The Knight Leaves the Stage (5)
He did not turn his steps toward home.
Instead he bought a few sheets of letter paper, scribbled something passable across them, sealed the lot, and left a request with the guild.
"Send these for me."
"At once, Sir Lee Han!"
"I'm not even a knight anymore. Just call me Lee Han."
"How could I possibly address you that way, sir!"
"What's with all the enthusiasm?"
"Haha — it's a request from Sir Lee Han, isn't it? Of course this is how it has to be done. ...More to the point, are you truly leaving the kingdom?"
"They're calling it exile."
"...Idiots. The lot of them."
Simon clicked his tongue, openly contemptuous, as if the foolishness of nobles had sickened him past endurance.
"Then don't. Why not throw in with the Guild Union instead?"
"You scouting me?"
"I can even give you my seat."
"Don't. I'm not clever like you. That chair only shines with someone as sharp as you sitting in it. So I'll decline. Politely."
"Sir Lee Han..."
"Enough. Don't act like this is forever. If our paths cross, we'll see each other again."
"..."
"Take care. Until next time."
"...The letters will be delivered. Without fail."
Most of what he left behind was bound for people tied to him by some thread of acquaintance — Kal at the butcher's shop, Hans Junior the fruit merchant, Anna who kept the bakery, and the countless others he had come to know along the way.
Facing each of them once would have been the courteous thing. The situation being what it was, it was more proper that he not go looking for them at all. What if a visit from him only got his people misunderstood?
I show up, and they get marked by those lunatics. That's all that happens.
Better, then, to leave his thanks and his apologies on paper.
Even so—
"They haven't shut the school, have they?"
However far things had fallen, Lee Han had not forgotten that a few people still remained whom he owed a face, not a letter.
As was only natural, the Academy was hardly in a stable state either.
For a start—
"Another leave of absence?"
"Plenty of withdrawals, too."
"I heard a lot of the instructors and professors are on leave. Resignations as well..."
"...That's right."
"Are you leaving too?"
"..."
"...I see."
Who had suffered most from King Edmund's betrayal? No — past mere damage, who would feel the deepest shock, the sharpest sense of having been sold?
None other than these.
"Thank you for everything, Dean."
"Mmm."
The faculty and students of the Royal Academy. Time and again they had been dragged to the edge of disaster, through calamities in which it would not have been strange for them to die. And lately the guild, among others, had made something else plain: during last year's War Game, a cell of Illegal Mages had stolen the faces of Academy staff, and because of it several hundred students might easily have been handed over to those same mages.
Ironically enough, the one who had seen the Illegal Mages coming and cut them down ahead of time was also that knight.
Either way, the Academy had been left with a betrayal it could taste. Students and faculty alike were shaking with rage that the king had meant to kill them, and so they walked out. They could not forgive a royal house that had spat on their loyalty and their honor. The grounds were not on break, and still they stood hollow. Vast and magnificent as ever — and, with no one left in them, bleak enough to raise the hair.
"..."
A page rustled. In that desolate Academy, in the single room where a light still burned, one man kept his post as he always had.
The Dean.
"Haaah..."
Allen, Dean of the Royal Academy — former chancellor of the kingdom, and once head of House Guinevere. None other. A face that looked ten years older pressed hard at the furrow between his brows as he sighed. Even the books he loved would not turn for him today. It was not the secretary who had just tendered a resignation. It was simply—
"I'm worn out."
The strength had gone out of him, from somewhere he could not name.
"..."
Allen wanted only to give himself over to the quiet and sleep, if sleep would come.
That was how it should have gone.
Knock, knock.
"Doesn't it get lonely, sitting here by yourself?"
"...Hah."
At the voice he had not expected, his head turned. There stood the walking disaster who had been stirring up trouble without pause — not merely today, but from the whole of last year straight through to now. Allen sighed before he quite meant to, and answered.
"It's quiet. Good for reading."
"I see."
"...A joke. Don't take it for sincerity."
"Ah. Was it?"
And yet they say even dislike ripens into affection. Simply having the face in front of him, simply trading a few words, Allen found he was a little glad of it.
"Have you been well?"
"...Do I look well?"
"Mm. No."
"...Brutally honest."
"I hear that a lot."
"It wasn't a compliment."
"Haha. I know."
"..."
Allen studied him through a crooked stare, as if that slick ease of his were personally offensive.
"Hoo. So. Why are you here?"
"To hand in my resignation."
"...A resignation."
The corner of Allen's eye twitched. He had heard those words far too often of late.
But—
"To be precise, I hear an exile order is coming down. Losing the post by force, you could say."
"Hm. I see."
"Yes. That's the shape of it."
"...In the ordinary way a few procedures would be required. Given the circumstances, it can't be helped."
Allen had no right to stop him. Nor should he have tried.
"Haha. Thank you."
"...You're enjoying this rather a lot."
"Being sad about it isn't really an option either."
"..."
"Well, then."
He gave a light bow, plainly meaning to finish his errand and go, and was already turning for the office door when Allen, for one instant—
"...I'm sorry."
"Yes?"
—offered an apology.
To the other faculty he had said only that they had worked hard. Strangely, with this one, he wanted to apologize. On behalf of the worthless? No. Allen was not altruistic enough to apologize in those bastards' stead. So the apology was this:
"No one in the world is without their circumstances, I'll grant you that. But he was not always that sort of man. In his youth he had a passion of his own, and a sense of justice besides. But... the weight crushed him. The weight..."
An apology stood in for an old friend — someone with whom he had once shared a bond, and his youth.
"...Ah."
A beat late, Lee Han caught the meaning of it, and his expression turned peculiar, as if an apology was the last thing he had expected to collect in this room.
"You called him a friend."
"I did."
"...You meddle entirely too much. Apologizing in his place for what he did."
"That man will not apologize."
A friend too far changed for that.
"Heh. Don't trouble yourself. I've nothing to apologize to that gentleman for, either."
"Is that so..."
"Yes. That's how it is. And more than that—"
"?"
"I couldn't care less about his circumstances. I didn't like him, he laid a hand on my kids, so I beat him. That's all."
"..."
"So there's no need for you to apologize, Dean. I raised my fist because I wanted to be satisfied. That's the whole of it."
Firm, unwavering, without an inch of regret in it — and at those words the tightness between Allen's brows eased for the first time. Arrogant, and yet it did not sound arrogant in the slightest. Honestly.
"...Your own life won't run smooth either."
"You're one to talk, Dean. Choose your friends with more care. No — get better at knowing when to cut them loose."
Advice that landed like a scolding. For a moment Allen looked frankly dumbfounded, and then he snorted, as if it were the first time in his life anyone had presumed to counsel him so.
Even so.
"I shall bear it in mind."
He said he would not let the words pass him by.
And there was not a shred of falsehood in it.
Everyone else had chosen leave or withdrawal, and still two faculties remained at the Academy, rare as they were.
One was the magic faculty. Spell-slingers walking their own road paid no mind to whether a king had betrayed them or not; they simply kept their own ground.
And the other—
"Spears, swords, and guns?"
"Yes. You said to gather anything that could serve as a weapon, for now."
"Hm. Well done. Though with the guns, we're a little short on powder and shot."
"Ah, someone's already promised support for that."
"Now that is good news!"
The sword faculty. More precisely, among the second-year students — the first-years aside — there was not a single withdrawal, not a single leave of absence. They looked like people waiting for something, and preparing for something.
At a glance—
"...Are you lot getting ready for a war?"
"Ah! It's the instructor!"
"Instructor!"
"You finally escaped!"
"Who escaped? More to the point, what are you actually doing?"
A scene in which it was hard to tell the sword faculty from a faculty of war. Lee Han stared, incredulous, at the heaps of blades they had stacked in the secret passage he himself had bored through the Academy, using the tunnel for a warehouse. What in the world were they up to?
"Nothing much. Young Master Roen warned us. He said things were moving faster than he'd known, so we needed to prepare. I don't really follow what he meant, but he told us to get ready like this, so we're getting ready. In our own way. Diligently."
"...What."
"And I was in favor of stockpiling weapons anyway. I have a feeling we're going to need them."
"..."
Were they trying to start a revolution? He had never taught them anything of the sort, and watching disciples prepare for one of their own accord, Lee Han felt a dizziness coming on.
Only for a moment.
"But, Master."
"?"
"...Is it true? That an exile order came down?"
"..."
"Master?"
"...Little Bear."
"Yes?"
"...How about we take a deep breath together first?"
"..."
"...Put the blade down before you go anywhere."
"No, I was just..."
"..."
Little by little, his disciple's devoted affection was becoming both a burden and a fright.