The Fair Instructor (1)
He hated discrimination. Perhaps that was only natural, given how much of his life had been spent on the receiving end of it.
There was the washout among washouts who had shot up the ranks at impossible speed for no better reason than being the division commander's brat of a son. And there was the other history, his own: ten years of long service, and still passed over for promotion on the most absurd pretexts, left to rot as a perpetual staff sergeant. He had been ground down to the bone often enough that fairness, in the way he dealt with others, had become something close to an absolute.
So he had no intention of favoring the Sprout squad merely because they came from the lower classes, and no intention of tossing the nobles' children aside merely because they were nobles' children. Fairness meant treating them the same.
And so.
"All right. Let's put our backs into it again today."
"......"
Lee Han was at the Academy. All fifty-four students of the sword faculty who had remained behind, rather than go to Vulcan, stared at their instructor with faces that said the sight made no sense at all.
...What is this? A dream?
"...I-Instructor."
"Speak, Chick Number Three."
"Um, well. I—I definitely heard you were going all the way to Vulcan for training."
"I did. And?"
"A-and the distance between Vulcan and the Academy is forty kilometers, as far as I know."
"37.9, to be exact."
"R-right."
That is not the point!
"Why are you here? Shouldn't you be on Vulcan?"
"I came to teach you."
"...And Vulcan?"
"Wrecked them this afternoon and came back. I'll teach you, then go wreck— no. Go train them again tonight."
"......"
"Why the look?"
"...Nothing. I was just thinking that you really are peculiar."
"Peculiar, my ass. I'm only being diligent."
"Haha..."
This was a man who would run 75.8 kilometers round trip rather than skip a class. How could he be anything but diligent? Faced with a reality she had no way to refute, the female student he called a chick let out an empty laugh.
Belated as it was to mention, word that Lee Han and Odewal would hold a War Game had kicked up a considerable uproar. In all the Academy's history the sword faculty and the magic faculty had always been on ugly terms, and yet there had never been a clash this direct.
By the time anyone thought to stop it, news of the War Game had already spread past containment, and with the nobles themselves looking forward to the match, the Academy could not have called it off even if it tried. Pretext and momentum were already out of hand.
Which was why Lee Han was summoned once more to the Dean's office. He got chewed out. How many incidents did he intend to cause in a single first term?
He had no shortage of objections, of course. The one who picked the fight was a spell-slinger, and the one who started it over some worthless quibble was a spell-slinger too. So he stood there unashamed, and the Dean shook his head until the back of his neck went stiff.
...And yet, watching the man still put up activity funds for the students, Lee Han had to admit that the Dean was a dean indeed.
'After nothing but crooked teachers, it does feel good to meet a real educator.'
The face that handed over that considerable sum, however, carried no great expectation. It was plain the Dean thought the sword faculty would lose the War Game. Nor was it only the Dean. That was the mood running through the whole Academy, as if the outcome had already been decided.
"It can't be helped. In a War Game, warriors are pawns, if you think of it as chess. Skilled warriors might be treated as bishops at best, but mages are queens or knights."
"Hell of a way to treat warriors. Narrow-minded bastards."
"...What can we do? The record is what it is."
"That's because the ones who lost were weak."
"Is there anyone who isn't weak, compared with you, Instructor?"
"I'm comparatively weak myself."
"......"
One of the students already sprawled on the ground twisted his face, as if this were the most absurd thing he had heard all year. Or perhaps the twist had less to do with absurdity than with pain.
"Ghhh..."
"Hnnnngh!"
"Khak! Kagh...!"
Students were collapsing and dry-heaving all over the yard. In place of jumping a steel rope, the lot of them had gone at their instructor under the banner of unlimited free sparring, and every last one had been slammed into the dirt, crying out in agony. Strangely enough, no one was seriously hurt. He had thrown them, yes, but he had checked his strength at the last instant. ...Which only made it more humiliating.
"I didn't go easy to humiliate you. The priest in the recovery room told me to quit sending him children, so I didn't have a choice."
"...We have been producing a lot of injuries."
"I-Instructor. You really ran here from Vulcan?"
"That strength of yours is just..."
Looking at a man who had beaten every one of them and still seemed entirely unmoved, it was hard to believe this was him with his stamina already somewhat spent.
"It's true I'm lower on energy than usual. Even an instructor runs out of breath going back and forth over a distance like that. But why would I struggle against a pack of 'greenhorns'?"
"......"
"Bitter, are you? Then work harder at getting stronger. I'll teach you with everything I've got."
"......"
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"...I was only curious. You're so passionate, and yet you didn't take us to Vulcan."
"You mean the special intensive training?"
"......"
"Hm. I said it the day before, too. Anyone who wanted to come was told to assemble on the day of departure. You didn't show."
"...That's..."
The student who had let his disappointment slip clenched his teeth, telling himself it was a childish sulk. He couldn't help it. They hadn't stayed behind because they wanted to.
"Wh-what were we supposed to do, when our houses told us not to go?"
"Grown as you are, and you're still kept on a leash at home?"
"...!"
"Haha. I'm joking. You think I don't know how it is for you?"
Surely some among them had wanted to hear Lee Han's intensive lectures. Especially those who, through the training so far, had felt their bodies growing firmer. Knowingly or not, they had begun to recognize him as a fine instructor.
...But they were nobles. They lived by authority and honor, belonging to a class society in which status, connections, and blood mattered above all else. They could never defy an order from their houses.
"Heh. I imagine a few of you here have already been told not to attend my classes. Your houses probably count it a stain to study under some lowborn knight."
"......"
"I'm not angry. I'm not even offended. I came up through a knight order. You think I don't know this?"
He had been nothing less than the official outcast of the Silver Lion Knight Order. He was sick to death of noble privilege. Well—more of them had flaunted that privilege and gotten beaten for it.
"I understand you. Nobles don't permit foreign matter to mix into their history."
Among the students, some probably wanted to learn Gyeong. It was, after all, a rather impressive art. A noble house, though, would never allow it. These were people whose pride in the Fighting Art and the techniques they had stacked up over hundreds of years pierced the sky. In that sense, Lee Han's art was something heretical. Set it beside the murim, and the noble houses were the orthodox sects, while his techniques would be treated like the black path or the unorthodox sects—or, to put it more harshly, something akin to the demonic arts of a demonic cult. Learn them, and one might not merely be branded an enemy of the martial world. One might be cast out of the house.
'Not all of them, though.'
Chiefly Arno and Roen. Both were scions of great nobles, yet comparatively free-spirited. House Offen had a peculiar streak and did not hesitate to absorb the techniques of other houses. Roen, for his part, paid no mind to what his house thought, and so had no qualms about taking Lee Han's instruction.
Damian? That one was simply being worked.
In other words, the only ones begging Lee Han for teaching now were those with truly nowhere else to turn, or those who did not care in the slightest what anyone thought. These students were in a different position. And so it rankled. They wanted to learn, and they harbored their own rebellion against their houses. In the end, they still could not refuse an order.
"I bet some of you wanted me to drag you to Vulcan and train you whether you liked it or not."
"...Ahem."
"But I can't. The training I'm running on Vulcan is for the desperate. Even if I'd hauled you there by force, it wouldn't have amounted to much. How is someone who has to watch a dozen other things supposed to be desperate, when just looking straight ahead is already more than they can manage?"
"......"
"Still, if I made you feel that only the others were getting special treatment, then your instructor apologizes. It wasn't what I intended."
"...We're the ones who should apologize."
Nineteen, or twenty, on average. The age of adulthood—but being of age did not make them adults. They were not yet fully formed. Understanding that they were still green, still prone to whining, was an adult's duty. It was a sincere apology, and they felt an unreasonable swell in their throats.
"Thank you for understanding."
A strangely moving, needlessly warm air settled over the yard.
Lee Han went on.
"In that spirit, your instructor will specially spar with you again. Come at me."
"...Pardon?"
"I gave the others special treatment, so you ought to have special training too. Chances like this don't come easy. On your feet."
"......"
The warmth shattered with a crash.
For the record, and it hardly mattered, Lee Han's MBTI in his previous life had been T.
...It seemed he had worked the recovery-room priest hard again today. Lee Han was satisfied! It felt, in its way, like something an educator would do.
'Everyone in my last life who said I couldn't empathize was wrong. How's this for empathy?'
They had wanted to grow, so he had taught them with everything he had in order to grant that wish. The very model of empathy. A great satisfaction settled over him, and with it a sense of duty: now that things had come to this, he ought to run today's ranger trainees twice as hard.
'What should I add to the night training?'
Individual combat drills, maybe, and cliff climbs. His head spun at a furious clip, and in proportion to how busily it spun, a nightmare was already scheduled for the unfortunate Sprout squad tonight. A case of diligence, of all things, turning to poison.
He stopped.
"...?"
As he walked, Lee Han's keen senses caught something unfamiliar.
"This is..."
What felt wrong was the straw dummy standing alone in the training yard. It was the sort used for sword practice, but it had not been touched once since Lee Han became instructor of the sword faculty. He preferred live combat to hitting a dummy, and so the thing had been reduced to a yard ornament that even the students rarely bothered with. His sharp senses, however, told him it was subtly different from usual.
"Spot the difference, is it?"
It was no mere decoration. A strip of cloth hung around the dummy's neck. It had not been there before. Muttering about which bastard was playing a prank, Lee Han undid the loosely tied cloth and took it in his hand.
"...Ho."
A strange smile touched his mouth. He didn't know who it was.
"Old-fashioned, aren't you?"
A single sentence had been left on the cloth, in a method so classical it might have walked out of a stock play from ages past. However classical the method, though...
You must not kill the mages.
"Hm. 'You must not kill the mages.' ...You. This."
—How did they know?
It was nothing if not interesting: a line that saw straight through an intention he had spoken to no one.