Episode 11: A Knight Hates Spell-Slingers (1)
The faculty who worked at the Academy were, as a rule, busy.
Preparing lessons was only the beginning. The paperwork they had to file was considerable in its own right: lesson plans, budget allocations, reports on their duties, even letters of courtesy to the instructors of other subjects, so that classes might proceed smoothly later on. Someone was bound to call it pointless, but it was precisely by observing such small courtesies that smooth relations were formed. In practice, an ordinary day for an Academy instructor was to sit at a desk from morning until night and work.
And yet.
"Damn it! To hell with this! Goddamn it!"
A man who was not faculty sat at a desk, working furiously through documents.
Damian Paulet — Lee Han's assistant instructor on a three-year sentence, and the man currently doing Lee Han's paperwork in his stead with all the diligence he could muster.
That damn instructor!
Damian had been a young noble who had lived a life far removed from profanity, but after more than a week of nothing but paperwork, curses had taken up permanent residence in his mouth. The heavy shadows beneath his eyes alone would have told anyone how much stress and fatigue he was carrying.
And he was, in fact, exhausted. He could no longer remember having used the dormitory in over a week.
A dormitory? What's that? Did the Academy even have one of those?
The nonsense rose of its own accord. Damian had originally been a dorm student, but these days he used the faculty lounge far more often. One might wonder how there could be no time to return to the dorm, however much paperwork there was, but it could not be helped. By day he had to attend not only the sword faculty but liberal-arts lectures and required courses besides, and once those lectures were done he had to wait on the instructor — and it was not merely waiting on him.
"You need to train too. Quit standing there like it's somebody else's problem."
As if grinding him underfoot like a ball were not enough, the instructor tormented him under the name of training. Damian was thus reduced to attending him and training alongside him, and even when the lectures finally ended—
"You think I'm doing this? You're the assistant. You do it."
A bundle of documents was thrust in front of him. Damian had half a mind to rebel, but the moment he met the instructor's eyes he folded with a whimper. Disobey, and he felt certain he would physically die.
Before he knew it, handling the instructor's paperwork in his place had become part of daily life, and somewhere in the course of finishing assignments for his other lectures, the time it would take to walk back to the dorm began to feel like a waste. From some point on, Damian all but lived in the faculty lounge. He had become something akin to a ghost bound to the room.
A few people had been startled when he first took up residence there, but by now not one member of the faculty paid him any mind.
"Ho. The sword faculty instructor is impressive. To think he'd already acquired an 'assistant.'"
"Heh heh. We see it every year, and it's still a curious sight. I wonder when that assistant will drop out."
"Hmm. Won't he vanish before this semester is out?"
To the faculty as a whole, it was already a familiar scene: an assistant instructor setting up house in the lounge and working there.
Damian felt a chill. From what he heard, plenty of his seniors had succeeded in fleeing — that is, in dropping out — but for him it was impossible.
Three years. For three years he had to do this. A slave for life. No — an assistant instructor.
"Goddamn it…."
He spat the curse again, and Damian's eyes grew wet.
"—Why has Damian Paulet ended up like that?"
A student with dull gray hair stole a glance into the faculty room and blinked.
This was not a scheduled chapter. Damian Paulet was not supposed to be like that.
"Why is he working as an assistant instead of being one of Irene Windler's followers?"
The gray-haired student thought something had gone wrong. This was not the scheduled story. Something had twisted.
"Why? Where did it go wrong…?"
He kept turning it over, and then—
"Student, what are you doing there?"
"Y-yes?!"
"…You've been talking to yourself this whole time. Is something the matter?"
"Ah, no."
"Is that so? Ah! Did you come because you're interested in assistant work? If so, I recommend an assistantship in our history faculty! A rewarding faculty, where fresh material to study springs up every year!"
"Ah, no, I mean…."
"Come along! Let us converse together about the splendid merits of the history faculty!"
"Uh, uh…."
The gray-haired student seemed, somehow, entirely incapable of making himself understood, and he had clearly been caught by a history professor whose vigor crossed the line into something like madness.
That day, through no will of his own, he was detained for a full five hours and made to listen to Reasons One Must Become a History Faculty Assistant.
A week had passed since the semester properly began. A short span, yet for some it could become a stretch of time thick beyond measure. In that sense, Lee Han was confident that the week he had spent in the sword faculty was thicker than any other faculty's.
I didn't know teaching brats would be this hard.
A moment in which the schoolteachers of his previous life became worthy of respect. Ah — a few of them excepted. Bastards who didn't even deserve the name of teacher.
"…If I met them now, I'd kill every last one."
"S-Sir Turtle."
"Yes?"
"…Your muttering. Isn't it a little loud?"
"……Ah."
Only then did Lee Han remember that he was at a faculty meeting. Several people were looking at him with trembling pupils, as if they had heard every word.
…Outcast. Confirmed.
Humbly acknowledging his mistake, Lee Han let out a low groan. He hadn't meant to. He decided to attempt an excuse.
"…When I said kill, I didn't mean it like that. A few things that weren't quite human just came to mind."
"I-I see."
"It's true."
"Right…."
"……."
Not a single face believed him.
It was a fairly large conference room, packed tight with lecturers, professors, and instructors. One hundred and twelve in all. Add the dean, who was passionately delivering an oration over there, and the number would be one hundred and thirteen.
The man seemed to inhabit an entirely different world. He had claimed he would offer only a greeting, and he had already been going on like that for an hour.
Didn't he say that line a moment ago?
Lee Han felt the uncanny sensation of listening to something on repeat, but he let the words slip out one ear and turned his gaze to the faculty member who had spoken to him.
"Excuse me. Are meetings usually like this?"
"…Well. In practice, listening to the dean is the whole of it. Suggestions and the like, we tend to bring to the vice-dean."
Fear was still written plainly across the nameless faculty member's face, but fortunately he was a man of decent character, and he answered Lee Han in earnest all the same.
"Then may I simply leave?"
"Hmm. Those of professor rank need not attend. They have so much research that the dean understands. If one is not such a person, however, I should think one ought to come, if at all possible."
"Why?"
"The dean is a former chancellor, is he not? He is still hale and hearty — a sitting marquis. His Excellency."
"…Ah."
That, he understood. What madman would cross the temper of a man who, former or not, had once stood among the five greatest powers in the kingdom?
…Except someone had provoked that temper at the entrance ceremony.
That was me, wasn't it?
Hmm….
"Haha, please don't worry overmuch. The dean hardly concerns himself with trivial matters."
"I threw a lectern."
"…This is a little awkward to say, but an accident comes along about once every three years. A minor incident, in other words, that crops up now and then."
"……."
So there had been seniors before him. An inexplicable sense of kinship rose, and a gentle smile formed of its own accord. Indeed — when fury made a man sick, the thing he ought to throw was much the same in any land. He had not been the only one.
"…Even so, please be careful next time. I was the one who rebuilt that lectern."
"Ah, you did? My thanks. And… might I ask your name?"
"Hans Schmidt. Metallurgy instructor, and vice-master of the smithing guild as well."
"An impressive man."
"Haha. It's nothing at all. Really."
Nothing, he said. Hans was a common enough name that a man might be tempted to dismiss him, but that would be a mistake. Vice-master of the smithing guild meant, at the very least, a craftsman of the highest rank. To anyone who lived by the blade, he was a living prodigy one had to open a connection with, one way or another.
This Academy really was something.
The man in the next seat is a top-tier blacksmith. Outstanding.
It was the equivalent of having Jang Yeong-sil for a coworker — the sort of royal inventor a kingdom boasts of for centuries.
Lee Han smiled faintly at the situation.
"Do you happen to know a glasswright? Not a single dish has been surviving at my house lately. I need something sturdy."
"…You're a peculiar man. When knights meet me, the first thing they ask is that I forge them a sword."
"A sword's a sword. If it cuts well and holds together, that's enough. What's the use of something expensive, if you lose it or snap it and then ache over the waste?"
"……You really are peculiar. Heh."
A different breed from the noisy lot who always demanded swords as if they had left an order waiting. It made a good impression on Hans, together with the thought that Lee Han was not so violent a man as he had imagined.
"So. Will you introduce me to a glasswright, or won't you?"
"…Buy me a meal sometime. Then I'll make the introduction."
"As often as you like."
Lee Han and Hans lightly tapped fists. In his own way, Lee Han had succeeded in making a connection.
And then—
"But, Instructor Hans. There's something I'm curious about right now. May I ask just one thing?"
"Ask whatever you like."
"Someone's been glaring at me for a while. Who is that?"
Lee Han put the question politely, the smile never leaving his face. Hans answered with a bitter one. He had looked at the face being indicated.
"…Hmm. You haven't made some mistake toward that person, have you?"
"None at all. Today is the first time in my life I've laid eyes on them."
"……Then you would do better to avoid them."
"And why is that?"
"That person, you see…."
At the explanation that followed—
"…Is that so."
A cold sneer settled at the corner of Lee Han's mouth, and he made a show of pinching his nose shut with one hand.
I thought so. A sickening stench kept drifting in from somewhere nearby….
Ha.
So a spell-slinger had been here all along.