Lilith Rosewood's Melancholy (1)
The news that Harold had been newly appointed as a professor spread through the Swordsmanship Department like wildfire.
Which made sense, considering how famous the man was. A war hero, after all.
He was a legendary Sword Master whose name no one in the Empire who could so much as swing a blade would fail to recognize, so the rumor raced not only through the Swordsmanship Department but across every other department in the Academy as well.
So that's why Ethan wasn't at the estate on our last day there…
To think he'd been preparing to take a temporary professorship at the Academy during that time.
When I first came face to face with Harold, who had chased us all the way to Luminor Academy, a scream nearly tore out of me on the spot. Thank goodness I was too stunned to even let it out.
I had a rough idea of how he'd come to take the professorship, though.
The Empire was hardly the sort to leave a war hero like Harold to idle away his days managing a territory. Even if he had retired from his seat as one of the King's Three Blades, he was still, in sheer martial power, one of the ten strongest individuals in the Empire.
Every institution under the imperial banner had surely been courting him for years. He must have turned them all down one after another, only accepting the temporary Academy post for this particular semester.
…Though given that a "temporary" professor can extend his term as long as he pleases, I had my doubts about how temporary it really was.
"I never dreamed Father would follow me all the way to the Academy. I suppose he must have grown lonely at the estate with me gone, haha…"
"…Yes, my lord. Perhaps, contemplating the absence of the young master who graced the estate every day, he felt compelled to."
Ethan, for his part, was merrily chattering away about things that suited him just fine, so all I did was offer the appropriate agreeable responses.
And honestly, Ethan had little to complain about. With his own father holding a professorship in the Swordsmanship Department, earning good grades would become infinitely easier.
Few among the other Swordsmanship professors could rival Harold's standing or achievements, so most of them would naturally grade him favorably just to stay in the old man's good graces.
Not that Ethan needed such shortcuts — he'd pull excellent marks in any of his subjects on merit alone.
…The real problem, if there was one, was my end of things.
Now that Harold existed within the Academy, sword-training sessions between him and Ethan had become an event that could occur at any moment.
During the weekly Fundamentals of Magic-Swordsmanship lecture, certainly — and there was every possibility he might institute regular weekly sparring sessions at the estate, just as he had before.
In the final stretch back home, Ethan had been taking a bout off Harold roughly once every two weeks. If Ethan — somewhat stronger now than he'd been then — resumed sparring at that same frequency…
He might come back having lost to Harold every single week.
Troubling.
Genuinely troubling.
And with good reason: the dormitory room Ethan and I currently shared was not a space meant for the two of us alone.
With only a not-particularly-thick door separating us from the room Isabel lived in, continuing our customary practice of providing him with chest… compensation was fraught with danger on every front.
The moment a moan slipped out by accident, we'd be caught. One hundred percent.
But quitting cold turkey something we'd always done? That was more than my pride could stomach.
A man doesn't make a promise and then break it in such a pathetic fashion. …Even if the body in question was Lilith's.
Well, no sense agonizing over it yet, I suppose.
For the problem to even matter, Harold and Ethan's sparring sessions would have to actually happen — and Ethan would have to actually lose to him.
Harold had only just taken up the temporary post, so his schedule would be packed for a while, and even during lectures he couldn't very well spar one-on-one with every single student.
With barely ten days elapsed since the Academy term began, conditions were far from ripe for the two of them to cross blades. Their schedules might never align at all.
Viewed that way, worrying now was simply foolish. Thinking of it like that did put my mind at ease.
Harold doesn't seem to teach anything besides Fundamentals of Magic-Swordsmanship anyway, and even if Ethan did end up sparring with him somewhere else, it'd be impossible to prove I didn't see it.
I just had to dodge that one lecture a week. One single lecture. That was all.
I was doing my best to soothe myself with such thoughts.
…The sparring match between Ethan and Harold arrived far, far sooner than I had anticipated.
Exactly two weeks had passed since I'd begun attending Luminor Academy alongside Ethan.
Today was the day of our shared lecture — the one that came around once a week. Harold's lecture, tragically enough.
The moment morning classes ended, I hurriedly gathered my things and made a swift exit from the classroom, slipping out of the Magic Department building.
If I dawdled, Ethan would come all the way to the Magic Department building to fetch me again.
Two weeks in a row of Ethan coming to collect me was, no matter how I looked at it, a dereliction of duty on my part as his exclusive maid…
"Oh, Lilith. Looks like your class let out a little early today."
"…Young Master Ethan."
"Ah, just so we're clear, I wasn't waiting for you or anything. It felt like a waste to sit around the Swordsmanship building, so I was thinking of taking a stroll around the Academy."
"…What a coincidence indeed. That in the middle of your stroll, you happened to pass in front of the Magic Department building at precisely the hour my class ends."
"Right? Truly a remarkable coincidence."
…This boy gets more shameless by the day.
Anyone with eyes could see he'd come all the way here just to fetch me, and yet there he was, putting on an act.
The moment I warned him it was unbecoming conduct for an employer, he immediately switched to behaving like this — honestly, I was beginning to harbor the perfectly reasonable suspicion that he was doing it precisely to fluster me.
"Isn't the student cafeteria considerably closer to the Swordsmanship building than to the Magic Department building? Why must your route always be so needlessly inefficient…?"
"I'm hungry, so let's hurry, Lilith. Father's lecture is this evening — we can't be late."
"That is certainly true, my lord, but…"
"If it bothers you that much, why not just take off that lace cuff and headdress? Then you wouldn't need to bother with all the formalities of an exclusive maid—"
"Absolutely not."
"…W-well, if Lilith objects, I suppose there's nothing to be done."
This was the one thing that could prove I belonged to the Blackwood household, and I intended to display that certification at all times.
Besides, I'd already attended the Academy in full uniform for two weeks now — if I suddenly stopped, the rumors would fly that Ethan had fired me.
Unnecessary complications were to be avoided on every front. Which meant I had to give my all to the role of Ethan's exclusive maid until the day I graduated from the Academy.
That was how Lilith survived Luminor Academy.
The second week of Harold's Fundamentals of Magic-Swordsmanship.
The instant the afternoon session began, Harold appeared in the indoor training hall and, surveying the assembled students, announced the day's lesson before anything else.
"To assess each of your approximate skill levels, from today onward we will pair off for sparring practice."
The orientation-style first session had drifted by without much substance, but from the second week onward, it seemed the class was entering its real meat.
"Before you pair up for sparring, the four I name now will step forward separately."
A few students of the Swordsmanship Department began glancing around uneasily, wondering if their own names might be called — and the instant the first syllable left Harold's mouth, the selection criteria became obvious at once.
"Gehwa-joses-gigwat Volt."
"Ethan Richard Blackwood."
"Natalie Sharp."
"Caraham Samuel Auguste."
…Right. Of course it would be this group.
From the very first name he called, I grasped immediately what kind of group this was — an assembly of honor students… no, of those in the beyond-human tier.
Among the first-years of the Swordsmanship Department, there wasn't a soul who could defeat any one of those four, let alone all of them.
If those monsters had been mixed in among ordinary students and paired off for sparring, their unfortunate partners would simply have ended up pummeled black and blue for nothing.
"You four are forbidden from sparring with any other students. Your bouts will be against each other and each other alone."
"Yes, sir!"
"I trust you four understand better than anyone why I've set you apart. Am I wrong?"
"Yes, sir! We understand!"
True to a bunch whose specialty was the blade, their answers brimmed with nothing short of confidence.
And Natalie especially, answering with her chin high and her expression fearless amid those three men, was rather adorable.
If nothing else, enrolling at Luminor Academy has definitely paid off in ways like this.
Just getting to see Natalie — my favorite character from my past life — in the flesh, alive before my eyes, meant I'd arguably already accomplished half of my reason for entering the Academy.
Anyone who came to know her charm, I was certain, couldn't help falling for her. She was pretty, of course, but what made her so magnetic was that bold, unshakable personality of hers.
The way she stood tall and answered with perfect composure, the lone commoner with no magic at all, surrounded by mana-wielding nobles and the Hero himself.
Watching her hold her ground, the only woman in a crowd of men and never once cowed, it still felt like I was looking at the Natalie from the game I'd played in my past life, and a fond smile crept across my face.
If I were still my old self, I'd have been hammering the print screen key at every change in her expression, never mind the special CG collection.
It was honestly a pity, in so many ways, that I couldn't save the image of her orange ponytail whipping in the breeze.
And yet… my heart doesn't race the way it used to.
Maybe it was simply because I'd spent too long living as Lilith in the world of Luminor Academy.
Not that this body could ever end up with Natalie, and the girl already had her childhood friend Thomas, anyway.
It was never my place to meddle in a love that the protagonist, Gehwa-joses-gigwat, was deliberately leaving alone.
Simply watching from afar as my favorite character from my past life breathed and moved before me was more than enough.
"…"
That I could no longer feel romantic desire toward a character I had once loved was, in one sense, a relief.
…And yet, being unable to feel again an emotion I had once carried — that melancholy, in the end, was an irresistible force of nature.