The Two Problem Children (1): Orca's Mating Proposal
The two beastmen were problem children, but it started with Orca’s pairing proposal. It wasn’t like the killer whale was suggesting anything weird with a goat, of course. She obviously meant we should team up as a pair of two when we submitted our names to the list tomorrow morning. It was a smart move. Because if left alone, the one most likely to be weeded out was Orca.
Simple math. Even if the relatively cooperative seven somehow managed to form teams, one person would still be left over. And if you asked who’d want to pair with the delinquent goat or the killer whale, the answer would depend on the last person standing—but the most likely candidate was already decided.
Me.
This wasn’t about attitude. It was a matter of species itself.
“Why are you suggesting we pair up?”
“You need a partner too, don’t you?”
Orca answered grumpily. It looked like her pride wouldn’t let her admit she was reaching out to me because she had no other choice.
“Why? You think anyone from the ocean is a stinky idiot and you don’t want to deal with that?”
Origin issues.
“I don’t discriminate just because of some sea smell.”
“Hah, really now? A land-dweller who’s even part of the Twelve Tribes?”
“It hasn’t even been five minutes since you suggested pairing up, but your attitude is already something else.”
“Ugh…”
To put it plainly, this was an inferiority complex. The problem was that her pride was ridiculously high, which made her a pain in the ass. I knew that if I played along and coaxed her a bit, she’d come around. But I needed to knock her down a peg first.
“I have no intention of pairing with you.”
“Wh-what?!”
There was no need to kneel and adjust myself to her level.
“Liar! There’s no way you could even find a partner…!”
“Corvalt made me an offer.”
“…What?”
“The successor of the Blue Dragon offered to pair with me. Whether it’s because we’re both male, or because we’re both from the Twelve Tribes like you said, I don’t know.”
Orca’s inferiority complex and the cartel effect inside Cadelis. The starting lines were completely different.
“If you really don’t believe me, go ask Corvalt yourself.”
“U-uuu…!”
Orca clenched her fists and shook. From the outside she looked completely human, but the whale tail stretching behind her lower body trembled so violently it seemed ready to smash the floor at any second.
“Well, I turned him down for now.”
“What?!”
At the word “turned down,” her head snapped up as she stared at me.
“Huh…?!”
Then she flinched, quickly turned away, and crossed her arms.
“I-is that so?! Well, it is pretty surprising that you turned down the great successor of the Blue Dragon…! There’s no way he’d come crawling back after getting rejected, right?”
…This was getting fun. She was a lot easier to read than I’d expected.
“Then are you going to go propose to him instead?”
“………”
“Feel free. It doesn’t matter to me whether I end up with a partner or not.”
“What?”
“I figure I can handle things alone. No matter what kind of problem they give us for the two-person teams.”
“W-what if that becomes impossible?”
“Then I just take the lowest score and move on.”
I tapped my head lightly with a finger.
“Getting good scores in all twelve subjects is the primary goal, but if there’s a subject where pouring in resources still won’t get me a good score, isn’t it more efficient to abandon it without hesitation?”
“…Abandon a subject?”
“It’s called strategic choice.”
Like how, if the university you wanted only cared about high grades in Korean, Math, English, and Korean History, you’d cut back on elective study time. Or how, even in college, you’d settle for average in classes where an A+ was unrealistic and focus on maximizing scores elsewhere.
“Instructor Anju mentioned there are penalties.”
“Y-yeah.”
“Then you take the penalty and still aim for a perfect score. Even if it’s fifty points per person and you only get fifty? Just abandon that subject.”
“Uh…”
“Besides, we haven’t even received the score distribution for each test yet. What if the two-person team problems are only worth five points out of the hundred-point three-year curriculum? Getting zero there is fine as long as you score ninety-five on everything else.”
“…You.”
Orca stared up at me, eyes sparkling.
“You’re actually really smart!”
“…Is that supposed to be an insult?”
“I thought you were the type who’d throw a punch the second someone picked a fight with you!”
Average for beastmen. And I was no exception.
“You’re not wrong.”
“What?”
“I don’t back down from fights that come to me. Not long ago I smashed a shark beastman who tried to block my path.”
“…You’re the one who sent Sharkness flying with a single hit to the solar plexus?”
“You knew him?”
“Unfortunately. He’s been strutting around since he got here, claiming he’s the strongest marine beastman.”
Orca snorted and shook her head.
“You did good. That bastard doesn’t have any real skill—he just relies on his teeth and bite force. Getting wrecked by a goat instead of a tiger or dragon probably humiliated him even more.”
“How did you hear about it?”
“He was clutching his chest all day. You didn’t see him at the banquet?”
“Didn’t notice.”
“Pfft. He was probably too scared to make eye contact and looked away on purpose.”
Sharkness, was it? Looked like I’d earned some points with Orca thanks to that.
“Alright. Your skills seem solid, so there’s no reason to refuse. Let’s team up.”
Orca grinned brightly and thrust out her hand.
“………”
“………”
I simply stared at the offered hand.
“What the hell? Don’t leave me hanging like this.”
“Did I ever say I was making a pair?”
“What?”
“Going back to what I said earlier, it’s not like they’ll expel us if we don’t pair up. So I was wondering why we absolutely have to.”
“Y-you…!”
Weren’t we heading toward actually pairing up if the conversation kept going? Well. Not right now, at least.
“If you really need one, go find some other beastman. Who knows? Maybe if you succeed, I’ll be the only one left without a partner in Class 13.”
“You little—!”
Orca jabbed her extended hand toward me and ground her teeth.
“Just wait until tomorrow morning! I’ll find a partner and show up looking so damn good you’ll regret this!!”
She kept pointing at me all the way out the door before finally leaving.
“Hmm.”
A little disappointing.
“If she’d just asked politely with some honorifics, I might have said yes.”
A little while later, after the killer whale had left, I resumed exploring the library interior. It wasn’t just to gauge the academic level of the empire from a hundred years ago—the simple joy of learning new things was enjoyable in itself. There should be no end to learning. Just as I had taken Bastet as my master even though she was a cat beastman, because she far surpassed me in magic and alchemy, this place could become a treasure trove of new knowledge. I would probably need to visit the library often from now on. Especially any books written in the last century.
Titles like The History of Beastmen, The Era After Bremen, or The Beastmen Revolution and the New Class Struggle especially.
I was curious. What kind of content did books written by the beastman race usually contain? The level of university professors or famous sociologists? Or the equivalent of a college student copy-pasting from NamuWiki and calling it a report? If it was on the level of an AI-generated report from feeding prompts into GPT, that in itself would be proof that beastmen had reached humanity’s intellectual domain.
I needed to know. The overall intelligence level of beastmen. The books written by the highest intellectuals in academia.
Even if—
“Excuse me.”
“What is it?”
“…Why did the goat beastman come to the library?”
Even if it caused a misunderstanding.
“Who are you?”
I looked the being who had picked a fight disguised as a question up and down. Height—similar to Bleber’s. But everything else carried a red tint. Aside from the academy uniform and pale skin, her hair, eyebrows, everything was crimson. No beastman features were visible. At least on the surface, she was simply a beautiful girl with crimson hair and eyes.
“…Vermilion. Academy Class 1.”
“Sapiens Gote. Academy Class 13.”
“………”
“If you’re asking why I came to the library, I came to read books.”
I shook the book already in my hand.
“Are you library staff or something? The way you asked made it sound like you were worried I’d chew the books up and eat them.”
“Th—!”
For the first time, Vermilion’s calm voice rose.
“…My apologies.”
“Huh. You’re serious?”
I had expected it, but I never thought she’d actually approach me thinking I was a delinquent who might damage books.
“Do you think I solve my meals with paper? Then do rabbits only ever eat grass and tigers only eat meat with no vegetables?”
“…I’m sorry. I made a mistake.”
“Hmm?”
“Why are you surprised?”
“I didn’t expect an apology.”
“If I did something wrong, I should apologize. Especially… if it’s someone I’ll likely see often from now on.”
Vermilion gestured alternately toward the inside and outside of the library.
“Many people come to tour the library, but it seems only you, me, and those two actually came to read.”
Where Vermilion pointed, several bespectacled beastmen were visible. They would open a book, close it again shortly after, and instead of returning it to the shelf—‘That beast bastard?’—they simply dropped it on top of a pile and left.
“…Mister Gote. You—”
“Call me Sapien.”
“Mister Sapien. What kind of book did you come to read?”
“Social science books on understanding humans, the history of the empire, and observations about the beastman class system. You?”
“Um, well… something similar.”
Look at her. She seemed to like books, but not in quite the way I’d thought.
“Then enjoy your reading… Ah. Your instructor probably didn’t mention this.”
“Instructor Anju? You know her?”
“Yes. We have a personal connection.”
Vermilion drew an X with her hands.
“The library will allow borrowing starting next week. I figured she probably hadn’t told you.”
“……Thank you.”
I suddenly started to envy Class 1.
“Then I’ll be going.”
“Wait.”
“What now.”
“This might be prejudice, so I’m asking carefully. It’s rude, but may I ask one thing?”
“Asking that is already rude, but go ahead. What is it?”
“Um.”
Vermilion raised only her pinky finger and gave it a little wiggle.
“Are you single?”