A Professor's Day
It had been a while since I'd arrived at the Academy.
Even on days without classes, Sienna would sometimes come looking for me, and when nothing much was going on, I'd set aside an hour or two to watch her swing her sword.
At first I only meant to check whether she'd properly learned the Arang Style, but her fundamentals turned out to be better than I'd expected.
At the very least, she was far ahead of where I'd been when I first picked up a sword.
Back then, I hadn't even known how to grip a blade properly—for the first few months, I'd swung it however I could, driven by nothing but the thought of surviving.
Sienna, by contrast, had actually been taught by her father, so her stance rarely fell apart.
More than anything, her head worked fast whenever things went sideways, which made her temperament a perfect fit for the Arang Style.
Today, too, I came out to the training grounds about an hour before class started. I spotted Sienna already there waiting, raised a hand in a halfhearted greeting—then froze when I noticed something strange clinging to her back.
"Hey."
"Yes?"
"Who's the one behind you?"
At my words, the girl behind her opened her mouth to answer, but Sienna got there first.
"She's the top student of our year. She said she wanted to train with us, so I brought her along."
"Top student?"
I thought for a moment, then it came back to me.
"Ah. The girl who took a hit to the jaw and dropped like a sack."
The girl's face went red in an instant.
Apparently that was her, alright.
"……I'd appreciate a slightly different way of putting it."
"Was I wrong?"
"No, but—"
"Then we're good."
I brushed it off and gave the girl a once-over. Come to think of it, I did remember her face—the one who'd challenged my qualifications in the very first lesson and even drawn her sword on me.
"So what're you here for?"
"Excuse me?"
"You've probably had plenty of proper instruction already, and class starts in a little while anyway. What do you need to show up an hour early for?"
Anyone ranked top of the year would have been trained in proper swordsmanship since childhood.
She wasn't clinging to the Arang Style her father taught her like Sienna, so I couldn't see what she'd need to learn from me in particular.
The girl glanced at Sienna for a moment.
"Sienna's skills have improved a great deal recently."
"So?"
"When I asked her why, she said she's been receiving private guidance from you, Professor."
"So you want in too?"
"Yes."
She answered so matter-of-factly that she must have come here with exactly that in mind from the start.
I scratched the back of my head like it was all a nuisance.
"Why would I?"
"……Pardon?"
"Watching that one alone is already more trouble than I can stand. Why would I take on another?"
"Professor."
"What."
"I'm standing right here, you know."
"I know."
Sienna pouted at me, but I ignored her.
The top student deliberated briefly, then spoke up carefully.
"If necessary, I can offer compensation."
"No need."
"Pardon?"
"I said forget the money."
As I said it, I jerked my chin toward Sienna.
"In exchange, keep an eye on that one for me."
"Me?"
"You're the top student—you've got connections around this place. If she ends up getting picked on by weirdos again, handle it yourself."
Sienna blinked up at me with wide eyes.
"Professor, are you… worried about me?"
"Nope."
"It kind of seems like you are."
"I said I'm not."
"Then why are you telling her to look after me?"
"Shut it."
Beside us, the top student's gaze flicked back and forth between the two of us before she let out a small laugh.
"I'll take good care of Sienna."
"Good."
Since that seemed to settle things, I looked back at the top student.
"So what's your name?"
The girl's expression froze for an instant, and the way she looked at me changed in a strange way. It was the look of someone asking, you don't even know the name of your own student?
What. It's not like it's impossible.
"…It's Erin Rebellion."
"Erin Rebellion…."
"Yes."
Nobles and their names. What a pain in the ass to remember.
I nodded vaguely, then told both of them to draw their swords. Today, I'd originally planned to get a closer look at how Sienna actually fought.
Outside of these sessions, what I taught in my regular classes wasn't how to swing a sword well—it was how to survive. The same way I'd trained raw recruits dragged to the Frontline: if your opponent was stronger, don't fight them head-on, learn to run first. What to do when you lost your grip on your sword. Which parts of your body to protect first when you fell. How to move when a comrade went down, so you didn't die alongside them.
Most of the students here would end up living by the blade in one way or another after graduation. Some would become knights, some would join the army, and some would turn adventurer or mercenary.
Whatever they did, if they were going to spend their lives carrying a sword, they needed to know how to stay alive in the moment when it seemed certain they'd die.
Swinging a sword beautifully and elegantly was something the other professors could teach just fine. That wasn't what I had to offer.
But what I'd be teaching these two was a little different. Not the grim art of bare survival, but how to fight like a madman—like me.
"First, both of you, put your swords down."
Sienna lowered hers to the ground without a word, but Erin looked mildly puzzled.
"We're starting without our swords?"
"You think your sword's going to stay glued to your hand forever?"
"No, but…."
"You can drop it mid-fight. It can break. Someone can close the distance so tight you can't swing at all. Are you going to stand there and take it?"
Erin fell silent for a moment.
"Do you carry a knife?"
"Yes. One, as a backup weapon."
"Good enough. Keep carrying it, always."
I drew the dagger at my hip and spun it lightly on my finger.
"Once you lose your sword and it turns into a plain, dirty brawl, this is often far more useful."
"A… brawl?"
"Wrestling around, rolling around on the ground."
Erin's expression turned a little complicated. Apparently a noble young lady didn't care for the phrasing.
"In that situation, forget about form. Give your opponent a single breath to recover, and you're dead."
I sheathed the dagger again and looked at Sienna.
"Hey."
"Yes?"
"Remember what I told you before?"
"Going for the eyes?"
"And?"
"Stomping the instep, throwing dirt, breaking fingers, going for the groin—and if there's an injury anywhere, keep targeting it."
"Right."
Sienna answered with complete nonchalance, while Erin's face beside her grew stiffer by the second.
"…Do you really teach things like that?"
"Why?"
"No, it's just…."
One look at her struggling for the right words told me exactly what she was thinking.
"Does it seem cowardly to you?"
Erin hesitated, then honestly nodded.
"A little."
"Life is a coward's business."
"……."
"You're not going to end up in the afterlife bragging, 'I fought fair and square,' are you?"
While Erin stood there at a loss for words, Sienna was nodding along beside her.
"Now that I hear it out loud, it does make sense."
"You hush."
"Why?"
"Because you accept this stuff way too easily."
Sienna looked utterly baffled.
I looked back and forth between the two of them, then kicked a wooden training sword up off the ground with the tip of my foot and caught it in my hand.
"What you're learning today is simple."
Erin looked at me.
"What are we learning?"
"What to do when the plan falls apart."
Erin narrowed her eyes.
"When the plan falls apart?"
"You think a fight is going to go exactly the way you want it to?"
I rested the wooden sword across my shoulder.
"Like I said—you can lose your grip, you can misstep, another bastard can come charging out of nowhere behind you. Your opponent might be faster than you expect. That technique you know inside and out might not land."
Erin's expression grew serious.
"When that happens, if your head stops along with your plan, you die."
"……."
"So today, I'm going to deliberately mess you up."
Sienna's eyes lit up.
"Sounds fun."
"What's wrong with you?"
"That's the fun part, isn't it?"
I looked at her like I couldn't comprehend her, then settled the wooden sword on my shoulder again.
"You'll see once we start. Both of you, get ready."
After the two of them took up positions a short distance apart, I walked slowly forward as well.
At first, I'd simply come to see for myself.
I'd heard Sienna mention that she was receiving private instruction from the Professor before classes, and today I'd followed along to see exactly what she was learning.
Certainly, I hadn't come intending to ask for lessons myself from the start.
My plan was to watch how he taught first, and then decide—but the moment I arrived, Sienna blurted out that I wanted to learn alongside her, and somehow things ended up like this.
And yet.
Maybe this is what being a commoner does to you….
I watched Sienna, standing a little apart from me, listening to the Professor's words without a trace of discomfort.
Things I would have considered dirty tricks, she absorbed without the slightest hesitation.
For someone like me, raised on nothing but orthodox swordsmanship from childhood, the very idea of fighting that way was hard to accept—yet to Sienna, it seemed as natural as simply confirming what she'd already known.
I knew it wasn't a good way to think. But the things you'd seen and heard naturally since you were small don't vanish overnight.
Still, when I remembered that I, too, had followed all this way to learn that, I found myself with nothing to say.
Back when I'd first taken that hit to the jaw and been knocked flat, I'd refused to acknowledge him as a professor at all.
His clothes alone made "professor" hard to believe, his manner of speaking was even worse, and I'd been certain that no man who knocked out a student barehanded in his very first lesson could be a legitimate instructor.
Even so, I never missed a class.
The Headmaster had personally brought him in, and more than anything—he was the man who had defeated me far too easily.
And after sitting through a few lessons, there were things I couldn't deny even if I wanted to.
He almost never taught how to swing a sword, or which stance was better.
Instead, he taught what to abandon and what to protect in a dangerous moment, and when to run if you wanted to live.
It was completely unlike the swordsmanship I'd learned until now—but there was no question it held a great deal worth learning.
And Sienna was absorbing that instruction far faster than I was.
Her swordsmanship itself hadn't suddenly improved. Her movements were still just as rough as ever—but she flinched less when an unexpected attack came in.
Even when her stance broke, the speed at which she somehow chained into her next move had improved dramatically.
That was the reason I'd followed her here today.
If….
If I kept learning from that man too.
Could I become far stronger than I am now?
And someday, could I finally pass my father's standard as well….
I looked at the Professor standing in front of me, lost in those thoughts.
He certainly didn't look like a proper professor.
I'd heard rumors he'd shaken down his own students for money, and he still didn't seem to know the names of even the students attending his own classes.
No.
Come to think of it, the top student of the entire year—me—was someone whose name he'd only asked for the first time today.
But having followed this far, I had no intention of turning back now. If Sienna could learn things like that without blinking, there was no reason I couldn't.
Throwing dirt, stomping feet, methods entirely foreign to the swordsmanship I knew.
If it made me stronger, then I would learn it.
"Hey, Erin."
At the Professor's voice, I broke off my thoughts and raised my head.
"Ah—yes."
"Why are you spacing out?"
"I'm not."
"Then get in here."
I steadied my breath for a moment, then stepped toward the Professor.
Right.
I came here to learn.
I had no intention of deciding I hated it before I'd even tried.