The Eye That Sees the Trash Class (1)

The dawn air seeping through the cracks in the window was still damp and cold. Arcadia's mornings settled far darker and lower than those of the capital. I had tossed and turned all night on that creaking cot, and my shoulders and the nape of my neck had locked up, heavy and stiff.

Ever since my Holy Core had been ruined, this dull ache found me every morning, clinging to my body like an old scar that would not let go.

I splashed my face with cold water and shrugged on the worn coat I had laid out the night before. The face in the mirror was hardly any different from the one that had first walked into a frontier mercenary company eighteen years ago. Strip away that respectable shell — husband to the Sword Saint, the vice-headmaster — and all that remained was a blunt-faced man of thirty-four with a few more wrinkles.

Leaving the faculty quarters, I headed toward the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠main building. Across the grounds, students in neatly pressed deep navy uniforms moved in clusters, the silver crests of the Central Faculty or the Knight Faculty stamped clearly on their collars. Their faces had not yet shed the last of their youth, but the arrogance and pride peculiar to cadets of a great academy already showed through.

I passed that glittering procession and made for the old annex behind the main building, a structure so dilapidated it looked ready to come down at a breath. Paint peeled from the corridor walls in ugly sheets, scored with graffiti of every kind, and the floorboards shrieked underfoot as if in pain.

"That's the Trash Class over there?"

A handful of Knight Faculty cadets leaning against the corner of the corridor glanced my way, clicking their tongues.

"It's really him. That's the Rank 4 professor who started yesterday — Hagen Kern, right? The one who just put his name on the Demon King War and hid behind Her Excellency the Sword Saint. They said he got divorced and dropped all the way to Rank 4. Guess it was true."

"Tsk tsk. Pitiful. And of all things, they stuck him with the Special Remedial Course. He and those Class 7 rejects make a perfect match."

They didn't even bother to hide it. The mockery and the clicking tongues rode the chill air straight to my ears.

It wasn't exactly a pleasant feeling. But I had had my fill of this kind of contempt and sniping in the six years since I had come back from killing the Demon King. In the Empire's eyes, a mana-capacity figure and a standardized control score were a person's character and their worth.

What kind of welcome a man officially measured at Rank 4 could expect did not take much thought. That number had become the finest possible proof of the rumor that had followed me for six years: a hero in name only.

I ignored the stares completely and stopped before the old wooden door at the end of the hall.

I stared for a moment at the brass nameplate, its paint scraped off as if by fingernails, then gripped the handle and shoved the door open. A sharp creak of friction, and a stale smell of dust washed over me.

The classroom was past quiet. It was hollow. The lecture hall was wide, its seats rising in tiers enough for several dozen, but that whole expanse held only three students.

The first thing that caught my eye was the kid slumped at the back by the window. A young man with shaggy brown hair and a massive build. His shoulders were broad enough that he looked like he could beat an orc to death with his bare hands, but he was curled in on himself, staring blankly at the empty air beyond the glass. Bram Neumann.

In the center of the classroom, a girl sat alone with a worn training sword across her knees, absently stroking the hilt. Erin Cardia. Her reddish-black hair was loosely tied back, and her eyes were full of deep exhaustion and self-reproach. The calluses packed hard into every knuckle made it clear she had been swinging that wooden blade all night. Nowhere in her posture was there a swordsman's confidence.

And last, the gaunt silver-haired young man sitting in the front row, right before the lectern. Lucien Bell. He was glaring at a basic magic textbook spread on his desk, gnawing at his nails without pause. Tiny bluish sparks of mana flickered at his fingertips and died, unstable, again and again.

Even after I had opened the door and walked in, not one of them lifted their head to look at me properly. Nothing but cynicism and indifference pressed down on the room — the sense that yet another pathetic professor had been parachuted in.

"Professor. You've arrived."

Assistant Mariel, standing beside the lectern with a folder of papers clutched to her chest, offered a proper greeting. Her clothes were as neat and unrumpled as yesterday, and the way she adjusted her silver-rimmed glasses was thoroughly composed. But the look she gave me was still thick with doubt.

"I was told the roster was six. I only see three."

I set my leather bag on the lectern as I asked. Mariel answered with a sigh mixed in.

"Student Seraphina Rose sent word she would be absent due to an interview with the Church. Student Rhine Erhardt is... chronically truant. And the remaining seat is still vacant."

"I see. Lucky we've even got three sitting here, then."

I planted my hands on the lectern and slowly looked over the three kids sitting there in a daze.

These were eyes that had spent eighteen years watching nothing but the reasons people lived and died on a battlefield. That was all they were. There was no sleight of hand here, no status window, no convenient numbers.

But to my eyes, the grain of the mana and aura flowing through these children's bodies showed as clearly as streams of water. Where the current had dammed and pooled, where it leaked away and wasted its strength, what they feared enough to draw their shoulders in — all of it lay open.

Lucien Bell. The mana flowing through him was not a narrow creek. It was a vast river. The problem was the channel that river ran through — his mana circuits — were far too simple and thick. The Empire's standard magic circles were an organic structure designed to split the water of a rivulet thin and use it that way. Trying to force a waterfall like that into a thin glass tube, of course the pipes burst.

Erin Cardia. Around her body, thin, keen threads of aura stretched out like nerve fibers. Too sensitive. From the moment I had set foot in the classroom, she had been reading my stride, my breathing, even the trajectory of my coat hem as it swayed, overloading her own brain. Before an opponent even drew a blade, she was mapping more than ten evasion trajectories in her head, and her body locked up on its own.

And Bram Neumann by the window. Unfitting as it was for that massive frame, his aura was clumped thickly only behind his own back. It wasn't that he feared what stood in front of him. The moment someone stood at his back, terror would seize him and he would throw down his shield. That was the flow.

"We'll skip the introductions. We've all seen each other's names on paper anyway."

At that dry voice, Lucien in the front row propped his chin on his hand and spoke, crooked.

"Professor, don't waste our time. Just take attendance and wrap it up. You already know we're all getting kicked out when this semester ends, don't you?"

His tone was thick with defeat and bristling with thorns. The resentment piled up from being driven out of his faculty after one explosion after another came through intact.

"Student Lucien! Is that how you speak to a professor?"

Mariel frowned and scolded him sharply, but Lucien only snorted.

"Did I say something wrong? You were a hero of the Demon King War, they say. But now you're Rank 4, and the only career papers you've got are a handful of mercenary guild certificates. How exactly are you planning to teach the defectives the Central Faculty clapped out the door?"

Mariel's face colored with embarrassment. She glanced at me, trying to salvage the situation somehow, but I just looked down at Lucien without a word.

"You don't need to know magic circles."

"What?"

"The reason you blow up isn't because you can't draw one."

Lucien's brow twitched. The lips that had been about to sneer went slightly stiff.

"...What kind of nonsense is that?"

"A channel bursts not because the water is dirty, but because the sluice is too narrow. You try to ram a thick log through a needle's eye and of course your hands burn. Your problem isn't that you can't control it. You keep twisting your circles into something complicated to match everyone else's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠standard, and that's why they blow."

Lucien's pupils wavered. He opened and closed his mouth, unable to say a word. No professor at the Central Faculty had ever said anything like that to him. They had only ever hounded him to split his mana finer, to steady his breathing, to carve the runes of his circles with more precision.

I turned my gaze to Erin, who still held the wooden sword. Her face was as blank as before, but her fingertips were trembling, faintly.

"You look at the sword too much."

"...Me?"

Erin asked back in a low, hoarse voice.

"Before the other person even takes the hilt, you imagine more than ten times where they'll cut. That's why you startle and fall over backwards the second they so much as twitch a shoulder. You're not slow. You read too fast, and you trip over yourself. Throw out those defensive sword forms. They're clothes that don't fit you."

The sound of Erin's breath catching rang small in the quiet classroom. Behind the self-reproach settled in her eyes, a shock she had no name for flickered past. Two sentences had cut clean into the chest of a girl who had been called trash for failing to complete the Cardia family's orthodox defensive sword forms.

Assistant Mariel was staring at me blankly, her mouth half open. The folder in her hands crumpled. The rough, outlandish diagnoses I had tossed off yesterday in the basement faculty office, looking at nothing but papers, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠were taking on a strange persuasiveness the moment she saw how the students actually reacted.

"Professor... ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that's..."

"Grab the papers, Assistant Mariel. We're going to the training grounds."

I left the lectern and walked toward the door.

"Sitting here tearing into each other's faces will only pull your expulsion dates closer. Let's go."