This Is What They Call an Academy

“Here you are, sir.”

The waiter bowed, set the after-dinner desserts and drinks in front of me and Lee Se-rin, then withdrew. Once the door to the private room clicked shut, I let out a long sigh.

He had been a complete stranger when he brought the food, yet in that brief interval he had somehow become a familiar face. Given how narrow my circle of acquaintances was, it was a hundred-percent certainty he was one of that woman’s retainers.

I sighed loud enough for her to hear, but Lee Se-rin simply began enjoying her dessert as if she hadn’t noticed a thing. Giving up, I pulled the Lost Relic of the Firmament from my pocket and checked its information.

Not bad.

For a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠rare-grade piece of gear it might look underwhelming, but since it was an amulet that granted its effect simply by being carried, I didn’t even need to equip it to raise my Intelligence. I handed it experimentally to Hive, who was lurking in the shadows, then checked my status window. Intelligence had indeed gone up by two. Small as the boost was, any free stat was better than none.

“…So why exactly did you drag me outside the academy today?”

At that she looked up, flashed a sly smile, scooped a spoonful of dessert, and held it out in front of my mouth. Same routine as last time. I shot her a sour look, but she only deepened her smile without a word.

Grumbling, I snatched the spoon and shoved the whole thing into my mouth as if I meant to chew the metal itself. I really did try to crush it so she couldn’t pull the same stunt again, but whether it had been reinforced somehow or simply coated in mana, even grinding it between my teeth with mana didn’t snap it.

“Heh-heh. Chewing so desperately… I take it the flavor suits you better than expected?”

Watching me struggle like a cute little tantrum, she mocked me until I finally had to spit the spoon back out, having gained nothing. A curse rose unbidden, but I swallowed it. Credit where it’s due—she was a master at getting under people’s skin.

Most of my own sarcasm, after all, I had learned from her.

Tone is everything. Just a slight twist at the end of a sentence or a shift in inflection, and she could make the same words feel filthy enough to set your teeth on edge. Which meant she knew exactly what she was doing and chose to speak that way on purpose, completely indifferent to how my brain would take it.

That’s what pisses me off.

Even when I swore and snarled right in her face, to her I was nothing more than a puppy yapping far below her feet. The sheer fact of it made my blood boil. Damn this world.

“…Stop changing the subject and answer me.”

She had deliberately chosen an amusement park far from the academy. When that failed, she introduced a dungeon completely cut off from the outside. Now she had even rented a private room sealed on every side, blatantly pulling every gaze away from the academy.

More importantly, the reports from Hive’s shadow crows outside had cut off at some point. That could only mean something was happening back at the academy.

The hint had been there from the start.

What she said to me this morning.

Back in the dorm she had told me, “Better than getting tangled up with the child favored by the stars.” At the time I thought it was just a hypothetical about Ban Taewung maybe pestering me. Looking back now, she had meant something else entirely.

With a hint that obvious, only an idiot would miss it. I turned a cold, mocking smile on her.

“You think I’ll thank you for this crap? Or what—were you worried I’d die because of that bastard mastermind or whatever?”

She looked thoroughly delighted by my irritable sniping. Propping her chin on one hand, she smiled even more deeply, then took the spoon I had been chewing and began rolling it around inside her mouth, savoring the dessert with deliberate sensuality.

The sight of her regarding me like a doting adult watching a sulky child was so absurd I almost laughed.

They say when a person gets angry enough, the emotion freezes over. That was me right now. The heat that had been rising because of her nonsense cooled in an instant.

Clack.

Noticing my expression turn icy, Lee Se-rin set the spoon on the plate, laced her fingers, and rested her chin on them.

“Doctor, you came along because you figured you’d get dragged into something annoying anyway. I get to indulge my personal feelings, and you get to be a little less bothered. I thought it was a perfect win-win…”

Isn’t that right?

The phrasing was carefully crafted to coax agreement, but I wasn’t falling for it. Or rather, as long as that twisted delight glittered in her eyes, trusting her was out of the question.

“Say it properly. What you really want is the ‘more entertaining’ option, isn’t it?”

As if confirming I had hit the mark, Lee Se-rin blinked once. Light began to gather in her golden eyes. In the dim room they sparkled even more vividly, curving into a smile that spread across her whole face.

“Ahaha, that’s my doctor. This is exactly why I love you.”

“Bullshit.”

Wipe that scheming look out of your eyes before you say crap like that. If that counted as affection, every human relationship on the planet would have collapsed long ago.

“Want to hear something interesting? The person you think of as the mastermind is nowhere near as impressive as you imagine. More accurately… he used to be smart, then turned stupid.”

“…What?”

The way she spoke as if she already knew the mastermind’s identity gave me a strange sense of déjà vu. Not as big a deal as I thought? What the hell was she basing that confidence on?

“The reason he started targeting you is simple. He just wanted an excuse to get closer to the child favored by the stars. Isn’t that ridiculously dumb? Maybe it’s because he was raised so preciously in the underworld, or maybe it’s first love… probably both, right? Ahaha.”

More than the content, I was struck by how rapidly and aggressively she was tearing someone down. From her perspective most living things were inferior, sure, but this was the first time she had ever voiced that contempt so openly to me.

Had the mastermind done something that truly offended her? Hostility this blatant was rare.

When was the last time she had been genuinely angry?

I thought it over. The only time that came to mind was when she had “educated” a man who hit on her despite having a loving family, all because she hated NTR. Nothing else fit.

“As a fellow woman I can understand treating your first love as something special, but that doesn’t give you the right to inconvenience other people. Yes, it’s an emotion that should be treasured.”

Setting that aside, my head was starting to throb. Whether she noticed or simply didn’t care, Lee Se-rin rattled on at machine-gun speed, saying only what she wanted to say.

“No matter how many pests swarm around the one you love, you should be generous about it. Doesn’t that just mean the person is that attractive? If you start moving to eliminate them the moment they become a mild nuisance, and you can’t control your emotions and lash out indiscriminately, that’s nothing but violence! There’s no greater blasphemy! Don’t you agree, Doctor?!”

“…Hold on. Let me get this straight.”

I cut off Lee Se-rin, who had suddenly turned into a love evangelist and started preaching about romance in the middle of a conversation about a mastermind, and tried to sort the chaotic information in my head.

So, to summarize: the person I thought ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was the mastermind was a woman who had fallen for Ban Taewung at first sight.

Among the annoying people clinging to his side, she had decided I looked like the easiest target to eliminate first. At the same time she was playing coy, pretending to solve the incident so she could stick herself to Ban Taewung… right?

Even if the real culprit was found, it would only be a disposable underling whose tail had already been cut, so there would be no blowback.

No—by actively pinning the crime on that underling she could plant the impression that she was on Ban Taewung’s side. Eliminating me would be ideal, but even if she failed it was still fine.

I fed the cleaned-up version back to Lee Se-rin to confirm. She nodded in agreement.

“Yes. Honestly she was so single-minded she had no attention left for anything else, so catching her was easy. If it hadn’t been for the child favored by the stars it might have taken another ten days… no, wait, the whole thing started because of that child, so it only got more complicated. Never mind the thanks.”

Watching her talk to herself like that felt strangely off. Normally she would have laughed it off with a “How amusing” and a soft chuckle. Seeing her actually angry created a cognitive dissonance.

“…Is it really something to get that worked up over?”

It felt like watching a bipedal tuna leap out of the ocean, slap a fisherman across the face, snap his rod in half, then fillet itself into sashimi and offer the pieces while saying “Just eat me already.”

What kind of nonsense is that? I don’t know either. That’s why it’s nonsense.

Apparently the thought showed on my face, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠because Lee Se-rin’s expression turned distinctly sulky.

“…Haa. Doctor, do you have any idea how nerve-wracking it is for the people watching when you stay this calm about things that involve you? Is this revenge? If you’re doing this because I teased you a little, then congratulations—it worked perfectly. Damn it.”

“Hey, there’s no one who values himself more carefully than I do…”

“And that same person just heard what I said and asked, ‘Is it really something to get that worked up over…?’ Excuse me, but did you hit your head?”

Her curt interruption left me speechless for the first time in a while.

I was speaking from her perspective. Who the hell defends the guy trying to kill him? Yet the very person who had planted that perception in me was now treating me like a lunatic, and the whole thing felt surreal.

Is this my fault…?

I wanted to say something, but my mouth felt stuffed full of sweet potatoes that had been aging for dozens of days—dry, scratchy, and impossible to swallow. I forced down a pointless gulp of saliva.

“You’re the doctor, so even if you learn the mastermind’s identity you’ll just catch and use him whenever it’s convenient, right? You’ll keep putting off dealing with him. You’ll even enjoy stacking things higher and higher until they’re about to explode, then give them a little poke so you can detonate them yourself. Whether your own hands get dirty or not doesn’t matter—you just want to clean up the ticking bomb because not knowing when it’ll go off is annoying. Am I wrong?”

…She was exactly right.

Honestly, the mastermind thrashing around and spreading nasty rumors about me had been a mild nuisance. Hong Su-ah had bitten hard into that bait, but that was just her going off on her own.

In other words, as long as I drew a line and blocked variables like Hong Su-ah at a reasonable level, no one else would approach me just because of the bad reputation.

To put it bluntly, the trash was falling away on its own without me lifting a finger, which was convenient.

Getting tangled up with people never leads to anything good.

That was why I had deliberately ruined my own image from day one. Lately, though—maybe because of recent events—whispers of “Maybe he’s actually a decent guy?” had started circulating. So this whole affair wasn’t entirely bad for me.

I had half-abandoned it, planning to use it in reverse.

It’s the same principle as when a guy everyone thought was a bastard does one good deed: people focus more on the later act than the earlier ones.

Human hearts are surprisingly fickle; they believe only what they want to believe.

Just looking a little less bad than the rumors is enough for some people to start getting ideas.

They’ll probably reflect that they were blinded by gossip, polish their own image, and try to get involved with me. That way a few more idiots with lukewarm expectations might start hovering around.

Beautifying your own way of thinking requires the conviction that it’s correct, after all.

Anyone who clings to useless convictions is the worst kind of idiot. Better to seal off the possibility at the source than get tangled up with them.

I had put on that whole out-of-character act from the very first day precisely so this kind of annoying situation wouldn’t arise. Why would I change now?

So riding the wave and calling it convenient was only natural, right?

Apparently my thoughts were written all over my face, because Lee Se-rin let out a magnificent sigh while looking at me.

“When it comes to this matter I actually feel a little sorry for the child favored by the stars. How did he ever get his nose hooked by someone like you… ugh.”

If I pointed out that she was in no position to talk, she would just say she knew that and fire another arrow at me. I was ignoring her on purpose; I wasn’t completely dense.

…But did I really have to sit here and take this? When you got down to it, she was the one sticking her nose into something I could handle myself and clinging to me.

It wasn’t like anyone was holding a knife to her throat and forcing her to watch. She was the one who found it fun, who liked it, who kept inserting herself and throwing wrenches into the works. She kept showing up even when I told her to get lost, and now she was lecturing me. It was starting to piss me off.

No—that wasn’t it. The point had drifted. Mastermind or not, that wasn’t the important part.

“What’s happening at the academy right now?”

“…Doctor, have you ever heard of a Rube Goldberg machine?”

Rube Goldberg machine.

I knew it as the perfect expression of a chain reaction. A device where one starting action triggers the next in sequence. The simplest classic example is a row of dominoes.

“What about it?”

“What’s happening at the academy right now is exactly that. Everything that had been piling up got poked by a girl who lost her mind over love, and now it’s exploding in a chain reaction all on its own.”

“…Details.”

Lee Se-rin giggled, recreating the sound of popcorn popping with mana, then held up three fingers.

“One: recently a large-scale smuggling case blew up at a port in Busan. Even though consecutive large-scale terrorist attacks turned parts of the harbor into a sea of fire just to erase the trail, not a single related article appeared in the news. That was the starting point of the investigation.”

One pristine white finger folded down.

“Two: a corrupt prosecution. During the investigation we discovered the information was wrong. Someone in the middle had swapped it out with remarkable precision. Behind it we found that Japan’s Shikokukai—the Purple-Black Society—had been taking bribes.”

“…Is that the smuggling organization?”

“Yes. More precisely, a subsidiary branch under the organization that was running the smuggling. Obviously a guild set up for money laundering. Unfortunately the principal had already fled overseas, so we couldn’t catch him, but the fact that Japan was openly listed as a transit point suggests he was a planted agent from the start. That was exactly two days ago.”

Two days ago—meaning the third day at the academy had been quiet.

The entrance ceremony was on Sunday. Accidents started on Monday, the first day. The next day the schedule was postponed for investigations and such. The third day passed quietly, and on the fourth the large-scale barrier-jacking incident occurred.

So they caused chaos to draw every eye toward the academy, then escaped. The second finger folded as she confirmed I understood.

“And three: of course they started searching for the fugitive. When he didn’t turn up they began thoroughly stirring the dark alleys where light never reaches. In the process several big players in the underworld took hits heavy enough that they had to shut down some of their businesses.”

The underworld… she had said the woman who fell for Ban Taewung was raised preciously there. A rough blueprint was forming.

“They had always been walking a tightrope between legal and illegal, but this incident caused massive losses they couldn’t cover with their usual methods. While they were under considerable stress, a job came in that could both relieve that stress and bring in money.”

Snap.

She flicked her fingers. Mana rippled in the air and projected a holographic display from a device. On the screen was a beautiful girl with black hair and violet eyes.

Her sharp, almost venomous gaze might have looked frightening, but the beauty layered over it made her seem more keen than scary. Like an unpolished raw blade.

A girl who gave the impression that if you touched her you would inevitably get cut or stabbed.

“Alias Julia Rose. Real name Cheon Jang-mi. Second daughter of Cheon Muk-hwa, master of the renowned underworld organization Sumuk, and the one widely tipped to become the next leader of Sumuk. She’s already forming her own faction inside the organization—charisma and skill to match.”

“And this woman offered them the job? Using her own faction?”

“More accurately, it was a faction that opposes Cheon Jang-mi. Do you really think a man who sits as the head of an underworld organization—someone who could die any day—has only one child? She’s marked as the next master of Sumuk, but in the end she’s only a candidate.”

The screen shifted sideways, and information on Cheon Muk-hwa’s other children—half-siblings, sisters, brothers—flooded into view.

“The one who orchestrated this academy incident is Cheon Nan-cho, Cheon Jang-mi’s half-sister. Growing up she was constantly compared to Cheon Jang-mi. She must have resented the younger sister who was born later yet outshone her in every way.”

Funny story. But people who stake their lives on power are more common than you’d think. When you’re the head of an organization, of course you want to pass the seat to the superior child rather than the one who falls behind.

“Just when she had begun solidifying her position inside the organization without a single opening, she suddenly started acting strangely—right after returning from the academy’s entrance exam. Cheon Nan-cho dug into it, finally caught the tail, and decided to act today. Whoever it was that caused that chaos at the academy, she planned to disguise her move as part of the same mess and kill Cheon Jang-mi.”

So that was where the story started to tangle. I smacked my throbbing head. The entrance exam I had skipped with a parachute because it was too much trouble—that was where everything had gone wrong.

The overall flow was clear now. I finally understood why she had asked me about Rube Goldberg machines at the beginning. Things that had nothing to do with me had piled on top of each other and produced an enormous result. What kind of first love turns into an assassination request disguised as terrorism?

Is this what they call the butterfly effect?

“…This is seriously fucked.”

“Yes~. Thanks to that, the academy is currently struggling to deal with the curses and undead scattered by the black mages of the Black Magic Tower that Cheon Nan-cho hired.”

“No. That’s not the real problem.”

There was a separate reason she had so willingly handed me all this information.

“The cleanup. You deliberately brought me here because the aftermath of this incident looks entertaining. You fed me just enough information so you can watch how I handle the aftermath.”

“Ding~ dong~ dang!”

She beamed and started clapping. Letters of pure mana burst around her like fireworks. Her eyes grew noticeably brighter, and I couldn’t help frowning.

“Tch.”

I had no choice but to click my tongue. She had cheerfully admitted she wanted to watch me suffer for fun. Who the hell enjoys that?

“Still, isn’t it better to jump in later than to suffer from the beginning? Personally I don’t want to see the doctor tormented by something as lowly as a curse.”

“…Either way it’s the same amount of trouble.”

Objectively speaking, the later you get involved the higher the chance of getting tangled in something even more annoying. Retiring early after testing the waters is one thing; showing up late and getting mixed up with the boss is another. The fatigue is overwhelmingly worse in the latter case.

Clap!

She clapped again to draw my attention and spoke.

“So, are you going to ignore it? Or will you head back to the academy even now?”

Intervene in the incident right now, or keep ignoring it. She was giving me a choice. The pros and cons of both options were crystal clear; no need to spell them out.

She was staying in the position of a spectator, wanting to enjoy my hesitation, my deliberation, and whatever result I chose. But from where I stood she wasn’t just a spectator—she was a more annoying existence than the mastermind who was actively complicating things.

I wanted to tell everything to go fuck itself and ignore it, but I no longer could. Even if I left the incident alone, Ban Taewung would somehow clean it up as the central figure.

The problem was what came after. The academy had already been attacked multiple times in this short period, which by itself gave outsiders enough justification to question its safety.

The only reason that criticism hadn’t come out into the open yet was because the academy had always managed to handle things internally somehow.

If Cheon Jang-mi brought in outside personnel to resolve this, it would no longer be a simple attack on the academy—it would turn into a family feud using the academy as the stage.

You might ask what’s wrong with that, but it would be a clear blow to the academy’s prestige. The world’s finest educational institution reduced to a battleground for an underworld family squabble, and they couldn’t even manage that? The mockery would write itself.

It might be a tiny crack compared to the prestige, but there are more ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠than enough bastards in this world who would love to dig their nails into that crack and tear it wider.

You have to endure every kind of envy and jealousy from people like that while still living up to the admiration and expectations of others.

That’s what it means to protect the title of “the best.”

And if we end up constantly dealing with that kind of nonsense, the fallout will naturally reach those of us living at the academy. Depending on how this is handled, the next three years will either be peaceful or a complete mess.

In other words, it would take me even farther from the peaceful life I want.

“…You’re really not going to die a clean death.”

“What a coincidence. I was thinking the same thing. Though I have no intention of dying that easily!”

Meeting the sticky, boiling emotion in her pupils behind that bright smile sent a chill down my spine. Fuck. I really need to get stronger as soon as possible, if only out of pure resentment.

“…Shit.”

I downed the completely cold coffee in one go and stood up. Lee Se-rin, as if it didn’t concern her at all, picked up the spoon again and mashed the half-melted ice cream into a sticky mess before bringing it to her mouth.

“Take care on your way.”

She tossed the words out without even looking at me. I ignored her completely and headed straight outside.

Destination: the academy. The place where battle was currently raging.