Is It a Crime to Strike the King? (1)
It hardly needed saying. The moment the next day arrived, the kingdom was in an uproar.
Had it been some other district that was breached, the matter might have passed. But of all places, the Upper District. The very streets where the nobles lived had been invaded, and the absence of a commotion would have been the stranger thing. The lower wards they would have ignored. That the noise began only once the powerful themselves were touched was an irony, and proof enough that a certain knight's hatred of the nobility was not entirely misplaced.
"After them! They can't have gotten far!"
The intruders had vanished in a pillar of fire, yet however they leaned on magic or Mystery, there was a limit to how far anyone could run. A pursuit was formed. The Noble Council meant to visit a wretched punishment on those who had dared lay hands on nobles—and the haste of it was also a cover, meant to hide that this same incompetent Council had known the Brass Knight Order had slipped into the Royal Capital, looked the other way, and even blocked the deployment of troops.
If this gets out, my political life is finished!
What becomes of the lowborn is no concern of mine, but to touch the nobility—these bastards have crossed the line.
Hah. Trouble in my old age.
And so, if only to preserve their own political lives, the Noble Council had no choice but to do their utmost and produce results. Even private soldiers were on the move, and the hunt for the Brass Knight Order was underway. The Council did not doubt that they would have the culprits in irons before long.
Except.
"Incompetence on this scale is practically magic."
The man took a sip of black tea and clicked his tongue. A pathetic spectacle, if ever there was one.
"With so little thought in their heads, how do they even practice politics... Ah, no. Where among the men who practice politics would you find one with a thought in his head? Haha. I'm spitting in my own face."
He corrected himself at once. He had mocked the nobles' incompetence, only to realize that the assemblymen of his own homeland had been much the same, and the laughter came whether he wished it or not.
"Am I wrong?"
He tossed the question out as if seeking agreement, and with a rush of flame, figures slowly took shape.
"...We greet you, Captain."
"Enough of that. Rest, and be quick about it."
The Brass Knight Order revealed themselves, looking no different from the day they had fled, and the man gave a nod.
"Mystery joined to magic is a wondrous thing. Spatial Mystery laid over a spell, time stopped inside a space, and them hiding within it... Well. In my youth I couldn't have imagined the like."
He grinned at them. From his unhurried manner the Brass Knight Order understood that the escape had succeeded, and they bowed their heads.
"Farhan. You had a hard time of it as well. I was right to trust you with this."
Farhan said nothing.
"Brat. Ignoring me? Sulking because I didn't help?"
Still nothing.
"I told you I had business of my own, so don't take it so—"
"Urk—!"
Before he could answer, Farhan convulsed and vomited blood. He poured so much of it that even the man fell silent. When he had finally brought up a measure of the stagnant blood, he looked up, paler than before.
"An unsightly display, Captain."
"...It was that hard on you, was it."
"Haha... I can't deny it. I haven't met a knight that strong since you, Captain."
Blood surged in him again.
The internal injuries were so severe that even a Half-Fiend's recovery could not close them all. Farhan had endured that knight's sword dozens of times over, and the damage stored up with every clash was killing him.
"I try to recover, and it won't take. A knight free in the handling of Intent really is something, haha..."
"Stop laughing and drink a potion. You'll actually die at this rate."
He scolded, yet inwardly he was startled. He had never seen Farhan so powerless.
"Where did you go and sell your Intent? You answer a thing like that in kind."
"...Which is why it ended at this much."
"What?"
"If my Intent is a sawblade honed to an edge, his is an iron hammer. A large iron hammer."
The Captain was silent.
"I'm presently admiring myself for surviving a collision with something like that."
"...Heh."
It was so absurd that a laugh escaped him.
"Live long enough, and you hear a boast like that."
"I'm privately rather pleased with myself just now, so save the scolding for later."
"...Then I'll ask you this. That knight. Could you have killed him?"
No answer.
"Why aren't you answering?"
"...Seven to three."
"Hm. Seven. That's a decent enough chance—"
"For the record, we were the three."
The man said nothing.
"If you took the field yourself, Captain, I could generously call it four."
"...What in the world did you fight, and come back from?"
"I don't know either. Haha."
Farhan laughed. The man could only look thoroughly fed up.
When the exchange, half of it a joke, was over, Farhan wiped the blood from his mouth and asked,
"So. Did the business you went to see to end well?"
"And who do you think you're asking?"
"I'll take that as a yes."
"...Hah."
Even that left the man looking stifled. Disappointment sat plain on his face, and fatigue with it.
"You didn't fail, did you?"
"Old as I am, I'm not incompetent enough to fail at a matter of this scale."
"Then why do you look like that...?"
He didn't seem like a man who had just fought anything so fierce, nor like a man whose work had gone badly. Puzzled by how drained he appeared, Farhan watched him, and the man answered.
"Because I'm disappointed. Those who were once our enemy have fallen this far... I'm so disappointed, so disappointed, that I've gone past anger. Now the strength is simply leaving me."
He let the disappointment spill out like a mutter. Farhan looked at him.
"...You said you were born in Britannia."
"What does Britannia amount to? I never offered my loyalty to that base, half-witted kingdom. I belonged to Britannia only because it was the homeland of the lord I followed and respected."
Farhan held his tongue.
"And so I am disappointed. The kingdom of knights my lord once called so great comes to no more than this. It is past pathetic. It is wretched."
The man drew a breath. And then—
Farhan gave a small shake of his head, watching his captain murmur to the dead as if making an appeal.
In any case.
As expected. There isn't a sane one among the people of Britannia.
He was reminded, not for the first time, that those born in the South included a great many strange people.
Even so.
Strange as he is, he does the work well. There shouldn't be a problem.
Results were everything.
All at once Farhan thought of the knight he had fought. What was that man thinking, looking upon the scars they had left on the kingdom? Was he laughing, or—
Was he angry?
A newspaper slapped down in front of him.
"This is you, Instructor, isn't it!?"
Lee Han wore a blank look.
He had been settling lunch with the maid's special shrimp bisque pasta, thick with savor, when guests arrived out of nowhere, and he was thoroughly bewildered. One might wonder why visitors should bewilder a man.
"One after another... there's kind of a lot of you?"
The neighborhood's only virtue was that it was quiet and empty of people, and yet so many had come to his house at once that the virtue was rendered meaningless. Lee Han tilted his head, wondering what all of this was supposed to be. The visitors—no, his students—kept thrusting the front page at him and demanding an answer, and before he quite knew it he was reading the thing.
According to the testimony of a noble who was rescued: "He looked truly terrifying, but his back was warm, and though his muscles were harder than stone, they were smooth and pleasant to the touch."
"...What is this? Why is this suddenly sexual harassment?"
"Knew it!"
At his reluctant reaction the whole company nodded as if they had expected as much. Lee Han only frowned and objected.
"...I wasn't even planning to deny it."
He had no intention of claiming the deed wasn't his, and he was protesting why they felt the need to interrogate him over nothing. They weren't listening. Instead—
"Thank you, Instructor. For saving our aunt."
Lee Han blinked.
"Thank you, thank you, Instructor! Thanks to you, my uncle and my grandfather were saved!"
He blinked again.
"My little sister says to tell you that you were amazing. This is a gift."
He simply stared.
A parade of gifts began without warning, and in an instant Lee Han's yard was heaped with them like a tower. Fine liquor and sweets, ornaments worked in gold and silver, a watch that looked expensive at a glance, and a horse of plainly good breeding. The horse snorted. Lee Han could only wonder what he was supposed to do with a pile that had appeared out of nowhere, until something occurred to him.
"Ah. Right. You lot were rich kids too."
Only then did he consider that the people he had saved might be tied to his students. He ran them so hard they couldn't escape looking like beggars every day, that was all. The boys and girls he called young masters and chicks were nobles, every one of them, and comfortably well-off nobles at that. It was no surprise they had connections among those who lived in the Upper District, and he understood at last why they had come so heavily laden. Even so.
"Th-thanks, but take all of it back. Where in this house am I supposed to put any of it?"
"We thought as much, so we brought craftsmen to build a storehouse. If you wish, we'll also have the house built out, larger and wider."
"It's plenty as it is..."
"As for the horse, if you wish, we'll send a stable and a handler to look after it. Ah—if that would be inconvenient, we can entrust it to the racecourse my family operates. Whenever the horse runs, there would be a side income for you, Instructor, so it wouldn't be a bad arrangement."
Lee Han said nothing.
"Instructor, expressing gratitude with money may sit poorly with you, but please accept it. For those of us who are nobles, this is simply the only way we know how to show our thanks."
Still nothing.
"Even if you refuse these, or sponsor them somewhere else, should you not receive them yourself, worse gifts will come tomorrow. And they will keep coming."
"...You people live exhausting lives."
Lee Han clicked his tongue. He was grateful, but a way of living this troublesome looked tiring just to watch.
Even so.
Something clinked.
From the tower of gifts, a bracelet of platinum and green diamond caught the light with particular brightness. Lee Han cleared his throat.
"...That bracelet. Is there a smaller one?"
He asked it like a whisper.
"Pardon?"
"A size a woman could wear."
The students stared.
"Ahem."
It seemed like it would suit the maid very well.