Reinhardt
"So, what do you plan to do?"
"...What do you mean?"
The Pope's gleaming teeth kept flashing my way, and he seemed to be making not the slightest effort to hide his amusement.
"Your conduct from here on out, naturally."
"...?"
At my expression—which plainly asked what on earth he meant—he heaved a sigh of exasperation, but only for a moment. Tapping the carriage wall with a finger and propping his chin on one hand, he spoke again.
"Let's say that meeting the Emperor is the most pressing matter at hand..."
"...Is it really proper to refer to His Majesty so carelessly?"
"People curse even their king the moment he's out of earshot. What of it?"
"..."
"In any case, what I'm curious about is where you intend to go next, and what you intend to do once you're there."
"Why would that possibly interest you..."
"Well, it can hardly hurt to know the comings and goings of a man on whom the Empire's Sun has fixed his entire attention, now can it?"
"Was that why you pretended to know me from the very beginning?"
Even though I had only tossed the words out in passing, he seemed to take them rather seriously. The smile in full bloom across his face vanished in an instant, and before I knew it, a gaze gone utterly grave had turned its full weight on me.
"Of course, that isn't the only reason."
"..."
"Come to think of it, the Saintess has already expressed her gratitude to you. It would hardly do for me to be the only one who didn't, would it?"
"...There's truly no need to go to such lengths—"
"No."
The Pope cut me off, holding out an open palm. His eyes, which had closed and opened again in the space of a breath, looked harder than anything I'd seen in recent memory.
"The truth is, I could do almost nothing back then."
"..."
"All I managed was to blunt their invasion. I couldn't seal it shut completely."
The palm that had been extended toward me slowly curled into a fist atop his knee. A fist clenched so tightly it trembled; an arm with tendons standing out from the sheer force of his grip. As if he refused to ever live through that again, holy power far denser than before gathered in his clenched hand.
"The one who stopped them was you. Not me. Not the Saintess. You."
"..."
"And in that spirit, know that I am truly grateful to you."
How often does a man like him ever bow his head? At a funeral, offering a silent prayer for the dead? Or perhaps when cradling children who barely reach half his towering frame? The Pope of an entire faith, standing at the summit of all believers, wielding a boundless wellspring of holy power—bowed his head to me.
"...Please don't. This is... rather a lot to bear."
I meant every word; the protest left my mouth because I genuinely felt the weight of it. But he simply raised his head again, tilted it quizzically, and carried on.
"Do you not know your own worth? Or is it that you fail to grasp what I'm telling you?"
"...Even so, I believe you're overestimating me far too much—"
"How many souls your age could slay a monster of that caliber?"
"..."
A monster that had crossed blades with the Pope himself, exhausted though it may have been. A monster no mere Academy cadet could ever hope to face. And that monster had supposedly been put down, single-handedly, by the delinquent they called the stain on the ducal house?
"Does that sound the least bit plausible to you?"
"..."
"And plainly, the way you moved was something the rumors circulating out there could never account for."
"..."
"Well, I've no intention of inflating the gossip myself—but do not forget that how you carry yourself from here on matters a great deal."
He rose from his seat, brisk and unburdened, as though his business here was done. His massive frame squeezed out through the carriage door, and the whole vehicle lurched once, hard. The carriage was by no means cramped, yet it had clearly felt tight around him; as he stretched his back until it gave a deep crack, he turned his head as though something had just come to mind.
As if something still remained unsaid.
"Ah, and one more thing—should you happen to cause some truly enormous mess, don't let it weigh on you too much."
"...What on earth are you saying?"
"Well, short of a genuinely catastrophic incident, I'll take the lead and step in myself."
"...Is that proper? The Pope intervening out of personal sentiment?"
"What could possibly be improper about it? It would be for the Church's own Saint, after all."
With that, he tapped his own forehead a few times, pointing to it—and behind him stood the priests, every last wounded soldier seen to, drawn up in orderly ranks. Today of all days, dazzling sunlight spilled into my eyes.
"...That is a comfort."
"Haha! Then I'm glad to hear it!"
It was no empty pleasantry. It was my honest impression.
The Academy. A private institution of learning that stood beyond the Empire's direct reach, where the sons and daughters of nobility gathered and gathered until, before anyone noticed, the young had come to call it a second society of its own. For a rumor to spread through such a place was no difficult feat.
"Hey, so, about that Jenison guy..."
"...Why are you suddenly bringing up that piece of trash again?"
"Hey, can't you read the room? Why would you bring that up? He absolutely despises Jenison!"
"N-no, but still..."
"...What is it? Out with it."
Jenison Reinhardt. No—the rumors concerned the man who was a Reinhardt no longer. And it had all begun with the most trivial piece of idle chatter.
"Does he still have some kind of backer?"
"Are you out of your mind?"
"What backer could he possibly have? He's a half-wit who got tossed out of a ducal house."
"No, but just listen..."
He had once been so weak that his very admission into Class A invited suspicion—yet at some point he had grown strong enough to snap Leon in two. He had succeeded in hunting an intermediate-rank demonic beast. An elven princess had taken an interest in him, and as if that were not enough, he had taken her to the Great Forest. For an ordinary cadet—and more than that, for one who was now a commoner—such things were flatly impossible. Perhaps the suspicion was only to be expected.
"Come on, no way that guy has a backer."
"But if he doesn't... then none of it adds up, does it...?"
A word needs no legs to travel a thousand miles. As time passed, the rumor spread at a breakneck pace—faster, even, than those who had set it in motion ever anticipated.
"Someone's watching Jenison's back? That incompetent oaf?"
"No, actually, they say he made a pact with a demon..."
"He looted some noble's entire vault of relics—"
As rumors invariably do, the tale splintered, swelled, and warped. That he had made a pact with demons; that he had ransacked the nobles' relic vaults and made off with artifacts by the armful—speculation of every stripe ran rampant.
"Well, it's all just rumor in the end, isn't it?"
"No, it might actually be true."
"...Right. There's no way any of us are weaker than that oaf, after all."
"...Honestly, though—unless he pulled some kind of trick, none of it makes sense."
And a rumor drawing this much attention always attracts someone determined to unearth the truth. People who would approach those who seemed close to him and hurl their questions.
"Um, when you teamed up with him, did you notice anything suspicious, or—"
"Did he ever try to pull anything strange, like—"
"Did you ever sense some kind of... unsettling aura from him—"
From Lianna, quietly absorbed in a book, to Albert, mid-workout and building his strength, a storm of questions rained down on everyone who had teamed with him during the Midterm Evaluation.
"S-sorry, I really wouldn't know anything about that."
"...You're interrupting my training. Get lost."
"I-I don't... really know anything... ehehe..."
But the answers that came back were all identical. Every last one of them pleaded ignorance. If anything, those very reactions only whipped public opinion into a hotter boil.
"...How can every single answer be exactly the same?"
"Well, maybe they're all in on it together... And if not, then there really is something to hide."
They were hiding something. Something about Jenison. Before anyone noticed, public opinion had tilted in that direction—and just as people's attention began pouring onto Jenison more heavily than ever, someone summoned the students. Every cadet from every class, without a single exception.
"I-I came because I was told to... but who actually called us here?"
"No idea. Someone just handed me a letter..."
"Mine was inside my bag...! I got goosebumps all over, I swear!"
The students had been herded into the plaza without the faintest idea why, yet they shared one thing in common. Every last one of them had received a letter instructing them to be here at a set hour.
"Seriously, who sent these things? Just come out and show yourself already!"
"...Was this all a waste of time, then? It felt like something interesting was going to happen."
But no matter how long they waited, no one who looked like the sender ever appeared. And in the very moment most of the students, worn out from waiting, began to turn away—
"...Greetings, students."
A voice rang out from somewhere. A voice so beautiful it seized every ear in the plaza at once.
"Hey, don't shove—urk!"
"...Pardon me, would you step aside for a moment?"
"Y-yes! Of course!"
As everyone strained desperately to find the voice's owner, someone began pushing through the crowd of students.
"My name is Aria Reinhardt."
"A-Aria...?"
"The... the Reinhardt ducal house's...!"
A woman with black hair streaming behind her, her beautiful voice carrying over the crowd. The younger sister of Jenison—the very subject of the rumor now setting the Academy ablaze. It was Aria Reinhardt.
"The rumor that has been spreading through the Academy of late."
"...Lady Aria, do you perhaps know the truth behind it...!"
"The person who ordered that rumor spread is me."
The mouth of a student who had been about to say something fell open and would not close. Because those were words no one could possibly have foreseen.
"And gathering all of you in this place was likewise my doing..."
"Huh... why?"
"Lady Aria... why would you call us here...?"
Most of the students simply could not comprehend it. Everyone knew her reputation well. The noble daughter of the Reinhardt ducal house, hailed as an extraordinary genius in magic, celebrated as one of the Academy's brightest flowers. Perhaps that was why no one had suspected it, and no one had imagined it—that she herself was the mastermind behind the rumor. Nor did a single soul know why she had spread it, or why she had gathered so many people here.
Not until she began to speak.
"...The reason I have gathered you all here—"
"..."
Everyone held their breath and waited for the next words to leave her lips.
"Is because I have something to tell you about my brother, Jenison... Reinhardt."