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 mory — 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 ans 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 ca through. Userna: Asuna. Profile photo: a selfie, clean and direct.
Ren's profile: no userna, default avatar image, the kind of account that looked like it had been created for a single functional purpose and then imdiately abandoned.
Asuna stared at it. "…Do you use this app at all?"
"I watch videos." He accepted the request. "Send a ssage when you have the materials ready."
"How much are you charging?"
"Ten thousand. Friendship price — you're my first custor." He turned around.
"Are you selling sothing, Isana-kun?"
The voice ca from the aisle. He turned.
gumi Kato and Yukino Yukinoshita had arrived without him noticing — well, gumi had arrived without him noticing in a very specific gumi way. The difference from yesterday was imdiately apparent.
He stared. "Kato-san. You broke through."
"Last night," gumi confird, with the expression of soone whose accomplishnt ca 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." gumi's troubled expression confird it. "I only realized this morning. Yukino-san walked in with 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 sa 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." gumi had clearly already spent significant ti 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 co to him already active.
I should think about how to explain the chanics to her. He filed it for later.
"What were you two talking about?" Yukino redirected the conversation toward the earlier exchange. "Sothing about selling?"
"I'm installing a Magic Array for Asuna-san," Ren explained. "Sa type as the one upstairs. If either of you want one, sa 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 extrely difficult to learn," Yukino said, in a tone that indicated this was widely docunted and not a matter of debate.
"For most people."
She absorbed this.
"…Could you tell the details?"
Ren could already see the ntal calculation running behind her eyes — a personal ditation Array at ho, available whenever she wanted, without having to rely on school facilities. The value proposition was obvious.
"Prepare the materials and I co install it," he said. "Ten thousand. Sa 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 ."
"And ," gumi said, at Ren's other shoulder. "Sa 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 developnt.
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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