A quick breakfast and initiation

I looked around the room. It was much to my likings, to be honest. A large wardrobe to contain all the clothes I’d ever need, standing right next to a large drawer with a mirror, in which I always took a good look before I got out. No, wait. That’s not how I lived in Japan. That’s how I ‘lived’ in this world so far. Wow… that’s a little much to just accept like that.

I got out of my bed, stepping on the wooden panels. The wood was already old and worn out, but honestly, it felt amazing. My apartment in previous life was outfitted with ordinary tiles, not even allowing for the amazing feeling when you stood on it barefoot, only cold embrace. Or maybe I was biased because I had two sets of memories now, both lived through differently?

I sighed a little. Honestly, new world was kind of an amazing deal, not gonna lie, but that didn’t mean I was going to just accept it all right away. I would need a few minutes, and… I won’t be given any time at all. My and Mari’s initiation is going to be held today at noon. The initiation was supposed to be held when you turned 18, but for a few decades it started to be done at one time for an entire class of students to avoid unfairness. Initiation was simple. A priest would help us get through the ritual that would activate the ‘Skill System’ to allow us to gain our first skill. First of many. The information flood didn’t want to stop as I recalled reading a legend about a hero of old times, Tristan, who had gained more than 30 different skills to be truly versatile, and he even mastered all of them.

Okay, finally. It all stopped. The emptiness in my mind that suddenly gave me clarity was both beautiful and calming. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked for this option… oh well. I’ll get used to it eventually. Either that or I run out of information to have uploaded.

Quickly, I got some clothes and dressed up. A large shirt and long pants that ensured I was covered and still had freedom of movement. Normally, people tend to dress up specially for their initiation, but I wasn’t going to. Wearing some tight outfits for hours was not for me.

A bit of sleepiness swept over me as I walked over to my desk and turned on my laptop. Amazingly enough, the startup took seconds, and I could only confirm that it was nearly 8 in the morning. Initiation was supposed to take place in my school, so I would need to set off at 10 to get there. Honestly, I kind of wanted to go for a round of League of Warriors… no wait, I meant League of Legends! This whole new world had a thing similar to LoL? Oh wow. As shocking as it was, I actually felt myself smirk at the thought.

Oh well. There would be time soon. I closed my computer and quickly fixed my look in front of the mirror. Honestly, I looked a lot like Mari (well, we’re twins, so no wonder). Small nose, ears, black hair, and basically black eyes. Just like I looked back in previous life. Good, good. I nodded to myself a little as I finished fixing whatever there was to fix. And then, I simply walked out of the room, and went through the corridor.

Going down the stairs, I was welcomed with sight of my father sitting and reading some article on his phone, munching on some bread as he was finishing his breakfast up. Mari was sitting next to him, mixing her cereal slowly, clearly waiting for me to come around to have a brother-sister meal with her before our initiation.

Then, I heard a warm, womanly voice:

“Tooru, quickly, sit down and eat!” My mother called out to me. She was a bit shorter than me and Mari, but she had the same black hair as we did, made in an orderly fashion and reaching to her chin. On her nose, a pair of glasses were visible. She sent me a heartwarming smile as she nodded towards the table, and I noticed a bowl of cereal of my own.

My… I wasn’t even sure how to react. For a moment, I reminded myself of my mother back in Japan. She was a… stoic and rather cold figure in my life. Honestly, if anything, I felt like a stone weighing her down. Perhaps that was why she was always away.

But not anymore. Now, my mother, Megumi, was taking care of me. For once, I felt… a bit of a sting in my heart. Was this what it felt like to actually have a family? It was… a good feeling, for once.

“Tooru? Did something happen?” Mother looked at me, a glint of worry in her hazelnut eyes.

“…w-what? No, nothing. Just lost in thought.” I made a small, reassuring smile, and quickly stepped forth. Circling around the table, I made my way to my seat, opposite of my sister, and sat down.

“Oh, little bro.” Said Mari, with a bit of sarcastic pity in her voice. “Are you already despairing over your skill? Maybe you got a prophetic dream and you already know initiation won’t give you anything good?” She smiled at me.

“Hello, mister kettle? Mister pot called, he said you’re black.” I replied with just as big a smile; the two of us, while we were inseparable, also loved to joke off of each other over the tiniest of things. Not that riposting was easy for me in any way…

“You know, I always thought you’d look cute with only one eye.” She responded, rotating a spoon in her hand.

“You know, those nails don’t suit your hands. How about we cut them off, together with your fingers?”

We stared at each other for a few long seconds, neither of our parents caring for what we were saying. It was like this for years now; we would start talking at one another, and then came the second phase. The phase when we kicked, shoved or threw things at each other. And now…

Mari had a quick wrist. Even I had to admit that the speed with which she threw things was phenomenal. But this time, I managed to predict her movement, and moved just in time to catch the spoon she threw at my shoulder.

“Haha! Not this time wit-“ And then I got hit by the follow-up, which turned out to be a hand towel. Where did she even get that from? Was it sitting on her lap the entire time?

“Oh, I think it’s this time.” She replied with a laugh in her voice.

“You wanna make this dirty? Fine by me!” I said, and got hold of my bowl with cereal. Without a second of hesitation, I stretched my hands forward, causing the contents to spill in Mari’s direction. However…

“That’s enough, you two.” Our father spoke, and he rose his hand. In an instant, a sigil of magic formed in front of Mari, and all the milk and cereal bounced right off of it, and straight back to my bowl. Within 2 seconds, it was all done, and contents of my bowl were right back there, waiting to be eaten by me. “Today is a very important day for both of you. As much as I appreciate you two getting along, there is no need to be ruining your sister’s dress, Tooru.”

“…I’m sorry, father.” I bowed my head respectfully towards him for a moment. Yeah, another flood of information. Seichi Otosaka, my father, was an archmage. He worked for a ministry monitoring usage of skills in our world. Well, he was just one cog in the machine, but that didn’t mean his skills were anything to scoff off at. Especially his first and most trained skill, ‘Elemental Wall’… but enough of recollections. I had a breakfast to eat!

After we ate our breakfast, me and Mari got prepared properly for the ceremony. We both wore our school’s uniforms, which for me turned out to be a suit pants and jacket, both in indigo colors. I also wore a large, white shirt under the jacket, and a black tie around my neck.

Mari was wearing a long skirt of same color as my jacket, and a large shirt of light green color. After tying her hair in a ponytail, she was already ready to leave. Honestly, so was I. The clock was showing 8:50 when we finally left the house.

Of course, if we just wanted to reach the place in time, leaving at 10 was absolutely acceptable. We did that every day, so there was no rush. But I wanted to go out already. After all, I wanted to sightsee this world a little first.

Stepping out of our house, I noticed instantly how this world reminded me of Earth. In fact, there was hardly a difference at first sight. There were cars going on the asphalt road just beyond the fence a few meters from us. The pigeons sitting on it were looking the same as back in Japan, and the garden around our house was… normal. And then, I noticed it. A change.

I took a deep breath, and was surprised. It was… unbelievably clean. Immaculate, even. The traffic was similar to Kanto region at first glance, but… hardly any pollution in the air. The sun was beaming down warmly at us, visible beyond the clouds. In the air, there was some traffic (if you could call it that), as people riding magical machines and enchanted gear flew around. In the far distance, up above everything, some people were riding wyverns (or maybe those were dragons, difficult to tell). Woah…

I looked into the sky for a few more seconds before Mari hit my stomach with her elbow.

“You look like you’re seeing the sky for the first time.”

“…”

“Tooru? You okay there? Did a spectre eat your thoughts again?” She asked.

“No, I’m fine.” I replied, shaking my head a little. “Let’s go. You wouldn’t want to miss your own failure.”

“Pfft. As if I’m going to fail.”

“Oh my, such confidence. It almost makes me forget how you were crying yesterday ‘I want to get a good skill, please help me God up there!’” I sounded with my best parody of ‘whining girl’ voice, turning to Mari a bit as we walked onto the sidewalk.

“And who’s saying that? Forgot how you were crying over your Physics assignment last month? ‘Oh no, I can’t calculate gravity, I’m so doomed!’” Two could play the ‘voice parody’ game, and honestly, Mari wasn’t too great at it. Guess it was a price to pay for her easy ripostes.

“Wow, look at that!” I pointed at the sky. “It’s all your luck for today, already gone! Oh no, such a tragedy~!” I laughed.

“Says a guy who is about to trip.” She replied.

“Wha-“

And then, Mari kicked me in back of my knee, pushing at my chest at the same time. Within a second, I was lying flat on the ground. I had to give it to her, she won the second phase second time today.

-Near noon-

I had insisted that I wanted to walk around the city just a bit ‘since I was going to be tied to a work soon’. Surprisingly, Mari didn’t object at all. I was expecting her to throw some snarky remark about me trying to skip school or anything, but she seemed complacent with my choice, and didn’t stand in my way, instead tagging along. All the while we walked through some streets, I had to pretend to not be fazed by all the magic being used everywhere. I had to admit, this world was basically the same as Earth where I came from, except magic. Is this a proper way to describe it? I don’t really care.

Eventually, however, we needed to get going to our initiation. Rushing our steps, we soon entered the school grounds. The time was nearing 11:50. Just on time.

“Tooru!” I heard a familiar, feminine voice call out to me.

“Guys!” A second voice, more manly than the first one, sounded, approaching.

The first person to reach us was Manami. Her full name was Manami Tetsu, and she was my and Mari’s friend. She was just barely 150 cm tall. From what I could recall, her mother was not Japanese, which was apparent in her long, dark brown hair, which only emphasized her cuteness. She was wearing same type of outfit as Mari was, her hands held together as she smiled warmly in our direction.

The man’s name was Osamu, Choi was his surname. He was roughly my height, but his slightly spiky, black hair, made his stand ever so slightly taller than myself. His face was bearing same type of expression as Manami’s did, visibly happy so see the two of us approach.

“Hey, Osamu.” I called out to him and shook my hands with him. “Sup, Manami.” I did a quick fist bump with the girl. “Ready for it?”

“You know it.” My spike-headed friend answered, getting just between me and my twin. His hands got over both our shoulders, and he hugged us together. “But promise me, no matter how good a skill you two get, we remain friends, ay?”

“Haha…” Mari let out a slight chuckle. “Of course. But don’t weep if you’ll get a useless quirk, okay? Failure is the foster father of success.” She winked in a slightly provocative way.

Meanwhile, Manami was standing next to Mari, rather silent and not indulging into the physical contact between our trio. It’s been like this forever, at least in here. Osamu was much more prone to getting physical with me and Mari (albeit in a very friendly way) while our slightly foreign friend stood by calmly.

As we finished our greetings, we further into the school grounds, soon surrounded by hundreds of our schoolmates inside the building.

-Noon, at school’s stadium-

We stood in 2 groups, separated by gender, in front of a large platform that was placed on top of the running tracks. On top of said platform, there were a total of 3 people standing. The first one was our director, a middle-aged man with wrinkles all over his forehead. The second one was our year’s representative, one of our classmates, Miyako. She was somewhat tall for a girl, almost half a head taller than me, and her toned body was somewhat visible even in her current outfit. Dark hair of shoulder length were tied in a tidy, neat ponytail, and her brown eyes seemed bored, but were constantly looking over us all, looking for anyone who misbehaved. Her bulging breasts were visibly suppressed by sarashi she wore to at least somewhat hide her assets. And don’t get me wrong, she looked hot even the way she was, but nobody ever dared approach her (in a romantic way, at least). Her biceps might’ve not looked the part, but she was actually as strong as most men in our class.

And then, there was the third person gathered. He was standing to be roughly 1,9 meters in height, which put his forehead on level with Miyako’s. His outfit also didn’t exactly fit with the school’s norm, consisting of a large suit in dark indigo color, a black coat resting on his arms. The man’s face was rather stiff as he looked towards the director with a calm, yet dangerous look. Nobody needed to introduce the man; he was representative of Ministry of Magic.

“Attention!” Miyako shouted, getting everyone’s attention. In unison, both our groups stood up straight and turned towards the stage.

“Welcome, students!” The director said loudly. “The school year is about to end for you. As per tradition…”

-A lot of blah blah blah later-

As our director was speaking, my eyes were slowly drafted away from the stage. I glanced left, towards the women’s group. Mari and Manami were standing near each other, focused on the speech. Or rather, they seemed to be. I knew my twin sister well enough to know that she was probably sleeping under the cover of opened eyes. Seemingly sensing my staring, her eyes suddenly darted towards mine. As our gazes met, Mari quickly stuck out her tongue before returning to (not) listening to the speech, missing the moment when I stuck out mine.

Slightly startled, I turned my head a little and reciprocated for a split second, before my eyes looked towards the stage. Oh.

Miyako’s eyes were penetrating straight into my skull as she had a slightly pent-up expression on her face, seemingly fighting the urge to call out my name to get me disciplined. Sheepishly, I abated doing anything stupid anymore, and just kept on listening to our director’s words.

-…when the speech ended-

“And now, our lucky 71 students who have freshly finished your studies, you will be called one by one, and our guest, branch director Ren Satou, will help you in the process of appraising your first skill.”

How long has it been? 10 minutes? 15? It was hard to say, especially when your brain just shuts down mid-speech. This was one of those things that me and Mari have in common when it came to listening stuff like this.

But finally, the students were being called one by one; the time for initiation has come. First was our class representative. As Miyako approached mister Satou, the man stretched out his hand, and some kind of a small void appeared beneath it. Without hesitation, he put his hand into the void, and brought out a small, spherical device of black color, which would be used to initiate us all.

Our class representative put her hand on it, and the sphere quickly started emanating bright, orange light, which subsided after a short second. Miyako’s face contorted a little, before she her eyes skimmed a few times left and right. And then, her lips contorted in a smile.

“Please state rank of your skill, class representative.” Director asked, bringing the microphone closer to her mouth.

“B-rank, ‘Laceration’.” Miyako said, her voice just barely containing her excitement.

“B-rank?” I heard someone around me ask with disbelief. “Isn’t this unexpected? I always thought class representative wasn’t as good.”

“Yeah, but I heard that System sees all the potential one has, even if they don’t.” Another student answered. “Although it’s rare, B-rank is not impossible.”

…

One after another, the students came and went, called by their name, and repeated the procedure.

“As expected of our class.” Someone said. “There are so many C-ranks… we truly are an amazing year.”

“Hush, it’s her now!” Another guy cut in, silencing the one just now.

Mari stepped onto the stage. Her trek was refined and graceful, but I easily noticed just how much her hands were shaking. She didn’t show it much, but she was stressed like hell. The results would be published soon as well, so it was important to show a good face. And moreover…

“Since she’s from Otosaka family, won’t she get a B-rank without even trying?”

“I heard that their family is great at elemental magic. That’s at least A-rank, even.”

“Didn’t her father get A-rank when he was initiated?”

…Murmurs kept on happening near me. Someone tried to talk with me, but I was too stressed to pay them any attention. I held my fingers crossed. Let it be good, please let it be good. Mari’s always been great at studying and understanding magic, she deserves good rank.

She placed her hand on the orb, and it suddenly glowed with nice, fire-red light.

“…A-rank, ‘Summon Spirit.” Mari said to the microphone, but her voice was definitely shaking with excitement. We all opened our eyes wide. This was a rank that appeared for the first time today.

It was a rarity to get high rating on first skill. It was innately connected to one’s skill and magic ability. Of course, having a bloodline like ours helped a lot, but getting a D-rank or lower would’ve been… well. Let’s just say Mari wouldn’t be walking straight home today if that happened.

But I was happy for her. It was a good skill. Theory about it was well known to many, so it would undeniably be easy for her to master it.

“Tooru Otosaka.” I heard the director call my name. I stiffened up before relaxing quickly. Yeah, there was no need to be nervous anymore.

I heard some people murmur around as I quickly walked to the stage.

“That’s Mari’s twin brother, right?” Some girl said quietly to her friend. “My, doesn’t he look nice today?”

I walked up the stage. My heart was racing, but I kept my cool. Mari’s rank was good, and so would mine be. Without hesitation, I put my hand on the orb. And suddenly, a blue panel appeared in front of my eyes, littered with white text. ‘The System’, as it was called.

[Initialization…

Tooru Otosaka

Initialization successful. Processing…

…

…]

‘…?’ I waited for a few seconds, but nothing happened. I frowned a little, and then turned to my year, who were visibly murmuring between one another.

This was… weird, to say the least. I looked back to the notification, but… nothing seemed to want to appear. The initialization should only take a few seconds, but… I was standing there for nearly a minute, hand on the orb, and nothing happened.

“Student Tooru, please remove your hand.” Mister Ren said calmly. Although he didn’t betray anything with his voice, I could tell by his stare that he was just as surprised as me.

“…ah, alright.” What just happened? I wondered, unable to understand. You were supposed to be able to awaken the System earlier than 18th birthday! Then why didn’t it want to work?!

[…!

…!!!

Warning! An error occurred!

Applying normalization…

Normalization applied.

Skill will now be dispensed.]

Light emanated from my hand. It was so bright and warm that it caught everyone off-guard. I yelped, taking a quick step back…

But it all finished before I had time to process what was happening. Just as suddenly as it appeared, the light disappeared, leaving behind only an aftermath of a warm sensation spreading throughout my hand.

“…student Otosaka, please state your skill.”

I looked to my right, noticing some information skid around in the air.

[Improvise, adapt, overcome. A skill that suits the true survivor.]

[Received [Adaptability (F)]]

…

…WHAT THE HELL?!