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After taking attendance and asking all students to move their desks and personal items to the walls of the classroom, the Improvised Weapons professor asks for two volunteers to spar.
As a fourth year magical girl trainee with fledgling leadership skills and a desire to not be in her head so much, Jiwoo is first to raise her hand. The professor nods at her and someone behind her, then gestures for them both to stand in the designated fighting circle in the center of the classroom. Jiwoo’s opponent is Roh Yuna, a popular second year known for mischief in her magic fundamentals courses while showing real promise on the Transformations and Disguises side of things, more actress than hero. Today, Yuna has long red hair and her natural brown eyes. She presses her lips together, as if torn between looking serious and finding this match-up really funny. She’s been a noisy nuisance to Jiwoo in a Charms class before.
They both have ten seconds to select any mundane-looking item around the room, not belonging to themselves or another student, to use in combat.
Jiwoo zeroes in on a folded circle-drawing compass that rests on a stack of glossy textbooks at the back of the room. It’s made of weighty, dark metal that winks under the ceiling lights; if she’s right, it’s meant for drawing sigils used in ritual casting, which is one of her strengths. In a pinch, both ends are pinprick-sharp and can be wielded closed like a dagger or open like a switchblade. Jiwoo doesn’t love close combat, but this is a fake fight, and she knows how to keep her head down. There are options. She nods to herself and brings it back to the ring.
Yuna chooses a meter-long, silver aluminum ruler. She holds it on her outstretched palms like a serving tray. Just by looking, Jiwoo isn’t sure what it could do beyond slapping and leaving skin stinging, but it’s a fine, if predictable weapon. Workable.
Like other sparring exercises happening on school grounds, the match goes until someone is forced out of the circle, pinned in a place or position where they can no longer counter, or voluntarily surrenders. For this fight, they’re not to use magic beyond what the makeshift weapon is innately capable of, if they can somehow figure it out—hearing this, Jiwoo feels even better about having a tool whose explicit purpose may very well be directing magic. They must always be honest, fair, and clever. Win honorably and lose graciously.
The professor counts down from five. Standing around the ring, the class joins in chorus. Jiwoo makes the mistake of being too aware of her audience. On three, she flicks her eyes over Yuna’s right shoulder and sees Jueun. Jiwoo tenses.
Jueun’s long black hair is neatly gathered in a high ponytail, and she wears a black track jacket over her uniform top, as if she prepared herself to fight today. Her expression is flat. She doesn’t return Jiwoo’s stare. Jueun is another second year and one of the best fighters in the entire school, already on the radar of upper administration and Korea’s Magical Girl Board as a possible rookie candidate for the next big wave of idol heroes. Jiwoo figured Jueun would also take this class but wasn’t sure until she entered the classroom and walked past a primly sitting Jiwoo in the front row. It’s not been long since then, but Jiwoo has been tamping down a cocktail of insecurity, dread, and anger. How dare someone so talented be in her section. So young, too, barely eighteen.
But so is Yuna. And age, Jiwoo realizes too late, cowers in the face of confidence.
The match begins.
Jiwoo winds back her right arm and throws her compass at her target. Yuna reacts, not by dodging down but running toward Jiwoo and sliding on her knees, under and past the projectile. She stops, turns, and tries to sweep Jiwoo off her feet, but Jiwoo has moved to retrieve her weapon.
Yuna springs forward from her three-point stance, gripping the ruler like a spear. From the ground, Jiwoo dashes toward Yuna, trying to use her upward movement to shove Yuna back. She succeeds. Yuna stumbles but does not fall. From her back foot, she steps forward and swings the ruler down like an ax. For a split second, Jiwoo hesitates, but she counters, using both hands to shield herself with the wider flat side of the compass. Yuna grins with teeth. The clashing metal echoes in the high-walled classroom.
This sequence sends tremors through Jiwoo’s arms, as if Yuna really is fighting with an ax or some other hardy weapon. Her elbows ache as she regroups.
Yuna has been taking risks with her body that Jiwoo would never consider, fake fight or otherwise, and she brandishes her tool with an assortment of fighting styles in a way that suggests either prior practice or instinctive control. Certainly, Jiwoo thinks, she isn’t worrying about when to parry and when to strike, the way Jiwoo has been doing the whole time. Jiwoo’s never had a relaxed fight in her life.
She starts to get mad again. Her combat becomes sloppy, and her guard slips.
She can almost see it in Yuna’s eyes, when she realizes Jiwoo has lost control of herself and, thus, the fight. If there’s one thing Yuna knows how to do like no one else, it’s poking holes through things and people, leaving her mark with a flourish.
Yuna spins away from another close encounter. She uses the additional space and Jiwoo’s reduced reaction time to slice through the air, lowering her body as the ruler falls, ultimately finding purchase in the right side of Jiwoo’s torso. At point of contact it becomes clear what the ruler does beyond measurement: on the way to hit Jiwoo, it collects enough momentum and channels it outward like a sound wave, or a baseball bat, carrying enough force to launch Jiwoo off her feet and toward the classroom windows. Glass glitters around her before Jiwoo realizes the gravity of her loss.
Time slows. Jiwoo will shortly plummet to the earth from the top floor of the main school building, and Yuna will have won the match and possibly also the whole class on the first day, and any chance Jiwoo has of being a cool, composed, charming senior or worthy early candidate for real-world magical girl experience is as moot as her compass, which seems to have just been for doing math.
It’s all so frustrating. And yet, here, horizontal and floating, Jiwoo’s mind is the clearest and quietest it’s been all day.
Briefly, she lets herself wonder what the fight must have looked like through Jueun’s eyes. Whether she is impressed or disappointed. Jiwoo almost wishes they could have fought. Jueun is an opponent she has lost to once before and wouldn’t mind losing to again. There’s a part of Jiwoo that knows she only cares so much about Jueun’s presence today because that long-ago match weighs heavy on her, and there’s only so much time left before she has to let her one-sided rivalry go, in favor of real problems.
Maybe Jiwoo will never be a capable fighter, thinking like that. Jueun probably doesn’t remember. Admitting that to herself just might unravel her.
Time resumes as normal. Jiwoo falls, not for the first time.