The Blank Called Protagonist
The first lecture was over.
To be precise, it had ended.
But inside my head, it was nowhere near finished.
Does becoming a monster have to be a bad thing?
Elise Morgan’s question kept circling.
It was a good question.
A genuinely good question.
There are questions that merely tire people out. There are questions that make them uncomfortable. And there are questions that keep a person pinned to their desk all night.
Elise’s belonged to the third kind.
Ah, that was really good.
I walked the corridor, quietly clenching and unclenching a fist.
I had to manage my expression. Smiling alone with this face of mine was out of the question.
Ian Werner’s default look was already sly and villainous. Add a smile on top of that and some passing student might start filling out a report form.
In fact, a girl walking the other way met my eyes and immediately sidestepped.
“…….”
I quietly bowed my head.
Behave yourself.
That was my survival strategy for the moment.
Before I could rehabilitate the future calamities with philosophy, I first had to rehabilitate the misunderstandings this face created. The difficulty was high. Extremely high.
“Professor.”
Martin, who had been following behind, carefully spoke up.
“About today’s lecture.”
“Is there a problem?”
“Not so much a problem as…….”
Martin cradled the documents against his chest as if choosing his words.
“The students seem to have been quite shaken.”
“In a good way or a bad way?”
“I don’t know yet.”
An honest assessment. I nodded.
“Shock is part of the class.”
“The Academy’s Administration Bureau is unlikely to see it that way.”
“That’s not ideal.”
Classic accuracy-obsessed trash game. Administrative procedure hit harder than philosophical impact.
Martin looked at me for a moment. Caution still lingered in his eyes, but it was different from this morning. He didn’t fully trust me. But he no longer doubted me on principle either.
A good change.
I asked,
“Martin.”
“Yes, Professor.”
“Is there a student named Rina Everett among this semester’s Introduction to Philosophy enrollees?”
Martin immediately flipped through the papers.
“Rina Everett…… yes. There is.”
Of course.
I stopped walking.
Rina Everett.
The protagonist of Imperial Academia: Chronicles of the Kingdom.
In other words, the character the player controlled.
In the game, Rina Everett had almost no special backstory. Commoner origin. Above-average talent. Able to grow in swordsmanship, magic, holy arts, or scholarship in whatever direction one chose. Personality shifted with dialogue options. Relationships with surrounding characters changed according to affinity. Depending on the route, she could become a hero, a traitor, or a bystander.
In short:
She was an empty vessel.
The one place the developers abandoned historical accuracy was the protagonist herself—because the player needed to immerse.
Give the protagonist too much past and the player feels constrained. Give her too sharp a personality and the choices feel awkward. Give her too firm a philosophy and the user can’t play as they like.
So Rina Everett was almost blank.
And that blankness was an advantage in a game.
But if this world was real—
What did that blank become?
“Professor?”
Martin called to me.
“Is there something about Student Everett?”
“Not yet.”
“Not yet?”
“There’s a high chance something will come up.”
Martin’s expression turned subtle. He was probably thinking, This professor is saying weird things again.
I asked,
“Where is she now?”
“According to the schedule, it’s free study time. She is usually either in the central library or at the East Training Ground.”
“Usually?”
“Yes. Oddly enough, she drifts between classes of several departments. She trains with sword students, watches magic practicals, and even joins holy-arts volunteer work.”
Martin consulted the documents.
“Her grades are unusual as well. Not overwhelmingly excellent, yet she maintains a solid level in every subject.”
Naturally.
She was the player character. She had to be able to take any build—sword, magic, holy arts, even a political route.
Rina Everett was not a specialist. Possibility itself was her identity.
I nodded.
“Let’s start with the East Training Ground.”
“Pardon? Right now?”
“Yes.”
“Your next appointment is the faculty meeting.”
“Is it important?”
“Yes. It’s about this semester’s liberal-arts course operations.”
“Is it interesting?”
“Not in the slightest.”
“Then later.”
Martin closed his mouth for a moment.
“Professor.”
“What is it?”
“You seem like the old you.”
“…….”
I coughed without meaning to.
“Do I absolutely have to attend that meeting?”
“No. You simply need to submit an absence form.”
“Accuracy-obsessed trash game, as expected.”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing.”
I changed direction.
The East Training Ground.
It was a location where early events frequently triggered in the original game. Players received their first sword tutorial there, built relationships with knight candidates, and could even have their first spar with Karen Astra.
Of course, I wasn’t going there to spar.
What I wanted to confirm was one thing only.
A player character without a player.
What face that child wore while living in this world.
The East Training Ground lay outside the academy buildings.
A broad floor of sand. Wooden targets. Neatly arranged weapon racks. Students swinging practice swords under the sunlight.
Shouts of effort carried from a distance.
“Haap!”
“Your footwork collapsed!”
“Again!”
True to the accuracy-obsessed trash game, the training ground was not comfortable. The sun was hot; sand dust scraped the throat. The smell of student sweat mixed with leather armor.
On a game screen it had been mere background. In reality, everything was painfully concrete.
I stood at the edge of the grounds.
A few students spotted me and began to murmur.
“Isn’t that the philosophy professor?”
“Why’s he here?”
“Come to preach at the sword department too?”
“Look at that face. Looks like he’d blackmail you with grades.”
I pretended not to hear.
No—I heard. I heard far too well.
This face. A genuine penalty.
Martin spoke quietly beside me.
“Professor, are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“The students have been rather rude for a while now…….”
“People believe what they see first.”
I answered briefly.
“I’ll change that, slowly.”
Martin looked at me. He seemed about to say something, then closed his mouth. He was probably thinking I had changed again.
I scanned the inside of the training ground.
And soon found her.
Brown hair. Average height. Average build. Ordinary practice clothes.
Rina Everett was alone, swinging a wooden sword in front of a training dummy.
There was nothing particularly striking about her appearance. Not cold like Elise, not intense like Leonora, not sacred like Serena, not radiant like Karen.
Truly ordinary.
But her movement had an oddly good balance.
The way she swung the sword was not that of a complete beginner. The way she shifted her feet was as stable as a knight candidate’s. The rhythm with which she regulated her breath mixed in the concentration methods magic students learned.
Not a genius who excelled in one thing. But someone who could learn anything.
That was Rina Everett.
“That’s the student.”
Martin said in a low voice.
“Rina Everett. Commoner scholarship student. Seventeenth overall on the entrance exam.”
“Seventeenth overall?”
“Yes. Twenty-fourth in swordsmanship, nineteenth in magic theory, thirty-first in holy aptitude, eleventh in general academics.”
I nodded.
Perfect protagonist stats.
First in nothing, yet numbers that could go any route.
On the strategy boards they called Rina this:
Jack-of-all-trades empty can.
A bit harsh, but not wrong.
Rina stopped the wooden sword and caught her breath.
That was when it happened.
Three male students approached her from one side of the grounds.
“Everett.”
A tall golden-haired boy rested a wooden sword on his shoulder.
“Which department are you cosplaying today? Sword? Magic? Or holy arts?”
Rina looked at him.
“I’m training.”
“That’s why I’m asking. What do you even want to become?”
The boy sneered.
“Not a swordsman, not a mage, not a priest. You think dabbling in everything makes you something?”
A few nearby students laughed.
Rina did not answer.
She looked down at the wooden sword.
That silence felt strangely familiar.
Someone who said nothing. Someone waiting for dialogue options to appear in her place.
I took an unconscious step forward.
Martin followed in surprise.
“Professor?”
I raised a hand to stop him.
Not yet time to intervene.
The boy kept talking.
“They called you a prodigy, but maybe you’re just mediocre?”
Rina’s hand tightened on the wooden sword.
“Back in your village you were a genius, sure. Different here, right? This place gathers the real talents.”
Common mockery.
But it would have landed differently on Rina.
Prodigy.
That word had dragged her this far.
You have talent. You’re special. You should go to the Academy. You will become something.
Those words had decided her path.
Yet once she arrived, she could not tell what she was.
There was no player.
No finger to press the choices.
She did not know where she was supposed to go.
The tall boy snorted a laugh.
“Say something. What the hell are you?”
In that moment,
Rina spoke, very quietly.
“I don’t know either.”
The boys stopped.
“What?”
Rina lifted her head.
Her face was not angry. Not sad either.
It was empty.
“I don’t know what I am either.”
A strange silence settled over the training ground.
“People called me a prodigy, so I thought so.”
Rina spoke slowly.
“They said I should go to the Academy, so I came. I learned the sword, I learned magic, I took holy studies. Everyone said I just had to choose.”
Her voice was quiet.
“But it’s strange.”
The tip of the wooden sword lowered onto the sand.
“It doesn’t feel like I’m the one choosing.”
I stopped breathing at those words.
Rina continued.
“Something keeps pushing me. Go here. Meet that person. Take this class. Get tangled in that incident.”
The surrounding students grew quieter and quieter.
“I’m just following along.”
Rina’s eyes wavered.
“Then is that really me?”
Ah.
I muttered inwardly.
The player character was doubting herself.
If this world was a game. If Rina Everett was truly a vessel made for the player—
Her blankness was not freedom.
It was terror.
The tall boy looked flustered.
“What are you even saying all of a sudden.”
He laughed awkwardly.
“See? Weird kid.”
A few around him tried to laugh again.
That was when I walked forward.
“An interesting question.”
Every student on the grounds turned to look at me at once.
The tall boy’s face stiffened.
“P-Professor Werner.”
I passed him and stopped in front of Rina.
I carefully kept my distance—far enough that students wouldn’t misunderstand, close enough for my voice to reach.
“Miss Everett.”
Rina looked at me.
Confusion outweighed wariness on her face.
“Professor……?”
“Would you repeat the question you just asked?”
“Pardon?”
“A good question deserves to be heard once more.”
Rina blinked.
The surrounding students looked equally bewildered.
I added,
“Just now you asked whether you were truly yourself.”
Rina’s lips parted slightly.
She hesitated a moment, then spoke.
“I thought I was choosing…… but if I’m just following a path that was already decided—”
She looked down at the wooden sword.
“Can someone like that still be called me?”
Good.
Really good.
No—I must not enjoy this.
This child was genuinely shaken. If I grinned like a mad philosopher here, it was over.
I desperately suppressed my expression.
But inside I was already filling ten blackboards.
Free will. Determinism. Existence. Narrative self. Identity shaped by others’ expectations. The gap between role and being.
Insane.
This academy was full of questions.
My previous world had told me philosophy was useless. Yet the students here asked philosophical questions simply to survive.
I spoke calmly.
“Let us first draw one distinction.”
Rina looked at me.
“Walking a predetermined path and becoming a predetermined person are not the same.”
“……They’re different?”
“They are.”
I drew a line in the training-ground sand with the tip of my shoe.
A short line. Then a small dot at its end.
“Suppose you followed this line to this point.”
I pointed at the dot.
“You were called a prodigy in your village, so you came to the Academy. You had talent, so you studied many disciplines. People expected things of you, and you moved according to those expectations.”
Rina listened quietly.
“That much is true. Human beings do not begin in a state of complete freedom.”
I looked around at the students.
“We do not choose the house we are born into. We do not choose our parents, our era, or even the first name we are called by.”
Silence settled over the training ground.
“That does not mean a human being becomes nothing.”
Rina asked,
“Why?”
I drew small branches at the end of the line again.
“A path may be given.”
Then I erased one of those branches with my toe.
“But the way one interprets that path keeps changing.”
Rina still looked uncomprehending.
I made it simpler.
“You may have come to the Academy because of others’ expectations.”
“…….”
“But what you learned here, whose words made you stop, which questions you did not run from—those become part of you.”
Rina’s eyes wavered.
“A person is not born with a finished self.”
I said,
“Rather, the self is closer to a sentence that continues to be written as one lives.”
The air shifted.
The tall boy no longer sneered. The other students listened quietly.
“A sentence…….”
Rina murmured softly.
“Yes.”
I nodded.
“Someone else may write the first sentence for you.”
I looked at her.
“But that does not mean every next sentence has been stolen.”
The tension in Rina’s hand eased a little.
“What if the sentences I thought I was writing were already decided?”
A good question.
Very good.
This child was no pushover either.
I almost smiled again.
But I held it back once more.
Face management. Conduct. Absolute conduct.
I pointed at the line in the sand with my toe as if with a cane.
“No one can fully prove that.”
“Pardon?”
“Whether free will fully exists, or whether everything is already determined—that is a problem many people have fought over for a long time.”
I said,
“So if I stand here and declare ‘You are completely free,’ that would be a lie.”
Rina simply watched me.
“But the opposite claim—that you have no freedom at all—is equally unproven.”
I marked another small dot on the line.
“This is what matters.”
“What is?”
“When we cannot be certain whether freedom exists, how should we live?”
Rina could not answer.
I spoke slowly.
“If you believe everything is already decided and therefore do nothing, then by that belief you truly become someone who does nothing.”
I lowered my voice a little.
“But if you act on the assumption that you can choose even a little, then at least you become someone who tried to choose.”
Rina’s gaze wavered.
“That difference is not small.”
I looked at her wooden sword.
“The reason you hold a sword now may be because others told you to.”
Then I looked at her hand.
“But whether you set it down now or grip it again—that, you can decide.”
Rina stared at the wooden sword.
The entire training ground was watching her.
Even the boys who had mocked her earlier kept their mouths shut.
After a long silence,
Rina gripped the wooden sword again.
Very slowly.
But clearly.
I nodded.
“That, too, is one sentence.”
Rina looked at me.
“Did I just choose something?”
“At least that is how I saw it.”
“If that is only how you saw it?”
“Another person’s gaze also becomes part of the self.”
I said,
“It simply must not become the whole of it.”
Rina chewed on those words for a long time.
Then the tall boy coughed awkwardly.
“U-um, Professor. We were just joking…….”
I looked at him.
He stiffened the moment he saw my face.
He probably thought I was angry.
In truth I was a little angry.
But getting angry with this face would turn me into a genuine villainous professor. Conduct. Conduct.
I spoke calmly.
“What is your name?”
“O-Oscar Bren, sir.”
“Mr. Bren.”
“Yes.”
“You should be careful when asking someone ‘What are you?’”
Oscar blinked.
I continued,
“That question sometimes cuts deeper than a sword.”
He could say nothing.
“Next time, before you try to define someone else, first consider the intention with which you are asking.”
“……Yes, Professor.”
I said no more.
Excessive scolding only bruises pride. Philosophy is not a club for beating people over the head.
Though occasionally one does feel like using it as a club.
I looked at Rina again.
“Miss Everett.”
“Yes.”
“Are you taking Introduction to Philosophy?”
“No.”
So she wasn’t.
In the original, it was a course the player had to choose to take. On the default route it was often skipped.
I said,
“If possible, audit it.”
Martin sucked in a small breath beside me.
“Professor, auditing applications require Administration Bureau paperwork…….”
“I’ll fill it out.”
“Class capacity and classroom assignment also…….”
“We’ll expand them.”
“Consent from existing students as well…….”
“We’ll obtain it.”
“……Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
Martin wore an incredulous expression.
The previous Ian Werner would probably have fled at the mere mention of paperwork.
I looked at Rina.
“This is not coercion.”
I deliberately enunciated each word.
“If you wish to attend, come.”
Rina did not answer for a while.
She looked at my face. At my professor’s robe. At Martin behind me. And at the wooden sword in her own hand.
At last she asked,
“If I go there, will I find out what I am?”
I answered,
“No.”
Rina’s eyes wavered.
“You can’t tell me?”
“The moment someone else decides ‘You are this kind of person,’ you are once again trapped inside a sentence written by another.”
I said,
“Philosophy does not tell you who you are in your place.”
After a short breath,
“It only teaches you how to ask the question yourself.”
Rina said nothing.
I turned my head.
“Martin, let’s go.”
“Yes, Professor.”
We left the training ground.
Behind us, students murmured.
“What was that just now?”
“Is philosophy class normally like that?”
“I don’t know…… but it was weirdly cool, wasn’t it?”
“Professor Werner?”
“No, the words.”
Good.
The face was still a failure, but the words had landed a little.
This counted as a solid performance.
Once we exited the training ground, Martin matched his stride to mine.
“Professor.”
“What is it?”
“You’re meeting a lot of students today.”
“I’m a professor.”
Martin was silent for a moment.
“You used to avoid students.”
“Did I?”
“Yes. Especially students who asked questions.”
“A pity.”
“Pardon?”
“Students who ask questions are the most precious kind.”
Martin looked at me strangely.
I pretended not to notice and gazed out a window.
In the academy garden, students clustered in twos and threes. Some laughed, some read books, some drew practice magic circles.
This place looked peaceful.
But I knew.
This peace would not last long.
Once the early game section passed, incidents would erupt one after another. A magic-department lab accident. A visit from a holy-nation envoy. News of civil war in a frontier duchy. The hero selection trials. And Rina Everett would stand at the center of every single one of them.
Because she was the protagonist.
But right now she was doubting herself.
That was dangerous.
When a protagonist cannot believe in herself, the story easily falls into other people’s hands.
I thought quietly.
The Great Witch. The Demon King. The Fallen Saintess. The Psychopathic Hero.
And—
A protagonist who doubts whether she even has a self.
“Five of them, then.”
I muttered without meaning to.
Martin asked,
“Five of what?”
“Nothing.”
I kept walking.
Things were growing larger.
At first I had thought I only needed to stop the four future calamities.
But that was wrong.
This world did not contain only monsters-before-they-become-calamities. There was also a child who stood at the center of the story yet did not possess herself.
Perhaps she was the most dangerous of all.
An empty vessel can hold anything.
A hero. A bystander. A savior. A calamity.
I brushed sand from my fingertips.
Philosophy does not make money. Philosophy is slower than the sword, more inconvenient than magic, and more bothersome than administration.
But in this world, philosophy can do one thing.
It can return the question.
Who are you? Why do you think that way? Did you truly choose that path as your own?
Those questions might, perhaps, hold these children in place.
Then footsteps sounded behind us.
I did not look back.
But I knew.
Footsteps lighter than before. Hesitation mixed in, yet not fully stopping.
Rina Everett was following us.
I did not slow my pace.
Whether she followed or not had to be her choice.
A moment later, a cautious voice came.
“Professor.”
Only then did I turn.
Rina stood there.
Wooden sword held against her chest. Face still damp with sweat.
“The audit application.”
She said,
“Where do I fill it out?”
Martin looked at her with startled eyes.
I was silent for a brief moment.
Then, with an expression as unsuspicious as I could manage, I nodded.
“Go to the administrative building.”
Rina gave a small nod.
“Then I’ll go.”
A short reply.
But enough.
Elise Morgan had said she would attend the next class. Rina Everett had said she would write an audit application.
Very small changes.
But philosophy always begins with small cracks.
I walked forward again.
Martin spoke softly beside me.
“Professor.”
“What is it?”
“Today you truly seem like a professor.”
“I am a professor.”
“That’s not what I mean…….”
Martin let the words trail off.
Then, very carefully, he added,
“You seem like a somewhat decent professor.”
I did not stop walking.
A decent professor.
In my previous life, I had never properly heard those words.
Instead of answering, I adjusted my glasses.
I kept my expression as cold as usual.
If I smiled for no reason I would look like a corrupt official again.
But inside, I smiled a little.
Just a little.
The academy’s bell rang in the distance.
Dong.
Dong.
Dong.
A day inside the accuracy-obsessed trash game was not yet over.
And my Introduction to Philosophy class—
had only just begun drawing in strange students.