Midterms (1)
Arlo Classman, the craftsman who had made a deal to give Ellie a wand one year from now, first threw himself into finishing every wand he had already begun, spending ten straight days working himself to the bone.
As for all the other orders, he informed their clients that they would have to wait an additional year.
There were some advantages to living as a cantankerous artisan: even when you pulled nonsense like that, people simply sighed and accepted it as if nothing could be done.
By the time all of that was done, there were about 340 days left until Ellie the student moved up to second year—until March 1st of next year, in other words.
—A masterpiece wrought by the greatest artisan of the age, poured out through the sheer grinding of his soul.
With enough time, that might be a little tight—but true works of art were always at their best when the deadline pressed close.
Still, once he had decided to make the best wand possible, one obstacle remained.
Materials.
Of course, the old man’s workshop already held just about every material this world had to offer.
But to make the best wand for Ellie, he needed one particular material in large quantity.
Jineun. The queen of metals, also known as mithril.
He had some, of course. Normally, jineun was used for the core of a wand.
But for Ellie’s wand, the body itself had to be made of jineun, not merely the core.
And the core would have to be made from diamond, the king of all gemstones.
Because—
If this was Ellie’s wand, then that was the only way a true masterpiece would come out of it.
A wand was not just a matter of quality, good or bad. Making it suited to its user was just as important.
That was why, depending on the client, one person’s wand had to be made from rare and expensive materials, while another’s was better forged from ordinary wood. Only then would it harmonize with the mage’s mana.
And Ellie was one of the most extreme cases of all, someone who absolutely needed those rare and expensive materials.
Even the old man had been taken aback by the result—jineun body, diamond core—so he repeated the measurements five times instead of the usual three.
Just the materials alone would cost a fortune.
And yet the old man planned to ask the Imperial Family, who would be the ones capable of paying that fortune, for exactly one silver coin.
He intended to drain his own lifetime savings instead.
I knew people would call that a foolish choice.
I knew it was a useless sentiment.
But this was meant to be a pure contract between artisan and client—just the two of them. He did not want a third party like the Imperial Family getting involved.
If anyone asked the craftsman why he would go that far, the old man would answer like this:
Student Ellie had made him dream again.
She had kicked at the dead, cold firewood buried under ash and barked at it until he could make it burn one last time.
It had been over thirty years.
That was how long it had been since he had opened his workshop in the southern district, the most expensive part of the capital in terms of land value.
During all that time, the craftsman had never realized that the workshop which had once been his pride had become the arrogance that bound him.
What was all this, anyway?
People died no matter what. Were they supposed to carry their workshop with them when they died?
This city was vast, full of countless shops. If one of them managed to leave a place in history, it was already a great thing; if one artisan did so, that was plenty.
In any case, his son and daughter-in-law had died young, and his only blood relative, his grandson, did not have the skill to inherit this workshop or its name.
—A masterpiece that would flash through his eyes at the moment of death and let him feel his life had been worth something.
The essence of who he was lay in wandcraft.
If he wanted to be remembered after death, he had to leave behind a work.
And the old man was certain of one thing.
Ellie would carve her name into history.
She was a girl who had succeeded in reigniting even the heart of a decrepit old man.
She would become a figure of the century.
She would be a wave that shook the world and turned it upside down.
And becoming the maker of the wand in her hand was the only way the old man himself could leave his own name in history.
“I shall step out for a while.”
Arlo Classman, master wandmaker, bowed to the portrait of the wife who had long since departed from this world, and then stepped out into it.
To obtain a sufficient quantity of jineun, and the finest diamond.
For Ellie’s immortality, and his own.
Then, a few weeks after the old man set out on his search for Ellie’s wand—
“Your name’s Garzan, right? Perfect timing. Help me with an assignment.”
His grandson was caught by Ellie.
In the literal sense.
“Uh, uh…?”
The boy, whose shoulders had been seized by a girl without warning, turned as pink as his hair and eyes.
“What is it?”
“Uh… Ellie, was it?”
“Yep! You remembered?”
Garzan had a reply sitting right up in his throat—of course I remembered, no, of course I knew.
After all, at the Academy, almost no one did not know the name Ellie these days, except for a few assistants who had been shut away in the research labs for months.
The new student who had ridden on the academy dean’s shoulders in his original form, united the students in refusing class, and then dueled the professor responsible for it all and won.
Her resume was so dazzling that her commoner background felt almost trivial by comparison.
Besides, from Garzan’s perspective, she was the one and only client his grandfather had ever introduced to him.
She was special in every possible way. It made no sense that he wouldn’t know her name.
But wait, what did she just say?
She wanted help with an assignment?
“…What’s giving you trouble?”
“Ah, we got a practical assignment in the equipment class.”
The formal name of equipment class was Magical Equipment and Enchantment.
It was a course where students learned to make magic-support tools like wands and staves themselves, or to imbue items with mana so that magic would remain active and trigger automatically.
Garzan’s expression stiffened.
“If you came because of my grandfather, I probably won’t be much help.”
It happened often enough. People expected the grandson of a great wandmaker to have inherited his talent.
Maybe he’d inherited the ability. If not that, then at least he should have learned something just from watching over his grandfather’s shoulder.
And so, in that sense, this Ellie girl was probably just another ordinary person—
“Huh? No? I asked our professor, and he told me you were good at it and also good at teaching, so I came to find you.”
“Uh…?”
Special. The sort of special that looked like it wouldn’t be special at all, which meant—special—
“This is the assignment. Look.”
Ellie took out a sheet of paper and stepped closer to Garzan to show him.
“Uh, uhh?”
Garzan had a few friends, but he was fundamentally a shy, timid boy. It probably had something to do with living his entire life in his grandfather’s shadow.
In any case, from a pubescent boy’s point of view, Ellie was practically a disaster.
Why was she so unguarded? So bold? Why didn’t she hesitate? No, it wasn’t exactly common for guys to get this close either—whoa, what is that, she smells really nice, what is this, I can feel my intelligence dropping?
“…Garzan? Do you not understand it?”
“Uh, uh-huh…?”
He could see the assignment well enough, but he had no idea what it meant.
It wasn’t that he truly didn’t understand; Ellie was just so distracting that he couldn’t focus at all.
He would read one word, and before he could move on to the next, the previous one had already leaked out of his mind. What is touching my back right now—no, surely not, there’s no way, wow, it’s soft, wow, wowwowwow….
“Mm… If you don’t know, I guess there’s no helping it. Sorry for stealing your time!”
“Ah, no—”
If Garzan had possessed even a little more courage, he would have rushed after her with a wait! But sadly, he was not the sort of person who would ever become the protagonist of a romance novel.
But Ellie had started off at a brisk trot, then suddenly looked back and cried, “Ah!?” before running back this way again.
It was a second chance. The boy felt his body grow hot.
But Ellie ran past Garzan and toward another upperclassman.
“Hey! You there!”
“What is it?”
It was the same upperclassman boy who had once called Ellie a “piss-ant orphan bitch” on the lawn, and who had said to Garzan, “You’d be a maggot if I looked at you through your grandfather’s eyes.”
To be fair, it wasn’t just limited to the two of them; he was the type of boy who always had a filthy mouth. Like all those middle and high school kids in Korea who practically lived with curses stuck to their tongues.
That didn’t make it okay.
“Oh, you’re that—”
Ellie stamped down on the ground and sprang forward.
“Orphan Bitch Punch!!”
“Ghk—!?”
The girl’s fist slammed into the boy’s face.
At the sudden scene of violence, the surrounding students stared in shock at Ellie and the upperclassman who had gone sprawling.
“Mm….”
Ellie looked at the boy’s gaze, saw that there was astonishment in it but no true murderous hatred, and said, “I’ll let you off with this one, but if you do it again, I’ll make it hurt more. Got it?”
“Wh-what the hell is that supposed to—”
“Answer.”
“…!”
The boy could not bring himself to speak, so he nodded.
Ellie nodded as well, then roughly ruffled the upperclassman’s hair.
“And talk nicely. If you can’t do that, then keep your mouth shut.”
“….”
The boy nodded again.
“Good! See you later!”
And Ellie trotted away once more with a light, springy step.
Garzan stared blankly after her, then remembered the assignment Ellie had shown him.
The problem was, right. And then, that kind of thing… yes. He remembered it clearly.
He’d solve it since she’d asked him to. And if Ellie happened to ask whether there was anything he wanted in return because she was grateful…
The boy, whose self-esteem was painfully low, placed a hand on top of his own head.
His face flushed crimson. It was not only shame, but a little guilt as well.
He had no real reason to feel guilty—it wasn’t a crime, after all—yet the mere fact that he wanted to ask a younger girl for this made him feel as if he were committing one.
After moving away from the boys, Ellie rejoined Philia and Stella, who had been waiting for her.
“So, was it any help?”
“Looks like he didn’t really know.”
From their point of view, they had been walking together when Ellie suddenly shouted, “Hold on!” and ran off, then asked one boy a question and knocked another flat before returning.
From Ellie’s perspective, it was perfectly ordinary behavior. Philia and Stella thought nothing of it either.
“I see. Then bring it up when we study together later.”
“Guess I’ll have to. Midterms are only three weeks away now, huh?”
The Academy ran on roughly three-month terms. First semester in September, winter break from the end of December, second semester in March, and summer break from the end of June.
“It is indeed three weeks away.”
“Though I don’t feel like ‘only’ is the right way to put it.”
Philia groaned, and Stella let out a sigh as well.
It had only been three weeks since enrollment, yet Ellie was already throwing herself into exam preparation.
Wasn’t this still the adjustment period? Why was she so focused on something like tests?
Ellie shook her head at her friends as if they were the ones who didn’t understand.
“You two really don’t get it… Studying for exams is something you do steadily from the start. If you suddenly try to cram everything at once, it’s hell.”
“Mm…?”
“Is that so…?”
Looking at her friends, who still seemed unable to fully grasp it, Ellie thought to herself:
Well, can’t be helped.
After all, first-year Academy students had never once in their lives experienced a large-scale exam like midterms or finals.
“All right. Don’t worry, I’ll lead you through your midterms.”
Ellie thumped her chest with confidence.
These days, she had grown a little more, so strictly speaking it was somewhere between the center of her collarbone and the top of her breasts.
“I’ll take you, along with Clea and Isabel, and make the four of you the second through fifth highest in the entire school.”
“Ahaha….”
“Heh….”
Philia and Stella exchanged hollow laughs, thinking that, surely, that had to be an exaggeration.