Awkwardness
Cold moonlight drifted across his eyes — deep dark circles that would mark him, to any observer, as a man worn thin with fatigue. And yet there was something in his face that read less as sinister than as simply spent. After all, Jenison was hardly the sort whose looks would ever earn the word ugly anywhere he went.
If he would only sit still, he's easy enough on the eyes. So why does he insist on ruining himself like this?
He had drifted off to sleep without her noticing. Watching him, Hildegard thought quietly to herself, her gaze settling on his shoulder with its pitifully lingering burn marks — and a question took root in her mind. His shoulder was seared that badly, so why were his arms perfectly unscathed?
The wonder lasted only a moment. Deciding it was no concern of hers, the Saintess quietly set about sorting the roster of cadets who had visited the infirmary that day — most of whom, in truth, had worked up a convenient illness for nothing more than a single glimpse of the Saintess whose beauty was the stuff of rumor even within the Academy.
She was not blind to such ploys. But she was the Saintess, after all — her image and the Church's were one and the same. A woman who had lived her whole life caged by her own hand, never once letting her true feelings show, and yet so frail of heart that she could never bring herself to refuse anyone who reached for her. Such was the hidden face of the Empire's Saintess — the reverse side of the woman all the world revered.
And yet I cannot for the life of me fathom why it is this man, of all people, who stirs even my sympathy...
Asking Jenison, to his face, whether he had lost his mind. Hauling off a man who only wanted to rest, robbing him of his repose. Insisting on unconditional treatment when she should have stood by and watched. Every last one of them something the woman she had always been would never have done.
But in truth, there was no helping it. The Saintess was, above all, the proxy of the Creator God — the inheritor, undiluted, of His love for the humans He had made. She was one who, faced with anyone yearning for salvation, ached to save their life exactly as they wished it saved. And Jenison — who deep down wished, more than anyone, for his own life to become something better — was a man she could not bring herself to treat coldly, even if all that stayed her hand was the Saintess's instinct alone.
And so, sighing at feelings she could not name, the Saintess bent once more over her list.
I'm exhausted...
The one who came to wake me — after I'd lain sprawled in the infirmary clear until evening — was Ella, who had been waiting for me back at the dormitory.
"Young Master... are you truly all right..?"
"I'm fine. It was hardly a serious injury."
"But they said your shoulder was burned..?"
She murmured the rest too softly for me to catch, but I could tell well enough that she was worried about me.
"By the way, Ella — how did you know I was in the infirmary?"
"Ah, that — a professor told me. His name was... um..."
"Say no more. I can guess well enough."
Most likely, once the duel was over, he had heard that Ella was waiting at my dormitory and stopped by to pass the word along.
That professor... fearsome as he looks, he's a kind soul...
I was still thinking along those lines when I felt Ella fiddling with my left arm, and I turned to look at her.
"Young Master, your left arm really is all right, isn't it?"
"...I told you it's fine. Aren't you hungry yourself?"
"I haven't eaten, Young Master — I was waiting for you."
"...Then let's go eat first. Together."
"Hehe, yes!"
Watching Ella beam as though a meal were the finest thing in the world, I felt the corners of my own mouth lift of their own accord. Even if a small problem had just come up.
Just as I'd said, I meant to start with a meal the moment we reached the dormitory — but having spent the last fifty days alone, living on the bare minimum while I buried myself in research, there wasn't a single decent ingredient to be had.
Left with no choice, I resolved to go out and buy provisions, and was preparing to head out when—
"No, you don't. You're a patient right now, Young Master!"
On the grounds that I was an invalid, she declared she would do the shopping alone and that I was to rest right here — and I found I couldn't talk her out of it. Nothing I said seemed likely to get through to her, and the heart she put into looking after me was, frankly, endearing. Was this what it felt like to watch a daughter, younger than yourself, running little errands for her father? I had never once had a daughter in any of my lives, and yet somehow, looking at her, I couldn't shake the feeling that she was one.
I pressed my entire remaining savings into her hands and told her to buy whatever she wanted to eat, but she looked far from pleased about it.
"Young Master, this is your entire fortune?! How am I supposed to spend this?"
"It's fine. I've lined up a source of income."
"R... really?"
"Yes. It's no lie, so spend as much as you like."
"Uuu... then I'll make you something delicious for dinner!!"
"...Yes, yes."
Sending her off with a smile, I resolved to spend the time until she returned developing a magic tool to register with the Magic Tower. Money had to come first, after all.
Register a magic tool with the Tower, and the Tower would handle its sale exclusively, remitting the proceeds to me at an agreed ratio. For earning money without actually working, nothing could have suited me better.
Better still, as a man who had lived through the twenty-first century, I could produce tools this world could not so much as imagine. To build something from the firsthand experience of having used it would tax even a seasoned master craftsman — but for me, with Creation Magic at my command, it was child's play.
Which left only one question: what, exactly, to make. And that decision proved harder than I'd expected. It had to be something rare in this world, something with guaranteed profitability — and of a caliber the Tower would actually agree to sell.
What I settled on was scrolls.
For adventurers who delve into dungeons in search of treasure and thrills, mortal danger is not a possibility but a certainty. So what would happen if a scroll appeared on the market — one a person could carry at their belt and tear open to save their own life, just once? For any adventurer who valued their neck, buying one would not be a choice but an inevitability.
Scrolls demanded circuits without a single flaw and mana control to match, which made them ill-suited to mass production. But imbuing objects had always come naturally to me, and if all else failed, I could simply create the scroll itself from nothing — there was nothing to worry about. Besides, scrolls were, by strict classification, magical goods in their own right, so even the Tower would have no grounds to object.
An item with nothing but advantages — was there any reason on earth not to make it?
The moment my mind was made up, I threw myself into producing scrolls, and so absorbed was I in crafting them type by type that I never heard Ella come home. That evening, I ate my dinner stone cold.
The next day.
The weekend had come to the Academy as well, and the cadets were hurrying off every which way. Some wore faces brimming with anticipation, as if they'd promised one another a day of play; others could be observed scouting out date spots with their sweethearts — a sight painful to watch. With the whole campus buzzing like that, trudging off to the Magic Tower alone felt a touch desolate, I'll admit.
My food expenses have doubled... if the income doesn't start flowing soon, I'm in trouble...
For a man in my circumstances, refusing to go out on the grounds that it didn't suit the festive mood would have been pure luxury.
"Young Master, where are you off to?"
"I have business at the Magic Tower. Eat lunch without me."
"You too, Young Master?"
"...Too?"
"I heard Lady Isabella is going to the Magic Tower today as well."
????
Why, all of a sudden?
Granted, it was true that Isabella's House Renuel enjoyed a special relationship with the Magic Tower. People claimed to have seen members of the ducal house — the so-called family of mages — working within the Tower, and rumors circulated that the Tower's operating funds and patronage flowed from Renuiel's coffers. Between a house of mages and the Tower itself, suspecting some manner of connection was only natural.
But why today, of all days? Especially after what I'd said to her last time, meeting her face to face would be awkward enough as it was. Worse, the Magic Tower was, for all practical purposes, Renuiel territory. Walking in there would be no different from tossing feed straight into their mouths.
As it happened, the Tower was also home to the very man who doted on her — her teacher, no less. The one who had glimpsed her talent when she was a child, taken her as his disciple, and cherished her dearly ever since. And in front of people like that, word would arrive that I had humiliated the daughter of House Renuel before the entire Academy? I had every confidence that a third-rate mage like me would be ground to dust without so much as lifting a finger.
For a while I wrestled with whether today was truly the right day to go — but tomorrow had its own commitments, and my funds were running too thin to put it off another week. And so, like it or not, I found myself with no choice but to visit the Magic Tower today.
"...Why today, of all days..."
Still, word was that her teacher lived as a recluse and never showed his face, so at the very least I needn't worry about him. Because if it came to her teacher, he was a man who could toy with me like a child and then kill me at his leisure. The mere fact that he wouldn't be there was, in itself, a small comfort.
"Ah — could it be because the Lady's teacher is returning to the Magic Tower today?"
That is, until Ella trampled every last shred of my hope.
"...What?"
"The Lady's teacher is coming back today... so she's hurrying to visit him... Young Master??"
This... son of a bitch.
At news that struck like a bolt from the blue, I clutched the back of my neck. Ella, fretting no doubt because she feared her words had grated on my nerves, fidgeted this way and that — and looked terribly cute doing it.