Bringing Down the Professors (3)
There was, from the very beginning, a vast difference between the professors of the Academy and the professors of a modern university.
The social prestige enjoyed by a university professor—especially a tenured one—and the privilege of being safe from dismissal unless he committed something truly outrageous rested on something more fundamental than the university itself.
It rested on society’s respect for scholarship itself.
But this world had no such respect. There were individuals who personally admired learning, certainly, but there was no social consensus behind it.
So what, exactly, protected the Academy’s professors?
For instance, if some person in power said, “Give my relative a professorship,” or “I don’t like that bastard, so get him out of my way and make him quit,” what could stop them?
The answer was Headmaster Scathach.
This was a world where the charisma of a powerful individual was itself strength, itself law.
The more Ellie learned about the Academy’s structure, the more she found herself thinking that Scathach hadn’t been clinging to the headmaster’s seat all these years for no reason.
Of course, Scathach wasn’t invincible.
Even if she would never bow to the turbulent winds of politics in the outside world, there were surely times when she had no choice but to bend a little.
There would be people she wanted to drive out, but also people she was obliged to appoint as professors.
Maybe Rachel had been exactly that kind of case. She’d probably belonged to the same faction as LeSanti.
To sort out her thoughts, Ellie wandered in circles around the administrative building, then suddenly looked up at the towerlike structure.
In a world without elevators, the best floor was the second floor.
And yet the headmaster’s office was on the first floor.
Scathach herself could perform tricks like teleportation, so she must have placed it there to make it as easy as possible for students to come find her.
Even when Ellie had seen her true form before, the thought had crossed her mind that perhaps Scathach was the truest educator of them all.
Since I’m thinking about it anyway, why not go see her?
If she wanted people to come comfortably, then Ellie might as well go comfortably.
When she opened the front door of the administrative building and stepped inside, she saw professors, assistants, and fourth-years on the verge of graduation chatting away—only to jolt in surprise at her sudden appearance. The black-haired first-year they had only heard rumors about had shown up out of nowhere.
Ellie noticed their reactions too, but right now she had something more important to do than make new acquaintances.
Melitt isn’t here?
Was she doing her job properly? Since she was here, Ellie ought to stop by and see Melitt too.
Ellie knocked on the headmaster’s office door, as naturally as if she were dropping in to see a friend.
“Come in.”
At the invitation, she immediately pushed the door open and went inside with a cheerful “Yup~.”
Scathach was seated at her desk, flipping through papers, when she looked up and, upon seeing Ellie, lifted her silver eyebrows.
“What brings you here?”
“Are you busy? If you are, I can come back later.”
“No, not at all. I merely wondered whether you’d come with a specific matter in mind.”
“That’s harsh. Can’t I just drop by to see the headmaster?”
Scathach gave a snort of laughter. She had been headmaster for more than thirty years, and yet no student had ever approached her with this much ease.
“No, you may. Come by anytime with your friends as well. Sit on the sofa; refreshments will be brought out.”
“So it was automatic?”
“Semi-automatic, let us say.”
As Ellie sat down, a tray with cake, cookies, and tea really did appear just as it had last time.
“Help yourself. I’ll just finish looking over this for a moment.”
“Then I’ll enjoy it gratefully!”
Watching Ellie happily open wide and take a big bite of cake, Scathach dropped her gaze back to the documents.
“Say, Headmaster, is this room soundproof?”
“…Let us say that no one is listening in on our conversation at present.”
“Hmm. Then, how would I go about getting rid of a professor quickly?”
“Cough!?”
Scathach’s little body jolted violently as she choked.
“Are you all right?”
“W-What, exactly, are you asking the headmaster…?”
“Huh? Then who am I supposed to ask? You’re basically the one keeping this place running.”
“…”
Scathach stared at Ellie, then sighed at the papers and rose to her feet.
“Is it Behrmi?”
“Yes. Rachel.”
“No matter what your relationship is, if she is a professor, then you should call her Professor Behrmi.”
“Okay, I’ll do that in front of you.”
“I would rather you do it even when I’m not present.”
“Ehehe.”
For one irrational instant, Scathach felt the urge not to sit opposite Ellie, but beside her, and give her a whack on the head. In a way, she was infuriating. Not really hateful—just irritating in the most maddening way.
“Ahem…”
Scathach picked up her tea as well and said, “Naturally, I can’t just expel Behrmi because you ask me to. The same would be true for any student, and for any professor, too.”
“That’s one thing I really respect about you.”
“…”
Truly, she was a girl with a talent for taking people’s feelings up and down in one breath.
What made it most vicious was that every word she said was sincere.
“To date, there have only been ten cases in the Academy in which a professor was either killed, or dismissed without having wished to retire or change professions.”
“Was the tenth one the former Professor LeSanti?”
“Indeed.”
Then she added, “And you needn’t address dismissed people as former professors. Otherwise, do so.”
“Yes, Headmaster.”
Ellie smiled sweetly, the picture of a model student. Since she was clearly joking rather than being insincere, Scathach shook her head and went on.
“And those ten dismissals were… let me see…”
Her golden eyes drifted into the past.
“In order: embezzlement, murder, cheating on evaluations, cheating on evaluations, murder…”
She counted each one off on her fingers.
“Cheating on evaluations, robbery, embezzlement, murder… and the last one was cheating on evaluations as well.”
“Ah. So you have to commit something at that level before you can be dismissed without any fallout.”
“…”
“Thanks. I’m not sure how useful it’ll be, but I’ll keep it in mind as I move forward.”
Scathach looked at Ellie again.
It still struck her as strange, the way this girl spoke.
Is she really only fifteen? Could she possibly be from the same era as I am—no, that can’t be—
“I really was born fifteen years ago in this world. You noticed I wasn’t lying, didn’t you?”
“…Hm.”
And yet that was precisely what didn’t sound like a fifteen-year-old.
With the exact same impression Melitt had once had, Scathach let out a small sigh, and Ellie smiled again.
“Anyway, that’s enough about whether we can drive a professor out. Want some cake too, Headmaster?”
“It is, in fact, mine.”
“Ahaha, let’s not fuss over such tiny details.”
Watching her, Scathach realized that when Ellie had first come to the headmaster’s office, she had been tense in her own way.
The petite headmaster glanced at the refreshments tray.
Strictly speaking, when it came to refreshments, she might have tea and perhaps the sweets, but usually not the “cake” part. If she ate something sweet in this body, it felt like her dignity as headmaster wouldn’t quite hold.
And yet—
“Haa…”
Suddenly it all felt absurdly laughable.
Scathach herself took a slice of cake and ate it with complete ease.
More to the point, she did it in a wildly unrefined way—grabbing it with her bare hand without caring whether cream smeared her fingers, then taking a big bite out of it.
With a body about the size of a ten-year-old, it looked adorable; in her true form, it would have looked less like eating cake and more like tearing into a slab of meat. Or maybe a giant slice of pizza.
“You do eat rather wildly.”
“Leave it be.”
With a light clench of her hand, Scathach made both the cream and the crumbs vanish at once. Magic, of course.
“By the way, you…”
Unable to endure the thought any longer, Scathach asked,
“Um…”
“Yes?”
“Do you not feel, ah… any sense of distance from me?”
Even Scathach herself wasn’t sure what she was trying to say.
Wasn’t the whole point of constantly adjusting her body that the children wouldn’t feel that distance or that authority? She’d gone to that trouble every single day for over thirty years.
And yet after more than thirty years as headmaster, she’d unconsciously developed a habit of carrying herself with authority. There really was truth in the saying that position made the person.
That contradiction, that imbalance she hadn’t even realized was there, Ellie had exposed simply by coming up to her with such utter ease.
Scathach had no idea what to do about it.
“Huh? But you look so cute. How could I possibly feel any distance?”
“……”
Scathach looked down at her own body.
She had lowered her age just enough so that even speaking too neatly wouldn’t look bizarre—just a ten-year-old girl.
This wasn’t some lump of clay she had molded at will; it was the actual body she had possessed when she was ten years old.
But back then, there had not been a single person beside her to tell her she looked cute.
So this was the first time she had ever heard such a thing.
That was why—
It was why the words that had slipped from the mouth of Headmaster Scathach Merlinia were words she absolutely should never have said.
“………h?”
“Pardon?”
She had heard what was said, but it had been smaller than a mosquito’s buzz, so Ellie couldn’t make it out.
So Scathach tried again, haltingly.
“C-cu… that is to say… cute, am I?”
She drew in a shaky breath and went on.
“…Really?”
Her face was hot. Hot like the time she’d had an enemy’s blood splashed across it in battle.