Bringing Down a Professor (1)
Ellie had never hidden the fact that she was an orphan, so not only her friends and the first-years, but quite a few upperclassmen knew it too.
Still, there was a vast gulf between stating a fact and hurling an insult like orphan girl.
It was only natural that Ellie’s four friends had gone rigid.
As for Ellie herself, she remained perfectly calm.
The faint rustle of her fingers turning a page in her textbook was the only sound she made.
“Don’t mind it.”
Rather than the one who had been insulted, Ellie was the one comforting her friends.
“If you react to every little thing like that, you’ll never get anywhere. It’s not like you can wipe all of them out, either.”
It was impossible to be loved by everyone.
If you were outstanding, people resented you for that; if you were lacking, they looked down on you for that; if you were ordinary, they dismissed you for being ordinary. In the end, if someone wanted to pick a fight, there was no such thing as a person in this world without fault.
If someone came up to you and spat abuse in your face, of course you should knock them flat. But if you went flying at every bit of gossip exchanged behind your back, you’d never see the end of it. And it wouldn’t root the problem out, either.
“But….”
Isabel, who was among the most sensitive of the five, hesitated awkwardly. Ellie snorted and reached out to pat the head of the friend lying beside her.
Or maybe she had scratched it, or maybe she had just mussed up her hair; even Ellie herself wasn’t quite sure which.
“Relax. I saw who it was.”
They were all noble kids, with bright hair colors and bright eyes. If you just memorized a glance at someone’s hair color and gender, you’d rarely get it wrong.
In fact, the upperclassman who had called Ellie an orphan boy had already been firmly stored in Ellie’s mind.
That was unfortunate for him.
Then, as Ellie was about to return to her textbook and the others to what they had been doing, the boys’ conversation veered in a direction Ellie had never expected.
“Watch your mouth.”
Another upperclassman boy had said it to the student who had insulted Ellie.
“My grandfather said so. He said that girl would become a figure to shake the world.”
Huh.
Ellie blinked.
She recognized the color of the boy immediately and realized he was the grandson who, just yesterday in the capital, had brought the legendary wand artisan Classman over to greet her. His name was Garzan, wasn’t it?
The boy who had insulted Ellie seemed to bristle at Garzan’s words and shot back, “What are you talking about? How would your grandfather even know that orphan?”
“He came yesterday to have a wand fitted.”
At that, another boy who had been rolling about in the grass jumped to his feet.
“What? He went to Classman Workshop to have a wand fitted?”
Apparently, the fact that his grandfather was an extraordinary artisan was fairly common knowledge.
The boy who had first called Ellie an orphan snorted.
“As if that even makes sense. I heard how much they charged when our highness had his own grandson’s wand commissioned there, and it was ridiculous.”
“I don’t know about that, but he came, and not only that….”
Garzan scratched at his pink hair hard enough to look painful.
“I don’t know. That girl really does feel different. He suddenly called me downstairs, and I thought something had happened, but all he did was make me greet her and told me to go back upstairs.”
“…Didn’t he have you greet the girl?”
“No. It was the first time Grandfather ever showed me to a customer.”
The boy who had insulted Ellie sneered.
“From that artisan’s point of view, you’re probably just vermin.”
“….”
“Hey, shithead, you’re crossing the line. Apologize if you really don’t want to end things with Garzan, idiot.”
“Forget it. It’s not like this bastard running his mouth is anything new. He’ll pay for it himself sooner or later.”
Ellie, who had still been half-listening to the boys, gave a quiet laugh at Garzan’s last remark.
Quite right.
People should be careful with their words. Unless they wanted to discover, one night, that the person they’d been badmouthing was waiting for them.
There didn’t seem to be anything more worth listening to, so Ellie turned back to her textbook.
“…What’s wrong?”
Not until she found her three friends staring at her with wildly questioning eyes.
“W-what was that just now?”
“Classman Workshop? A wand? Is that real?”
“You went to the capital yesterday because of that?”
Stella asked urgently, Isabel blurted out in a fluster, and Philia fixed Ellie with a sharp look.
Of course, Clea, who already knew the whole story, was silently absorbed in her knitting. She wasn’t exactly eager for the others to shift their attention onto her, either.
“Ah….”
Ellie trailed off.
There was nothing she couldn’t explain, but to do that, she’d have to start with how she’d run into the Emperor.
That, too, was something she could explain. But….
She didn’t want to say it out loud herself, especially not when it came to the Emperor.
After all, the man who had abandoned her was not exactly someone she cared to speak about. And she had to keep that fact hidden, too.
“Ask Clea.”
“!?”
Clack went the knitting needles as they struck together. Orange, purple, and red eyes all turned toward Clea.
“Sigh….”
It wasn’t exactly an easy subject for Clea, either, but now that it had come to this, there was no helping it.
“Well, here’s what happened.”
Once she explained everything from accidentally crossing paths with the Emperor’s carriage in the capital to parting ways with the artisan, the three who hadn’t been with them yesterday stared at Ellie with wide eyes.
“…”
“…”
“…”
No, they glared at her. Which, in fairness, was allowed, since they were friends.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You ask us that?”
“Just what kind of wiring does Ellie have in that head of yours…? If I’d even met His Majesty, I think I would’ve been so scared I’d have fainted….”
“...I think the most ridiculous part is that I can actually imagine Ellie doing that.”
After their three very different reactions, Isabel spoke up.
“But why didn’t you tell us before we asked? That something like that happened.”
Ellie scratched her cheek for a moment.
“I just… didn’t really want to talk about it.”
“If that’s all it is, then it’s fine. I thought maybe you were giving only Clea special treatment or something.”
Ellie smiled a little.
“What are you talking about? I asked everyone in the first place whether they wanted to come to the capital with me.”
“I guess that’s true…? Anyway, if it’s nothing like that, then it’s fine.”
Ellie thought that maybe she had become too much of the center of gravity herself, more than she’d expected.
Well, what can you do?
A friend group always needed a central point at the beginning. It took time for the relationships between each member to grow and become truly close.
“Give me some snacks too.”
As Ellie closed her book and said that, Stella handed her a cookie.
“Are you finished studying?”
“Yep. I’ve memorized it all for now.”
“…Hmm?”
Memorized it all for now?
Stella checked the book Ellie had been reading again. Basic Common Magical Language.
At the Academy, students moved on to the intermediate text from the first semester of their first year. Even then, many of the students had already learned the material at home, so they were already discussing whether to split classes by level.
But Ellie had never learned Common Magical Language at all, so she had been given the basic text and was teaching herself from it.
“Th-that’s a lot of vocabulary and grammar, though, isn’t it?”
In the beginner text, they learned 570 words, basic word order, the present tense, imperative forms, double-object constructions, and the past tense.
It was basic, yes, and not even a huge amount of material, but was this really something you could memorize after only skimming the book for a few days?
Yet Ellie just yawned.
“This much is easy.”
“Can I test you?”
Isabel’s eyes sparkled as she picked up the book. It wasn’t that she didn’t think Ellie was amazing, but wasn’t it the friend’s role to draw out a little of that person’s humanity now and then?
“Boart?”
“Cart.”
The answer came instantly, and Isabel was the one who looked flustered this time.
“Uh… earth?”
“Ter.”
“Pants.”
“Pantaran.”
“Then the reverse—what’s ille?”
“Island.”
“Huh? Wait, you really memorized all of it?”
“I told you I did.”
Clea jumped in.
“You haven’t officially registered for Common Magical Language yet, have you?”
“Yeah. Except for a word or two.”
“Then translate this sentence. ‘I threw the chair.’”
“Ma ranseosi ro ses.”
“Then how about, ‘I ate eight loaves of bread’?”
“Why are the example sentences like that from the start? Ma mahjaeji hwi pan.”
“…You really do know it all, don’t you?”
“I told you, I memorized it. I’ve been making time to study.”
Stella, who shared the room with her, added her own confirmation.
“I can testify that she’s been looking at it constantly. So that’s why she kept the light on right up until just before bed.”
Philia frowned.
“How did you keep the light on? After lights-out, the lamps are… ah.”
Philia’s cheeks reddened. What a stupid question. Of course she’d used magic. It was Ellie, after all.
Stella said, “Perhaps it’s just my imagination, but it feels like you’ve been studying more diligently since the semester started. Is there some reason for that?”
“More specifically, after the timetable came out.”
“What does the timetable have to do with it?”
“Well… our Common Magical Language professor, you see, is someone I have a bad history with. So I figured that just in case, I should raise my skill level enough to keep up with the others as quickly as possible.”
“You have bad history with him? You and Ellie?”
Stella had also heard enough to know that Ellie was an orphan, and that her magical talent had only begun to show very recently.
Ellie smiled.
“That man’s master got himself thrown out of the Academy because of me, more or less.”
The teacher in question was called Lessanti.
Come to think of it, aside from Clea, none of them had actually seen what happened back then, had they?
Philia had been at the Academy, but she hadn’t come to watch. Stella and Isabel hadn’t even arrived yet.
So Ellie decided to explain.
“You remember that boy named Dane Edwick, right?”
“The one who gets especially cowed in front of Ellie?”
“The young master whose eyes always drop to the floor whenever he sees Ellie, you mean?”
“Yep, yep. Before you and Stella got here, what happened was basically this: Dane started by picking a fight with me.”
A crisp autumn breeze wrapped itself around the girls.