11. The Academy's Spring
11. The Academy's Spring
Kirke had passed out cold. Wasn't she supposed to be a 6th Rank mage? Why was she this fragile?
And honestly, was collapsing really a proportional response to being told to stay in her lab until she finished developing the hair-loss remedy?
'You were going to have to develop it anyway because of your own hair loss, weren't you?'
All I was doing was helping her wholeheartedly with that. The ingratitude stung. I'd planned to let her keep 2% of her salary, but now I was thinking I'd cut it to 1%.
I left Kirke where she lay, hair scattered dramatically across the floor, and turned toward the door.
"Chairwoman, Student Chloe. Excellent timing."
"I—Finance Director. I'm so sorry for being out so long..."
"Apologies? Between us? It's fine."
"Finance Director...!"
The Chairwoman forgetting her schedule and wandering off was a recurring feature of daily life. It happened during the entrance exam season too.
Of course, she also routinely handled an absurd volume of work, so I factored that in. Today? Today I'd been annoyed because she didn't show up at a time we'd specifically agreed on.
Besides, wasn't the Chairwoman over a hundred years old? At that age, a certain amount of absent-mindedness was to be expected.
But if she got distracted and pulled another futures-trading stunt, that would be a problem, so I kept a watchful eye on her as she beamed at me. Then I turned my attention to Chloe.
...Why was she staring at my lips?
"More importantly, Student Chloe—are you free right now?"
"Y-yes!? Free! I'm free! Totally free!"
"Oh, good. In that case, would you mind taking Professor Kirke back to the infirmary?"
"......Excuse me?"
What? She just said she was free. If you're free, you work. Sure, I started out exploiting her labor gratis, but now she gets a scholarship and volunteer credit points, doesn't she?
If I give something, the person receiving it should do commensurate work. That's only natural. This is why I paid attention to students who came bearing bribes.
While Chloe stood there looking slightly stunned, I nudged the unconscious Kirke with my foot.
"It seems Professor Kirke is, regrettably, in too delicate a mental and physical state to continue lecturing. I'd appreciate your help."
"Well, I..."
"Unless you'd rather not..."
"Absolutely not! I'll... I'll do it."
What was this? It felt like she really didn't want to. She was agreeing but shooting me looks that screamed she wanted something in return.
Was that it? Was she angling for overtime pay since this fell outside our originally agreed-upon hours? You cunning little mercenary of a student.
How could I work her without coughing up extra pay? First the communication magic device, and now this—Chloe had clearly developed a nose for money.
"And I have one more favor to ask."
"Wh-what is it? We have a special relationship, after all! I'll do anything!"
What kind of relationship did we have, exactly?
Still, she didn't seem likely to bring up overtime pay, so I let it slide without asking.
"From now on, I'd like you to serve as Professor Kirke's guard."
"Excuse me? Guard?"
"Professor Kirke will be suspending her lectures and remaining in her lab for what amounts to a rest cure. I originally intended to send her to a proper retreat, but she refused. She claimed focusing on her research is rest."
That was the truth. I'd tried to send her. After she paid off all her penalties, surrendered her professorship, and I'd gotten some work out of her, anyway.
I had no idea why she'd refused, but she had, so here we were. Circumstances were beyond my control.
"But why a guard...?"
"Well... as you can see, Professor Kirke's current condition is, shall we say, not good."
I pointed at the bald patch on Kirke's crown and the scattered hair around her. Chloe nodded immediately, as if she understood. Anyone who looked at this and didn't understand wasn't human.
Which meant I could fabricate a little context without flinching.
"As a result of stress, she's become considerably mentally unstable. She keeps trying to leave her lab despite her own wishes, or fabricates stories, that sort of thing."
"That happens at the Magic Tower too. Mages are especially prone to mental instability."
"Which is why I'm asking you to guard her. In her current unstable state, there's no telling what kind of incident she might cause outside the lab. We can't have another hair-loss-inducer leak incident, can we?"
"That was certainly an incident the two of us personally handled. Just the two of us."
Chloe's eyes glittered. Though she kept stealing glances at the Chairwoman standing beside her—what was that about? Had they gotten into a fight or something?
'No chance.'
The Chairwoman would never squabble with a student a sixth her age. And if they had genuinely fought, Chloe wouldn't have made it back here at all.
More importantly, if they'd fought and it led to a damages claim, that would be a cost. I was begging the universe that I could trust her.
"So what exactly should I do?"
"Stand watch in front of Professor Kirke's lab at a set time each day. I know your lecture schedule, Student Chloe, and if there's a conflict, I'll speak to your professors myself."
"Every day? That's a little..."
I knew she'd balk. This wasn't a one-off favor—I was asking her to be regularly exploited.
There was no way the overtime-pay-hinting, money-hungry Chloe wouldn't realize that. She was, first and foremost, a student. At 5th Rank, there wasn't much for her to learn here, but she still needed good marks to maintain her political leverage with the Magic Tower.
But I genuinely had no other candidates.
'If I assign faculty, they'll demand overtime pay or push back about working outside their duties. If I use the Guard Corps and Kirke gives up entirely and spills everything about our deal, that'll be a headache.'
This wasn't a simple matter of assigning personnel and being done with it. I needed someone within my sphere of influence, who understood the danger of Kirke's reckless behavior, who would actually monitor her, and who would dismiss anything Kirke blabbed as lies and report it to me—someone with that level of established trust.
A few people fit the criteria, but they were all too swamped with their own work to spare time for babysitting Kirke.
However I looked at it, Chloe was the best option. She met every condition I'd just listed. The trust element was still a little ambiguous, but judging by her reaction just now, she wasn't going to believe anything Kirke said.
And most importantly, if she accepted without a fight, I wouldn't have to pay overtime.
'What to do?'
Could I get her for even cheaper?
"Of course I want to help you, Finance Director, but standing in front of a lab for hours every day..."
"...You're right. And when you add the part about reporting to me daily on Professor Kirke's movements and condition——"
"I'll do it."
"Pardon?"
"I said I'll do it. Leave it to me!"
What was this? How did her reaction flip 180 degrees that fast?
Well, good was good. If there's one thing I'd learned from my short social career, it's that when something works out smoothly, you don't ask questions.
I grabbed Chloe's hands before she could change her mind. She was not getting away.
"That's Student Chloe for you! I knew I could count on you!"
"We have a special relationship, after all. As for Professor Kirke..."
"Please take her to the infirmary right away."
"Leave it to me."
Truth was, I could've handled this myself, but I didn't want to run into the Medical Department Head—that crazy bitch. I'd rather pull another week of all-nighters than lay eyes on her.
I waved to Chloe as she levitated Kirke with magic, wearing an oddly pleased expression.
Once Chloe had gone, the Chairwoman approached me.
"Finance Director, are you sure about this?"
"About what, exactly?"
"Of course Student Chloe has handled tasks with you before, but... she's still a student. She can't possibly have the same trust built up between us. Isn't she a little hard to rely on?"
"That's true, but."
It sounded insane, but I had a gut feeling Chloe could be trusted.
Not reason—intuition. The kind of thing least suited to a Finance Director. But the feeling was there.
The Chairwoman and Chloe. These two, at least, I felt I could trust on a level beyond rationality. There seemed to be someone else in that category too, but no matter how hard I thought, I couldn't place them.
Still, if I said that out loud, I'd get an earful about relying on gut feelings.
"I've judged it to be acceptable. I'll take responsibility."
"......Responsibility."
"Chairwoman? Why the sudden look?"
"Ah, it's nothing."
First Chloe, now the Chairwoman. What was wrong with people? Had they eaten something weird?
In any case, Chloe had taken Kirke away.
Time to have a proper conversation.
"So, Chairwoman."
"Yes?"
"Have you made your decision?"
"............."
In my hand was a single sheet of paper. Out of the sixty-odd pages of the plan I'd submitted, I'd brought only the final page—for security.
It was the section with barely any text on it, so looking at it alone, you'd be hard-pressed to guess the contents.
But the Chairwoman knew exactly what it meant.
"Finance Director, perhaps a little more time—"
"I can give you more. But it seems to me you've already made your decision."
The air that had been hanging around the Chairwoman vanished. Her attention snapped fully onto the matter at hand.
That small shift alone told me she'd already made up her mind. It had only been a little over a year, but it was no exaggeration to say I'd spent the entire year working practically glued to the Chairwoman's side.
And yet she was asking for more time—because she needed courage to say the decision out loud.
The courage to refuse my proposal.
Or the courage to personally say the words: let's stage a terror attack on the academy.
"The sooner the decision, the better. So I'll say this one last time."
"Finance Director."
"If we fail, the academy will be reduced to rubble. If we succeed, it will be normalized. That's the situation, isn't it?"
And the academy was doomed to bankruptcy either way if we did nothing.
Of course, that alone wasn't reason enough to stage a false-flag terror attack. A terror attack, even a staged one, would drag in not just me and the Chairwoman but the entire academy.
But I had a method.
Not simply thanks to my knowledge of Dark Kingdom.
A method I was certain of, based on all the information I'd accumulated while serving as Finance Director.
"The odds of success?"
"There will be no outcome other than success, so I'll say one hundred percent."
"......In the end, I suppose this is my karma. How laughable. I caused all of this—every circumstance, every cause—and yet I let the Finance Director alone play the villain. Am I really in any position to agonize over this?"
"............."
"We're already one body and one mind, after all. My decision is your decision, and your thoughts are my thoughts."
"Chairwoman."
"If we're going to do it, we'd better do it right, wouldn't you say?"
The smile the Chairwoman showed me then wasn't the face of someone anxious or uneasy. It was the face of someone who had made her decision.
So I smiled back at her—the Chairwoman who had made the hard call.
As the one who'd drafted this plan, I had to look utterly confident at all times.
"Excellent! What should we do first?"
"I appreciate your enthusiasm, but given the nature of the plan, we need to choose the timing carefully. I'll need your help desperately when the moment comes, but for now, it's fine."
"True—in the plan you submitted, the execution date was during final exams, wasn't it?"
"That will be the optimal window."
Final exams. Why had I chosen exam period as the time for a terror attack? The reason was simple.
Grandis Academy's final exams were, by tradition, conducted as outdoor field training.
Meaning the academy would be empty.
"And as for who will carry out the attack."
"I've already got someone in mind."
Staged though it was, we weren't going to carry out the terror ourselves. The only one who could was the Chairwoman, and during the attack, she would have somewhere else she needed to be.
Besides, this was a terror attack. We needed people who would genuinely wreck the academy—even if their motives differed from ours.
Attacking an academy was less about material gain and more about spreading notoriety or sending a message. Naturally, a terrorist organization would want to maximize impact by killing students. But would any group target an academy that would be emptied out for finals?
One would.
"First, I plan to approach this student."
"......When I first found out, I was genuinely shocked. I never imagined they'd still be targeting the academy."
"Do you prefer someone else?"
"Not at all. If anything, those bastards are trustworthy in more ways than one."
Flutter.
What I showed the Chairwoman was a single photograph.
A magical snapshot of an ordinary academy street. At its center was a female student running with a look of urgency on her face.
"Milia."
"A 3rd Rank mage in the Administration Department. And at the same time."
I pulled a book from a nearby shelf. Not a thesis, not a self-help manual, not a professional text—the kind of book you'd expect in this office.
A collection of fairy tales. A book that seemed out of place, given the Chairwoman's age.
One of the tales collected in it was an old story passed down through this kingdom.
"In the beginning, there was a sword in this world called the Light Sword. The Light Sword possessed the power to grant wishes, but through the schemes of evil men, it was corrupted and became the Dark Sword."
"It's a fairy tale only told in rural villages these days."
"But a small number of people know that this fairy tale is true. And it'll be the villains from that very tale who stage the terror attack on our academy."
"......The Wish Order."
"They are, after all, heretics formally designated by the Church itself."
Milia was a member of that same Wish Order—and a spy planted inside the academy.
Though she'd been quiet so far. The Wish Order's business didn't start until second year, not now.
Not that any of that mattered to me.
"So first, I'll approach Milia."
"............."
"If we can't set these people in motion, the plan can't be executed to begin with."
The Chairwoman's decision was all well and good, but if the Wish Order didn't move, there'd be no terror attack at all.
The immediate objective was Milia—or rather, to prod the Wish Order into action.
The reason they had 'already' attacked the academy once in the past. The reason they had kept a spy planted here even now.
'The holy relic.'
One of the sacred objects the Wish Order worshipped was in the Chairwoman's possession. It was the kind of item only the Chairwoman—famous as a collector of artifacts—could have acquired. The Order was surely still after it.
There was just one small problem. One truly minor, trivial little issue.
"So let me ask you something."
"Yes."
"The Wish Order's holy relic. The one you acquired."
".........."
"You sold it to the dwarves, didn't you? The other day."
"Yes..."
Ha.
Now what?