As prophesize by the dragolyte girl blessed in observation and maybe predictions, Inkaro managed to bump the tiny car he chose into every wall of the course. In fact, the atrocity that was his driving skills was so abhorrent that he managed to get the thing airborne, despite the pre-made track being perfectly smooth and flat with no obstacles. Eventually, the examiner for the practical test had to step in and drive the tiny car for him. They were left baffled, stupefied even, when it effortlessly and unerringly moved with butterly smooth inputs under their control as compared to Inkaro. They were so confused by the stark contrast that they completely forgot about the point penalty for getting someone else to drive the car for them.

  As for the error finding test, it was simply debugging with a time limit... so fairly uneventful, excluding the scene of Inkaro and Lizu racing to see who could finish first.

  Naturally, Lizu had an edge over Inkaro, thanks to her speciality in observation. It totally wasn't unfair.

  So, it came as no surprise when Lizu finished half the corrections by the first minute mark. Inkaro wasn't far behind, but it was big enough that his drive to try winning fizzled out enough to start converging with the obvious winner.

  "Honestly... it could've been worse," Inkaro remarked cheerfully with an innocent smile, devoid of his previously shown sinisterness, only to get a perplexedly scornful sigh from LIzu. She was almost brought to tears, of reluctant joy, at how much the guy was downplaying how nonsensical Inkaro's driving was.

  A thought came to the girl's mind. Inkaro could have asked Grimoire Galore to do it for him, or would that be considered outside help? Lizu could only ponder in silence on the issue, but it was swiftly pushed out by something else. Still, Lizu did find his words mildly amusing, and his smile soul soothing, as she took the chance to take the lead she had even further, from the sudden swelling of inner power. "I still don't understand; how is it that the second something requires the slightest bit of directional control, your ability to control it goes out the window?"

  "Mana tolerance, or my lack of it, remember?" Inkaro teased as he twirled his oak mana ink pen between his fingers with exaggerated movements, giving the pen the illusion it was phasing through his very fingers. Lizu was momentarily stunned at the visual trick; it took her a second to bring herself back from the brink of complete mental collapse, of the awe-inspired variety.

  "Ah, right, completely forgot with that work around you- say, when are you going to te-"

  She was in the middle of her reply when her happy face turned to that of exhausted displeasure. The source and cause of the change? A certain noble girl in the middle of peering her big ol' sparkling eyes over Inkaro's shoulders.

  Inkaro didn't so much as flinch, not even when the girl crouched down beside him and took in what he was doing, marvelling at something about it most others would pay no mind.

  "Wo-oh! Your handwriting is so pretty, it's so easy to tell where you edited stuff~ I wish mine was as good as that....". The girl's mere act of trying to talk to Inkaro lit a fury of a fire inside Lizu, who swiftly threw her head and whole body into her debugging.

  Seconds later.

  Lizu shot her eyes up after finishing her debugging test, and glared a concerning amount into the back of the noble girl's skull. Enough so, she flinched on instinct alone.

  [Hinosa Andreo is an average height, fifteen-year-old vatruva female; she has very long cotton candy pink hair with a teal and cyan gradient that's roughtly ten percent of her total hair, her hair is stiled into a braided ponytail that splits in two around her hips, pale pink right eye, pale cyan left eye with a faint and functionally white teal sclera, super fair skin, slightly wide hips, and a large and trailing deep crimson red cloth-like appandegae covered in faded crescent moons that protrudes from between her shoulder blades]

  [Hinosa is wearing a fluffy pink jacket with a large crescent moon-shaped hole on the back and extra fluffy white fur around the hole and the jackets collar, a fancy pale red shirt with a hole in the back, skin-tight reflective black shorts, a white skirt, slightly oversized crimson red leg warmers that are super fluffy, and white fur boots covered in grey crescent moons]

  "Are you going to hound Inkaro every second that passes? Don't take his lack of response for acceptance of your antics, Hinosa," Lizu uttered disapointedly as she ran her claw-turned nail across the stem of her birch mana ink pen.

  The somewhat ditsy noble girl stood stonefaced, heeding exactly nothing of what Lizu had said other than the fact Lizu had, in fact, spoken to her. Seizing her chance, Hinosa wasted no time in spinning on her heel to face, not bothering to stand up as she did, and deployed something Lizu dreaded: girl talk.

  "Say, Lizuranti, do you think the assessment thingy will be like the one when we got as kids? Or do you think the ones the academy has will reveal more, because my papa already had my advanced attributes assessed a while ago, and it revealed I had a holy affinity. Although I suppose things could've changed by now. What do you think?"

  Lizu was unable to respond or comprehend anything, having slumped to the floor in a slacker manner after only three seconds of being bombarded by the girl talk. If there was one thing Lizu couldn't handle, other than Inkaro in certain situations, it was anyone who wasn't Inkaro, talking about benign and pointless topics.

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  She couldn't explain why it happens so often.

  Stuck to the floor like glue, she wondered if it was a simple her thing or if there was something else going on. "Maybe... the thing that perma-kidded Nuli did something to me-"

  Something caught Lizu's eye; Inkaro paused his debugging. He raised his gaze to Hinosa.

  "Can you use purification spells?" Inkaro asked bluntly, but speaking in a tone devoid of impoliteness.

  Almost falling on her side from suddenly getting words out of Inkaro, Hinosa threw out a jittery head nod as her face slightly reddened from nearly making a fool of herself. As she sat there awaiting a response, Hinosa found her clothy appandage coiling around her face tightly while a certain girl's glaring intensified. Lizu did not like that one bit; to a sufficient threshold, she powered through her near-coma state. Whether from a sense of jealousy-influenced protectiveness or an obligation to keep Inkaro from causing trouble when she could help it, Lizu knew she had to do something.

  "Inkaro, what did you do that needs pur-"

  Sadly for the girl named Lizuranti, her question was cut short, again, by the uncaring passage of time, but mostly by the booming voice of an examiner. "Myhail's group, it's almost been ten minutes, so get ready to finish your debugging and move onto the attribute assessment and check."

  Having been forced to put her question on hold and being interrupted again, Lizu found herself involuntarily pouting with nothing but frustration, puffing up her cheeks in such a cute way that Inkaro and Hinosa found themselves nodding in unison by complete accident. The sight was nothing short of traumatising for a certain dragolyte girl. Lizu gasped in unbridled shock while covering her gasping mouth. Mere Moments following the expulsion of all her air, Lizu passed out on the spot, not having mentally prepared herself for the possibility her Inkaro and the girl calling herself her rival would or could get along.

  The duo stared at the sleeping and babbling girl as she silently mouthed off how impossible it was. "Is that normal?"

  Inkaro nonchalantly shrugged. "For people in general? Unlikely. For her, however? Most certainly... don't tell her I told you that."

  Hinosa flung a hand to her head, priming it in a salute. By the time he registered what she was doing, Inkaro was fully expecting her to say she'd defend that secret to her dying breath; however, the fluctuations in her mana, signifying laughter, left a sizeable amount of doubt in Inkaro's confidence.

  "No promises."

  Inkaro meekly slumped his shoulders. He knew he was done for, and his peaceful evening would be ancient history if Hinosa spilled the beans.

  "...at least you're honest." Inkaro lightly pressed a finger against his cheek, finding it somewhat odd that someone could be so proud about not being unable to keep a secret. When he said in his head and on paper, the act of not keeping secrets did sound rather noble and praiseworthy. But if his interactions with Lizu told him anything, even someone as socially dense as Inkaro knew keeping things to himself was sometimes the morally right thing to do. Like fixing a kid Lizu's syntax after she'd been stuck on it for a month without telling her. "Say, there's a favour I'd like to ask of you."

  With a little bit of effort and a promise of a spoonful of soda-tasting honey, Lizu was back in action, right in time for the attribute assessment/check. Unlike the practical test, Inkaro wouldn't be causing any incidents by his own hands, of the type brought about by a low mana tolerance, anyway.

  Lizu, for the most part, was some form of calm. She tried to picture a tranquil lake in her mind; however, her nerves were too frazzled. It was functionally impossible, after all, being spoon-fed into waking was just way too embarrassing. She must've looked like a complete baby. Huddling up in a vain attempt to make herself appear smaller, which wouldn't happen on account of her large tail. Her tail swooshed from side to side, only adding to her embarrassment. Following a deep humming noise, Lizu addressed what Inkaro was planning on asking. "Ahem, naturally, I'd look cute. In fact, saying I look cute is redundant, like saying... chai tea."

  Her retort brought her a single, unavoidable outcome: Inkaro poking her in her pouting cheeks.

  "Your tone seemed oddly exhausted at the end there," Inkaro teased as he felt Lizu slap the side of her tail against his leg for that comment. Despite his unsaid question and his observant comment to her response, they did work in lightening her mood enough so that when she inevitably sighed, it was more exhausted than it was dreadful.

  The girl with the mostly pink design let out an equally exhausted sigh filled with nostalgia and cringe for her child-self's ideas. The memories left Hinosa to shudder all over, cloth appendage included, as she practically turned into the zig-zaggy line on a heart rate monitor. "Yeah, that one teacher was an oddball; she'd police everything we said or wrote."

  "She was a literature teacher, so it checks." Lizu flopped her head to one side, sharing in Hinosa's displeasure for the grooling memories of the noble etiquette school and the works. This was certainly a rare scene indeed.

  It was so rare, in fact, that even Inkaro could tell just from a glance, leaving him with a singular thing to ask. "So, are you two friends or not?"

  At the question's conclusion, Hinosa's face lit up whilst Lizu's reddened, but whether it was from anger or embarrassment was left to be seen. Lizu didn't know how to respond initially. After all, how could Inkaro make such a claim? Actually, as she thought about it, Lizu came to a most dreadful realisation, had she truly grown closer to the girl that she once... unliked. She had no clue; she'd never been all that good at telling what kind of relationship she had with any given person, outside of the obvious ties between family. Inkaro was the exception to her usual confusion on the matter; although she wasn't sure why, she chalked it up to love and friendship running on different metrics.

  "You bet'cha/I dunno!" Hinosa and Lizu announced, respectively. Inkaro had expected such a response, so he lightly sighed as he turned away and looked to the attribute reading devices.

  "I wonder if this will turn out like those shows Teacher showed me."