Fellow Alchemists
A few days had passed.
I had received far more instruction from Sayulcheon than I had originally planned, and thanks to that, even as an alchemist I had reached a point where I could hold my own in close combat under most circumstances.
And so, at present—
Apparently the Guardian of Balance disliked polishing only one side of a person, because the time had finally come to grind my mind instead.
"Ugh. I'm dying."
A mountain of papers loomed before my eyes. Every last sheet was an exam. The answer sheets the cadets had submitted for the midterm written tests that had just ended were stacked so high they seemed to have forgotten the ceiling even existed. It wasn't only the first-years either; the upperclassmen's papers were mixed in, and the sheer volume was no joke.
"Harder than you expected, right?"
"Yeah… I'm genuinely dying."
I exhaled a long sigh and collapsed face-first onto the desk. Charlotte sauntered over with a sly little grin. I had started the grading so boldly, only to fall apart this spectacularly—she clearly found the sight hilarious.
It wasn't physical exhaustion. I was sitting all day, moving nothing but my wrist joints, fingers, and the muscles around my eyes. The work itself wasn't hard. It was just unspeakably, soul-crushingly boring. No matter how many sheets I flipped, new answer sheets kept appearing, and the mountain of paper somehow never shrank. When a simple repetitive task stretches on without end, the mental agony is real.
"You've been doing all this alone until now?"
"Yes. There was never anyone to help."
Charlotte hummed a little tune under her breath, a smile still fixed on her lips. That smile had not faded once since the grading began. At first I couldn't understand what she found so delightful, but now I finally got it. She had been shouldering every last bit of this work by herself, and now a new pair of hands had arrived—highly competent ones, no less. Unless you were a severe workaholic who derived pure joy from the act of labor itself, of course you'd be glad. You'd practically want to throw a welcome party. Even I was already wishing someone else would show up to help.
"Still, thanks to you, Instructor Ryu, I can finally breathe this year. There's no other alchemy instructor, and there wasn't even a teaching assistant I could dump the grading on."
Well, of course—it's an unpopular subject. The words rose all the way to my throat, but I swallowed them. I didn't have the heart to throw cold water on Charlotte's bright smile. There's a saying about not spitting in a smiling face, after all. Slightly different context, same principle. She was someone who rarely smiled because of everything she had been through; if she was smiling now, I wanted her to enjoy that happiness for as long as possible.
Scratch, scratch.
How long did we sit there after that, pens rasping across paper? Eventually Charlotte broke the silence that had seemed like it would never end.
"A few days ago, I had dinner with Instructor Sayulcheon."
My pen stopped mid-stroke. My gaze, which had been boring into the answer sheet, lifted along with my head and settled on Charlotte. Even after I stopped writing, though, the scratching sound didn't cease—because Charlotte was still moving her pen.
"I always thought she was completely indifferent no matter the situation, public or private… but she was surprisingly attentive."
Whether she didn't want me to see her expression or not, she kept her head bowed over the papers and continued in a matter-of-fact tone.
"Whether I was having any trouble with instructor work, what I usually do after hours… things like that."
Charlotte's words kept coming without pause. I wondered if I should respond somehow, but decided it was better to simply listen quietly for now. Her flat delivery almost made it sound like a complaint. At the same time the pitch of her voice was oddly high, almost like she was bragging, and without her face to read I couldn't quite pin down what she was feeling.
"Honestly… it was strange."
The scratching stopped. The pen no longer traced complex curves; instead it jerked and rattled in uneven bursts. Charlotte's hand was trembling, and the pen simply followed.
"I never imagined she paid that much attention to me."
Charlotte still didn't understand pure goodwill and encouragement that expected nothing in return. That was exactly why Sayulcheon's concern and care had shaken her so deeply. Satisfied by that knowledge, I lowered my head again. Eyes back on the answer sheet, I resumed scribbling with my pen, allowing myself a small smile at an angle she couldn't see.
Charlotte was no longer someone who would simply sway and collapse. There were people beside her now who would stop that from happening, and she herself had finally realized it. I was quietly pleased that things had turned out exactly as intended—
"Thank you for looking out for me, Instructor Ryu Seojun."
Charlotte's sudden expression of gratitude hit me like a surprise attack. Startled, I jerked my head up on pure reflex. Whether she had predicted the motion or not, the moment I looked up our eyes met. Only moments earlier she had been staring down at the papers; now she was looking straight through me.
How…?
While I sat there opening and closing my mouth uselessly, Charlotte let out a soft, amused laugh at the sight of me.
"Actually, there are a lot of things I'm curious about too."
Her voice gentled, as if soothing someone still reeling from shock.
"And among the questions I'd like to ask… there are quite a few where I already have a pretty good idea of the answer."
As she spoke she lowered her gaze again. The pen that had paused resumed its diligent scratching, raining marks of rain and snow across the answer sheet.
"The disappearance of James Baker, who used to be my teaching assistant… and the fact that lately I've been sensing his mana coming from your body, Instructor Ryu. That would be one of them."
I gave a bitter smile. From the moment I had transmuted my own body, I had never truly believed I could keep it hidden from Charlotte. Like it or not, James was someone she had observed up close for a long time. Not long after he vanished, I had started showing up for work with his mana sealed inside me. She might not have said anything until now, but she would have figured it out at a glance.
"You're planning to stand against my father, aren't you?"
"…You figured that much out?"
"I don't just sit in a corner doing research all day, you know."
Her expression as she said it wasn't particularly bright.
"To be honest… it's a little embarrassing."
Charlotte lifted her head slightly and offered a shy smile—bright, yet laced with a small, private worry. Before I could comment on it, she pressed on.
"When you first arrived, Instructor Ryu, I was terribly worried."
"…"
"I kept thinking maybe my efforts weren't enough, my results too meager… and that was why the academy had gone looking for a new instructor."
"…That wasn't it at all."
"I know that now. I'm only saying that's how it felt back then."
Because of the environment she had grown up in, Charlotte was constantly trying to prove her own worth. Through near-obsessive effort she produced result after result, hoping the other person would need her. She had never been taught any other way of relating to people. It wasn't because of her nature—it was because her parents had deliberately taught her only that method.
"At dinner, Instructor Sayulcheon's mouth spoke only the truth, and her eyes reflected only transparent facts."
Well, of course. Sayulcheon was not the sort of person who would dress up lies for a colleague.
"All this time Instructor Sayulcheon had recognized me… but she never bothered to show it, so I never knew."
Which was exactly why I had prodded Sayulcheon. I had pointed out that what she considered "obvious" was not obvious at all, and steered her into having an honest conversation with Charlotte.
"I think the reason Instructor Sayulcheon suddenly changed… is because you arranged it, Instructor Ryu."
"…"
"Oh? You're not denying it?"
What would be the point of denying it? Once she had gotten that far, shaking my head would just look like stubbornness.
"Honestly, Instructor Charlotte looks much better now."
"Pardon?"
So this time I was the one who spoke.
"Better than when you always looked so anxious, as if something were chasing you, swaying unsteadily on the edge. This is much better."
It was the pure, unvarnished truth. The Charlotte of the past—pushed around by the Hohenheim family—had never sat well with me, either as a person or as an alchemist. She was no longer being jerked around by others. She had reclaimed her place as the protagonist of her own life and thrown off the family cage that had bound her for so long. That knowledge alone was enough to make me smile.
"Th-then… why did you go that far for me, Instructor Ryu?"
Charlotte asked while avoiding my eyes. The uncharacteristic stammer was a little strange, but the question itself wasn't hard to answer.
"There's no complicated reason."
"Huh?"
Charlotte tilted her head as if she couldn't believe what she was hearing. Honestly, though, the reason I had helped her really was that simple—so simple you could call me a soft-hearted fool and it wouldn't be enough.
"We're fellow alchemists, aren't we?"
From the moment I first encountered this world as a game until the day I began living in it for real—that was the reason I had always held a special regard for the person named Charlotte.
"It's already an unpopular profession. Same alchemists ought to look out for each other."
Whether she believed me or not, at least I had spoken the truth I was capable of conveying. Charlotte muttered the word "alchemist" under her breath several times, then abruptly dropped her head low.
Well, I killed the mood.
I should have chosen my answer more carefully. The regret came late, but there was no putting spilled water back in the cup.
Until the grading was finally finished, the room was filled with nothing but an awkward atmosphere and the soft scratching of ballpoint pens.