Heroes Don't Study - 1
The temporary headquarters of the Imperial Army on the Great Northern Subjugation Front. The compound was littered with yurts—the kind the Imperial Army itself often used for how easily they went up and came down.
"Whoa. This bastard's the senior team leader?"
"End times. Even Division Four's reputation has hit rock bottom."
Seven men and women were gathered inside one of the yurts. Their black uniforms were caked in dust, their faces thick with exhaustion, and yet they kept snickering as if something were endlessly funny.
"Obviously."
The black-haired man at the center of it all spoke with total confidence. Having finally secured the title of senior team leader—a post left vacant until now—his face was full of mockery and contempt for the other team leaders.
"I can't even share a table with a bunch of lowly team leaders. You all reek."
"What do we do with this bastard?"
"First we put him on the floor."
At that, the six team leaders swarmed the senior team leader, flattened him, and pounded him with everything within reach.
"Fuck! This is insubordination!"
"Since when is there a ranking between team leaders?"
"You think being senior makes you above us? Kid, you're just the guy who handles the leftover crap."
A few minutes later, both the battered senior team leader and the six who had enthusiastically thrashed him got up as if nothing had happened.
"This is why we stay in Division Four. Where else are you going to get to beat the heir to an Imperial Count?"
"Filthy red blood."
"Want me to put him down again?"
Even so, all seven faces were still full of laughter. Horseplay like this was routine.
"Still weird, though. So we actually get a senior after all?"
"Team leaders kept dying too fast. No point naming one if they're going straight into a hole."
"Fair."
The average survival time for a Division Four team leader had never been long. After the war broke out in the North, it got even shorter. That was why they had simply left the senior post empty. But the current team leaders had survived far past the average—so at last, a senior had been chosen.
"Let's ride this all the way to the end of the war."
"When the war's over, I'm quitting this goddamn Audit Department life."
"I... I'm going to confess to the girl back home..."
"Is this guy insane?"
Even the team leader who had never so much as spoken to a woman, let alone a "girl back home," got swept up in the mood and started spouting nonsense. Talk of the war ending, of what they would do after—if this were a play, it would have been foreshadowing for a tragic ending. But the seven paid that no mind.
We will make it back to the Imperial Capital alive. Thinking that, none of them hesitated.
Morning sunlight slipping through the curtains tickled my face, and my eyes opened.
"Ah."
Fucking dream.
I let out a small sigh and sat up. Lately I had been hearing about those bastards so much that they had started showing up even in my sleep. Still—lucky. At least a decent memory had crawled up into a dream.
Why was I so happy about it back then?
At the time, being named senior team leader had quietly pleased me. Laughable. These days I would have clenched my teeth and dodged anything that piled more responsibility on me. Back then I was simply glad to feel recognized as better than those bastards. Ridiculous.
What was truly ridiculous was that the people who had been Division Four chief and senior team leader then were now, respectively, a minister and a department head.
I rolled my stiff neck this way and that and got out of bed. Then the old line about quitting the Audit Department once the war was over drifted through my mind. We had been joking around when that bastard had suddenly said it with complete sincerity.
That abrupt truth-or-dare moment had pulled real wish lists out of the others too—not "the girl back home" nonsense, but actual desires. None of us had known that quitting the Audit Department would turn out to be the hardest wish of all. Not me, not him, not any of us.
Thinking of it, a laugh slipped out of me.
The moment I arrived at the club room I opened the cookie tin—empty. During the expo, nothing had been going into the tin, so for the first time it had hit bottom.
"Damn."
The word escaped me, full of regret.
My private human feed was gone. Eating cookies alone in an empty club room had been my routine, and now it was broken. I would have to ask Luise to make a generous batch today.
I left the tin behind, sat in my usual chair, and looked around the club room. Between the abundance of ingredients and the proper tools, there were times when sitting here alone made me think, maybe I should try baking too. Enduring club hours alone was one thing for a day or two. Doing it for months was another.
There I go, thinking weird things again.
I had to get past this temptation cleanly. I knew my own cooking. There had been a time when I had to cook for the officers. The results had been extremely bad.
Of course they had. I had never once in my life seriously considered cooking. Circumstances had forced my hand.
Maybe I should bring a book.
I had been avoiding leaving anything but cooking tools here in case everything ended up dusted in flour. But how much was there really to do alone? Today of all days, I found myself missing actual club hours.
After several hours of waiting by myself, the club members who finally showed up proved more diligent than I had expected.
"For a while I think we'll only be studying."
"Is that so?"
I nodded as if it were nothing. Exam season had, in fact, arrived. Whoever set the Academy calendar deserved some kind of award—whip the mood up with an expo, then slam everyone straight into exams. The craftsmanship was almost artistic.
"It's my first exam since enrolling, so I'm going to work really hard!"
She clenched both fists as she said it, and I could not open my mouth. Looking at a club president like that and saying, No need—just make me cookies, I'm getting dizzy, was something not even a thoroughly rotten adult could do.
Knowing Luise, she would have said yes if I asked. Even so—failing to open a path for a kid was one thing. Becoming the adult who blocked it was another.
"All right. Do your best. Effort usually brings good results."
"Yes!"
In the end, all I could offer were the usual empty words of encouragement. Tomorrow I would have to stop by the library first thing in the morning for real.
"Actually, this place is better for studying. It's just us, so it's quiet."
"And we can talk without worrying, so it's better than the library."
"Ah, right. In the library you always have to watch the librarian."
Erich's and Later's conversation from the side delivered the finishing blow. For the foreseeable future, the club room would smell of paper and ink instead of cookies.
For most Academy students—nobles—grades did not mean much. They were not going on to higher institutions after graduation, and they were not applying for jobs, so why bother with high scores?
Some did enter the administration or the military after graduating, but those paths ran on separate recruitment exams, not school grades. Recommendations were even more useful than exams. In this world, a recommendation still carried more weight than a test score.
And yet noble students still fixated on exams for a simple reason: grades were a visible metric, and therefore something to compete over. For prideful blue bloods, that was reason enough. Commoner students, on the other hand, threw themselves into high marks so they could catch even one more noble's eye. Their lives depended on it.
"There are quite a lot of exam subjects."
"Huh? I heard they actually reduced them compared to before."
I had muttered it while watching Luise pull out textbooks one after another, and the reaction I got was pure confusion. This was the reduced version? If you maxed out your credits at a university you might end up with roughly this load. Had it been high-school level before that?
I stared blankly at the textbooks. Luise tilted her head, then her face shifted into an awkward little smile of realization.
"Still, like you said, Brother, there really are a lot."
I saw her pupils tremble slightly and simply nodded, letting it pass. She had answered without thinking and only then remembered.
I'm an unschooled adult.
Her first reaction had essentially meant, Didn't you study even more back in your school days, Brother? She had heard the old days were harsher—so why was a graduate from those days reacting like this?
But I did not know those days. I had never even enrolled in the Academy, let alone graduated. Fortunately Luise had caught herself before I had to say anything out loud, so we at least avoided the most excruciating moment.
Luise turned her eyes back to her textbooks in embarrassment; her ears were a little red. She had nearly fired off a full Talulah-style academic reveal—of course she was rattled. Fair enough. I was a special case.
"Ah, right—Advisor never attended the Academy, did he?"
You wouldn't understand, you Talulah bastard.
Ryutis drove the remark straight into my solar plexus. My body locked for a second, and Luise carefully checked my expression. Even Erich, way off to the side, flinched and looked over.
"...Yeah. That's right."
"Man, I actually thought hard about whether to enroll myself. You don't strictly need a diploma, and if you can find work that suits you earlier than everyone else, how great is that?"
Shut your mouth.
If Division Two's chief had said that, I would already have hit him. What made it worse was that there was no malice or mockery in it—just pure admiration. How were you supposed to get angry at It's amazing you found your calling and started working earlier than everyone else!?
"Maybe you shouldn't have come to the Academy either. You could have found another path."
"Well, I met some good people after I came, didn't I? I would have regretted it if I hadn't."
Ryutis burst out laughing. I smiled for an entirely different reason. If he had never come, the total number of complete disasters around me would have dropped from five to four. That would have been nice.
"B-Brother? Even without graduating from the Academy, you're already an incredible person. I think that's even more impressive."
Luise, realizing Ryutis had meant it as innocent praise, threw me a lifeline—but unfortunately it was not much of a comfort. I was not bitter about never attending the Academy itself. What drove me insane was that the path I had chosen instead of the Academy was this path.
Of course, as Ryutis said, choosing this road had let me meet any number of people. But the fact that I had been sweet-talked by the family head into picking a road of hardship with my own two hands still sat in a corner of my mind, flaunting its presence at all times.
"Thanks."
After a stretch of silence, I finally managed to open my mouth and answer.