Before Becoming a Professor
The capital, Ernese.
Passing the checkpoint and stepping within, I found my breath caught for a moment by the sheer press of people. Crowded, yes—but not chaotic. Carriages kept an orderly flow along the paved roads, and the people walked the edges of the streets. For an age like this, the city was remarkably clean.
The clock tower soaring overhead gave the hour as eleven-fifty in the morning.
A little time to spare, then.
The letter had named one in the afternoon, so I felt no need to hurry. I simply waited for the carriage to reach the mansion I had purchased in the capital.
So this is it.
A short while later the carriage halted. I opened the door, stepped down, and could not help a silent breath of admiration at the grandeur of the vast estate. In Perzen's memory there remained only the fact that a mansion had been bought in the capital; he had never once laid eyes on it himself, and the sight struck me as wholly new. The exterior was a Versailles in miniature. Past the gilded gates, an artificial lake lay in easy harmony with the garden.
No one lived here, so there seemed to be no one charged with the house itself—yet a gardener had evidently been kept on to tend the grounds.
The latch clicked. Within, contrary to that beautiful shell, the place had stood neglected for a long time, and dust lay thick over everything. I told the maids who had come with us to begin with the cleaning, and went up with Euphemia to the bedroom on the third floor.
"If there is furniture, or anything else you wish to buy, go out with the maids and purchase it. I expect I shall not return until late afternoon. Evening, perhaps."
"All right..."
Watching Euphemia nod, listless, I changed my clothes.
As she was now, Euphemia had been bent again and again to my will, and her sense of herself had fallen a long way. Even if she did not wish to be led, she had no goal she might brace herself against. There was nothing to be done.
She did not so much as imagine that Ciel Midford would come for her. Set her private feelings aside, and though the process had been rough, there had been nothing amiss in the marriage itself.
That was why I meant to get her with child. For a woman presently without aim, drained of all will, nothing would serve so well as motivation as a child.
"Euphemia."
"Mm..."
"I shall return."
"...Come back."
Not a shred of feeling in it—a farewell that was courtesy and nothing more—and for a moment my mood soured. Still, it had the shape of seeing me off, and that was something. I left the mansion and climbed into the carriage.
"Drive."
The Imperial Academy, raised on the outskirts of the capital of Ernese, took a single main building as its axis, with two education halls and a dormitory besides.
Strangely familiar...
The architecture, perhaps. It was as if the grounds of some ancient university overseas had been lifted and set down whole, and a faint memory stirred of the first time I had traveled abroad.
The others are arriving as well, one after another.
From the Academy's main gate all the way to the carriage park behind the main building, a long line of carriages stretched. And the one that caught my eye at once, of course, was the carriage of House Alfred, bearing the crest of a violet rose.
Uriel Wayne Dana Alfred...
She would be riding inside.
If we met, I meant to pass it over as composedly as I could, so the rift between us would not deepen. Once the carriage was parked I stepped down, and from subspace I drew a cane of decent design.
"......"
The motion was so entirely natural that I did not even think to question it. Perzen's habit of taking up a cane wherever people gathered was worn into the body, and so I let it be.
A creak. I was about to walk on when Alfred's carriage drew in beside mine.
To park next to a carriage marked with the crest of Brutein was an awkward thing, and most carriages did not so much as approach this side, which left a comparatively wide space open. Even so...
House Alfred was a house that had nursed an inferiority toward Brutein for a very long time. Seen in that light, this was either nothing more than a bid for a comfortable place to park—or, if not, some manner of demonstration that Alfred ought, as a matter of course, to stand abreast of Brutein.
The door banged open.
"Don't misunderstand."
A beauty with black hair a shade lighter than Perzen's. Uriel Wayne Dana Alfred stepped down from the carriage.
A crisp black coat in the Gothic style, a cape of exquisite embroidery laid over it, a short skirt that bared long, slender legs, and a hat with a long brim—dress that told anyone at a glance she was a mage.
"This was just the widest—ghk!"
Uriel, striding straight up to me, took the cane I held out square in the center of her chest. With an unseemly groan she sank where she stood.
So that was the cane's use. A means of warning anyone who tried, out of nowhere, to close the distance past a certain point.
"Y-you... you're insane!"
Tears brimmed as Uriel glared at me, vicious.
"If you have something to say, say it from there."
"You could have just told me not to come closer...!"
"If that is all you wished to say, I shall go."
I turned my back without a second thought. Uriel scrambled up, came around in front of me, and blocked the way. The distance she kept was exact—just far enough that the cane would not reach.
"I only parked here because it looked like the widest space."
"And that was all you were so eager to say?"
"Hah. Don't pretend. You're condemning me in your head right now—an Alfred, daring to stand abreast of Brutein, how insolent. Your thoughts are obvious. Other people might not know, but I do. I know you, Perzen. That much, I'm sure of."
"......"
"Wh-what."
I only looked at her, saying nothing, and Uriel faltered for no reason at all and straightened her brimmed hat.
"Uriel Wayne Dana Alfred."
"What."
"Do not presume, at your station, to understand me. It is unpleasant."
A single meeting, and the tie between our houses. To claim she knew me on the strength of that alone was absurd.
Even if she learned that I suffered from a compulsion, could she sympathize with so much as a tenth of how cruel it was, how painful?
"Do not put such blind faith in that dull eye of yours."
Nothing more would profit either of us. This time I turned my back cleanly and walked toward the Academy's main building.
"......"
And Uriel walked at my side.
The moment our eyes met she flinched and opened her mouth.
"We're going the same way. I am not following you."
"As a child, and now—you remain a tiresome woman."
Was this persecution aimed at Brutein a fate carved into Alfred blood?
Sighing inwardly, I entered the main building and set out to find the chancellor's office, where we were to gather. I had set my course by the directory on the first floor, and yet where I arrived was not the chancellor's office.
Where was this?
"The chancellor's office is to the right, not the left."
"...If you knew, why did you follow?"
"Y-you walked off so sure of yourself, I... thought I was the one who was wrong..."
"You cannot even hold to a belief you yourself think right? Truly, you are pathetic beyond words."
"Excuse me. You're the one who got lost!"
"I was wrong because I did not know. You were wrong though you knew. They are not the same. Do not throw a tantrum."
"Oh, you're wonderful. Really..."
Uriel turned away with a look of pure disgust and strode off. I followed her toward the chancellor's office.
"Hmm..."
In the Academy's chancellor's office, the First Imperial Princess—Elizabeth—had been at her work. Seeing the carriages gather one by one beyond the window, she rose.
Brutein and Alfred...
What seized the eye first among them, without question, were the lavish carriages bearing the crests of House Brutein and House Alfred.
It was true that Brutein's name stood higher than Alfred's. And yet, ironically, what the imperial house preferred was Alfred. The weight one had to bear was different when Brutein bled for the throne, and when Alfred did.
Through every age of history, Brutein had walked the middle path. The loyalty they offered belonged to the emperor alone. So much so that the loyalty of Brutein, which one could take in hand upon becoming emperor, was said to be worth more than all the other houses that had backed one's bid for the throne.
But they were inflexible, and stubborn. Like a strict father. A powerful ally—and one that could not be moved carelessly.
Alfred differed from Brutein in that, and so belonged to the side that was comparatively easy to handle.
"Everyone has gathered outside."
"Bid them enter."
At the report of the maid who had looked out, Elizabeth seated herself at her ease and began to receive those who had answered the imperial summons.
When I entered the chancellor's office, I did not once look upon the face of the First Imperial Princess—Elizabeth.
With very high probability, I expected I would find in her something to set my compulsion off.
Imperial blood, and a woman among it, carried a high value as a brand. It was no exaggeration to say that the fashions of high society turned upon such people, and so skilled craftsmen and tailors presented their work to the imperial house, steadily, every month. The women called the flowers of society therefore wore a fair number of ornaments as a matter of course—not to excess, perhaps, but enough that to look upon them would be no small ordeal.
So I quietly lowered my gaze to the papers setting out the Academy's overall plan, and read them through in calm.
Blessed by the god of wisdom, they said. It shows.
Provided there was a sponsor, even a commoner could enter the Academy. But unlike the novels and the comics, no matter whose imperial name one borrowed, the bullshit about everyone being equal beneath the status of student would never be realized in the real world. To force the comparison to its extreme, it would be like shutting Jews and Nazis into a single school and hoping they would live as equals merely because both were called students.
So, ironically, if commoners were not to be despised and tormented by nobles, one had to discriminate thoroughly.
The papers said as much. Beyond the division of lecture zones, commoners were required without exception to take their meals in the dining hall inside the dormitory, and even the lunch hours were arranged so they would not overlap. The education halls were separate already, and still, when the commoners were in lecture the nobles had a free period, and when the nobles were in lecture the commoners had a free period.
There were many other plain elements of discrimination besides, and not one of them struck me as unjust. The dormitories given to nobles were one person to a room; those given to commoners were four to a room. Under a management held in check by discrimination, they might also grow a bond with one another. It would make a sound plan.
That imperial blood, seated at the apex of feudal rule, should possess a view this fine was honestly astonishing.
No. Not necessarily.
This was the early stage of a move toward centralized power. To gather greater strength, the fundamental course was to raise capable commoners rather than nobles, whose interests would inevitably tangle. In fact, every professor assigned to the commoners answered directly to the imperial house. Trace the patrons behind even some of the commoners admitted under sponsorship, and the imperial house would likely be what turned up.
Ambitious, at least.
Having read the whole of the outline, I tucked the papers into my coat.
"Go down to the first floor, and you will find instructors employed there who once kept a school in Rosenberg. You may have their help in drawing up a long-term plan of lectures."
"May I take them to my private residence?"
"Do so, and they will suffocate and die. I forbid it."
"......"
"Should you, having read the outline through, find aught you cannot grasp, or aught you deem must be amended, I shall permit you to speak. If not, then you may depart as you are and look over your lecture room and your office. That, too, would be well."
At the princess's words, several of the nobles began to glance my way.
Of course. However plainly she had spoken, the burden of rising first before a princess was too great, and they were desperately hoping I would stand before they did. Follow Brutein out, and there would be no loss of face.
"Then I shall take my leave first."
I rose. Hesitant, the other nobles followed after me.
It was no burden at all. People following where they saw Brutein's back—that was an entirely natural thing.
Here, then.
I declined the offer to tour the Academy in company, and stepped alone into the lecture room assigned to me.
"Ah..."
Perzen had never known it, but Lee Seojin had lived it for far too many years, and for an instant I sank into a long-missed nostalgia. A great blackboard, and a lectern where small sticks of chalk lay in neat order. Chalk took a certain technique to use, but with the talent of Fine Penmanship, nothing about it ought to grate.
Nothing here to worry over.
The desks and chairs where the students would sit were set at a suitable distance from the lectern, so a fit did not seem likely. On a whim I drew a chair back and sat in it.
Old memories swelled up, billowing like clouds. Only for a moment. I broke them apart, rose, and pushed the chair in.
"......"
And only then did I find the problem.
Yes. This will not do.
Once a lecture ended, what were the odds that every student would push a chair in correctly? Even if I ordered them to, the moment a hand put in a little too much force, the desk would skid forward under the chair. Bit by bit the desks and chairs would fall out of line, and in the end they would press the switch of my compulsion and throw me into a fit.
Nor was that all. No one sat still in a chair. One way or another, the arrangement would end up all different.
"......"
The solution rose in my mind with surprising simplicity. From the subspace engraved in the ring on my left hand I drew a sheet of paper, and took up the fountain pen within my coat.
To change the interior of a lecture room would require Her Highness the Princess's leave, however I spent my private funds. It would have to take the form of a report.
The contents were exceedingly simple. Replace the desks and chairs of the Black Magic lecture room with new ones. And those new ones, even should they earn the room the infamy of the worst lecture hall, would at least keep me from becoming the worst of professors.
A demon lurking in certain lecture rooms of the universities of the twenty-first century. The common enemy of every university student: the all-in-one desk.
I was a villain anyway. Surely a little mischief on this scale did not matter.
Lee Seojin's memory, displaying today of all days an unusually rich empathy and sensitivity, pricked at my conscience. I stubbornly ignored it. For the present, making an environment in which I could be at ease came first.