The Hikikomori Professor
The duel between Bohn Zaborg and Johann Baker.
Because it had been an impromptu arena thrown open in the middle of the entrance ceremony, word of it raced through the entire Academy.
"You've got to admit, Bohn Zaborg was incredible. Did you see that assault? I might've wet myself."
"That Johann kid used some weird skill. And they're saying he's the top student?"
"He didn't look bad, exactly. But without Professor Tepes stepping in, Zaborg would've taken it, right?"
The name on everyone's lips was Zaborg's more than Johann's. To the students watching, the bout had clearly tilted his way.
Johann had fought well for a commoner — but not well enough to match Zaborg. That was the prevailing view. And that, precisely, was the ceiling of the mid-to-lower ranks.
"Hmph. Idiots."
Arsha Swordhorn scoffed at the lot of them, then tossed a remark Johann's way.
"You're just going to sit there and let garbage like that spread?"
"What garbage would that be?"
Johann tipped his head, all mild curiosity. Arsha stared at him as if he'd grown a second one.
"Those fools think you lost."
"Haha. No result was called, so they're free to guess, aren't they?"
Lower-rank opinion didn't matter. Almost none of them were the kind of people who moved the story. The students worth targeting with Johann's trait copy were, almost without exception, the ones at the top.
"Besides, it isn't only the bad rumors making the rounds."
Among the upper ranks, the talk ran differently.
"That duel just now. What did you make of it?"
"The way he slipped Bohn's opening barrage — that was no accident."
"Accident? Please. There's a reason he's sitting in the top seat."
The uncanny movement Johann had shown was proof enough that his skill was no empty number. In the reading of the bout — the small, decisive choices — he had clearly outplayed Zaborg.
With no official winner, no one could swear who had taken it and who had not. What no one could do was look down on Johann. If the Academy had set him at the head of the class, it had done so for a reason.
That much, the upper-rank students agreed on.
"Anyway, we should go pick our departments. Swordhorn, you'll be Swordsmanship, I assume?"
"Obviously. What about you?"
Johann tapped the dagger at his hip.
"I'm a rogue."
"Me too!"
Sierra's hand shot up, her face bright with delight.
The rogue class.
Unlike swordsmen, mages, or archers, it carried a uniquely sour reputation — and for good reason. The typical output of a rogue's training was an assassin, and nobody in the world thought kindly of assassins. Not even the assassins.
"A rogue, huh. Does the Academy even have a Rogue Department?"
Arsha cocked her head.
"Surprisingly, yes. It is the Academy, after all."
The Academy had an odd custom: students chose their department after they enrolled. So the first order of business once the ceremony ended was picking a major. They had a week to shop around, sample other departments, and decide.
Of course, most students arrived already knowing where they were going. Arsha, Johann, and Sierra included.
You could usually tell from the entrance exam which department a student would petition for. The week of sampling existed, supposedly, to let them taste something else — to broaden a student's horizons, if only a little.
"Then this is where we part, Miss Swordhorn. Thank you again for the carriage today."
"Thank you!"
Johann and Sierra bowed together.
They left Arsha behind and started for the Rogue Department building. Johann took the winding path as if he'd walked it a hundred times. The building sat on the Academy's outermost fringe.
"Johann. I think we might be the only ones coming this way."
He nodded.
"Seems like it. I'd heard it was extremely niche. Miss Swordhorn didn't even know the department existed. The class itself doesn't have a great image to begin with."
"Still… I didn't think it'd be this empty. Ugh. I wonder what the professor's like."
A gloomy, narrow path unspooled ahead of them — the kind of place that made you wonder whether it belonged to the Academy at all.
Sierra found herself thinking of the murky alleys of the Royal Capital where she'd grown up. This was cleaner than those, but it still didn't belong here.
"You saw the professor at the ceremony, didn't you? The gloomy one with the heavy dark circles."
The two of them stopped in front of a building. A ramshackle shack of a place, a half-rotted sign hanging off it in lonely surrender. Nothing about it looked like a department hall.
"H-here?"
Sierra's voice came out thick with dismay.
"Johann. Is this actually it?"
She kept glancing at him, worry written all over her face — and perhaps that voice carried inside, because hurried footsteps came pattering toward the door.
"Hnnn…! Students...!"
A murky, gloom-soaked voice leaked out of the shack that passed for a department office. Then a woman with long, seaweed-like hair poked her head through the doorway. Dark circles ringed her eyes. She looked from Johann to Sierra and back again, and her voice leapt with naked rapture.
"They're real students...!"
Sierra caught Johann's sleeve and whispered, low enough that only he could hear.
"Johann. She seems a little… off. Is she actually the professor?"
"At last…! Students have come to our Rogue Department...!"
Joy? Panic? Her manner and her voice refused to settle on either, and Sierra felt a distinct prickle of unease. Johann, for his part, spoke as if this were the most ordinary thing in the world.
"Professor Reina. May we come in for now?"
"Eek…! You know my name...!"
The woman flailed her head and hid her face. Sierra shook her own.
"See? Weird."
The Academy's Rogue Department building was the sort of place you could have labeled for demolition — or called a haunted house — and no one would have argued. It was only a slight step up from the warehouse in the Back Alleys of the Capital where Sierra and I used to train.
And Professor Reina, department chair and sole faculty member of the Rogue Department, matched the building with almost painful fidelity.
"Eek…! I'm so sorry all I can offer is cold water...!"
Two cracked teacups sat on a round table.
Sierra stared at my face with a look that said, Is this for real?
It wasn't the shabby hospitality she was objecting to. It was the fact that a place this threadbare existed inside the Academy at all. A fair question.
Professor Reina's eyes flickered between Sierra and me. She didn't look like a professor with students in front of her. She looked like a bullied kid who'd just been cornered by the class thugs.
For all I knew, that was more or less what she felt. She had always been hopeless with people.
"Please take care of me...! I'm Izumi Reina, from the East...! I'm not much, but I serve as chair of the Academy's Rogue Department...!"
She ducked her head in a deep bow as she said it, in that unforgettable voice and that unforgettable way of talking — the kind you heard once and never quite shook off.
"If we didn't get any students this year either, they were going to shut us down...! I'm so glad you came, Johann, Sierra...!"
"Um… when you say 'this year either,' does that mean there aren't any seniors taking classes?"
Sierra's question sent Professor Reina's head whipping back and forth.
"That's right...! For three years, not a single student tried to enroll in the Rogue Department...!"
The rogue class.
From a gamer's chair, it was just one class among many. According to the lore, though, classes came with their own prejudices and pecking orders.
Swordsmen and mages sat at the top of the popularity chart, no contest.
Rogues sat at the bottom.
Nobles made up a huge share of the Academy's incoming class, and almost none of them spared this path a glance. Noble houses handed down a class the way they handed down a name — the way the Leoris family had produced mages for generations.
People who actually wanted to become rogues didn't come to the Academy. They earned their scars in the field, in places like the thieves' guilds.
One look at this building told you everything you needed to know about how the Rogue Department was treated inside these walls.
In the original story, most of the faculty pushed to have the department closed. It didn't fit the Academy's image, or so they said.
Department funding came in drips, and Professor Reina's salary was a quarter of a normal professor's. Looking at the state of the place, that was easy enough to believe.
The only reason the department was still breathing was Headmaster Glas's influence.
"The Headmaster scouted me, and I came to the Academy three years ago...! But in all that time, not one student wanted to learn! If this keeps up, I'll be fired...! And then I won't even get a professor's pension...!"
The dark circles around her eyes seemed to gleam as she put her whole voice into it.
"Johann! Sierra! Please enroll in the Rogue Department...! Especially you, Johann — being a rogue is your calling...!"
That pitch only appeared when her affinity was ten or higher. A little dividend from the duel with Bohn.
"What you showed in that duel! I was in awe...! You have every quality a rogue needs...! A rogue among rogues! You could become the First Left Hand...!"
Professor Reina poured it on. Sierra still watched her with open suspicion.
Academy professor or not, the impression she gave was so underwhelming that doubt was only natural. No matter how generously you looked at her, she didn't look like anything more than a hikikomori.
"I don't know about this."
Sierra's skepticism hadn't budged. Professor Reina shot to her feet and thrust five spread fingers at her.
"W-what is that?"
"Fifty-fifty!"
"Excuse me!?"
"I'll give you half my salary as a student fee...!"
Not protection money. Not a friendship fee. A student fee.
Professor Reina had just invented a concept that had never existed.
Sierra had been bracing for some display of actual ability. Her face fell apart on the spot.
"I really can't go any higher...! My salary's a pittance as it is, and living in the capital costs so much...!"
"J-Johann. This professor is actually kind of weird."
Sierra grabbed my sleeve. She wasn't wrong. Even in Legend Route, Professor Reina had been a character who stood out for personality alone. Her skill, though, was the real thing. She was one of the reasons I'd chosen the Rogue Department in the first place.
"She may look like that, but she's still an Academy professor. If the Headmaster scouted her himself, her ability's a given."
"Mmm. If that's how you see it, I'll follow your lead."
The two of us enrolled in the Rogue Department.
"Fwaaah…! Students have finally enrolled...!"
Professor Reina beamed, her whole face lit with joy.
"I'll deposit the student fee first thing tomorrow...!"
"N-no! We really don't need a student fee!"
Sierra broke into a cold sweat at the professor's sheer, unfiltered strangeness.