Despite being the only one to wear a school uniform among the group of people wearing casual clothing, Mari was somehow inconspicuous. It might have been because the mages wearing voluminous robes and hoods or pointed hats have never known the difference between the two styles of clothing. It could also have been because the other people were still busy with their own thought.

 

‘To be the only one wearing a uniform when everybody else wasn’t…’

 

‘Was this what my cousin felt when he woke up drenched in a cold sweat from the nightmare of having a wardrobe malfunction in public places?’

 

‘…Maybe not. Maybe it would feel so if everyone made a fuss about what I currently wearing.’

 

But from the beginning when the other people started to be conscious and awake, even until the time they confronted the mages who kidnapped them using a summoning ritual, nobody felt that uniformed Mari didn’t fit in. They didn’t notice the strangeness of having someone in their midst wearing a uniform when they didn’t.

 

Even when each of them had traded inquiry and found the answer that everyone remembered being in the classroom as their last memory before they got there.

 

‘But still… it made me feel like I’m the only one who actually got spirited away from the classroom’

 

‘Or it might be because in the time between attending school and being summoned, I was the only one who hasn’t had a chance to change my clothes, and no one remembers that time period.’

 

Mari of course noticed how strange it was, but she didn’t do anything to call attention to the weird way she was dressed after a bit of inquiry. In her questioning, she had asked other people why they were wearing casual clothing in the style that they have never shown before even when they were attending one of the in-class informal gatherings they had before.

 

Like one girl who had always have a clean and refreshing style were there waking up wearing all black and skulls jewelry of Goth aesthetics. The polite and sharply dressed boy was waking up there with unkempt hair and wearing a sloppy meme print t-shirt and loose jeans. The girly girl who came to the informal gathering wearing punk rock t-shirts and shorts suddenly wore an elaborate princess dress.

 

They answered her saying that it was the clothing they felt most represent who they were as a person. Some styles of clothing might not be the most comfortable to wear in day-to-day life, but they profess their inclination toward it. Some even felt that if they didn’t have the obligation to obey and take heed of other people’s feelings then they would have worn this since a long time ago.

 

‘Why was I the only one to wear a uniform?’

 

‘Wearing a uniform was okay and fine, but our school uniform wasn’t the kind of uniform I like the most though?’

 

‘Does this mean that the style that most represent me was school uniform?’

 

‘I did make a lot of preparation to make sure that my school life was free from any kind of drama and trivial troubles, but…’

 

‘Doesn’t everybody realize that this was somehow against the flow, something abnormal?‘

 

‘I don’t know what should I feel about being stereotyped to be a schoolgirl, but… I felt that there was something odd with this.’

 

While Mari was busy trying to find what she felt odd, Mr. Riz had argued and bid the mages to give them time to discuss things between themselves first before anything. And then he asked everybody else to discuss their future between themselves, doing it like how he usually taught them, only giving minimal guidelines and prohibition.

 

Mari paused her blind sensing and considered whether she should join the discussion or not, and she rejected the desire after brief thought. She felt that if she didn’t find what disturbed her, then there was a chance that she wouldn’t find it in the future, forget the odd feeling, or worse, being bothered constantly by it for a long time.

 

And then suddenly an exquisite make-up kit as big as a medium pocket notebook materialized on her hand. It was similar enough to the one given to her by her Grandma, but it was somehow more stylish. And when she opened it, it was filled with more modern beauty tools instead of something retro.

 

‘This looked exactly like what Grandma gave me, but why did I feel that something was different about it?’

 

‘I don’t remember her gift to be something this good, but somehow the one in my memory was exactly like this…’

 

‘There was no sign of the passage of time, the wear and tear in the framing were gone.’

 

Mari contemplated silently, locking her gaze on the beauty kit she held in her hands. She tried to replace the blocky thing back to where it came from by wishing it, but there was no change. But when she resigned to the possibilities of having to keep bringing it everywhere and put it into her blazer pocket, it disappeared without a trace.

 

She paused briefly, thinking it over. She conjured the make-up kit back and it appeared on her palm, pristine and giving her a nostalgic feeling. And then she tried to put the kit back on her other pocket with a big enough opening to fit it and put it in slowly. It stayed there but disappeared instantly when she moved her focus away.

 

‘Why would I suddenly have a magical make-up kit?’

 

‘Maybe there was some use of it, but thankfully I didn’t have to worry about forgetting where I put it or losing it now.’

 

When Mari moved her gaze to observe everyone around her, she found out that the discussion was already over. And then the one discussing leave the result toward Mr. Riz to be discussed further with the mages.

 

The expression of the other people was still in the gamut of anger, annoyance, shock, unwillingness, and despair. But she found that there was someone who looked really calm and unaffected.

 

‘I remember that he was someone who sits unobtrusively in the back of the classroom.’

 

‘Rio, was it?’

 

‘But usually, he still emoted in the rare time he was not busy with his cellphone…’

 

‘Too shocked to react?’

 

After another arguing with the thin midnight-blue-haired middle-aged man leading the mages, Mr.Riz succeeded in giving the students a favorable term and promise of accommodation. But they still insisted that everyone went through the aptitude assessment test no matter what.

 

‘Fortunately, Mr. Riz made sure that no matter how poor our aptitude, we would still be given accommodation and time to acclimatize with this world…’

 

‘But forgoing the usual questionnaires, interviews, and practical tests to find our aptitudes and instead of using something like shining glass orbs…’

 

‘It feels like one of the science-fiction stories my cousin likes, determining someone’s future path by their brainwaves and body measurements, disregarding their interests and other normal parameters…’

 

Two pairs of mages levitated the opened box filled to the brims with various orbs closer. It looked like in the beginning they were planning to herd the summoned people toward where the box was placed but changed their mind after the long series of gestures given by the lead mages.

 

‘What should I do now?’

 

‘There were no guidelines and the success condition was indistinct.’

 

‘This is not something that could be anticipated at all, no collection of previous years' test questions could give me the instruction of what to do.’

 

The vision of having found out as someone with a poor aptitude made Mari’s heart beat faster and her breath was in disarray. But she suddenly felt that the sensation she felt when she summoned the make-up kit coming from her right hand. Mari placed her right hand outside the skirt pocket, expression calm and breathing even once more.

 

‘What was the use of a make-up kit in helping someone get a good score?’

 

The corner of her lips lifted slightly, eyes lighting up in mirth. The mages had finished unloading the orbs from the boxes and were in the middle of assembling them into some arrangement together with some metallic panels. The finished parts were some machinery as wide as two people spreading their hand side by side and as tall as one and half a person.

 

The mages then signaled toward Mr. Riz that the machine was ready, and he should make someone go inside the opening and be assessed. Mr. Riz turned toward the people from the class and asked them who wanted to be the first one to try it, but nobody made any sound or volunteered to go first.

 

‘It felt like the PE lesson where the one who went first would be the benchmark for the other.’

 

‘Would Mr. Riz told us to do it by our roll call sequence?’

 

Mari looked at her homeroom teacher who stood aside. He was frowning with scrunched eyebrows, gaze flitting from one face of her classmates toward the others. She followed his gaze and observed her classmates’ expressions one by one. Everybody was still looking reluctant, trading glances and shuffling in place. She wondered who would volunteer to do the aptitude assessment first.

 

Mari’s gaze drifted toward Rio, he still reacted differently, his calm face sticking out among the worried and nervous expression held by the other. But this time she could see an undercurrent of impatience and desire behind his calm demeanor. Mari wondered briefly about it before she remembered an idle comment from his seatmate and others who sat at the other table around him.

 

‘Wasn’t he a fantasy web novel enthusiast?’

 

‘ Was this scenario something similar to the one inside his novels? ‘

 

There still wasn’t any person who wanted to be the first, and when her gaze moved back toward Mr. Riz’s direction, he looked like he was still observing the mood of the class members. The second ticked by, and suddenly Mr. Riz nodded to himself and moved.

 

She was pleasantly surprised that he moved to the assessment apparatus and be the first instead of calling the students to do it one by one. She briefly glanced around and saw that the boy and the girl who were the number one and the last one on the roll call list both sighed in relief. The same happened to a bunch of other people who were always being picked by Mr. Riz for the reason of being the noisiest, the most hyper, and the shyest.

 

The assessment apparatus shined ominously and gave off a noisy sound of small gear moving fast before it stopped. The mages read aloud and translated the gibberish script that shows the result of the aptitude assessment machine. Everyone inclined their ears and craned their necks in curiosity.

 

‘At the very least, those mages were someone professional. I wouldn’t want someone dramatic that made face and create suspense to be the one in charge in any kind of test result announcement task.’

 

The result of Mr. Riz’s assessment was that he was someone who had superb mental capabilities, with average aptitude in physical, and someone perfectly suited to be an elemental mage. When one of the students asked what was the shining thing in the series of orbs, the mages said that it was the blessing of elements that Mr. Riz had.

 

After Mr. Riz’s lead, everybody clamored and stopped being nervous. But before anyone decided they wanted to be the next one, someone had stepped forward in front of the machine. Mari saw that it was Rio, who she has previously seen as being in the very back of the crowd.

 

“Hey, Rio, what’s the rush?”

 

“Don’t cut the queue, Rio!”

 

“Rio, don’t be impatient, you might not get a good result, you know?”

 

“I want to get this over with and get some rest, after all, those guys said that assessment is mandatory!”

 

When the crowds got restless and questioned him, Rio answered with his ‘let’s get it over with’ excuses. But Mari could tell that there was something else he hid. Mr. Riz waved him through, and the mages uncaringly started the assessment machine.

 

‘It looked like there was something he wants to make sure among the other reason…’

 

The mages who previously neutrally read the result of Mr. Riz's assessment made face. Their expression was set in a 'disappointed face at seeing something that was not quite matching up to their expectations' kind of expression. And Rio’s result was truly so, below average in everything, and even all the blessing he got was the very minor variants.

 

Rio’s expression wasn’t the disappointment or other things that fit with how abysmal the result of his assessment was, but an expression of ‘ah, I thought so’. Mari didn’t understand why, but she kept her silence even when the other people broke into a loud murmur.