And so time passed—me, or rather, should I say “I” now?

I had only average athletic ability when it came to sports, but I guess I was blessed with a decently sharp mind for studying. Without even killing myself over it, I managed to get into one of the top-ranked prestigious private high schools in the prefecture.

I had this vague hope of making clever, troublemaking friends there. Someone reliable, smart, and willing to brainstorm slightly unethical uses of time magic with me… If you’re thinking, “This guy sounds like he doesn’t have any friends,” well…

You’re kinda right☆

But hey, I was in the baseball club in middle school, so I did have some friends. …Just not a lot, that’s all.

By the way, I kept playing baseball in high school, too. It was one of the few places where I could actually feel my cheat ability at work.

But then, during the summer prefectural qualifiers that year—oh yeah, I was a first-string player as a freshman.

The reality was, since it was an academically focused school, the baseball team was pretty small. And since I had experience playing in middle school and was decently skilled, I got to play in games even as a first-year.

The first round of the summer Koshien qualifiers was against a team at about our level, and thanks to my performance, we won. But in the second round, we had the bad luck of facing a seeded school.

I managed to get hits in my first two at-bats.

But our team only had two hits total, and I never got a third at-bat—because we got mercy-ruled in the fifth inning.

And honestly, even those two hits felt a little lucky—like the ball just happened to go where the fielders weren’t. Plus, they were both singles, so they didn’t affect the game’s outcome at all.

If I’d had just a bit more power, maybe I could’ve gone pro someday.

But after that crushing defeat, my passion for baseball started to fade.

Maybe seeing the limits of my time magic cheat in baseball made me lose motivation. From then on, my enthusiasm for the sport visibly dwindled.

And so, my time magic cheat in baseball saw less and less use.

That got me thinking about other ways to use time stop, and the one I ended up putting into practice the most was… this.

Time, halt!

Quick glance

Snap (Look away)

(One second passes)

And time resumes.

Huh? What was I doing?

A quick peek, that’s all. Just sneaking a glance at a pretty girl’s chest.

You know how they say a man’s “quick peek” is a woman’s “full-on stare”? But think about it—what if that “quick peek” happened during stopped time?

Heh heh heh… Perfect, right? A true genius at work.

I had gained the right to steal glances to my heart’s content.

But even when I timed it perfectly, sometimes the girl would still shoot me a look like I was trash. …Women are scary.

Other than that, well… my high school was pretty lenient with dress code since it was an elite school, so a lot of the girls wore pretty short skirts—which was great. Plus, the school was close enough to the coast that sea breezes would blow through now and then. So—

Whoosh—flutter!

“Eek—” (Time, halt!)

Heh. Right at the perfect moment—just as she yelped and was about to press her skirt down.

Mmm, white. A clean, pure white! Magnificent!

Huh? What do I mean?

Come on, don’t play dumb.

By the way, during time stop, everything except me turns monochrome, so colors other than white are kinda underwhelming. But I’ve always believed white was justice anyway.

No, wait—it’s not just that. What I really want to say is this:

In a monochrome world, only white can shine!

Yeah. This was the kind of slightly wicked, fun use I’d always wanted from time magic.

…Though, honestly, I can’t deny it’s kinda pathetic.

I mean, come on—if you ask 100 guys my age what they’d do with time magic, every single one would say they’d stop time for like 10 minutes and sneak into a public bath. Compared to that, this half-baked ability is just tragic!

Anyway, even as my passion for baseball cooled, I’d found the true meaningful use for time magic that I’d always wanted. And so, I kept using it occasionally in my laid-back life.

And then… it finally happened.

At that time, I still wasn’t a true time mage.