"This is Vallynn, he went to the Academy with me a few months ago," Astrid informs the receptionist with no preamble. "He's a genius prodigy and I want to make sure he remembers my name when he's like super famous."

"—hey, now..."

"May I see your Eden badge and the wizard's seal?" the receptionist asks.

"—of course."

He does not like the way that went.

They do something to both things while pointing them at sheets of paper which causes writing to appear on that paper, then start quickly reading what's on there. The report that they extracted from Wizard Mara's seal is rather long and dense, written in very tiny hard-to-read script. As they read, their eyebrows ever so slowly rise up into their fringes, though their face is otherwise unreadable.

Is that a Skill? Surely not. But if it's being done the hard way it looks really complex, and Vallynn is almost certain there wasn't a magical artefact doing the transcribing. So maybe it was a Skill, and thinking about it that's even reasonably likely, it's not like everyone wants to be adventurers and the breadth of possible Skills that could be used in professional contexts is very very wide.

When they're done reading they put the papers down and ask, "No last name?"

"Four of them, actually, but I think my first name is probably rare enough?"

    "Hmm, not wrong. Well, welcome to the Mages' Guild, Vallynn, I believe we'll have a very fruitful partnership. Now I should—"

"I'll show him around," Astrid interrupts. "Don't worry about it."

    "—would you? Thank you."

"Yeah, no prob." She turns around (making sure to do so in a way that makes her robes go whoosh) and says, "Follow me."

"—sure," he says, belatedly realising he never caught the receptionist's name. The moment's passed, though, probably, so he follows Astrid. "Why'd you want to show me around?"

"Like I said, I want you to remember my name when you're super famous for killing Surt or whatever."

"Didn't realise you had quite so much faith in me." They only spent a couple of weeks together at the Academy.

"I hadn't realised how badass your schtick was until I got here and tried it myself."

"Tried what?"

"Spell development. The professor thought I was shitting her when I told her about you."

That kind of makes him uncomfortable! 

"I see. 'Professor'?"

"Yeah, there's classes and stuff. I'm told other guilds are a lot more hung up on properly training people but ours is kind of like the Academy? You can go watch lectures if you want, or ask for one-on-one time with instructors, but you don't have to."

"I don't think our instructor ever had one-on-one sessions with anyone, at the Academy."

"Well, not Wizard Mara, but you know, everyone else."

"Yeah, I got you."

"Anyway that was mostly a joke, I just kinda feel alone here I guess? Because most of the other mages have been here longer and without Magnhild it's been kind of lonely. It'll be good to be someone's senpai."

"Someone's what now?"

She grins. "It's an Amatsu word, they have a whole hierarchical culture thing going on and a senpai is, like, someone who's higher than you in some formal but not too formal hierarchy, or sometimes just older. So having been here a couple of months longer than you means I'm your senpai and you're my kōhai."

"Why does it sound like there's some fine print there?"

"Oh I'm not going to make you fetch me drinks, don't worry. ...or, I will if you can teekay it, but that's just because it's convenient and I want to get some benefit from being friends with a prodigy."