Fine, Let's Get Divorced

A sheaf of papers slid across the marble table. The imperial court seal stamped on the cover, and the black lettering beneath it, were neat and unambiguous.

Vice-Dean of the Swordsmanship Faculty at Valerion Imperial Academy — the woman known throughout the empire's salons and among its warriors as the Sword Saint.

Afternoon sunlight cut through the silk curtains of the luxurious reception room and fell aslant ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠across her silver hair. An impeccably tailored navy-blue uniform. A collar without a speck of dust. And beneath that spare, disciplined frame, the ordered current of her aura.

Fourteen years ago she had been an eighteen-year-old girl standing in the rain and mud of the north, a dismissal notice from her knight order still in her hands and tears in her eyes. Not a trace of that girl remained anywhere on her now.

"There's nothing left you can do for me."

Leysia's voice was calm. No hesitation, no tremor — not even a shred of apology for the years they had shared. Just a dry, even tone.

"I'm strong enough now without you."

She was looking straight at me across the table. In those hard eyes sat the full weight of six years of praise the social world and the imperial nobility had poured on her, and the contempt they had hurled at me.

The acclaim that the true hero of the Demon King War had been the Sword Saint Leysia. The aristocratic murmuring that the washed-up Hero had been nothing more than a ceremonial banner. The naked mockery that a husband whose official imperial mana measurement registered no higher than a Rank 4 knight was dragging down the empire's pride, the Sword Saint.

And yet, in all that talk, the only things that ever circulated were the name Hagen and the fact of his being the Sword Saint's husband. His face on the battlefield, his actual war record — the military had classified the whole of it the moment the war ended. In the files of some frontier government office, all that remained was a mercenary registration.

I looked at her across the table.

Honestly, it wasn't that I failed to understand the root of her resentment.

For fourteen years, I had never once treated her as an equal — as a man and a woman standing on the same ground. Even after she became the Sword Saint, nothing in my manner changed. I was always correcting her sword forms, pointing out the slightest waste in her aura, and burying myself in the next stage of her training schedule. I believed that surviving a battlefield and cutting down a Demon King required nothing but precise design: the closing of every gap.

I never did manage to read what fear she held in her grip on the sword, or what she wanted proven behind the laughter of high society. My way of loving her, of looking after her, had always taken the shape of correction and training. Beside a man blind to feeling, she must have felt not a husband but the shadow of a teacher she could never escape.

But the fact that the cause of her discontent lay with me did not make the distortion and the deceit she had committed any more justified.

To justify her own frustration and dissatisfaction, Leysia had chosen to believe that every achievement she had built was owed to her genius alone. When I offered no explanation against the noise of high society, she went along in silence with the rumors that diminished the Hero's accomplishments. At times she even sat in the same room and helped that false silence along.

"I've attached a property division list as well. The mansion, the estate, and the imperial pension rights will remain under the family name. In exchange, I can transfer a small villa on the outskirts of the capital and a modest sum of cash into your name."

She indicated the second page of the documents with a tilt of her chin, as if she were granting some great kindness.

I took the quill she held out. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠There was nothing to think about.

I had no intention of laying the truth of that day in front of her face now — the day I burned most of my Holy Core in the final battle against the Demon King to push every party member's output to its absolute limit.

The moment that fact came to light, two tragedies would follow. First, the qualifications and the grounds of appointment of my former comrades from the Hero's party, who had taken up key military command posts immediately after the war, would be shaken to their foundations. That would be an act of collapsing the Allied Human Forces' stable postwar order.

Second, if it became known that burning one person's Holy Core could trigger the awakening of six others, the empire's and the Magic Tower's power brokers would inevitably try to reproduce that amplification formula. Cruel experiments — artificially burning someone's Holy Core to manufacture living weapons — would take root across the continent.

There was a separate reason I hadn't even hinted it to her alone. She was the Imperial Swordsmanship Advisor, a woman who lived with principle carved into her bones. What had happened to me in the final battle was, by its very outcome, a military secret, and the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠moment she caught even a whiff of it she would have been obligated to report it to the imperial court. Asking her to know a truth of that weight and bury it in her chest for the rest of her life would have been just another way of binding her.

I had kept my mouth shut not because I was too powerless to fight back. It had been a commander's judgment. If the bill for that judgment had arrived in the form of a divorce, there was no reason to cling to her pathetically.

"I don't need the villa. I'll take the clothes I left at the mansion and the old bag, and I'll go."

The ink-laden nib drew my name at the bottom of the document.

Hagen Kern.

A rustic name, written without a family name — just the origin-place tacked on, the way it had been entered in the frontier mercenary registry.

The moment I set the pen down, Leysia's fine brows twitched, just slightly.

She had apparently expected a protest of injustice from my lips, or some attempt to hold on by invoking fourteen years of affection. But when not even a ripple of emotion crossed my face, a cold displeasure flickered through the corner of her eyes.

"...Is that really all? You don't intend to say anything?"

"Yeah."

I answered shortly and stood. I shrugged on the coat whose cuffs had worn white from long use, and slung a single old leather bag over my shoulder.

I opened the heavy door of the reception room without looking back. I could feel Leysia's cold gaze fixed on my back until the door closed, but I did not stop walking. There was no lingering attachment left to leave behind in a relationship that was already over.

Three months passed after that.

The place I reached after four days of rattling northwest by carriage from the capital was Arcadia High Academy, sitting by a mist-heavy lake on the outskirts of the Arteria Empire.

Three hundred years ago it had been called the finest institution for gifted students on the continent, but after countless faculty and promising graduates were slaughtered on the northern front during the Demon King War, it had fallen into rapid decline. Now, overshadowed by Valerion Imperial Academy in the capital, its ranking had slipped over several years until it sat dead last — fourth place — among the few academies the empire formally accredited.

The main building of red brick had not withstood the weight of years; cracks ran through it here and there, and in the fountain at the center of the courtyard, dry fallen leaves rustled and tumbled in the wind in place of water.

"Well, you look better than I expected. I'd been a bit worried, hearing the rumors you'd been divorced and thrown out on the street."

Beyond the heavy oak desk of the headmaster's office, an elderly man with a full head of white hair set down his teacup and chuckled.

Roderick Arcadia. The man who had served as a corps commander of the Allied Human Forces during the Demon King War, and one of only two people on the continent who knew what I had burned and offered up in the final battle.

"Just pay me on time, Headmaster."

I sank deep into the creaking leather sofa and answered dryly.

"The monthly stipend is twelve gold coins, as we agreed. Pitifully little compared to the first-rate professors in the capital, but even this was scraped together by cutting our academy's finances to the bone. And your officially registered rank ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠is 4 — D-grade, isn't it? I nearly broke my back trying to talk those old men on the board into it."

Roderick let out a deliberately exaggerated sigh and slid a sheet of paper toward me.

"The class you'll be in charge of is Special Remedial Course Class 7. The folks around campus all call it the Trash Class, I'm afraid."

"How many students are there?"

"Six seats on the roster, five currently enrolled. Every one of them failed out of another faculty and got pushed to the brink of expulsion. If they don't produce noteworthy results this semester, the class will be officially dissolved and every student will be expelled."

"And the criteria for those results?"

"Certified records from the midterm evaluation and the regular inter-academy exchange matches. And the pass rate on the comprehensive practical test at the end of the term. I'll add this as well — Class 7's operating budget for this semester is nominally set at forty gold coins, but the administration has frozen the actual disbursement until the class's continued existence is decided."

"Forty gold coins?"

A hollow laugh slipped out of me before I could stop it.

Considering that the annual budget of Valerion Imperial Academy's Special Swordsmanship Class was at least 1,200 gold coins, this was, in raw numbers, a pittance — a thirtieth of that yearly total. Barely enough to furnish proper wooden training swords and mana recovery potions, let alone any real magic tools.

Roderick stripped the playfulness from his voice and spoke in a low, settled tone.

A deep weariness seeped through the heavily lined corners of his eyes.