Why Are You Fighting?
Before heading to work, I checked whether the lid on the bottle containing the flower wreath—no, the clump of blossoms—I’d received from Irina some time ago was sealed tight, then struck up a conversation with the sparrow chirping away in front of me.
“Haha. Adding just one more sparrow to our aviary won’t cause any trouble. Still, thanks for asking. That Usteria girl, the Saintess candidate… she really is bold. Planning to straighten her out this year?”
“Yes. Her lack of basic decency needs fixing, and that sadistic streak of hers has to be ripped out.”
“Terrifying. If I’d met you while I was still a student, I probably would’ve cried. Oh, but the Saintess didn’t just cry, did she?”
“It’s not like I fix people for fun, but that is why I get paid. As for your daughter… rest assured I’m protecting her properly.”
“I only wish you understood how reassuring those words sound.”
It wasn’t anything special. The whole exchange felt like an ordinary phone call from back in reality. Lord Laval, who had left the capital on Inspection Bureau business, apparently didn’t want to eat breakfast alone and had sent the sparrow to chat about this and that.
He had two main points. Both were quite important.
First, the reason he had gone abroad.
“The trail of Orlan has definitely led outside the empire.”
“Naturally…? After pulling that stunt, anyone trying to live inside the empire would have to peel their own face off first just to get by.”
“Right. Obvious, but here’s the important part. It doesn’t look like he fled alone. An outsider was involved.”
“…Wait. That means—”
“—The odds that the remnant forces you predicted actually exist have skyrocketed. We’ll need to dig deeper to be sure.”
“Good lord.”
The idea I had first proposed, the one Lord Laval had built the foundation for, had apparently hit the mark better than expected. Even while I was grinding away at the academy, he was using the power he held exactly as I’d anticipated—working diligently and keeping me updated on every development. How grateful could a guy get? This must be what they mean by having someone else wipe your nose for you.
At the same time, I felt a little embarrassed, like the pathetic younger brother who gets his ass kicked in the neighborhood and then runs home crying to his older sibling. Come to think of it, I used to do the exact same thing with my cousin back when I lived in South Korea. Guess people really don’t change. Being an educator means living with desperate contradictions.
Still, the news that actually caught my interest was something else entirely: the riot that had broken out at a tavern in the Ainhart Margraviate. Someone’s face immediately came to mind, but I set that aside for now.
I straightened my tie with a quiet tug.
“The knight order escorting the Rothschild faction… went insane? Hah.”
The Inspection Bureau was an organization Laval and I had created to save lives. Even if it had been the equivalent of a suicidal final lance charge at the ripe old age of seventy-three, the moment it was established and everyone started watching their backs, shit like this happened.
“They’re not crazy, yet the empire somehow manages to phrase the exact same situation that way.”
Knights who had lost every last job and found nowhere willing to take them in. When their final tether snapped, they lost it completely—overturning the tavern and seizing the holy city of Ainhart. Their equipment probably wasn’t the best, but these were veterans who had once rampaged across the demon world. Against the margraviate’s standing knight order, which had grown lax after the war, they might as well have been snatching candy from a baby.
After smashing every force sent to suppress them, they occupied part of the margrave’s castle and began inciting revolts throughout the surrounding domains.
“…Fuck.”
In truth, none of them had probably intended for any of this at the start. I knew how loyal and noble their souls were. I didn’t want to abandon that trust. They had once been my comrades-in-arms. If they were the knights attached to the Rothschild side, they had to be Iron Crown Knights—probably from the 4th regiment, men who had served under my command more than once. How could anyone imagine them doing something like this?
Yet it had happened. When I thought about it, they must have been just as shocked as everyone else. It probably started with simple anger, smashing whatever they could reach. Then they realized they were far stronger than expected, and everything crumbled before them. Before they knew it the scale had grown. Before they knew it they were clashing with the knight orders blocking their path. And then, as comrades who shared their will began to gather, they realized they could no longer stop what they had started. The agitation must have been overwhelming.
“What will you do, Joseph?”
“Obviously… it’s a military rebellion. The imperial army will be dispatched and wipe them out. There’s zero chance of success. Their subjugation is only a matter of time.”
“I’ve lost my appetite.”
“…Same here. I imagine quite a few of those faces are ones you know.”
Of course, none of the responsibility would fall on me. The root cause might have been the creation of the Inspection Bureau, but no one had held a blade to their throats. Everything that followed was their own doing.
Yet the reason it didn’t feel like someone else’s problem was obvious.
Because if I hadn’t had the connection called Laval, I might have ended up exactly like them.
The war was over, but the soldiers could not return home. They no longer even knew where home was. That truth weighed especially heavy on my mood today.
Back then… what exactly had we been swinging our swords so desperately for?
There was a time when I thought I knew the answer. Now I had forgotten.
The great storm known as Usteria had passed. No matter how fierce a storm appears, it eventually calms on its own with time. Usteria had quieted down all by herself. Of course the reason was me, so maybe it wasn’t the best metaphor. Let’s just move on, yeah?
“Hiiik…!!”
“You attended properly again today. Excellent. Please keep coming like this every day, Miss Usteria.”
“Th-this won’t do. It won’t… I-I’ll sit in the back. The very back seat, it is.”
“I won’t hold any prejudice, but given your previous record, I must ask you to fulfill your duty as a student…”
If the reason for her terror was my presbyopia no matter how I looked at it, I was the one who wanted to cry. Did she think she was the only one who could wet her pants? I felt like emptying everything from top to bottom myself.
“Professor, I will soothe Usteria’s phobia myself. Please do not worry too much.”
“Thank you as always, class president. I already thought so before, but lately I can’t imagine a classroom without you in it.”
“Hu… huhu…”
“Why? Did that make you happy?”
“Isn’t it only natural? How many students ever get to hear such words from you, Professor?”
“True. It isn’t easy. For now, only Irina manages it.”
“My, my.”
But Irina was as cheerful as ever today. She seemed conscious of me and was keeping a firm grip on Usteria. I figured I could ease off the worry a little. I had originally thought of her as pitch-black paint, but since she had tried to harm Tiel, it was probably necessary to have someone tightening the leash even in places my eyes couldn’t reach. And Irina was the perfect person for the role.
“Anyway, keep working hard. I intend to look upon you even more favorably.”
“…Having received such expectations, I cannot afford to disappoint.”
“Good.”
“I’m glad as well.”
Come to think of it, ever since we shared that flower crown last time, the distance between Irina and me seemed to have closed considerably. The feeling wasn’t bad at all. I had approached her rather cautiously at first. If I had known I would be this moved by her charm, maybe I should have acted friendlier sooner.
But something kept nagging at me. The Iron Crown Knights’ riot in Ainhart. …It refused to leave my mind as easily as I wanted.
While I lingered on that thought, another day slipped by, and the long-awaited club instruction time finally arrived.
“—Let’s see, both of you are present today.”
“I have been waiting, Professor.”
“Sion, it looks like your busy matter has been resolved? It’s good to see your face more often lately.”
“It was nothing major. From now on I plan to devote myself more intensively to training.”
Yet while Sion’s complexion had improved greatly recently, today the problem lay with Zikrinde. Why? My mind was still caught on the instigators of the riot, but Zikrinde was the one whose land had suffered it.
“Ugh…”
I knew it was rare to see her like this, but if the person whose house had burned down showed up with a smiling face, that would be even stranger.
“Miss Zikrinde. I heard the news.”
“Ah, so you did hear after all.”
“Are you worried about the margraviate?”
She nodded.
“But it’s all right. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Why? Your problems are my problems.”
She scratched at her hair rather irritably. It didn’t seem directed at me. Things simply weren’t going her way, so she had done it out of gloom.
“—Aish, I don’t know. Not paying attention to this is actually paying attention. If it were my personal problem I wouldn’t care, but since it’s the territory’s problem I have no choice but to mind it, right? More importantly, Professor, there’s something you should know.”
“What is it?”
“Today I arrived thirty minutes earlier than Lagrange.”
At those words Sion’s eyes flickered with killing intent.
“—Did you want to brag so badly about sneaking out of the last class early?”
“Lagrange telling lies. How amusing.”
“The amusing one is this side, no? That was marked as an absence. I saw it myself.”
“Eek, that’s a lie.”
It seemed Zikrinde had been looking forward to spending time with me so much that she had ditched her final class and come running. While I found it cute, the moment I learned of the fact I had to fulfill my responsibility as a professor.
“Miss Zikrinde…”
“Oh dear god.”
She had done something that deserved a scolding. How dare she, in the peaceful world we had built, fail to fulfill her duty and skip class? I could not tolerate that. The territory’s troubles must have been distressing, but to act this way while knowing exactly whose corpses her school life rested upon—she had forgotten a student’s duty.
Forgetting one’s duty. Ha… Was that really so important?
The knight order. The knight order before this incident hadn’t been like that. On the contrary, they had served the world with hearts full of loyalty and devotion. In the end they had come to this.
………Ah, damn it.
At that moment I couldn’t help but frown. The Ainhart Margraviate where the riot had broken out was far away, so I had tried to swallow the matter whole. But when I saw Zikrinde’s blinking amber eyes, it no longer felt like something I could ignore. The distance of the event suddenly felt much closer.
The thoughts that had been rampaging through my head since morning wrapped around my heart like a flash of lightning. It might have been an overthought, but since everything was meaningless anyway, what right did I have to scold anyone?
Yes. Duty, you say. Joseph. Who kept that better than anyone? It was the knight order, wasn’t it? Even they ended up with broken minds and a fate of death…
Then. If that was the case, what exactly did keeping one’s duty even mean?
Even while knowing what had happened in Zikrinde’s territory, the reason I should steer her into living like the model student I wanted… wasn’t actually all that clear. Well, I knew the two things were different. …As I continued turning over the meaning of life as a warrior, I suddenly found myself thinking that.
Thoughts are originally like that, aren’t they? Undifferentiated fragments of imagery suddenly undergo a chemical reaction from some coincidental trigger and weave themselves into form…
Fuck. It’s complicated. It makes me skeptical.
So instead of scolding her, I quietly sat down on the chair placed outside. I had simply grown a little curious.
“Miss Zikrinde, about what happened in Ainhart.”
Her expression changed—for the worse. I’m not scolding you. Sorry for paying attention when you told me not to. But I want to be selfish for once too.
“You came early to divert the attention that had turned toward those people, right? Because doing something you enjoy clears your mind.”
“…Yes.”
“Then it’s hard for me to say anything. I understand both you in your confusion and the rioters in theirs.”
I held back the sigh trying to burst out.
“…You know, those people once fought alongside me.”
Her eyes widened in genuine surprise. The discomfort from earlier had vanished from her gaze. She was simply looking at me because it was rare for me to talk about myself. But actually, knowing this story is the stranger thing. As you know, I don’t often speak of myself.
“I can’t fully put myself in your position, Miss Zikrinde. Still, before we begin class, I suddenly felt like sharing something that might help.”
Zikrinde listened with surprising seriousness, ears perked.
“Those people… are now nothing more than rioters. I won’t deny it. However, every last one of them once had a reason for taking up the sword. They’ve simply lost it, and so it came to this.”
“So even the rioters had such things. Well, that makes sense. They are veterans, after all.”
“Yes. Everyone has a story. That’s why I’m a little curious about you, Miss Zikrinde.”
“About me?”
“I have a question that even I myself… don’t fully understand. I thought you might know the answer.”
So I spoke the question I had been carrying since this morning. I didn’t expect it to be resolved. But since we both seemed troubled, I wanted to sort out my thoughts. The rioters and the knight order did not know the answer to this question. Even I didn’t know it. We are relics of a bygone age. Then what did the beings of the future we had created—students like Zikrinde—think?
“Miss Zikrinde, why do you take up the sword?”
Yet the moment Zikrinde received that question, she was visibly, greatly shaken. Why?