A Knight Throws a Banquet (2)
By common sense, a banquet was something you opened only after a week of preparation, or even a fortnight.
A noble banquet, in particular, had to be grander and more dazzling still, for the sums involved were of an entirely different order.
To hold one in a single day was, in practice, impossible.
That was the end of it.
There would be no further argument.
The princess wanted it, so it would be held. What else was there to say?
Even the impossible has a way of turning possible once you grind enough people into it.
Hundreds—no, a full thousand of the elite—were mobilized, and the preparations were finished in half a day.
The students could not stop marveling.
A garden that had been nothing at all before morning had been transformed—no, violently rewritten—into a banquet ground of outrageous splendor.
It was a feat built from the blood, sweat, and tears of a thousand people.
"Huh? Since when has there been a fountain here?"
"Wasn't this a flower bed? It was just a sandlot."
"Are you insane? Those are all jewels!"
"...Sell just one of those and you'd have five years of living expenses."
Fountains and ornaments, an orchestra and a mobile kitchen.
Even magical tools, lighting the dark sky as it happened.
If this was not throwing money away, then nothing was.
...Or was that wrong? Money alone could never have managed a thing like this.
"The princess really is something."
"Not just a princess. Her Highness the Crown Princess, no less."
"Huh."
"But why are we all packed in here? Why not somewhere else?"
"What, you want to go play over there with the nobles? Go on, if you feel like it."
"...No. Absolutely not."
A fresh, dizzying sense of what power meant settled over them.
The sprouts of the sword faculty—stuck by their instructor with the bizarre name of the Eighteen Bears and Arhats—were huddled together in a single spot.
The banquet had plainly been opened for them, and yet they looked as if they could hardly bear the weight of it.
Wasn't there a saying that a caterpillar ought to live on pine needles? For people who had spent their whole lives as commoners, a gathering of nobles was a difficult place.
They might grow used to it later. For now it was uncomfortable, and then uncomfortable again.
Especially—
"Hmm...? Kunta not sure if Kunta imagining it, but Kunta and the bears seem to have become a spectacle."
"You're not imagining it. You really are a spectacle."
"Well, it is a strange combination."
Farmers, beggars, vagrants, mercenaries, and a barbarian.
They could not avoid notice even if they wanted none of it.
...Not in a good sense. In a bad one.
Among those stares there would surely be not only curiosity, but jealousy in full.
They had won the princess's favor, and that would stick in the throat.
The reason it stuck?
Because they were the lowborn.
The lowest layer of the kingdom.
They might be academy students now, but where was their station going to go?
Just as it had been for their seniors, no matter how skilled they became, the discrimination of birth would follow them all their lives.
Even so.
"Why are you clumped together like a mob of meerkats? You commit a crime or something?"
Someone with an overwhelming habit of doing things his own way, and the skill to match, would not care about station or anything else.
Someone like that man.
"Instructor."
Lee Han, their instructor, came toward them at an easy pace, caring nothing for who watched, and the nobles and students who had been staring at them like the mystery beasts of a circus snapped their eyes away at once.
Nobles and students alike had already heard of the entrance-ceremony incident.
Even if they had not, the pressure he gave off without meaning to was enough to make street brawlers who fancied their fists whimper and tuck their tails.
In truth, having watched him tear an enraged boar apart with his bare hands on Vulcan, they knew perfectly well that this was not mere presence.
And that overwhelming man swept his eyes over them with a gaze that was, in its way, gentle.
"Didn't even mean for it, and the entire sword faculty is gathered."
"Young Master Roen and Assistant Instructor Damian aren't here, though?"
"Student Roen said he had something to do and vanished. He's the sort who wanders as he pleases, so leave him. And the assistant? Where would that one find time to enjoy a banquet? He's got a report to write."
"What report?"
"The one that has to go to the dean."
"Th-that's supposed to be written by you, Instructor..."
"Why would I? I've got an assistant."
"......"
...Come to think of it, the one suffering most, and the one most to be pitied, might well be Damian Paulet.
They were all on the verge of arriving at that same worthless thought when—
"All of you. You worked hard."
—........
At the sudden, utterly misplaced remark, the whole sword faculty blinked.
"When I say you worked hard, I don't mean only the bears."
"You're not going to call us the Bear-Arhats?"
"I could always go with teddy bears."
"Th-the bears will do, we think."
"Brats. All that grew was your heads."
Amid the slackening air and the worthless joke, he met the eyes of every student, carefully.
Not one of them left out.
"First, the chicks."
"Y-yes?!"
"You worked hard too. Keeping at the jump rope was good, and so was not slacking. More than anything, I know you organized the bears' liberal-arts work and the other coursework and handed it over. I'm grateful for how thorough you were, and how careful."
"Th-that was just..."
As if it had been nothing.
They stammered that they had only looked for something they could do and tried it, but Lee Han went on, unmoved.
"Bears. Bow your heads to ninety degrees and greet them. Right now. These are the commendable people who looked after your grades."
"Ack!"
They obeyed on instinct, dropping their heads at once and showing their manners.
But it was not only because they had been ordered. There was real gratitude in it, and so there was no play in the thanks.
They had realized that today's victory had not been possible on their effort alone.
There had been unseen cheering, and unseen help.
"Uuuum—!"
The girls, still embarrassed, hid their faces behind their fans.
They had thought them nothing but haughty noble young ladies, but they were not bad girls after all.
"And you young masters. You did well too. I hear you straightened out the ones sneering at the bears."
"...We only found it unpleasant that the sword faculty was being insulted. They belong to the sword faculty as well, do they not?"
"That's why I said you did well. When we first met, you were nothing but obnoxious young masters. Looking at you now, you were decent young masters after all."
"If you're going to praise us, please start by dropping that young-master business."
"Not yet."
"Uuuum..."
"Ahaha!"
They groaned, but the bears, for their part, could not hide their surprise.
They had never imagined the young masters had gotten angry on their behalf.
They were, in their way, moved, and the ones caught under that gaze turned their eyes aside, shy.
Comradeship.
A sticky, trusting bond, felt by people who suffered together beneath the brutal cliff called Lee Han.
Getting close through hardship—this was exactly what people meant by that.
They could not openly call one another friends, but something like a friendship that crossed station had clearly taken root among them.
It was almost enough to bring tears.
"And last, the bears."
"......"
Lee Han called them, and they were already prepared to cry.
What on earth was he going to say...
"—I won't say you did well. Honestly, you won because you were lucky."
"......"
...The tears vanished in an instant, and their chests lurched for an entirely different reason.
The lurch of being let down.
"Instructor..."
"Don't sulk. You've already heard plenty of praise from other people, haven't you? Then somebody has to say the bitter thing."
"......"
...As expected of a man who always slipped the prediction.
When everyone else was applauding, he scolded.
But Lee Han was entirely serious.
Just as he had been with the others.
"The only reason you won is that the spell-slingers let their guard down. If they'd fought carefully, step by step, you would have lost without question. Stretch it even three minutes and your stamina would have given out. You'd have destroyed yourselves."
"That..."
"Anyone care to argue?"
"......"
...No one.
Because it was the truth.
Just as he said, three minutes was the limit of how long they could fight at full strength in a real battle—no. Thinking back carefully, the moment the fight had passed two minutes they had thought they were going mad.
To unfold Gyeong and technique in actual combat had been a harsher, more vicious experience than they had imagined.
If the mages had been only a little colder.
If, that is, the petty spells they had shown at the very end had been used from the start to bind their mobility—or, failing that, if they had shown the clever tactic of splitting their fire?
Then the bears would have been defeated wretchedly.
Helplessly. Pathetically.
Lee Han had put his finger on exactly that.
"They were careless. There was the surprise of you having two more bodies than they did. And last, luck was with you. So I can't praise you. What you failed at, you failed at."
"Yes, sir..."
They lowered their heads.
Only a moment ago they had been taking bouquets from a countless crowd and dreaming of a rose-colored future, but when the man who taught them spoke so strictly, the wind went out of their lungs.
Today's mistakes, visible the moment he picked the flaws apart one by one.
The dizzy instants flashed through their minds, and only then did their faces go pale.
A bitter smile was all that would come.
But.
"Still. It was good that you didn't give up."
—!!?
"You didn't run in front of the crowd. You didn't run in front of the fire. And at the end, when it felt like you'd lost, not one of you quit. Even if you'd lost today, I would have been satisfied. I'm glad that at least my disciples weren't cowards who abandon their comrades and walk away. So you did well. The match was a mess, but your spirit is plainly worth praising."
Thud.
Lee Han passed among those who had gone out to fight that day, tapping a fist lightly against the left side of each chest.
Bonk.
For Levi Fault he showed a finer care, touching only her head, and not her chest.
"You worked hard. That much, I'll grant."
—......
They stared at their instructor with round eyes.
Each of them touched a chest or a head and felt a heat rising from somewhere deep.
Yes. For the first time, the instructor had acknowledged them.
"He hits the heart and the head. A mercenary's encouragement."
"What kind of encouragement is that?"
"The kind you give a mercenary who kept his head and his heart in one piece on the battlefield and came back. Praise you hand out to green mercenaries a lot, mind you."
"I see."
An encouragement worthy of an instructor whose past, every so often, invited suspicion.
"The rest of you, listen. Gyeong isn't some cure-all, the way I told you. So don't envy what I taught them. Cherish what you already have. What you've learned is more stable, and better, than what those ones picked up."
The young masters.
The noble students had offered their congratulations, but a bitterness had lingered in them somewhere, and at Lee Han's words they flinched.
They still carried in their chests the regret of never having gone to Vulcan, and watching today's fight had left them sore.
The instructor, it seemed, had already noticed that soreness.
"Don't regret it. You're still young, and you'll have a long time with me. I'll forge you properly in the meantime."
"...When you put it that way, Instructor, it's rather frightening."
"You won't die. You won't die."
"And I'm supposed to laugh at that..."
It sounded like a joke, and not like a joke at all.
Even so, listening to it was a comfort. Such was the psychology of unripe youth.
"You three as well. Learning Fighting Art and Gyeong at the same time doesn't mean you automatically get stronger. Far from one thing adding to the other, you can end up good at neither and slide into the minus. So treat Gyeong as nothing but training wheels. Don't hang any great meaning on it."
"We're getting the nagging too?"
"You're my disciples too."
"......"
"All right. The tongue-lashing is over. All of you, enjoy the banquet. And rest. I'll give you three days off. You don't have to attend for a while."
"......"
"I'm not joking, so believe me a little, you brats."
"Waaaaah!"
A cheer full of joy.
Whether that joy was for the holiday, or for the acknowledgment he had handed them—
—probably only they themselves knew.
"...Brats."
As if his words had been a detonator, they shook the tension off in a breath and enjoyed the banquet each in their own way.
Once the ones who had been clumped like meerkats scattered, people from the other faculties began to drift over, and even to speak to his disciples.
He could guess why. Things that had been bunched together like a hedgehog's spines had finally come apart into individuals, and only now could anyone approach in comfort.
Right. If not a time like this, when would they ever mix?
He understood the feeling.
A banquet was also a channel between faculties that otherwise had a hard time getting along.
Which meant a chance for anyone who wanted to tie a thread to the sword-faculty lot.
Bear-Girl's going to have a time of it.
Levi Fault, who had gone from Chick No. 1 to Bear-Girl, had seized the interest of a great many men.
Well, she was a fairly cute one. It stood to reason she would be popular.
Nothing strange, either, about there being plenty of them making a play.
Of course.
Touch her and it's three months laid up...
A bear was not something you laid a hand on, male or female.
The bears he had raised, in particular, might not be able to tear a person in half, but they could fold a waist in half.
Hoping no one would try any funny business and suffer the misfortune of a folded waist, he—
"Hm? Instructor, where are you going?"
"I've got something to see to for a moment."
"The princess will be here soon, you know?"
"Which is exactly why I have to go."
"??"
"Enjoy yourself to your heart's content, Student Irene. Seems there are plenty of them interested in you, too."
"Oh, come on. I'm not interested. How am I supposed to get along with kids like that?"
"You're a kid yourself."
"Ah!"
"......"
...What a clumsy little possessor.
Lee Han shook his head and left, and Irene watched his retreating back in a blank stare.
"You think I'm a pervert like you? ...Ahem. I-I looked a little, but I didn't mean to. That's all."
"Hey, seriously! It's not like that!"
Irene Windler flushed and snapped at the ghost, and the men who had been coming toward her at the sight took an unconscious step back.
They had been drawn in by her beauty, only to remember that a mage's madness was more dangerous than a poisoned rose, and their lives were dear.
Irene Windler, the poisoned rose who had unintentionally driven off the approaching pack of males, turned to the ghost girl.
"It's just... I don't know if I'm imagining it, but the instructor's eyes..."
"They seemed, a little, like they were smiling."
If he was smiling, wasn't that a good thing?
The ghost girl tilted her head, but Irene Windler only shrugged, unable herself to say exactly what the strangeness she felt might be.
If she were to put that strangeness into words—
He looked so happy that it was frightening instead. Is that it?
Even she thought it a truly odd thought, and she laughed, awkward, and let it go.
Clop! Clop!
A party was riding across an empty street of the Royal Capital, bound for somewhere secret.
Whatever the hurry, there was no slowness in their pace, and at a certain moment they passed into the deepest ground beyond the law in all the Royal Capital.
A street where, even among the lowborn, the most ruined lives gathered to live.
The Royal Capital had tried to erase it any number of times, but each time they hid as well as cockroaches or parasites and appeared again before anyone noticed, so Narak was a hidden darkness of the capital that could not be destroyed even by those who wished to destroy it.
It had taken the name of a parasite street from the way it fed on the Royal Capital as if the city were its host, and it was an abyss as well—a cliff with no bottom—because once you went in, you never came out again.
There was some exaggeration in that. The danger, however, was real, and the only people who went looking for the place on purpose were criminals of a truly tremendous sort.
And yet riders were entering that street of their own will—people, moreover, dressed in rather fine clothes.
So it was strange.
Not a single criminal of Narak blocked them, and the quiet was abnormal.
As if, for this day alone, everyone had agreed with one heart not to step outside.
"Hoo, hoo! I-if we've come this far, we're all right, aren't we?"
"Yes. You can relax a little now."
"But listen. Did we really need to run this urgently? Feels like we might be panicking over nothing..."
"Don't talk like a fool! If the princess is there, that mad inquisitor is nearby! A man like that would certainly notice something off about us—how could we stay in that place? Running is the answer."
"Mmm."
Inquisitor John Ray Albert.
The moment his name came up, their bodies shivered.
They had met his record only in reports, and still they shook.
The record was fearful enough merely to read.
If their existence had been discovered, he would have come at once with a cross in his hand.
A Superhuman wrapped in a death that terrified.
"Hoo. Still, we're lucky. It didn't go as planned, but we got away safely like this."
"To think Narak would actually be a help..."
"It isn't Narak that helped. It's because the Organization is there that we have any strength at all. So you must never forget to be grate—"
A chill.
"......"
Step. Step. Footsteps coming lightly.
A man approached as if he were only walking a promenade, smiling with his eyes, and they looked at him with eyes that could not believe what they saw.
Why... why he was here, they could not understand.
The man, for his part, only smiled, as if he were the one who had been slighted.
"As if I wouldn't know where my friends were. Isn't that right, Instructor Hans?"
"......"
"Haha. Smile, Instructor. Why the long face?"
"...S-Sir Turtle..."
He—Hans, instructor of the metallurgy faculty—shook as he forced out the man's name, Lee Han's name, in a trembling voice.
And Lee Han—
"You don't understand how I found you, I take it?"
He tapped the ground, playful.
But unlike the play in the gesture, the longsword at his hip was unusually cold.
"Well, it's nothing that strange. I just have a good nose."
Thud.
"Mage-stink, especially. I catch that one like a marvel. And if it's..."
THUD.
The hand axe in his grip breathed an unquiet ferocity.
To hunt the beasts who had given up on being people.