Editing Failing Witch:Volume1 Episode1 (section)

===5===

Dorothea Rockpool was in the infirmary.

She hated that sterile white room. It reeked of disinfectant. It was an artificial space created by repeatedly driving out all signs of nature for the convenience of the humans.

She tried to throw out that meaningless fantasy.

But she couldn’t.

“Uh,” she groaned as she got up from the bed. The back of her throat hurt. Was that because she had swallowed so much pool water? And that pool water that creeped her out because it was so thoroughly purified by those artificial familiars.

(It’s lunchtime. I need to get my lunch and join Viocia.)

She spent a few minutes feeling around for her glasses. She noticed her ears felt strange and then realized that was the temples of her glasses, meaning she was already wearing them.

She bit her lip.

Was she really this useless?

She had done poorly on the last practice exam. She had just barely remained at Rank C and she still showed room for improvement, but that room for improvement wasn’t nearly enough to reach Maleficium. This wasn’t like getting into an ordinary school, so she had to work even harder. She needed every point she could get. She needed every advantage over the other girls she could get. But she couldn’t even reach the one point right in front of her.

Her weight.

Her height.

Being big was a plus for knights and martial artists, but not so for witches.

''Witches flew, so being small and light was best.

“Wh-what…” she muttered, squeezing the edge of the blanket in her hands. “Eep. What am I supposed to do?”

She had known she was growing faster than her peers even back during her compulsory education. When her classmates had said she looked “mature”, she had pushed herself to respond with a modest smile. The way the boys had looked at her had of course bothered her. But when she was growing and growing back then, she hadn’t imagined it would cause so much trouble in the future. Everyone knew you weren’t supposed to discriminate based on physical characteristics, but that didn’t apply in this ruthless competition.

Anyone who couldn’t earn this one point would fail in the very end. She had experienced it already.

(I can’t go to Viocia. Sh-she could never understand how I feel.)

Dorothea was afraid Viocia would innocently say she was jealous of Dorothea.

That friend always had a bright smile on her face and she meant no harm, but her small and slight build was everything Dorothea wished she had. Seeing what was forever out of her reach was painful at times, so Dorothea couldn’t open up to that girl about this.

Which left only one option.

“A-Aristotle.”

Her partner was always there for her.

A witch must always keep her broom with her, so it was leaning against the wall nearby.

“Formula Broom – Lyceum. I-I don’t want to change. Eep. Can I still get into Maleficium?”

She wasn’t expecting a response.

While Formula Brooms could talk, they were not boutique clerks. They didn’t need to smile politely for a young girl.

But she did hear a voice.

And it was undoubtedly speaking to the lonely girl.

“Conclusion: the odds are quite low. Quitting now would honestly be the wise decision.”

“Eh?”

For a moment, she didn’t understand what he meant. She even stopped breathing. She only felt a tingling in the back of her head, which pushed in from the sides of her vision like a sandstorm.

She couldn’t stop it. This was the exact opposite of her faint hope. The Formula Broom’s response was even more cruelly precise than a slide rule.

“This should be obvious based on your practice exam results. You are currently Rank C and the average percentage increase in results is 0.03%. Conclusion: even if you work consistently to improve until the day of the exam, you will not reach the passing line. And your efforts have already reached their upper limit. Odds of a miraculous increase in your results at this point: 0.”

“Stop.”

Which ATU number was this? Right, it was ATU 0709.

The Earth text called Snow White included a magic mirror.

But.

The truths revealed by the mirror were all cruel things that drove its owner to her ruin. If the beautiful stepmother hadn’t had that tool, she never would have gone down the path of evil and would have lived out her life both attractive and happy.

“N-no more!!!”

“If you choose to ignore your physical inadequacies and focus on learning as much as possible, you will need at least 5 more years of studying. Report: you would then have a chance of passing assuming no prominent rivals appeared in the meantime. But, Dorothea, your family said you were only allowed one failure and you agreed to return home if you failed a second time. The conditions you need cannot occur unless you solve that problem.”

That wasn’t possible.

She had needed to cry and beg to get permission to come here and try to become a witch in the first place. It had taken a week before her puffy eyes recovered. Her shopkeeper parents must have given her permission more out of exasperation than anything. They had told her to return and inherit the family store once she had gotten this witch thing out of her system. They said she had to take responsibility as the eldest daughter.

“Eep. Uh, ahh.”

Another year after this one wasn’t an option.

It simply wasn’t possible. She thought and she thought but there was no solution!!

If she tried to convince them, she just knew they would tie a rope around her and drag her back home if they had to.

''Then the life she had dreamed of really would be over.

“Ahhhh!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!? Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

“Conclusion: your dream cannot come true unless you reduce your weight. Otherwise passing the Maleficium entrance exam is logically impossible.”

He was so mean.

How could he be so mean?

She couldn’t do anything more than she already was. She couldn’t lose any more weight. What could she do when she kept growing taller no matter how much she cut back on her food? It didn’t even have anything to do with the material they were studying. How was that fair!?

Dorothea held her head and screamed, but her Formula Broom did not hold back. The cutting-edge witchcraft device simply accurately and precisely answered the question it was given. Because it was not human.

“Then…”

The tears fell. Her mask was stripped away. She tasted blood from the lip she was biting.

She had not been lazy about making her dream come true. She had studied every single day, she had kept her weight down as much as possible, and she had worked so hard to fight her own growth. In all seriousness, she was pretty sure she had shortened her lifespan doing it. ''She had even done that one thing.'' So how was it possible she hadn’t earned a single point from it all!?

So she screamed.

Her face crumbled below the weight of the world’s unfairness.

“Then…wh-wha-what am I supposed to do, Aristotle!!?”

The foolish girl kept making the same mistake.

Hadn’t this all begun when she sought answers from a mere object?

And the witch’s broom answered.

Mercilessly.

“''Suggestion: you need only let me take care of everything.''”