The Hero from Another World! (2)
The Hero, his black hair grown out in an unkempt shag, was named Kim Yu-seong. It sounded like a name from another world, and because it was difficult to pronounce, everyone simply called him the Hero.
The moment he saw Professor Freyja, his eyes went perfectly round. I was sure her looks had stolen his gaze.
Rebecca seemed thoroughly displeased that the professor had taken the Hero's soul clean out of him, and she cut in with a sharp, irritable voice to drag his attention back.
"……Hero? Where exactly are you looking? Didn't you say you had something to tell Cecilia?"
"Ah. Right. Yes, yes. That's what it was. I'd forgotten."
"Hehe, honestly, Hero~ You can't do a single thing without me~"
Rebecca pressed herself against him openly, her voice syrupy and cloying. Conscious of the breath she blew over him in a soft huff, the Hero flushed, cleared his throat, and began to mutter.
"Hm. Is that so. Hm. No, it's not that…. Hm. Dear me, I'm rather hopeless myself."
The Hero talked to himself often. Perhaps it was a habit. He would pinch his chin between delicate fingers and fold his arms like a detective brooding in a novel, and the pose was, admittedly, rather exaggerated. Those of us who had shared a party with him, myself included, had grown used to it, but people seeing it for the first time were frequently thrown.
This time was no exception. Professor Freyja flinched and spoke with a stiff face.
"I can see you both have something to say, but could it wait a little? Cecilia seems rather tired today, thanks to a certain someone, and I'd like to let her rest."
"What did you just say?! This bitch has been running her mouth since earlier…!"
Rebecca reacted as if she'd had a fit, but a moment later she remembered the Hero was standing right there and cut herself off awkwardly.
"Ah, ah, aha… Ohoho. Hero, Cecilia does seem tired, doesn't she. She's been so quiet."
"Tired, is she? Hm. Is that so. I see. True enough, I haven't been looking after her at all lately. Hm. Should I apologize?"
"An apology…?! Hero, that beas— no. Why would you apologize when Cecilia is the one who did wrong?"
"No. Hm. This is all my fault. …It's my fault for failing to pay her the attention I should have. A protagonist has to look after the side characters, too. That's how he reaches the ending the way a protagonist ought to."
Looking after was a phrase the Hero was fond of using. Setting aside the otherworld words he sometimes let slip—side characters, endings—which were difficult to make any sense of, if I considered the matter purely in terms of looking after someone, my honest feeling was that I would have been more at ease if he simply ignored me.
It was the same even now. Rebecca's eyes were wide and vicious, and I hesitated to open my mouth at all.
Perhaps that look of mine caught her attention. Professor Freyja, wearing an expression of pure disbelief, stepped between Rebecca and the Hero.
"In any case, party members or not, I can't overlook what happened earlier. Step aside."
"Earlier? What happened? Hm… Something must have occurred while I was away."
"…You're in the same party, aren't you? Surely you won't pretend you don't know. This hardly looks like a matter of a day or two."
"What do you mean? A day or two of what?"
"I mean that lover of yours over there—Rebecca—bullying our student, Cecilia."
"Rebecca, bullying Cecilia? No. Impossible. Rebecca would never do such a thing."
"……You aren't about to tell me that all that talk of beasts and the like was only a joke."
"It's banter between us. Rebecca is shy, so her mouth runs a little rough, but her heart is gentle. …Hm. It seems there's been some misunderstanding. We're family."
"Oh, honestly, Hero~! How embarrassing…!"
"Cecilia, if Rebecca's little joke hurt your feelings, won't you forgive her for my sake?"
I turned my face from the two of them. To be precise, it would be truer to say that no feeling rose in me at all. Talk like this had become so familiar that I had gone numb to it. If a light nod was enough to bring the matter to an end, then that alone was satisfaction enough.
Professor Freyja seemed to have given up even on understanding what was happening. Her face gone cold, she warned them quietly.
"……Move. If you won't, I'll call Cecilia's advisor, Eugene—"
"Did someone call?"
"Eek!"
Professor Freyja's cute little scream snapped the moment in two. Anyone would be startled if a person's upper body suddenly dropped, upside down, out of the air. A dark shape—and it did not take long to realize it was human. The first thing to burst loose was a dull, heavy thud.
And yet Professor Neferna, having come down headfirst in a motion closer to acrobatics than a fall, wore an expression of perfect calm.
"H… haah……."
Caught utterly off guard, Professor Freyja looked ready to cry, and her legs must have given out, because she simply sank to the floor. A sniffle reached me. Worried, I stole a glance at her face, and there were real tears gathered at the corners of her eyes.
"M-my heart nearly stopped! You… you awful man!"
"And what am I supposed to do if the person who called me has a heart attack? ……Come to think of it, the pendant reacted to your voice, Freyja? …Haa. Cecilia, mind if I adjust the pendant's structural formula for a moment? Since I'm here, we may as well fix it."
I handed the pendant over without a word of protest. Professor Neferna scratched his head and began to work at the enchanted margin.
By then Professor Freyja had gathered herself. In a rather sulky voice, she grumbled at him.
"Why is it so shoddy? Are all those bonus freebies like this?"
"Shoddy? That's harsh. I'll have you know I put real work into making it respond only to the voice of a kind-hearted beauty. Do you have any idea how hard it is to engrave an enchantment that processes an abstract, variable input condition like that?"
With practiced hands, he revised the pendant's margin.
"There. I've adjusted it so it responds only to your voice, Cecilia."
"…Thank you."
"Works well, doesn't it? Make good use of it."
I had no idea how a margin finished in the blink of an eye was meant to function. To Rebecca, though—someone who was all but first-rate when it came to enchantment and imbuement magic—the sight seemed to sting her eyes.
"Hmph! Look at him lying just to seem like he knows what he's doing! Do you take us for blind? Who's going to believe you can rewrite an enchanted array that fast? What did he even fix, puffing himself up like that? At best he changed the shape of the margin—never mind the conditions! Ugh. Talking big when he doesn't know a thing…!"
"…..Hm? What, you were here too. You don't tire out, do you. Uh… what's-his-name. So this fellow here is the Hero of the 6th Holy Sword?"
"I am called Kim Yu-seong."
"Yeah, yeah. I know."
He had only nodded halfheartedly, but the Hero seemed to have taken it another way. As if delivering a monologue to himself, he muttered in a low voice, utterly serious.
Mumble, mumble.
"Hm… Have I become famous without even realizing it? Dear me… I never meant to stand out like this… Hm. Perhaps I ought to hide my power a little. I'll have to… give it some thought. At a time like this, what would the correct choice be?"
Professor Neferna flinched and looked back and forth between me and Professor Freyja.
"Is that kid… sick or something?"
"How should I know? I was about to ask you."
"Tsk. Young as he is, and already like that…."
Professor Freyja tilted her head.
"Anyway, why did you set such a vague condition on the pendant's formula?"
"Well, I didn't know who my student would be. I made it a fair while ago."
"If you didn't know who, why did it have to be a kind-hearted beauty?"
"Because there's no way whoever became my student would have an ugly heart. I threw in 'beauty' as a joke, but I didn't expect a real beauty to get caught— look, Professor Freyja. You don't have to look quite that disgusted."
Faced with Professor Neferna joking in that utterly brazen tone, Professor Freyja seemed to lose whatever she had been about to say. He paid her no mind. From who knows where, he produced several application forms, and, seizing the moment, he fluttered one out to each of them.
"Well then, welcome, my dear transfer students. I was summoned in the middle of class, so I'll be heading back in first. And if you happen to be so inclined, do enroll in Professor Eugene Sir Neferna's course on the Structural Theory of Margins. Here, the forms. One for the Hero of the 6th Holy Sword as well… The deadline is today! Be sure! Be absolutely sure to apply!"
Rebecca's face twisted through red and blue in sheer disbelief, and she shrieked.
"What is wrong with you?! Handing out this useless junk out of nowhere! Are you making light of the Hero?"
Professor Neferna looked at Rebecca, then at the Hero, then at me, in turn.
"A hero and his party—hm. Romantic. I'll give you that. But this is a school. A school is fundamentally different from the Snowfield."
"What nonsense is this now…! I'll tell my father about you. Don't think you'll get away with it!"
"Well, suit yourselves. What matters is not crossing the line. Remember that, and I'm sure you'll all have a worthwhile time at this school. There are a great many eyes here, when it comes down to it, so being a little conscious of them isn't a bad choice. …I'll be off, then. Take care~"
The wooden door could be reached only at the very end of the dormitory corridor. Come the hour of sunset, the sun always seemed to find it, and the sunlit stretch of floor had buckled upward more than the rest. The creaking door sat crooked, its top and bottom out of true, and the key would turn only if you pressed it gently down with your knee.
Beyond the window, maple branches reached through a deep quiet. It was a still, snug single room, and that modest space was the room given to me. I opened the wardrobe beside the soft bed and the clean window. The desk, stained with the oil of many hands, had passed through generation after generation of students, and the parts worn glossy were especially soft to the touch.
It was a reasonable size for one person, and yet the furnishings were too close to luxuries to call the room merely ordinary. A vanity inlaid with jewels, and a tea set and table for afternoon tea set near the window—things expensive enough that they surely would not have been found in any other room.
I had neither Rebecca's noble station nor the Hero's outstanding ability, and the reason I had been given so comfortable a single room was plain to see. The other students would surely not want to live alongside one of the Fox Tribe, and a magic school counted among the Empire's top three had no cause to be stingy over a single dormitory room. Tossing me one leftover room to avoid needless controversy would not have been difficult for the school. There would have been a plausible pretext as well: a show of courtesy toward the 6th Holy Sword Party.
"……Haa."
Once inside, I threw myself onto the bed as if collapsing. Whatever else, I was simply grateful that no one was around. I buried my face in the blanket and shut out my sight. I did not want to move at all.
How much time had passed? The sunset faded quickly, and when I came back to myself the room had already sunk into blackness. Lighting a lamp was out of the question; I realized I did not even have a change of ordinary clothes. My thoughts tangled, and all at once my throat was dry. There was nothing in the room to eat or drink, so after a moment's hesitation I rose from the bed.
Light leaked from somewhere along the corridor. Someone must have forgotten to lock a door. At the clamor of voices I stopped walking without meaning to. I had not intended to eavesdrop, but I had reason enough. It was unmistakably Rebecca's irritable voice.
"This is infuriating! How dare they make a fool of me?"
"Please endure it, Lady Rebecca. Anyone else, perhaps, but within the academy you must not lay a hand on Professor Freyja."
"That's right, that's right. Just the other day someone badmouthed her behind her back, and the next day they were hanging upside down from the roof of the great hall!"
"A few months ago there was a boy floating unconscious by the lakeshore. They say he became a target because he confessed to Professor Freyja. When I mistook him for a corpse, the chills—!"
"Then why not go after that Fox Tribe girl from earlier instead."
"Exactly! A Fox Tribe isn't much different from the monsters of the Snowfield, or the Blood Kin, is she? Why on earth does the Hero keep a beast like that around?"
"Ha! That's what I'm saying! Our Hero crossed over from another world, so he hasn't a shred of caution. He doesn't understand why a beast is a beast. If she were simply a pet, fine—but he treats that thing like a person, drags her around, and even shows her attention. How am I supposed to stand it without my blood boiling? Until now I've watched her myself and driven her off, but I'm reaching my limit."
"Ah, poor Lady Rebecca. You always try so hard for the Hero…!"
"And the Hero doesn't even understand Lady Rebecca's heart! How can he be so dense? I feel so sorry for you…."
"Isn't there some way…? A way to get rid of that fox bitch. She's been an eyesore since the day she joined the party. Lately the Hero's gaze hasn't been right, either. I want to deal with her while I have the chance."
"Hm, then what about tomorrow? The practical where we hunt monsters in the Snowfield."
"……The practical? What would I even do during a practical… Yes! Ah! That would be perfect! If it's a Snowfield practical, no one would think it strange if something unexpected happened. If one student met with an unfortunate accident, they wouldn't make much of a fuss! I need to send my father a telegram right now. Why didn't I think of that?"
I froze in the corridor, unable to do a thing.
Forgetting even that I had wanted a breath of air, I fled back to my room and buried myself in the blankets. I could not tell whether what held me was fear, or grief, or the resignation of someone for whom the long-dreaded thing had come at last. I only curled myself up as small as I could and let my breath out, slow. I had believed my tears were long since dry. They were not.
I lay awake through the night. Sleep would not come. The hands of the clock, deep in the dark, advanced with a speed I resented, and as the hours passed the morning sun painted the window in colors so vivid they felt cruel.
When day broke, I set out for the Snowfield as one who had already given up.