Professor, Please
The dawn air was cold. Winter's fault, of course. It was only the start of December, but step outside without a winter coat and a cold was all but guaranteed.
Breathing out a plume of white, I made for Professor Elia's private research building.
"Sad morning, everyone."
I opened the old door and stepped into the lab. In one corner of a room scarcely seven hundred square feet, a woman with hollow eyes was nodding off where she sat.
Same clothes as yesterday. She hadn't made it home. She'd been up all night.
I looked at her with a pang of pity and rapped the desk. Knock, knock.
"Senior Kysha. Sleep in the break room. You'll wreck your neck dozing like that."
"Mmm... Jin..."
"And the professor? Is she in her room?"
"Why... couldn't you kill her... I even lent you the shovel..."
The shovel I'd used to bury the professor yesterday had been Kysha's. When she handed it over, she had begged me — please, kill the professor for three days at least. Too ashamed to answer, I changed the subject.
"The intern's coming today. When the master's students get in, have them sort the supplies and clean the lab."
"An intern...?"
"Yes. They're our junior, so let's show them our good side. We'll eat out on the professor's money for once."
"Can't we just eat at the dining hall... I'm tired..."
"And what if they don't even apply for the master's next year?"
"That... wouldn't do... All right. I'll make them clean when they get here..."
Kysha bobbed her head, face vacant. The blood standing thick in her eyes told me exactly how exhausted she was. She looked as if a wraith had sucked the soul clean out of her. Her gaze wouldn't hold.
Reading the room, I set the freshly wiped shovel down beside her.
"I'm sorry. I went and borrowed your family heirloom, and I couldn't even keep her dead for a day."
A shovel handle, a family heirloom — you might scoff. But this was no ordinary shovel. It was an artifact fashioned from the wood of the sacred tree known, in Kysha's homeland, as the World Tree. A World Tree would grow from any grave that shovel dug, and I had thought that might be enough to seal a vampire. It had failed.
"It's fine... I didn't expect much... Someone who won't die with a stake through the heart... isn't going to die just because a slightly large tree falls on her..."
"Is an elf really allowed to talk about the World Tree like that?"
"But it is the truth..."
A self-evident proposition, so what was the problem — that was Kysha. Beside her disheveled blonde hair, a pointed ear gave a twitch.
Kysha was an elf out of the Great Forest, and the most senior soul in our lab. A doctoral student in her one hundred and forty-first year. Until I inherited the post, she had been Lab Leader here the entire time. Had she not been one of the long-lived, she would have died and died again a hundred times over, until her white bones were dust and not even a ghost remained to linger.
"The professor seemed to be in a bad mood... Be careful, Jin. Don't catch a stray spark..."
With that she staggered off toward the break room, where a cot — a privilege reserved for doctoral students — had been set up.
I watched that pitiful back recede and shook my head. Today, too, was a sad morning.
Professor Elia's room sat wedged in the innermost reach of the research building, in shade where sunlight never came. I opened a shabby door that might have belonged to a storeroom, and a vicious chill slapped my cheek.
In the dark that seemed to spill over itself, a cypress coffin as shabby as the door lay forlorn on the floor.
"Professor, I'm here."
The voice came from inside the coffin, and the tone was thoroughly sulky. Just as Kysha had said — she was in a foul mood. No question.
Damn. This is bad.
"I'm sorry. It won't happen again."
I apologized first. I didn't know what had put her out of temper. Not for lack of a reason — because there were far too many to guess between.
Creak. I carefully lifted the lid.
A girl white from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes lay neatly inside. The scene was endlessly still, as if time had stopped only within the coffin.
The professor spoke with her eyes squeezed shut.
"It is bright. The light hurts my eyes."
"It's morning. Even so, there's nowhere with less light than this."
I took the vampire-grade sunscreen from my pocket and slathered it thick across her face.
"You ought to get up. There's a faculty meeting today. Go and pry a little more budget out of them."
"Has the laboratory no money?"
"It all went on the levitation stone and the mana-particle accelerator. It isn't grant season, so there's no way to replenish the funds."
"You might have spent it more sparingly."
A light rebuke. I bit down on my lower lip and swallowed the anger. You bought the mana-particle accelerator yourself, Professor — the words climbed all the way to my throat.
"...I'll be more frugal from now on."
"Good. You are a clever child, Jin. I trust you will manage well enough on your own."
A soft rustle, and Elia's pure-white negligee became a black dress. Her body rose weightlessly and drifted out of the coffin.
I opened a parasol and took my place at her side.
"You are coming as well?"
Eyes red as blood turned on me. She hadn't expected it.
"The sunlight is harsh. I'll escort you."
Of course Elia would not die for want of a parasol. She was an Elder Vampire, nobility even among vampires. Direct sun would only sting a little. But there had been yesterday's attempt on her life, and today I meant to accommodate her as far as I could. She held the authority over my graduation. I had to stay in her good graces, no matter what.
"Hmm."
Elia studied me with an unreadable look, then walked on ahead. Her gait and her face were detached from every affair of the world — the ease, perhaps, of a vampire who had existed for more than a thousand years.
I let out a long sigh on the inside and followed.
By the time we stepped outside, the sun was fully up. We crossed the campus sharing the parasol.
From within the shade, Elia spoke.
"How is the paper coming along?"
I tested the ground.
"My dissertation?"
"No. I mean the paper on the Boiling Point Dynamic Shift Formula. Have you finished the one that must be submitted to the next Kellimond Conference?"
"...It'll be done once I have the experimental data. The report won't take long to write."
"Finish it and turn it in by next week. I shall read it and mark my corrections."
"Then, by any chance, could you also correct my dissertation at that—"
"Mmm. The sun is certainly glaring. My brow furrows all on its own."
Elia, slipping neatly past the defense. That brazen dismissal ached all the way through me. My hand tightened on the parasol.
It was always like this. To graduate I had to pass my thesis defense, and she was determined, by any means, not to permit it.
Once I had snapped — demanded whether this wasn't going too far, raging at her until my voice broke. I hadn't been in my right mind. Kysha and the rest of the lab had barely stopped me from setting Elia's room on fire. Fury climbed to the very crown of my head, and I slammed down a withdrawal form and went home. The sickness in me ran so deep that for a while I think I gave up food and drink and shut myself away in a corner of my room.
That I was able to come back to this lab at all was entirely thanks to Elia's clemency. The moment she returned from the conference, she came to my family home. If you leave like this, she said, won't everything you've learned go to waste? She would pretend the withdrawal had never happened, so I should come back. She must have been sorry, in her own way.
She told me that if my stress ever looked ready to explode again, I should simply kill her instead. She only said it because she couldn't die anyway — but I drove holy magic straight into her heart, and the instant I watched her torn apart and dead, the resentment drained out of me and I returned to the lab.
From that day on, killing the professor seemed to come with a pardon. A privilege extended to me alone, of course.
"Jin, the sunlight is harsh indeed. Not a cloud in the sky."
It was her voice that pulled me out of my thoughts. Blank-faced, I tilted the parasol toward her.
"Professor."
"Yes? What is the matter?"
"I'm not a long-lived race like Senior Kysha. A hundred years would be generous."
"I am aware."
"Which is why you can't keep putting off my graduation. My classmates already hold high posts in the magic towers. You know Darius, don't you? He's already with the Tower Master's exclusive task force at the Gray Magic Tower."
"Comparing yourself with others is a poor habit. The only one worth comparing is yesterday's you."
"Professor. Please. Spare a little thought for how things look from a human's side."
"Jin, if you truly must, there is a way."
"A way?"
Elia smiled, beautiful.
"I shall give you my true blood. Become my thrall. Become a vampire, and you will live forever, undying."
A crack of thunder.
A bolt out of the clear sky.
Elia's body collapsed into ash. Where she had evaporated, only a blackened scorch remained.
I spat hard on the ground and went back to the lab.
Budget or no budget. She can sort it out herself.
"That lightning just now — was that your magic, hyung?"
When I got back to the lab, the master's students came up with hope bright in their eyes. For the record, there were three of them.
"What happened to the professor? Is she dead? Does that mean she won't be coming to the lab anymore?"
Iley. Rascal No. 1. A second-year master's student, with his defense scheduled this semester.
"Are you an idiot? How does an Elder Vampire die? And if the professor dies, what happens to our defenses?"
Turison. Nitpicker No. 2. He had entered with Iley, and he too was meant to graduate this year.
"S-Seniors... I-I've finished organizing the supplies... I-is there anything else you'd like me to do? Eek!"
Trina. Coward No. 3. A green mage who hadn't been in the lab a full semester.
These quasi-slaves had all come in as master's students, juniors scheduled to fill exactly two years and graduate. The professor did at least let master's students out on time. Doctoral students she would not release even in death.
I spoke in a tired voice.
"You dumped all the cleaning on the youngest? On a kid who still barely knows the names of the instruments?"
"Come on, this is how you learn. And do people of our standing still do grunt work?"
Iley snickered and slung an arm over Turison's shoulder. Turison looked irritated, but he didn't shake it off. He was of the same mind.
"We don't even have time to prepare for our defenses, hyung. Cut us a little slack."
"Th-that's right... Senior Turison and Senior Iley are both s-so busy..."
"Hey, say it like that and it sounds like we threatened you. You snitching on us?"
"Eek! I-I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!"
Coward No. 3, bowing and apologizing without pause. Rascal No. 1 and Nitpicker No. 2, taking it as their due.
The sight made me dizzy. Slaves boasting to each other over whose chains were larger and finer, when they hardly had comfort enough to spare between them. From the look of things, they might have cuffed her a few times while I wasn't watching.
I scratched savagely at my neck and turned on Iley and Turison.
"Iley. Turison. Know when to stop. You do your own share of the grunt work. You don't want to graduate?"
"Aw, hyung! You can't threaten us with graduation!"
"Iley, do I look like I'm joking? On the day of your defense I could kidnap the professor and stuff her in the basement of the Holy Imperial Court, and nobody could say a word to me."
"...I'm sorry. We'll correct it."
The color drained from Iley's face. Shaking, he dropped straight to the floor and pressed himself flat. Turison gagged and went down beside him.
Those two had been my direct juniors since their undergraduate intern days. They knew better than anyone that when I said I would do a thing, I did it.
"Let's do this properly, kids. Don't be difficult."
I could have torn into them further, but then the backlash might have landed on Trina. A slave I'd worked that hard to get — I couldn't very well send her away. I left it at a warning and hauled No. 1 and No. 2 back to their feet. I had a question for them anyway.
"The undergraduate intern showed up, right? Where are they?"