery mud, grabbing and tugging and—

"Oh, wow. So this is what getting corrupted feels like…"

And with that note, I turned on my heel and walked down the corridor towards the cafeteria while making sure to lock the dangerous mental image in my head into the deepest recesses of my subconscious.