Urgent News
"Whoa! Did you guys hear? The Crown Prince is coming!"
It was dinnertime. With exams breathing down their necks, most students were filling their growling stomachs with notebooks and textbooks spread open beside their trays.
"How is that even believable? Why would the Crown Prince come all the way out here?"
A loaf of bread in one hand and a chicken drumstick in the other, Schubik shouted in excitement. Crumbs from his enthusiastic meal were smeared all around his mouth.
"The autumn festival's going to be packed wall to wall as it is — the second word gets out that the Crown Prince is coming, it'll be absolutely suffocating! Will people even be able to walk around normally?"
Apparently, an official notice announcing the Crown Prince's visit to the Academy had formally arrived. Giddy for the first time in ages, Schubik bounced around the table like a jack-in-the-box.
"Who do you think gets to do the ceremonial duties? Could it be me? I've never once seen the Crown Prince's face! And wouldn't it be amazing if Princess Grace came along too — nah, that's probably asking too much, huh?"
Lost in his daydream, Schubik stared off into the distance and gnawed fiercely at the drumstick. His mouth worked away in satisfied little chews.
"…Wait, what's with this atmosphere?"
Only after the meat hit his mouth did something finally register, apparently. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously at the friends who were silently focused on their dinners.
"Who have I been talking to this whole time? Why is nobody answering me?"
"You're being a lunatic, so just sit down."
In the end, it was Aidan who took charge. He gestured with a jerk of his chin toward an empty chair.
"Hey, Aiden, you guys already knew the Crown Prince was coming, didn't you? Right?"
Schubik did as he was told and sat, but his expression was already as stormy as it could get.
"Then why didn't you tell me? How could you do this! You should've told me first!"
He was the kind of boy who couldn't rest easy unless he was the first to know any piece of news. Genuinely wounded, Schubik bellowed his grievances loud enough that every eye in the dining hall swung toward their table.
"Hey! Will you quiet down? This is a place where people eat!"
"Ugh, what do you care!"
Face twisted in full-blown sulking, Schubik crammed the entire uncut loaf of bread into his mouth, then made a show of chomping through it noisily.
"This is exactly why I didn't tell you."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Do you have any idea how badly you would've fussed us all to death with your excitement days in advance? Ugh, just thinking about it makes me tired. So tired!"
"…That's kind of a weird thing to say, though?"
Schubik's chewing stopped dead.
"The Crown Prince is coming — why on earth would I be fussing over you guys? Him coming is just him coming, end of story. Who do you think you are?"
Aidan flinched and ducked his gaze down to his plate. Arrows of accusation flew from his friends' eyes, but he studiously avoided meeting any of them.
"Something smells fishy here."
By now all that was left in Schubik's hand was the drumstick. He didn't eat it — instead, he pointed it at each of his friends in turn.
"You guys are hiding something. What is it? Are you seriously not going to tell me right now?"
Bayul was caught in an awkward spot. The Academy hadn't formally approached him yet, and until they did, it felt delicate to bring it up himself.
"You should worry more about wiping that mouth of yours."
Perhaps sensing Bayul's discomfort, Quinn wrinkled his nose and addressed Schubik.
"My mouth? Why? Is there something on it?"
As Schubik rubbed roughly at the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, Quinn's look of disdain deepened into a sigh.
"Schubik. Here."
When Bayul held out a napkin, Schubik snatched it up and scrubbed briskly at his face.
"Thanks, Bayul. You're truly the only one who thinks of me as a real friend."
"Don't assign that much meaning to a single napkin."
"Jealous, are we?"
"Jealous of what, exactly?"
At Aidan's retort, Schubik clicked his tongue in disdain — then, apropos of nothing, turned to Eli.
"Oh, that reminds me — Eli, the new professor, Serarika. I hear she's all warm and tender in class. Is it true? They say honey literally drips from her voice."
"…Honey?"
"Yeah! You have no idea how many nicknames she's already racked up. My favorite's the Goddess of Sunshine!"
As if he'd overheard something he was never meant to hear, Eli's expression contorted. To anyone who knew what she really was, such talk was beyond absurd — enough to knock a person flat out cold. It was even more preposterous than the nonsense about the Gentleman of the Wind.
"You're a Magic Department student, so I take it you don't agree? There are a ton of others — Goddess of Beauty, Goddess of Kindness, Goddess of Gentleness. You seriously haven't heard?"
"The word 'goddess' never seems to be left out."
"Obviously not! This is the first time in my life I've ever seen a face like Professor Serarika's!"
Rumor had it that droves of the Academy's male students had fallen head over heels for her in private. Schubik was, without question, one of them.
"If I'd known this was coming, I should've gone into the Magic Department instead of Knights. Maybe I'll transfer next year."
"You think you have the chops for that?"
This sneak attack from Aidan left Schubik speechless. All he could do was bug his eyes out at his friend.
To become a mage, one had to memorize vast oceans of formulae, master them, and wield them freely at will. Naturally, this made for a fundamentally different approach to study than the Knights Department, where physical training came first. A boy who still hadn't fully grasped basic spelling transferring into the Magic Department? That was a dream one shouldn't even have while asleep.
"Can't a guy joke around? I'm just saying my heart's in it."
"Finish your food and go get back to exam prep. We're all splitting up to study right after dinner too."
Aidan, stealing a careful glance at Eli, shooed Schubik along. None of them had yet heard a proper explanation from Eli about what happened in the auditorium. Something had clearly happened — and judging by everything, it was nothing good — so no one had been able to bring themselves to ask.
Their job, as his friends, was to simply wait for the day Eli chose to speak of it himself. They had to shut Schubik up before he spouted more nonsense.
"Can't I come study with you?"
"We agreed to study quietly in our own rooms this time. So naturally, no."
"What about the summary notes?"
"Did you even order any?"
"Are you Eli's spokesperson now? I'm asking Eli, so why do you keep answering?"
"Hah! Today I am the spokesperson. So scram!"
"Oh, come on, seriously!"
To Aidan, he was protecting Eli, whose mood was already fragile; from Schubik's perspective, he was nothing but a saboteur.
Schubik was genuinely fuming at Aidan for butting in over and over — when suddenly, Logan pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. Intimidated without quite knowing why by the sheer size of him, Schubik faltered backward.
"Is something the matter?"
"…Huh?"
Just as Schubik was blinking in confusion at this out-of-nowhere question from Logan—
"Um, excuse me…"
A small voice floated in from behind Schubik's back. He whipped around, and there, unexpectedly, stood Nathan. His face said he had something to say.
"Nathan? What are you doing here?"
Nathan had once, before the break, been unable to endure Jared's torment any longer and made a terrible choice — saved from it by the help of the spirits. There was nothing physically wrong with him anymore, but the psychological wounds ran deep, and he had been receiving counseling for a long stretch of time since.
On the rare occasions their paths crossed around the Academy lately, all he'd ever done was scurry out of sight first. Something being different today was genuinely puzzling.
"I should have come to you long ago. I'm sorry it took me this long."
Nathan's first words were the last thing anyone expected. This was a boy who, even after his own misdeeds were exposed, had done nothing but heap on resentment — never once offering a sincere apology. Bayul, along with everyone else, was so caught off guard that for a moment, no one could find a single word to say.
Nathan bowed his head low and forced the words out with difficulty.
"I just really wanted to say thank you. You must have hated me… but you came to stop me that day. I'm so grateful you did."
The words they'd spoken that day, meant only to calm him, had instead provoked him — had nearly brought everything to catastrophe. As that dizzying memory resurfaced, Bayul thought once more how lucky they'd all been.
"The only reason I'm alive like this is because of all of you. I hear you came to visit me at the temple sometimes?"
"Ah… that was just… we were worried about how you were doing…"
"Heh. You people really are something else. Is that why Jared hated you all so much?"
"…?"
"Kids like me — nobody bothers to care about us, usually. It was like that before too, but after I fell out of Jared's favor, it got even worse."
"He's gone from here now. So nothing like that will happen to you again."
"I know. I heard he got into Marseilles Academy."
"You already knew that?"
"I was trying to escape there myself, actually."
He hadn't been confident he could survive amid all the students' whispering and sneering. So while looking into transfer options over the break, he'd learned that Jared had made an enormous donation to Marseilles and enrolled there.
"I very nearly crawled straight into another den of malice."
What would have become of him then?
That was the moment Nathan had come back to himself. Professor Rothius's advice — that running away was never the answer — had flashed through his mind like a bolt of lightning, and for the first time, he had wanted to live differently.
Of course, turning that thought into reality had taken quite a long time. But steady effort had carried him forward bit by bit, until at last he could work up courage like today's.
"Congratulations."
"…Huh?"
"On escaping the den of malice."
"That's no small feat — genuinely impressive. My congratulations too."
After Aidan, even Eli offered Nathan his congratulations. He had made plenty of mistakes back when he ran with Jared's crowd, but this much counted as a full turn from wrongdoing to righteousness. It truly was nothing short of remarkable.
"You people are impossible to beat. How can you say things like that… how can you look at me like that…"
As his past misdeeds surfaced in his mind, Nathan felt like crawling into a mouse hole and hiding forever.
"Forget everything I said back then. None of it was what I truly meant. I just want you to believe it was the despair talking."
"Nathan, we already forgot it all long ago. You being healthy again is all that matters. I'm the one who's grateful you came to see us first."
"Yeah. Let's do well by each other from now on."
Under the warmth of their welcome, Nathan felt a mortifying welling of tears. Being forgiven so easily after such a grave wrong only made him feel more ashamed.
"Bayul, you're entering the chess tournament, right?"
Shaking the moisture from his eyes, Nathan asked Bayul.
"Hm? Chess?"
"At the festival. You beat Jared, after all — I figured you'd have no trouble taking the championship. I'll be cheering my hardest for you."
Nathan still remembered how splendidly Bayul had dispatched Jared in the Crow's Nest. The image of him, still lucid after drinking Blood of Dragon, staying locked in on the chessboard — that scene had imprinted itself on his memory quite vividly.
"Oh, that's right! Bayul really is good at chess, isn't he?"
It was something that had never once crossed their minds amid all the other matters demanding attention. The friends crowded around Bayul and pressed the chess tournament on him with full force.
"You said the horseback riding had you worried anyway. Chess is perfect for you, if you ask me."
"…Would I even have the time for it?"
Wouldn't it get in the way of the ceremonial duties for the Crown Prince?
"When you can't be there, we'll be there. Let's show them the dignity of the first-year delegation!"
Only now did Bayul learn that there would be a chess tournament at the autumn festival. Chess was one of the very few things he could accomplish entirely on his own strength. Perhaps that was why a quiet ambition stirred within him.
Over this past break, I used to play chess with Father now and then.
I wonder how good I really am?
If I entered the tournament — could I play well without my hands shaking?
'Bayul, you have to win!'
'Your father believes in you!'
The festival hadn't even begun yet, and still, from somewhere, he could almost hear the cheering voices of his brother and his father.