The First Day of the New Semester
“Should I put this over here?”
“Yes, please! Thank you!”
The weather was neither hot nor cold. If you stood still, a gentle breeze would brush past you. The sky was clear, and the clouds hung high. There couldn’t be a better day to prepare for a new semester.
“Oh, uh, I can handle that myself.”
“Not at all. Please, Professor, just rest comfortably.”
“Besides, how could we ever dare to make a noble do such work?”
“Well, I really don’t mind, but…”
It had been over twenty years since I reincarnated into this world, but being treated like a noble still felt incredibly awkward. I was only twenty-eight, yet here they were, moving my luggage as if I were some high-ranking aristocrat. It didn’t sit right with me to watch men who looked old enough to be my parents doing all the heavy lifting.
“My, you’re quite impressive, though. You look about the same age as my son, yet here you are, already a professor at the Academy.”
“Oh? Ah, haha, yes… I was just lucky.”
At those words, memories of my past life flickered through my mind. Before coming here, my profession was a high school teacher. I was a bit of an elite, having passed the teacher certification exam on my first try without even needing a gap year. Of course, I died before I could even finish my first year of tenure.
Maybe that was why? Even after being reborn, I had always been hungry to teach someone.
“Wait? You could become an Academy professor just by luck?”
“Don’t be silly, of course not. He says that, but he must have put in effort we can’t even imagine. My apologies, Professor. This fellow doesn’t know what he’s talking about…”
“No, it’s fine. You don’t need to apologize.”
It was true that I was lucky, though. What else would you call being born as a noble in a medieval-esque world? Thanks to that, I was able to enter the Academy without any real obstacles, and after graduating as the valedictorian, I was able to return here as a professor.
“But if you don’t mind me asking, which subject are you in charge of?”
“That’s right. You’re so young, perhaps the Magic Department?”
“Ah, well…”
“What are you all doing there?”
Just as the workers’ curiosity was about to spill over, a cold woman’s voice cut in from behind.
“…Oh, my. We’ll be going now!”
“H-if you need anything else, please let us know! We’ll come running right away!”
And just like that, the workers fled as if they had encountered the Grim Reaper himself. Soon, only two people remained in the professor’s office. She stared at the door the workers had exited through for a moment before bowing her head toward me.
“Greetings, Professor Darren. I am Aisa Veritas, and I will be serving as your secretary. You may call me Aisa.”
“Ah, yes. Hello, Aisa.”
“…? You may speak informally to me.”
“Oh, that… I’ll take my time with that.”
Still, it felt a bit odd for colleagues to switch to informal speech the very first day they met. She didn’t seem to mind, though. She just started rummaging through her bag without a word, and I could immediately tell what kind of personality she had.
“I have organized the necessities for you while you were visiting the Imperial Palace.”
“Ah, right. Thanks.”
I’d like to get along with the people I work with, but I guess I’ll think about that later. For now, it was time to check these documents.
‘Doesn’t look like the curriculum has changed much since I was a student…’
The Academy in the capital was a hybrid between the high school and university systems of my past life. Students entered at seventeen for a three-year course. In the first year, like high school, they were divided into classes and took a balanced variety of subjects. From the second year, they chose a major and picked their own classes, like in university. When I was a student, the atmosphere was so suffocating that just graduating by twenty was considered an achievement, but that didn’t seem to be the case anymore.
‘Well, it’s not that kind of era anymore, anyway…’
You know how novels always start by setting a grim atmosphere with talk of a “war-torn era”? That happened to be the exact time I was attending the Academy. Countries were being wiped off the map and split apart every few months, so the history professors never had a chance to get rid of their dark circles. And don’t even get me started on the Fencing or Magic departments. They were constantly being chewed out by the Emperor, screaming about raising the students into elite soldiers.
But now, well.
“Are there still students who graduate after turning twenty?”
“If you are referring to students held back a year, I believe they account for less than one percent of the total.”
“Wow, things really have changed…”
A peace treaty spanning the entire Empire. The world had become peaceful, but the Academy had begun to lose its reason for existing. Even the professors who had led the place back then had left because their market value had skyrocketed. The ones who remained were either commoners with nowhere else to go or old geezers who just read from textbooks and collected their pensions. In short? It had devolved into a launchpad for the romance of the protagonists in a romance-fantasy novel.
Isolated from the outside world, with every student living in dorms—there was no better place for sparks to fly.
“By any chance, is the list of students in my department ready?”
“Yes. Here it is.”
Hmm, as expected. Even a quick glance revealed several familiar names. That was because the novel I had possessed, *The Academy’s Raised Young Lady*, was set in this very Academy, true to its title. These settings were probably provided to create an atmosphere where the protagonists could just laugh and flirt without any real incidents or accidents.
However, having personally experienced the war-torn era that the novel would dismiss in a sentence or two, I couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable.
“Sigh…”
“……”
A sigh escaped my lips before I could stop it. Aisa, watching me, silently handed me a letter. It bore a golden eagle stamped in the center of the wax seal. It was undoubtedly a letter from His Majesty the Emperor.
“…I suppose His Majesty sends congratulatory messages for professor appointments these days, too.”
“I recall you were already aware of that.”
“Yes, I suppose I was.”
I carefully slit the envelope with a paper knife. The content inside was, as expected, a repetition of the stories I had grown tired of hearing at the Imperial Palace.
“I just want to teach my classes…”
“Pardon?”
“Oh, nothing. It’s the first day of the semester, so I’m looking forward to it. Aisa, you’re staff too, right? Let’s have lunch together later.”
“Ah, yes. Understood.”
Aisa bowed her head. I gave a light nod in return, gathered the materials I needed for class, and stood up. It was 8:59 AM, and class started at 9:00. Even when I was a student in my past life, teachers who walked in exactly on the dot always felt a bit cold. So, I took my time, enjoying the scenery of the Academy as I walked toward the lecture hall. And by giving myself a little leeway—
“Greetings, everyone~!”
—I’d be able to see their true, unmasked selves.
“……”
“……”
“…*Cough, cough*.”
The majority of the students sat with stiff faces. Up at the front of the lecture hall sat a group of students dressed in attire that screamed “I’m a noble.” And among them, there was one girl who looked a bit different.
“You there, student. You don’t look so well. Is something the matter?”
I didn’t ask because I didn’t know. She had a strikingly pretty face, but her Academy uniform was noticeably tattered. Even if they started dorm life a month before the semester began, there was no way the clothes would be that worn out already. Unless she’d been rolling around in the dirt since morning, it shouldn’t look like that. I began walking toward her to figure out the details.
“I can’t see you from far away. Come down for a moment…”
“You don’t need to concern yourself, Professor.”
And the one who stopped me was a student sitting in the very front row. Unlike the nobles behind him, he was dressed in a neat, orderly uniform, but his face was one that couldn’t help but stand out.
“Ah, Your Highness the Third Prince.”
“I understand that status is not recognized within the Academy. Although I was born through the grace of the Imperial family, here, I am just a student like everyone else.”
“Oh my, how cool…”
“As expected of a Prince.”
“…Is that so? But I am also someone who has lived my life by that same grace, so it’s hard for me to treat everyone exactly the same. Now then…”
“I said you don’t need to concern yourself, Professor.”
“……”
Look at this guy. What kind of “equal student” would dare to grab a professor by the wrist to stop them? If I had done this when I was at the Academy, I would have been dragged before the Emperor and hanged without a word.
“But that student looks like she’s in a lot of pain.”
“If that is the case, I will take her to the infirmary myself. Daisy, follow me.”
“Yes? Yes… Ah, no, okay.”
The face of the girl named Daisy was filled with fear. And the Prince was wearing a strange smile. Ah, is that what this is? Since a Prince on a white horse can’t just appear out of nowhere, he’s using the strategy of deliberately scattering gravel so he can play the savior? I understood well enough.
“Then, if you’ll excuse me, Professor. I apologize for interrupting your class.”
“Ah, wait a moment. Could you come here for a second?”
“…… *Sigh*, yes.”
He sighed softly as he walked toward the door of the lecture hall, then turned back toward me. He wore the expression of someone who was deeply annoyed that his date had been interrupted. And I, toward that Prince’s face—
“Why are you… *Gah!*”
—swung my fist without hesitation.
“*Kyaaak!*”
“W-what is this…!”
“There’s a limit to being rude… How can you leave without even hearing the professor’s introduction?”
I really hate this. Where did the hopeful teaching life I dreamed of go, and why do I have to play the villain again? Doing that sort of thing on the battlefield was more than enough.
“I am Darren Wintergard, and I will be in charge of your Military Science class for the next three years. I look forward to working with you.”
***
“…Are you truly sure about this, Your Majesty?”
Inside the Emperor’s office. A man spoke cautiously beside the Emperor, who stood with his hands behind his back, looking out the window.
“Wintergard is already praised by the people of the Empire as a war hero. If you grant him even more power like this, he might truly…”
“Ah, so your concern isn’t for the safety of my children, but for that?”
“……! Ah, no. Of course, I am also very worried about the well-being of the Prince and Princess…”
“Flattery is unnecessary. I know better than anyone that those brats are rotten to the core.”
He wanted to make excuses, to say he had no choice. It was natural for a father to want to give his children everything he could while he still had the chance, especially when he might not be the Emperor tomorrow. But the extent of it had been too much. It was only after the era of peace finally arrived that he was realizing it with painful clarity.
“Answer me honestly. When those boys succeed me as Emperor, will they truly be able to lead the Empire wisely?”
“……That is.”
“I don’t want to give Wintergard any more power, either. But what else can I do? If I leave things as they are, I’ll be forced to watch the Empire collapse on its own while I lie in my grave.”
*Thud.*
The Emperor clenched his fist and slammed it onto the desk, recalling the end of the war.
“…When I asked a man covered in blood what he desired, he said he wanted to teach people. When I first heard it, I thought the war had broken his mind.”
“I am sure Sir Darren did not say that with any ulterior motives. He spoke of it as his dream even on the battlefield.”
“Yes. I know. It is I who am the tyrant for using a man like that.”
A written waiver of immunity, promising no consequences for any action taken, excluding murder. Since he had already reached an agreement with the head of the Wintergard family, there was no turning back now. The Emperor only hoped for one thing:
That the youngest son of Wintergard would, please, turn his children into human beings. Even if he had to use violence to do it.
“…This is the heart of a father. You will never understand it until you have children of your own.”