The Model Answer
The forest was thick with mystery. Now and then a bird called, and from every side drifted a faint, clean scent — the quiet breath of the trees themselves.
But I knew the truth of it. The peace held only because magic lay over the place. Step even a little past that boundary, and the woods would be crawling with wild beasts, and with magical ones besides.
They wouldn't actually drag me out that far... would they?
I was spinning some idle nonsense, waiting for the principal to speak, when she did.
"Dante, do you know why the cadets enroll at the Academy?"
It wasn't what I had expected. The question came out of nowhere.
"For a noble, graduating from the Academy is a required virtue, isn't it?"
The principal laughed softly.
"The Academy isn't only nobles."
Fair. I'll admit I answered out of prejudice.
"If they aren't nobles, they graduate with excellent marks and become a dependent of whatever place took notice of them."
A guild, say, or a magic tower, or a noble house. And the finest of those is, of course, the imperial household.
"A very model answer."
I shrugged. Counting my previous life, I had spent years out in the world. Something like this was nothing.
"Which is why it's a little disappointing."
"...Pardon?"
Her reaction had landed so far from anything I expected that I asked it with a thoroughly stupid look on my face. This was already the second time the principal had thrown me this far off balance. And then she said:
"The truth is, I haven't been principal for long. About a year, I think? Did you know?"
"I had no idea."
I'll say it again. Until not long ago, I didn't know the first thing about the Academy. Frankly, that still hasn't changed.
"What did you do before that?"
I had a fair guess. Rise to principal at an age like hers, and you were either attached to a magic tower or a figure of some weight in the imperial household.
"I wandered the continent."
The answer missed my guess completely. So she had been a wandering mage?
"A little shaken? Fufu."
"Not in the least. If anything, it sounds romantic."
The principal's eyes went wide.
"That is a model answer as well."
"I'll take it as a compliment."
"It is a compliment, of course."
As if.
A minute ago you said you were disappointed because I gave you a model answer.
Saying that aloud would only make me look cheap, so I swallowed it. Still — why bring up that she hadn't been at the Academy for long?
"In any case, I traveled all over and saw a great many things."
Oh.
"Now that has my ears up. Did you happen to see a dragon?"
"Fufu. Is that what you're curious about?"
"Of course. People never stop arguing that they exist, then that they don't. Honestly..."
A quick look through the literature would probably have given me an answer. But what I wanted wasn't whether they existed. I wanted the account of someone who had actually seen one. Come on — how was I supposed to sit on that?
"I'll tell you later, if the chance comes."
What.
Say it like that and you sound exactly like someone who really saw one. So why did it ring like we should get a meal sometime — a promise with no date on it?
"Ah, but I'm curious. Can't you just tell me now? I've got a bit of time today..."
The principal let out that soft laugh of hers.
"All right. Since you're that curious, I'll tell you."
"Really?!"
"Just not now."
I was halfway to springing up when a weight seemed to drop onto me with a dull thud. This woman had the nerve to toy with a man's pure heart?!
"Then when, exactly..."
"When you have proven your qualifications, Dante, I'll tell you then."
Another condition. It took some of the wind out of me, but it beat never hearing the story at all. In a month, I would hear it anyway.
"You promise?"
"Fufu. I do like that you are still so full of confidence."
"Kind of you to say so, but I will need an actual answer."
"Yes. I promise."
Only after I had secured that firm reply did I settle in to hear what followed.
"What I want to speak about is people."
"People?"
"Yes. I have been granted an audience with the emperor who commands the world, and I have also met paupers convinced that whatever they can see is the whole of it."
In a word, she had witnessed every shape a human being could take.
Mm. This is about to get serious.
A principal's lecture has, since old times, been employed as a method of torture, so I tensed considerably. I had no decent excuse for leaving, either, which left the situation thoroughly awkward. We were in the middle of the forest to begin with. There was nowhere to run.
Wait. She didn't lure me out here for this, did she...?
Surely not. Even so, I was a little suspicious. Either way, I clearly had no choice but to listen, so I put on a look of keen interest and waited for whatever came next.
Well. Still far better than talking alchemy until dawn.
"Earlier I said I was disappointed because it was a model answer, didn't I?"
"You did. I'm just not sure which of the two you mean."
"Ah. Right."
The principal smiled, just barely.
"The second one really was a compliment."
It was? And here I had thought she was needling me.
"Honestly, my heart fluttered a little. You are so good with words. Women must adore you."
If anyone was good with words, it was her. I am a man too. When a face that pretty says something that pleasant, of course my heart flutters. The glasses still aren't to my taste.
"I have wandered off. The reason I said I was disappointed is that I do not particularly welcome that answer."
"Meaning..."
I paused a beat to draw a breath, then asked.
"You mean you resent the way nobles take graduating from the Academy as a matter of course, and the way people scramble for good marks just to land a better post?"
I let it all spill out, and sure enough, the principal's eyes went wide again — wider than before.
"Have we spoken about this before?"
"You know we haven't, Principal."
She answered with a faint smile.
The reason I could see straight through her, for once, was nothing mysterious. This was the very grievance countless people had hammered at while trying to fix what was wrong with a modern education system. Only the ones living it had changed — cadets instead of students. The shape of it was the same.
She is more remarkable than I thought.
I had taken her for someone of good character, and no more. She was a true educator, and the character was real. Even so, I figured her wish lay a long way off. Where I used to live, people had kept pointing at the same flaws and never managed to mend them. All of it was spent on politics.
And in a world where elitism is simply how things are, there is even less point in saying it.
My guess landed true.
"Which is why I have a great many enemies."
Enemies.
Set against her usual way of speaking, it was a blunt choice of word. The weight it carried was anything but light.
"I imagine so."
"Fufu."
Put plainly, it came to this.
The principal wants to make the Academy an educational institution in the true sense of the word.
The start of that would be sweeping away the climate that currently saturates the place — bloodline as the answer to everything, and ability as the only measure that matters. Beyond that, abolishing the system that sorts cadets into the four great faculties and judges each person by a fixed set of traits.
Right. All well and good. That's the thing.
I had listened in silence. Now I spoke in a slightly more serious voice.
"There is one thing I would like to ask."
"Please. Ask anything."
"Then I won't hold back."
Before I even weighed whether her plan could be realized, there was something I absolutely had to confirm.
"Is it all right for you to be telling me something like this?"
The answer that came back was—
"That is why I gave you a month."
An answer that was entirely like her.
"Ah."
I wasn't even sure I was the sort of person who ought to be hearing it. Still, one question, at least, was settled — why she had passed over every distinguished name and chosen me, a commoner.
"Oh, and."
"...?"
"My name is Yuria."
Ah. Come to think of it, I hadn't known her name until this moment.
The principal who had just introduced herself properly — no, Yuria — added with a bright smile.
"So from now on, could you call me by my name, instead of that stiff title of Principal?"
And of course, once again, refusal was not among the options.
"So that's what this has been."
When Seria went to the office in charge and explained her situation, the clerk answered in a voice full of pity. She was someone the principal had chosen personally, a commoner like Seria, and she could feel the bind the girl was in more deeply than anyone.
Even so, there was a limit to what a single clerk could settle.
"I'm sorry. Paying an additional dignity allowance because of a cadet's personal circumstances goes against the regulations."
Not even the principal could move those regulations. Bend them to grant a commoner special treatment, and there was no telling how the nobles would strike back. Those born into privilege are, by nature, lenient with themselves and severe about any benefit someone else enjoys.
Haa.
At the disappointment on Seria's face, the clerk let out a small sigh.
What a shame. Isn't there some way to help her?
And just then, a thought crossed her mind.
"Oh — now that I think of it, there is one way."
At those words, Seria jerked her lowered head up.
"The Academy has a work-study scholarship. You would earn a wage, and receive a scholarship as well."
"Whoa..."
The girl, who had brightened at once, soon sank into worry.
But where would I even find work...?