Entering the Academy - 3
Reuniting with the younger brother I had enrolled in the Academy so he could see a wider world turned out to be an absolute disaster. I had raised him with a fair amount of care at home, yet somehow he had fallen for a girl whose difficulty rating was pure hell.
Terrifying. A human capybara.
The shock hit even harder because he had never shown much interest in the opposite sex to begin with. If it had been the sort of guy who was always chasing girls, I could have shrugged it off. Instead, the one person I never saw coming had suddenly popped up out of nowhere. My reunion with my little brother was truly the worst...
"I'm glad you're staying healthy."
Wrestling with the complicated feelings in my chest, I settled on something noncommittal. Even if my brother had barged into a race whose finish line was already painfully clear, butting into a romance he had not even confessed yet and handing out free advice would have been pathetic.
I did not think things between Erich and me were bad, but we were not exactly close either. And even if we had been close, suddenly telling someone their love life was "completely screwed" would be grounds for immediate disownment.
Erich nodded with a dazed look as I patted his shoulder. Irina, who had been watching from a step back, finally spoke up.
"But Karl... Oppa, what brings you to the Academy?"
I could feel her wrestling with what to call me before she abruptly drifted into "Oppa." A small, quiet satisfaction bloomed in my chest as I answered. After endless days of hearing nothing but stiff titles like "Director," "this bastard," "you son of a bitch," and "crazy bastard," hearing that fresh little word "Oppa" felt surprisingly nice. I carefully ignored the fact that finding it nice was proof I was turning into an old man.
"Work. I'll probably be staying a while, so if we run into each other, at least say hello."
"Work? Are you a civil servant?"
Irina's eyes went round with surprise. Any bureaucrat who came to the Academy on official business had to be at least mid-level, yet Karl looked less like a mid-level official and more like a fresh recruit who had only just started drawing a salary.
"Yeah. Civil servant."
I almost added "You kids should never do this" and then shut my mouth. If any future civil-service candidates actually took that to heart and stayed away, I would be in trouble.
The more new slaves stacked up beneath me, the easier my life became. Someday the gears might keep turning just fine even without me... please.
"Wow! I heard becoming a civil servant is really hard these days!"
Capyba—no, Luise's eyes sparkled at the word "civil servant." Is becoming a public official hard these days? That cannot be right. Then the slave supply slows down.
"I became one four years ago, so I don't really know how it is now."
Luise looked ready to say something else, so I cut her off in a hurry. She was already this world's protagonist, and she had even swallowed up Erich. Keeping her close any longer felt like inviting disaster. Of course she had not done anything wrong... I just found her a little, just a little, unsettling.
Jealousy from a pitiful civil servant toward the world's beloved heroine? Hmm. Sounded plausible enough.
"Weren't you on your way to class? If you hang around any longer you might be late."
"It's still fine—"
"Ah, that's right. We should get going."
Irina cut Luise off just as the other girl looked ready to keep talking. She must have sensed I wanted to leave. Pretty sharp. Was sticking next to the protagonist also the result of pure instinctive social radar?
"See you again if we get the chance."
I offered the usual empty "let's grab a meal sometime" farewell and looked at Erich. He was still my little brother, so I owed him at least a word of encouragement.
"There's a lot you can do at the Academy. Work hard and improve yourself."
Of course I had no idea what "a lot you can do" even meant. You had to have attended an Academy to know that. Damn it.
With that, I turned toward the main building—only to spot a blond man walking in the distance with a trail of followers behind him. I immediately changed direction. Meeting the protagonist and surviving the worst possible reunion with my brother in the same morning was already enough to shred my nerves. Running into that guy on top of it would finish me off.
Watching Karl's receding back, Erich let out a long breath and wiped the sweat running down his jaw. He had never expected to run into his awkward older brother here at the Academy. And the man had even said he would be staying a long time. It was like a bolt of lightning out of a clear sky.
Luise, seeing the look on Erich's face, asked worriedly. His whole body had gone rigid, cold sweat was pouring down him, and his pupils were flickering wildly. Even a casual passerby could tell something big had just happened. Not asking if he was all right would have been rude.
"Erich, are you sick? Are you okay?"
"Ah—ah, um. I'm fine. Don't worry."
He managed an awkward smile, but inside he was anything but fine. From the moment Karl spotted him and started walking over, Erich had gotten a full demonstration of how a frog felt staring at a snake.
"Long time no see. Have you been well?"
When those pitch-black eyes—so unlike his own, so like their father's—looked down at him, when that deep voice settled quietly over him and coiled around him, all Erich could do was force himself not to look away and answer. Karl's mere existence pressed down on him like a crushing weight.
The harder I try to get used to it, the worse it gets.
Maybe as Erich's own skill rose, he was finally sensing a pressure he had never noticed before. A man who walked around casually radiating that kind of pressure—were they really brothers who had come from the same mother's womb?
It had not always been like this when Erich was little. Their relationship had never been especially close, but they had at least the ordinary level of brotherly affection you found in other families. They played together a reasonable amount, fought a reasonable amount, apologized a reasonable amount, and then played again. Just a normal brotherly relationship, and a quiet older brother—until Karl fell off a horse and blacked out around the age of sixteen.
Naturally the entire estate had been thrown into chaos. The heir of a count's house had lost consciousness; anyone even remotely responsible had been one step away from walking around with a poisoned water bottle hanging from their neck. Fortunately Karl woke up healthy soon enough, but from that day on he was different.
The rather introverted Karl became lively. It was a little strange, but nearly dying could change a person's personality, so everyone let it go. Yet no matter how generously you looked at it, after seventeen you could no longer find any trace of the old Karl.
The Karl who came home from work grew more and more tight-faced, and after a certain point he simply stopped coming home at all. It lasted far too long to be explained by mere busyness, and the last time Erich saw him he had looked utterly wasted.
Only two years after Karl became a civil servant—when Erich was about fifteen—did Karl finally return to the estate. The heir's homecoming set the whole house buzzing, and the scene from that day still refused to leave Erich's mind.
"Well done. You are the masterpiece of House Crassius."
Karl and Erich's father. Yet calling him "Father" always felt foreign—the head of House Crassius. He was an excellent loyal subject, an outstanding noble, and a decent lord, but he was not a good father.
He saw his two sons only as objects that would carry on the Crassius name, pieces to be raised and then used for the Emperor and the Empire. He treated them well enough so they would be useful, but he never gave them affection or attention. That was simply the kind of man the family head was.
Yet when he welcomed the long-absent Karl, the family head smiled so broadly and laughed so loudly the entire estate could hear. Even the steward and head butler who had served him for years looked stunned; they had never seen him like that. Only Karl calmly bowed his head and answered the praise as if nothing were unusual.
"I merely did what had to be done."
The reply pleased the family head even more.
Only after the family head finally left, still laughing in satisfaction, could Erich approach Karl. No matter how little warmth there usually was between them, welcoming an older brother you had not seen in ages was only natural. But when Erich stepped closer, the look in Karl's eyes made his skin crawl.
It was the same look Karl gave the family head. Not the gaze of one person looking at another person, but the calculating stare that measured how much someone had grown. Karl patted the frozen Erich's shoulder a few times and then walked away, leaving Erich standing alone in the same spot for a long time.
And now, two more years later, the look in Karl's eyes today was exactly the same.
The kid's still growing up well, at least.
Only after I took a wide detour around the blond man I had spotted in the distance and headed for the main building did the complicated feelings finally settle enough for me to picture how much Erich had grown. Barely ten days after the entrance ceremony and he already looked like he had been completely swallowed by the protagonist—pathetic and pitiable—but he was still healthy and growing strong.
I carried a lot of guilt toward Erich. A family head who was nothing like a father. A mother who either refused to object to the family head's methods or simply could not. And me, the stranger who had taken over the original owner's body. Caught in that fantastic triangle, little Erich had essentially been forced to raise himself.
When I first took this body, Erich was twelve. From that moment on he had been thrown into complete self-reliance. For the first year we at least lived in the same estate, so I could greet him in passing and look after him a little. Once I started civil-service life, even that became impossible.
When I finally finished the northern business and returned to the estate, seeing how tall and sturdy he had become made my chest ache. Feeling proud, I patted his shoulder a few times and quickly turned away. The kid had looked a little stiff—probably awkward seeing his older brother after so long.
Today, too, I had been so moved by how much he had grown in the time I had not seen him that I put a hand on his shoulder... and he froze again. Families really do need to live under the same roof and see each other often. The kid finds his own brother strange.
I should use this chance to meet Erich more often.
If Erich ever learned of that idea, he would probably have a heart attack and seriously debate whether to drop out of the Academy or keep living his school life with Luise.
Conversely, if Karl ever learned that Erich saw the look in his eyes as the same calculating stare the family head used when sizing up chess pieces, he would have had a heart attack of his own.
The two brothers each carried a weapon that could deal the other a devastating psychological blow—just for completely different reasons...