The Academy's Strongest Street-Stall Uncle (1)
Aside from the central plaza, everything beyond the second wall belonged to Arcadia Academy. A library fit for a great city stood there, along with schools where one could study magic or administration rather than the technical arts, and most of the shops, restaurants, and even the stores that sold daily necessities sat inside the Academy's fence. It was no exaggeration to say that a full third of the imperial capital, Belegrad, was Academy land.
The place had come to shoulder as much of the city's economy as the retail markets and the bustling commercial streets. Which raised a question.
Was it really all right for an academy like that to cut off the distribution of ingredients so high-handedly, entirely on its own?
"Of course it isn't all right. We're the ones who landed the hardtack contract because of it, but the situation is serious. Very serious."
"Ah. Figures."
It was that unmoored stretch of evening after dinner. I asked Calius about the protest I had seen at the Academy earlier that day, and this was the answer I got.
"Then again... it also feels like it was only a matter of time before it blew up. The provincial nobles had been going at it far too hard."
"Is this what you mentioned before?"
"It is. I kept it short last time, but there isn't much more to the story. One or two houses, maybe I could understand. But every family that commands a company trading in ingredients tried to grab the Academy and shake it. What else was the principal supposed to do?"
People who grab you and shake you are the frightening ones, after all. I didn't know the details, but the principal of an academy ought to be a person of considerable learning — and someone like that had gone and turned full villain. Even so, the aftermath was going to be no joke. The place had always bent under the breath of the nobility, and now she would also have to weather the fury of the Academy's own shopkeepers, people staring down the prospect of shuttering their businesses overnight.
I was going to meet this principal tomorrow regardless. Did she even mean to clean the mess up?
I asked Calius.
"Do you think this will last? I don't really know how the Academy's meals or the outside commercial district are set up, but pushing through like this seems like too much, even for a principal..."
"Hard to give you a straight answer. And for good reason. Someone who could stop a principal that angry... as far as I know, there isn't one."
"Sorry? What do you mean by that?"
A principal was just some elderly person in reading glasses, wasn't she? Peerless in connections, knowledge, and refinement, perhaps, but still only the highest decision-maker of a school. If the imperial household, the authorities, or nobles with real influence rolled up their sleeves, wouldn't that be the end of it?
I asked again, as if he'd said something absurd. Calius, however, looked at me as though I were the madman.
"You're a fine cook, but you're sorely lacking in everything else. The current principal of the Academy is the one who contributed greatly to ending the war — Archsage Grendel!"
"Whoa. The Archsage is the principal?"
"His disciple. Principal Ermia Belfast."
"What? That was one hell of a swerve."
I'd startled myself thinking a war-hero archmage was the principal, only for Calius to yank the wheel and drift clean off the road. So she was just the archmage's disciple, more or less? Was that really such a big deal?
When I still looked unconvinced, Calius let out a sigh.
"Haa... Archsage Grendel left a saying behind."
"Which was?"
"That if Ermia had been born even a little sooner, the war would never have begun at all."
He let the words hang a moment, as if to give them weight, then went on.
"Because she is the greatest mage in the history of the Empire. A talent the heavens themselves handed down."
"Uh..."
So even the Archsage, the man who had done so much to end the war of old, had acknowledged her. A walking tactical nuke on the scale of state power. A master-class archmage.
Master-class archmage sounded a little strange, admittedly. In any case, the point was that she was so overwhelmingly strong that even the authorities didn't dare lay a careless hand on her.
And yet... what kind of nobles tried to grab and shake her, knowing full well that the principal was a person like that?
Whatever the case, tomorrow's contract wasn't going to go smoothly. That was the feeling that settled over me on this night.
What a beautiful day.
The birds were singing, the flowers were blooming... On a day like this, it would have been lovely to visit Lake Kalian and take in the eternal snow.
Ermia Belfast, principal of Arcadia Academy, gazed out the window and sipped from her teacup. The tea she was enjoying, steeped from snow-fragrance herb, and the hardtack beside it — by coincidence, both were specialties of Silbaerin, in the north of the Empire.
Specialties. Hardly. Aside from the snow-fragrance herb, the north was a region scrambling just to eat, and yet they had produced food like this. She was truly glad she had gone to the market not long ago and, by luck, bought up the last of the stock.
Crunch—!
Ermia's snow-white hand picked up a piece of hardtack and brought it to her mouth. Unlike the surface, which snapped crisp, the inside was dry, crumbly, and sweet. Just when the moisture in her mouth was stolen away and everything turned chalky, a cup of snow-fragrance tea set the balance perfectly.
Honestly, she had signed the hardtack contract half out of spite. Looking back now, she thought the choice had been an excellent one.
"Kicking up a fuss over nothing. You're crossing the line. The line."
Arcadia Academy occupied a third of Belegrad and had planted itself as an economic stronghold of the capital. Because of that, merchant houses hoping to carve out a fat share for themselves had been trying to get a foot in the Academy's door since long ago. Their pretext was their own children, enrolled there. Not only ingredients, but daily goods, stationery — even houses in the service trades had reached into the Academy.
At first, it hadn't been bad. They had all sent gifts dressed up as the courtesy of asking that their family's children be looked after well, and they hadn't made unreasonable demands. But the Academy's goodwill became a right, and a few houses began moving to seize the Academy's market as they pleased.
The Academy's rules championed equal education. If the market fell into the monopoly of a particular house and the balance of influence broke with it, there was a real fear those rules would collapse as well. Pushed past her limit by behavior that crossed the line, Ermia had finally played her strongest card.
She cut off every last ingredient the noble merchant companies were distributing into the Academy.
That near-reckless act became a major topic, inside the Academy and out. Whether it did or didn't... Ermia no longer wanted to care.
Just... leave me alone to research magic...
A woman mad for magic, ready to leap into a furnace if it served the art. Beloved of mana from the moment she was born, she had, by the age of ten, already set most mages beneath her feet — a talent without peer in an age. That was also why Ermia Belfast had taken the post of Academy principal. As principal, she only had to stamp the approvals her subordinates brought up — click — and the conditions for researching magic were far more comfortable.
But once she actually became principal, the headaches were more than one or two. Complaints from parents pouring in day after day. Restless factions trying to grab the Academy and shake it. Even the outlandish incidents dreamed up by students in the full flush of youth. She was mad for magic, yes, but she had not forgotten the virtues a civilized person was meant to keep, and so she could not ignore such things. However vexing they were, they were students who had gathered to learn, and she herself was a person starving to learn something new.
It's about time they arrived.
Halfway through reviewing official documents and papers awaiting approval, Ermia glanced at the clock and tidied the principal's office.
Knock, knock, knock—
Before long, a knock sounded against the thick door.
"Principal. Guildmaster Calius and the chef have arrived."
It was the director of finance, the man who managed the Academy's budget and its contracts with outside vendors. His voice, worn thin with fatigue, announced the visitors.
"Come in."
Creeeak—
The moment Ermia's brief reply left her, the office door opened.
"Good day, Lady Ermia. I hope you'll look kindly on us today."
Calius, the guildmaster who had come for the contract, stepped in with an easy, affable greeting, and behind him followed a black-haired man she had never seen.
So this is the chef who made the hardtack.
Just as a mage's secret knowledge was passed down behind closed doors, so were a chef's recipes. This was a contract to buy, in bulk, hardtack made from his recipe, so he had every right to take part in person. Ermia instinctively took the measure of the black-haired chef.
Hm? His mana... it's alien.
She didn't know who had cast it, but a magical aegis lay over him, and for a human he had a constitution that spirits rarely failed to favor. Setting all of that aside, his mana was profoundly strange.
Ordinary people circulated the mana held in the soul, and that mana converted into magical power and manifested. The chef before her, however, had no mana dwelling in the soul itself. It wasn't that he lacked mana, either. How to put it... like water sliding off a waterproof cloak, the mana skated over the surface of his soul and refused to sink in. It was not a case unknown to academia, but it was an exceedingly rare one.
This... I'll have to set aside a day and look into it properly.
The contract came first, so there was nothing for it now, but as a mage she could not simply leave a case this interesting alone.
"How do you do. I'm Kang Jinwoo, the chef who made the hardtack. I look forward to working with you."
"Good to meet you. I'm Ermia Belfast, principal of Arcadia Academy. Everyone, sit. Let's talk."
They sat at the table in the principal's office and went back over the terms of the contract, one by one. It was a hardtack contract that both Calius and Ermia had seen often enough to be sick of it, so the exercise was nothing more than proof that the procedure had been properly carried out, lest anyone tell a different story later. The chef who had given his name as Kang Jinwoo seemed to have no great objection either, and watched the signing in silence.
And so they came to the clauses at the heart of the document — the delivery price of the hardtack, the term, and the volume.
"Lady Ermia. I'm terribly sorry, but might I step out for a moment and speak with this friend?"
"Hm? Go ahead."
Calius, who had been checking the contract without a hitch, suddenly asked to be excused. Then he went out into the corridor with the chef beside him, Kang Jinwoo. There must have been some point in the terms the two of them had not fully settled.
Come back quickly...
Whether they did or not, all Ermia wanted was to sign the thing and be comfortable again. Unlike the other merchant houses locked in turf wars and contests of nerve, this new hardtack was the exclusive product of the Silbaerin house in the Empire's north. To be precise, House Silbaerin had not made it, but it had come out of their territory.
Silbaerin was a northern region to begin with, standing apart on its own, and its duke, Kailan, was known throughout the Empire as a madman. Not a question of the noble faction or the imperial faction — simply a man who liked the north and liked to fight. A specialty from territory ruled by a house like that could be distributed as a staple meal without causing any political trouble. In every respect, it was food perfectly suited to an Academy where the fight over interests was only growing worse.
Creeeak—
Before long, Calius and Kang Jinwoo came back into the principal's office. If anything had changed, it was their faces. A merchant might be a master of the poker face, but he could not hide a flicker of microexpression.
The moment they stepped inside, the corner of Calius's mouth sank, and his lips pressed shut with a faint tension gathered in them. Kang Jinwoo, by contrast, wasn't even trying to hide it. The smile started in his eyebrows.
Looks like they settled it in the chef's favor.
Ermia thought as much, and waited for Calius to speak.
"I apologize for the rudeness, Lady Ermia. Might we... revise the terms a little? I'm truly sorry."
"It's fine. Five thousand servings of hardtack is no small amount, and I was the one who rushed the contract."
"Thank you. Then..."
"I'll explain, Mister Calius."
Calius had opened his mouth to go over the terms again, but Kang Jinwoo's words cut across him. The chef who had stayed quiet through the whole contract suddenly spoke, and Ermia's attention turned to him of its own accord. The director of finance, observing from behind, flinched and pricked up his ears.
"First, I'll lower the price of one bag of hardtack from eight coppers to six. Not just this month — for the entire term of the contract."
"Hm? That's to our benefit... but are you sure that's all right?"
"In exchange, I'd like to add a single condition."
Ermia Belfast, a genius mage without peer. The rabble who could not sense magical power never even got the chance to meet her. Those who could were crushed beneath her overwhelming power, and weighed every word against her mood. But the chef named Kang Jinwoo, standing before her eyes — this man with black hair, rare in the Empire — did not lose an ounce of nerve even with her in front of him. Rather, with phrases like I'll lower it for you and the entire term of the contract, he quietly made it plain that he held the upper hand, and was taking the advantage in the negotiation.
For the first time, interest kindled in the eyes of Ermia, who until then had been waiting only for the contract to be signed.
Then Kang Jinwoo went on.
"I want to open a street stall in the spot closest to the Academy's main building."
"Hoh... a street stall. I suppose I can ask why later. For how long?"
"Until I'm satisfied."
A remark that went past provocative and could well have sounded insolent.
It doesn't matter whether you're Grendel's disciple or the greatest mage in the history of the Empire. I will take what I want from this deal.
Ermia had never been pushed back in any contest, of any form, in her life. At the additional condition that scraped the pride of a woman undefeated through a hundred battles, the corner of her mouth drew a slow arc.
"Fine. Do as you like. Whether it goes well, I couldn't say."
"Haha, thank you for the permission. Then let's sign right away!"
"So it came to this after all..."
Joy, awkwardness, interest. The three who concluded the contract each felt something different.
The director of finance, watching that whirl of tangled feelings from a step away, pressed hard at the corner of his eye and thought.
Something else is about to happen...
The incident of Principal Ermia Belfast cutting off the distribution of ingredients. His thirty years on the job told him that a wave to match it was about to come rolling in again.