I woke up to the alarm on my phone. I opened my eyes to an unfamiliar ceiling, only to remember what had happened the previous day.

I sat myself up on my bed, only to hear snoring from a corner of the room. My eyes followed the direction the sound was coming from, only to find... a Natasha sleeping on the chair.

It seemed like my alarm was loud enough to disturb her sleep too, because she slowly opened her eyes and looked at me. "Good morning, Roma," she said with a drowsy smile. "Did you sleep well?" She yawned and continued to smile at me. It was quite different from how she usually behaved, cold and instrumental.

Still, there was a cute girl in "my" room, in the morning, waking up and smiling at me. I've not once had a girl in my room since I was a child. Realizing the situation I was in, I grew flustered. "Wh-why were you sleeping here?" I asked nervously.

"Lena really treated you harshly when you first met, and you seem to not trust us mages much, so I thought I'd make it up to you by waking you up with a good mood. It seems you woke up earlier than me, though," she followed with a giggle.

My mind raced. 'She actually seems like a nice person. And she's so cute too! No, I must stay true to Lana. But-'

"Anyways, do you want to get a wand today?" she asked me, interrupting my monologue. "If you want to come back to the University after you leave, you'll need one."

"How long does it take? I have school today, too," I inquired.

"It won't take very long. Let me show you to the bath, for now," she replied. Soon enough, I was out of the room and on my way to the bath. She guided me to a room with a large door, on which hung a sign saying, "Strictly for use by mages only." I asked Natasha about it, and she said that pretty much the entire third floor was accessible only by the Five Mages. It seemed like the floors were divided by the status levels of magic users. Perhaps the reason I did not meet any other students was because they simply weren't allowed here.

The bath here was larger than what I had at home, but it wasn't too grand or spacious. I took a bath, changed into some clothes they put out for me, and walked over to the Mages' room as Natasha instructed earlier.

I was greeted by the usual company of Lena, Alexei and Natasha. The room was filled with the smell of delicious food, and sure enough, the table stood in the middle of the room was covered with food. They gestured for me to come join them, and we ate over small talk.

Soon, we decided to get me my wand. This time we walked over to the first floor, down a long corridor, and over to what seemed like a tiny shop. In reality, it was a room, but it looked more like a walk-in storefront. Outside was a sign saying 'Wandmaster'. The name made it sound like there'd be a crippled old man on the inside, with big glasses and a walking stick, sitting in front of a cupboard full of wands.

Alexei walked in first, and spoke to the master. "Here's the guy I told you about sometime back," he told the master. Then he gestured for us to walk inside. The person stood behind the counter... was a young man probably no older than 25. "Hello there, I'm Sasha Popov, the wandmaster of this University."

I was positively shocked. Neither was he a crippled old man, nor did he have a cupboard full of wands behind him. Instead, there was a desk with a strange device on it, and not much else. A few chairs sprinkled throughout the room was about all that was notable about it.

Perhaps sensing my confusion, Alexei explained, "We open up this room only when someone needs a wand. There's only a few hundred magic users in this University, and they only need a wand if they're looking for something stronger or their old wand was damaged."

Satisfied, I moved over to the chair across the desk that the master was gesturing towards.

The device that sat on the desk had a big crimson gem on it, about the size of my palm. The carcass of the rest of the body was jet black, save for a little protrusion in which was a slot for a long stick. Perhaps this was where the wand was to be placed.

"Please place your hand on the gem," instructed the master. I did as he said. Immediately, I felt a pull on my hand, as if the gem was trying to suck my blood. The wand slot began shining in chorus with the gem, and slowly, something dark was taking shape in the slot. The gem kept pulling for some time, giving shape to the dark object, until it abruptly stopped. The glow died down, and I was left with a wand about 12 inches long.

"A teak wood wand," claimed the master. "Rare, but not too uncommon. For a first wand, I guess it validates his strength and potential." It seemed he was addressing the mages. "Please hold the wand and try casting some magic," said the master.

'Wait, cast magic? How am I supposed to do that?' I thought it would be best to ask Alexei. "Hey, how do I cast magic?" I asked him. It seemed that he predicted I would ask this, so he demonstrated a simple spell. "Repeat after me, word by word. 「May the one I face be blown away by my spirit. Wind Rush!」" He aimed at a chair, and the gush made it noisily move away from him.

I tried the same thing. I pointed at the same chair, which wasn't too far away from the wall now, and spoke the same incantation. "「May the one I face be blown away by my spirit. Wind Rush!」" I felt a tug on my hand, just how I did when I placed my palm on the gem. The chair squeaked a little bit, but didn't move.

I tried replicating the feeling of this pull by exerting some pressure of my own on the wand. The wand glowed a little bit, and just as Alexei's eyes grew wide in warning, the chair took off from the floor and went crashing against the wooden wall.

There was a moment of awkward silence in the room. I unintentionally broke the wandmaster's chair, and everyone else was just stood there, staring either at me or at the wall. The moment grew seconds long, until Alexei finally broke the ice. "His first spell, and he learned to manipulate mana already. Bringing him in was definitely the right choice."

The master also chose this moment to complain about me breaking his chair and ruining his shop. With the ice broken, the room suddenly became noisy with everyone either exclaiming about my unintended show of power or complaining about it.

After some time, we settled the commotion and were on our way back to the third floor. Alexei spoke earlier about mana manipulation, so I decided to ask him about it.

"Hey Alexei, you said something about mana manipulation earlier. What was that about?"

"When you cast your spell, you decided to pour some mana into your wand, which greatly amplified the power of the spell. It's not out of the ordinary though, I was just surprised that you managed to pull off something that would usually take beginners a while to understand."

"I felt some sort of pull while casting the spell, so I decided to push a little bit to see what it did," I explained myself.

"That's mana that you felt. People with lower magic aptitude have quite a tough time feeling it. You're the University's renowned though, so it makes sense that you felt it so easily."

'Great! I'm well on my way to becoming the world's strongest protagonist!' I thought. As if reading my mind, Alexei cautioned, "Don't grow too conceited. If I poured in my own mana during that spell, either there'd be a hole in the wall or the chair would be turned to dust. Though I specialize in energy magic, so I guess it would be unfair to him," he added under his breath.

We split up on the third floor. I went towards my dorm room and they went towards the Mages room. I looked at my phone, which I left there, and noted the time: 7:32 A.M. "Fuck!" I audibly exclaimed. I grabbed the bundle of clothes that I was wearing the previous day and my phone, and made haste towards the Mages room.

"Guys, my school starts in half an hour, I'm about to miss the bus, get me out of here!" I yelled, barging into the room. To my surprise, though, there was only Lena in the room.

"Oh, someone's late for school, huh~?" Lena teased. I tensed up a little, and then asked her to help me get to the station on time.

"You bear a wand, and yet you want to board a bus?" she said. "What else can I do then?" I asked.

"Why not teleport?" she suggested.

Teleport? Now that I thought of it, Natasha did teleport towards me last night to scare me. I could probably use it to get to school on time, too.

I really didn't want anything to do with Lena, but I asked her to teach me the spell. "Are you really going to go to school with a strange stick of wood on you all the time?" she asked. "Or what if they think it's a wand? Wouldn't you have to... wipe their memories?"

"I'd tell them they're wrong! Besides, nobody's dumb enough to assume a random stick is a wand. They'd get laughed at by everyone." This woman really knew how to piss me off, dragging in my latest trauma and my embarrassing chuuni episodes.

"Ah, don't raise your voice so. I was merely cautioning you, dear," she said. "You need to learn how to summon your wand. Then you could just put it away somewhere and nobody would see it."

'She's actually trying to help?' I thought. "How do I summon my wand, then?" I asked her. I expected a half-assed answer or another provoking statement, but she actually answered my question.

"Try feeling the bond between yourself and your wand. When you need to summon it, just use that bond to try and pull the wand towards you, and it will be summoned." I tried envisioning a bond, but I didn't really feel anything.

I kept the wand on Alexei's desk, and moved across the room. Then I tried envisioning the bond again, but I still couldn't feel anything. I decided to try something else.

You know that feeling when you've just left home for a trip or to go somewhere, and you feel like you've left something behind? I tried to replicate that feeling, as if I left my wand behind at home. I pictured it in my hand, and thought something along the lines of, 'Come to me, my wand.' The wand shuddered a bit on the desk, then abruptly disappeared, and reappeared in my hand a moment later.

"Bravo, dear!" Lena congratulated me. "By the way, here's a piece of paper Alexei asked me to give you if you needed it." She handed me a sheet with stuff written on it. Alexei gave me his number if I wanted to contact him, and also explained the principle behind teleport magic. He also apologized if Lena teased me too much, saying that he wanted me to trust her too.

I thanked Lena and left the room, who sent me off with, "Drop by in the evening, won't you?" I headed straight for the main entrance, looked through an eyehole to see if there was anyone around, and walked out of the University disguised as the entrance to a residential block.

Now, I needed to teleport home to get ready for school. I attempted the magic that Alexei described on the paper. I envisioned my room, and spoke the incantation, "「Bring me to the place that I desire to go. Teleport!」" I felt like I was about to get knocked out, but I stayed conscious, and I found myself in my room within a few moments.

I changed and got my stuff ready, and teleported to the boys' washroom, as I didn't want to pop out of thin air in front of everyone's eyes. Then I stuffed the wand deep into my bag, and made haste towards the class.

---

The school day was unremarkable. Nobody saw the wand, and nobody noticed the fact that I casually walked out of the boys' washroom without ever walking in. I decided to take a bus home, to avoid suspicion.

In the evening, I went over to the University as Lena had asked me to. I stabbed my wand in the glass at the entrance to the residential block, and got in the same way as I got in with Natasha last time. I went straight up to the Mages room, expecting to find someone there.

"Hey guys!" I said as I opened the door. Inside I found Natasha looking at some papers. "Hello there," she greeted me. "What brings you here today?"

"Lena told me to come by in the evening, so I came. By the way, where's everyone else?" I asked.

"They're off tracking monsters. They should be back soon," she replied.

I should explain a little bit about what these 'monsters' are. Since ancient times, magic users would fight magical creatures that would threaten the existence of humans. Magic wasn't a very secretive art back then, which is what gave birth to many legends of dragons, vampires and the likes.

However, at some point in time, the more intelligent monsters figured out how they could protect themselves. Over time magic became more and more secretive, something that humans should not know about. The monsters used that to their advantage, and those resembling humans enough were able to survive amidst human society.

Thus, it became a game of finding the camouflaged monster among the innocent humans. Mages used various means to find these monsters, from magic itself to rumors and reports from humans. That was the situation in the present day. The papers on Natasha's desk, too, were reports of missing people or strange medical conditions.

"Who are they up against?" I asked.

"A nest of cyclops. It seems they were kidnapping children and the police couldn't deal with them," she replied.

Cyclops weren't usually hostile to humans, so mages weren't keen on wiping them out. However the stronger ones could use upto wizard-level magic, and a nest of them would definitely be a job for a mage-level magic user or two. That was what made them among the strongest monsters to ever exist, and practically the strongest in the present day.

Natasha seemed worried, so I said, "I hope things go well." She said, "I'm sure they will," in reply.

The stack of papers made it hard to see, but I noticed her clutching what seemed to be a hairpin tightly. I asked her about it. "What are you holding in your hand?"

She loosened her grip, and then opened her palm to show me. It really was a hairpin. "This is something Alexei gave to me on my birthday when we were kids. I've held on to it ever since." So they were childhood friends. "I see," I said, and sat on the sofa, with nothing to do. We didn't have much to talk about, and I didn't want to worry her about Alexei, so I just sat there in silence, waiting.

After a while, Alexei and Lena returned. They were all sweaty and tired, so after reporting to Natasha, they went straight to the bath. Natasha looked like she had a weight lifted off her shoulders, and she sat on the sofa to relax. I went to brew us some tea.

Soon, Alexei was back in the room. Lena said she had some other business to attend to, so she didn't join us. Alexei told us about what happened in detail. It was a tough battle, but the two mages proved victorious anyway. The police arrived to pick up the children from the nest.

Alexei asked why I was in the University too, so I told him about Lena's request.

Sometime later, Alexei asked me about my training. I hadn't really done any training, and I needed to start doing some. I told him the same, and he offered to train me after school in the evening, when he wasn't away fighting monsters. Natasha offered to help when Alexei wasn't around, too.

"So that settles that," Alexei said.

"When do I get to learn memory control magic?" I asked.

"Why do you want to learn it?"

"I have a friend whose memory was blocked by magic," I explained, "and I wanted to learn how to give them those memories back. That is the reason why I came to study magic."

"Well, it's not a tough spell, it's just a little hard to master it. If the spell fails, you might end up wiping the blocked memories for good. That's why you need some experience as a magic user before attempting these delicate spells."

"How long do I need to train for that?"

"Depends on the person. You have absolutely no magical experience, so it may take you about a month to get to a level where the spell has a good success rate."

"That doesn't sound too terrible, I guess." I was expecting a higher number, so a month was pretty convincing enough.

"It's only this short because of your magical aptitude," he told me. He seemed concerned for some reason about my choice of magic to learn, but I didn't let that bother me.

Soon I bid them goodbye, and was on my way back home. Weeks of magic training lay ahead.