Filling in the Gaps II

Atsuo and Lord Kaiser entered an isolated room, resembling that of an office, where Sana sat waiting for them.

“Atsuo and Lord Kaiser of Brimor?” she asked glancing at them.

“Yes, ma’am” Lord Kaiser answered.

“Sana is fine,” she said, motioning them to take a seat, “like mentioned before I’ll be asking you a couple of questions. This is a test of honesty. Simple as that. Understood?”

“Yes… Sana” Lord Kaiser answered, as Atsuo stared into open space.

“Okay. Let us get started. First off–”

She looked at Lord Kaiser, suddenly stopping.

She cleared her throat and turned to Atsuo instead.

“First off… have you ever been, are, or planning to be a part of a crime organization?” she asked with a stern look on her face.

Lord Kaiser was taken aback by such a random question out of nowhere, and nervously turned to Atsuo who was expected to answer.

He sat there in silence, as if completely out of it.

“Sleeper!” Lord Kaiser said, slapping him on the back.

“Yes…” Atsuo mumbled as he stared off into space.

“NO” Lord Kaiser said in a panic, looking at Sana out of the corner of his eye, “ANSWER HER QUESTION.”

Atsuo wasn’t answering. He was staring off into space with his mouth half open, his mind entirely somewhere else.

Sana wrote something down, before continuing.

“Have you ever committed one of the life offences?” she continued.

The offences of the highest degree. They entail wrongdoings on par with murder and severe phenomena misuse. Crimes of this scale would inevitably have you spend the rest of your life at Typhon’s Realm. No one knows how bad it actually is, but rumors say it is located on the bottom of the Solus Ocean, at the farthest point in the world from any of the four major continents. The people who go there never see the light of day again, let alone society.

They stared at Atsuo, who was completely quiet and motionless.

Lord Kaiser saw Sana scribble something down again with a hint of disappointment and frustration, prompting him to get up from his chair.

“No, PLEASE!... he uhh… has some sort of condition…” Lord Kaiser told her, glancing back at Atsuo who was in another world.

“I assure you he’d never do any of those things…” Lord Kaiser spoke in desperation.

Sana quickly looked down, as if avoiding Lord Kaiser.

She sat as stiff as a board for a few seconds, before speaking up.

“I… believe you…” she said awkwardly as she stared down at her paper, “…you pass… you’re free to go…”

“…thank you…” Lord Kaiser said, surprised as he bowed.

Confused but relieved, he got up from his chair and grabbed Atsuo by the back yoke of the blazer and dragged him behind himself, out of the room.

***

“That’s it…” Lord Kaiser said, “it’s been bothering me ever since…”

“Well, at least we got the points” Atsuo said.

“According to Lodre, that was the fastest honesty test Drezore has ever seen” Rivia said.

“How about you guys?” Atsuo asked, looking at Rivia, Crod, and Eskasa.

“I did fine…” Rivia said, “I didn’t have any questions like that though…”

“Neither did we,” Eskasa said smiling.

“Yeah… I guess one should be prepared for surprises when you’re with sleeper” Lord Kaiser remarked.

The foul mood in the room was progressively dissipating, as the conversation went on.

“So what did I miss about the fifth event?” Atsuo asked.

“Do you not even remember the details?” Lord Kaiser asked in disbelief.

“No…” Atsuo replied

“I see…” Lord Kaiser said, laughing all of a sudden.

“What?” Atsuo asked confused.

“Well… it sort of looked like you got stage fright or something when I saw you up there…” Lord Kaiser said, “I guess it makes sense now.”

“Yeah, it looked like you completely ignored whatever Arete was saying prior to the event” Rivia noted.

Atsuo sighed again. The black outs were making his life harder by causing gaps in memory, but now he needed to even think about the possibility of unknowingly tarnishing his own reputation.

‘What a pain in the ass…’ Atsuo thought to himself irately.

“So? What did I miss?” he asked again, a little impatiently.

“Not much,” Lord Kaiser said, “Lady Arete started with the event details like the other instructors.”

“Like the name suggested, she said she will be assessing our potential and magical affinity,” he continued, “at first, I had some serious doubts about her... I thought she would be biased towards the domestic students, but she was surprisingly fair and knew what she was doing.”

“Surprisingly fair and knew what she was doing,” Atsuo reiterated, laughing, “did you come to that conclusion after your own evaluation?”

“And what if that’s the case?” Lord Kaiser replied firmly.

“Nothing” Atsuo said, “His Highness’ limitless potential is salient but to a blind eye.”

Lord Kaiser glared at him as the friends laughed.

“As I was saying…” Lord Kaiser resumed, eyeing Atsuo, “She could accurately see your potential and give it a numerical value. Then, she would give you points based on your potential.”

“The scoring went as follows:”

No potential (value of 0) = 0 points

Little potential (value of 1 – 100) = 1 point

Moderate potential (value of 101 – 1,000) = 10 points

High potential (value of 1,001 – 10,000) = 30 points

Vast potential (value of 10,001 – 999,999) = 50 points

Limitless potential (cannot be measured) = 100 points

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“Then, just for Minae students whose academies had two representatives, they just took the average of both,” Lord Kaiser explained, “in our case, we got a hundred.”

“Is that rare?” Atsuo asked, turning to the others from Lord Kaiser’s smug expression.

“From everyone there, there were only four other students who got ‘Limitless’ potential,” Rivia said, “one from Drezore, one from overseas, and two from somewhere I’ve never heard before…”

Atsuo instantly thought of the girl from the Rotesar continent, who sat to the left of him.

‘I believe Ivia was her name…’ Atsuo thought.

“Was the person from overseas a girl?” Atsuo asked, “Dark blue hair? Light-blue eyes?”

“Yeah, that seems about right…” Rivia said, surprised, “someone you know?”

“She was in my group at the tea party” Atsuo answered.

“Wow, really?” Eskasa said, smiling.

“Look at you making such connections!” Lord Kaiser said slapping Atsuo on the back.

Atsuo, annoyed, turned to Rivia.

“By the way, what did you guys get?” Atsuo asked out of curiosity.

“Vast. 120,309” Rivia replied.

“Vast. 766,110” Crod said.

“Vast. 680,223” Eskasa said gently.

“Hah… I see we make a terrifying group…” Atsuo joked.

“Indeed” Lord Kaiser nodded.

“What about that Eboro guy, what did he get?” Atsuo continued curiously.

“He got 900,000 I believe” Crod answered.

“Exactly?” Atsuo asked astounded.

“Exactly…” Crod said.

“Interesting… what about Greener?”

“Who?” Lord Kaiser asked perplexed, as the group stared at Atsuo.

“The guy who said we should leave when we first came here?” Atsuo tried to make the friends remember, “Black hair?”

“Who knows,” Lord Kaiser shrugged, “not limitless potential, that’s for sure.”

“The domestic student who got it was another girl” Eskasa said, seeing Atsuo’s blank expression.

“Still, I’m surprised you remember him” Lord Kaiser said.

“Also at my table…” Atsuo said, to which Lord Kaiser started laughing.

“Ha… what are the chances?” he said, bending over, “It’s even funnier knowing you got him disqualified…”

“Anyone else?” Lord Kaiser asked, amused.

“One of your fanatics, too…” Atsuo said.

“It just keeps getting better…” Lord Kaiser laughed.

Getting tired, Atsuo switched the topic.

“I see you guys took second and third,” Atsuo said, looking at Crod and Eskasa’s silver medals and Rivia’s bronze, “congrats.”

Crod, Eskasa, and Rivia’s smiles vanished. They felt hollow inside.

“That’s right” Lord Kaiser said happily.

“I’m… glad to hear that. Congrats,” Atsuo said awkwardly after seeing his friends’ grim expressions.

Lord Kaiser puffed out his chest proudly, while the rest of the friends quickly exchanged their alarmed glances, and turned to Atsuo, their eyes widened.

Before Atsuo could question their troubled expressions, Lord Kaiser started speaking again.

“Now that I remember, Lodre said something to us at the end of the awards ceremony” Lord Kaiser said, looking at Atsuo, “He asked whether we want to temporarily pursue studies at Drezore. What do you think, sleeper?”

Atsuo looked at him, bemused.

As if prompted, Atsuo recalled Deimos’ words before they separated at the Vilne station.

‘Learn more about ourselves, huh…’ Atsuo thought.

He was sad about leaving Brimor for an indefinite period, but he made up his mind.

Determined, he nodded.