The Tail End of Spring
Dignity and refinement were notions so distant from my life they might as well have belonged to someone else entirely.
I had been alone from the day I was born. I learned how to beg long before I ever learned how to offer a polite greeting.
The Oslo family had since taught me the ordinary courtesies and made something like a proper person of me, and even so, that underlying truth had not changed very much.
The only social gathering where I ever showed my face was the Nocturne Club, a place that had tossed refinement out the window altogether. I had never once had the chance to see how distinguished houses kept company with one another, or to witness the empty ceremony of the highborn.
Whatever I thought I knew of upper-class dignity, then, rested entirely on scenes I had observed at the magic university.
And by my limited observation, the sons of the highborn were—
How to put it. Petty. Small-minded little creatures.
"Now then. The last work we'll examine before the midterm. If we turn to the sixteenth-century play The Young Coachman—"
Once again, the dreary lecture in Understanding Literary Genres coughed itself to life.
On an ordinary day this would have been about the hour they started murmuring among themselves.
Not today.
I feigned attentive listening and took the temperature of the room.
Eyes.
Gazes that had died down for a while were brushing against me again, sidelong and furtive.
I could think of only one reason.
"Oh my. You're a little late."
"...Hm?"
"Good morning, Eugene."
That brief exchange had been the spark, and it had thrown the lecture hall into a tremendous upheaval.
The conversation itself was nothing special. If one assumed they were friends, it was almost stiff.
The problem was the simple fact that Julia Müller had spoken to someone.
Since the day of enrollment, the times Julia had addressed another person could not have numbered ten. She did not approach other students first. They would come to her regardless.
And that same Julia had, for the first time, offered someone a warm good morning.
To me, of all people.
"..."
This was awkward.
The looks the male students were turning on me were anything but ordinary.
Memories of the first day of term came back, sharp and fresh. Back then, most of them had found gray hair distinctly unwelcome.
But I had lived like a man possessed, cycling without end between home, school, library, and home again, and little by little they had stopped paying me any mind. For me, that had been a blessing beyond price.
I had been living in perfect comfort because of it.
And now this felt like the first day of school, risen from the dead.
It was absurd that a single greeting should draw such open hostility. And yet, when I considered the way Julia had carried herself until now, I could also see why it might.
I closed my eyes and called up Julia Müller's smiling face.
No matter how many times I turned it over, I was certain. It was an expression I had never once seen on her.
Was yesterday the cause?
"Hm."
Reading a room was not my field.
What on earth was she after? I reached no conclusion at all, but in a single breath I set my mind firm.
Let it go.
I lifted my head and fixed my attention on the board.
As it happened, the lecture was on drama. My favorite of the literary genres.
Deeeng—
The bell rang.
"Ah, next week is already the start of midterms. I hope every one of you does your best."
With that kindly benediction, the professor left the hall. The warm word of encouragement, unfortunately, did not seem to reach the students.
Six or seven young men shot up from their seats at once and came swarming toward Julia.
The cream of the upper-class heirs ringed her wheelchair and snapped to a stiff, formal attention.
What manner of farce was this?
I had just propped my chin on my hand to watch when the most ceremonious-looking of them, a blond young man, opened his mouth.
"Lady Julia. Have you decided which of us will attend to your wheelchair?"
"Oh my. I was planning to send for my butler before long."
"More than half the grounds are open only to students and faculty, are they not?"
"Mm... I wouldn't want to burden any of you with something difficult. I may not look it, but I manage a wheelchair rather well on my own."
"Enough of that. Never withhold aid from one who needs it. That is the motto of our house."
"...And so?"
He had not expected so flat a reply. A flicker of fluster crossed the young man's face.
He recovered at once, and answered with a confident look.
"At first we meant to settle the wheelchair duty among ourselves, but it proved a question on which we simply could not reach an answer. So I must ask that you, Lady Julia, choose one of us."
He brought the speech to an elegant close.
I forgot even to leave the lecture hall, watching the scene with keen interest.
It was quite an entertaining farce—not least because Julia had never once said she would entrust her wheelchair to any of them.
I tried to guess the next scene.
She'll refuse.
What mattered was the manner of the refusal. By my limited observation, a blunt no in society was not much different from an insult to one's character.
Well then. How would Julia answer?
The thought had barely formed when her lips parted.
"I find I prefer spending my time with someone of cultivation."
Hm?
"So let us settle it this way."
She was not refusing.
With that, she let her gaze travel once around the room.
She turned the wheelchair's wheels in opposite directions, and the chair began a slow rotation. Julia skimmed the young men hemming her in, and at the last, through a gap in their ranks, she looked at me.
At the same moment, the hand that had been covering her mouth gathered itself again upon her knee.
Ah.
That smile again.
A sky packed solid with ink-black cloud announced that midterm examinations had begun at the Fraussen Federal Magic University.
The number of exams varied from student to student, but most sat about five. Among them, the true battlegrounds were Calculus I, required of every first-year, and—though not strictly required—Type 1 Magic Practicum and Type 2 Magic Practicum, which nearly everyone took.
That they were difficult went without saying.
They demanded understanding as well as memorization, so cramming the night before did nothing. The knowledge taught in those courses was also the foundation of higher magic, and so a great many first-years threw themselves into the midterms for Calculus I and the magic practicums with genuine fervor.
But there is an exception to every rule.
Gustav Mach, a young man of brilliant blond hair, had settled on a strategy that ran directly counter to everyone else's.
"All in on Understanding Literary Genres."
Gustav's entrance examination rank was 569th.
Plainly the lower tier.
But that was no problem for Gustav, because he had not the slightest intention of becoming a scholar of magic.
Such was the will of his father, a merchant of magic lamps.
He had taken up study for no reason but to receive the family business intact, and once he reached the university he let his studies go completely.
The only thing that interested him was connections.
To meet the sons and daughters of every sphere gathered at the Federal Magic University, to get on familiar terms, to cultivate acquaintance. That alone was Gustav's purpose.
And Julia Müller, the one he had marked, was without question the finest prey of all.
A daughter of the Müller house, among the three wealthiest families in Fraussen.
More than that, the daughter of Professor Müller, the greatest power at the magic university after the president himself.
"I can't possibly let her slip."
Securing her mattered far more than any grade.
Her face was pretty enough, too. Deepening the acquaintance along the way might not be so bad. For that, he could even play nursemaid.
The first day of exams.
Calculus I.
"Gyaaaaaa..."
"What is this? Some alien language?"
The students groaned.
What on earth was written there, to make them carry on like that? Gustav lifted one corner of his mouth and looked down at the paper.
"Perfect."
He gave up without a second thought.
A glance around showed every head clutched in despair but one. That one was the infamous delinquent of the Fourth School, which meant the difficulty of this exam was no laughing matter.
Which also meant that bombing it would not matter much.
The fourth day of exams.
Type 2 Magic Practicum.
"..."
"..."
Silence.
In a case like this, it was usually one of two things. Too easy, or too hard.
Gustav looked at the paper.
...The latter, it seemed.
All but one had set their pens down and sunk into agony. That one was the same ash-haired bastard, so this exam, too, could safely be half-ruined.
And at last came the day before the examination in Understanding Literary Genres.
For the first time in a long while he made for the library, and there he drew out a tissue-thin sheaf of paper.
None other than last summer semester's midterm for Understanding Literary Genres. A past paper.
What students called a genealogy.
"Heh... Not just anyone can get their hands on this. The world really does run on connections."
A smirk escaped him of its own accord.
With this in hand, the midterm score was as good as won.
Who, after all, would have listened carefully to that old professor's lectures?
Even if his rivals had studied in earnest, the result would not change.
The old professor's exams had a reputation for being so nitpicking and old-fashioned that word had it you could score well only by memorizing every work by heart. And for well over ten years, they said, he had served up the very same questions again and again.
There was no possibility of surpassing the score of a man who had the genealogy memorized cold.
It was not exactly fair play, but what could one do? That was the life they lived.
Certain of victory, Gustav began to commit the genealogy to memory.
"Mmm..."
It was only memorization, but months had passed since he last held a book, and the letters simply would not go in.
In the end it took him more than three hours just to get the thing into his head.
"Whew!"
He let out a light sigh and glanced around.
The exams were nearing their end. The library, which had been packed to the doors, was now nearly half empty.
It was then.
"Well, well."
Gustav spotted a familiar face.
Gray hair.
Eugene Oslo, sprawled face-down across a desk, dead asleep.
"He was the only one I was worried about... keh."
A thoroughbred is a thoroughbred even in decline. He had fretted that the top student's prowess might extend even to literature, but one look at that state and there was clearly no need to worry.
"Hahaha!"
Certain victory.
Gustav Mach left the library with a smile spread across his whole face.
At last, the hour of the examination in Understanding Literary Genres.
More than half the class dropped their heads the moment the exam began. In that slack air, only a handful of model students and the true rivals scribbled their answers in earnest.
"...Huh?"
Gustav Mach alone rubbed at his eyes, the mood around him gone grave.
It was different from the genealogy.