First High did not have any student dorms.
Since there were only nine magic high schools in the entire country, it
was inevitable that students from abroad would be present.
Thus, while student dorms didn't seem to be entirely out of the
question, in this day and age, besides a few specialized boarding
schools that viewed student dorms as an integral part of the
curriculum, facilities such as student dorms were no longer in service.
In the modern age, HAR (Home Automation Robot) has already
entered the mass market, purchase of daily items can be done online
and delivered directly to the door, so students can freely live on their
own without discomfort, making student dorms a redundant facility.
Owing to the above reasons, most of the students who were unable to
return to their family homes largely chose to rent housing close to the
school. As a transfer student, there was nothing odd in Lina renting an
apartment. Her house was only two bus stops from school, which was
considered close proximity thanks to modern public transit. The
reason that she did not rent a personal studio or a one room apartment
and instead chose a small, family-sized apartment was because Lina
wasn't living on her own.
"Welcome back, Lina."
"Silvie, back already?"
The moment Lina opened the door to the apartment, Warrant Officer
Silvia, who was serving as her support on this mission, immediately
greeted her as if she had been waiting for her arrival for quite some
time.
"It's quite late now, isn't it?"
Lina smiled wryly upon hearing this after taking a roundabout way
home and walked towards the dining room in her uniform. There was,
"Mina, you're here."
A young woman wearing a tense expression greeted Lina. She was
standing in front of the table and had probably just conversed with
Silvia.
"Yes, sorry for bothering you, Major."
The woman called Mina replied back in a stiff tone. With a perplexed
smile on her face, Lina took a seat by the table.
"Please sit, Mina. Silvie, could I trouble you for some tea?"
Normally, Silvia would completely ignore the chain of command and
fire back with "Given that you're a girl, you should fix your own tea".
However, she wasn't someone who couldn't read the atmosphere.
"Is milk tea OK? Mina, would you like a cup?"
"Ah, OK, sorry for the trouble."
Silvia's question seemed to terrify Mina, but at least she loosened up a
few degrees as she replied back.
The woman's full name was Michaela Hongo, or Mina for short. She
shared Lina's Japanese-American heritage, but unlike Lina, Mina
could fully blend in based on her appearance. Perhaps her skin tone
was a little darker? This degree was not enough to raise eyebrows in
Japan.
She was one of the spies who had entered Japan ahead of Lina's group.
That being said, this wasn't her original occupation either. Her true
identity was a magic researcher attached to the Department of Defense
who specialized in Release-Systematic Magic. She was a talented
woman who participated in last November's black hole experiment in
Dallas. She volunteered for this mission in search of an alternate
breakthrough for "annihilation reaction energy conversion" after the
debacle at the Dallas Research Center.
Like many magic researchers, she was also a Magician. Unlike the
fake students who came this month under the guise of mutual
research, she had infiltrated the magic universities under the identity
of a salesperson and engineer from the Japanese branch of Maximilian
Industries, "Mia Hongo". Speaking of which, her current housing was
directly next door to Lina's rented apartment. Despite not being
combat or intelligence personnel, she still served as support and was
concealed enough to serve as an active asset for this infiltration
mission.