Application Day at the Office of Academic Affairs
So I've gathered them all.
I gave the stack of lecture registration forms a satisfied nod. That was when I noticed Milo hovering nearby, fidgeting like he had somewhere else to be. The man couldn't hold still to save his life.
"Need to take a dump?"
"……Pardon?"
"You keep squirming around like a guy who needs to go."
"I already went this morning. First thing, actually. The moment I wake up, I sit down and—"
I grimaced at the unnecessarily detailed answer. Milo, apparently unfazed, chose that exact moment to speak up, cautious as a man defusing a bomb.
"……Were you a professor?"
"Where's that coming from?"
"It's just—you teach way too well."
Milo eyed me with a look that hovered somewhere between awe and burden, waiting for an answer.
"Hm. I am good at teaching, but no. Never was a professor."
"What? But you were genuinely good at it. I've secretly sat in on real professor lectures before, and you were far better than any of them."
"Secretly?"
"……Anyway! You really weren't a professor?"
"I did similar work."
"I knew it! So what was it?"
"Classified."
"Again?! Argh, dammit!"
Milo clutched his head and howled, looking for all the world like a hamster whose sunflower seeds had just been confiscated. But the truth was, my past really was classified.
"Damn it all—though seriously, I'm shocked you actually lectured instead of just beating us bloody. You know, with the family secret techniques! Take this, inherited art of my line! That kind of thing."
"It's too early to beat anyone yet."
"……Too early?"
I gave a light nod.
"It's the first class. If I thrash someone on day one and the lectures get cancelled, that's just more paperwork for me. I have to hold it in."
In truth, it had taken considerable restraint. The class had been assembled from nothing but hopeless cases, and simply watching them fumble made my fists itch all on their own.
"Then that lecture you just gave—"
"A bait product."
"……Isn't that fraud?"
"Fraud? Please. That's called commerce."
Milo made a deeply uncomfortable face and sketched a sloppy, half-hearted sign of the cross.
"First things first—we need to file the syllabus and registration forms so nobody can slip away. Where's the Office of Academic Affairs?"
"So-nobody-can-slip-away, you say—hm. The Academic Affairs Office is on the first floor. But fair warning, that place is guarded by Unit 10, so you'll want to be careful. Nora especially. Watch out for Nora."
"Nora?"
The name tugged at something in my memory. Where had I heard it before…?
"Yes, the Unit 10 squad leader, Nora. She's extremely chummy with the professors and TAs. They call her the assistant-in-waiting, that's how much. I've heard she could be picked up as a TA the moment a vacancy opens."
As Milo's explanation rolled on, it clicked.
Ah. The guard who gets hired as a TA in the game.
There had been one deeply paranoid professor in the game who refused to hire any assistants, convinced someone would steal his research. So Elysium Academy had assigned a guard to serve under him instead.
That guard had been Nora.
Just then, Milo dropped into a grave voice and issued a warning.
"You're going to be lecturing from now on, right? TAs are famously territorial about their turf. The guards would set their eyes ablaze trying to sabotage a fellow guard becoming a TA—and if Nora gets thrown into that mix—"
"Sounds entertaining."
"……Pardon? This time you really, truly need to be careful. Nora especially. Seriously, especially Nora."
Milo hammered the point home a second time.
Nora, huh.
In the game, Nora actually got cut from her TA position the very next semester. But she'd made it through at least one full term without a single problem. She'd been suddenly assigned as assistant to a paranoid professor who didn't even trust his own TAs—and survived an entire semester clean. Which meant she was every bit as capable as her reputation suggested.
"Good."
"……Good?"
"Yes. Very good. Is Nora at the Academic Affairs Office right now?"
"She should be. She's stationed there permanently."
"Great. Let's head over now."
Milo and I made for the Office of Academic Affairs. Sharp-eyed guards stood watch at the entrance, and I gathered these were the Unit 10 men Milo had warned me about.
Not bad.
They were clearly a cut above the average guard—being Unit 10, after all. Though that was still a fairly low bar to clear.
Just then, a hawk-eyed man squinted at Milo.
"Milo. What brings you here? We didn't request any support."
The elite guard numbered quite a lot, so it wasn't unusual for them not to recognize each other on sight. And yet wherever Milo went, every guard seemed to know him—and their reactions were always the same, too. I was honestly curious what he'd been doing to earn that kind of reputation.
"Ahem. Business with the Academic Affairs Office."
"A Unit 42 guard has business with Academic Affairs? What, the lecture something-or-other? The—you know, the thing you file?"
"The lecture registration form?"
"Yes! That! Exactly that! We're here to submit it! Move aside!"
Milo bellowed with full confidence. The man's face twisted in disbelief.
"And why is a Unit 42 guard the one submitting it?"
"Good question, actually."
Milo shot a furtive glance my way. Just then, the door to the Academic Affairs Office swung open with a smooth click, and out stepped a woman with sleek black hair. Razor-straight bangs cut like a blade's edge, sharp, intelligent eyes—a beauty of the severe variety.
Every guard nearby dipped their heads the moment she appeared, while Milo's face curdled into something sour. This had to be the Nora Milo had warned me about.
"What's going on here?"
"Ah, Lady Nora. Milo from Unit 42 is causing a scene."
"When did I ever cause a scene!"
"Milo. You again?"
Nora heaved a pointed sigh at Milo, and his face crumpled on the spot.
"What do you mean, again!"
"So what brings you here? I haven't made any support requests to Hanswel."
Nora put pointed emphasis on the name Hanswel—and the moment it left her lips, Milo's face drained of color. He shot me a desperate look, one that clearly asked, what do we do?
Then Nora's gaze swung to me.
"So you're the Unit 42 rookie Bedrick's been going on about."
Apparently Bedrick had been spreading my name around. I'd have to grab him at some point. I clicked my tongue and nodded.
"Yes, that's me."
"What's your business?"
"I've come to submit a lecture registration form."
I held the form out. Nora swept through it at remarkable speed.
"Professor Leon, is it."
At the name Leon, the guards visibly stirred. Nora's lips curled upward as she extended her hand.
"He's newly arrived, so I suppose he wouldn't know. The Main Building falls under Unit 10's jurisdiction. Hand it here—I'll submit it for you."
Her voice was flat, matter-of-fact, brimming with the certainty that I would simply comply.
I shook my head.
"That's quite all right. I'll submit it myself."
"……Did I say that as a request?"
"Was it not?"
"The Main Building is Unit 10's territory. Whatever squad a guard belongs to, inside the Main Building, Unit 10 holds command authority. Command, as in orders."
"Ah, I see."
"Then if you understand, hand it over."
"I'll submit it myself. The professor selected me as his assistant, you see."
……Assistant? Nora's eyes went rigid.
The other guards made no effort at all to hide their laughter.
"A professor picked a guard as his assistant? A Unit 42 guard, no less—not one from Unit 10?"
"Feel free to verify it yourselves."
At that, the laughing guards froze. Professors were, apparently, terrifying after all.
"Ask the professor directly, and that won't pass as a simple mistake. Are you certain you want to risk it?"
Nora asked in a perfectly level voice, neither rising nor falling.
"Yes, I'm fine with that. But—"
I smiled back at her, adding with perfect courtesy:
"Would you be all right?"
Nora's smile stiffened. Her eyes raked up and down me in a quick, appraising sweep, the way one might size up a purchase.
The surrounding guards erupted. Cocky little bastard—let's go confirm it with the professor right now! The din swelled into open chaos.
Then Nora raised a hand, and in an instant, silence fell.
"There's no reason for two branches of the same guard to spat over this. Go on in. Ah—the document submission desk is at the very back. No—actually, I'll escort you there myself."
Nora held the door open for us personally. However polite her voice, the message underneath was unmistakable: I'm watching every move you make.
"Wonderful. I was getting confused about where to go, anyway."
Nora led the way inside. Being the start of the semester, the Academic Affairs Office was packed to bursting. Haggard, sleep-starved figures with bruised shadows under their eyes crowded every desk—TAs, clearly, at a glance.
Nora was already striding far ahead of us. Charitably speaking, you could call it escorting; realistically, it looked like a drill sergeant marching prisoners to processing.
"Yah, why are you needling her like that—she's obviously planning to sabotage the lecture."
Milo muttered out of the corner of his mouth, eyes locked on Nora's back.
"It's fine. I'm not the one preparing the lecture."
"What? Then who's preparing it? Not me. I can't. I'm illiterate."
"I know that much."
"Anyway, I absolutely cannot do it! Absolutely not!"
"I wasn't planning to ask you. I'd sooner give it to Evangeline."
"……Okay, it's not quite that bad."
Milo said it with a completely straight face, and I had to admit I'd gone a step too far.
Just then, Nora beckoned us over.
"Here."
Seated before us was a man who looked distilled from pure sternness—the sort who would obviously be the hardest to deal with in the entire office. Knowing Nora, she'd picked him out deliberately.
Which suited me fine. One stop, and I could verify everything at once.
I handed the lecture registration form to the stern-looking man. He began by checking the registration itself first.
"Vivienne, Rosa, Andy, Evangeline, and Luna. Did you simply pick the five worst entrance exam scores in the intake?"
The man's voice dripped incredulity.
"And half of them are remedial placements. The other professors will be so grateful."
Nora laughed openly, right in front of us. But finding nothing wrong with the registration form, the man moved on to the syllabus.
"And for TA—Grave of Unit 42? You're using an elite guard, not an actual TA, as your assistant?"
The man asked while fixing me with narrowed eyes. I gave a light nod.
"Yes. Is there a problem?"
"In principle, no—it's permitted. We respect the professors' choices. However, since it directly bears on the quality of instruction, quite a few documents are required. First, you'll need the Permit for Elite Guard Participation in Educational Support—the template for which is this form. Then the Acknowledgment of Educational Safety Liability Attribution, the Request for Psychological Suitability Review, and—"
Documents with increasingly convoluted names poured out of the man's mouth one after another. The longer he went on, the greener Milo's face became, until he looked two seconds away from vomiting.
"This is at least a week of all-nighters just to file everything. Think you can make the deadline?"
Nora taunted with relish.
She wasn't wrong—the mountain of paperwork waiting to be prepared was genuinely enormous. And the students who'd be sitting in the lectures were openly hopeless cases on top of that, which would only multiply the workload. An absolutely miserable situation.
But it wasn't really a problem.
Because none of it would be done by me.
"Oh, would it be possible to register one more TA?"
"In principle, yes. However, all the TA positions have already been assigned, so—"
What I needed was someone capable of single-handedly demolishing that entire mountain of paperwork.
"Ah—my mistake. The professor told me to write something down and I nearly forgot. Might I borrow your pen?"
Looking thoroughly baffled, the man handed over his pen. I moved it lightly across the page.
"……Is this serious?"
The man asked, flustered, staring at the name I'd written.
"What'd you write—let me see."
Nora narrowed her eyes and checked the document. Then she froze, and her gaze snapped up to me.
"Wh-why is my name—?"
There, added boldly to the TA line, was Nora's name. The woman who had maintained flawless composure from the first moment we met was now audibly stumbling over her words.
I looked at her and asked:
"Do you not want it?"
A whole chaotic marketplace of emotions competed across Nora's face—flusterment, disbelief, irritation, fury—and the very last one to surface, edging out all the rest, was—
"No. I accept."
Naked, unvarnished ambition.