Preparation for the Tournament - Part 1

I was sat in my seat, listening to the teacher talking about affinities and other things related to Esper abilities. I was a Level-0 Esper, meaning I couldn't really even put this theory into practice no matter how much practice I did—life really was unfair.

After the class, the teacher announced something to everyone.

'I'm sure you're all familiar with this but we're participating in the Interschool Tournament for Espers this year as well. Details for the tournament will be written on the sheet I will hand out to everyone. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask me.'

She began handing out the sheet.

-

{Interschool Tournament for Espers}

The preliminary round of the tournament will be split into two parts this year.

1. Level 0 to Level 2 Espers will first participate in the first stage of the qualifiers tournament. 16 students will get the opportunity to move onto the next stage of the qualifiers tournament.

2. The 16 students from the first stage will compete against all students from level-3 to level-4 in another qualifiers tournament where the top remaining student will join the official preliminary tournament.

3. All level-5 Espers or above will automatically gain an invite to the tournament.

32 students will take part in the official preliminary tournament and the top 4 will continue on to the official Interschool Tournament for Espers

-

In short, this was all a long qualifiers tournament process to weed out the weaklings but still give them combat time. Ultimately, 32 students will join the preliminary tournament held at the school stadium and the top four will join the official tournament which is held at the main stadium in Central Park.

Before this year, the qualifiers never split up the level-0s to level-2s and the level-3s to level-4s. They were all thrown into one big qualifier round. However, I assumed they wanted to give the weaker Espers a bit more of an opportunity to show themselves so they split it up.

Back then, it didn't matter if I was fighting a level-2 or a level-4, I'd always lose anyways. However, this year I had my <Vampire System> which meant I might stand a chance and make it past the first stage of the qualifiers. I still needed to train hard to actually effectively use my abilities because at the moment I am still very much an amateur to the system.

With that announcement, we were dismissed for the end of the day

*

All the students began leaving the school. I made my way to the lockers a little bit later to avoid the main stream of people leaving the school.

I was putting books into my bag at my locker when I realised that I had left my pen on my table. There was a very high chance that it was probably either stolen or destroyed considering my reputation. I decided to go back into the room and check anyways just in case.

To my astonishment, there was a brown-haired girl standing at my table. At first, I thought she was just vandalising my table, however, once I got a closer look, I noticed that she was holding a cloth in her hand.

'What are you doing.'

'I'm not doing this for you, as a member of the student council, I can't have students vandalising school property.'

'You really don't have to, it's fine.'

'Didn't you hear me the first time? I said this wasn't for you. I don't care what you think.'

'Oh, well did you see a pen on the table?'

'A pen? Um, I'm not sure, I saw a lot of garbage on the table so I just decided to throw it all away.'

'Well, that's fine then, uh, do you want me to help you?'

She looked up at me and thought for a little while.

'I mean, this is your table so I guess so.'

She opened up a little bag she was carrying with her and pulled out another cloth. She also grabbed a spray bottle off the floor and handed it to me.

'This ink is really hard to remove, keep spraying and wiping until it comes off.'

'Okay.'

I kneeled down and sprayed some of the cleaning liquid onto the table. A little bit of foam gathered and I wiped it off with the cloth. Once I looked again, I noticed that barely any ink had come off. I looked at the area that she was cleaning and noticed that the ink was almost completely gone.

She must have been doing this for a while.

We continued cleaning the table for almost half and hour before it was substantially clean.

'That should be enough, thanks for the help.' She said.

'I should be thanking you.'

'I'm just doing my job.'

Huh.

'By the way, I don't even know your name.' She continued.

'I'm Ritsu—Ritsu Takamiya.'

'Well, I'm Azusa, level-4 Esper and member of the student council.'

I guess that's how people introduced themselves these days.

With that she walked off without another word. I also decided to make my way home, I wanted to go to Haven and see what's up with the shop and missions.

The walk home was relatively unextraordinary.

I decided to grab some food on the way back so I made my way into a small fish and chip shop. It was on the corner of a relatively quite street and it seemed like it didn't get very many customers, however, I was craving some chips so I decided to go in.

To my surprise I managed to see Azusa again.

'Oh, you're here as well?' I said.

'Yeah, I actually work here.'

She was still in her school uniform so I didn't expect her to be one of the workers at this run-down fish and chip shop, but I guess I was wrong.

She walked around the to the other side of the counter.

'So what do you want?'

'Just a half-serving of chips please.'

'Alright, coming straight up.'

It appeared that she was just the cashier and there was someone at the back who was working the kitchen.

'Just out of curiosity, why was your table so vandalised?'

'I guess people don't like me very much.'

'I assumed that's the cause of the wounds all over your hands.'

'For the most part.'

Before long, she handed me my chips, wrapped up in a big piece of newspaper. After that, I made my way back home.