Asuna was already at her desk when Ren arrived. She gets here early, he noted, settling into his chair.
He pulled out his notebook, wrote up the materials list from memory — the exact grades required, the quantities, the specific properties to look for in the magic stones — tore out the page, and handed it back to her.
"Get these. Higher quality stones means better effect. The rest are just materials."
Asuna took the list, read it over quickly, and nodded. "I'll take care of it." She reached for her phone. "We should add each other as contacts while we're at it."
Practical. He pulled up his QR code and let her scan it.
Her friend request came through. Username: Asuna. Profile photo: a selfie, clean and direct.
Ren's profile: no username, default avatar image, the kind of account that looked like it had been created for a single functional purpose and then immediately abandoned.
Asuna stared at it. "…Do you use this app at all?"
"I watch videos." He accepted the request. "Send me a message when you have the materials ready."
"How much are you charging?"
"Ten thousand. Friendship price — you're my first customer." He turned around.
"Are you selling something, Isana-kun?"
The voice came from the aisle. He turned.
Megumi Kato and Yukino Yukinoshita had arrived without him noticing — well, Megumi had arrived without him noticing in a very specific Megumi way. The difference from yesterday was immediately apparent.
He stared. "Kato-san. You broke through."
"Last night," Megumi confirmed, with the expression of someone whose accomplishment came packaged with a complication.
"And your talent got stronger too." He could see it. The aura around her was noticeably deeper, and it was spilling outward — the edges of the effect visibly reaching past her personal space and beginning to clip Yukino beside her. "It's affecting the people next to you now."
"Yes." Megumi's troubled expression confirmed it. "I only realized this morning. Yukino-san walked in with me and people just…" She made a helpless gesture.
Yukino, who was normally the kind of person who drew eyes from across a room, had apparently passed through the school corridor this morning receiving approximately the same level of attention as a ceiling tile.
She looked like she had feelings about this.
"You need to learn to control it," Ren said. "The passive range will keep growing as you get stronger. Getting a handle on it now is worth doing."
"I know. I just don't know how to start." Megumi had clearly already spent significant time on this question. "I've been trying since I first awakened it."
Ren thought about his own version of the ability. Activating it was conscious and deliberate for him — he'd never had to learn the active trigger because it had come to him already active.
I should think about how to explain the mechanics to her. He filed it for later.
"What were you two talking about?" Yukino redirected the conversation toward the earlier exchange. "Something about selling?"
"I'm installing a Magic Array for Asuna-san," Ren explained. "Same type as the one upstairs. If either of you want one, same deal — you buy the materials, I install it. Ten thousand labor fee."
Yukino's eyes went from neutral to interested in about half a second. "You've already mastered Territory Magic?"
"Array Magic," he corrected mildly. "It's not that hard to learn. The conceptually difficult part is the theoretical foundation — the physical execution is just accuracy and control."
"It's extremely difficult to learn," Yukino said, in a tone that indicated this was widely documented and not a matter of debate.
"For most people."
She absorbed this.
"…Could you tell me the details?"
Ren could already see the mental calculation running behind her eyes — a personal meditation Array at home, available whenever she wanted, without having to rely on school facilities. The value proposition was obvious.
"Prepare the materials and I come install it," he said. "Ten thousand. Same as Asuna's." He tore a second sheet out of his notebook and handed her the list. "Higher quality stones give better results."
Yukino took the list, read it, and made her decision without visible deliberation. "I'll buy them. Please set one up for me."
"And me," Megumi said, at Ren's other shoulder. "Same please." She held out her hand for the third copy.
Ren wrote it out, tore it off, handed it over, and felt genuinely satisfied with this development.
Three clients. Thirty thousand Valis in labor fees, minimum. Before he'd even left the classroom this morning. The money problem was well on its way to being solved.
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