Transfer Student (1)
Transfer Student (1)
Tillet Academy's student body was smaller than one might think.
Roughly three hundred to four hundred students per year. Thanks to that, memorizing the faces of your classmates was easy enough if you put your mind to it.
Supposedly, the really sociable types could memorize the names of an entire year just by attending a few drinking parties. I wasn't at that level, but I knew enough to say "Ah, that kid's a first-year" when I passed someone on the street.
It was simply because I was from the Gold-Eye Tribe. Part of it was having a good memory, but given my race, it must have looked fascinating to other people. I'd lost count of how many strangers had introduced themselves to me in the corridors at the start of the semester.
It was ironic, considering the thousand-year history of the Gold-Eye Tribe being despised just for being unable to use magic. Most of the students I'd met since entering the academy hadn't made a bad first impression. Maybe it was because I'd entered as salutatorian.
I wasn't just a Gold-Eye; I was a Gold-Eye who'd entered Tillet's Special Class, so the treatment could have been different. In any era, someone attending a good school generally gets decent treatment.
Of course, there were those who purely looked down on or discriminated against the Gold-Eye Tribe.
I'd often run into bastards like Prince Clion who'd spit insults like "For a race that can't even use magic." Most of the time, I ignored them and moved on for the sake of time, but there were the occasional types who took that as fear and crossed the line. Whenever that happened, I'd introduce them to the profound taste of my engineering calipers and savor the crackling sensation of legally caving in skulls to relieve some stress.
Like it or not, the number of students I'd gotten to know that way was now roughly five hundred.
"I've never done course registration before—could you help me for a moment?"
Out of all those faces, this girl's face wasn't in my memory.
......Who was she?
"Course registration?"
When I tilted my head and asked, the girl nodded, her ocean-colored eyes sparkling brightly.
"Yes. I'll only be attending for this semester, you see."
"Like an exchange student?"
"Ah.... Yes!"
Didn't seem like it.
Course registration itself was so easy that even a ten-year-old brat could figure it out on their own. You just wrote down the subjects you wanted to take, handed it in at the desk, and that was it.
A student smart enough to come to Tillet on exchange would surely know that....
Having personally heard and experienced countless people's bullshit since way back, I could tell on instinct alone. This kid was lying.
In times like this, the best move was to leave without getting too involved.
"See that poster up ahead? You write down the courses you want, along with the professor's name, and submit it at the information desk."
"Oh.... Sis, what courses are you taking?"
The question, thrown out with zero context, made my mind go blank for a second.
Why would you want to know that?
"...I'm mostly planning on basic subjects."
"I see. Would it be okay if I took the same ones?"
"Yeah...."
The girl fetched the course registration paper and a pen, then sat down beside me. She immediately started copying down the courses I wrote.
"It's right to write them here, correct?"
She lifted her head slightly and smiled softly. Her pale blue hair, straight down to her lower back, rippled. A scent, much like the bath salts I'd smelled at the Saliere estate, briefly wafted up and vanished like an incense trail. She seemed to use a rather high-end rinse.
Looking closely, she could rival a Gold-Eye or a High Elf in appearance.
"Correct?"
"Yes."
Ah, just my damn luck. After dealing with Angelica yesterday, I'd gotten stuck dealing with this one today.
She was a suspicious kid in many ways. The way she kept giggling whenever she looked at me, or the fact that she'd come just to register for courses in a dress fit for a royal court social.
"Sis, can I call you Sis?"
Or weird things like that.
"...Suit yourself."
As annoying as she was, the one saving grace was that she didn't grate on me to the point I wanted to beat her up like Angelica had.
I didn't know the reason. I just didn't completely dislike her.
"Thank you for helping me with registration, Sis."
A girl who suddenly produced a fan from her bosom to cover her mouth—why had she been carrying that around, anyway? She laughed to herself. The gesture, like some villainess out of a comic or drama, made a hollow laugh bubble up to my throat.
"As thanks, I'll treat you to tea."
"No, I'm fine......."
"As it happens, I know a decent dessert café near here. I'm sure it'll suit your tastes, Sis."
"......."
...Desserts, huh.
I seriously contemplated this as a student of physics at the boundary of the metaphysical and the physical.
The things I had to do were piled up like a mountain. I had to develop the Small Flare in exchange for the chairman funding my tuition and research, and I needed to think of a new method to exchange information with Vermel. I also had to focus on developing a thermonuclear bomb in case the Demon King resurrected, and in order to return to my original world, I needed to master as many Magic Arts as possible at Tillet.
All these processes came at the cost of stress. Completing one task would leave me mentally exhausted in equal measure.
Given that, if I could lower my stress level at the cost of a little time, wouldn't that be a net gain?
"They've got Kopi Luwak you can't find anywhere else, and a three-story parfait. Would you like to go see?"
The girl tugged at my arm and gave a gentle, charming smile. With that smile added to her round, cat-like face, I found it psychologically impossible to refuse.
Right, this was give and take. I had helped this kid, so I could accept being treated a little.
If it came to it, I could just pay the difference myself.
**
...Thinking that had been a fatal mistake.
"Everything you've ordered comes out to fifty Gold Coins."
The place we'd come to was called 'Yellowcake Median', and according to the girl in front of me, it was a hidden dessert spot in the back alleys of the capital.
That didn't matter. The waitress's dry, toneless voice made the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
Fifty Gold Coins? Was she insane?
I stared at the waitress with a dumbfounded look, and she stared back at me and the girl with an expression that said, 'Are you really sure about this, you suckers?' Too busy or not caring about that, the girl was blissfully sucking down the non-alcoholic cocktail that had arrived first, a look of rapture on her face.
We hadn't even ordered much, but the money had been smashed. I wasn't the one paying, but wouldn't her cost-benefit ratio be completely off?
"I'm sorry, miss. Prices have just skyrocketed so much lately.... If we don't raise prices this much, we'd just run at a deficit...."
I'd thought the imperial economy was strange even before the Black Death broke out.
Even without studying economics deeply, I knew this amounted to inflation or stagflation. The problem was, I was a layman in this field with nothing more than a liberal arts level of knowledge, so there was nothing I could do about it.
"It's fine."
Not caring in the slightest, the girl pulled fifty glittering coins from her bosom and stacked them up neatly. Even at a rough estimate, you could tell there were fifty.
The waitress looked slightly surprised.
I was probably wearing a similar expression. The vast majority of people working here were commoners, and I was still a commoner myself. It meant that person and I had similar money sense.
"Heh-heh, you don't need to be sorry. I am, after all, the one treating you."
Wasn't this actually the reverse—wasn't I the one sinking into debt to her?
I could definitely tell this girl was a noble. Or perhaps a princess of some foreign country.
"Something's strange. In an economy like this, don't people usually try to tighten their belts?"
Without realizing it, I was using informal speech with her. It hadn't been my choice; the girl in front of me had begged and pleaded for me to drop the formalities, and I was just going along with it. Given my druthers, I'd want to switch back to polite speech right now.
"Commoners would, I suppose. But I'm rich enough that I don't need to worry about that."
"Even so, carrying this much cash around...."
"I originally brought it because I was planning to come here."
"Can you really afford to spend this much money on me?"
"Well, I said it's fine. In times like these, people like me are actually supposed to pump a lot of money into the market. How else would the national economy keep running?"
She'd clearly said it in a joking tone, but it didn't sound like a joke. It was more like there was some ulterior motive lurking behind her light words.
As if she was trying to gauge something from me....
"No, that's not it."
"Hmm."
I let out a soft snort of laughter and said no more. There was no further explanation. I didn't want to start an argument on the first day I met someone.
"Here's the parfait you ordered."
"Is it really okay for me to eat this?"
"Yes, please go ahead. I'm not trying to put you in my debt, so eat your fill without worry."
Yahoo.
With a happy heart, I speared the half-strawberry on top of the glass with my fork. Just as I was about to put it in my mouth, the girl in front of me batted her long eyelashes and asked,
"Come to think of it, Sis, we haven't even exchanged names yet. Do you happen to recognize who I am?"
"Recognize you...?"
"Haven't we met somewhere before?"
"...No?"
Her saying that did make me feel a slight sense of déjà vu, but that was mostly just an illusion the brain suffered. Whenever you thought something like that, it was definitely a no. It was a fact I'd felt many times while studying my major.
"Hmm, I see. I felt like I'd seen you several times before, Sis, so you felt familiar."
A weird sensation washed over me, and I glanced up for a moment.
"What's wrong?"
"...Nothing."
I thought back.
The only Gold-Eye Tribe in the empire—who'd lived cooped up in the capital for four years—felt familiar because you'd 'seen her several times'?
Before I scooped up a bite of whipped cream and put it in my mouth, I inspected it. Minuscule jade-colored particles, so small they were hard to see with human eyes, were mixed into the cream. Beryllium crystals.
Finally, I recalled the name of this café once more.
'Yellowcake Median'.
"Huh."
Only now did I get an outline of what was going on and who this kid in front of me really was.
It was just as Vermel had once told me.
The second semester would be hard to get through easily.