After blazing through the paperwork with Excel, I left for the day. To be precise, I was ordered to leave.
"Leave for the day?"
"Yes. There's nothing more to do, is there?"
What is this? Isn't it standard procedure to work a newcomer to the bone for a few weeks? At my words, Giuseppe tilted his head.
"Which school has that kind of tradition?"
"... Well."
I couldn't exactly say it was a graduate school in the Republic of Korea.
"Tsk. Wherever it is, they must not know how precious new recruits are..."
"Anyway, you probably haven't even unpacked in your dormitory yet. Go on and get some rest."
Giuseppe continued with a bright smile.
"See you tomorrow, then. You must...!"
They were light words, but they felt like they had some weight to them. What would happen if I didn't show up tomorrow? ... A scholar's curiosity stirred within me, but I decided to hold it back.
Instead, I gave a short reply.
"Yes. See you tomorrow."
And so, I left for the day. When I walked out of the annex, the sun was still high in the sky. I paused for a moment to enjoy the sunlight.
It had been a long time since I'd left work while it was still too bright to see the stars. The Magic Tower's dormitory was inside the Magic Tower. Studying in the Magic Tower, working in the Magic Tower, and resting in the Magic Tower...
"Just like livestock."
I muttered to myself at the dormitory entrance. Since my lab is in the annex, does that make me free-range livestock? In the first place, what kind of graduate student gets a dormitory?
I headed straight for the dormitory management office. The staff member there assigned a graduate student to guide me.
"Hello. I'm Elara, the floor leader. It's nice to meet you."
"... I'm Isaac."
For reference, not a dean, but a floor leader. A floor leader is a student who manages the dormitory and receives a scholarship in return for their labor. That aside, this crazy Magic Tower.
They even have floor leaders.
"At this rate, they might even do roll call..."
Elara immediately replied to my muttering.
"That's right. We do roll call."
"... Really?"
"I'm kidding. This isn't the army, why would we do something like that?"
It seems Miss Elara likes to joke around. I followed Elara around the dormitory.
Cafeteria. Fitness room.
And so on. As we were touring the dormitory, Elara suddenly stopped in front of a seemingly ordinary staircase.
"Wait a moment."
Elara stepped onto the stairs with me and continued.
"[Third Floor]."
And then. Kugoong!
The massive stone staircase began to move.
"This is the most important part, the floating staircase."
"Floating staircase...?"
"You didn't use it when you went to your school?"
"No. My school is in the annex."
"Oh dear..."
Elara looked away, seeming troubled. It seemed the annex was treated as a sort of place of exile within the Magic Tower. Otherwise, she wouldn't have reacted like this.
Gugugugu.
The way the staircase moved gave me a very, very strong sense of déjà vu.
'Isn't this... Harry Potter?'
I glanced down over the railing. 'If I fall, I'll definitely die, right?'
"For your information, there's no fall-prevention magic. So don't ride it while drunk."
"... Yes."
Thump.
The floating staircase stopped at the third-floor landing. The dormitory room I was assigned was number 304. It was in a rather secluded corner. We walked toward the far end of the hallway.
"By the way, this is unusual."
"What is?"
"The dormitory floor reflects a student's performance. It's like your floor goes up if you publish good papers."
"Wow..."
It was well-known that the floors of the Magic Tower reflected the professors' power, but this was a first. To be this petty from the master's level, not even the doctorate program. I asked Miss Elara.
"So, is the third floor kind of bad?"
If you fall to the first floor, you get expelled... it's not something like that, is it? Elara stared at me blankly.
"No, not at all."
Her words were firm.
"I'm on the second floor. The third floor is very good."
"It is...?"
"Plus, from the fourth floor up, it's only for doctoral students. For anyone below that, the third floor is the limit, no matter what you do."
This is strange. What did I do to get assigned to such a good place?
"Maybe you did well on the entrance exam? I heard that sometimes happens with the top-scoring students."
"Hmm... that can't be right."
I had moderately doctored my answer sheet before submitting it. Forget first place; my answers were a sure ticket to the first floor.
"Then maybe you have connections in high places."
"No way. My last name is Upperhills. I'm an orphan."
Elara's expression instantly froze.
Damn it.
I messed up. Upperhills is a surname given to orphans rescued from the northern magical beast front. 'It's not that I wanted to announce I was an orphan...
I just wanted to say I had no connections to anyone important, but my words slipped out.' The mood was shattered. Not a confession attack, but an orphan attack.
'Now who's going to guide me through the dorms...' After a moment, Elara spoke.
"Sorry... I'll be more careful with my words from now on."
"No. You don't have to."
It seemed too late to laugh it off now. I should think about something else. Why was I assigned to the third floor?
Was someone pulling strings? 'Could it be that elf Dean?' I really hope it's not her.
I wouldn't mind an honorary professor on her deathbed, but catching the eye of a long-lived species would make my entire life exhausting. Lost in these stray thoughts, I found myself in front of my assigned room.
"We're here. This is it."
"Yes. Thank you."
I bowed my head deeply to Elara.
"Take care. Let me know if you ever need help."
"Yep."
And so, I escaped from Elara, the victim of my orphan attack, and entered my dormitory room. But as they say, there is no paradise in the place you run to. Creeak- As soon as I opened the door, the musty smell of paper and ink greeted me.
'It feels like a decently sized single room...' The room was quite spacious, about 66 square meters, but one corner was covered by a gigantic mountain of books. 'That's what makes it look cramped.'
A man was sitting amidst the pile of books. He was startled by my presence and looked up. A skinny frame, thick glasses, and dark circles that looked like he hadn't slept in days.
The very model of a graduate student.
"Ah... right. They said a new roommate was coming today... Hello. I'm Liam."
His voice was quiet and steeped in exhaustion.
"I'm Isaac."
I introduced myself briefly and headed to my assigned bed and desk. Liam fidgeted awkwardly, glancing my way, before quickly burying himself back in his pile of books. 'I won't have to worry about noise.'
I hit the jackpot with the roommate lottery. This guy is A-grade. I was very satisfied.
I started arranging the furniture on my side. I put on the bedsheets and moved the desk toward the window. I asked Liam, "Does this room get good sunlight?"
"... Hmm. Not really."
"That's a shame."
Shoot.
The roommate was great, but the room itself was B-grade. Living with sunlight is very important for mental health. More than a few graduate students became wrecks because they ignored this simple fact.
Since it's come to this, I'll have to use good lighting and intentionally soak up some sun from time to time. While I unpacked, the only sound in the room was the turning of pages. And just like that, it was evening.
I asked Liam, "Aren't you going to eat?" Liam answered without even lifting his head.
"Ah... I'm fine. I still have a report to submit by today."
"... You're working hard."
"It's nothing. Everyone in our lab is like this."
Writing a report without even eating. I'm so glad I didn't end up in a lab like that. When I returned after dinner, Liam was still sitting in the same position.
He was A-grade as a roommate and a researcher... but as a human being, he looked a little pitiful. 'I used to be like that, too...'
Following citation after citation into fields I had never even heard of, testing all sorts of hypotheses on the whiteboard in the corner of my single room, trying to accomplish anything and everything my professor said. Then my health fell apart, and after that, no one came looking for me.
"Ugh..."
Liam let out a low groan and dropped his quill. He clutched his forehead and muttered, "Damn it... it's starting again." As if he were used to it, Liam took a pill from his desk drawer and tossed it into his mouth.
Then he gave me an awkward smile.
"Don't mind me. It's just that my posture is a bit bad."
"A cervicogenic headache, you mean?"
"... I don't know the diagnosis, but they say a sore neck can cause headaches."
"Hmm..."
A cervicogenic headache usually stems from poor posture. Even if the weight of the head is the same, the force exerted on the neck differs depending on the angle. I scanned his posture.
A forward head and rounded shoulders. 'He's just a typical graduate student...' I did a quick calculation, but the load on his neck didn't seem that severe.
"From what I can see, I don't think your posture is the problem."
"... Then what is it?"
My gaze was fixed not on Liam's body, but on the mana lamp brightly illuminating his desk. It looked like an ordinary lamp, but a faint noise was coming from it.
Zeeeeee...
'Is that it?' I strode over to the mana lamp. I placed a hand on it and channeled a minuscule amount of mana.
It was a kind of scan to understand its internal structure.
"I knew it was this."
"Huh?"
"I found the problem. Mister Liam, your headaches are because of this lamp."
"...?"
Liam tilted his head.
"What do you mean?"
I flicked the lamp with my finger.
"This lamp keeps flickering, and that's what's giving you a headache."
"It doesn't look like it's flickering to me."
"No. It is flickering."
"...?"
I picked up the quill Liam had dropped and, under the lamp's light, used telekinesis to spin the pen rapidly.
"Look. Under normal light, the afterimage of the pen should be a smooth, continuous blur. But what about here?"
"It looks... choppy..."
The spinning pen didn't form a smooth circle, but rather looked as if several pens existed simultaneously in a stuttering motion. It was a classic stroboscopic effect.
"Now, let's fix this."
I channeled mana into the lamp once more. At that, Liam's eyes widened.
"You'll get hurt if you handle a magical device recklessly!"
"... What?"
"Rebound!"
"Ah."
Tampering with another person's magic or magical device often causes a backlash. It's like getting an electric shock if you mess with an outlet's wiring without an electrician's license. That kind of magical shock is called a rebound...
The rebound didn't happen. If it had, I would have collapsed from acute mana intoxication.
"... Huh?"
"Then I'll continue."
I visualized the mana circuit inside the lamp in my mind.
"All light is a wave, and all waves have a frequency. The problem is that the frequency of the light emitted by this lamp is irregular."
This mana lamp is the same. Except for the fact that its mana source is a small mana stone, it's not fundamentally different from the light of an electric lamp.
"A normal lamp emits light close to a stable sine wave. It's predictable."
A fluorescent lamp is a perfect example. Fluorescent lamps also flicker so fast that the eye can't see it, but they don't cause headaches. That's because they flicker quickly and regularly.
"But this is different. The light from this lamp... is closer to a square wave with an irregular amplitude."
The cause of the square wave was resonance in the lamp's internal mana stabilization circuit. A phenomenon was occurring where energy was being unnecessarily amplified at a specific frequency. I devised a new mana circuit and overlaid it inside the lamp.
Flash!
Light leaked out as a result of the mana reaction. And with that, it's done.
Problem solved.
When I spun the pen under the lamp again, this time it showed a proper, continuous afterimage.
"... You really did it."
Liam looked between the lamp and me with a bewildered expression.
"But actually... I didn't understand a single thing you were explaining so earnestly earlier."
"... I figured as much."
No wonder he was so quiet. And I thought I did a pretty good job explaining it...
"Still, that's amazing."
"It's a little late for that..."
"No. I'm serious. Without any catalyst, safety measure, or incantation... to modify someone else's magical device while mumbling about its principles."
Liam continued, his face mesmerized.
"I've never seen magic like this in my life."
"... Anyone can do it if they work hard enough."
"No." Liam shook his head.
"You must not know because you're a new student, but there's no one in the Magic Tower who 'doesn't work hard.'"
"Setting effort aside, you have talent, Isaac."
Liam continued.
"An immense talent, at that."