The Trashy Professor (5)
"…The, the brothel?"
And a heavy silence settled over the conference room.
Even Professor Blithe, who had been cheerfully leading the conversation while needling Simon this whole time, froze mid-laugh with her mouth hanging open in disbelief.
"D-did I hear that wrong? Or— or is this a joke? Hoho, Professor Kallen, I must say your sense of humor is a bit…"
"Well, in professional terms, you'd call it a gigolo. I manage the whores, and as a side job, I chase off the problem customers…"
The woman, who had been stiff as a wooden puppet, finally managed to stammer out a response—but Kallen only stretched his grin wider, throwing around even more brazen words.
"A—a—a—a GIGOLO?!"
Professor Simon shot to his feet, sputtering in unmistakable panic.
Kallen glanced back at him and gave a light wink before continuing.
"Interested, are you? Unfortunately, the place has already gone under. If it were still open for business, I might have offered you an acquaintance's discount. What a shame, truly…"
"You—you insolent cur!!"
Unable to bear it any longer, Simon screamed, foam flying from his lips.
"H-how dare a bottom-feeding street rat barge in where he doesn't belong…!! Why don't you— why don't you get out of here!!"
"Terribly sorry, but I've still got the better part of a year left on my contract. If it bothers you so much, why don't you take it up with the Headmistress? She's the one who dragged me here, after all."
Kallen shrugged as Simon jabbed a trembling finger at him, sputtering with rage, then slowly rose to his feet.
He unscrewed his canteen, took another swig, and looked around the room.
"Ahh… Well, I'd say that's enough of an introduction. If there's nothing else, I'll be on my way?"
"H-how dare you ignore me!! Hey!!"
"Ooooh, goddess of the dawn… wrap me in your mist…"
Kallen swayed out of the conference room with a rolling gait, humming a tuneless song, leaving Simon's protests entirely unanswered.
"Uuh…"
Professor Simon's legs finally gave out beneath him, and he sank limply into his chair.
Stillness blanketed the room as though a storm had just swept through it.
The professors could not bring themselves to speak, exchanging nothing but stricken, bewildered glances.
"…"
And in a corner of that conference room.
Professor Jiya sat glaring at the spot where Kallen had been, utterly oblivious to the tea going cold in her cup.
"Nice. Very nice."
In the vast central plaza of Elysion, Kallen lay sprawled half-reclined against a bench by the fountain, murmuring in a languid voice.
Since the academic day was still in full swing, the area around him was deserted.
By all rights, he should have been in a lecture hall at that very moment, diligently performing his duties as a professor—but as always, Kallen had parked his students under the pretext of "self-study" and was savoring the afternoon all to himself.
"Mmmmm."
He stretched out leisurely and let loose an idle yawn.
It had already been ten days since his first day on the job.
He was, at this point, growing fairly accustomed to this farce of a professorship.
"…Damn, this place really is absurdly huge."
His face suddenly crumpled as he voiced a complaint that came out almost begrudging.
"No wonder I can't find my way around. What the hell went through the elves' heads when they built this place?"
For all his grumbling, a trace of genuine awe lingered on Kallen's face as he looked around.
The grounds of Elysion boasted a vastness that was simply impossible to reconcile with the modest exterior of the fortress.
Radiating out from the central plaza, the avenues on either side were lined with buildings large and small and looming castle towers, packed densely together.
The structures that had stood for well over a thousand years gleamed as pristine as if they had been raised yesterday.
The only traces of age to be found were a bit of moss and ivy creeping over the smooth stone walls and red-tiled roofs.
Lecture halls, dormitories, training grounds, the library, the stables, the glass conservatory—follow the path of gleaming white marble, and it would carry you to them all.
It even embraced an endless, sprawling forest within its walls, which meant Fabian's words had been no exaggeration after all.
"So this is what they meant by 'wider on the inside than the outside,' huh…"
Kallen muttered to himself, staring down at his palm as he flexed his hand open and closed.
With that one simple motion, he could immediately feel the thick, dense mana saturated into the air around him.
Truly, there could be no better place to force someone's growth in a short span of time.
"…"
At that, Kallen flinched ever so slightly, a guilty look flickering across his face.
The thought of the first-year swordsmanship students—already ten days into the term, yet left abandoned without any proper instruction—had crept into his mind. But he merely shrugged it off with a light roll of his shoulders and muttered to himself.
"…There's nothing a guy like me could teach them anyway."
The guilt belonged to that scheming old hag who had half-dragged a humble gigolo here against his will—certainly not to him.
Kallen reminded himself, once again, of his original resolution: to loaf around like a degenerate and milk his salary for all it was worth.
"Nnngh… is it that time already…? Well then, better head back…"
He glanced up at the clock tower, smacked his lips, and was just about to rise from the bench—
"Why on earth would Talisa bring someone like you in as a professor?"
A sharp voice suddenly bored into his ear from behind.
"…Who is it?"
A woman wearing plain spectacles, her hair tied neatly into a low bun, had turned around—and she now stood squarely in his field of view.
Behind her lenses, her eyes gleamed with razor-edged intensity as she glared at Kallen with naked murderous intent.
Just like that day in the conference room, on his very first day of work.
"So then… Jerry? Professor Jessie, was it?"
"It's Jiya."
Professor Jiya cut the frivolous man down with a single word.
"I knew your memory was poor, but I never imagined it was that bad."
"…"
The man called Kallen simply dispersed her hostile glare with a lazy, unhurried smile.
Which only served to stoke her fury further.
This was Elysion Academy, with its thousand years of history.
Yes, the Swordsmanship Department might be locked in fierce rivalry with the Magic Department—but that was precisely why they could never allow themselves to be toyed with by a man as light as a feather.
And beyond that, her reasons for bearing this man a grudge were abundant.
'Ah, so that was the one.'
Before she knew it, Jiya was recalling her conversation with Talisa from days past.
'Truly an amusing fellow, that one.'
Though they belonged to different faculties, the sudden accident that claimed the venerable Professor Tyrell had been a genuine shock to her as well.
On top of that, Talisa's announcement that she had chosen his successor by her own direct authority rather than through official procedure had left the entire faculty dumbfounded.
Jiya, who had been quietly conscious of her rival's movements all the while, had ultimately been unable to contain her curiosity and asked Talisa directly about the circumstances of the appointment.
And the reaction she received back had been nothing short of shocking.
'Not only did he grope this body and toy with me the moment we first met, he had the gall to demand I give him a bath on the spot.'
The Talisa Jiya knew was not one to laugh so freely.
Worse still, the sight of the dreaded Vampire of Helkar doubling over in giggles at the memory of a man had left Jiya utterly aghast.
'Is that truly what you desire?'
Another detail that gnawed at her was the timing: this man Kallen had appeared immediately after Talisa had flatly rejected her own request.
It was enough to plant yet another unease in her heart—and an unfamiliar, festering sense of inferiority alongside it.
'Why on earth would Talisa bring in such a frivolous creature…'
Had he been even remotely exceptional in ability, she might have found some way to accept it. But the man before her was, from every angle, nothing more than a pathetic good-for-nothing loafer.
Worse, ever since his shameless talk of brothels and gigolos, a half-joking rumor had begun circulating among the faculty that Kallen was less a professor and more the Headmistress's pampered young boy-toy.
For Jiya, watching the teacher she revered above all others entangled in such scandal was nothing short of revolting.
In any case, he was a man utterly without a single redeeming quality.
"So. What do you want?"
"I asked why on earth Talisa brought someone like you in as a professor."
"How should I know? That old hag dragged me here by force."
"How dare you speak of Talisa that way… Hah."
Jiya ground her teeth, then managed to suppress her killing intent with a deep breath and opened her mouth again.
"…What exactly are you here for? You don't seem to have the slightest passion for teaching."
"What else? Money, obviously."
"Wha…?"
At his answer, Jiya let out an involuntary, gobsmacked sound.
"No need to look so shocked."
The man's calm shrug only deepened her disgust.
Jiya stammered, as if she had forgotten how to speak.
"H-how— how can you say something like that…"
"Why not? When they're offering a fat salary on time, every month, just for lazing around and eating?"
Every word out of his mouth was a fresh outrage stacked atop the last.
Even Professor Simon—infamous for his thinly veiled contempt for commoner students—was at least a distinguished scholar in his own right.
His handful of remaining hairs made him a frequent target of Blithe's teasing, but every professor knew full well that the baldness was the aftereffect of experiments he had once sacrificed his own body to conduct.
In the entire history of Elysion, not a single soul had ever set foot in this place for a purpose as wretched as Kallen's.
The man's very attitude was an insult to everyone who had ever passed through these halls.
"How dare you…"
Jiya had been just about to unleash on him, unable to hold back a moment longer—
when a thought flashed through her mind, and she slowly sealed her lips.
What Jiya had recalled was the one thing guaranteed to flatten that arrogant man's nose in a single stroke.
It was, ironically, only possible because he was a creature who chased coin rather than honor or scholarly ambition.
"…Money, is it? What a shame, then."
Her frigid composure restored, Professor Jiya curled her lips into a thin, contemptuous smile.
"You know, the way I see it, you're going to walk away from this place penniless and empty-handed."
"…What?"
For the first time, a flicker of alarm crossed the man's face.
Jubilant at how dead-on her strike had landed, Professor Jiya pressed her advantage and pressed on.
"What on earth are you…"
"Did you know? Elysion professors are expected to produce results in two areas. First, as a homeroom professor, measurable improvement in the grades of the students in your assigned course. Second, your performance as a club advisor."
"Club advisor…? What's that supposed to…"
"Club activities are extremely well developed at Elysion. It's common for clubs to enter campus tournaments and off-campus field exercises as a unit."
"…"
"It's all laid out on the first page of the faculty handbook… though from the looks of it, you've never even cracked the cover? Well. I didn't expect much to begin with."
Professor Jiya flashed a sweet smile and continued, watching Kallen stand there struck dumb as a man fed honey in silence.
"At Elysion, it isn't only the students who are evaluated. At the end of every semester, the professors themselves are judged according to their results. And…"
Jiya paused for effect, casting Kallen a supercilious snort.
"The professor ranked dead last in the overall evaluation receives a ninety percent pay cut."
Elysion's professors were, as a rule, people who prized honor and scholarly achievement over financial gain.
For such people, a salary reduction would never place them in any genuine hardship.
The vast majority had already accomplished everything worth accomplishing out in the world before coming here.
A docked salary was nothing more than a badge of underperformance—a spur to whip themselves harder, and nothing more.
Of course, for a certain shameless man who openly declared money to be his sole purpose, the story was rather different.
"You've thrown your homeroom course to the wind entirely, and from the look on your face just now, you didn't even know the clubs existed…"
She smiled brightly at his stunned expression.
"At this point, I'd say last place in the overall evaluation is a foregone conclusion, wouldn't you?"
"W-wait a minute!!"
Jolted back to his senses at last, Kallen scrambled to protest.
"What kind of garbage is that?! None of that was in my contract…!"
"It isn't a codified regulation. It's a custom passed down among the professors, generation to generation. Naturally, it wouldn't appear in your contract."
Professor Jiya answered with unwavering confidence.
"Though it is, without question, a rule that binds all the same."
"Th-that's insane! Where in the world does…!"
"If you think I'm lying, go ask the other professors yourself."
"H-huh…?!"
"Last place. Congratulations in advance? And on the pay cut, too."
As she turned smoothly on her heel, Professor Jiya threw one final remark over her shoulder.
"Well, give it your best effort. Though from where I'm standing, it already looks far too late."
She walked on without so much as a backward glance, leaving behind her the sound of a low, anguished groan rising from somewhere behind.
And the weather, of all days, could not have been more brilliantly sunny.
Lifting her spirits, Professor Jiya found herself humming a bright little tune before she knew it.
Kallen, his face twisted with fury, flung open the door to the antique headmistress's office.
The maze-like tangle of corridors on the way there had only inflamed his anger further.
"Hm? If it isn't Professor Kallen. What brings you here at this hour?"
Talisa, Elysion's headmistress, looked up from the documents she had been sorting through behind her spectacles and greeted him with an air of mild surprise.
The face he was meeting for the first time in a month remained as youthful as ever—an odd mismatch for her archaic way of speaking.
"I was planning to call on you before long anyway… Have you settled into professorial life, boy? You received your gift, I trust? So long as it pleased you… Mmgh."
Kallen ignored her greeting entirely and stormed straight toward her, shoulders heaving.
Closing the distance in a heartbeat, he seized a fistful of her long hair in one hand and hauled her up out of her seat.
"Hey, you scheming old witch."
Then he shoved her back against the bookshelf, his voice dropping to something lethal.
"You thought you could swindle me?"