Editing Failing Witch:Volume3 Episode1 (section)

===Part 3===

“Bwuh. I-I’m so tired…”

Viocia collapsed onto her desk.

Having to study without flying on her broom seemed to take a lot out of her.

“Sigh… My right hand is shaking. If only it would move on its own and answer the exam questions for me.”

“You won’t learn anything yourself if you rely on the Kokkuri-san or a planchette. You might as well use a self-flying broom.”

“Ugh.”

“Also, all of this falls under the genre of (__________).”

“How am I supposed to know if you don’t tell me!?”

“(Automatic writing), you idiot! That will almost certainly be on the exam, so you need to know it!!”

The other nearby students reacted to this more than Viocia herself.

Yagoro feared he was being corrupted by the idiot because the mere fact that the girl with the omnidirectional curiosity antenna was still at her desk writing in her parchment notebook felt like considerable growth on her part.

“Anyway, I made it through today! Which means it’s lunch time! Let’s go, Dorothea!”

Flying witches had to look after their weight, so even Viocia’s friends Dorothea and Melehe wouldn’t join her in the cafeteria. But lately Viocia’s lunches were handmade by Moloch (the bronze bull), so they had been eating together more often. This showed a minor improvement on Viocia’s gluttonous cafeteria diet which had been hard to watch for anyone watching what they ate.

“Eep. Wh-where should we eat today, Viocia?”

“Since the weather’s so nice, I say we go outside! Like by the fountain!!”

“The fountain might help keep us cool in this sun.”

Viocia, Dorothea, and Melehe.

They had never officially agreed to it, but those three tended to stick together.

“Um, eep, study, study. ATU 0782 is the King Has Donkey Ears.”

“That’s Midas and the Donkey Ears. Learning it by the wrong name will hurt you later on.”

Melehe corrected Dorothea before Yagoro could do so.

The sky pirate girl continued lecturing the busty glasses girl who looked like a rare cheesecake thanks to her white bandages.

“It has a number of magical lessons, but the most common is that you need to watch what you say. Because when the barber shouts about the donkey ears, it will eventually reach the king’s ears somehow.”

“We’re here!”

They arrived at a circular stone-paved plaza. Lots of benches were set up on the perimeter, but the edge of the circular fountain in the center was more popular place to sit. There were a lot of girls their age here. Students were far from the only people in Temple School City, but lunchtime was the perfect time to target student customers, so no one else was going to be taking a break now. The adults working in their shops tended to take their lunch breaks at 2 or 3, so more the time for an afternoon tea.

“Oh, wow! Dorothea, you brought the same thing for lunch as me!!”

“Hee hee. But the ingredients are different. Eep. Yours is seafood, but mine is grilled chicken and boiled egg whites.”

The lunchboxes sitting on Viocia and Dorothea’s laps contained sandwiches. Melehe had a health bar made from walnuts, a few other nuts, and dried fruit held together by honey. She was munching on one end like a rodent. It didn’t appear to be an instant food. Apparently she had found the most efficient way to get her food so she could spend as much time as possible studying. Was that A Rank even human?

Yagoro, meanwhile, was poking a wooden fork into the lobster noodles he had bought at a nearby food stall. (It came in a boxy waterproof parchment container that made it look something like American Chinese takeout.)

“A study group?” said Viocia without warning.

She had apparently been listening in on the girls from another prep school chatting nearby. Come to think of it, she was the kind of idiot who would see what the person at the next table was eating in the cafeteria and go order some for herself.

“Apparently it’s a way for students to get together and study in their private time instead of just relying on prep school time! That sounds like fun! You can pass around your reference books and play word games to remember the names of different herbs.”

<span style="font-size:125%">“What do I gain from studying with you two?”</span>

“Gyahhh!?” screamed Viocia at the sudden rejection.

For a student, creating an environment where studying was fun instead of a chore could be an extremely powerful trump card. But Melehe had the self-control to stay focused for long periods of time as she studied, so it may not have meant much for her.

“U-um, Viocia? Eep. If you want, we can have our own study grou-”

“No, Dorothea. Showing mercy is a bad idea for an exam student. The time you have is how many tickets you have to act. If you waste your limited tickets helping that low-scoring idiot just because you feel sorry for her, you’ll be the one who ends up in tears.”

Viocia began trembling when even the tutor nixed the idea.

Yagoro was only Viocia’s tutor. He appreciated the offer to assist Viocia, but he couldn’t take responsibility if that derailed Dorothea or Melehe’s efforts.

Their current ranks in the official Maleficium practice exams were D for Viocia, C for Dorothea, and A for Melehe. If they could find a way to help all three of them improve, Yagoro would rejoice, but with their skill levels so varied, Viocia would end up being pulled up by the other two without giving them anything in return. That was hardly fair when it came to preparing for the anything-goes witch entrance exam.

Melehe sighed quietly and casually pointed to the side.

“Now, if you were on her level, I might be interested. Hi, Chloe.”

“Chloe? Who?”

“C-Chloe Sharprain!? Eep, she’s another monster with an A Rank on the official practice exam, Viocia!!”

Amazed, Dorothea held a hand to her mouth and shouted. It was just like her to show more admiration than fear.

Apparently the elite had an elite friend.

“Hm?” Chloe herself turned casually around in a puzzled way. She was a tall girl, but she had kept her body fat down enough to look more slender than anything. Despite the heat, she wore mourning clothes. But the inclusion of small skull and spider accessories suggested it was meant to be a necromancer outfit. With the occasional glimpses of pale skin, the outfit gave her a coffee jelly in milk look.

“Oh, Melehe? Are you here for lunch too?”

“I’m studying the influence that sunspots and the path of the sun have on astrology. Using actual observations.”

“Ah ha ha. What a Melehe thing to say.”

The carefree way Chloe laughed clashed with the vibe of her mourning clothes.

She embodied the confidence of those A Rank girls who seemed to live in another world.

The lunchbox on Chloe’s lap contained broiled salmon fillets wrapped in a hand-sized leafy vegetable similar to lettuce. It reminded Yagoro of the Korean lettuce offered at some yakiniku places back on Earth, but what was that actually called? He couldn’t remember the vegetable’s name, but it looked like Chloe was the type to eliminate all red meat and carbs from her diet.

Restricting your diet was easy enough, but the stress of coming up with enough variety to keep things interesting could lead to a rebound. As a tutor, he thought she was doing a good job in that sense.

Was Dorothea viewing her with such admiration because Chloe had overcome the idea that smaller was better for broom-riding witches and had achieved an A Rank through hard work and self-control? The occasional nodding suggested Dorothea was soaking up some kind of knowledge from observing Chloe’s lunch.

<span style="font-size:75%">“U-um. Chloe, do you do study groups with Melehe? Eep.”</span>

“Not a chance.”

Melehe answered for Chloe.

It wasn’t clear what kind of friendship those two had, but they seemed to know each other fairly well.

“Chloe’s even more of a lone wolf than I am. She looks all friendly and smiley, but she refuses to team up with or get along with anyone. I mean, she got her A Rank by studying at home instead of going to a prep school.”

“She’s not human,” muttered a trembling Viocia.

As long as they passed the exam in the end, it didn’t matter what path a student took, so why was the idiot letting that girl scare her before she’d proven she really had what it took?

Chloe smiled and poured something from her leather water bottle into a wooden cup. The drink was a reddish-orange, so it was probably a homemade health drink made by crushing up carrots and few other vegetables.

“Oh, right. I’ll be seeing you at Carraway’s Lughnasadh exam, Melehe.”

“?”

“I study at home without visiting a prep school, but the results of an officially-recognized prep school exam can be applied to your official practice exam. I don’t really care which one, but I will be taking an exam at a prep school.”