A Knight Gets the Autumn Blues (7)
"First time I've seen your face in person."
"...Y-yes. I... I suppose it is."
"Don't be nervous. If only for Timid's sake, I've no thought of doing you harm."
"Um, by Timid... do you mean Derek?"
"You catch on quick."
"Heh. It's much too good a fit. I think I'll call him that myself, from now on."
Lee Han said nothing.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"No reason. I only thought the Timid brat had found his fated match. Same gift for rubbing salt in the wound."
She went rigid.
"You can get away with it in front of me, but keep the lovey-dovey act to a reasonable level around other people. Honestly, it's irritating."
"Y-yes..."
The reaction of a girl still green with youth. She had stood utterly composed before a crowd of thirty thousand, and yet the moment talk of her lover came up, out came a response that fit her age.
I thought he was the one being kept. Looking at this, it isn't one-sided after all.
Watching her face ripen red, he found himself thinking the girl might like that Taechang brat even more than he liked her, and Lee Han was glad the kid wasn't standing in front of him. If he had been... he might have cracked a knuckle down on his head. They say a man blinded by envy is an ugly thing, but Lee Han fully intended to envy him honestly. It was the method that cost less stress.
And then—
"I see it now. So Lady Irene, Lady Levi, and the sword faculty's trio joined the Student Council all of a sudden because you put your hand in, Instructor?"
The girl with eyes that called to mind a mysterious amethyst nodded, as if she had at last grasped the whole of what had been happening these past few days. Her reading of the situation was finished. She sorted through it the way someone murmurs to herself.
"Lady Irene's character isn't the sort that enjoys other people's attention. The same goes for Lady Levi and the trio. I did think it strange that people like them would suddenly come knocking at the Student Council's door, but if your influence was behind it, then it finally lines up.... Hmm. Is something big meant to happen at this exam?"
Guesswork.
"Like the monster attack at the midterm evaluation...? Ah! Of course! It isn't an attack. Suspicious people are after something at the Academy, aren't they? Sending the trio, strong as they are, to the Student Council means there's an escort duty folded in as well!"
Grasp.
"Then what those suspicious people are after is... Lady Irene, or Lady Levi, or it might even be me? It's a little embarrassing to say with my own mouth, but there's no one inside the Academy with a higher price, or a higher value, than we have. Haa. I have too little information to be sure of anything."
Judgment.
"What would you like me to help with?"
Lee Han was silent.
The words had poured out in an instant. He hadn't even been given a gap in which to explain. He could only listen to what she guessed, and once he had heard it all, he was past disbelief.
"Nothing left to explain. You figured out the lot of it. What are you, Holmes?"
"...Who is that?"
"He exists. A great detective who solves even cold cases without getting out of his chair."
"My. If there were such a person, I'd truly love to meet him! Ah, before that, let's hear the plan. How do you mean to proceed?"
"...No other questions?"
"Solving the matter matters more than questions, doesn't it? We ought to move efficiently. Efficiently."
He only looked at her.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"No reason. Just thinking there are a lot of geniuses."
She blinked, uncomprehending.
...That Taechang brat. He's going to live under her thumb.
Lee Han was certain.
To enter the Academy, one had to pass five exams in all. First, the written test. Second, the specialty check. Third, the practical. Fourth, the first interview. The fifth and last was the second interview.
The written test was where nearly all the riffraff fell away. But the specialty check — that is, once Mysteries and the rest of a person's varied capabilities had been confirmed, if the Academy judged them worth raising — offered a chance to make up for a failed written score in the practical and the interviews. Of course, in the Academy's long history those who had entered by the specialty route did not even number fifty, and in practice one could assume that fail the written test and most people failed outright.
And now, thirty minutes after the written exam had ended.
"Th-this can't be! There's no way I failed!"
"Do you know how much money my father paid! Y-you dare fail me!"
"You goddamn bastards...!"
About half of them had been cut. Applicants who had failed the written test raised a ruckus here and there, and examiners and guards came up with practiced ease and put them down. The scene unfolded without fail every year, and the examiners wore faces not merely accustomed to it, but sick of it.
"Kunta's head is spinning. This test, it was made so people pass, yes?"
"These are problems anyone could have answered, had they only studied hard. They even set questions to the level of each desired faculty. Failing even so means they studied carelessly. So they can only be failed."
"You got in on the specialty track, so you were genuinely lucky."
"Kunta is happy because Kunta is a barbarian!"
A mystery-race that had invested everything in fighting ability looked delighted not to have to sit a test like this. And yet, for all that, Kunta was someone who had taken perfect marks on both the practical and the interview. It was not a widely known fact, but the very person who had entered the Academy with the third-seat score, right on the heels of the top and the second — Roen and Irene — was Kunta.
...He himself had not the slightest interest even in the fact that his score was high.
"Is the sword faculty practical a spar, like last year?"
"I doubt it. They said the contents of the exam change every year."
"Hmm. What sort of test might Sir Instructor have prepared?"
"From what Kunta sees, Instructor did nothing. Assistant probably prepared all night."
They could only concede the point. True enough, their instructor was diligent in other respects, but where paperwork was concerned that diligence sagged. In particular, it was something of a hobby of his to shove every task that could be shoved onto the Assistant Instructor, Damian Paulet, and torment him that way.
"Assistant. Pitiful."
"The more dreadful part is that he still has two whole years of that left to do."
"I'd sooner start as a fresh recruit in a mercenary company. I could never be an assistant."
The trio were on the verge of a moment of silence for Damian Paulet, who was surely steeped in fatigue like one of the undead — had a girl's voice, strict and yet threaded with kindness, not cut in along the way.
"That's enough playing around. Back to work, Mr. Arno, Mr. Kunta, Mr. Garand."
"Bear-Girl's here?"
"Yes. I've finished most of the first exam. It's harder than I expected."
Levi Jeanne d'Arc. Going about her work as deputy proctor, she looked worn in more ways than one. Her stamina still had something left; it was her mind that was spent. Well, of course it would be hard. She had to walk the grounds supervising some thirty thousand people.
But if one judged by stamina and mental strength alone, Levi ranked in the upper tier even inside the sword faculty. That someone like her was this exhausted from a proctor's work didn't sit right, in several respects. She must have piled some additional chore on top of it. And sure enough—
"Did you find any of the suspicious ones?"
"About twenty?"
"That many? I only managed twelve."
"Finding that many while you were proctoring besides strikes me as the more impressive thing."
"Agreed. Remarkable young lady, whatever else."
"Y-you're all praising me far too much..."
Levi flushed and grew shy, as if praise were unfamiliar and still a joy.
"B-but the temple really is vicious. To think they'd pull a scheme like this at the Academy. It's unforgivable."
As if she had never been shy at all, Levi let a quiet anger show. She was not someone who singled a person out to curse them, as a rule, but this once she seemed unable to endure it. And no wonder. The kingdom was suffering one incident after another. Even if everyone pooled their strength it would not be enough, and the temple's attitude — committing this sordid scheming and these crimes merely to harden their own power — was more than enough to drive her to fury.
"...You don't seem to feel very kindly toward the temple, Lady Levi."
"Didn't expect that."
Judging by looks alone, she had seemed a devout believer, and yet her resentment of the temple came through thick. When they blinked at her, she only said:
"No matter how I searched for God, from the time I was small, He never helped me. I haven't looked for God since. Oh — these days I look for the Instructor instead of God, though."
They felt as if they had stepped on a landmine. A guilt came over them, as if they had needlessly raked up a dark past, but Levi paid it no mind. She only went on.
"Let's do our best and drive the bad people out. At least the innocent applicants won't come to harm."
Levi, striving to do the very best that was hers to do.
"Th-then let us do so..."
"Kunta will try hard."
"Hah. Not a quiet day to be had."
An aura that wins people's trust as if by nature, and leads them.
Before the extraordinariness of one born with a talent heaven itself had granted, even those who carried a hero's talent had no choice but to follow.
Naturally.
Meanwhile, as Levi and the others were picking out the suspicious figures who might have been temple spies, Irene Windler was doing the opposite.
"Ah. Found her."
She had just succeeded in finding her target.
"That... so that's the Duke's 'real daughter'?"
"Yes! That's what I'm telling you!"
He was quiet a moment.
"Well? You can tell just by looking, right?"
"...Yeah. She takes after him."
"That's what I said!"
The chick jabbered in her excitement, but Lee Han understood the feeling well enough.
She really does look like him.
Like that duke.
Irene Windler held out a telescope, but even without one Lee Han could make out the woman's features with perfect clarity, far off as she was. Unlike Irene's long straight hair, this woman wore hers cut short, and she boasted an uncommon gold. The nobles of Pendragon came in every gaudy color of hair, but silver and gold in particular tended to be rare, and the only person at the Academy with gold that deep was the chick. And yet this woman was a deep gold.
Was it because the color was so rarely seen? A good number of the examinees and proctors kept glancing her way. Reading the shapes of their mouths...
"Wow. She's really pretty."
"A beauty..."
"Still, next to that senior from a minute ago, she's a little..."
"Ah, I'll grant you that!"
Men. Every damn one of them.
"Instructor?"
"...It's nothing."
Irene only blinked at him.
Lee Han pressed his mouth shut and watched the woman a moment, almost glaring.
...The eyes resemble that man's, and so does the air.
Stand her beside him, and you would have no choice but to think she looked more like him than the chick did. And yet Lee Han was certain, at the level of raw sense.
Why does that one feel so artificial?
The features were certainly similar. The air of her, and the ripple she gave off, were similar in places too, and even her scent shared something with the duke's.
But how to put it.
It was off. She resembled him, and yet the thought that she was the duke's daughter would not come at all. Was he only like this because he already held her in distaste?
No. It isn't that.
If he had to offer an example, it was the feeling of looking at an unpleasant doll, made with breathtaking skill, and that was why the certainty sat in him. A doll. Which was to say, she felt made. And with that, Lee Han settled on his conclusion.
That thing.
And one with a Dream Fiend mixed in.
It was the moment he felt he finally understood how the Magic Tower and those cult fanatics had meant to get their hands on Galahad's Magic Sword.