What Are You Doing, Sis? (2)
What Are You Doing, Sis? (2)
The weekend passed, and Monday arrived.
Yesterday... or rather, Sunday, the plan to search for Vermel by combing through every inch of the academy fell through. Rote, having noticed my poor condition, threw a fit and carried on about it.
Still, it was fortunate that I could send Rote to Iliad Academy as an exchange student in exchange for this.
A delay of a day or two shouldn't be a big problem. I intended to visit the chairman's office after class today.
"Everyone. Did you enjoy your weekend?"
I answered Professor Herlein's question inwardly.
No.
"There's some news I have to share with you on this first day of the week. Don't be too surprised and listen."
What news could that be? The ears of the students, mine included, perked up.
"Mister Horde has withdrawn from the academy."
At Professor Herlein's bombshell declaration, my friends and I let our jaws drop. My head rang as if I'd been struck by a hammer.
I flinched. I almost leaped up from my seat right then and there.
That bastard ran? For real?
"Vermel is leaving school? Why?"
"He said he could no longer attend due to personal circumstances. He asked me to convey his apologies for leaving without saying goodbye."
That couldn't be right. It just couldn't be.
- Report to me immediately if anything happens. If you can't manage that, at least leave me a hint.
It had only been a few months since we made that promise, and he was already breaking it?
Even if I hadn't known Vermel for very long, we were still both from Earth and South Korea.
We both had our respective goals and needed each other. Under those circumstances, for him to tuck tail and run without even giving me a hint was no different from smashing me in the back of the head.
Considering Rosemary had entered the picture, it wasn't as if I couldn't make some allowances for why he did it, but still, there was a line.
Feeling uneasy, I took a sip from the tumbler on my desk. The luwak coffee with syrup tasted like shit, especially today.
"Ah.... That's a shame. I had really wanted to meet the elven exchange student at least once."
Rosemary, who had been fluttering her fan like a peacock waving its tail, let out a sigh of disappointment. Her eyes retained just the slightest hint of pretense.
"This makes no sense."
No matter how many times I went over it, I couldn't understand.
When we first agreed to cooperate, I had told him so clearly not to act alone.
I told him, time and time again, to contact me first if anything came up before he moved!
"Ah, and everyone. I have one more announcement today."
Thump.
Just as I was sorting through my tangled thoughts, Professor Herlein dropped a thick bundle of papers onto the lectern.
"Starting in the second semester, the professors will also need to pay attention to your career paths. This is that questionnaire. It's nothing too difficult, so fill it out and submit it by the end of the school day today."
As she said this, Herlein gestured to me, who was sitting in the front row.
"Aether, take these and pass them to the back."
I looked at the top questionnaire, and something was odd.
In the blanks for name and student number, something was already written in light pencil.
[Come to the Liberal Arts Building basement after class.]
I took the top sheet and passed the remainder backward. Rosemary was right behind me.
I quickly took out an eraser, wiped away the message, and wrote my name in the three-character field with a ballpoint pen.
While Herlein checked to make sure no one had missed getting a paper, the students who received theirs first immediately started scribbling away. Their intent was clear: since it was a bother, they'd just scribble it out and be done with it.
"Did we really have to do this kind of thing...?"
As if representing her classmates' feelings, Rosemary fanned her paper and grumbled.
"Of course, Your Ladyship."
Rote began to kindly explain the reason to Rosemary.
"Career exploration is important for everyone. It's about thinking through what you'll do for a living after graduating from the academy. The age where you could get by on nothing but the name of your school is over."
A similar trend existed in South Korea too.
The era of getting a good job based solely on a university's name value was over. Not that I had any idea what a good job even was anymore.
...I looked over the questionnaire.
The questionnaire was broadly divided into two questions.
[1. Desired occupation after graduation]
[2. Specific goals you wish to achieve]
They were only difficult questions to answer.
If I had received a similar question back on Earth, I would've written down the answers in a flash. No, that wasn't it. Back on Earth, I had more or less achieved those goals, so there wasn't anything left to write. To think I was dragged here after getting to that point—it made my blood boil. After everything I did to get to that position....
I looked around, pondering what kind of excuse to write.
"I'm done!"
Unexpectedly, the first to put down her pen was Frey. The other students, who had been puzzling over what to write, began to gather around her one by one.
"What did you write?"
"Hehe. I'm not telling."
Frey folded the paper and slipped it under her desk. The ominous feeling came the very next moment.
"Is it so embarrassing you can't even show a classmate?"
My intuition was never wrong. Rosemary smirked and prodded at Frey.
Having taken the bait, Frey growled like a wildcat and glared at Rosemary.
"Hey! Why are you picking a fight with me all of a sudden?"
"You did the same to me last week, didn't you? Is there a problem?"
"Hmph."
Without getting too angry, Frey whipped her head around.
She was reining in her temper more than I thought she would. She had a decent head on her shoulders. That was true; the best response was to just ignore her.
"Oh my. You turn your head just like a little kid. How cute."
"You...!"
But it seemed she was merciless when it came to those trigger buttons.
"I don't care if you are a Lady!"
"Calm down, Frey."
Just as Frey was about to launch herself like a sports car getting pedal to the metal, Rote lifted her up and set her back in her seat.
Still huffing with rage, Frey pulled her paper out again to show everyone.
To summarize the content, it was about how she wanted to make every race in the world equal.
Humans and elves, elves and beastmen, beastmen and the Gold-Eye Tribe, the Gold-Eye Tribe and spirits.
She had written that she wanted to contribute to a world where all races on the Arens Continent could live in harmony. It was an ambition that some would find admirable and others would find far too embarrassing to show anyone.
"Huh. I thought it would say, 'Please make me a little taller.'"
"Do you think I'm an idiot? I know how to draw the line!"
"No, no, of course not. *Hmph*. But isn't this a little too grandiose?"
Rosemary let out a snort and shrugged her shoulders.
"How could every race in the world be equal? We're all fundamentally different from birth."
"What does it matter if our races are different!"
"That's exactly why it matters."
"Why don't you just come out and say you don't like me?"
It was probably unjust for Frey.
The beastmen race she belonged to had faced discrimination since ancient times. Simply for having ears and a tail on an otherwise human body.
They were called barbaric, simply because they supposedly smelled like beasts. Like the Gold-Eye Tribe, they'd had their right to survive stripped away, with a significant number falling into slavery over hundreds of years. It was fortunate that at least after the elves began to take an interest in their basic rights, they could finally breathe a little.
Among them, the fox beastmen were likely worse off. Because they actually engaged in pillaging. Every time they clashed with humans, nothing but resentment was left behind.
But Frey had said she came to Tillet after swallowing those feelings.
For the revival of her race. For the civilization of the fox beastmen. To prove that everyone was the same intelligent being.
Although she hid her small fox ears with a large hat and ran around with that dwarf act or whatever, in truth, she was a soft-hearted fox who couldn't find it in herself to truly hate a single human.
"Listen closely, shorty. Just as there is an order of nobility and commoners in human society, there is also an order and hierarchy among races. Don't many people basically agree that beastmen are a degenerate race compared to humans?"
There was no worse thing to say than to tell a child, who retained her innocence like a young kid even after coming of age, to give up on her dreams.
"Hey. Are you listening?"
Frey clamped her mouth shut. The hand she was lifting to her shoulder to press her hat down trembled.
"So just erase that and set your sights on something a little more realis—."
Thwack!
"Oww!"
"That's enough, Lady Blanton."
Rosemary, who had gotten flicked on the forehead, grabbed her brow and glared at me.
No, it wasn't even a glare. It was a dumbfounded look unbefitting a Great Machine of the Nine Heavens.
"Sis...?"
Rosemary's eyes had become misty with tears before I knew it. I hadn't even flicked her that hard, yet she was pulling such a cheap act.
On the surface, she was a duke's daughter, and I was merely a student. Meaning, Rosemary could use this incident to bury me.
But she wouldn't be able to.
Because this 'hierarchy' wasn't about the superiority of races—it was about this.
"No matter how much of a Lady you are, I can't just let it slide when you tease a classmate."
"But, Sis.... Just look at history and you'll know. The races that become slaves and the races that keep slaves have always been separate. It's not strange at all!"
"In that case, the Gold-Eye Tribe must be an inferior race, since they've been worked like slaves for hundreds of years."
"......."
Just as Frey had done a moment ago, Rosemary shut her mouth.
Both Frey and Rosemary were in the same boat when it came to hiding their true identities.
The two of us glared at each other for a long time. Though to be more accurate, it was closer to me unilaterally staring her down.
"...Now, now, everyone, let's not get angry so early in the morning."
"She's right. Your Ladyship, you went too far. Please apologize to Frey."
Meri and Rote stepped forward to calm the shattered atmosphere in the classroom.
Still, perhaps because she had some kind of pride, this racist let her lips twitch without speaking. She was acting exactly like Prince Clion did last semester.
"Th-that...."
It seemed she was having trouble getting the words out.
This wouldn't do.
"Wait a moment. Let's take this a step further, just as you said, Your Ladyship. Would that mean dragons are the most superior race in the world?"
At the single word 'dragon,' Rosemary's complexion soured immediately.
Whatever she was thinking showed on her face for an instant. She was obviously thinking about the First Seat. I bet she was imagining herself getting smacked around by her with a control rod at the end of the semester. My previous statement had been practically aimed at that thought.
However, only Rosemary and I knew the full story behind that. Even Frey wouldn't dare make the connection.
"I'm, sorry for laughing at you...."
Rosemary bit down on her lip and bowed her head. It was a magnificent sight.
**
As she lowered her head to a filthy beastman, Rosemary gnashed her teeth.
'A friend, she says....'
It was so unfair. Who could have guessed her eldest sister would side with that cheeky little fox beastman brat instead of her?
She never would have dreamed that brat and her sister could be this close. Even with amnesia, this was too much. It made her head sting, feeling like a clueless little runt had stolen her sister away.
'I can't kill her easily now.'
She had been keeping an eye on the brat during dungeon practice, but this complicated matters by another layer.
After her insincere apology was over, Rosemary gripped her pen as if she might snap it. The career exploration questionnaire lay on her desk.
It asked two things.
1. What is your desired future career.
2. What do you specifically wish to do.
There was no way she could write down her real objective. So, she simply wrote that she wanted to become a violinist.
It wasn't like she hadn't brought about the destruction of a country or two. She had several templates like this prepared.
Then, a sudden curiosity arose.
'What did Sis write?'
Rosemary pressed against Aether's back and asked in a timid voice.
"Sis, are you mad at me?"
"......."
"...Sis?"
"No."
'She's basically saying she's fucking pissed.'
Whether she lost her memory or not, a person's true nature didn't change easily. When her sister was angry, she grew quiet and her words became few.
"Sis, what did you write in the career section?"
Rosemary asked.
Without a word, Aether passed the paper backward.