Chapter 72: Club Festival
The club fair ran the length of the ground floor corridor on the east side of the student activities building. Tables on both sides, every registered organization represented, forty-three pitches happening simultaneously.
Anastasia stood at the entrance.
"This is all for clubs," she said.
"Student organizations," Tessira said. "Social, academic, and practical. You join one, you attend sessions, you develop a secondary skill or interest alongside the curriculum."
"And they are all recruiting simultaneously."
"Orientation period. The first three weeks."
Anastasia looked at the tables.
"Which ones are worth attending," she said.
"Depends on what you want from them," I said.
She considered this.
"I want to find one thing this year I could not have found anywhere else," she said.
Tessira and I looked at her.
"Sora said that during introductions," Tessira said.
"Yes," Anastasia said. "It seemed like an accurate criterion."
She walked into the corridor.
Tessira fell in beside me.
"She absorbed Sora’s introduction sentence," Tessira said.
"She absorbs most things," I said.
The Sword Combat Circle had Reinhardt.
He was standing behind the table explaining, to whoever was in range, why the grip modification he had been developing for the past two months was the correct approach for three-point stance adjustment, and why the senior members had told him the grip was unconventional, and why unconventional and wrong were different categories.
He had collected seven people.
"Amagi," he said, when I passed.
"I am looking," I said.
"The club is good," he said. "The seniors are useful. You can actually spar here."
"I am looking," I said.
He returned to the grip explanation.
Tessira was already two tables ahead. She had her annotated map open and was comparing it to the actual table positions.
"Four clubs moved positions," she said when I reached her. "The Spirit Research Circle is where the History Society was listed. The History Society is down there."
She pointed.
Anastasia had stopped at the Spirit Research Circle.
A third-year student was attempting to demonstrate a minor spirit summoning. The spirit kept appearing and then moving sideways out of the circle and hiding behind the banner. The third-year kept adjusting the circle parameters and the spirit kept finding the next available gap.
Anastasia watched this for thirty seconds.
"Your mana output is slightly irregular," she said to the third-year. "The circle is reacting to the variation. The spirit can feel it."
The third-year looked at her.
"Even output throughout the initialization phase," Anastasia said. "The spirit will not hide from a stable field."
The third-year tried again with a more regulated breath pattern.
The spirit appeared and stayed.
He stared at it.
Then at Anastasia.
"Do you want to join the Circle," he said.
"No," she said. "But thank you for demonstrating."
She walked back to where I was standing.
Tessira came up on my other side.
"That is going to happen a lot," Tessira said.
"Probably," Anastasia said.
She held Tessira’s annotated map.
"What is this one," she said, pointing at a club near the middle of the corridor.
"Combat Medicine," I said. "Practical first aid for mana injuries."
A student was demonstrating the correct pressure application for a mana burn with a practice dummy from the training grounds, oversized for the corridor.
"Useful," Anastasia said.
"Are you joining," Tessira said.
"I am noting it," she said, and held the map out.
Tessira took it.
"That is my map," she said.
"Yes," Anastasia said.
The History Society had mountains of documents. A second-year was giving a pitch in front of a stack that kept threatening to fall. She was tracking both.
The Mana Theory Research Circle had a live mana measurement demonstration accurate to four decimal places. Several students had gathered to stand in front of it and read numbers. The researcher running it appeared satisfied with this arrangement.
Anastasia stopped.
"The calibration is slightly off," she said.
"Ana," Tessira said.
"The fourth decimal place is drifting. Within tolerance but not within accuracy."
The researcher looked at her.
"I can see that," he said. "We are using the standard academic calibration tool."
"The standard academic calibration tool was updated in Year 283," Anastasia said. "The current instruments have a different resonance baseline. The tool does not account for it."
The researcher looked at his instrument.
"How do you know that," he said.
"I was working with the instruments before the update," she said.
He looked at her with the careful attention of someone deciding whether a sentence meant what it appeared to mean.
"Join the Circle," he said.
"I am still deciding," she said.
She walked away.
Tessira fell back to walk beside me.
"She is going to accidentally join four clubs today," Tessira said.
"At least," I said.
The Alchemy Club was at the far end of the corridor.
One table. One chair. One student.
She was second-year. The table had three items on it: a series of small vessels, a preparation board, and a piece of paper with a compound written on it. She watched the corridor pass without appearing to wait for anything specific.
She looked up when we stopped in front of the table.
"Identify it," she said.
She indicated the vessel on the left.
I looked at it. Color, texture, the way the mana in it moved.
"Compressed wound moss extract," I said. "Stabilized with a low-grade crystal fraction. The mana signature is slightly irregular. You used a filtering stone with residual contamination from a previous batch."
She looked at the vessel.
Then at me.
"The contamination affects potency by approximately four percent," I said. "Not harmful. Just less effective than the base compound."
"How do you know about the filtering stone," she said.
"The signature has a secondary resonance layer," I said. "It is very faint."
She studied the vessel.
"Sit down," she said.
"I am standing," I said.
"I know," she said. "I am asking you to not be."
Tessira looked at me.
Anastasia was already examining the second vessel.
"What is your name," I said.
"Seren," she said. "Second year. I run the Alchemy Club."
"Alone," I said.
"Currently," she said.
"The people who walk past this table either do not know what they are looking at or they know but they do not care about the contamination." She set the vessel down. "You cared about the contamination."
"It affects the result," I said.
"Yes," she said. "It does."
"Sit down," she said, "and I will show you what the corrected version does differently."
Tessira put her hand on my arm.
"We are going to be here for a while," she said, to Anastasia.
Anastasia was already looking at the second vessel.
"That one has a different problem," she said.
Seren looked at her.
"Yes," she said. "Sit down."
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