Episode 43: A Knight Begins Anew (3)
"You got dragged here too? Kunta is happy! Kunta has more comrades!"
Hard hats yellow on their heads, safety gear strapped over their bodies, the students took in the barbarian laboring away at the construction and quietly got ready to slip off. For a moment they had to wonder whether they'd walked onto an illegal worksite.
But then Lee Han spoke.
"Ah. Those ones, yeah, I did haul them here by force. You, I only brought along as part of today's outdoor class, so just watch quietly."
"Th-that's really allowed?"
"You entered the Academy to study, not to work. If there's work to be done, I'll do it. Why would I put you to it?"
The consideration was kind enough to catch them off guard. He had no shortage of bizarre sides to him, and yet every so often he showed the face of a proper educator.
"B-but aren't we students too?"
"Instructor, sir, did we do something wrong?"
Arno and Garand, kitted out in the same construction gear as Kunta and busy shoring up the Tunnels, protested the injustice of it. Unfair, and then some. Think about it: they were students as well, so why should the labor fall on them alone?
"I hear you went around catching criminals while I was gone."
"You little bastards. Fine work for students, sneaking about in the dead of night. Tsk."
"Th-that was only a little real combat..."
"So you're saying you did well?"
"...No, sir."
"Then what do you figure you ought to be doing?"
Lee Han asked it with a crease between his brows, and they answered at once, for the sake of staying alive.
"Where would you like us to start the work?"
"We'll shut up and do it."
They deflated. Lee Han clicked his tongue. Honestly.
Who do they take after, making messes like that...? Huh?
...Me?
A single grain of conscience—one that would not have been strange had it blinked out of existence at any moment—scolded him to mind that conscience, and for a while Lee Han was silent.
After scraping past death in the Empire and waking from two solid days of unconsciousness, Lee Han had gone straight to the hill out back, dug a burrow into it, and driven a tunnel clear through to the Academy. It was not because he had lost his mind, and it was not merely to work the stiffness from his body.
"As this instructor sees it of late, the Royal Capital, Academy included, is not in a safe state. In a manner of speaking, this instructor judges the situation to be a state of war."
The students said nothing.
"I am not saying this merely to frighten you. It is nothing but talk grounded in fact. And so this instructor felt that a countermeasure was required."
"C-could that countermeasure be... that?"
"You could call it one of them."
The words state of war stirred a small commotion, but the children held firm all the same. Well, they were the ones who had already lived through a monster terror attack without precedent. Having actually endured it, they would know Lee Han's words were no empty boast.
If that spell-slinging bastard was telling the truth, another attack will probably come before long.
That the fanatics had Pendragon in their sights was a fact no longer worth hiding. For Lee Han, whoever came, it would be enough to snap their necks and be done. He did not, however, believe his disciples or the other students could move with that same boldness. This was not a matter of resolve. It was a matter of the lives they had lived, a difference in perception that split along whether or not one had been through a war. And so, from the moment he woke, Lee Han had thought—of some means to keep the children safer, or else—
"We draw up a manual for emergencies."
"A manual?"
"A shelter, to take the chief example. When a crisis comes, there are times you need somewhere to hide for a while. If we prepare a refuge for the students, a bolt-hole to flee to, this instructor believes it will help without fail."
"Th-that is certainly right, but no order has come down from above yet, has it?"
The Academy Dean, for one. Failing that, the royal house.
"And do you know when those people will give an order? This instructor is certain of it. Fail to prepare ahead, and it will be too late. The ones on top, those fine gentlemen, only move once something has already blown up. An iron law, true in every nation under the sun."
"...I can't say whether that's true, but it's clear you've been through a great deal, Instructor."
At some point they had begun to listen to Lee Han's argument in earnest. They had confirmed it was no decision made in the heat of feeling, but a choice reached at the end of serious thought.
"...Still, it's unexpected. That you would go to such lengths to prepare a countermeasure for the students."
"Hm?"
"Ah, of course I know you aren't a bad person. But to think of building a facility like this just to save the students' lives... that's remarkable!"
A boy from a house that prized noblesse oblige, perhaps. The disciple looked at Lee Han with a face somewhere between awe and emotion, and inwardly Lee Han flinched. With good reason. The reason he had built a bunker of this sort was—
I made it so nobody would get in my way while I fight...
...Mm.
Better not to say it?
Sometimes the important thing was knowing when a useless remark would only cost you points.
Master probably made the shelter because everyone else would get a little in the way, didn't he?
A quiet little laugh. Hiding a shallow smile where no one could see, Levi had seen straight through him. It was not mind-reading. It was closer to a gift for deduction, possible only because she understood the man she adored better than anyone, and Levi judged that her guess was right. Sure enough, the instant respectful gazes from the others fell on him, the smile at his mouth stiffened for one fleeting moment, more than usual. The awkwardness was wiped away at once, but Levi's eyes were sharp.
His pupils widened by about 0.03 millimeters more than usual. He must be quite flustered.
Watching him at times like this, she found herself thinking he was a man who could not hide what lay inside.
"What a cute man."
Sharp past the point of sharpness—frightening, even. It meant she was good at watching people, and one might have taken it for proof of an uncommon talent. But anyone who knew the girl's life could not carelessly belittle such powers of observation by calling them talent. She had spent her whole life reading other people's moods, and the ability was closer to something she had been forced to learn in order to survive: a talent granted by an unhappy life. Yet because of the man who had, for the first time, reached out a helping hand to her, that talent was now being put to its proper use, and what lay ahead was something to look forward to.
Except—
Hm? But he seems a little different from usual...?
Was the talent simply flowering faster? Or was it a difference of obsession? The more Levi's observation searched Lee Han's body, the more it caught, in fine detail, a strange sense of incongruity. It was not that anything hurt. Simply—
He looks a little uncomfortable.
As if he were wearing clothes that did not fit, drawn too tight against the body. Levi tilted her head, wondering what could possibly be so uncomfortable. And then—
"Ah. Perfect timing."
The students had barely begun to wonder at the abrupt remark when a rush of air crossed the clearing where they stood, and someone was simply there.
A man who had wrapped himself in black. At the appearance of an unknown outsider the students showed their confusion, yet instinct had them reaching for their swords first.
"Passable. Slow, though."
A sharp smack.
"Huh? ...H-huh?"
"Wh-what is this?"
They never managed to draw. They had certainly meant to, but the swords slid back into their sheaths. It was not their will. Something had shoved the blades home before they could clear the scabbards, at a speed like wind the eye could not even catch. And the one who had done it was, without question—
"You walk around dressed like that as a rule? The other day you were going about in perfectly decent armor."
"Nothing good comes of peddling my face. Nor do I have the slightest wish to become a clown."
"Oh-ho. Looking down on clowns? That's job discrimination, that is."
"...That was not my intent. Ahem!"
Without question, the man in black. Identity unknown—
"Oh. It's Sir Rak."
Unknown, yes. Though that seemed to have just stopped being the case.
Irene Windler—a lovely girl with golden hair and blue eyes, her eyes creased in a bright smile—pointed at the man in black.
"Sir Rak came as well? Did the instructor invite you?"
"...Ah. My lady."
"Ah, was I not supposed to say your name? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to..."
"Not at all. You have done nothing wrong, my lady. I beg you, do not wear such an expression."
The moment Irene Windler's face began to color with apology, the man in black tore off his mask. What showed itself was a man of astonishing good looks, blue-green hair and red eyes, and the women covered their mouths with their hands. Just as men cannot help where their eyes go at the sight of a very pretty woman, even women found their gazes gathering of their own accord when someone appeared whose looks and presence were that unmistakable. Some burst out in admiration of his face. Still more fixed upon his name.
"Rak? That Rak de Duron!?"
"G-Galahad's Dire Wolf!"
"Are you insane...! Didn't you say he was your idol?"
"What are you—oh. He fainted."
The weight carried by the name Galahad was weight enough, but Galahad was also a thing anyone aiming to become a knight could not help but admire. And now a knight spoken of as Galahad's champion stood before their eyes. They could not help but be moved. They were overwhelmed.
On the other hand—
"What is that? Some kind of monster...?"
"Kunta, you mustn't call a person that. ...Though I understand how you feel."
"...A man nobody but our old man could handle, isn't he? What is this? Why are there so many monsters...?"
Those with a measure of skill, the trio in particular, were busy being horrified. Just as the other students' ability had risen markedly from half a year before, the skill of those who had already stood at the very top had come into full bloom. They had begun, to some degree, to feel confidence in that skill, and yet looking at that knight, the confidence wilted all over again. A solid pat landed across backs and shoulders.
"You're doing fine. So don't compare yourselves to that guy. You'll only make yourselves sick over nothing."
"Instructor?"
"I didn't call him to give you an inferiority complex. Part of why I called him is simply so you can watch. It'll help you later."
"Wh-what do you mean...?"
Lee Han gave the three boys that light pat, as if offering comfort, and walked straight up to the offensively handsome bastard.
"You acted like you weren't coming, and you showed up anyway?"
"I came only because you begged so hard, scoundrel."
"Bullshit. You came because you can't stand the incongruity in your body either."
Rak said nothing.
"...Enough. I didn't call you here for a war of words."
"...For once, we are of one mind."
Lee Han began to stretch, lightly. So did Rak. Now and then there is a knight who stretches carelessly, on the grounds that it looks undignified, but one thing can be said for certain: those who will not warm up because they are striking a pose are second-rate—no, third-rate or worse. The more confidence one has in one's skill, the more one ought to think of drawing one's condition up to its peak. Where is the leisure to pose? Lee Han loosened his whole body as if settling into a yoga posture, and at the flexibility, at the dynamic play of muscle, the students let out a gasp.
"Whoa..."
"Watch to the end. It's nothing but a simple spar, so I don't know whether there'll be anything in it to help you."
"...Yes?"
"Hoo!"
He gave no answer to his disciples and spent roughly another thirty minutes on stretching alone. It could hardly have been anything but tedious, yet the students watched in earnest. The fact that even a knight who had reached such a height was sincere about warming up came down on them with real weight.
"How do you want to run it?"
"Five minutes of sparring, then one minute of rest. Ten bouts or so, and it will be decided."
"Ten rounds. That's going to be a bit rough."
"Have you grown afraid?"
"Something like it. I'm worried whether I can properly hold my strength back for ten rounds."
"...You scoundrel!"
"He's the one who started it..."
At some moment Lee Han and Rak had closed the distance. He could not have said when the mark was carved, but a circle was scored into the earth, and they faced one another inside it. Two knights with nothing more to say. And then, like that—a flash, a rush of wind—by way of a taste, and with no guard at all, they threw the first punches at each other's faces.