From any conventional, logical point of view

"What in the world were you thinking?" Aida demanded as she strode over to Mikado's bench. "Challenging Kanzaki to a duel—you do know he didn't earn the nickname Morning Star for nothing, right?" She hesitated, her voice lowering slightly. "Even if… he does seem to dread it. Titles like Level Five aren't given without cause."

        She crossed her arms. "It's not too late to take it back. Apologize properly, and this can still end quietly."

        They were in Second highs training ground, a vast, enclosed hall adjoining the main school building. Reinforced walls lined the perimeter, sealed observation windows overlooking the floor. This was where practical classes were held, a space designed to withstand magic without mercy.

        Mikado looked up at her from his seat, his expression untroubled, if anything, he looked tired.

        "Are you worried about me, Senior Yaegashi?"

        He gave a faint, almost teasing smile. "Relax. It's not like he can kill me or anything. He just has to knock me out, or immobilize me." His tone bordered on sarcasm.

        Aida sighed, planting both hands on her hips.

        "Save the bravado for yourself," she said. "I'm not doing this for your sake. As your senior, it's my job to knock some sense into you, and help you save face while I'm at it."

        Mikado let out a slow yawn, utterly unbecoming of someone with a duel fast approaching.

        Aida turned away, her gaze roaming the breadth of the training ground. It swept past Kanzaki standing on the opposite side, composed and waiting, then over the assembled members of the student council who had gathered along the perimeter, their presence lending the hall the quiet tension of an official spectacle.

        "—Tell me… are you and—"

        She looked back at Mikado. The words caught in her throat just as her lips parted to give them shape. For a moment, she hesitated, torn between what she suspected and what she feared confirming.

        Mikado watched her patiently, eyes steady, as though he already understood what she was about to ask.

        "Never mind," Aida said finally, forcing the words out and turning away from the thought as much as from him.

        "…Oh," Mikado let out softly, the sound edged with mild confusion.

        Aida didn't respond. The question she had nearly voiced weighed too heavily on her mind—about Mikado, about Eto, and about the quiet glances and unspoken reactions she could no longer ignore. Whatever the truth was, this wasn't the moment to pry it open.

        Not with a duel about to begin.

        "What's that?" Aida asked, her attention catching on the long, straight black case resting beside Mikado's bench. At a glance, it almost resembled an umbrella sleeve, plain, unobtrusive, easy to overlook.

        Mikado followed her gaze.

        "Oh, this?" he said lightly. "You could call it my weapon. I'm the failure student, remember? Think of it as insurance against a Level Five mage."

        "A nail?" Aida frowned, the assumption coming naturally. "This is a mock duel. Anything that could be lethal to your opponent is strictly forbidden."

        Mikado let out a short chuckle.

        "As if I could do much to a Level Five mage," he replied, his tone brushing the edge of mild reproach. I'm the failure, after all—the lowest of the low, he made her remembered that. "You worry too much, Senior."

        He reached down and unzipped the case.

        The sound drew Aida's attention immediately.

        Inside lay a long wooden nail, dark and polished, far thicker than an ordinary one, its surface smooth but unnervingly dense. It had no edge, no ornament, nothing that suggested it was meant to be a weapon at all.

        "And I doubt this thing could be lethal to anyone," Mikado added calmly, "let alone a mage." 

        "…That's it?" Aida blinked.

        "It is," Mikado affirmed calmly. "A wooden nail."

        Not sharp.

        Not enchanted.

        Just solid

        A sharp beep broke the moment.

        Aida glanced down at her wristwatch, then straightened. "Your duel will start in a minute," she told him.

        Turning on her heel, she walked back toward the student council's corner of the hall. The mock duel had been scheduled to begin shortly after Mikado's declaration, and just like that, the thirty minutes of preparation had nearly run out.

        "All right, participants, step forward!"

        The time had come. Aida's voice echoed sharply across the training ground, cutting through the low murmur of anticipation.

        "I will be acting as both referee and judge for this duel," she declared. "When I deem the match over, it is over. No objections." Her gaze swept over the two of them.

        "Any attack that may result in death or irreversible injury is strictly forbidden. To be declared the victor, you must either knock your opponent unconscious or immobilize them, rendering them incapable of continuing the match."     

        The two stepped forward, closing the distance between them to fifteen paces.

        Kanzaki clasped his right wrist with his left, as though locking himself into position. His expression remained calm, unperturbed, betraying how little importance he placed on the duel itself. Naturally so. To him, Mikado the failure, someone hardly worth acknowledging, let alone treating as a serious opponent.

        Still, even if he couldn't do much more than knock him out under the rules, Kanzaki had every intention of teaching him a lesson. Not merely to defeat him, but to humiliate him, to grind the difference between them into his bones until Mikado understood his place. 

        Mikado, on the other hand, looked every bit like a boy walking into an unwinnable match, already branded the loser before the first move was made. He appeared exhausted, as though whatever strength he had left had been drained away during the long wait on the bench. His back slouched, his eyes dull and unfocused, like a fish being hauled home after a graveyard shift, alive, but barely. 

        But his exhaustion had nothing to do with the body.

        It was mental. Emotional. Self-inflicted.

        This situation disgusted him. Challenging someone to a duel was crude, impulsive, so unlike him that the thought alone left a bitter taste in his mouth. He prided himself on restraint, on distance, on never letting emotions dictate his actions. And yet, watching another man touch her so freely, speak to her with the confidence of ownership, had scraped against something raw and unguarded inside him.

        He hadn't stepped forward out of courage.

        He had stepped forward because he couldn't endure it.

        That realization unsettled him more than the duel itself.

        He had always believed himself composed, someone who observed rather than acted, endured rather than reacted. But standing there now, facing the consequences of his own jealousy, Mikado understood a truth he had long avoided.

        He wasn't as detached as he thought.

        And that frightened him far more than the Level Five mage standing across from him.

        "...dammit," Mikado muttered under his breath. His gaze drifted toward the student council's corner, where Eto stood among the others. She was looking at him. Her expression was cold, composed, no different from the face she showed the world. To anyone else, it was unreadable, indifferent.

        But Mikado had known her long enough.

        Beneath that calm exterior, he could tell exactly what was running through her mind. She was worried, yes, but more than that, she was displeased. Not because she doubted the outcome of the duel, she knew better than anyone how obvious it was, but because he had acted on impulse. Recklessly. Unreasonably.

        The thought of her scolding him afterward sent a quiet dread crawling up his spine.

        Strangely enough, that frightened him almost as much as the duel itself.

        He drew in a deep breath, not a sigh, but something steadier.

        "Participants, prepare yourselves."

        Mikado unzipped the long, straight black case and withdrew the wooden nail, letting it rest openly in his hand for everyone to see. Gasps of confusion rippled through the onlookers, drawn by the sheer strangeness of his weapon. A nail, wooden, blunt, unremarkable.

        But wooden or not, it did nothing to alter the verdict already passed in their minds.

        To them, the outcome was inevitable.

        Mikado was doomed. Even Aida watched him with the look one reserved for someone already halfway to defeat.

        "Ahem!" Aida cleared her throat. She glanced over her shoulder at Eto, who met her gaze and gave a small nod.

        "Go!"

        Aida's voice rang out, and the duel began.

        —Almost immediately, Kanzaki dropped into a crouch and pressed his hand against the concrete floor. His plan was simple, to demonstrate his overwhelming strength, to crush Mikado mentally until he begged for mercy in the most pathetic way possible.

        "Heh."

        A snicker escaped Kanzaki as his will surged forth, carried and shaped into mana. The world responded. The concrete beneath his palm quivered, ripples spreading outward as the earth itself stirred.

        Then something came flying toward him.

        A storage bag hurtled into his path, briefly obscuring his vision. Kanzaki barely reacted. It was already losing momentum, dragged down by gravity, hardly worth his attention.

        What he hadn't anticipated was what followed.

        A pair of eyes surged forward in the bag's wake, sharp and unmistakably intent.

        "—Pah!"

        The sound burst from him despite himself. In that fleeting instant, Kanzaki was acutely aware of how unbecoming the reaction was of him.

Yet one truth was impossible to deny.

        He felt fear.

        Acting on instinct, he leapt backward, abandoning the spell he had planned. Different incantations spilled from his lips as a wall of earth erupted from the ground, surging upward to separate him from the other side.

        "Hah… Hah!" Kanzaki forced his breathing to steady, lungs burning as he dragged in air. What the hell just happened…?

        The thought barely formed before a shadow swallowed him whole.

He looked up. Mikado stood atop the earthen wall, his silhouette cutting sharply against the lights above.

        "Shit!"

        Kanzaki clicked his tongue and sprinted sideways. His boots scraped violently across the concrete as he fled, kicking up dust and loose grit. Six, maybe seven, meters away, he spun around and hurled his right hand forward.

        The ground exploded in response.

        Concrete cracked with a sharp report as earth tore itself free, stone and soil spiraling upward in a violent rush. Dust billowed into the air, choking and thick, as the mass twisted and coiled, forming the unmistakable shape of a serpent.

        Spectators staggered back as debris skittered across the floor, the shockwave rattling the railings and sending fine dust raining from above.

        A jagged chunk of stone hurtled straight toward Eto.

She didn't flinch.

        Without so much as a step backward, heat shimmered around her fingers. The stone never reached her, its surface blackened, then cracked, crumbling into brittle crust before collapsing into ash and dust, as if it had been thrown into a blazing fire.

        The fragments drifted harmlessly to the ground. Eto remained where she was, expression unchanged.

        With a thunderous roar, the earthen serpent launched itself forward, pulverizing the ground beneath it as it surged straight toward Mikado.

        The impact was deafening.

        Earth collided with earth in a brutal explosion, sending fragments flying in every direction. The wall collapsed in on itself, pulverized into rubble as a dense cloud of dust erupted outward. In seconds, the training ground vanished.

        Fine particles flooded the air, rolling across the arena in heavy waves, swallowing the floor, the walls, everything. Visibility dropped to nothing as the dust spread like a released smoke grenade, clinging to the lungs and stinging the eyes.

        Coughs echoed from the spectators. The lights above blurred into hazy halos.

       Kanzaki stared into the swirling haze, heart hammering. Did I get him…?

        Relief crept into his expression. He had believed from the very beginning that victory was inevitable—that this duel would end exactly as it should and he just made that certain.

        But no matter how he justified it to himself, one fact remained unavoidable.

        He had crossed the line.

        Under the rules of the duel, that spell was never meant to knock an opponent unconscious. At that range, with that amount of force, it could only lead to one outcome.

        Death.

        That reality became unmistakably clear when a figure emerged from the rolling dust cloud.

        "Ack—!"

        Aida stumbled forward, coughing violently as she waved the dust away from her face. As the referee, and the one closest to the epicenter, she had taken the brunt of the aftermath.

        Her eyes snapped toward Kanzaki, sharp and alarmed.

        The haze still swallowed the battlefield behind her.

        And Mikado had yet to appear.

        "—That's no good, senior. I don't think that attack was meant to only knock your opponent out."

        The voice spoke from directly behind Kanzaki, low, calm, almost a hunting whisper.

        His blood ran cold.

        Kanzaki jolted, muscles screaming as he forced his body to turn, but he was too slow.

        Darkness swallowed his vision.

        A wooden hilt struck his forehead—

        —No.

        The blunt head of a wooden nail cracked against Kanzaki's forehead with a dull, ringing impact, precise enough to rattle his skull and shut his consciousness down instantly

        His body went limp before he could even register the blow.

        Mikado stood behind him, the wooden nail lowered at his side, held loosely between his fingers as if it weighed nothing at all.

        Just like that, the mock duel was over. Mikado had prevailed.

        "…The winner is Mikado Ryuugamine."

Aida paused longer than necessary before declaring it. From any conventional, logical point of view, Kanzaki should have been the victor. Power, rank, and raw output all favored him. And yet—