The Next Master of the Ivory Tower
The Deathland practical assessment, more perilous than any before it, had come to an end without incident.
The Class A students washed up and shut themselves in their dormitories, one and all. Their bodies and minds alike were running on empty.
Simon and Dick were no different, sprawled flat on their beds without so much as wiggling a finger.
"……"
Simon blankly raised his arm. Fingers floated into view against the familiar ceiling, Jet-Black still flowing along his hand.
It keeps coming back to me.
Pier had insisted he'd used Corpse Explosion, but Simon had no memory of it. When he came to, he'd simply been in the basement of Prince's manor, and all that remained was the lingering echo of it in his body.
Yet the instant he'd witnessed Professor Aaron's Corpse Explosion, a shudder had flooded through him. His whole body had trembled and responded, as if aching to recreate that dark magic.
But there aren't any zombies nearby, so even if I want to practice, I can't.
Thinking he'd have to make a trip to Rochest over the weekend, Simon let his arm flop back down.
"Dick. You awake?"
"Huaaam… kinda."
Dick's sleepy voice drifted over from the neighboring bed.
"Hey, do you remember what classes we have tomorrow?"
"…Uh, nope. Totally forgot. Wait, now that you mention it, I kinda want to know too."
Dick picked up the notebook lying abandoned on his bed and flipped it open.
"Aw, crap."
"?"
"We've got Magic Combat in the afternoon! And it's a joint class with Class C."
Dick dropped the notebook and scratched his head furiously.
"We're doomed. My condition is at rock bottom. This time I'm definitely getting dropped from the hammock."
"……"
Simon blinked slowly and stared at the ceiling.
A joint class? Now who was it in Class C that I know…
'Joint classes' — where two or more classes took a lesson together — were fairly common at Kizen, a natural product of the academy's flexible scheduling.
In this particular case, Aaron's Summoning practical assessment had swallowed an entire day from each class's timetable. Every class he taught had been pushed back, and joint lessons were being held to make up the lost ground.
Simon had wondered whether the other professors might object, but as it turned out, professors burning through a full day or half a day for practicals and the like was utterly routine. Everyone understood everyone else's circumstances, so they cooperated on such matters without complaint.
And so today, Class C — the first to return from Deathland — and Class A, who'd returned just yesterday, were holding a joint Magic Combat lesson.
"Uuuoooogh."
Dick lay flat on his back in the grass, groaning like a Deathland zombie.
The other students were slumped where they sat, catching their breath, but just as Dick had feared being dropped from the hammock, not a single one had actually fallen behind. That was human nature for you — backed into a corner, people somehow dredged up the strength to keep going.
"Wait, Class A went just yesterday, right?"
"Yeah, and we looked exactly like that."
The Class C students snickered as they watched the wilted Class A students — the smugness of those who'd already been through it.
"Hey, Simon."
Meilin, sitting across from him, dabbed her forehead with a handkerchief as she spoke up.
"You really haven't ever seen that Pion guy?"
Simon's heart lurched, but he answered with practiced ease.
"How many times do I have to say it? I opened my eyes and I was in the manor basement. That's all I know."
"Shame."
Meilin tilted her head back with a genuinely disappointed sigh. Camibarez, sitting beside her, covered her mouth and giggled.
"Meilin spent all of yesterday in the dorm lounge talking about nothing but you-know-who and Pion~"
"Hey! He's awesome, okay?!"
Meilin shouted, her face going red.
"Honestly, I never understood why my roommates would squeal and make fools of themselves over professors. But I think I'm finally starting to get how they feel."
"Is he really that handsome?"
"Obviously!"
Simon, quietly sipping his drink, nearly sprayed it across the grass.
Half the man's face had been covered by Pier's skull, if he recalled correctly.
"When I got kidnapped and things got dangerous, he just dropped straight through the ceiling of the carriage! Beat the creepy old geezer who'd taken me to a bloody pulp, then kicked him off into the carriage! Then he scooped me up like a princess, so gently, and we escaped — and the carriage went over the cliff seconds after we jumped!"
"Waaah! It's like something out of a fairy tale!"
"……"
It had happened literally yesterday. How on earth had her memory warped this badly, this fast?
Simon's face burned just listening to it.
"Honestly, Pion isn't really my usual type."
Meilin said, arms crossed.
"You know I absolutely despise brutish, violent behavior. But how do I put this… is it that thing? The whole falling for the bad boy thing?"
"Dangerous charm, maybe?"
"No — more like, that violent brute is gentle only to me? There's something romantic about that, I guess. Ah, whatever, honestly, a face that handsome covers pretty much everything else."
"……"
Meilin, still going strong with her Pion lecture, shot Simon a sidelong glance.
"Hey. Why is your face turning red?"
"…It's hot."
Just as Simon whipped his head away, the teaching assistants' voices rang out.
"Alright! Class begins in ten minutes!"
At that, the sprawled students clambered to their feet and began loosening up.
Simon was preparing for class when—
"Hello there~"
A voice of unbearable refinement drifted in from behind him.
Ugh.
Simon flinched and turned around.
A girl in a white coat draped over her Kizen uniform, ivory hair spilling loose down her back, was strolling toward him with her hands clasped behind her.
Simon did know someone in Class C, after all.
Special Admission No. 2, and heir to the Ivory Tower — Serne Aindark. That signature, suffocating presence of hers was as strong as ever.
"It's been a while, hasn't it~ Simon."
She lifted the hem of her skirt delicately with one fingertip and curtsied with all the grace of a queen of high society.
Then, the moment her eyes found Meilin standing beside him, her expression flipped completely.
"Meiiiiliiiin!"
With a childish cry, she slammed herself onto Meilin's arm.
The crease between Meilin's brows deepened instantly.
"I missed you soooo much!"
"Oh, gross! Get off, get away from me!!"
Meilin shoved Serne's face away with genuine revulsion. That lovely face was mashed ruthlessly against her palm, but Serne wouldn't give up — she leaned right back in and nuzzled against her arm.
"Are you okay? When I heard my Meilin was going to dangerous Deathland, I couldn't sleep a wink!"
"Say 'I' one more time and I'll freeze to death! It gives me chills, cut it out!"
When Meilin shoved her away with all her might, Serne toppled over in an exaggerated flourish.
Sitting down hard in the grass, she hung her head in abject misery, like a drenched little mouse in the rain.
"…I only ever wanted to be friends with you, Meilin."
"Get lost."
Meilin's voice was boiling.
"You toy with people's hearts however you please, and then you pull that? It's nothing but hypocrisy, and you know it. Got it?"
"……"
"Let's go, Cami."
Meilin swept Camibarez away with her.
An awkward silence hung for a moment. Then Serne brushed the hair by her ear aside with an elegant motion, blinked, and looked at Simon.
"A lady has fallen, you know. Aren't you going to help her up?"
"……"
The pitiful expression was gone without a trace; in its place, a foxlike smile had settled at the corner of her mouth.
Sighing inwardly, Simon took her hand and pulled her to her feet.
"Our first meeting since the Island survival exercise~"
"Yeah, it has been. Work hard in class today. My friends are waiting, so I'll be going."
Dealing with Serne drained him too much. It was simply exhausting.
But the moment Simon turned his back and started walking, she glided up alongside him with those soundless steps.
"You haven't forgotten the debt you owe me, have you?"
Then she murmured, just barely audible, "…Legion Commander."
Simon heaved a deep sigh, stopped, and turned to face her.
"If I keep you company today, will you clear that debt?"
"Nope~ I'm saving it for when I really need it."
Clap clap!
Just then, a round of applause rang out, along with Hong Peng's unmistakable slurred mainland accent.
"Okay, everyone! Gajher up over here, pleathe!"
"The profehhor is calling ahhembly!"
"Everyone gajher round!"
Both Class A and Class C gathered before Hong Peng.
"Today we'll be learning a very shpecial shkill! We'll run the lehthon in pairth of two, with plenty of shpace between you!"
The teaching assistants went around personally sorting students into pairs.
Perhaps because it was a joint class, they mixed Class A and Class C unconditionally. Pairs were mostly matched by gender, though occasionally a boy and girl ended up together — apparently purely at the assistant's whim.
"You two, over there. You two, here. You two, here. And…"
The assistant assigning pairs stopped in front of Simon. He had quietly slipped off alone to escape Serne, after all.
As the assistant moved to grab some random Class C boy standing near Simon, a single translucent feather came fluttering through the air and lodged itself in the back of his neck.
At once, the assistant's arm swung a full half-turn and pointed at Serne, standing far off to the side.
"That student there."
"……"
Simon caught a glimpse of Serne waving cheerfully, fox smile and all. The feather soon dropped from the assistant's neck, but he seemed to notice nothing and simply moved on to the other students.
"Well, nothing to be done~ The assistant chose for us, after all."
Serne drifted toward Simon with a gait as light as if she were floating on air. With every step she took, white feathers came swaying down to the grass.
Haah.
Simon pressed a hand to his forehead without a word. He was beginning to understand, just a little, why Meilin avoided her so fiercely.
Clap! Clap!
"Alright, everyone's gajhered their partnerth, yeth? Then let'th begin with a light warm-up!"
The assistants stepped forward and demonstrated the warm-up routine, and the students had only to copy the movements as they watched.
Simon and Serne faced each other and began pulling their arms through the stretching sequence.
She smiled, her voice soft and syrupy.
"Are Pier and Erzsébet doing well?"
Simon flinched, his eyes darting.
There was a generous distance between them and the other students, but he couldn't help being on edge anyway.
"Don't worry~ I've set up a barrier so no sound leaks out."
Simon noticed a single feather planted in the grass nearby. He let out a small sigh and spoke.
"I'd rather not talk about that."
"Then what would you like to talk about?"
Simon stretched his side, arm arcing overhead, and said:
"You and Meilin. What's the deal with you two?"
Serne always seemed to keep a certain distance from everyone, but with Meilin alone she behaved with the easy familiarity of an old friend. Of course, every time she did, Meilin reacted with outright disgust.
"I don't get why you keep clinging to Meilin. If it's all an act, like she says, you should quit. To Meilin, you're a rival. An enemy to be beaten. She doesn't think of you as anything more — or anything less."
She smiled brightly.
"But I genuinely want to be friends with her, you know?"
"……"
"I mean, isn't it only natural? Of course people from the same Ivory Tower want to lean on each other when they're out here in a foreign land."
Simon's brow furrowed.
"Somehow I don't think that's how she sees it."
"Maybe not. But I mean it."
Serne was an adopted daughter with not a single drop of blood tying her to the Ivory Tower families.
When the Ivory Tower Master had first brought her home, the story went, she'd been met with a storm of abuse and contempt.
"The one who reached out her hand to me back then was Meilin."
Serne said with a smile.
"Meilin was so far above me — a girl who'd just arrived as a servant — that I couldn't even look at her properly. And still, she said we were the same age, took care of me, played with me. Even knowing full well I'd come in as her exact opposite."
In Serne's expression as she said it flowed something wistful, different from her usual façade.
"Even now, it stays with me as a warm memory~ But then, as the years went by…"
"At some point, everything flipped."
"Yes."
Serne's talent was a monster beyond anything in recorded history.
In the end, the Ivory Tower's people, bewitched by her gift, went so far as to rewrite the Tower's own laws to make her their successor.
The situation had reversed.
Serne basked in everyone's praise, while Meilin — the yardstick she was measured against — was left out in the cold. Every single person who had once cherished her turned their back, and as Meilin found herself isolated, her heart was eaten away, little by little.
That was why, even now that she'd entered Kizen, she was still straining with everything she had to catch up to Serne.
"Meilin firmly believes I toyed with her. Manipulated her, strung her along for my own amusement."
Serne shrugged.
"Can't be helped. My ability is what it is, and people misunderstand me a great deal."
"No thought of clearing up that misunderstanding?"
"She treats me with maximum hostility on her end — do you really think a talk would go well? Ah, though… even if the chance came, I can't say I would clear it up~"
"Why not?"
"Because of how desperately she scrambles to catch up to me."
As she stretched, a single feather drifted down. She caught it and gave it a little lick with the tip of her tongue.
"Watching her is awfully cute, you see."
…Yeah. She really is rotten to the core, this one.
Simon felt a flicker of embarrassment at the fact that, for the briefest of moments, he'd actually felt a pang of sympathy for Serne.
"Alright, next exercise!"
Befitting a joint class, the assistants' demonstrations moved on to stretches done in pairs.
It started simple: the two partners stood back to back, hooked each other's arms, and then one bent forward at the waist to lift the other off the ground.
"Shall we begin?"
"Uh? Uh, sure."
The two of them stood back to back. When Serne boldly hooked her arms through his, Simon flinched despite himself.
"I'll go first!"
She drew in a breath — hnngh — and bent forward with all her strength.
"……"
Hopeless. Absolutely hopeless.
Simon's feet lifted, touched the ground, lifted, touched the ground again. She kept huffing and straining, but all she managed was to hold his feet off the grass for about two seconds.
So the Ivory Tower kids really are all hopeless at physical exercise.
"Alright, back to sharting pothitionth!"
At the assistant's call, Serne returned Simon to the ground barely able to hold him, and the two stood back to back once more.
"Simon."
Then came that lilting voice at his back.
"I believe it's my turn to choose our topic of conversation?"
"…Do whatever you want."
"It's about our futures."
"Like, dreams and career plans? Never really thought about it."
The girl at his back giggled softly.
"After we graduate in our third year — have you given any thought to where you'll be working?"
So that's what this is.
What she wanted to talk about was obvious.
A recruitment offer. Simon sighed inwardly.
Just then, the assistant's cry rang out — "Now switch! Other side!" Simon drew a deep breath and bent forward, and her body rose into the air with almost impossible lightness.
No muscle on her at all.
The very moment Simon let his guard down, she suddenly arched her head all the way back.
The crown of her head came to rest against the crook of his neck, and heat rushed up Simon's face.
"What do you think you're—!"
"Or else — how does this sound as your future, Simon?"
Her voice rang out like the melody of a song.
And the words that left her lips next made Simon doubt his own ears.
"Next Master of the Ivory Tower."