While the Headmistress Is Away
"Consider yourself lucky—that was me going easy on you. Take it gracefully and be on your way."
"P-Professor! I'm the victim here!"
Pas screamed himself nearly hoarse, foaming at the mouth.
"Those jewels were clearly stolen! And on top of that, she used forbidden sorcery—!"
"The jewels belong to Silvie. I'll stake my professorship on it."
"Wh-what? That can't—"
"And it wasn't forbidden sorcery, either. She used a scroll inscribed with wolf claw magic. For the reckless misuse of a scroll, library duty seems a fitting punishment."
Kallen continued on, utterly indifferent.
"It's settled. So don't go flapping your mouth about heresy or whatever else—just sit quietly and reflect on what you've done. Understood?"
"Professor…! I'm telling you, I'm innocent! Something clearly went wrong here—owk!"
Pas, who had been hopping around in a frenzy, let out a yelp and clutched the top of his head.
Kallen had crept up on him without a sound, fist clenched tight, glaring down at him with sharp, narrowed eyes.
"You really want to bully a girl who can't even see what's in front of her? And you call yourself a Swordsmanship student… honestly."
"B-but, Professor…"
"Quiet. Cause one more problem and it's a real expulsion next time. Let's do better going forward, hm?"
Kallen cut him off as though he weren't worth another second, waving his hand in dismissal.
"Your punishment begins this very moment. If you both understand, then get out of my sight."
"This is insane…"
Pas, wearing the hollow expression of a man whose country had just fallen, mumbled the words listlessly and dragged himself away on leaden feet.
Silvie lingered in the office for a moment even after he was gone.
Then, fidgeting nervously, she clasped her hands together and bowed her head toward Kallen and Ziya.
And with a slightly shy voice, she spoke to Kallen.
"S-see you again soon, Professor?"
Her lips were curved into a smile brimming over with joy.
With her greeting done, she limped out of the office on unsteady legs.
Kallen watched her retreating back and shook his head with a sigh.
"Honestly… thanks to that Pas idiot, my own evaluation score is about to take a hit too. Every single time…"
"…I can't believe it."
Beside him, mid-lament, Ziya stood frozen in place as though she'd taken some devastating blow.
Her pupils trembled violently from side to side, as if an earthquake had just struck.
"It took me over a week just to exchange a single word with her… and to think Silvie was a student capable of smiling like that…? At a man, no less…?"
She muttered to herself, stumbling over the words like someone who'd been gravely wronged.
"How did they get so close in just that little bit of time?"
Watching her flounder, Kallen found his mood improving for no particular reason.
Granted, "a little bit of time" hardly did justice to the history between him and Silvie—but there was no need to explain any of that to Ziya.
A smirk tugged at his lips as he opened his mouth, teasing.
"I suppose I just come across as the more dependable, reassuring professor. You should've treated your students better, then."
"I treated her wonderfully… I always seated her at the very front so she wouldn't strain herself… I made sure to call on Silvie with a question every lecture so she wouldn't lose confidence… I even scheduled extra one-on-one meetings with her, specially…"
"…That's not taking care of a student. That's torture."
At those words, Kallen's face twisted in horror.
Ziya, who had been murmuring to herself in a daze, suddenly turned and shot him a venomous glare.
"…Don't tell me you did something inappropriate when the two of you were alone."
"Like I would."
Kallen snapped back at the suspicious look in her eyes.
"What exactly do you take me for—"
"…Good. Then I'm relieved."
Ziya, still watching him warily, finally let out a long sigh and muttered.
"Anyway… I'm glad it worked out. Her notes came from friends, and the magic she used on Pas was just a wolf claw scroll…"
"…"
"She was carrying it for self-defense, then? Well, I suppose, with her eyes the way they are… but still, she could have just told me from the start… Do I really inspire so little trust…"
Watching Ziya mope and mutter to herself, Kallen turned away, feeling an unexpected twinge of guilt.
Then came a hesitant voice from behind him.
"…Thank you."
"Hm?"
"If it hadn't been for you, things would have gotten very loud. Silvie might have faced unfair suspicion, too."
Before he knew it, Ziya had bowed her head slightly toward him.
"Thanks to you… this ended well."
"…"
That was her, all right—never one to adapt easily.
Just when he thought she was about to devour him whole, the moment students became involved she would show this surprising side of herself. It truly was a strange thing.
All things considered, she was far better suited to being a professor than he was.
"…"
Uneasily, Kallen felt as though he were sitting on a cushion of needles.
Wearing an awkward expression, he cleared his throat and quietly began edging toward the door.
Then he whirled back around to face Professor Ziya, tossing out the words with playful flippancy.
"If you were always this gentle, you'd have been married off ages ago."
His lips had already curved into his usual lazy grin.
Professor Ziya's sour face flushed scarlet in an instant.
"Y-you—!"
The air in the office boiled over in a heartbeat.
Ziya, who had kept her head bowed low, was now gritting her teeth and glaring at Kallen with murderous intent.
"I give you one decent compliment and this is what I get…!!"
The neatly arranged furniture and objects throughout the office rose floating into the air, then came hurtling at Kallen like a barrage.
He nimbly dodged them and rolled out into the corridor, only to hear her voice thundering furiously after him.
"Get back here! You and your…!!"
"I'm a busy man! Let's catch up next time!"
"I said stand still! Today, I'm finally going to end you!"
Even as he scrambled down the stairs, the enraged shouting pursued him relentlessly from above.
Now that's more like the woman I know.
Having barely shaken off his pursuer, Kallen glanced back over his shoulder and smirked.
"Well, looking at it this way, I can't say it isn't entertaining."
Even so, his steps were quick and purposeful, aimed at somewhere specific.
The smile at the corners of his mouth had long since settled into calm stillness.
It wasn't an excuse—he really did have somewhere to be.
Kallen's eyes narrowed slightly as he murmured to himself.
"There's no way she doesn't know."
Anyone else might be kept in the dark, but he couldn't imagine Talisa being ignorant of Silvie's ability.
The fact that she had personally approved Silvie's admission on her own authority reeked of ulterior motives.
"Mana beasts…"
The taming of mana beasts was an act strictly forbidden by both the Empire and the Church of Aten.
So savage and merciless was their nature that whenever those creatures manifested in the Material Realm, they inflicted devastation on everything around them rivaling that of demons themselves.
What's more, even witches and Corrupted Beings steeped in that brand of dark magic could not easily bend mana beasts to their will.
Which meant that Silvie, handling them with such ease and without any visible binding spellwork, could only strike an observer as deeply unsettling.
"What in the world happened to her all that time…"
Recalling Ziya's casual mention of torture chambers and the harrowing burn scars across Silvie's body, Kallen's face soured against his will.
In any case, he had no right to simply walk past without demanding answers about whatever scheme lay behind her admission.
The corridor leading to the Headmistress's office was as crowded as ever.
Still, having made the trip once before, Kallen managed to pass through with somewhat more composure than last time.
As for the ornaments lining both sides of the corridor—previously he hadn't even realized they existed.
As he walked along, skimming past the plaster busts and portraits of successive headmasters, Kallen's gaze came to rest on something.
"Hm?"
It was a faded portrait of some unknown figure, tucked away in the farthest corner.
A woman of breathtaking beauty, her bearing somehow radiating nobility—the kind of face that drew an involuntary gasp of admiration.
Yet the long, slender ears stretching out on either side of her head made it clear that she was something other than human.
Kallen slowly read the inscription beneath the portrait.
Ardel.
First Headmaster of Elysion.
"…An actual elf was the headmaster?"
Remembering what Fabian had once told him, Kallen let out a small, wonderstruck exhale.
The Empire was fundamentally built on the persecution of other races, yet when it came to elves, its treatment of them seemed, oddly enough, rather generous.
Unlike the beastfolk, who faced nothing short of extermination, elves enjoyed restricted passage to and fro—and even the artifacts they had left behind were still in active use.
"Some form of tribute to their teacher, perhaps?"
Considering the legend that the founders of both the Empire and the Eastern Kingdom were among Elysion's first graduating class, it made a certain plausible sense.
Not that any of it had the slightest bearing on his present circumstances.
Having admired the portrait for a suitably interesting while, Kallen spun on his heel, threw open the headmaster's door without so much as a knock, and barged in.
"Anyone home? I've got a few questions to—huh?"
The words died in his throat as a bewildered expression spread across his face.
Talisa was slumped in her armchair, utterly motionless, her head drooping forward.
"Hey? Hello?"
He approached and gave her shoulder a shake, but no response came.
Confronted with what looked for all the world like a corpse, Kallen rested a finger on his chin and fell deep into thought.
"…Did she die? Dying of old age in this day and age would be quite the honor, I suppose…"
But he soon smirked and shook his head.
"…Not a chance."
That vindictive woman would never go so gently into the dark.
It was only now that he belatedly recalled she was one of the most celebrated avatar-mages in the entire Empire.
"So she's left her avatar behind and gone out for a stroll somewhere. Figures—never around when you actually need her… hm?"
In any case, for Kallen, who had come specifically to see her, this amounted to nothing but wasted time.
But as he scratched at the back of his head in annoyance, Kallen suddenly froze mid-motion, as if realizing something.
"Wait a moment…"
A strange gleam kindled in his eyes.
The room is empty.
The mistress of the headmaster's office is absent.
Which was to say—there was no one here to stop him from doing whatever he pleased.
"…My contract. Half of it."
Kallen muttered to himself, his expression turning grave.
"If I could just get rid of that one thing… wouldn't this whole mess of mine finally be over?"
By now, the corners of his mouth had stretched all the way to his ears.
Resolve hardening in an instant, his eyes took on the glint of a beast stalking its prey, and he set about ransacking the headmaster's office from top to bottom.
Truthfully, he had more or less settled into his position as a professor by now.
It was just that if he could destroy that contract, he harbored a hope of renegotiating on terms that would let him move a little more freely.
He still had no idea why, but the headmistress was evidently desperate to bind him to this Elysion.
Of course, Kallen wasn't asking for much.
"Classes only two days a week, free-form working hours, salary at five—no, ten times the current rate, plus a fixed base pay regardless of student evaluations…"
Chuckling at his own absurdity, Kallen recited the terms to himself as he happily painted a picture of his golden future.
But it took less than an hour for those hopes to come crashing down.
"Damn it, where the hell did she hide it?"
Kallen's hair stood in complete disarray as he panted and growled in frustration.
He had torn through every drawer and bookshelf in the room, and still his contract was nowhere to be found.
"The other professors' contracts were just sitting in their drawers… why is mine the only one…"
Impatience gnawed at him as he furrowed his brow and muttered irritably.
There was no telling when the headmistress—or anyone else—might walk in and catch him like this.
He needed to find his contract before that happened, one way or another.
"I've searched every reasonable place there is to search… hm?"
As he wracked his brain, his gaze abruptly snagged on something.
The headmistress's avatar still lay draped over her armchair like a corpse.
And her full, frilled dress looked, for some reason, like the perfect place to hide something.
"Come on, surely not—even for her, that's…"
Kallen wrestled with his conscience for a long, agonizing moment—then shook his head hard, as though shaking the hesitation loose.
"…It's just an avatar, so who cares? If not now, the chance will never come."
Mind made up at last, he approached Talisa's avatar slowly, eyes half-lidded with determination.
Standing before the armchair, Kallen studied her carefully from above.
Long, soft lashes; delicately sculpted features; even small lips whose slight sheen only made them look more inviting. Her skin retained its healthy color despite her complete stillness—no breath, no pulse, and yet she looked alive. A truly uncanny sight.
If he hadn't already known she was an avatar-mage, he would have sworn she was the woman herself.
"I'll just slip my hand in for a second, that's all."
Steel himself as he might, Kallen finally lifted the edge of Talisa's dress and slid his hand inside.
"…Let's get this over with."
The moment his fingers brushed the smooth curve of her calf, Kallen flinched bodily.
"Damn it, it feels completely real."
The warmth, the soft give of her skin—identical to the real thing in every respect.
Kallen had crossed paths with plenty of self-proclaimed avatar-mages in his time, but an avatar of this caliber was far beyond anything those amateurs could hope to imitate.
"What the…"
Then came the sensation of rustling lace, and beneath it, a garter belt holding it all firmly in place—and Kallen's expression turned stranger still.
Unfortunately, nothing resembling a contract revealed itself in the lower regions.
"A little higher up, then…?"
His hesitating hand steeled itself once more and began climbing up Talisa's thigh—
"I had no idea you had a taste for touching sleeping women."
A soft voice rang out of the empty headmaster's office without warning.
Kallen, absorbed in his hunt for the contract, turned to stone on the spot.
Slowly, his eyes climbed upward of their own accord.
Talisa had returned at some point, and was regarding the man with his hand buried in her skirt with an unreadable smile on her lips.
"…Damn it all."
Kallen squeezed his eyes shut.