The Committee Pt. 1

Sometimes at night, when the skies were clear and it wasn't too cold, Huko would go up the hill alone. He liked seeing his little town from above. Something about seeing lights in the dark relaxed him. He made sure to go at a time where nobody was awake. For some reason, seeing his little town empty like that made him feel like he was at a place out of this world. There was only the sound of crickets, the ground was soft underneath him, and the weather would be perfect all the way until the sun rose.

He tried to imagine that hill and the town.

"Hey," Kenta said as he munched on a rice ball, "this must be the line."

The hill and the village receded into the darkness. Huko opened his eyes and he was back in the city again. The local gymnasium that was used for the committee was not yet in sight, but the line had already started. There was a trail of students, all about Huko's age, with their parents standing in the winding line going up the street.

"Everybody looks scared," Kenta remarked with bits of rice sticking to his cheeks.

"They should be," Huko replied, "this one moment is going to determine their future."

Some of the kids had their tomes out, studying, reciting, and casting miniature versions of their spells to practice. Some were crying or on the verge of a nervous breakdown having to be comforted by their mother or fathers. The line moved slowly through the winding street. In reality, Huko was on the edge of a nervous breakdown himself. His deep breathing exercises weren't helping anymore. All he could do was think about that hill. The hill next to his house. It was a moonless night the last time he went there, when mom was really sick, and the village was in another blackout. He remembers the stars and how they shined brightly, casting a faint light on the hills. He could spend his entire life just looking up at stars, he thought, it would be a simple and wonderful life.

“Hukoooo,” his brother made him open his eyes again, “your onigiri’s getting cold.”

Kenta played with his onigiri in front of his face, teasing him into eating it.

"Let's rehearse the plan again," Huko said, completely ignoring the onigiri.

The plan was simple. To get into the medium tier schools, Huko didn't need to do alot. He just needed to show his little trick with the fire magic. He would make sure to tell the judge that he didn’t need to use any tomes or scrolls to help him, and that should tell the judges that at least he had an above average magical talent. Though, after the fire trick, he won’t be able to do anything else, and that should bring his overall rating down a bit to average. With the contraption latched on to his body under his clothes and the trigger for the gas on his shoes, he would only need a few minutes and it was all over.

Huko went over the plan with Kenta. Kenta stayed silent and nodded as Huko explained it to him. His part was the parent. He didn’t really need to do much, actually, and was just there to make it seem like Huko was part of a normal family.

“Alright,” Kenta said, finishing the last of Huko’s onigiri, “we got this.”

The lines kept on moving. By the time the brothers were in sight of the gymnasium entrance, the sun was at its highest. Kenta was sweating, and had to remove his jacket. To give a good impression on the judges, Huko had decided that he would need to dress up appropriately. So, he forced him to go with an office shirt and tie, and brought out his dress shoes. He also carried an empty briefcase to complete the look. Huko wore a shirt and tie also. Under his long sleeves and shirt was the contraption they had spent all night building. It was a series of clamps and tubing that ran up from the stove canisters attached to his back, up to his arms, and out into just before his sleeves end at his wrist. The clamps, which looped around his waist, chest, arms, and legs were there to keep the tubing from dangling around. On the end of both his sleeves were the lighters that could be flicked on with the movement of the wrist alone. It was somewhat comfortable to wear, and the metal was cool against his body. From the outside, it was nearly invisible. Even the stove canisters at the back were modified in a way that made them flatter and thus less visible. The trigger to release the gas was pinned under the soles of his shoe. With one strong stomp, the trigger would pull a string that ran up his legs and that string in turn would open the valve of the canisters. A burst of gas would flow from the canisters to his arms and out to the opening on his sleeves. The timing would have to be right to flick the lighters right when the gas had reached the end of the tubing.

"Next!" a small man behind the plastic fold up table shouted at the entrance to the gymnasium. The brothers were now within reaching distance of the gymnasium. Inside, Huko could see that the gymnasium had been divided into three large areas. On each of those areas were a table with the three judges. Just before those three booths were the preparation area, and just before that was rows and rows of seats which were used as the waiting area for the parents. The small balding man gave the brothers a number on a piece of paper, and without looking up from the paper he was furiously writing in, he pointed them to the left side of the waiting area.

“Booth three,” he said.

Sitting on the plastic benches with the fan blowing on them, Kenta could finally relax. He looked on at the kids in front of them in the preparation area. The kid directly in front of him was a pale looking boy and neatly dressed girl. He was buried in his tome of his, reciting the spells he would cast, and she had her hands on her knees as sweat collected in her forehead.

"Hey Huko," he nudged his brother who had his eyes closed again, "how can you mess up a casting a spell?"

Huko recalled what he had read in that magazine.

"In a lot of ways."

"How so?"

Huko started to get annoyed. His hill was always taken away from him.

"Casting spells is tricky," he said shortly. Imagine the hills, Huko said in his mind.

"How so?"

Huko gave up trying to imagine the hill and instead decided to look at the girl who was called up by the judges.

"They say that to cast magic, you first have to channel it, and that stream of magic doesn't always come smoothly. Sometimes it fluxes and comes in like a gush of water, and sometimes it trickles. You have to be ready to adjust yourself and your spells based on how the magic's coming. That's what they're testing you on, your control, and not whether or not you can do your spells. Scrolls and Tomes help with that regulation."

"How do you know so much about this stuff?"

“The magazine,” he replied shortly, interested more in what the pale kid was going to do.

The girl went up before the judges. She greeted them, and with her shaky hands, pulled out her tome. She looked through the pages, unsure where the thing she was looking for was. The judges were three old looking people that Huko could tell were really good at what they were doing. The one on the right was an old lady. She had thick round glasses, and her face looked mean and sharp. The one in the middle was a large and round man. He had folds under his chin, and his face was stuck looking angry about something. He was a man whose presence you could feel all the way from where Huko was sitting. Finally, the last judge was the odd one of them all. He had a warm smile on him, and looked genuinely excited to see what the kid had to offer.

"You're wasting our time kid," the judge in the middle said after a few minutes of the girl looking through his tome.

The girl panicked and quickened his search. She fumbled with her tome, until eventually landing on a page. She took a deep shaky breath, and uttered the spell. Nothing happened. She uttered the spell again, this time carefully, and again nothing happened. The dumbbell weights and the water bottle in front of her did not move. "Levitating spell," Kenta said, "He's trying to lift it." She tried again and again, each time her voice getting shakier. Still, the weight in front of her did not move.

"Time's up," the old judge on the right said, holding up her golden pocket watch.

The judges briefly scribbled down on their notes.

“Wait,” the girl pleaded, “give me one more minute please.”

“Time’s up, kid,” the middle judge said with a devious smile.

The girl stood shocked. Slowly, tears began to stream down her cheeks. After a minute, she shuffled her way to the exit and went back to her parents who were sitting all the way in the back of the waiting area.

"Sure hope we don't get them, am I right Huko?" Kenta nudged his brother who had his eyes closed again.

The judge on the left opened his palm towards a metal box on the floor beside the entrance, and out came a piece of paper that floated gently to him.

"Candidate number 983, please come to the preparation area for booth three," he said.

Huko looked at his slip of paper. It was number 983. He looked at the number on the divider between the booths. It was number 3.