The Forbidden Ground (1)
KRA-KOOM!
"I object!"
The man who split the dark on the heels of that enormous blast was the professor in charge of Class Gap.
...Why is he here?
Bihyung had no choice but to stare, eyes wide. Regular classes were still a long way off, which meant this was a man who ought to have been among the anomalies—among the old things. How in the world had he learned what was happening here?
"Oof. My back."
The Class Gap professor thumped his lower back, glanced around, and searched until he found Bihyung. The moment their eyes met, he grinned.
"It's all right now. I'm here."
...What is that? A line I feel like I've heard somewhere before?
No. No, it isn't.
Anyway.
Bihyung looked at the Class Gap professor, and then at the woman walking in behind him. Black hair. Glasses with no prescription in the lenses. A woman whose eyes smiled from beginning to end. Chair of the Library Committee, and of the Discipline Committee both.
"Hmm."
Humming, the Chair looked around, spotted Bihyung, and smiled. She lifted a hand and gave a small wave.
"Junior. We meet again?"
Spiritual power she had not yet spent still clung to the hand that said it.
Did she open a gap in the barrier over this place? And the professor smashed through it? Why?
The disciplinary hearing had not even begun, and already the room was a shambles. His head throbbed.
At that moment a cold voice drifted out from where the lights were on. Several figures of the Elder Council.
"You thunderstruck fool. Do you even know what manner of seat this is, to rampage so?"
"What—the seat where you drag in some poor innocent and threaten them with discipline and the like?"
"This seat exists to decide the weight of that discipline. What kind of thoughts do you live by?"
"Well. Truth is, I really wanted to try saying I object. Just once."
"Of all the—"
Disbelief rolled off the Elder Council's side. He understood. He was in disbelief himself.
He crashed a disciplinary hearing for a reason like that?
Just then the Class Gap professor looked at Bihyung.
"That's the reason on the surface. The selfish one is that a student I'd already set my eye on might be up for discipline, so I came running."
On the way he had already met the place where it happened, and the Guardian Corps with it. He had even heard testimony that the circumstances were certain.
"Who knows? Someone might punish an innocent student for a reason that doesn't hold water."
So saying, he dropped into a seat with a thump. The meaning was plain: his eyes were wide open, and he would not forgive an unjust ruling.
"You—!"
The Elder Council seemed to have understood him perfectly. Eyes glaring, they fixed on the professor.
That was the moment.
"Enough."
The Head of the Elder Council's icy voice overturned the air of the hall.
"...But, Head."
"I told you to stop. Just now."
With a single sentence he crushed the Council's objection, then turned his head and looked down at the professor.
"So you will stop there as well. I can overlook no more of this."
"Yeah, yeah. As if you'd ever let it slide."
Even at the professor's needling, the Head's expression did not so much as shift. He turned his head, and his eyes met Bihyung's.
"A disciplinary hearing is, by nature, a proceeding that confirms whether the circumstances align, confirms the validity of the cause that led to the act, and decides the weight of the discipline."
Bihyung nodded.
"Yes."
"As the professor of first-year Class Gap said, a report has just come up from the Guardian Corps."
The circumstances were confirmed. All that remained was to confirm the justification for the act.
"Begin."
Every word is weighed. Truth is laid bare.
Bihyung recognized it, and opened his mouth.
"We were on a date."
"...A date?"
The Head of the Elder Council faltered for a moment, and the Class Gap professor was already needling him.
"Means they locked eyes and paired right up."
"...I am aware. Hold your tongue."
Wow. Provoking the Head of the Elder Council. Is our professor's backing sturdier than I thought?
Bihyung forced down the laugh that wanted to burst out, and went on.
"After that, we went into a secluded stretch of woods."
"Why?"
"Do I have to explain even that?"
He looked at Mina. She flushed and ducked her head. He hadn't even asked her to. Nice assist, Mina!
"Mmm..."
A groan slipped out. When the Head turned his head, the professor who had been wielding the blood art nodded.
"It is all true."
"Then, afterward, you were by chance invited into an anomaly's domain that had no barrier art, and you exorcised it."
The Head's words were closer to a mutter sorting the case than to a question. Bihyung did not bother to answer. He only smiled. If he answered here, it would be branded a lie on the spot, and things would turn difficult.
I've been put under this blood art dozens of times. As if I wouldn't know a way out.
The flaw in Whisper of True Void: when the circumstances of the words you've spoken really did happen, they are ruled to be truth. And he'd said they went on a date. He had never said when. That, too, was one of the gaps. It had cost him five playthroughs to pin this down.
When he posted it on the gallery, his fellow no-lifers had mocked him too. Said he was buying himself pointless suffering. But had they seen this, you entrenched fossils? In this world, there is no such thing as pointless suffering!
While Bihyung was smiling brightly, the Head's low voice filled the space.
"Then. How are we to rule on Cadet Shin Bihyung and Cadet Hwang Mina?"
Claims ran wild from every side.
"It was legitimate self-defense."
"But as for the destruction of property belonging to the Academy..."
"Is that not also a failing on Yeongwol's part, for failing to keep proper watch?"
A splendid debate caught fire, and the one who crowned its end was the Committee Chair.
"If anything, I believe we ought to reward Cadet Hwang Mina and Cadet Shin Bihyung, who prevented an incident before it could happen."
At those words, the Elder Council's gazes were just about to bear down on the Chair when the Class Gap professor clapped and cleared the air.
"Right. A hundred times right. The cadets handled in advance what the Academyneglected to manage, so of course the Academy is in their debt. Isn't that so?"
As he said it, the eyes he turned were cold.
"You old fossils. What's so precious that you have to glare at children? What the Academy has spilling over is wealth. Unlike you lot, these kids have plenty of life left. Yield a little."
Even with the heat of the room about to burst again, the professor was unbothered. If anything, he wore his usual smile and scrubbed Bihyung's and Mina's heads.
"Let's go, you walking disasters. I owe you a bit of a sermon."
The professor hauled Bihyung, Mina, and the Chair out all at once.
That was the moment.
The Head's art of transmitted voice reached the professor's ear.
"Shinhoo."
"You threw such a tantrum about wanting to teach that child, and now you cover for them. Are they so precious a student?"
The professor, Shinhoo, answered with a thin smile and sent a transmission of his own.
"They are. As you can see, they're brats who do nothing but cause trouble—but they're rather fun, aren't they?"
For an instant the Head was caught in the professor's gaze.
"Rather like you and me."
By the time Shinhoo, having said so, led the children out of the space, the Head was turning the words over.
The same as me and that rascal, he says...
Thinking it, the Head let a breath of laughter slip before he knew it.
Is that so.
Well now.
This looks to become quite an amusing relationship.
The Head's gaze took in several of the other elders. A biting chill stirred in that gaze, and was gone.
"Whew. Old fossils. Would you look at those vicious eyes."
The instant they were out of the chamber where the hearing had been held, the professor stretched long and hard, then flicked Bihyung and Mina on the forehead. Tok. Tok.
"Honestly, you disasters. Stirring up an incident like this before regular classes have even started?"
"No, Professor, that's not—"
"What do you mean, no? Couldn't keep that hot blood of yours in check?"
At that, Mina flushed all the way to her earlobes and ducked her head. Bihyung, by contrast, was simply dumbfounded.
How low-grade can you get...
But he had nothing to say in his defense. That very move was the one he had used to slip Whisper of True Void.
Nothing for it but to take it...
Just as he made his peace with that—
"Professor. I don't believe that's correct."
The Chair smiled brightly and denied the professor's words outright.
"Hm? And why are you— Ho? Well, look at this."
Whatever about the reaction amused him so much, the professor looked from the Chair to Bihyung to Mina, and then burst out laughing.
"Hahaha! My, my. Our Cadet Bihyung is a real prize. A prize, I say."
"...More importantly, Professor, how did you get here? You were supposed to be in the anomaly's domain."
At Bihyung's question, the professor indicated the Chair as he answered.
"The Chair came rushing over, saying a hearing had been opened. So I asked the other professors to cover my post and hurried out."
When Bihyung looked at the Chair, she only smiled.
She moved the moment she heard a disciplinary hearing was being held? And when the ruling came, she had gone beyond defending them and insisted they ought to be rewarded.
I owe her.
Bihyung offered her his thanks, then looked to the professor.
"Thank you as well, Professor."
"...Thanks, my ass. A teacher is supposed to be that kind of person."
Perhaps embarrassed, the professor scratched hard at his head and said it gruffly.
"Well. The Academy caused a mess of its own."
For an instant, the professor's eyes went cold.
"An anomaly's domain is supposed to be warded with barrier arts. No matter how thoroughly an anomaly has been subjugated, no one can say what harm might come if cadets are exposed to it."
And yet there was no trace of any barrier art. That could mean only one thing.
"Someone dispelled the barrier art on purpose."
Bihyung had already known. He only nodded.
"So the responsibility isn't yours alone. If we're splitting the fault, call it three parts you and seven parts the Academy."
The professor grinned and clapped Bihyung on the shoulder.
"I'm not saying you did nothing wrong. But don't let yourselves be cowed more than you need to."
Haaahm.
Having said so, he yawned hugely and waved a hand.
"Then I'll be off. I have to go back into the anomaly's domain. Ugh. A life where I can't catch a wink of sleep, starting all over again."
Before he left, the eyes he turned on Bihyung and Mina flashed for an instant.
"Ah, right. And whatever the Academy gives you as compensation, show it to me once you've got it. I may not look it, but I'm decent at appraisal. All right—I'm really going."
With those words, the professor vanished like the wind. As if he had never been there at all.
Bihyung was staring blankly at the empty place, startled, when a voice pulled him back.
"Junior."
The Chair's voice returned him to reality.
"...Yes?"
"This incident. They called it self-defense, but it was dangerous."
At some point her faint smile had stepped right up beside his ear. A small voice brushed his earlobe.
"Well. Rather than self-defense—this time too, just like the library, you were the one who started it, weren't you, Junior?"
For an instant Bihyung hid his surprise and played innocent.
"...I'm not sure I follow."
"Hehe. Let's say that's how it is."
As if she knew everything and had decided to pretend otherwise, she set a finger to her lips. Shh.
That was the moment.
"...Senior. Isn't your face a little close?"
From somewhere beside him—he didn't know why—came the cold voice of Mina, who had been walking with them.
...Why? It's clearly spring. So why does there seem to be a chill in the air?
He turned his head, and there was Mina, smiling. She was definitely smiling... so why, behind her, could he see the shape of a growling puppy?
"Hm?"
The senior Chair seemed to have noticed as well. Wearing a look that said this would be fun, she let an even more bewitching smile spill free.
"Oh my. I only needed to whisper something to our junior for a moment."
"It's just the three of us right now, isn't it? There shouldn't be any need for that."
"Well... isn't a whisper, at its root, a secret that belongs to two people alone?"
Kzzzt!
He didn't know why, but the sound effect rose in his head all on its own.
...Are sparks flying between those two's eyes? I'm imagining it, right?
"Lord."
At Eodugi's voice, arriving just in time, Bihyung tried to turn his thoughts somewhere else.
But.
"I apologize, Lord, for ever saying you seemed to have no interest in women!"
And why are you like this now.
...Is there not a single normal person here?
Bihyung swallowed a sigh and meant to head back to the dormitory. He needed a refuge for his mind.
That was when he felt the phone in his pocket trembling in fine little bursts. He drew it out and checked, and there was a message from the Academy.
Cadet Shin Bihyung has been granted a single entry into the Forbidden Ground.
"...The Forbidden Ground?"
"Hm? Did you just say the Forbidden Ground?"
At Bihyung's mutter, the Chair's head whipped around. Those sharp eyes of hers had gone round as a rabbit's.
She could hardly help it.
The Forbidden Ground of Yeongwol Academy. Even Bihyung, entrenched as he was, knew it well. At the earliest, the middle of Act Two of the main story. At an ordinary pace, you didn't learn what the place was until you were into Act Three.
And now he was going in.
...Is this even the right speed for the story?