Human Rights for a Graduate Student? (2)
Ah—no. Calm down. Let's think this through.
Lucy forced herself to reassess Gilliam's invitation to rest together.
…That's what he meant, right?
As if a man and a woman were truly just going to sit around and rest.
Lucy swallowed hard. Her mouth had gone dry all of a sudden. What underwear was she even wearing right now?
Then a sharp, grating beep-beep-beep scraped across her eardrums.
"Ah…"
The heat drained out of her at once.
"What was that just now?"
"A call bell. From Professor Fraham… my advisor."
Ganne Fraham. The academy's newly appointed professor—the one who, in the original story, had driven Lucy to a death that was half suicide and half murder.
"…She's summoning you at this hour?"
Anger roughened Gilliam's voice. Anger on her behalf. Something hot swelled again in Lucy's chest.
And still, out of pure habit, she made excuses.
"I-it must be urgent. That's why she's like that."
An excuse. One she had been making for the full three months since she first stepped into Professor Fraham's lab. One she would have kept making forever if nothing had changed—to everyone else, and more than anyone, to herself.
Say it that way and people take the hint and stop asking. I guess she can't easily leave. I guess she just has to endure it for now, they tell themselves.
"Really?"
But one socially dense young man refused the excuse outright.
"Is she really so overwhelmingly busy that she can't manage without your help?"
He knew. He knew Professor Fraham was not that kind of person. And Lucy knew it too.
But still. Because of that—
"Then what am I supposed to do…!"
Once an advisor was assigned, switching was effectively impossible. Lucy had only two options: abandon any hope of a career in academia, or keep enduring and grinding under Professor Fraham—telling herself that someday the woman would pass her thesis, someday she would let her graduate.
Unless Professor Fraham suddenly retired or dropped dead, there was no other path forward—
"Then I'll go in your place."
"…?"
And before midnight that same day, Professor Fraham was dismissed from her post for violations of academic ethics.
"……Huh?"
The moment Lucy saw Gilliam return, she blurted it out.
"H-how did you do that!?"
"I got her to admit she'd plagiarized."
"No, I mean how did you get her to do that…!"
"Mm…"
He thought for a moment.
"With ajumma?"
"What the hell does that even mean!?"
Professor Fraham's research lab. A handful of graduate students whose eyes had long since gone dead were still being worked into the ground late into the night.
Fraham had been scowling and snapping at them when she shouted toward the approaching figure.
"You're late! If you can't even show up the moment I call, what kind of research—who are you? You're not one of my students."
A hysterical old maid in her forties. That was Ganne Fraham, professor, in a single line.
"You are Professor Ganne Fraham, correct."
"I asked who you are. A freshman? Interested in mana physics?"
"Someone who knows that both your master's and doctoral theses were plagiarized."
Professor Fraham's heart lurched.
"What on earth are you talking about!?"
Of course, both theses were plagiarized. But Fraham could never, ever admit it. Doing so would be social suicide.
A game of cards…!
What information did he have? What did he want, barging in like this? A contest of digging into each other's desires and hands to get what you wanted. And there was a surefire way to seize the upper hand in a fight like that.
Shake the other person's emotions. Make them angry enough to tank their ability to think. That was Fraham's specialty.
"Just because you're some ducal heir, you think you can say whatever you please and get away with it…!"
A half-finished glass of water sat on her desk. Fraham flung its contents at Gilliam.
Splash.
"Wake up."
Drip. Drip.
Tepid leftover water that somehow smelled like an ajumma's spit ran down Gilliam's body.
"This is the academy. How about I knock that stupid pride of yours down a peg?"
An insult hard enough for an ordinary person to bear. For a lofty ducal young master, all the more so.
Heh.
Fraham smiled inwardly.
Go on, then. Fly into a rage. Then I become the poor victim who got cornered by a lunatic.
Plagiarism accusations? Just a madman spouting nonsense. No need to even respond.
But Gilliam did not so much as sway.
Of course she'd come out like this.
He already knew Fraham's character was rotten through. A scrap of academic talent and a gift for shattering people's mental fortitude—those two things alone had carried her all the way to a professorship.
This world was a romance fantasy. Losing your composure and showing an ugly side of yourself was, in itself, already social suicide.
But Fraham's attacks did not work on Gilliam. On the contrary—Gilliam had a final weapon capable of obliterating Fraham's mental state, her cool, and her composure.
One-hit kill. Strongest. Most vicious.
"Yes, ajumma."
"……………What?"
"I said I understand, ajumma."
The muscles in Fraham's face began to twitch grotesquely.
She's holding out better than expected?
He wiped the water from his clothes with a frown, as if someone had smeared vinegar under his nose.
"Ugh, ajumma, that sour smell."
Fraham shrieked like a banshee and lunged at him.
.
.
.
"And then one thing led to another, and she ended up confessing to everything."
Having heard the conversation all the way through, Lucy had no idea what to say. Too many feelings were surging through her chest at once—she didn't know where to start.
Joy. Disbelief. Vindication. The liberating knowledge that she would never have to see that woman again. Confusion. Anxiety about what came next.
But unlike her head, which had no idea what to say—
"…Thank you."
—her heart knew, and the words spilled out on their own. Along with a single tear.
"Truly, sincerely, so very much… thank you, boy."
Lucy Merhantia was free.
"I-if there's anything you want as repayment… I'll do whatever you ask."
"…Whatever I ask?"
"…Yeah."
Truly, anything. Even the "rest" a man and a woman take together—the one they hadn't gotten to last night.
"Then for about three hours starting now."
"Th-three whole hours…!?"
That long? Weren't men supposed to get tired after one round?
Her breath quickened. Her mouth went bone-dry. Three hours. Wow—three whole hours? If they did it that much, wouldn't she end up completely dyed in the boy's colors? Living next door, always available whenever he called, a convenient little—
"Let me compliment you."
"…………?"
The faculty lounge was a calm space lined with houseplants. At present, however, every professor currently at the academy had gathered there for a grave discussion.
"It was a fellow student, correct?"
"Yes. Handled… by a fellow student, they say."
Orgh Gent, the ancient languages professor who had died suddenly of a heart attack—a pre-existing condition. And Ganne Fraham, the mana physics professor who had been forced into a disgraceful retirement after her research misconduct was exposed.
If Fraham was effectively… driven out of the academy…
He made too many enemies.
Living quietly after that won't be easy…
A short female professor shuddered from head to toe.
"Th-th-that delinquent student, Gilliam Everchess… he wouldn't… possibly be thinking of killing all of us… would he…?"
A heavy silence settled over the lounge.
"…Hm."
"…U-uhhmm."
It was hard to argue otherwise. Two people were already dead—or as good as—and in rapid succession.
"If that's true… then why?"
"Gilliam was always famous as a delinquent, but not that type of delinquent, I thought…"
"C-could it be… he holds some kind of grudge against the academy…?"
Among the increasingly anxious professors, only one person remained calm: Kadisha Flareheart, who had taught Gilliam's very first class on his first day.
—Isn't it true that you, Professor, refuse to tolerate injustice, and that even if someone demanded you manipulate grades, you would never go along with it?
Was that the kind of thing someone with a grudge against the academy itself would say?
To Kadisha's eyes, it rather seemed as though every other professor was under a strange delusion.
"Perhaps Gilliam simply… isn't thinking anything in particular?"
Every gaze in the room locked onto Kadisha.
"Perhaps it's something like this. Gilliam said something without any particular intent, and Orgh Gent just happened to have a heart attack. As for Fraham… well, everyone already knew she drove her graduate students far too hard, didn't they?"
This was a romance fantasy world, where talking around things was considered a virtue. Under normal circumstances, Kadisha would never have spoken so bluntly either. But the conversation was drifting somewhere absurd, and the two people concerned could no longer hear a word of it, so she simply went for it.
And perhaps—just a little—
—What could possibly matter more than sincerity?
—the look in Gilliam's eyes when he had stared straight into hers had left some influence. That possibility was not entirely zero.
"…Flareheart, even so, isn't that a little too convenient?"
"Exactly. You're saying he just coincidentally killed two professors in a row?"
The short professor counted on her fingers as she spoke.
"O-on day one of the semester he provoked the crown prince's faction, on day two at noon he killed one professor, and on day two in the evening he shattered another professor's psyche until she committed social suicide. And you're calling that a c-coincidence?"
"That is…"
…Hmm. Hearing it laid out like that, it did sound a little suspicious.
The dean, who had been silent the whole time, finally opened his mouth.
"In any case—Flareheart, am I to understand you place some trust in Everchess?"
"Well… a little, maybe…?"
"Then this works out perfectly."
The dean smiled.
"For next week's dungeon exploration, would you take over as leader of the group Everchess is assigned to? It was originally Professor Silon's responsibility, but as you can see…"
"Eek…!!"
The particularly anxious short professor shrank into herself.
"Understood. I'll cover for her."
Kadisha sighed inwardly.
He won't just start dumping compliments on me the second we meet again… will he?
…Surely not. How much about her was there even to praise?
And yet even Kadisha found it hard to deny that some part of her was looking forward to his compliments.