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The Lady Shizuku of the Hinomori family had been sent to The School as a very young girl. Everyone said she was the very picture of a lady, very beautiful, very sweet. Momoi Airi had been sent to The School after a plague had ripped its way through her village, and she had discovered a magical talent that had saved some people and hadn’t saved most, and had been sent off with stones thrown at her back. Kiritani Haruka had been one of the stars of her hometown, enrolled in The School to give her a shot at a brighter future. Hanasato Minori had had just enough magical talent to get herself a job as a maid in The School, and nothing more, though she did everything she could to study magic in hopes of becoming a full magician someday.
None of these girls were supposed to know each other. Shizuku, Airi, and Haruka had been in different magical groups for most of their tenure at The School. Minori, a maid, wasn’t supposed to have any contact with the students whatsoever, and though she had been receiving tutoring on magical theory from Aoyagi Toya, she was still generally abysmal at practical magic.
Still, though, the four girls knew each other, and, secretly, had begun weaving their magic together in order to form a magic group under the teachers’ noses. Magic itself was chained by The School—it couldn’t be more obvious, and Haruka’s studies had shown her, hazed by misinformation as they were—that the shackles put on by The School were slowly killing magic—and not just magic. All magical creatures were slowly going extinct, withering away as the humans watched. Nearly all the dryads had retreated into their trees; more and more mermaids were leaving the sea to walk on land, and their half-breed descendants dying, stricken by a strange disease; impossible, fantastical creatures only existed where they had been summoned, and not out in the wild; there were nowhere near enough knights in shining armor to allow for the existence of dragons. The School’s writings mentioned these as incidentals—as maybe even good things—but Haruka was no fool, and neither were the girls with whom she associated.
She never mentioned this, though—at least, not where anyone might overhear and understand. The other girls in More More Jump, their new secret magic group, all shared Haruka’s views, and they had all agreed that it was too dangerous to speak of openly; Shiraishi-Azusawa An, Haruka’s childhood friend who despised The School, was good enough at code that neither girl needed to actually write out their complaints and plots; Aoyagi Toya, the only other person at The School who seemed to have a less-than-stellar opinion of it, refused to interact with anyone who might hinder his escape attempts on principle, and, above that, he refused to step a toe out of line when he wasn’t attempting an escape out of fear that The School would retaliate against his own magic group, the Vivid Bad Squad, who were still out there, somewhere, free and far away. This was reasonable, and anyway there were always other allies—An and her wife were vicious fighters, good enough to hold their own against The School’s envoys and even to take down magicians when given the chance, and Shizuku’s little sister was close with the little sister of the leader of the group of Old Magic users who had successfully infiltrated The School some months prior, and Airi’s childhood best friend was an advisor to the Princess of the Mirror Realm, who was just beginning to spread her wings and touch her true power, and Minori knew every inch of The School, inside-out and backwards, and could get anyone she pleased in or out, which had won them quite a few favors from idiots who’d ticked off The School and then been forgotten by them.
The newest of these idiots was An’s wife and—shockingly—Toya’s groupmate, Shiraishi-Azusawa Kohane, who has not anywhere near as sweet as An had described in her letters or as innocent and kind as Toya had mentioned, once or twice when he could be enticed to speak of his old friends. She was angry—with the world, with her groupmate Shinonome Akito, with any and everything other than her wife and Toya—she claimed to abhor forgiveness—despite her friendliness towards Haruka, she kept herself closed off from near everyone—and despite the obvious futility of her actions, she did not stop attempting to escape alone. She was an ally, it was true—and if More More Jump could make their move while she was still in The School, she would be a formidable one and a priceless one—but not one single member of More More Jump was happy she was there, and neither was Toya, though he was unhappy for a very different reason—he did not want her endangered, and he was terrified that any moment now the teachers would learn that she, like Toya, was a member of Vivid Bad Squad and use her to finally, finally break him.
It was very little matter to More More Jump tactically if the teachers broke Toya’s spirit; as things stood, he was barely on their side at all, and nobody would believe him if he claimed that Kiritani Haruka, Hinomori Shizuku, and Momoi Airi were plotting against The School, and if anyone thought that the teachers remembered Minori’s name they had another think coming. But there was more to life than tactics, and none of them particularly wanted to see him broken, and, anyway, there was no point to letting anything close to that happen when they could just adjust their plans for the better.
Kohane would be a powerhouse, if they could begin their takedown while she was in The School; Shiho and her friends were in the area, which meant that WonderlandsxShowtime could be summoned quickly, if need be; somewhere, the girls of More More Jump were certain, An and Shinonome Akito were building their own plan, possibly with the help of Lord Akito’s sister and her friend, the princess, to rescue Kohane and Toya. Their own preparations to take down The School weren’t anywhere near where they wanted them to be, but in terms of outside support and allies, nobody thought they would ever be in a better position—and anyway, they had been planning on making their move when An arrived for the ball, bringing along with her any allies she could find. They were only a few months off from their planned attack. If—somehow—they could get word out—mount a coordinated attack with Vivid Bad Squad and WonderlandsxShowtime, and then retreat to the princedom ruled by Asahina Mafuyu—they might just have a shot at it.
And so the girls of More More Jump bided their time, and rewrote their prompts, and Shizuku wrote a letter to her younger sister and posted it the same day that Lady Shiho made her murder attempt.