8. The Academy Entrance Ceremony Is the Antonym of Peace
8. The Academy Entrance Ceremony Is the Antonym of Peace
"Is there some clause in Imperial law that I do not know about declaring top-ranked students to have no human rights?"
"That's not it, but I'd seriously like to look into it."
6:00 a.m.
That was the conversation Leon and I had after arriving several hours early to rehearse for the entrance ceremony.
Before us stood a firmly closed auditorium and a notice posted on the door.
To make matters worse, the dawn wind was needlessly biting, making the paper flutter and the notice difficult to read.
- Entrance Ceremony Venue Change Notice.
: Due to sudden circumstances on the school's side, this year's entrance ceremony venue has been changed.
"Fuck. Could they not announce this kind of thing through smart crystals?"
"Students come from all over the world. Some of them can't get reception or don't have crystals."
"So everyone suffers together in the name of fairness? How equitable."
"..."
Leon said that, but he knew the truth too.
The administrative office had simply handled the matter incompetently.
Neither Leon nor I could change anything by standing around here, so we handed the wheel back to Karl, who had just returned from parking, and headed to the notified location.
*
The island where the academy stood was roughly twice the size of Jeju Island.
Frankly, allocating territory of this size to a single academy was an eccentricity only the empire could pull off.
And Hetairo Academy had more than rewarded the empire for its investment.
The quality of education wasn't proportional to the size of the campus, but a vast campus and the enormous profits generated there could raise the quality of education.
The students' quality of life, however, had worsened in inverse proportion to the improvement in educational quality.
Because a vast campus meant the distances students had to travel were enormous.
And right there were three men experiencing that drawback with their whole bodies.
There were Leon and me, nearly dead from motion sickness, and Karl, who had spent an hour driving a vehicle filled with screams and roars since dawn.
After crossing the island, we reached a venue far more splendid than the original auditorium, exactly as the notice's promise to accommodate distinguished guests suggested.
The original auditorium had already been enormous, but this one practically rivaled the Tokyo Dome.
Fittingly, it was even called the Hetairo Dome.
"How many people do you think this can hold?"
"It can accommodate approximately fifty thousand people."
Karl-pedia answered immediately.
"How many incoming students this year?"
"About three thousand."
"Then how many current students?"
"Slightly less than fifty thousand."
"Hm... They're planning to call all the current students to the entrance ceremony?"
"Maybe that's because of me?"
Because of Leon?
When I looked at him with that question, Leon explained.
Normally, the custom was for only the incoming students and a few seniors to attend the entrance ceremony.
This year, however, Leon—the Parma Empire's legitimate heir—was enrolling.
People who wanted to see the prince's face, people who wanted to make connections—they would have been visiting the administrative office even before the ceremony began.
Some were probably children of influential figures, and Leon suspected their demands had produced this absurd situation.
"So you're the problem."
"How does that conclusion follow from that?"
"It's not exactly wrong, is it?"
"..."
And then we both let out a deep sigh.
What was the point of whining here?
If we didn't like it, we shouldn't have become students.
The three people in front of the dome grumbled as they grabbed the door handle.
*
- On this spring day when life stirs, we welcome all of you who step across the threshold of Hetairo Academy.
Backstage, I melted into my chair while only half-listening to the chancellor's welcome address.
Not even five minutes had passed since the ceremony began, yet I looked like someone whose ceremony had already ended.
This was all because of the rehearsal.
Sure, it was for the sake of a perfect ceremony, but if the rehearsal exhausted the people first, wasn't that putting the cart before the horse?
I wasn't the only one thinking this.
Behind the podium, besides Leon and me, there were the top students of each department, and they seemed to be thinking the same thing.
The chancellor's speech ended in about five minutes, just like during rehearsal.
The head of the Political Science Department took the microphone next.
Once that department head's speech ended, Leon, as the top student of Political Science, would give the address in reply.
After Leon, the heads and top students of the Knight Faculty, Theology Faculty, Faculty of Foresight, and the other departments would alternate.
The Hero Department came last, but that was beside the point. What mattered was that a performance followed every speech and response to keep the audience from becoming bored.
Not plays, of course—singing or dancing.
So why did I care about singing and dancing rather than plays or movies? Because music was a critical element in film.
A good film required not only actors but capable composers, so I concentrated on the performances in the hope of discovering raw talent.
Just as the performances were about to begin, Leon returned after finishing his reply and came backstage.
When I shared those thoughts with Leon after he sat beside me, his expression openly showed his disgust.
"How serious are you about film?"
"A Hero should be serious about film. What else is he supposed to take seriously?"
"Put that way, I have no... No, I almost let you fool me. Acting is only a secondary occupation for a Hero."
"For me, it's my main job, dumbass."
I'd only recently learned this myself, but heroes were fundamentally soldiers.
More precisely, they were elite special forces and irregular strategic assets—the joker card in a deck.
There was no way the state would let such an asset idle, and so a hero could never become a full-time actor.
Until then, I had regarded Sanctuaries as Hollywood and Heroes as leading actors. Learning the truth sent me through every stage of grief.
After denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and compromise, I still could not abandon my dream of acting and reluctantly accepted the military track.
'Fuck. I was applying to become an NCO for a second time.'
Strictly speaking, Heroes were officers, but dwelling on that made my life feel even more miserable, so I erased the thought.
In the end, I compromised with reality and walked the soldier's path again, but my purpose in becoming a soldier was still to become an actor.
So no matter what anyone said, Hero Allen's main job was acting.
Leon had listened to my miraculous logic for years. With a resigned 'Of course,' he ignored me and watched the performance.
I also watched the stage through the screen set up backstage.
The first performance was decent enough.
It was a six-person dance performance, and it was worth watching.
No, honestly, it was sick.
One performer did windmills with their back nearly vertical, perhaps because they were feline beastfolk.
That deserved admiration.
But it didn't seem like it'd be useful for film, so I forgot it quickly.
After that, every time another department representative's speech ended, there was a performance.
The ultra-high soprano of the avian beastfolk was impressive, and the instruments the dwarves showed—ones I'd never seen before—were fascinating.
Ah, the elves' was boring.
True to a race steeped in chosen-people ideology, they performed music that only elves could hear and then left the stage.
Typical pointy-ears.
To me, the speeches by department heads and student representatives were nothing more than commercial breaks, and they flew by quickly when I watched the teams preparing for the next performance backstage.
'Is this the privilege of being backstage?'
I was watching the teams head toward the stage for the next performance when—
A horned group bustled about preparing for the next performance.
The group had horns ranging from one to three, and their positions—forehead, crown, temples—were all over the place, with no consistency.
Still, there was one consistent trait that told me their affiliation.
'Tiger tribe, huh.'
I thought as I read the tattoos inscribed on their bodies one by one.
Oni were born with tattoos somewhere on their bodies, and those tattoos indicated their origin.
The oni had founded a nation and no longer lived in a tribal society, but their inborn tattoos made them retain a strong tribal identity.
Each tribe also had its own etiquette. The problem was that oni were notorious for splitting people's heads open without warning when that etiquette was violated.
Still, as a civilized nation was established and exchanges with other races became active, the oni no longer strictly enforced such etiquette, but there were bound to be extremists among them.
The types who didn't give a damn about globalization or other races and put their own traditions first.
That was why oni always reminded me of the Middle East in my previous life.
That was also why I was checking the oni's tattoos now.
There might be an extremist mixed in among that group, so I wanted to avoid violating the tiger tribe's etiquette from the start.
I could recall one peculiar custom of the tiger tribe.
'Never stare into their eyes for a prolonged time.'
More precisely, anyone not participating in a conversation was forbidden from staring into a tiger-tribe member's eyes.
If you locked eyes for a long time without being in conversation, they considered it a challenge and pulled out a mace.
Careful not to make eye contact with the performance team, I lowered my gaze toward their bodies instead.
But it happened to be a women's dance team, so finding a place to rest my eyes was awkward.
'Whoa...'
As expected of a warrior race, their development was no joke.
While my wandering gaze remained fixed on the women's toes, one of them began walking toward me.
The woman approaching me was barefoot, as suited a hardy oni.
I didn't have a toe fetish, but her toes kept drawing my gaze.
Were her red toenails painted, or naturally that color?
While I wondered, those feet came to a stop directly before me.
"Um, it's a little embarrassing when you stare at someone's feet like that."
Only then did I meet her eyes.
Since she'd spoken to me, now I didn't have to worry about my head getting split—
'Huh.'
Skadi stood before me.
The Great Warrior of War whose head I had blown off in a Sanctuary while wearing John's form.
And she was my upperclassman.
I panicked for a moment the instant I saw her, but it didn't show on my face.
I might not look it, but I was the lead in a film that had swept the globe.
Controlling one facial expression was hardly difficult.
Instead, I acted the part of a new student meeting her for the first time.
"Ah, sorry. Because of the tiger tribe's etiquette..."
"Oh, that custom about avoiding eye contact? How old are you, talking like those old elders? Do not worry about it. None of the oni at Hetairo Academy are fundamentalists."
"Ahaha... Thank you."
Leon and Karl's faces curdled when they saw me behaving politely before an upperclassman.
What, you bastards.
Despite appearances, I had always been polite to my seniors.
Ignoring their stares, I continued my conversation with Skadi.
"I am sorry if my staring made you uncomfortable."
"I didn't come over because of that, so no need to apologize."
"Pardon? Then what brings you...?"
"That reminds me... Why can I sense my on you?"
...Ah, shit.