Chapter 3: The Test and the Borrowing of Magical Tools

Feeling well-rested after a good night’s sleep, I started preparing for work at the Ministry. I was so glad that I had found a plan to avoid doom! I could finally focus on doing my best as a working adult.

I would do my work as I was told, all while looking for the weaknesses of the new love interests and teaching new tricks to Pochi. Go, Katarina, go! And thank you, mysterious book note!

Everything was explained so clearly. The person who wrote it must have been really smart... Hm, wait a second, who wrote it?

The note was in the book I’d borrowed from Sophia, so was it her? Or was it Jeord, who returned the book to me? Or maybe it was the person who found my bag in the hallway...

But the game was something from my previous life, and nobody in this world was supposed to know about it. Yesterday I had been so happy about finding the information I was longing for that I hadn’t paid any mind to it, but now, I realized just how mysterious it all was.

Why was it in the book? Who wrote it? I decided that I would start by asking Sophia, who gave me the book, and Jeord, who returned it to me after I lost it.

I put the note back in the book, the book in my bag, the bag on my shoulder, and I made for the Magical Ministry.

At the entrance, a notice posted on the bulletin board read “All newcomers must go to the auditorium where the entrance ceremony was held.”

Are they going to announce which department each one of us will be going to? We had been guided through a tour of the Ministry, but we still didn’t know anything about our assignments.

If possible, I wanted to avoid the Biomagic Research Department... The work looked hard, and I didn’t want to pass out again. But that was supposed to be the second most disliked department. I wondered about the first. If people wanted to go there less than to the Biomagic Department, it must have been hell.

I entered the auditorium and found that most of the newcomers had already gathered in there. I was one of the last ones to enter, so I stood quite far from the podium. I tried looking for Maria and Sora, but they weren’t there. As for my other friends, they were supposed to be at the Ministry, but they weren’t newcomers proper, so maybe they wouldn’t be there.

Hadn’t those two come yet? Or were they all the way in the front? I tried moving towards the podium to look for them, and accidentally bumped into someone. I was looking forward and didn’t see them at all.

“I’m sorry!” I apologized.

“No problem,” they replied, turning to face me.

I had already seen that boy with orange hair and blue eyes. He was Dewey Percy, one of the new love interests in FL2 that I had met during the tour the other day.

Up close, he really was dashingly handsome. All the girls into younger boys must have gone crazy about him while playing the game.

However, as soon as our eyes met, his beautiful face suddenly turned into a hateful expression.

He looked so peaceful until seeing me! Why is he looking at me as if I were his sworn enemy? I was supposed to antagonize him in the game, but in real life we just met!

Why? Why?!

While I was still shocked, Dewey turned away from me before walking off.

What just happened? Had I already angered him somehow, without even realizing it? If he started holding a grudge against me before I could find out his weakness, he would prove a formidable foe in the battle against doom.

I’ll have to focus on teaching tricks to Pochi. For example I could teach him to warn me when an enemy comes close, giving me time to escape. And who could teach me how to pick locks, something that I absolutely needed to learn to get out of jail? Maybe Sora? I had to ask him, and then I could practice in my room at home. If I needed any tools, like a piece of wire or something, I’d just ask Grandpa Tom.

“Lady Katarina!” someone called out to me.

Surprised, I turned around and found Maria smiling at me. I also noticed that everyone was starting to walk out.

Huh? What happened here?

“We are in the same test group! I am so glad!” said Maria with a lovely smile, but I had no idea what was going on.

Test? Same test group?

“Er, you see, Maria, I actually don’t have the best grasp on the situation right now. Would you mind explaining it to me?”

She looked surprised at first, but then smiled again and kindly agreed, as expected of (my waifu) Maria.

As it turned out, one of the higher-ups had said that we would need to take an examination to decide what department we would be sent to.

I really didn’t hear any of that. Or maybe I just didn’t listen.

Each newcomer’s preferences were accounted for in choosing their department, but apparently, this test was performed every year to test their actual skills and make a final decision.

We were divided into test groups and had to complete some simple tasks. The names of those belonging to each group were just posted on a notice board near the front of the auditorium, and Maria and I had ended up in the same one. I felt lucky to be in the same group as my friend despite this huge number of people.

“I’m glad to be in the same group as you, too! How many other people will there be with us?” I asked Maria. Surely it wouldn’t just be the two of us.

“Actually I was so excited about being together with Lady Katarina that I forgot to check the names of the other members...” she said, blushing. She was so cute it was baffling. She was so excited that she just ran back here... I was so happy.

“Let’s go check together then!”

“Yes!”

We walked together to the front of the auditorium. Near “Maria Campbell” and “Katarina Claes,” the notice read “Sora Smith.”

“Sora Smith?”

“That would be me,” said the blue-eyed handsome boy behind me.

“I thought that’d be you! So your surname is ‘Smith’?”

I was sure that he was supposed not to have a surname, being an orphan and all.

“Ms. Larna just gave me a random surname to make sure I wouldn’t be asked any annoying questions here at the Ministry,” he explained casually.

Not having a surname would make him stand out, sure... but just using a surname given to him without any second thought was incredible. And Larna “randomly” giving her own to a subordinate was even more incredible. Not that I cared so much about my own surname, but still...

Anyway, since it was me, Maria, and Sora, I smiled happily. “We’re all already friends in this group! That’s a relief,” I said. I didn’t know what kind of task we’d have to perform, but doing it with my friends would certainly be easier.

“You are also friends with the fourth member?” Sora asked.

What?

I looked back at the notice, and sure enough, under “Maria Campbell,” “Katarina Claes,” and “Sora Smith,” there was a fourth name.

Dewey Percy.

That was the name of one of the love interests of FL2, specifically the one that had glared at me just a few minutes ago. Could the fact that we were in the same group mean that this test was a scripted event in the game? Not that I could run away, either way.

Each group was instructed on where to wait for further orders, and I made my way there while fighting the fear of incoming doom.

Dewey was already there. He didn’t give me the hate-stare this time, maybe because Maria and Sora were there as well, but he was clearly avoiding looking at me and I could feel the tension in the air. Maria, kind as always, tried to talk to Dewey — who was still keeping his distance — but it didn’t go well.

This really made me nervous about how things would unfold. We were awkwardly waiting when someone called us from behind.

“Are you group number two?”

“Yes,” we all replied in unison, turning around to look and... freezing in shock.

The person in front of us was very, very peculiar. Hip-length black hair, beautifully braided with big ribbons. A uniform customized much more than Cornish’s, full of ribbons and frills, barely even resembling a uniform at all. Makeup thick enough to rival the garishness of the uniform. Eyes surrounded by glitter and with long, probably fake, eyelashes. Blood-red lipstick.

A look like that would have been shock-worthy on anybody... but it was even more shocking to see it on a man. A musclebound man with blue beard, at that.

I got the feeling that the Cornish and Norman had only been a warm-up to the craziness.

I just looked at him, unsure of what I should say.

“Hello! I will be watching over your test today. My name is Guy Handerson, but that’s not cute enough, so I go by Laura. Please call me that!” he... she said, throwing her head to one side in a cutesy gesture.

She sounded and behaved like the epitome of girliness, but she looked like a middle-aged macho...

“And, together with me... Oh, he isn’t here. Where did Nathan go?” said Handerson (I couldn’t bring myself to call her Laura) before starting to look for someone.

Even newcomers from other test groups were staring at her... which was completely understandable. I looked at the examiners for other groups, but I saw no frilly uniforms nor crossdressing bodybuilders. Did we just get the weird one again?

“I’m here. Right here,” said a feeble voice coming from somewhere near me, interrupting my thoughts.

I hadn’t noticed that there was someone so close to me, so I let out a little shout of surprise.

“Nathan, you big dummy, always hiding yourself! Look, you scared one of the newcomers!” said Handerson, looking at a man that was her polar opposite.

S-Since when was he here? I never noticed him...

His uniform wasn’t customized in any way, and he was wearing it neatly and properly. He was tall and had long bangs and large, thick glasses. That was all I could say about him. He was remarkably unremarkable.

“I wasn’t hiding. The people around just don’t notice me,” he said with a frown before introducing himself to us. “I’m Nathan Hart. Together with Guy, I’ll be your examiner for today,” he said calmly.

What a normal person! I was overcome with relief. After seeing all those weird Ministry employees, meeting a person this undistinguished — if a bit hard to notice — was very refreshing. He slightly eased the bewilderment I’d felt from meeting Handerson.

However...

“Now we’ll give you more details about the test, so follow me to the room that was assigned to your group,” he said, and started walking.

Uh? Wait, where did he go? We lost sight of him a few moments after he moved towards the crowd.

“Ahh, we’ve lost him again, haven’t we now?” said Handerson, who by contrast was someone who would be very hard to lose sight of. “He’s a good boy, Nathan, but he’s really easy to lose track of. And he also always gets lost...” she said, putting her hands to her cheeks.

I stared at her and her cute gesture, now sure that “normal colleagues” was not a benefit I would enjoy in this workplace.

A girly macho, a disappearing man, and a handsome boy who seemed to hate me for no reason. The path ahead of me was a thorny one...

Handerson led us to our destination, and Hart reappeared after a while, winded despite the short distance.

“I’m sorry! We couldn’t find you, so we thought we’d wait for you here,” said Handerson.

“Don’t worry, it happens all the time,” replied Hart, frowning. “I’m sorry myself.” He looked like a good — though a bit sorrowful — person.

“Okay, now we’ll explain today’s examination,” said Handerson after we were all together.

“The Ministry has a list of easy missions that even you little birds can be expected to complete. We chose one that we thought would be appropriate for you.”

“The four of you in group number two will have to cooperate to complete this mission, and we will examine your performance,” said Hart.

I was nervous, but it didn’t sound too difficult now that I had heard the details. That was a relief.

“And now, we’ll announce what the mission is,” Handerson said as he took out a piece of paper. “Some creatures have been appearing around a village and harassing its people. You’ll have to take care of that.”

Oh! It sounds just like a quest from an RPG! If it was enough for the Ministry to have to intervene, they couldn’t be your everyday creatures... They were probably the kind of animal that was researched in the Biomagic Department.

Could it be unicorns? No, unicorns wouldn’t harass villagers... Maybe it’s one of those plants, the... the things... the madeleines... I seriously hope it isn’t... I hate them...

What if it was a dragon?! That would be cool!

“By the way, what kind of creature is this?” I asked Hart, unable to contain my curiosity.

“Tanuki,” he replied.

Hm? Did I hear that right? Did he really say “tanuki”? The brown little mammals that eat crops? No, that wouldn’t make any sense. This is the Magical Ministry.

“...What exactly is a tanuki?” I asked, thinking that maybe they were different creatures that just happened to be called the same thing as the “tanuki” back in my world.

“What? You’ve never seen a tanuki? They’re little brown animals that live in farming villages and ruin their crops...” explained Handerson, surprised.

...That’s a tanuki alright. Nothing magical or mysterious about it. Why does the Ministry have to deal with them? Couldn’t the villagers just set up traps or something? Why does the most powerful organization in the kingdom have to fight tanuki?!

“Excuse me, but... why does the Ministry have to take care of tanuki? Can the villagers not do it themselves?” said Dewey, taking the words out of my mouth.

Thank you. That’s a question I’m dying to hear answered.

Hart replied with a troubled expression. “They tried, but there were so many that they had to ask for our help.” He paused for a second and then went on speaking. “And also... a lot of newcomers have idealized, unrealistic ideas about what the work at the Ministry is. We often have to deal with things that are, well, underwhelming. The Ministry has a lot of branches and quite a few employees, so it has to perform all kinds of menial tasks.”

Menial tasks... I wasn’t exactly planning to become Ministry Employee of the Year of anything, but after hearing about how powerful of an organization it was, I had higher expectations than “menial tasks”...

Handerson, probably seeing how surprised I looked, tried to explain things further to calm me down. “But our mission today is one that we’ve specifically chosen to be easy! You see, none of you darlings have powerful offensive magic.”

Indeed, Maria only had Light Magic, which was a healing power, Sora had Fire Magic, but it was weak, I had to keep my Dark Familiar secret because he was a spawn of darkness and so I could only use my Dirt Bump, and Dewey didn’t even have any magic at all. We all had our unique talents, but offensive magic was not one of them. That made the tanuki thing make a lot more sense.

“...How were the groups decided in the first place?” asked Dewey coldly. “Certainly not on the basis of magic ability balance, nor on age... So, what were the criteria?” he said before glancing at me.

“Members for each group were selected completely randomly. Why? Is there a problem?” replied Hart.

“...No, sir,” said Dewey, looking like there were, in fact, a ton of problems.

For some reason, he looked mad at me. FL2’s plot hadn’t started yet, so we had barely interacted at all so far... I had to find out the reason behind his hatred for me.

“Now, let me give you some more details about today’s mission,” said Hart.

He explained that the village was in the country, near one of the peripheral branches of the Ministry. Given its location, that branch had to deal with a lot more trivial matters than the main branch in the capital. They would normally be able to solve the problem themselves, but they had their hands full with other tasks, and so they’d asked for the HQ to help.

The HQ, thinking that it would be a perfect test for the newcomers, accepted. I knew that starting out with a difficult mission would be problematic, but at the same time, I still felt disappointed.

“The task itself is not particularly challenging, but the location is rather far. If we left today, we probably would not arrive before night. We will leave tomorrow early in the morning, and we may have to stay there for a few nights, so make sure to be prepared,” said Hart.

Oh, so it wasn’t near enough that we could just go, get rid of a couple of tanuki, and come back. Staying the night someplace far away sounded fun, though!

After the explanation, Handerson stood up and smiled. “Since none of you have strong offensive magic at your disposal, the higher-ups will lend you magical tools. Let’s go to the Magical Tool Laboratory’s warehouse.”

Magical tools?! Now that’s cool! And they would be helpful to compensate for our lack of offensive magic (even if we were up against... tanuki).

Hart and Handerson then guided us to the warehouse where the magical tools were stored. The first thing that jumped into my mind when I heard the term “magical tools” was the kind of things I’d read about in the books of my previous life: magic wands, cloaks that make you invisible, watches that let you travel through time... My excitement, however, vanished as soon as we entered the warehouse.

What is this... junk?

Before us was a collection of weird items, large and small, amassed randomly and covered in dust. Rather than a warehouse, it looked like a dump. All the others seemed as surprised as me while they looked at the jun— at the magical tools in front of them.

Again, Handerson sensed our shock and intervened. “We build a lot of tools at the Ministry, but not all prototypes turn out successfully, and a lot of them are stored here. But some of them do work.”

...Doesn’t that mean that most of them don’t work? She just made the warehouse look even worse...

“Could you show us some of the tools as an example?” asked Maria tentatively, and Handerson picked up a small tool lying close to her.

“This allows you to communicate over long distances. It’s still a prototype, but the results so far aren’t half bad,” she said proudly.

That sounded like a telephone. A marvelous tool indeed.

“That sounds wonderful. Can it be used from anywhere?” asked Maria, excited by the magic telephone.

“Well, not quite. You must be outside, and you must be standing on a place high up enough,” explained Handerson, visibly frustrated by the question.

“High up...? How high, exactly?” asked Dewey, interested in spite of Handerson’s disappointed expression.

“The roof of a three-story building, I’d say. Since we’re going to the country, that could be hard...”

There were some tall buildings here in the capital, but not many outside of it. The magic telephone suddenly didn’t seem as useful.

“Then it would probably be useless for this mission. What other tools are there?” asked Dewey relentlessly. He looked like a cute little boy, but inside he was very cold...

“This is always cold, so it’s perfect on hot days,” said Handerson, giving Maria something that looked like a stone around as big as her palm.

“Oh, it’s true! It really feels cold!” said Maria.

“It’s only spring now, and it doesn’t look like this would help on our mission,” said Dewey, colder than any stone.

He had a point... It wasn’t summer, and it probably wouldn’t help against our (tanuki) foes.

Still not discouraged, Handerson went on to show us “the stone that is always warm,” “the handkerchief that always has a light, pleasant scent,” “the hand fan that cools you a lot just by waving it a little bit,” “the bag where you can store food smells to retrieve them later,” and more.

They all were interesting tools in their own right... but none of them looked particularly useful for our mission.

“We have lots of things here... mountains of them. But most of them are still prototypes, so we can’t use them...” said Handerson, as if trying to defend herself. “Oh well,” she said, now apparently fed up, “just take whatever you like. If you’re lucky, it’ll come in handy during the mission.”

Way to give us all the responsibility.

It was then that I realized that Hart wasn’t there. Actually, I realized that I didn’t know whether he had even made it here with us. Did he get lost again while coming here? He was so easy to forget about that it was scary.

And now, with no advice from either Hart or Handerson to rely on, we all started silently rummaging through the junk.

Hm... Just looking at the tools wasn’t enough to tell what their function was. I found something that looked like a broom... I wonder what this does.

“Excuse me, Ms. Handerson, what kind of tool is this?”

“Oh, just call me Laura. That’s an auto-cleaning broom.”

“So it really is just a broom. But auto-cleaning sounds really useful.”

“Yes, well, unfortunately it cannot recognize dirt, so it just sweeps left and right, and it usually just makes a bigger mess than before.”

“...”

Can you even call it auto-cleaning then?

I kept showing Handerson tools and asking her what they were for, but none of them turned out to be particularly useful. They were interesting, yes, but I wouldn’t bring them with me on a mission.

Dewey had already lost interest in searching and was sitting in a corner, reading a book. That boy had no regard for authority.

If the tools were smaller then I could at least bring a couple of them with me, but most of them were impractically big.

I must find something small and possibly useful... Oh? What’s that? I saw something shiny on top of a pile of other tools. Could it be a magical girl’s wand? If I have to get something useless, it might as well be something useless but cool-looking.

I got closer to inspect it, and it was... A handheld mirror? No, wait, a magnifying glass?

The small instrument (which, to be honest, wasn’t very cool-looking) was a magnifying glass like the ones I had used as a child in my previous life, without even a decorative handle or anything. However, looking through it didn’t make things appear bigger... yet another tool I had no idea what to use for.

“Ms. Hander— Ms. Laura, what is this one for?”

“Oh? Let me see, my dear.”

Maybe because I called her Laura, Handerson replied with a huge smile. It wouldn’t be easy, but I decided to just call her Laura from then on.

Laura took the tool and looked at it, puzzled. “The boss was researching this personally, so I’m not so sure, but... I think this thingie was supposed to glow in the dark...”

So it’s... a flashlight? I thought I had finally found something useful, but Laura said that it was barely enough to see right in front of where you held it... Again, useless.

I kept showing and asking, but I only found more useless stuff. I thought that not borrowing anything would be rude, though, so I took the magnifying glass that (barely) lit up and the bag where you could store food fragrances to (barely) smell them later. Maybe I would find myself hungry and in the dark at some point.

Maria and Sora also borrowed some tools, but Dewey — so ungrateful! — did not. We then went back home to prepare for the next morning, when we would meet at the Ministry to make for the village together.

★★★★★★★

“So, Laura, what do you think of the newcomers?” my superior asked me.

“They have all searched through the warehouse and picked out some tools to take. Dewey Percy just said that he didn’t need any though,” I told her.

“Hahaha! I know he looks cute, but inside he’s quite a cold boy,” she replied.

My superior, Larna Smith, was the head of the Magical Tool Department.

“I don’t want to sound like Dewey, but I think that anyone would have trouble choosing tools from that pile of old prototypes. Why did you not give them proper tools?” I asked her.

Our department had another warehouse where we stored actually useful, complete tools, but Larna instructed us to guide the newcomers to the old warehouse, which only contained prototypes and failed experiments. I trusted my boss to be cunning enough to have some plan in mind, but I was afraid that the newcomers would think less of our department.

However, her reply was unexpected. “I wouldn’t want newbies to go and break our good tools. And they’ll also test our prototypes for us in the meantime.”

“I... see...” I had thought too deeply about it...

“And, by the way, there’s more than meets the eye in the old warehouse,” Larna said with a telling expression. “Some of those tools may be very useful in the hands of the right person.”

“The right person?” I repeated, dubious that there was anything more than junk, I mean prototypes, in that warehouse.

“Yes. For example, what did Maria Campbell choose?”

“She chose the... I think it was the ring that increases magic powers,” I said, and Larna’s eyes lit up as she smiled.

“Ohoho, she chose that? Even better than planned...”

“But if I remember correctly, that ring barely had any power at all... it was basically just a lucky charm.” Which is why we keep it stored with all that other junk in the first place. Surely Larna was aware of this.

“For normal people, or rather, for normal magic powers, it’s just a pretty accessory. But for some of them, it will probably prove incredibly powerful. We just stored it with all the prototypes because the magic powers it would react to were so rare that we never managed to test it.”

“By magic powers, do you mean...”

“Yes. Light Magic.”

Her words made a shiver run down my spine. Maria had unknowingly chosen the one item that would be useful to her out of all that useless junk...

“As expected of Maria Campbell, a girl chosen by destiny. This is so interesting... I really hope that she’ll come to our department.”

As a beautiful girl who, despite her lowborn origins, wielded Light Magic, many thought of her as a “chosen girl,” and what happened today made me think that there could be some truth to that. She seemed to have something unique inside her. But...

“I don’t think such a talented girl would come to our department,” I said.

After all, we were just the Magical Tool Department. Maria excelled in both magic and academics, so it was unlikely that she would want to join us.

“And what did Sora and Katarina choose?” asked Larna, who seemingly had not even heard my pessimistic remark. She was a really good boss, but if I had to say anything negative about her, it was that once something caught her interest, she couldn’t think about anything else.

She never changes...

“Sora took the staff that keeps magic fire burning for a little bit, and Katarina the bag that stores food smells.”

“Wahaha! Really? Sora’s fine, but Katarina’s choice is just too funny!” she replied, laughing uncontrollably.

Well... I had to contain my laughter too when I saw what Katarina had chosen. One of my colleagues had actually built that when he was so overworked that he couldn’t think straight anymore. Of course, having no real application, the bag was just thrown into the old warehouse.

And to think that Katarina would go and choose that, looking so satisfied about her choice... I was impressed that I had managed not to laugh.

“Ms. Claes seems nothing like the rumors make her out to be,” I said, making Larna grin.

“By rumors, do you mean that she’s a spoiled kid who just got into the Ministry through her connections?”

“Yes. Many people say that that is the case. But after meeting her today, I am not so sure.”

“Oh? How did she seem to you?”

“She didn’t seem spoiled or entitled... and, she didn’t even look like a duke’s daughter at all. She was really... peculiar,” I said honestly, prompting another one of Larna’s bouts of laughter.

Katarina Claes, daughter of Duke Claes and fiancée of Prince Jeord. Hearing that a person such as her would come to work at the Ministry had surprised everyone.

We all had our theories, but eventually we started believing that she just came here to mess around and kill time until her marriage, which obviously left us thinking of her in a bad light.

I cannot say that I thought highly of her, either... but after meeting her, I realized that the rumors didn’t hold true at all. She was nothing like any other young noblewoman I’d met so far, and her weirdness had me laughing right from the start. I was actually looking forward to going on a mission with her.

The smell-bag was so funny that I’d almost forgotten, but she had taken another tool with her. “Now that I think about it, Katarina also took that other tool, the one that looks like a mirror and lights up.”

Upon hearing this, Larna, who had been laughing all this time, suddenly turned serious. “You mean the one I built recently?”

“Yes, that one,” I replied, slightly taken aback by her reaction.

“I was wondering where that went... So it was in that warehouse! And Katarina took it...”

Her expression now started worrying me, so I asked her, “Does it do anything other than just light up?”

“Well... for most people, no.”

Apparently, just as the ring that Maria took, it only showed its true power to certain people who used it.

“Should I take it back from her?”

“If she’s just taking it with her, it shouldn’t be dangerous...”

She thought about it for a while and then kept talking.

“I have a bad feeling about that tool being chosen by Katarina... This mission may take longer than we originally expected. Should anything happen, contact me immediately, got it?” she told me gravely.

“Yes ma’am,” I said with a nod.

If the rumors weren’t true, then there had to be another explanation as to why Katarina was here at the Ministry. Something troubling enough to turn someone as carefree as Larna serious.

I thought that the examination would be extremely simple, and that there was absolutely no risk of anything dangerous happening... but it now seemed like I’d have to reconsider that.

I’ll just work out before sleeping to put myself in the right mindset...

“And, by the way, where’s Nathan?” asked Larna.

“Lost, as usual,” I replied.

Nathan Hart, the colleague that would be performing the examination alongside me, was an incredibly talented and diligent man... but he was so inconspicuous that you’d forget about him as soon as he was out of sight, and he always ended up getting lost.

“I know that the examiners are chosen at random, but I wonder if it isn’t dangerous to have Nathan on an outdoor mission... Maybe you should strap him onto a leash or something.”

“...I know...”

Knowing that the mission I had to share with Nathan could turn out to be dangerous, I started to feel anxious about it.

★★★★★★★

I was excited at the thought that, tomorrow, I would be on my first mission — well, examination — for the Ministry. And since we would have to stay the night, I had to prepare properly. Clothing was easy, as I just needed my pajamas and uniform... but what else would I need?

Snacks for the trip to and from and the mission location, snacks to eat after lunch, snacks in case I got hungry at night... If I had all that, I figured I’d be fine. Oh, and the magic tools I borrowed, too.

“I’m going to ace that mission!” I shouted while standing on top of my bed.

“Please stop doing that, young miss. It is not befitting,” said Anne, who was in the room with me and shooting me a cold stare. “Will she be alright by herself? I must ask Lady Maria to take care of her tomorrow...” she murmured to herself, sounding like a mother worried about her child’s first school trip.

But I was an adult now. Usually Anne helped me pack up for trips (doing, arguably, most of the work for me), but this time I prepared myself. However, now she asked to take a look at my luggage.

“What are these snacks for?”

“To eat during the trip there.”

“And what are these snacks for?”

“To eat after lunch.”

“And these ones?”

“To eat at night if I get hungry.”

“There are too many snacks. You do not need so many,” she said, removing more than half of my provisions from my luggage.

Oh, my poor, poor snacks...

“There does not seem to be any comb or mirror in here.”

“I figured I wouldn’t need them.”

“Young miss... you are an adult now. A lady. You are expected to take care of your appearance. Your mother has told you that time and again, has she not?”

“...Okay, I’ll bring them...”

Going through my luggage, Anne took out and put in things as she saw fit, ending up doing, once again, most of the work for me. Even after I tried to do it all myself...

After we were done with my bags, the sun had already set. I was worried that I’d be so nervous about the next day’s trip that I’d spend the night awake, but, maybe because I was so tired after my day at the Ministry, I fell asleep the second I lay on the bed.

Anne woke me up the next morning, and thus began the day of my first mission.