Why a Knight's Hatred Is Right (3)
Only ten days remained until the royal banquet — the first birthday feast of the royal grandson.
Even so, the Royal Capital went on groaning like a man with a stomachache beneath the tide of people pouring in from every province, one trouble breaking out after another. Daily life, however, did not stop for any of it. Restaurant cooks bought fresh ingredients at the market. Cobblers bent without a spare moment over the shoes they had been commissioned to make. Some boy who dreamed of becoming a great merchant someday tore through the streets in a frenzy, earning his coin. No one was fool enough to neglect the everyday merely because a special day was drawing near.
And that included—
"Fifteen minutes left."
—the Academy as well.
Nobles were coming up to the capital, and banquets and tea parties were being held on every side, yet education was not the sort of thing that stopped. Classes proceeded as usual. Or rather, something closer to class than to mercy.
"Remember this. Anyone who fails this exam gets demerits."
"Th-that's too harsh!"
"A test, out of nowhere?!"
"I'm ending the lecture early in exchange, aren't I? You ought to be grateful for that much. Why are there so many whiners?"
It might well have been closer to tormenting the students.
"Five minutes left."
"!!?"
The whole world might throw itself a festival, but a student's duty was still to study. The Academy, true to its name as a hall of learning, kept its lectures going even while the banquets rolled on without pause. If anything, it ground them harder than usual, springing pop quizzes day after day, and anyone who failed to clear a set score was handed demerits outright. Students who had neglected their studies night after night — attending parties under the fine pretext of faithfully burning their youth — met the misfortune of expulsion itself.
It had happened less than a fortnight after the Academy reopened. Cruel, one might say. From the Academy's standpoint, it was only natural.
So they said of the Dean's remark: a smile on his mouth, and none whatsoever in his eyes.
Well. Even if one called it harassment, the quizzes were in truth only a little harder than the entrance examination, and plenty of the problems could be solved even by the younger students of the intermediate course, provided they applied themselves. In short, so long as one had the fundamentals, the test was no trouble at all. And they could not even clear the average on a test like that? It meant they had made no progress whatsoever since enrollment — and in practice it gave ample grounds to suspect they had entered by unscrupulous means, reason enough to spare the expelled not so much as a scrap of sympathy. They needed to learn what shame was. They needed to learn that the Academy was never a place to take lightly. The Academy, for its part, was glad it could weed out the incompetent and those who would not put in the effort.
And in the midst of that—
"Whoa, the sword faculty is no joke. Last year they passed all eighty, and this time they left exactly twelve?"
"Thirteen out of a hundred and thirty. Extreme, that place...."
Ninety percent of the sword faculty's new students had been expelled, and the people who saw it were horrified. Last year they had advanced every freshman without a single withdrawal or expulsion; this year they were cutting them down with brutal extremity. It was only a misunderstanding, of course, born of the fact that merely a handful knew every one of the expelled had been a spy or something suspicious....
"Why are my ears itching like this?"
From those who did not know, only looks thick with misunderstanding came flying his way.
"Could it be the expelled students cursing you?"
"I have a feeling you're catching more of the curses than I am, Assistant."
"...As it happens, my ears have been itching like mad lately. I've had a bit of a headache, too."
"At that level, isn't it a curse?"
"......"
"Hm. Want me to introduce you to a shaman or a priest I know?"
"...Damn it."
Lee Han was nodding along through this exchange with his assistant — a conversation laced with what might, possibly, have been a joke — when the chicks' sudden whispering reached him.
"You heard the rumor too, right? They say there's a ridiculously handsome young lord in the Royal Capital these days. Santa, was his name?"
"Handsomer than Lord Roen?"
"Nearly the same level, they say. If Lord Roen is the cold sort, the young lord in the rumors smiles a lot and is cheerful?"
"...Oh my."
...So that's why my ears were itching?
Lee Han scratched the back of his head where no one could see. Somehow, it felt like living a double life. I'll have to hide it thoroughly. Getting caught probably wouldn't amount to a real problem, but nothing good would come of being exposed for no reason either. He wanted to keep the Santa form a little more discreet. There's already a headache brewing. Best to stay quiet.
By rumor, Mordred — that is, Wales — had recently been blossoming a new commemorative day. A peculiar sort of holiday, somewhere between the Christmas he knew and Buddha's Birthday stirred together: from a certain day they floated lotus blossoms on the river and gave gifts to good children.... Where do you even get a hybrid like this? The thing they were calling Santa Advent Day, or whatever it was.
The problem was that he knew the holiday commemorated him — Santa Rihan, to be precise — and the knowledge was enough to set his skull throbbing. It was no different from idol worship. If it came out that he was the object of that worship, temple and palace alike would be in an uproar. Among the extremists, especially, there would be those who tried to hang him on a cross....
Those ones I'll hang up myself, the other way around.
The nuisance of it, though, he could do nothing about. Lee Han had no desire whatsoever to welcome a situation like that. All he meant to do was take care that his identity did not slip. Fortunately, no one on the Mordred side seemed to be revealing who he was, so he could rest easy on that count. Their sense of loyalty is something else.
If there was a headache of another kind....
Thinking of the grudge a certain pink-haired little one must be nursing — she had sobbed so bitterly when they parted — gave him a bit of a headache.
"Mmm."
"What's wrong, Master?"
"...Bear-Girl."
"Yes?"
"I've got a friend who's a really little kid."
"?"
"It wasn't what I meant to do, but she cried a bit when we parted. Cried her heart out, actually."
"Oh my."
"I didn't do it on purpose. It just ended up that way, and it looks like she's coming to the Royal Capital this time."
"......"
"...Still, she's young. There's a chance she's already forgotten me, right?"
"I don't think so."
"Hm?"
Levi answered with a certainty that bordered on firm.
"I don't know if that child is five or ten. But I doubt even a three-year-old would find you easy to forget, Master."
"Mm. It was a hard look to forget, I'll give you that."
"And you said she's your friend? The Master I know isn't someone who would make a friend cry and then just leave it. You're the sort who would feel sorry instead."
"...You know far too much about me."
"This much is basic."
Lee Han gave a bitter smile and found himself thinking he ought to buy a gift, or make one, in preparation for the meeting. Something to soothe a sulking pink-haired little one.
"This is rough...."
"It doesn't seem as if that's the only thing weighing on you."
"?"
"Master, you've been busy with something else lately, haven't you? And I think that something is tied to a seditious group."
"......"
"I knew it."
...I didn't say a word. Why are you seeing straight through all of it?
"It's only my guess, but seeing you step in yourself, there's a good chance those seditious ones are targeting the Royal Capital again this time."
"No..."
"The Noble Council won't step in anyway. They're the sort of fools who think the peace you built with blood and sweat exists because they're so impressive. Which means you'll be the only one suffering again."
"......"
"Master, don't try to do everything alone. There are people who can be your strength. Starting with me."
"......"
"Master?"
"H-hey."
"Yes."
"Where exactly does one learn mind-reading?"
"??"
Lee Han was grateful for his disciple's consideration, and frightened by it. She had hit every mark like a ghost.
The Blood Cross Army was not exactly a secret. Anyone of the literate class — anyone who had so much as read a newspaper — could tell, as a matter of course, that a seditious group was running rampant, and nobles had even less choice but to know it well. In that sense, most of the sword faculty's students already knew the Blood Cross Army existed, and had a rough idea besides that they were the ones who had carried out the monster terror around last year.
So why had Lee Han not bothered to tell them? Part of it was leaving them be: stay out of it, and wait for the adults to handle things. More than that, how was he supposed to throw cold water on children in the middle of burning through their youth?
And yet....
"There's a chance of terror during this debutante season, so stay alert."
"...??"
"We're working hard to stop it, but these bastards hide like moles, so catching them isn't exactly easy. If we had support, maybe. The Noble Council doesn't give a damn. So, well...."
"......"
"If something happens, I hope you manage to survive it on your own."
"???"
Being struck without knowing and knowing before the blow fell were plainly different things, so Lee Han laid the truth out without resistance. In the movies, if you hid something like this and it came out later, didn't you earn their resentment? He was only telling the truth so he would not buy needless resentment, and faced with that truth, the students....
"This is a story I didn't particularly want to know...."
"Those damned Noble Council bastards! My parents and my little sibling all came up to the Royal Capital, and what the hell are they doing?!"
"...Ah. And I just had a new dress fitted."
They could only murmur hollow laments. The emptiness of life. His disciples were tasting life's bitterness early, and Lee Han waited, still wearing a gentle face, for their confusion to run its course.
"I-Instructor, is it all right to reveal that so openly?"
Derek, the gray-haired boy who had been blankly hiding his own presence, approached with a cautious face and put the question to him in a whisper. Wasn't stating the facts this openly a bit much?
"It's fine to reveal it. No — revealing it is the right call. This is just a hunch, but those fanatic bastards will show themselves at the banquet. No question."
"Weren't you already hunting them, Instructor?"
Derek asked it as if to say that, if Lee Han only put his mind to it, he could round up those fanatics whenever he pleased. Lee Han was pleased by the trust, and he did not forget to face reality.
And then—
"...The situation's gotten less than simple."
"What...?"
Lee Han was wearing a rare look of irritation. How to put it — the face of a man recalling something deeply unpleasant. Like waking in the morning, glancing at his nails, and finding a hangnail. And sure enough, the hangnail he had found was this.
"Turns out it wasn't just one of them."
"?"
"The ones in bed with those fanatics — there wasn't just one or two."
"...Pardon?"
Derek couldn't help asking again. Not because he had failed to understand, but because it felt as if he had heard something he could not believe. Lee Han lowered his voice to a whisper, as if out of consideration for disciples who were already confused enough. As if to say, don't tell the others.
"A hundred, at minimum."
"??"
"...More than a hundred noble houses, in bed with the fanatics."
"......"
"Wild, right?"
"......"
Derek went stiff as if he had fainted, staring into empty space, and for a while he could not be restored to his original state.