Call the Other One
I had thought the answer would come easily. He gave me one I had not expected.
"…Mm."
"Why?"
In truth, it was my brother who was the strange one. For most students, a reaction like this was perfectly normal.
"I told you last time. The house is finished. If I want a scholarship for my grades, I'll have to study until my nose bleeds."
To Peter, the future must have felt hopelessly uncertain. If the weight of it was too much for him, I had no reason to push. I turned a small smile his way.
"All right. Study it is. We'll study."
The next morning I showered and took my time walking to the lecture hall. I was not the sort who slept late, so I had set out quite early.
Huh?
Jack, astonishingly, was already in his seat.
"What are you doing here alone?"
I drifted into the chair beside him. The honors class was only about thirty strong, so far as I could tell, and yet the room was a cavernous tiered hall, more theater than classroom.
"Breakfast?"
"Skipping a meal isn't in my dictionary."
"Sleep all right?"
"I remember the blanket going over me. After that, nothing…"
New bed or old, the moment his eyes shut he was gone. A short breath of a laugh escaped me. Pure Jack.
That said.
Perhaps because fashion had its hooks in me lately, the sight of Jack brought military dress to mind. Most of menswear descends from the uniform, doesn't it? By that measure he might be of some use to a fashion business, directly or otherwise. And why not?
I was turning it over when the chair creaked. Jack shifted toward me.
"Have you thought about which club you'll join?"
"Hm?"
"They say clubs are the flower of school life."
He was not wrong. Still, after thirty-five years of living, the notion of joining a high-school club felt faintly absurd. Jack seemed to read my face another way.
"If nothing suits, shall we make one?"
"We make one?"
He nodded.
"A survival shooting club, say. That would be good."
I had known something military was coming. Even so, survival shooting sounded as if it might actually be fun.
"If fighting with guns doesn't appeal, a physical-training club would do…"
"I don't think a single person would join."
We were still at it when footsteps crossed the threshold and an unfamiliar face came into the hall. His bangs hid his eyes completely, and yet the clean ridge of his nose alone was enough to promise a striking beauty. A face you could not forget after a single look. That must have been why.
"Hey."
"…?"
"Haven't I seen you before?"
The words spilled out of me, glad and unguarded.
"I haven't the faintest idea what you mean."
He said it. So why did his shoulders flinch?
"A little shop down a back street in London…"
"Never heard of it."
"Sunglasses and a coat…"
"Absolutely not."
"Right. If you say so."
Was I imagining it? Those unusually long legs seemed to be trembling, fine as wire.
Jack, beside me, cut in.
"You know him?"
"That's Tennessee Grosvenor."
"Where did you see him?"
"He took the oath at the entrance ceremony."
"Ah."
Jack nodded, and added a thought of his own.
"Word is he's viciously prickly. Nothing corrects a jagged character like our physical-training club…"
Spare me.
I was not even sure I would join a club at all, and here he was with physical training. Whatever I thought, Tennessee was solidly built: well over six feet, shoulders set wide, arms and legs plainly long. Nothing lacking. If anything, the balance was excellent.
"Bet he played rugby."
"Did he?"
"Nobles all have a go at rugby. I heard he was rather good."
Unexpected. And there was PE tomorrow, wasn't there? If I was lucky, I might see what he could do.
While Tennessee went to sit at the far left of the hall, I lifted my eyes to the clock. Seven fifty-five. A good while yet before class.
At nine o'clock sharp, a quiet piece of music drifted from the speakers to mark the start of class.
Chopin.
A moment later the door opened, and a man who looked to be in his middle thirties stepped inside. He took the students in with one long look, then switched on the microphone at the lectern.
"A pleasure."
"…"
"Gary Pink. I'll be your teacher for the honors class."
Class teacher, then. Something like a homeroom master. As if to crack the stiffness in the room, Gary began on himself.
"I read economics at Oxford and took my doctorate there. My field is the index fund. I spent five years as a senior at Vanguard Group, then went independent. I run a private firm now."
An Oxford doctorate, and an asset manager out of Vanguard. A man who could command several million a year anywhere he liked. Why was he keeping a high-school homeroom? He had founded his own investment company, and still he was here.
Wait.
Turned over once more, a guess presented itself. Sure enough.
"Why would a man with a record like mine teach students? Did he disgrace himself somewhere? I expect some of you are wondering."
He smiled, and went on.
"Once I had my own firm, I found something that mattered more than returns. Acquiring clients."
Of course. The students of Royal School were potential clients in their own right.
And the rich parents come boxed in with them. Splendid.
For an asset manager, it was a gold seam among gold seams. Astonishingly, Gary Pink owned the point without a blush.
"Consider it from my side. If there were no advantage of that kind, why would I saddle myself with a class teacher's duties as well? Wouldn't you agree?"
A true teacher he was not. This was business, pure and simple. A transaction. Perhaps because he was so frank about it.
I don't dislike him in the least.
What followed lifted him further in my regard.
"It would be poor form to launch straight into a lesson on the first day, wouldn't it?"
"Yes!"
They answered in one voice.
"Today I'll explain how economics will run this term, and then we're finished. Anyone who simply must have a lesson even if it kills them may play dead in the corner."
While the students laughed, he went to the whiteboard, took up a black marker, and began to write.
"This is what we will be doing this term."
"…?"
"You may recite dull theory for a hundred days, and none of it will stick. But if the investment is real? Right up until you fall asleep, every indicator will be drifting through your head."
"…!"
"Then no one will have to tell you to open a book of theory. A few of you will wear a path to my office, begging to be shown how to read a financial statement."
That was when a familiar voice rose.
"I have a question."
Every gaze found Peter, his hand shot high. Flushed, he spoke.
"H-how much money does the investment take? If we have to come up with it ourselves…"
"You needn't worry about that. A promising firm means to sponsor five thousand pounds a student."
Five thousand pounds. About ten million won. Even at a school of aristocrats, that was no small sum in a student's hands.
"So we invest the money we're given?"
"Of course."
"And if it earns…"
"It is yours, naturally."
They wore the look of people who could not quite believe it. Gary Pink drew a notebook from his breast pocket.
"A concrete case will make it plain, I think. The student who earned the most to date… let me see. Ah. In six months he walked away with more than two hundred thousand pounds."
Forty times the stake, in other words. Talk of money had a way of concentrating a room.
"Whoaaa."
Their attention climbed all at once.
"Before the next class, choose a company in which to invest. America will do. Britain will do. You must, however, be able to explain to everyone why you chose it. Succeed or fail, you leave your reasons behind."
Questions broke out on every side. How ought one choose a stock? How much had the teacher himself ever made? What was the senior who earned two hundred thousand doing now?
Of all Gary Pink's answers, one passage seized them utterly.
"That senior I mentioned? From everything he invested over the course, he built a set of indicators that were his alone. On the strength of them, he entered the economics department at Harvard."
He was not finished.
"He went through his first year, received an offer from Bloomberg, and ought to be doing data analysis there now. When I saw him in Manhattan last year, he was wearing Giorgio Armani and stepping out of a red Ferrari."
A tale that might happen once in five years, if it happened at all.
"…!"
The students looked, every one of them, as excited as if they had become that senior themselves. Well. They had all been born with silver spoons between their teeth. Harvard, and Bloomberg after it, on five thousand pounds and not a penny of their parents' help.
No wonder it bewitches them.
Perhaps he judged that sufficient.
"Shall we leave today's class here?"
As Gary Pink left the hall, a great many students poured after him in a rush, hoping, no doubt, to pick up some trick of investing. Let them.
Why didn't he take the roll?
Had I known, I would have stretched out on the grass and slept. Unlike the students whose dopamine had blown apart, I could only smack my lips at the waste of it.
Royal School had a tradition. When the new boys came in, you summoned the one at the very top and broke him to pieces. The surest method, so they believed, of fixing the order between senior and junior. The custom had not missed a year. This year, the air was different.
Are we really going to take Tennessee Grosvenor in hand?
That was why the second-year student-council room was in an uproar.
"Are we actually calling him in?"
"It's tradition. Do it the same as always. What's there to agonize over?"
Boldly said. The room stayed cold.
"If it were going to be that easy, would we be mad enough to have gathered here?"
At those words from Carl Bernstein, president of the second-year council, most of them nodded.
"E-even so, try being the first year to skip it. They'll laugh at us for the rest of our lives."
"…"
"We just lean on him a little. That would do, wouldn't it?"
Perhaps he could not believe his ears. Carl Bernstein let out an empty laugh.
"And when that reaches the Grosvenor Duke's ear, what do you propose then?"
"Well…"
"Your house is in the wine trade, I believe you said."
"…"
"One call to the haulers, telling them they are never to take your freight. Do you imagine you would last?"
"Oh, come on."
"Come on?"
"We've dealt with them more than thirty years. How could a single phone call…"
"Hopelessly naive."
"…?"
"When the Duke telephones, even the British prime minister straightens his back and lifts the receiver, you stupid bastard."
A student-council president almost never descended to the gutter. Perhaps that was why tension drew itself across every face. When the heavy silence grew uncomfortable, Carl Bernstein opened his mouth with care.
"Didn't they say someone unusual had enrolled this time?"
"Unusual?"
"There was a boy who came recommended by the Queen."
"Ah. Right. I heard his class placement was settled ahead of everyone else's…"
Here Carl Bernstein turned a wide look over the second-year officers.
"Well?"
"…?"
"What if, in place of Tennessee Grosvenor, we summoned him?"
"What?"
"Think. Recommended by the Queen, and first in his placement besides. That's justification enough, isn't it?"
"True enough. If Tennessee weren't here, calling that one would have been the obvious course…"
"Meet him first."
"That oriental?"
A nod.
"Let's see what sort of style he has."