The Knight Came to Hate the Ball (1)
He turned to the students with a thoroughly drained look on his face.
"If this instructor ends up quitting the Academy, just assume he's living on the run."
"On the run?"
"Are you sick?"
"Instructor—?"
"Just keep it in mind."
"???"
"......"
Two days had passed since the uproar at Galahad, and a faint sense of crisis was finally beginning to creep in. People were creatures of regret, or so the saying went: a miserable loop in which the man you were now suffered for the disasters the man you'd been had set in motion. For two nights running, Lee Han had dreamed something just shy of a nightmare—Galahad soldiers hunting him down, the duke pressing a blade to his throat.
Where do I even run...?
Lately, exile had joined the list of options. The kingdom of desert and grassland under the Sultan ran hot, but he'd heard it wasn't a bad place to live. No. Heat's a deal-breaker. Then should he simply go to ground in some country village with a valley and the sea? That's no good either. Surviving was one thing; country life was another. If he was going to live anywhere, it would be a city that actually had infrastructure. He might look like a man who could survive anywhere, but he was a city dweller at heart.
"Haaah."
"Instructor, Kunta not know what wrong, but cheer up. Kunta comforts you."
"You're more delicate than you look, aren't you?"
"...Kunta not want to hear that from Instructor, of all people."
"What's wrong with me?"
"Instructor look more barbarian than a barbarian."
"Is that an insult or a compliment?"
"???"
"...Why don't you understand the thing you just said?"
For this kid's sake alone, he was starting to think he ought to wedge a reading period into class. Swordsmen might be called muscle-brains, but a certain amount of knowledge was still necessary. And somehow, thanks to the big lug, Lee Han forgot his worries about the ducal house and fell to pondering how his lessons ought to go from here. The habit of doing one's assigned work properly seemed to help at times like this.
Then—
"Come to think of it, ball season will be here before long."
"Ah, I'd forgotten."
"Oh no, what do I do? I still don't have a partner...."
The chicks practicing the judo he had taught them lately grew noisy. It started the moment the talk turned to the ball.
"A ball?"
"Yes. From the second semester on, ball season starts in earnest. The Academy Ball, which everyone attending the Academy takes part in, opens before long."
"There's something like that, is there."
"Everyone at the Royal Academy has to show their face in society, whether they want to or not. Failing to appear means being shut out of high society, so you could call it a mandatory event."
"Hm."
"Hehe. Instructor, you just thought balls and high society were useless, didn't you?"
"N-no, it's not like that...."
...The chicks were sharper than he'd expected. Was this what people meant by a woman's intuition?
Is my face that easy to read?
Lately, it seemed everyone he met could read him at a glance.
"Mm. First off, I'm sorry. I didn't actually think it was useless. It's just not the sort of event I'm familiar with. I wasn't looking down on you."
"Ufufu, I know. I know that wasn't what you meant, Instructor."
A chick's faint laughter followed the words, and the other chicks murmured their agreement.
"That's what we like about you, Instructor. You apologize even when we're young and don't have much standing."
"Exactly. Some young lords and knights are so proud they won't apologize—they fly into a temper first."
"If that were the worst of it, it'd be a relief. Some of them use violence, too. I mean, the other day I saw Sir Frand..."
"Heavens! That happened?! Lives exactly as he looks. Pretty face, rotten all the way through."
"Such a shame. If that man had been standing in front of me, it would have been a chance to test what the instructor taught us."
"Wouldn't it!"
"...Can I go now?"
Maybe a man really wasn't meant to insert himself into a conversation among girls. At some point he had the distinct sense that his presence had been forgotten, and Lee Han wanted very much to flee.
"Hehe. To put it simply, Master is a gentle person."
"...I asked about the ball. How did we end up there?"
The gentleness of Blue Gomsuni, who had drawn close before he noticed, reached his ears, and Lee Han learned a lesson.
When girls are talking, do not join in if you can help it.
It was a lesson that would serve him for the rest of his life.
"......"
The red-haired woman, Judia Pierre, watched in silence as the female students and the knight fell in so easily together. Her face was as unreadable as ever. Had some gentle, wise old priest been there, though, he might have read it well enough.
That expression was nothing other than—
"...O Light, how am I supposed to live—?"
It was envy.
Lee Han told a certain collaborator what had happened to him, and the moment the man heard it—
"Y-you were summoned by the Duke?!"
—he went white, one step from keeling over in a dead faint.
"Is it really that shocking?"
Derek could be bold now and then, but he was timid to the bone, and so he startled like this over things that hardly warranted it. The startled party, however, had a rebuttal.
"How could anyone not be shocked?! More to the point, did you know Duke Blake, Instructor? That Magic Sword Blake—?"
"...And what setting is that supposed to be?"
"Duke Blake of the Magic Sword. One of the people whose strength matches an Aura User. His own martial power is already formidable, but once he takes up the magic sword, that power is a natural disaster. ...A man who could erase a nation."
"Is that gentleman an important character, too?"
"He's something like an event boss. Same as the Grand Duke of Lionel, though—he's not a boss character you're meant to beat."
"...Then why make him?"
"The planning team loses its mind now and then on the job and slips in an Easter egg that makes no sense. Honestly, he barely does anything in the original. They must have decided this was the one and put him in anyway."
"That man has no feats...?"
The duke Lee Han had met was not a man indifferent to the world. Quite the opposite: he was as wise and capable as a man could be. To hear that such a person had no role at all struck him as strange, and at that reaction Derek nodded and explained why the duke was a character who did nothing.
"Because he's a bystander. You know how it is. If there's a human who can control every situation the moment he moves, the story doesn't go anywhere. The problem is he stands aside so thoroughly that he barely has any presence at all."
"So there is a time he acts?"
"There is."
"When?"
"When Irene Windler falls."
"...Ah."
Lee Han remembered something he had been told and gave a slow nod.
"You said Irene Windler was originally one of the three great villainesses?"
At the question, Derek nodded and went on with the rest of the setting.
"The reason Irene Windler becomes a villainess is that, inside the Academy at least, she's basically the final boss. In the original she becomes the Duke of Galahad's adopted daughter, too. And once a person enters a powerful house, what they do splits into two broad kinds. Do you happen to know them?"
"Thank the luck that found you and work for it. Or fail to be grateful, and go crooked."
"You know it well."
"How many comics do you think I've read. ...And from the way you're talking, the chick—"
"Yes. In the original, she goes crooked. Tremendously."
To an enormous degree. Wickedness was the baseline. She herself had lived as a commoner orphan, yet she despised the lower classes, and at last she used Galahad's power to reign as the queen of society. Worse, after entering the Royal Academy she spent her effort only on cementing her own base of power, neglected magic—the talent that was actually hers—and let that gift rot.
And after that...
"In her second year she stands against the 'heroine' who shows up then, and her role is to make the heroine shine. Later she commits wickedness too wretched to put into words, threatens the heroine, and in the end she's expelled from the Academy and cast off by the duke. That's the original storyline."
"...She deserves to be cast off."
Just listening made his irritation spike. A villainess of the most ordinary sort, and that frustration alone was reason enough for the duke to throw her away.
That man doesn't hand out affection just because someone looks like his wife.
In that so-called original, he had probably found an Irene Windler who resembled his wife and taken her as a foster daughter—then, once the villainess's wickedness crossed the line, cut her off in a single stroke. Even so, if Lee Han had to guess why he had left her alone until she was a second-year at the Academy...
He kept her because he was suspicious.
Just as he'd heard this time, the original Irene Windler had almost certainly been suspected of being something the temple had made, and kept close for that reason. Then, the moment the duke was sure she was useless and nothing but wicked, she lost her value.
And sure enough—
"Going by the original, there's a line about 'a nameless grave where a blonde woman is buried.' That grave is probably..."
"...Tch."
He knew the original's villainess and the chick in front of him were different people. Even so, Lee Han felt oddly bitter. Spell-slinger or not, she was someone he had taught. A student, wasn't she?
"Not a pleasant thing to hear."
"D-did I say something I shouldn't have?"
"It's not that. It just sits a little heavy, that's all. Thanks for telling me."
"Haha.... Then I'm glad."
"...Hm. But, Timid."
"Yes?"
"...What's that on your neck?"
"Huh? Ah, this...!"
Had an insect bitten him? Something like a blister had risen red on his neck, and the boy gave a wry smile.
"It's nothing, really. The day before yesterday a girl from the same faculty gave me something like an invitation, and when Lady Karin saw it she got angry. Then she suddenly bit my neck. Honestly..."
"......"
"I thought the pain was going to kill me. Why was she that furious?"
"...That's her marking her territory, you idiot."
"Yes? What kind of marking?"
"...Just go and die, you little shit."
"???"
"...Fuck."
Lee Han wanted to beat the boy senseless.
In Lee Han's front yard there was a doghouse—that is, a boarding room. A handmade piece by the landlord himself, built without a single shoddy joint. It could probably have weathered a storm. And because the house was so precious, its resident, Assistant Instructor No. 1, had bowed his head with tears shining in his eyes.
"My life is actual dogshit. Seriously...!"
No doubt he felt unworthy of living in a house so fine.
At any rate, that precious lodging had recently multiplied by nine, because new interns had appeared who wished to board. The yard had grown louder with snoring, but fortunately not loud enough to offend the landlord's ears. So even though it was the front yard, it seemed a space of its own, independent of the man who owned it.
But.
A soft shift. Someone rose and slipped out of that space. She got up slowly and walked with a languid sway, broadcasting her presence for anyone to feel, and still the other residents slept as if dead. However tired they were, the interns should not have failed to notice another person—but there was a reason they didn't.
Shaaaa....
She made no footfalls. She drifted through the air like a ghost, so it was no wonder they sensed nothing. Had anyone been awake to see it, they would have doubted their eyes and screamed. Unfortunately, no one here was awake.
At last—
Flash!
Her body passed not through the door, but through the wall. Was she truly a ghost?
"—Haa."
Breathing out a chill, sinister air, she came through the wall, and her eyes went straight to Lee Han, asleep in the hammock. He was deep under. Little by little, she laid a hand on his body. Was she trying to threaten him? Or to kill him?
Whooosh!
In an instant the gloomy energy pouring off her crashed down over Lee Han. A mistlike power, thick and sticky, with something in it that could bewitch a person just to look at it.
And so—
"......"
"Are your eyes open?"
"......"
"If they are, look at me. I am your master, after all."
"......"
She—Judia Pierre—was steeped in an expression and a voice nothing like her usual self.
Fwoosh!
The rest of her had changed as well. So had the air around her. Hair that had been short now boasted a length that fell to her waist, and there were changes here and there across her body. Put kindly, it had been a healthy body; put unkindly, a body that was not womanly. It had become more feminine, more luscious.
And to a woman like that—
"...Yin Ghost."
The name called up the mystic race known as yin ghosts, or succubi. Judia Pierre shook her head, her expression seductive.
"No. I'm a dream fiend. I'm not some lowly creature like that. So accept me. I'll grant you happiness."
"......"
"Hurry. If you become my servant, all the happiness you could want..."
"You done talking?"
"...Why isn't it working?"
"Hey. I asked you a question."
"N-no, it should work? Why.... Do you have a problem with your masculinity, or...?"
"...You mannerless bitch!"
WHAM!!
"AAAAAH!!"
There was the sound of Judia Pierre's skull cracking. It did not actually crack, but the dull impact was that heavy, and she thrashed in pain. A tremendous blow. Pain even a dream fiend's body could not endure came rushing in.
Whether she hurt or not—
"You—! Driving a spike through a man's chest! And the System Window bastard already rubbed salt in it on his way out...!!!"
A reverse scale has been touched.
Lee Han was in a supreme rage. There was a girl who had dared to touch his sorest point. She had no manners, and she had broken in besides. This was self-defense now.
"Don't even think about sleeping tonight!"
"...What?"
Lee Han took up the huge axe standing in a corner of the room.
"An axe can beat a person too, can't it?"
"N-no?"
"Then I'll show you. Take it till dawn, and you'll figure it out."
"!!!"
That night, Lee Han kept his word. He demonstrated any number of ways to beat a person with an axe without killing them, and he truly struck until the day broke.
Seven full hours.
That was how long Judia Pierre was beaten.