8. Everyone's Circumstances
8. Everyone's Circumstances
The midterms were over.
The students returned to the academy, and naturally, the uninhabited island dominated conversation for a while. Most of the talk, however, wasn't complaints or protests about the exam.
"I saw it with my own two eyes, I'm telling you! The Chairwoman swung her fist and the kraken just—wham!—exploded!"
"Just a minute ago you said she folded it in half with one finger."
"Same thing! Hey, you ever tried grilled kraken leg?"
"......No."
"Then don't even talk. I want to describe the taste to you but I literally can't."
Stories about the Chairwoman and the kraken.
"You seriously survived a whole week on an uninhabited island? Is that even possible?"
"Honestly, once you live through it, it's not that big a deal. Now I'm pretty sure I could survive anywhere I got dropped."
"From what I heard, you were crying your eyes out the whole time."
"Pfft—what! Where'd you hear that bullshit! Did I quit halfway? I finished! I even got a special scholarship this time!"
"Well, I suppose......."
Tales of survival on the island, and the like.
Naturally, not every student felt that way, but most of the chatter about the exam itself was favorable. More precisely, the kraken and the survival stories buried any complaints or protests about the test.
After all, the students still at the academy cared more about the kraken and survival bragging rights than griping about the exam—and the ones with grievances were almost all students who'd dropped out midway.
Of course, given that most of those were coddled nobles, the potential for trouble wasn't zero.
"Father, I'm telling you! The exam was absolutely absurd!"
"I've already received a letter from the Chairwoman regarding the exam. She wrote with the utmost courtesy, explaining the purpose and nature of this exam and requesting our understanding."
"What?"
"Certainly the approach was drastic, but it's also true that Empire academy students were stranded and came back with serious injuries. More importantly, the son of the baron right next door to us completed the exam—I couldn't hold my head up at the count's banquet."
"Ah......."
"You know who the Chairwoman is! You know what Grandis Academy is! Do you truly believe the kingdom's finest educational institution would administer such an exam without good reason? You should be looking for ways to seize the opportunity, not bleating like some weakling unfit to be called a noble of the kingdom!"
"F-Father?"
"Get out of my sight! And don't come to me with this again!"
"Father!"
Even that, however, passed without major incident—thanks to arrangements the Finance Director had laid in advance.
The pretext: the Chairwoman, the kingdom's strongest and a hero in her own right, had written to each noble house "personally" to ask for their understanding.
The assumption: the kingdom's most prestigious academy wouldn't do something without sufficient reason.
And the social comparison: plenty of students dropped out, but plenty finished, too—and that became a measuring stick in aristocratic circles.
All of it exactly as I'd anticipated.
"The banquet costs, magic-ship rentals, travel expenses, and other miscellaneous costs ran higher than expected, but we offset a substantial portion with the kraken bounty. Compared to last year's midterms, we saved more than half."
"And you even got some rest in. A fine haul. How are the reactions to the exam?"
"Survey results from students and parents."
"......All that letter-writing was worth it, then. At this rate, we could run it annually, couldn't we?"
"Plans for that are already under consideration."
This was exactly why I'd fought tooth and nail to protect the Chairwoman's authority and the academy's reputation.
Subsidies? Donations? Honestly, I could just open up the books and be straightforward about the finances—or leverage the academy's and the Chairwoman's prestige to extract funding whenever I wanted.
But even if that put out the immediate fire, the Grandis Academy that remained afterward would no longer be the Chairwoman's academy. And when the blame for years of financial mismanagement inevitably landed somewhere, there was a high probability it would land entirely on me, the Finance Director, not on the Chairwoman.
Whether it was the royal family or some other faction, they'd keep meddling in academy operations and carving off their own share.
'Burn down the whole house trying to catch a louse.'
Bankruptcy three years out, so the house wasn't just lousy—the pillars were rotting—but anyway.
For the Chairwoman's dream, and for my own safety and future, Grandis Academy had to solve its financial problems while pretending everything was perfectly fine.
Obviously the difficulty level was in "fuck this trash game" territory, but I still had cards to play.
The existence called the Chairwoman. The reputation Grandis Academy had built as the kingdom's finest institution.
'Same fake illness—if the kid ranked dead last does it, nobody believes him. If the kid ranked first does it, people figure there's a reason.'
Thanks to that, even a survival midterm on an uninhabited island—something that would've gotten a public or private academy burned to the ground—passed without real trouble.
It was only possible because the Chairwoman had always obsessed over the quality of education and student safety.
Maybe that was why the Chairwoman's face glowed as she took my report.
In a way, the results were proof that she hadn't been wrong.
"The easy mark—ahem, Sir Julius. When did you say he's arriving?"
"Within three days, most likely. He'll be busy, but he's quite fond of Kaern as a disciple."
"Then we have a little breathing room."
"Breathing room?"
"The midterms are over. I ought to resume contact with Risha and our other bribe students, don't you think?"
One of them had asked for advance information about the exam before midterms, and I'd refused.
He'd probably just been testing the waters—he didn't seem particularly disappointed—but still, you never know.
Bribery is the art of relationships.
Which means bribery is like painting a picture where the artist—me, the Finance Director—has to run around like a madman to make the whole composition work.
The other party? They're just supplying the paint. They don't realize they're not actually the ones in charge.
'Make the rounds with the bribe students, collect more bribes or at least soothe some egos. Then process the mountain of midterm-related approval documents waiting on my desk. Then send audit letters and return the customary percentage of the security fees we collected from nobles along the archipelago route. Then catch up on the week's worth of management-theory papers I missed. Then check in with the Food Supplies Management Head or Laura to see how things stand over there. Then pay a visit to the Student Affairs Department Head and the Chief Examination Officer—they've earned it—and let them vent a little. Then meet with the Planning Department Head and the Head of Academic Affairs for a conference. Then stop by the Illusion Magic Department to verify they're properly donating that forty percent of investment returns.'
Alright. Today, just this much should do.
Maybe it was because I'd spent a full week sleeping well and resting properly—despite the mountain of work piled up, I didn't feel particularly overwhelmed.
After all, this much was just.
"The daily grind."
"The daily grind."
The papers awaiting approval on the Chairwoman's desk had also accumulated into a week's worth—seven mountains spilling onto the floor—but that was her daily grind too.
The Chairwoman and I faced each other and smiled.
A short vacation, done.
Now it was time to return to an exquisitely ordinary daily life.
*
Rus sat on the dormitory bed.
Even with her self-imposed restraints, she was still 6th Rank, and technically entitled to the finest dormitory—but Rus had refused it. Using the money from her rock-salt-mine investment, she'd rented an entire small dormitory building for herself.
If only she could share a room with Mina, that would be ideal—but students whose "admissions paperwork" listed different genders weren't allowed to room together. Which was only natural.
So Rus did nothing but sigh.
"......It really is too uncomfortable."
Living while hiding her gender was a surprisingly grueling business.
At the same time, it was a choice aimed at a fairly distant future.
Binding her chest, manipulating her ki to alter her bone structure—she'd gone this far for one reason: to get close to Professor Kirke.
'I don't know why, but in the Holy Kingdom, Kirke used only men as test subjects.'
Professor Kirke was hailed as a life-magic virtuoso and a genius, but whether she'd accumulated that knowledge through human experimentation or whether the knowledge had led her to experiment on humans—that, Rus didn't know.
What was certain was that Kirke had displayed a strangely pronounced preference for male subjects.
'Ideally, I'd deal with her here at the academy. And if that failed, she'd already know me as a man, so I could approach her as a test subject in the Holy Kingdom.'
Except Professor Kirke, for whatever reason, was doing absolutely nothing right now. Rus had glimpsed her briefly during the midterms, and Kirke had been unmistakably weaker than before.
Why on earth would a 6th Rank mage, even temporarily, drop to 5th Rank?
......As expected.
"There's too much I don't know."
It wasn't that she knew nothing at all. She knew the method to reach the 6th Rank. The rock-salt mine. Professor Kirke's doings. Adam's affairs. The academy's future.
But what Rus knew was only ever the broad outcome—nothing about the process in between.
Wasn't that why the rock-salt mine's value had plummeted before more than a few trading companies arrived?
And when it came to the academy's internal affairs, it was worse.
'I was always dead last, after all.'
In the previous cycle, she'd cared only about her own growth. She knew almost nothing about the academy's detailed circumstances or secrets.
She remembered the disturbances that had taken place at the academy, but she knew little about their causes. She only knew they would happen in the future.
And now, even that "knowledge" had become useless.
'What exactly went wrong?'
Why was Kirke doing nothing? Why weren't incidents like the professors' summoning ritual breaking out? Why had Adam met Beatrice instead of Chloe?
No matter how much she mulled it over, Rus couldn't find the reasons.
And then came this uninhabited-island survival midterm, a massive change that hadn't existed in the original timeline at all.
'First.'
She'd decided to keep her regression a secret.
Frustrated by the situation shifting for unknown reasons, she'd planned to confess honestly to Adam if nothing else worked.
'But that could actually make things worse.'
On the island, watching the "old" Adam and the present Adam overlap in her mind, she'd changed it.
The future was already changing in ways Rus didn't understand. If she recklessly revealed her regression now, there was no telling what butterfly effect that might trigger. Unable to be certain of anything, Rus had no choice but to tread carefully around irreversible gambles.
Revealing her regression was a true last resort. Even she, who didn't consider herself particularly clever, knew how enormous the repercussions of that action would be.
But that didn't mean she could sit around irresponsibly either.
"...I'll figure it out."
Even if she knew little, even if she was a failure who had ultimately failed to save the world—or to save Adam.
This regression was a miracle that wouldn't come again.
Rus steadied her tangled heart and crystallized a single goal.
──Find out why Grandis Academy collapsed.
If the academy didn't collapse, and the Chairwoman didn't die,
Then Adam surely wouldn't fall into ruin either.
'First, it's not an internal problem.'
It couldn't be an internal academy problem. Right up until Rus graduated, the academy had been fine.
If it were internal, it might be finances or factional infighting among the faculty—but the Chairwoman was the kingdom's wealthiest person and ruled the academy absolutely. No way a problem could arise out of nowhere. That much, even Rus could be sure of.
More than anything, she couldn't imagine the Chairwoman—who had blown up a kraken in a single strike—dying from something as trivial as betrayal by the faculty.
The only real worry was Professor Kirke's covert maneuvering.
'I can keep her in check myself.'
Besides, no matter how formidable Professor Kirke was, she couldn't possibly bring down an academy with the Chairwoman in it all by herself.
That left only one possibility.
'An external enemy.'
After Grandis Academy had collapsed, the entire kingdom had plunged into chaos, and Rus—who'd been abroad at the time—had been forced to rely on rumors. Naturally, being rumors, their veracity was suspect and the details wildly inconsistent.
But one thread ran through all of them.
'The Empire and the royal family tried to intervene in the academy.'
So the conclusion was simple.
Carry on with academy life as she had been. Keep Professor Kirke under surveillance. Monitor key figures like Mina and Adam. And prevent any outside interference.
Having at last set a proper goal, Rus nodded firmly to herself.
Not that any of it required immediate action from this exact moment. Realizing instead how late the hour had grown, Rus rewound her chest binding and subtly adjusted her bone structure.
'Suffocating.'
But without this, she couldn't hide her ever-expanding chest and hips. Perhaps a side effect of rocketing to the 6th Rank so fast—her physical growth had been genuinely explosive.
At this rate, within a year, even skeletal manipulation wouldn't be enough to conceal it. Would she have to wear full armor, like the youngest knight? Sighing, she stepped out of the dormitory.
Even so, today was the day the general store suddenly put eggs on sale. The regret from missing out in the "previous" cycle had stuck with her so stubbornly that she hadn't forgotten.
'Back then I happened not to have money on me and couldn't buy any.'
Now things were different. Rus was, after all, a regressor. She'd made good money from the rock-salt mine, but she still had to scrimp and save for the future.
Still, the days of being too poor to afford discount eggs—those were gone.
Rus stepped forward to change the past.
"You there."
"......Huh?"
"Rus Spero, right?"
Blazing crimson hair tied in a ponytail with a black ribbon, and a face that broadcast pure irritation—a female student blocked her path.
The instant Rus saw her face, she couldn't help flinching.
Because in the previous cycle, this was someone she had killed with her own hands.
"......Chloe Pisti."
"Of course I'd know you. Or are you the more famous one? Whatever. I have something to say."
"What...... is it?"
"I looked into it. You spoke with the Finance Director at the entrance ceremony. That's right, isn't it?"
"............."
"I've been looking into that man."
Chloe Pisti. Originally, the girl who'd grown close to Adam—so close that after the academy collapsed, they left together.
But now, here she stood before Rus with a completely different demeanor.
"I have questions for you."
"Adam Caines."
"About that man."