11. The Academy's Spring
11. The Academy's Spring
This proposal was a thick one.
That was only natural. It would obviously be the single largest project of my year-long tenure as Finance Director.
Knowing how difficult it would be to persuade the Chairwoman, I'd taken every precaution possible.
The result was a document dense enough to double as a blunt weapon.
"Finance Director, even so, this is..."
"Madam Chairwoman, please begin with the third section of the table of contents, page 13, paragraph 2."
"Hm? Ah, this part? ...Julius?"
"Sir Julius proposed it to the academy recently."
The official pretense was an exchange of greeting letters. Since he and the Chairwoman had once traveled together as comrades, there was nothing odd about it.
His actual letter contained little more than formal well-wishes for the upcoming festival and a few polite inquiries.
I was the one who wrote back.
"I asked him to select whichever merchant company's upcoming trade route looked the most promising."
"W-wait a moment. That's—"
"With Sir Julius's luck, he'll undoubtedly pick the company poised for the greatest profit."
Yes. It was exactly what she thought it was. A donation in thin disguise.
Hadn't Grandis Academy refused all donations and subsidies until now? It had. But from now on, that policy was changing.
"But accepting donations, this is..."
"I understand your concerns perfectly. Accept donations or subsidies, and you can't refuse the royal family's or the donors' demands—audits of the academy's finances, influence over operations, the right to appoint graduating students to positions, and so on. Wasn't that precisely why you'd funded everything entirely from your personal fortune?"
"...But now—"
"We no longer have the money to keep doing that."
"E-even so, we've been earning income from multiple sources lately, haven't we? Can't we just keep doing that?"
The Chairwoman wasn't wrong. Artifact reimbursements, food-supply cost reductions, salary cuts for the magic department professors, Sir Julius's compensation—I'd scraped together revenue from every angle over the past three months. We'd even posted a surplus for the first time.
But as Finance Director, I understood the reality.
This was never a sign that our finances had stabilized. We'd merely bought ourselves a moment to catch our breath.
"Can we sustain that kind of income every day, every month, every year? The very next month, can we generate the same revenue again? Everything up to now has been the result of luck and plans clicking together just right. Nothing more."
"..."
"My goal isn't simply to pull Grandis Academy back from the brink of bankruptcy. As Finance Director, my ultimate objective is to establish a state where the academy can maintain complete financial stability over the long term, without requiring your intervention or mine."
Just avoiding bankruptcy three years from now? Honestly, if that were all, I could simply expose the whole financial mess and start taking subsidies and donations. Problem solved.
But doing that would shatter the dream the Chairwoman held when she founded this academy—and I'd very likely end up physically shattered myself, taking all the blame.
Even if I survived that, the academy would no longer truly be hers. An 8th Rank transcendent who'd revealed her financial incompetence to the world would see her standing plummet, no matter how fearsome her power.
What followed was predictable. Grandis Academy would become just like any other private academy.
Some might ask what was so wrong with that—might even call it a positive change.
...But one look at the Chairwoman's face made it abundantly clear that for her, that was the worst possible outcome.
'Even setting aside that the current Grandis Academy is the physical realization of everything she dreamed.'
The academy was a place the Chairwoman had poured decades of her life into building. Everything had been constructed from her personal fortune. There wasn't a single corner of this institution her hands hadn't touched.
If an academy like that slipped from her grasp, what would be left for her?
Money? She'd already spent it all. Standing? It would fall as far as it could fall. Her dream? Shattered into pieces.
Something like that—
—I'm sorry, Finance Director.
—I'm such a fool, what a hopeless fool of a Chairwoman I am...
"..."
"...Finance Director? What's wrong all of a sudden?"
"Nothing. My mind just went blank for a moment."
Why did this keep happening lately? My thoughts or words would cut off midstream, and in that gap I was clearly remembering something.
But once even a little time passed, I couldn't recall what it had been.
It nagged at me, but I forced my attention back to the proposal.
"In any case, assuming we can keep generating income the way we have been is arrogance. For the academy's long-term survival, we need a fixed revenue stream."
"And that is..."
"Donations."
There was nothing novel about it. Any normal private academy—and back in my original world, every university—accepted donations.
They'd invest those funds or place them in endowments, creating foundation-level income. Returns from those endowments were often the single largest source of funding keeping a university afloat.
But we'd excluded all of that for the sake of the Chairwoman's dream and convictions.
Honestly, it was a miracle we'd managed to hold on for decades.
"Grandis Academy, in particular, has reigned as the kingdom's premier institution for decades. Among its graduates, there exists a bond so strong they call it the Grandis Cartel. And since those alumni come from the finest school in the land, they occupy high-ranking positions across every sector."
"..."
"We've refused their donations at the institutional level until now, but if we begin accepting them properly, the revenue will be enormous. That much is obvious."
To be blunt, just the rough projected figures alone would be enough to stabilize our finances almost immediately—bankruptcy three years from now wouldn't even be a concern.
But had she and I really refrained from this approach simply because we hadn't thought of it? Of course not. We'd avoided it for all the reasons I'd just outlined.
So now that I was bringing it up, the Chairwoman had every right to be exasperated.
Which meant the real substance of the plan began here.
"However. If we suddenly start accepting donations after decades of refusing them, everyone will suspect the academy's finances have deteriorated. At worst, the royal family, major merchant companies, and great noble houses could demand a financial audit."
"I could just beat every last one of them away."
"You certainly could. But the royal family would go to any lengths to push an audit through, if it meant they could slip one more leash around your neck, however slim the chance."
The Chairwoman had been granted territory in the kingdom, but that alone hadn't put the royal family at ease. That was why the king himself had personally offered her an artifact not long ago.
The Chairwoman was the kingdom's greatest military asset. If she were ever to defect to the Empire—even hypothetically—the kingdom would struggle to hold onto its position as the continent's second power. So they treated her with the utmost deference, but they would also seize any weakness they could find with everything they had.
'They wouldn't necessarily try to threaten her over the finances, of course.'
Push too hard and a furious Chairwoman might defect in a fit of rage. More likely they'd try to coax her gently.
We'll provide you with subsidies. You'll never have to worry about money again. In return, pledge your loyalty to the kingdom. Accept a title and swear fealty. Submit to periodic royal audits...
The established powers always paid the closest attention to anyone who could threaten their position. To the royal family, the Chairwoman was both an honored guest to be treated with the highest courtesy and, simultaneously, the number-one priority to bring under control by any means necessary.
Decades of outward behavior that made her seem far more docile than in the days when she'd earned those chilling epithets—the Human Butcher, the Mad Dragon—only reinforced that calculus. They likely assumed that running an academy had softened her, turned her into a pushover.
Couldn't she just overturn it all by force? She could. In exchange, a whole garden of complications would bloom for the academy's future operations. The royal family would pressure the nobles to stop sending their children to Grandis Academy, or they'd blatantly prop up a rival private institution.
If the kingdom's greatest power were granted everything she demanded, royal authority itself would be eclipsed. From the royal family's perspective, the goal was to walk that delicate line—keeping the Chairwoman within the kingdom's fence while yielding as little ground as possible.
This was why even rumors of financial trouble had to be avoided. The royal family would pounce on them, whether slowly or aggressively.
So we needed a triggering event.
'Like Kirke's declaration of conscience.'
A catalyst and a justification that would let us openly accept donations without anyone suspecting financial distress.
"The triggering event..."
"Is a terrorist attack. A staged one, of course."
The academy was attacked by terrorists. To repair damaged buildings and so on, we're accepting donations from our alumni. Only a madman would find anything suspicious in that chain of logic.
The Chairwoman was publicly known as one of the wealthiest individuals in the kingdom, but when your alma mater has been bombed and urgently needs repair funds, it's only natural to donate and help out.
And if we added that we'd be collecting modest ongoing donations from alumni 'in preparation for any future terrorist attacks'?
Some might still suspect, but that suspicion wouldn't spread like wildfire. The royal family would only move to audit us when they had absolute certainty, since a failed audit attempt would inflict enormous political damage.
"...Even so, the royal family might still suspect. It's too dangerous."
"Correct. I've presented the best-case version. If things go poorly, they could go catastrophically poorly."
"And you know that, yet..."
"We must do it anyway, Madam Chairwoman."
"..."
"If we don't take measures like this, the academy will never escape the shadow of bankruptcy."
There's a clear difference between performing major surgery while accepting the risk of failure, and spending a lifetime on palliative care. Especially when even that palliative care is precarious.
Truthfully, this was a plan I could only conceive because I wasn't as emotionally attached to Grandis Academy as the Chairwoman was. From her perspective, it must feel like demolishing a beloved home in order to repair it.
Was this why failing enterprises brought in outside hires as CEOs?
But even so, I did consider this place my—
—This place is our home, Finance Director.
—Home, you say?
—You grew up an orphan, didn't you? From now on, this academy will be your hometown and your home. I swear it on my life. I promise.
'...What is this, really.'
I almost wished I could forget that I'd remembered anything at all. But the distinct sensation of having forgotten something lingered, and that made it all the more unsettling.
This time, I kept it off my face and continued explaining the plan to the Chairwoman.
This had never happened before this year. Had it started around the entrance ceremony?
"This plan is extremely risky. It borders on gambling. The intermediate steps are delicate, the variables are numerous, and the odds of a clean resolution afterward are low."
"..."
"But if it succeeds, the returns will be commensurate."
High risk, high return.
In the end, the decision rested with the Chairwoman. This wasn't something I could ram through unilaterally, nor something I could demand from her by sheer obstinance.
That was doubly true because the Chairwoman's cooperation was absolutely essential for the 'terrorist attack' to work at all.
The Chairwoman, who had started reading the thick proposal from the beginning again at my concluding remark, finally spoke.
"Could you... give me some time? This is simply too—I mean—"
"I understand. Just bear in mind that our circumstances don't allow us much of it."
"I... will."
Pushing any further would only backfire. She knew as well as I did how drastic the plan was, so I left her to her thoughts and stepped outside.
The Grandis Academy Terror Plan. Drafted by the academy's own Finance Director.
It sounded like a sick joke, but it was the fastest, most effective shock therapy I could devise.
Three days ought to be enough time for her to think it over.
'In the meantime, I'll clear the rest of my plate.'
I still had plenty to do. Routine paperwork and financial tasks were just the daily grind—there were other matters demanding my attention.
The festival was over, which meant I could finally chase down Kirke, whom I'd been too busy to corner. I needed to hear her excuses about the compensation and whatever the hell had happened with that ingredient analyzer.
I'd reached an agreement with Kassandra, so I had to track down the protagonist and discuss the student council situation.
Once Sir Julius's reply arrived, I needed to pick the merchant company and invest accordingly.
And since the volume of incoming bribes had grown, I'd have to schedule follow-up meetings with Risha and the others to keep those relationships well-oiled.
'Right, Beatrice too.'
I'd heard she'd been working part-time jobs to earn money lately. I had no idea why she'd stoop to that, but whatever the reason, it was thanks to her that I could acquire military-grade stimulants on the cheap.
I ought to see if she had anything else to offer and collect a bribe while I was at it.
I was mentally sorting priorities as I headed toward my office when—
"Wake up! Wake up!"
"Stop exploiting the professors!"
"Stop whipping the professors for the academy's glory!"
"...What the hell?"
Voices drifted in through the window.
Given that my office was practically at the top of the building, they had to be using magic amplification to project their chants. More to the point, some of those slogans were not things I could let slide.
Frowning, I approached the window and looked down.
"Protect the professors' rights!!"
"The academy is not above the law!"
"Freedom for the professors! Students deserve quality lectures!"
There were people down there spouting absolute horseshit.
No, let me correct that. I'd owe the horses an apology. Let's just say they were spewing stupidity.
What was this even about?
"Adam! There you are!"
"Laura?"
"It's a disaster! Right in front of the building...!"
"I just saw."
Was I seeing this correctly? The ones holding those placards weren't graduate students. They looked like ordinary undergraduates.
Students protesting for their professors' welfare? Seriously?
Weren't you the same breed who'd happily bury a professor alive if it meant a canceled lecture or a higher Rank?
"For now, the Food Supplies Management Head is handling the response! The Student Affairs Director is away, and the only other department heads here are...!"
"Myself, the Food Supplies Management Head, and the Head of Academic Affairs. That's it."
The Chief Examination Officer worked in a different building to begin with, and the Guard Corps Commander was probably out on patrol.
The Planning Department Head had collapsed from festival exhaustion and taken leave, which left just the three of us.
The highest-ranking among us was the Head of Academic Affairs, given his seniority, but that old fossil might well interpret the students' chants as defiance against the Chairwoman and go charging in headfirst.
The Food Supplies Management Head, for his part, had little experience dealing with students directly.
Which meant the only department-head-level person who'd been a student just a few years ago and could actually handle this unrest...
...was me, obviously. No wonder Laura had come running in a panic.
"Understood. Lead the way, Laura."
"R-right!"
"Brief me as we go. What exactly are those little bastards saying?"
"Well..."
"Laura?"
"During a lecture that started after the festival... a magic-department professor collapsed in the middle of class. The scene was apparently so ghastly that—"
"Collapsed? Ghastly how? Did he cough up blood or something?"
"No, not blood. His hair fell out."
Ah.
I had a pretty good idea who that was.
"The professor was admitted to the infirmary, and the class was canceled. But then a bunch of students immediately started protesting. Saying things like, 'Stop overworking the professors'..."
So, let me get this straight.
Kirke lost her hair mid-lecture and had to cancel class, and now the students were rallying "out of concern for their professor"? Without knowing the details, just assuming it was the academy's fault?
Fine.
'The Student Affairs Director would smooth this over gently on his own.'
But if Kirke was involved, the equation changed.
I didn't know whether this was intentional or not, but a perfect set of scapegoats had just presented themselves.
"Let's go."
"A-Adam?"
Could this academy ever have a quiet day?
If this dragged on, it might prolong the Chairwoman's deliberations—and I didn't need that.
"We're going to cut costs."
Since things had already gotten to this point, I'd start by assessing the situation.
And while the Chairwoman made up her mind, I'd find some "small work" to keep myself busy.