I Am Instructor Lee Han

The Pendragon Royal Academy.

The place people simply called the Academy.

A sanctum of learning, and a hall of scholarship devoted to raising the young pillars who would one day lead the kingdom, the Academy taught a bewildering range of things. Swordsmanship and magic, of course, but also medicine, statistics, astronomy, smithing, and plenty more besides. Dig long enough and you would turn up subjects so peculiar you had to wonder whether such things were truly taught at all. All told, the courses numbered more than thirty. Perhaps even more than that.

And yet, however many subjects there were, the instructors and professors who taught them were anything but second-rate. Would they call it a royal academy for nothing? Once the royal name was attached, to set the place beside any other academy was little short of an insult. The faculty of the Royal Academy was, to a man and a woman, a gathering of exceptional talent. They were charged with cultivating the people who would bear the kingdom's future, and so their skill and their records had to outshine ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠anyone else's.

Except...

"...That's him, isn't it?"

"The rumors were true?"

"Good heavens."

"Shouldn't we at least try to get on familiar terms?"

"Don't. He's probably in a foul mood as it is."

"...True enough."

It was a modest gathering of professors and instructors, held before the Academy's entrance ceremony. A presentation for the teaching staff, you might call it, meant ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to cover a few brief explanations and, more to the point, to let them put faces to names. Even as those assigned to each subject made their introductions and drew a little closer, they kept stealing glances at one man, their faces openly curious.

Unlike the clusters around him, he had settled alone, aloof as a lone wolf, and was eating steak. They already knew his name, and they already knew what he was.

"Rihan, wasn't it?"

"A Silver Lion... heh. Live long enough and you really do see everything."

"Quite so."

A few of the long-serving professors murmured the name.

Knight Rihan. An active knight, dispatched to the Academy as an instructor. It was not the first time any of them had laid eyes on a knight, but an active one — and a young one, at that, rather than some retiree — was a sight the Academy had never seen.

And what did young mean? It meant the prime, when Fighting Art burned at its strongest and most vigorous. The season when life-force ran fiercest. To become an instructor in that season was to throw the most dynamic years away.

Perhaps that was why people kept their distance. They assumed he privately resented the posting. Demotion or not — no, dispatch or not — it hardly meant he was weak, and the professors marked him as a dangerous element and quietly edged away from his seat. Better to avoid the risk than to take it. The wisdom of a long life.

Well.

Anyone watching would think I was poison. They might have thought themselves discreet, but they had not slipped past his eyes, and Lee Han snorted. People, honestly. Cute little game they're playing. Being the one they feared was better than being the one they ignored, so he was not especially displeased.

He swallowed. Another cut of steak vanished into his mouth.

A week earlier, the sudden news of Lee Han's dispatch had become a considerable stir even inside the knight order, and — a rare thing — the knights had offered him their sympathy.

...At a glance, it might not make sense. How could a mission to teach the young pillars who would bear the nation's future count as punishment? Was it not, quite literally, an honor?

But that was the talk of someone who knew one thing and not the other.

What was the Silver Lion Knight Order? They were the royal knights. The pride of guarding a glorious and mighty royal house was an honor nothing in this country could buy. And to cast that glorious duty aside and become a dispatched instructor? It was not a bad post, strictly speaking — but only in the sense that it was not bad for a retired knight. For a young knight still in his prime, it was a bolt from a clear sky.

So yes, it was a heavy punishment. At an age when honing one's skill and climbing higher still would not have been enough, he was being told to teach a pack of greenhorns. There was no greater loss. It was hardly strange, then, that the members pitied him for once.

The man himself, however, was another matter.

"Ah, so that's the setup we're going with? Yeah, if you want the story to line up front to back, you do need a trick like this. That woman is a sharp one, I'll give her that."

"Impudent wretch. What manner of tongue is that to use of Her Highness?"

"So you old men have some idea how this went, huh?"

"Heh heh. Nothing more than a rough guess."

"Hmm. Salary still comes in like normal, right?"

"...It is the reaction I expected, but I do wish you would at least pretend to be disappointed."

Baltar knew well enough that Lee Han had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠little attachment to the life of a knight, and yet the sheer indifference of it made him regret the fact all the more. Had the man possessed even a full measure of passion for the order, he would already have claimed a seat of his own.

"No mind to apply yourself even now? Say the word, and I will speak to Her Highness and have the mission withdrawn."

Baltar had that much authority, so he made the offer.

"I'm good."

"...Think it over for one second, at least, before you answer."

Things having come this far, Lee Han had already discarded any thought of refusing, and at last Baltar clicked his tongue.

Which brought them to the present. Lee Han was studying — a pursuit that sat miserably with his lot in life — so that he might complete the coursework and the various other requirements of the post, and his head ached rather badly.

Just try not handing it over.

He kept a calm face, but being dragged along by Isis did not sit well with him. She must have been certain he would not refuse. Even so, she had better be prepared. If she claimed there was a cure and then tried to play games...

Then sworn siblings or not, we're done.

Lee ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Han was confident. Confident he could wreck at least one person who stabbed him in the back. Even if that person happened to be the heir to the kingdom.

When the day's curriculum ended and he returned home, three letters were waiting.

One was from Jake. Sharp as ever, the man had skipped the worried well-wishes. Figuring the secret mission had something to do with the Academy, he had left nothing but a brief greeting.

The next letter was from Jord. They had barely known each other, and yet the kid had packed the page with anxious misunderstanding.

...What's wrong with this kid?

"Did I hit him in the wrong place last time?"

He hadn't hit him in the head. Honestly. Feeling awkward, he turned to the last letter. No recipient was written on it, and the page itself was nothing but blank white. A faint perfume clung to the paper, though, and he had a fair idea who had sent it. Lee Han filled a reasonably large bowl with water and wet the blank sheet.

Writing surfaced.

From that opening it ran on in elevated script and poetic turns of phrase. Royalty, through and through, and thoroughly boring. To put it shortly:

I'll keep my promise, so you'd better do your part.

There were lines embarrassing enough to heat his face — declarations that she believed in him, that she would trust his autonomy and his judgment — but they stirred little in him. Someone else might have called praise so extravagant, coming from Isis, the glory of three generations. To Lee Han it was nothing but tiresome attention.

Once he had skimmed the letter through, the paper dissolved in the water. Even the destruction of the evidence was thorough.

"She said that sister of mine takes quite an interest in alchemy and magic. She's good at this."

Lee Han burned the envelope with a Zippo. It caught beautifully.

"...Where do I start?"

The entrance ceremony was four days off. From then on, he would be able to meet every person of interest. But his sister had not told him how he was meant to sound them out. As the letter said, she was leaving everything to his own judgment. Perhaps she had even taken his dislike of orders into account.

Which meant he would have to act on his own. Lee Han thought carefully about what he ought to do, and began to write upon the blackboard.

It was a way of setting down the thread of his thoughts, a habit he had kept since his previous life as a noncommissioned officer. When utterly unreasonable orders rained down from above without end, you laid them out step by step in order to deal with them. ...A habit acquired, ironically enough. For the moment, though, it was a decent one.

Perhaps because his thoughts had settled to some degree, Lee Han grasped, roughly, the first task before him.

"First I need to make them come to me. And if the leads of romance fantasies and the leads of regression stories have one thing in common, it's that they're curious."

Curiosity killed the cat. And as if determined to prove the saying, those protagonists were lunatics who could not restrain that curiosity and deliberately charged into dangerous places. Kidnapped every day, stabbed, thrown into peril — still they could not help themselves. They suffered from a disease that would not let them sit still unless they stepped in personally.

So...

"Shall I grind them down?"

Quietly, beneath the place where the two names were written, Lee Han added it. The situation that, to his mind, would strip a person down to their true nature — the most goddamned situation of all.

"Hm. Not bad."

A smile, almost refreshing, drew itself across his face of its own accord. Passing on to someone else the suffering he himself had endured. That was, in its way, a deeply rewarding thing to do.

On the blackboard, one word had been written with particular clarity.