Let’s Go to the Academy (2)
Half emperor.
Half courtesan.
The bloodline the gods had given me, as if to mock me, and the goal I wanted to achieve with it.
And yet.
“It’s a secret, though.”
It was a dream I had no intention of telling Melitt, or anyone else in this world.
For now.
Someday I’d gather comrades.
Someday I’d declare it to the whole world.
And after that, someday, I’d have to proclaim that I’d taken it with my own hands.
But not yet.
I would keep it hidden.
Just as I’d hidden my hair, my eyes, and my beauty.
“I see.”
Melitt looked faintly dazed. It was amusing, and another snort of laughter slipped out of me.
I had a feeling about this.
Melitt was someone who could help me. Right now, and in the future.
“Then would you tell me about the Academy?”
**
Win her favor.
If I were just an orphan who’d shown off a little talent to an Academy assistant, then of course the one winning favor would be the latter.
But for reasons she couldn’t quite understand, it was the opposite.
The one being won over was Melitt.
The one giving was Ellie.
No.
Ellie.
Since she’d said I could call her that.
The delight that gave Melitt was so overwhelming it left even her flustered.
Up until now, the greatest connection Melitt Sinceregreen had ever made was her acquaintance with the eldest daughter of the Mistrey family, the great house of the North’s Grand Duke.
Compared with the standing of House Sinceregreen, she was such a tremendous contact that it was hard even to serve her properly.
And yet why was it that her chest was pounding even harder now? She’d only become a little closer to a single orphan girl.
But she couldn’t linger on that feeling for long.
“The Academy is an educational institution. Then where does its operating budget come from?”
“Huh?”
Do children normally ask things like this? An orphan, no less?
“Well, some of it is donations, but basically it comes from the royal family’s funds….”
“Is that the national budget, or does it come from His Majesty’s personal wealth?”
“W-well, that is….”
“So it’s either national or imperial. Ah, and can His Majesty spend the national budget however he likes, or is there some kind of check on it?”
Even after that, Ellie’s unchildlike questions kept coming.
“If the professors are all mages, don’t they have their own estates? Ah, unless you’re the eldest son or daughter, you don’t get one?”
Or:
“The Academy was the first magic school in history? Ah, so that’s why the royal family backed it. I get it.”
And then:
“What do graduates usually do after they leave? The top students usually go to the Imperial Palace? As I thought.”
They weren’t questions about school at all, but about the world itself.
No.
Questions about the power that covered the world.
She’s clever.
Knowledge, intellect, and intelligence were all different things, but the child in front of her definitely possessed a high intelligence.
Given enough time and education, might she not build something that could truly be called wisdom?
“So I can attend the Academy starting this year?”
“Yes. There are only ten days left until the entrance ceremony.”
“Ten days? Lucky me. If I’d been any later, I would’ve had to start next year—ah, so that’s why you brought the daughter of the count in the first place.”
“Hm?”
The questions kept coming, and then—
“Come to think of it, what time is it? I mean, how long has it been since I lost consciousness?”
“Now? It’s two in the afternoon.”
Ellie blinked.
“Only an hour?”
“Yes. It only took thirty minutes for you to recover from the mana overload. Honestly, it was absurdly fast, even faster than I’d expected.”
“…This is the village below the hill, right? Then it only took ten minutes to move me here.”
And then she grinned.
“Melitt, you’re a remarkable mage.”
“…No, that’s not—”
Melitt’s answer was sincere in two different ways.
One was that, compared to the realm this girl would someday reach, her present self was nothing at all.
And the other was this:
“The truly amazing ones among my cohort are already in the Imperial Palace or have become professors. I’m… just ordinary.”
“Really? That seems strange.”
That was when Ellie murmured it.
A series of heavy footsteps rang out. Not one or two—three… four… six.
And then—
Bang!!
“Is this the room? The one with that orphan in it!?”
Melitt’s expression hardened the moment she saw the man who barged in and flung the door open.
“Your Grace, the Marquess of Repeat. What business do you have here?”
The lord of this region.
The very man she had appealed to for help just today, only to be coldly turned away.
“Sinceregreen. Stand aside.”
The marquess strode into the room without hesitation.
“That orphan murdered one of my vassals, so I must judge her myself!”
“A vassal…? Surely you can’t mean that wretched orphanage director!?”
Melitt’s face drained of color.
“Don’t be absurd! Are you actually defending that vile, disgusting murderer by calling him your vassal…!?”
“Mind your tongue, Melitt of House Sinceregreen.”
The marquess cast her a cold look.
“This is my domain, and that woman was my vassal. If there was dissatisfaction or a problem, you should have come directly to me and demanded that I correct it.”
He jabbed a thick finger toward Ellie’s face.
“If I let some brat like this murder people as she pleases, my authority will fall to the ground. Punishment is only natural, wouldn’t you agree?”
“…There is some merit to that argument.”
Melitt ground out the words between clenched teeth.
“But the matter is beyond outrageous, and given that she’s an orphan, she was a child too ignorant to even know where Your Grace was.”
Her voice trembled with disgust, but Melitt swallowed the nausea and forced out the best words she could to save Ellie.
“If you show mercy and make your generosity known, that would surely be to your own advantage. Please, would you not forgive this pitiful child just once? I beg you, as a member of the Academy.”
But at her desperate plea—
“That will not do. My decision won’t change, so if you don’t want to be harmed as well, step aside at once. I warned you.”
Then—
“Authority.”
The voice of the girl who should not have had the right to speak in this place rang out.
“What a ridiculous thing to say.”
A girl with no title at all.
Just an orphan, daring to—
“Your real purpose isn’t authority. It’s covering up the fact that you used orphans for drug harvesting.”
“!?”
Melitt felt as if her heart had dropped out of her chest.
“Y-you insolent little—How dare you say anything you want because you think you’re going to die—”
“The hill where the orphanage stands naturally grows nobleknot grass. Every summer, when it bloomed in abundance, the orphanage director, Doloria, made the children pick it all. Then she carefully packed it into burlap sacks and loaded it onto carts.”
Ellie got down from the bed.
“Every year, among the children forced into that work, there were some who started seeing things, or who became unnaturally euphoric or depressed. Tell me, Marquess of Repeat. Why were your proud family sigils carved into those wagons?”
“…Your Grace.”
Melitt murmured, stunned.
“Could it be, then, that it was really…!”
The next instant, mana gathered at the marquess’s staff, but Melitt was faster at drawing her wand.
“Indizia!”
Crash! Mana exploded in an instant. The room filled with smoke, and the marquess clutched at his face and howled.
“Graaah! Sinceregreen, you dare!!!”
Melitt’s hand seized Ellie’s.
“This way!”
And then, without a moment’s hesitation, Melitt leapt out the window.
“Rutana!”
Thud—she landed cleanly. Then she ran at once, Ellie gathered in both arms.
“Melitt!”
“No! I won’t let you go!”
Melitt ran with everything she had.
In her arms, Ellie looked up at her.
Fear trembled in her eyes, and her jaw was locked tight with the same emotion.
Even so, there was warmth in the two arms clinging to her with the clear intent of never letting go.
It was such an endearingly foolish sight that Ellie didn’t ask to be put down. Instead, she said something else.
“Head uphill—I know a place that’s good for hiding. Left here, good. Past that tree, then right. That’s it. Keep going straight, keep going.”
It was almost like giving directions to a horse. But neither Melitt nor Ellie found anything strange about it.
At last they reached a gap beneath a large boulder. When Ellie said this was the place, Melitt finally set her down and hurriedly rummaged through her bag.
“There it is…!”
What she pulled out was paper and a pen. Mana could be felt from both.
She scribbled quickly.
—Currently under protection.
She rubbed out the middle section she’d written without thinking, then poured mana into the prewritten spell and activated it.
The letter split the sky and flew away.
Melitt said to Ellie, “The Academy’s teachers will come to take you away now. No matter how much of a marquess he is, he can’t beat multiple high professors at once.”
Politically, or as a mage.
“Listen carefully, Ellie.”
Melitt looked into her eyes as she spoke.
At the raw gemstone she alone had found, and perhaps would be the last to ever find.
“You’re going to become a great mage someday. Maybe the kind of mage who opens a new era, a new horizon for this world.”
So.
“I can’t let you die in a place like this.”
Even with tremendous potential, she was still just a novice who had only recently touched magic.
“I’ll fight and draw them all away. So you stay hidden right here and don’t move until the professors arrive. Got it? Don’t follow me. Don’t even think about me.”
Melitt knew. She might never see Ellie again, or anyone else, for that matter.
She knew it,
but she accepted it and steeled herself.
This world called that courage.
And this was how Ellie answered Melitt’s courage.
“Don’t be stupid. Melitt, you get behind me.”
Because she liked her—this brave idiot standing right in front of her.