The Lecture
It was drawing on toward nine.
Anyone coming up to the roof at this hour, I had assumed, would of course be one of the professors, and I was quietly working my way through a smoke of tobacco when Lizzie's familiar voice rang out, sharp and bright. I could not help being rather badly startled.
She never spoke my name outright, and yet the flood of feeling was aimed at me with perfect clarity.
……
Listening, I was not particularly displeased. If it was Lizzie, it was only natural she should be that way. That, however, was a separate matter. I turned my head and looked hard to see whether anyone else was nearby.
No one……
There was no one on the roof of Education Hall B across the way, either. Knowing as much, no doubt, was why Lizzie could carry on so boldly.
A little……
I felt a twinge of regret. Had some third party heard those cries, word would surely have spread through the Imperial Academy like rumor.
And then……
I would have had a pretext to bring a territorial war down upon House Claudia. If a third party were to read this thought of mine, they would take me for unmatched trash beneath heaven.
No—trash is accurate, but……
What else was I to do? It was not that I felt no guilt. With the self of a modern man whose morals were intact—Lee Seojin—folded into me, it would have been strange not to feel guilt over breaking a twelve-year-old girl's ankle.
But if a means of controlling the variable of death were laid before one's eyes, how many could turn away from it? Even if I rose to Apollyon and made contact with the anomaly that dwelt on the third floor of the Netherworld, the one that restored bodily defects and wounds, it was doubtful this hopelessly tangled skein would ever come undone.
This was not the sort of thing a simple apology could end. Had it been, I would have done so long ago. I remembered with perfect clarity the cold response that had come back when I sounded her out last time.
If there was a single misunderstanding bound up in this ill-fated tie, it was only the matter of severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. Eight years had already passed. Even if she were brought to accept that the one who did it was a patient with such an illness, she would not understand. Not unless one side wholly submitted, or broke. A fate that could not end.
It was not for nothing……
that I was preparing to intervene in this war to seize the imperial throne.
"Ah……"
The wind turned all at once. The smoke I had exhaled bent sharply and drifted toward Lizzie, and the effort to stay quietly hidden seemed to have gone to waste. I dropped the tobacco on the floor, ground it out under my foot, and spoke.
"Lizzie."
I did not show myself. Only she and I were on this roof. To reveal myself would surely provoke her trauma and leave her in the same state as that day.
Is she not going down……
However long I waited, I never heard the sound of Lizzie moving her wheelchair to descend. I had called her name and stayed buried here on purpose, so that she would go down first.
"……"
Stifled, I leaned my head out a little, and there was Lizzie, holding her place as stubbornly as a plaster statue gone rigid. At this rate I would not be able to give the lecture on time. I forcibly seized control of the corpse gripping her wheelchair and slowly pushed it toward the railing.
Plenty of people were still walking about below. If Lizzie took that in with her own eyes, she ought to pull free of the warning that a trauma fit was about to break.
Creak. Creak.
"Ah……"
Before she could even tell when it had happened, the corpse whose control had been stolen in an instant forced the wheelchair toward the railing. Was he meaning to drop her from here and kill her? Turn the thought over even a little, and she would have known Perzen had no reason to attempt anything so reckless. The Lizzie of this moment simply had no room left for thinking that far.
"N-no……!"
So she seized as if in a fit, undid the belt binding her waist, collapsed flat onto the floor, and crawled wretchedly away toward the opposite side.
This is enough to drive a man mad……
Watching, Perzen sighed at having driven her further into a corner than he had intended, and moved the corpse. Since it had come to this, better simply to lift her and let her look down past the railing.
……!
But the instant he tried to take the fiercely resisting Lizzie into the corpse's arms, the connection broke.
What?
What it meant was unmistakable. Control of the corpse had been seized back from him.
……
Of course, the mana Perzen had spent to take the corpse Lizzie was enslaving had been only a sliver. She, by contrast, had enslaved that corpse for a long time, raising both her proficiency and her understanding. If she poured mana in by brute force, taking the corpse back would not be impossible. The problem was—
I cannot recover control.
A talent that, upon any corpse, granted a bonus for shared blood. And on top of that, Perzen held mana of a quality above Euclid. If the contest became one of crudely pouring mana in, then no matter how Lizzie struggled, she should not have been able to keep hold of control.
So that is it……
He turned on Quantification and looked. The corpse's Implementation Rate was eighty-two percent. High, and yet the corpse was an ordinary body. Understanding and proficiency did nothing more than raise the conductivity of mana. Even if both converged upon zero, the maximum Implementation Rate of ninety percent could still be reached. It would only be extremely inefficient.
And Perzen's mana possessed both the quantity and the quality to do exactly that with an ordinary corpse, and still have plenty to spare…… Seizing control was impossible.
Once a certain Implementation Rate is reached, control can never be stolen by another. Is this the talent you possess in black magic, Lizzie……
She was still only Ketter, so it was not a talent from which much brilliance could be hoped. But if her rank rose by degrees, then at least in battle between black mages of the same standing, that talent would help her seize an overwhelming advantage.
"……"
Until a pretext was in hand, he had meant to keep the present situation from worsening, if nothing else. The saying that if one stayed still, one at least got halfway there was not spoken for nothing. But realizing anew just how soft that thinking had been, Perzen stepped out from the corner, his footsteps steady.
The trauma she bears toward me……
must not, at the very least, be overcome.
Trembling all over, Lizzie tried to push herself up from the floor where she lay miserably sprawled.
A step.
And the moment Perzen stopped before her and looked down with those characteristic red eyes—
"Hah, ah……"
Lizzie's mind went white as a blank sheet of paper.
Thud.
The corpse that had naturally recovered its control lost the connection as well and collapsed to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.
Softly, Perzen reached both hands toward her and lifted her body lightly into his arms.
Resistance? Defiance? The instant her trauma seized her, Lizzie's body forgot such things cleanly and submitted before him. The hideous, dreadful wound of the past that Perzen had carved into her held a spiritual dominion just that powerful.
"I—I was wrong……"
"……"
"I'm sorry…… I'm sorry……"
"……"
As Perzen walked slowly, without a word, toward the rooftop railing, Lizzie clutched the hem of his clothes and repeated apologies like a parrot, though she had done nothing wrong.
"Lizzie Paul Liana Claudia."
At last, before the railing. Standing at the fence meant to keep anyone from falling to their death, Perzen set her down, caught her slender waist firmly, and turned her body forward.
"Hic……!"
"Do you see the countless people moving about down there. Only you and I are here, but you need not be afraid of that fact."
With a large hand he caught the chin of Lizzie, whose head was bowed, and forced it up so she would look down from the roof. But her trembling would not settle. Rather, ice-cold teardrops kept falling onto the back of the hand that held her chin. At that, Perzen awkwardly wiped the tears running from the corners of her eyes and whispered, low.
Close—hot breath tickled her earlobe, and only then did Lizzie slowly open both eyes and carve into her pupils the countless people moving about below.
"You really are a child who takes a great deal of handling."
The process may have been rough, but the result was as Perzen had intended. Little by little, Lizzie regained her calm. And if one looked only at that result and inferred the intent of the act, anyone would agree, with one voice, that it was kindness……
In truth it was nothing but vicious harassment wearing the mask of consideration—deliberately inducing a trauma fit so that she would not forget it, so that it would be driven home again. In a word: kind abuse.
"L-let go of me……"
"Very well."
Come back to herself, Lizzie caught the thick forearm holding her waist and spoke quietly, her voice strengthless. Perzen did not refuse. He supported her and sat her in the wheelchair that had stopped partway there.
"Omitting the subject of your accusation was, in its way, a clever judgment."
"……"
"You have narrowly escaped the question of discipline."
Finishing what he had left to say, Perzen—who had kindly even set her disordered clothes to rights—raised the waist he had bent and drew himself upright.
"Some five minutes left until nine…… We ought to go down."
Confirming how little time remained, he turned his back first and walked on ahead, expressionless. Looking at that back, Lizzie clenched her slender hand tight and forced open a mouth that barely wanted to move, letting a single line fall.
"This lecture……"
"……"
"You will regret it."
"Regret, is it……"
Turning the words over, Perzen stopped, came toward her with steady steps, and lowered his head before her. Then, stroking her cheek and the line of her throat with a soft hand, he caught her by the nape and drew her in close before him.
She flinched.
Startled, Lizzie thrust both hands out in a hurry to push him away, but with strength so pitiful it was impossible to open any distance.
"Do the masters of a pasture, or its shepherds, feel fear each time the livestock they raise put on flesh?"
"……"
"Your elder brother has only just barely slipped that fence. You, who are still inside it, are nothing more than plump prey—well fattened, and good to eat."
A recitation arrogant beyond measure. Lizzie could make no answer at all.
"So think no useless thoughts…… Remain quietly within the fence. Was it not always those who slipped the fence of their own will who were eaten by the wolves?"
"……"
"Leaving the fence is not a pleasant thing. Even a child who threw tantrums about wanting to be grown comes, once grown, to long for childhood instead."
Tapering off, Perzen took his hand from the nape of her neck and went down from the roof first. Left alone, Lizzie enslaved the corpse, slowly pushed the wheelchair, and bit her lip hard.
No…… when is he even coming.
Stamping from foot to foot, Alphonse, the administrative assistant, heaved sigh after sigh. To gather personages of that standing and still have the composure to take his time—he understood anew what it meant to be of Brutein blood.
The door banged open. And just as his insides were burning away, at the exact moment it became nine, the lecture hall door swung wide, and a tall, clean-lined man in a neat black suit stepped inside with steady footsteps.
He always wore dress of the same cut. It felt like a standard of its own, and no one found fault with it.
A step. Perzen, having come up onto the platform, tapped his heel against the floor twice, roused the frozen Alphonse, and took the attendance list from him.
"Everyone is here, save one……"
"Yes. The young lady of House Rosenberg has been marked absent for illness."
"Good. Then see to the empty seats as I told you."
"You truly mean to?"
"Do not make me say it twice. I dislike it."
"Yes……"
Bowing his head as he withdrew, Alphonse gathered into his arms the dolls set behind the platform and set them down, one after another, in the empty seats. Every time laughter burst from those around at the sight, Alphonse's face went scarlet, but it was something Perzen had ordered, and there was nothing he could do.
Glancing over at him, Perzen looked across the outside guests seated toward the back. Office, house, personal renown—all of it differed. If there was a point in common, every one of them was a mage. Which stood to reason. This lecture was strictly a place for imparting magical knowledge, so neither commoners nor aura knights could attend. Even imperial royalty was no exception.
The reason was solely the oath sworn through mana. Those who walked the path of magic could make three oaths in a lifetime, and as was well known, the room for abuse was vast. And so—
When a paper is submitted within the Magic Society, only that which has been proven, without falsehood, may be submitted.
The magical knowledge of another shall not be disclosed without permission.
Magical knowledge shall not be shared with foreign nations.
Fulfilling these three articles at the age of four was the law of the realm. Were it not so, a mage who blundered an oath might have to live, because of it, a life lower than a dog's. In any case, thanks to this, even though the form was a lecture, there was no chance the knowledge in question would be disclosed in some absurd fashion.
She has come……
When Alphonse, having set down every doll, left the hall, and Lizzie came in after him, Perzen slowly raised his right hand.
"Silence……"
He opened by looking at the students seated in the front row.
"If you would."
He gave his gaze to the guests seated behind.
"……"
"Then I shall begin the lecture."