Found My Manpower - 1
Late February. It was about time to head back to the Academy and start preparing for the opening ceremony—and the entrance ceremony with it. I had planned to travel with the Magic Lord, but apparently it was the first time the Tower Master had ever left her post for so long, and she still had a mountain of preparations to finish. She would only teleport over on the day of the entrance ceremony itself, so I decided to leave ahead of her.
"Can't you take me with you? I don't want to be apart from my little sisters."
And right before we left for the Academy, the First Department Head—who had come out to see us off—clung to Luise and started whining. She was supposed to be showing her little sister only her best side, yet here she was making a scene.
"I want to stay with Unnie too."
You would think the First Department Head would get on her nerves, but Luise only hugged her tighter, eyes shining wet. She was probably overlaying her dead sister onto the First Department Head, the one who kept calling her little sister, little sister. Good sisters who teased each other and traded casual affection—that was the wish Luise longed for and could never have. Being able to live even a fragment of that wish must have made her happy.
Happy or sad, though, taking the First Department Head with us was out of the question. Luise knew it, which was why she only said she wanted to stay together and never quite managed to ask to come along.
"All right, that's enough. Stop bothering her."
So I ruffled the First Department Head's hair roughly and peeled her off. I had already coaxed and bribed her into staying behind in the Imperial Capital—and now she was pulling this at the last second.
"Penelia's behaving herself. What's wrong with you?"
"But Penelia got a present!"
At that, the Fourth Department Head's body gave a little jolt. Even so, the way she never once loosened her grip on the sword she was cradling was something to see.
"This is discrimination! You didn't give me anything!"
The First Department Head shrieked as if she were about to throw herself on the ground, and the Fourth Department Head glanced around, looking thoroughly awkward—as if she were fretting that the gift she had received might have hurt the First Department Head's feelings.
A pointless worry. If this one were truly upset or wounded, action would come before words. She would have raided my storeroom and claimed a present for herself by now.
"That one couldn't be helped."
Besides, my conscience was clean. If it had truly been favoritism, I would have had nothing to say—but that had been an unavoidable presentation.
I had done my best to divide my time evenly, so that the First and Fourth Department Heads left behind in the capital would not feel left out, and so that neither would get the impression that I favored one and disliked the other. If I dined with the First Department Head, I made time for the Fourth as well. If I gave the Fourth something, I made sure the First got a gift of her own.
In the world I came from before possession, there had even been a religion that taught a man with more than one wife to treat them all fairly—so equal love mattered, did it not? I would stake my letter of resignation on the claim that I had been truly even-handed.
"She's going to be suffering on another deployment. Of course I had to give her something."
Unlike the First Department Head, who was stationed permanently in the capital, the Fourth was obviously heading north again. I had only wanted her to take care of herself. That was not discrimination so much as necessity, was it not?
And it was not as if I had handed over anything precious. Just one decent weapon from the ones gathering dust in my private storeroom.
"Hmph…"
Faced with that perfectly reasonable explanation, the First Department Head had nothing left to say and shut her mouth with a sulky grumble.
She had not been throwing a tantrum out of real resentment so much as wanting to say anything at all before we parted. Afraid of being slowly forgotten while we were apart.
I hate it! I hate being forgotten! There was a girl like that around the ending, and I don't want to end up as a "oh, her"!
The heartrending cry I had heard not long ago rose up again. Honestly, the First Department Head was not the sort of person you could forget even if you tried.
"I'll contact you every day when you're not on deployment. The north is cold even in spring, so take care of yourself."
"Yes, Chief. I will keep that in mind."
Leaving the now-silent First Department Head behind, I clapped the Fourth Department Head on the shoulder. Feeding and housing her was well within my means—I did not even need her to earn merit. I only wanted her to come back healthy, without a scratch on her.
If she had still been in the Audit Department, I would not have fretted like this. Of all places, she had been sold off to the Ministry of Special Affairs, where they ran people ragged all over the map.
"Your body comes first. If something looks dangerous, run. You know it's better to stay alive and succeed at a dozen missions than to die completing one, right?"
The Fourth Department I had raised, now out of my hands. With a strange mix of bitterness and guilt, I pulled the Fourth Department Head into a hug and patted her back. Maybe I should have gritted my teeth and opposed it when she was sold off to Special Affairs.
"O-o-of course. The body—Chief—you gave me—I will return without a single hair harmed."
Thrown into full vibration mode by my embrace, the Fourth Department Head stammered out her determination.
Though the phrasing was a little odd. "The body you gave me"—anyone listening would think I was her parent.
"Good. Take care of yourself, and if anything's hard, don't hide it."
Bottling things up makes you sick. Take it from someone who knows.
"Chief. Why don't you ever say that kind of thing to me…?"
"Because you already talk plenty on your own."
Only after giving both the First and Fourth Department Heads a genuine farewell hug was I finally able to climb into the carriage.
"Making them wait until summer break would be too cruel, wouldn't it?"
"Yes. I plan to show my face a few times even before the break."
Once I was aboard, Margeta said it with a soft smile. She, too, seemed bothered about the Department Head duo who could not come to the Academy.
A teleport made a round trip to the capital nothing. If I had any free time, I would have to ask the Magic Lord for a favor.
The carriage ride itself passed without incident—perfectly peaceful. That peace was only the calm before what was waiting for me now.
"It's been a while, Headmaster. Have you been well?"
"As long as this old body still works, I get by well enough."
The moment we arrived at the Academy, I headed straight for the headmaster's office in the main building. He was one of the people who must have been weeping blood over this entrance-exam catastrophe, so we at least had to talk it over.
In truth the disaster had already broken, and we could hardly throw out royalty or the Magic Lord, so "discussion" would probably amount more to mutual lamentation.
"Lately I can't seem to stop smiling. Students are gathering from every corner of the continent to seek learning—how could a headmaster not be glad?"
As if to prove he truly could not stop smiling, the headmaster continued with a hollow laugh. That laugh, steeped in resignation and bitter conflict, circled my ears and prodded at both sympathy and guilt.
"And this old man who had been waiting only for the day he died is receiving precious instruction in his twilight years. A joyous thing indeed."
Precious instruction. Anyone could tell he meant the Magic Lord.
I was going insane. Maybe it was because I had heard that even the headmaster of Ernesto Academy had submitted an enrollment application, but I could not tell whether that remark was a joke born of enlightenment or the dead-serious raving of a mage's mania. Common sense said the former—but mages lived at a considerable distance from common sense.
Was he going to sit in the back row and audit the Magic Lord's classes? Given how much work the headmaster had taken on, he honestly deserved one-on-one tutoring rather than mere observation.
"With so many hot-blooded new students pouring in, I worry they may become a nuisance to you, Headmaster."
After turning it over a few times, I settled on a suitably bland reply.
Whether the headmaster welcomed the Magic Lord or not, the fact that his later years had turned chaotic was undeniable. Expressing a little regret on that score ought to be enough.
…Ought to be enough?
"Ha ha. Being full of fire at that age is only natural. I'm already used to it."
The moment I heard "used to it," the faces of the club members rose unbidden in my mind. So he had already gotten his scorching preventive shot and was fine—was that it?
Even so, he had only said he was used to it. He had not quite managed to say he was fine. That line was probably the last of the headmaster's conscience and reason.
"It's a pity that some of them will find life in the Empire unfamiliar, but fortunately there is someone to look after those children as well, so I am at ease."
"Yes. I feel the same."
I nodded quickly at the headmaster's smile-tinged words.
On the surface it sounded like concern for the new students arriving from foreign lands, but in reality it was a quiet proposal: Let's leave the foreign students to Sir Villar. An imperial auditor managing royalty and the next Saint up close, an imperial headmaster overseeing the Academy as a whole—surely Sir Villar could handle at least that much. From my position, there was no reason to object.
Right. No matter how I looked at it, putting the foreign students under Villar's jurisdiction was correct. If an imperial managed them, it would feel like territorial bullying—but if a fellow foreigner approached them, the walls around their hearts would come down more easily, would they not?
The mages are my responsibility.
Of course, dumping the foreign students on Villar did not mean I got to sit back and idle. If Villar was taking the foreign students because he was a foreigner himself, then I, as the Magic Lord's fiancé-to-be, was taking the mages. When there were two burdens, splitting them one apiece was only proper…
And so, in a room without Villar, the division of labor was settled—
"Come to think of it, Audit Department Chief. The Ministry of Palace Affairs said something rather unusual."
"The Ministry of Palace Affairs?"
The remark was unexpected enough that I withdrew the hand I had been reaching toward my teacup. If Foreign Affairs or Education had spoken up, I would have assumed it was about the current mess—but Palace Affairs? They had nothing to do with this affair.
A simple surplus of foreign enrollees was not enough to move Palace Affairs. If the ministry were going to react to Academy student issues, it would have reacted from the moment Ryutis, Later, and Tanian enrolled. One royal student mattered more than twenty or thirty noble ones.
"Yes. They said that His Highness the Third Prince is both a student and a Livroman, so even if the honored guests and the pillars of the future grow a little confused, we need not be concerned."
At those words, the corner of my mouth twitched of its own accord.
Of course.
Thinking about it, it was only natural. Ainter had flaunted his presence at the New Year's Audience and returned from a prince in name only to a prince in truth. According to the Livroman tradition that could not stand to see a member of the imperial family loaf around simply for being imperial, it was naturally time for Ainter to get put to work as well.
Found them. My manpower.
It was moving. I had been so sure that if I gained even one extra pair of hands, I would treat them wonderfully. In a situation where even a commoner would have been more than welcome, a member of the imperial family as a fully legal laborer? Ah, of course I would carry him on my back. From now on Ainter would never need to set foot on the ground—because he would never be getting down off my shoulders.
High-grade labor force authorized by His Highness the Crown Prince. I would use him with the deepest gratitude.