A Sense of Direction
The thing an adult misses, when they so readily take a child to task in a tone swollen with self-satisfaction—the world is no fairy tale, and other such barbs—is that children, contrary to expectation, already know perfectly well that the world is no fairy tale.
Just as an adult who has gone out into society absorbs that truth as a matter of course, a child comes to know it just as naturally.
A child sees. At home, at school, on the street—parents, teachers, people passing by. They see that one does not succeed merely for being good; that however hard one strives, going unrewarded is all too common; that there are those who fall to ruin through nothing but bad luck. They see it with those bright, wide eyes.
The precocious child, of course—but even children who grow up guarding their innocence—tend, by the time they leave school, to realize it on their own. That the world is woven of all manner of ties.
And if I had to guess, the chestnut-haired girl before me seemed the greatest victim of that paltry piece of advice. From the very first day of term she had been hemmed in by four or five students wearing awkward expressions, which rather gave it away.
"……."
Our eyes met. Recognizing her was not difficult. She was someone I had seen for the first time only that morning, and she was distinctive enough—not for the stock reasons, hair rippling like a brook, or a beauty that would turn nine heads out of ten. A chair on wheels. A wheelchair. The moment I saw it, the thought came of its own accord.
She looked at me and smiled, soft and bright. Strange. Youth still clung plainly to her features, and yet the nameless girl's smile was full of a bewitching charm. That smile alone must have melted no small number of hearts.
And yet I frowned before I could help it. I had already been through this once in the morning, so I was in no danger of being taken in. That was no smile. It was better understood as a meticulously calculated play of the facial muscles—something mechanical.
Then I caught myself and smoothed my expression. Reflex or not, I had answered a smiling face with a scowl.
Sure enough, the smile vanished from the girl's face.
"……."
"……."
For the briefest instant a chill passed between us, one only the two of us could have known. Immediately afterward, an intruder stepping into the lecture hall broke that fleeting silence.
"Oh dear…… I'm a little late, aren't I? Come now. Let's get the lecture started."
It was the professor.
It did not take long to grasp the true nature of this lecture.
Had someone said it would comfort students crushed beneath the difficulty of magical study? They were right. It was a lecture with no substance whatsoever.
From the title alone I had expected a celebrated course, one that would range freely across poetry, fiction, and drama and offer lucid insight.
"Now then…… where had I got to?"
The balding old professor's memory was none too good, and his skill as a lecturer was equally hard to praise. I remembered Benjamin once telling me that a professor's real work was not lecturing. At last I understood what he had meant.
Thirty minutes after the lecture began, he had asked where he had left off twice and wandered down side paths three times, and the students' concentration had struck absolute bottom. Then it was the students, not the lecturer, who quietly parted their lips.
The most delightful of delightful chatter. Surely more entertaining than picking apart the form of some unbearably fusty ancient poem.
Students who looked to have come from the same schools began murmuring among themselves. From my seat near the very back of the hall, I could see it plainly, and I quietly set myself to eavesdropping. What else was I to do? My only friend had declared that, it being the first day, skipping a dull literature lecture was perfectly acceptable, and by now he was no doubt sprawled on the lawn soaking up the sun. If I meant to ease the boredom, overhearing other people's talk would have to serve.
"I'm sleepy."
"Achievement unlocked: third 'where had I got to?'"
"Where was the dining hall again?"
Half the chatter was miscellaneous in the literal sense. The other half was not. As students so often will, they were talking about a fellow student. The minor twist, if there was one, was that I was not the one on their tongues.
"Who is that girl, anyway?"
"A professor's daughter."
"Aha…… so that's why they're all stuck to her."
"Something wrong with her? What's she doing in a wheelchair?"
Perhaps because the room held someone far more conspicuous than I, the topic turned to her of its own accord. I understood. A beautiful girl in a wheelchair made a far livelier subject than a gray-haired top student.
With nothing better to do, I kept my ears open.
The chestnut-haired girl's name was Julia Müller. There were various other particulars as well. Daughter of a professor at the Federal Magic University. Upper ranks on the entrance examination. Admitted a year early. Sickly. Absurdly pretty. And so on. Let me state for the record that the last of these included other people's private opinions.
At any rate, by the time the name of the girl in the wheelchair—Julia—had spread through the hall, the lecture was over. As if to make a mockery of the straight face she had shown me, Julia's smile never once came undone, not to the very end.
"Whoa……."
"Let's sit over there."
I could not hold back my admiration. What drew a deeper gasp from me than sitting through a lecture on Type 2 Magic was none other than the student dining hall of the Federal Magic University.
Vast. Pleasant. And full of people.
I had hauled Werner along—he had been dead asleep on the lawn—and the dining hall welcomed me with a splendor like paradise itself. We each took up a tray of food and settled into empty seats. The moment Werner sat down, he yawned so wide his jaw cracked.
"Haaahm…… Waiting nearly did me in."
"You could have just come to the lecture."
"I don't mind a hard lecture. Boring is the problem. Better not to go at all."
"Hah."
I let out a dry laugh and twirled the pasta on my plate around my fork. It was tomato spaghetti, striking for the cheese scattered over it like snowflakes. The moment the twirled noodles met my tongue, a savor burst forth that made the price of fifteen shillings feel entirely worthwhile. At least mealtimes were not going to be boring.
Meanwhile, a fair number of students around us were looking this way. Those who looked like freshmen especially so, and the reason was obvious. The two who had tied for first were eating together. I was beginning, little by little, to see how I would be treated at the Federal Magic University.
Roughly three sorts. The first were the model students who simply treated me as the top scorer on the entrance examination. The second were those who, like most people of the Federation, kept a step's distance and only cast glances my way. What was mildly encouraging was that no one in either group had picked a fight over gray hair. I felt anew the weight of being a student of the magic university. At least inside the school, I could probably worry less about my origins being called into question.
The problem was the third sort. Even now, mid-meal, their sharp looks were on me. Students of this kind were not direct, yet they shut me out rather blatantly—and I was not even their only target. I put a question to the other object of their exclusion.
"Werner."
"Hm?"
"You see those guys over there? I can't figure out what makes them tick."
"Let's see…… aha."
Werner explained, in a thoroughly fed-up tone.
"They're the ones who made it all the way to university and still swell with pride over which school they came from. They've got ties to the upperclassmen, too, so they're especially full of themselves."
"Oh ho."
"Mostly graduates of the prestigious First School and the Third. So it may stick in their throats that I, from the Fourth, and you—who never even went to school in Fraussen—took the top places."
Astonishing. Word that I was not a product of a Fraussen school seemed already to be circulating among them.
"Are there many of that sort?"
"A minority. Ignoring them is the best policy."
"True enough."
I was long since calloused to ignoring stares. Having brushed theirs aside with ease, I cast about for another subject. Ah. Come to think of it, there was something I wanted to ask Werner, who knew the professors well.
"Werner. Do you happen to know who Professor Luise Ehrlich is?"
"She's famous."
The answer came at once. Werner set down his fork.
"The youngest professor in the history of the Federal Magic University. An up-and-coming scholar of theoretical magic, with more than four papers already published as first author. Taking her class, are you?"
"Yeah. Type 2 Magic Practicum."
"Now I'm jealous. I wanted to take it myself."
"Why didn't you?"
"I didn't feel like sitting through a lecture first thing in the morning."
"……."
Whatever had become of Werner's disastrous approach to his studies, Luise Ehrlich was, as I had expected, a highly promising professor and researcher. The reason for my curiosity was simple.
The eldest daughter, Luise, has been boarding at the university because of her professorship.
Luise. Because that name was familiar.
There was, however, one strange point. The eldest daughter of the Oslo family, who was said to hold a professorship. If there was a Luise at the Federal Magic University, it could only be her. So why Luise Ehrlich, and not Luise Oslo?
"Hmm……."
A namesake? Then again, the odds of two renowned magical scholars and professors emerging from a single household were low—far too low. Resolving that I would sit in on a lecture of Professor Luise Oslo's someday, I brought my first day at the magic university to a close.
Slightly cloudy.
It was a terrible misjudgment.
The evening of the day three days after the entrance ceremony.
"Oh."
Far too suddenly, when I returned to the Oslo household after class that day, I found myself faced with a red-haired woman, half undressed.