A Guide Named Eli
“Hello? We've met before, haven't we?”
Astonishingly, the person standing there was a face Bayul recognized. The beautiful boy who had stunned him speechless the moment he first saw him — the red-eyed waiter from the dining hall just last night.
“I'm Eli. Everyone just calls me Eli, though. First year, Magic Department.”
First year of the Magic Department?
Come to think of it, he was wearing the academy uniform today, unlike yesterday. His signature flamboyant air was still there, but in a uniform he came across differently. Dignified, one might say. He had the bearing of a model student.
“You're Bayul, right? The one who transferred into the Administration Department. Nice to meet you. Let's get along from here on out.”
The boy — no, Eli — greeted him with a smile.
Eli.
As Bayul quietly murmured the oddly endearing name to himself, a question crept into his eyes.
“…How do you know my name?”
“Professor Rothius asked me to. I'll be your guide for the next few days.”
His guide? Then who was that student from before?
When Bayul glanced after the boy who had vanished, looking faintly puzzled, Eli laughed and explained.
“Ah, that guy? That's Schubik — the resident information broker of the first-years. He's endlessly curious about everything, so he keeps himself busy, you could say.”
“An information broker, meaning…?”
“Yep, exactly what you're thinking. By now, word about you has probably spread far and wide. Nobody spreads a rumor faster than he does. Shall we talk as we walk?”
Eli pointed down the corridor and strode ahead. Bayul hadn't noticed it when they were facing each other, but he was carrying a guitar on his back.
“First off, you were pretty shocked because of Professor Rothius, right? He's a bit of an oddball, but he's a good man. He'll grant students' little requests, and he even occasionally turns a blind eye to sneaking out of the grounds — an absolute angel of a professor.”
“Sneaking out? You mean you can't leave the castle without permission?”
“Of course not. Except on weekends, if you're caught leaving without a pass, you get a whopping ten demerit points. Get caught three times and that's thirty — which is as good as saying you'll be held back a year.”
Bayul had never heard of demerit points costing someone a whole school year. When his face fell in disbelief, Eli added, as though to put him at ease.
“Don't worry. No way that's happening to us Stone Lions. Professor Rothius is our homeroom. You haven't quite grasped how lucky that makes you yet, have you? See that girl over there?”
Where Eli tipped his chin, a girl in athletic wear was walking past. She was looking this way too, and from the way her eyes fixed on Bayul, the rumors really had already begun, just as Eli said.
“That's Stacey, another first-year in my department — Magic. Her dorm is Black Falcon, under Professor Janette. The woman's nickname is the Thorn Rose, so you can imagine what she's like.”
When Bayul nodded, Eli leaned in close and whispered.
“Last month, she got caught red-handed escaping her dorm. Ten demerit points, obviously — and on top of that, ten laps around the training grounds every morning, a hundred arrows every evening, and stable-cleaning on weekends. For three whole months. Honestly, that's a bit much, don't you think?”
Being punished for breaking the rules was only fair, but forcing a Magic Department student to do training that belonged in the Knight Department was, to Bayul, rather hard to understand.
Stacey's face was drenched in sweat, evidently on her way back from her morning penalty. When Eli waved, she gave a weary smile and passed by.
“By the way, Eli — you're a Stone Lion too? Can I… call you Eli, then?”
“Of course you can. Why wouldn't you?”
Eli looked down at Bayul with a grin.
He really is handsome.
That was the only thought Bayul had in that moment. When Eli smiled, the whole world seemed to brighten, as if even the air itself were being purified. It was an unfamiliar feeling, and a strangely pleasant one.
“It's because we're in the same Stone Lion house that I'm your guide. Different departments, sure, but you'll be sharing plenty of classes with me. That's how the professor scheduled it, he said.”
Eli glanced at the schedule in Bayul's hand and went on.
“See? Your first class today is with me too.”
The first class was languages. In the parentheses next to it was written Ga Kingdom Tongue.
“I like it. What about you?”
“I studied it a little, but I'm not very good at it…”
The Ga Kingdom was a small country at the far eastern edge of the Empire. A tiny frontier nation whose language, skin tones, culture, and ways of life all differed greatly — and yet, generation after generation its kings had been wise and its natural resources abundant, making it one of the strong kingdoms even the Empire dared not treat carelessly.
“Everyone feels that way at first. Languages are hard to learn unless you find them interesting. The moment it clicks, you'll improve by leaps and bounds — so don't worry too much.”
Bail was the one with a talent for languages, not me.
The old memory surfaced unbidden, and Bayul could only manage a bittersweet smile.
“Since it's your first day, I'll just give you a rough sense of where everything is. It's enormous and built like a maze, so it's confusing — but you'll get used to it in a few days. Listen carefully, now. If we keep going straight down here…”
From then on, Eli's fingers and lips never stopped moving. Despite promising only a rough overview, his explanation was astonishingly detailed — and in step with it, Bayul's mind grew steadily more tangled.
Nothing registered. What was what, where was where — not a single thing sank in. All he could see were white stone walls and blue trees.
Just as he found himself wishing for a map, a small square appeared, with a fountain at its center. And there, Bayul was met by countless pairs of eyes.
His feet stopped on their own. The tension that Eli's warmth had eased came flooding back, and his heart pounded wildly.
It felt as though the world were spinning. For the first time in his life, he had stepped out before a crowd. He had sworn to himself that he would stand tall — but as expected, it wasn't so easy.
Where should he look? Which way should he turn? For an instant, Bayul was utterly lost.
“A lowly merman dares study alongside us? Hey, everyone — douse this freak until he comes to his senses. Let's show him exactly how different he is from the rest of us!”
That was when an unpleasant voice cut in. At the sneering command, students lunged forward as though they'd been waiting for the word — every one of them clutching a bucket brimming with water.
SPLOOSH!
They had planned it all in advance; their movements were flawlessly synchronized. The water rose in swift, rapid succession —
What happened next was the truly astonishing part. Because something entirely unlike what everyone had expected unfolded instead.
Magic?
Bayul's eyes went wide at the bizarre scene, one he had never witnessed before. He'd never actually seen magic, but if this wasn't magic, nothing could explain it.
Water… hanging in midair?
The liquid poured from six buckets had bunched together and stopped dead in the open air, as though frozen. And beneath it stood a single student who seemed to be commanding it all, his face twisted with fury.
“…The merfolk?”
The second thing to shock Bayul was the boy's ears. Utterly unlike human ears, fins like those of a fish jutted from either side of his face.
Hair of a blue tinged with silver spilled down past his hips, and eyes of a deeper blue still glittered — cold, aloof, proud.
— Chapter 3: The First Class —
“Here we go again.”
Eli's voice snapped Bayul back to his senses. The face that had shown nothing but smiles until now was brimming with irritation.
“Jared's little gang. House Hector — you know it, right? Their eldest is the leader of those goons. The academy's finest delinquents.”
Bayul knew House Hector, of course. It was one of only two ducal houses in the Empire.
“They've been quiet lately, so I should've known they were cooking something up.”
“Cooking up what?”
“The water-throwing. The idiots actually thought that would work.”
When Bayul's expression showed he didn't understand, Eli returned to his natural, kind self and explained.
“Well, you can see he's merfolk. Oh, right — his name is Quinn. A boy named Quinn, pretty unusual, huh?”
It was unusual, carrying the meaning of a queen as it did. But there was nothing awkward about it at all. If anything, Bayul thought it suited him perfectly.
He was beautiful, even for a boy. Different from Eli, too. An elegant, delicate air — cool and chilly, supremely aristocratic. He was clearly a living, breathing person, and yet looking at him felt like gazing out over the open sea.
“A rumor's been going around lately. You know how mermen's legs change in the sea, right? They have to swim, after all.”
Bayul's gaze drifted naturally to Quinn's legs. Where, so obviously, human legs stood just like anyone else's. If not for the fin-shaped ears, no one would ever guess he was merfolk.
“The ears are like that for breathing underwater, too. Anyway, the rumor was this: that on land, too, the moment water touches their legs, they turn into fins. And since they can't change back into human legs until the water dries, land life is dangerous for the merfolk — that was the story.”
“Is that actually true?”
Bayul asked in astonishment, and Eli shook his head.
“Nope. Just nonsense somebody made up. You're looking at the proof right now — that guy manipulating water. Someone with a power like that, and his legs are going to turn into fins from getting a little wet? The fools are the ones who believed it and pulled this stunt.”
Bayul was a little taken aback to hear such harsh words come pouring one after another from the mouth of Eli, who had been nothing but kind and considerate. Just how many terrible things had those people done to earn it?
House Hector was renowned throughout the Empire for its prestige. The eldest son of such a house would surely have been drilled in etiquette from childhood — yet Bayul simply could not understand why he would behave this way in front of everyone.
Hm?
As he studied the boy called Jared, a prickling gaze suddenly fell on him. He wasn't sure whether to be grateful, but after the earlier commotion, most of the eyes that had been fixed on Bayul had shifted to Quinn.
And yet, strangely enough, Quinn himself was glaring holes straight through Bayul.
“Looks like he's finally noticed you.”
Eli whispered at his ear. Bayul wanted to answer, but found he couldn't. Something about his mood had turned strange.
Quinn's gaze was different from the rest. What Bayul had read in the other students' eyes was simple curiosity.
The only son of Duke Randert, who'd been kept hidden away all these years, has enrolled at the academy. What kind of boy is he? Is he really as frail as the rumors say? Is something wrong with him?
But Quinn's eyes, though seemingly startled, were heavy with something closer to suspicion. This was unmistakably their first meeting today — and yet he looked at Bayul as if it were not, his gaze wavering.
…Why?
“Ugh, what a waste! Should've just dumped it on him!”
Perhaps because all attention had narrowed onto Bayul, the mass of water that had been aimed at Jared's gang came splashing down onto the bare flagstones instead. The bucket-holders, who'd been frozen in place with no idea what to do, finally bolted as though they'd been given their lives back.
“Idiots, the lot of them.”
Eli clicked his tongue as he watched them flee with their tails between their legs.
“When will they ever come to their senses? I worry for the future of this Empire. Truly, I worry.”
Anyone overhearing might have mistaken him for a teacher rather than a student. But Bayul, every fiber of his attention swallowed by Quinn, heard none of it. In that moment, it was as if only the two of them existed in all the world.