Forced Training (3)
Forced Training (3)
Spring my ass.
True to its name, Winterfield was damnably cold.
Of course, just because it was called Winterfield didn't mean it was buried in snow 365 days a year. It was still part of the Empire's territory, and unless you went further north to the Riklant Autonomous State, the place did technically have spring and summer.
But spring there was merely less cold than winter, and summer was merely cool enough to rival autumn elsewhere.
Paradoxically, that made it quite famous among nobles as a pleasant summer retreat. They'd come during the stifling midsummer heat to enjoy the coolness and then leave. Down at the foot of the mountains, around the cities where people lived, the snow melted come spring, but the mountain peaks were always snow-capped, making for splendid scenery, or at least scenery that was hard to find anywhere else in the Empire.
Out in the Riklant Autonomous State, the warlords, the autonomous government, and Imperial soldiers were tangled up fighting one another, but that was far removed from the heart of the territory. Winterfield was a vast place, and the core of the domain lay in the comparatively warmer southern part.
"C-cold... It's May, so is it still winter here?"
People said the snow melted in spring, but that didn't mean it stopped snowing. And when it snowed, it didn't melt right away. Then again, people said that even in a place like Gangwon Province, during a particularly bitter year, snow could fall as late as May.
"It's Winterfield. To the locals it might feel different, but to outsiders it's a place that's winter all year round."
Leo said that to Claire, who was shivering.
"Well, that doesn't mean it's literally only winter."
At those words, which followed right on the heels of Leo's, Leo flinched.
"It does have summer in its own way. Though compared to the imperial capital, it's on the cool side. Honestly, by my standards, having been born and raised here, the imperial capital is excessively hot."
"... We've only just gotten to spring there, ma'am?"
"Which is exactly why I'm calling it hot. In a place where it doesn't even snow once in spring."
"...."
At Jennifer's remark, not only Leo and Claire but every noble student gathered here was left at a loss for words.
"Honestly, I do worry about how I'll cope when summer arrives... but well, it'll be fine. There's a summer break, after all."
It wouldn't be all that fine.
Jennifer would start sweating profusely before full summer even arrived.
And she'd go around wearing visibly revealing clothes, making her a prime 'character easy to make figurines of' in various ways.
Not that this game produced figurines all that often, admittedly. Which was a bit of a shame.
In the game, all you got were the cold-weather setting and the corresponding reactions—clothing could be changed arbitrarily. Of course, if I didn't manually choose something else, the characters appeared in their winter gear plus the same kind of coat I was wearing, but that didn't mean you couldn't put them in the DLC outfits.
Strangely, making other characters wander around this area in swimsuits felt intensely awkward, but with Jennifer it didn't. She was, after all, the character who'd been going around saying she was hot from early summer onward back in the imperial capital.
"All right, is everyone here?"
Whatever the season in Winterfield, it was both a vastly expansive domain within the Empire and a strategically crucial location, so a considerable number of people besides the noble A-Class were disembarking from the train.
Men in suits who appeared to be businessmen were moving briskly while checking pocket watches, and a few soldiers in officer's uniforms were walking by in the distance. There were also some enlisted men who looked like they were returning from leave. No one was looking this way. Jennifer was in civilian clothes rather than her usual officer's uniform, so no one came to salute.
They might have saluted if they'd seen her face, but Jennifer was technically a retired soldier. Strictly speaking, that meant she wasn't someone who should be receiving salutes.
That was probably why she'd deliberately worn civilian clothes and tied her hair back.
"Yes, everyone's here."
Alice, who had at some point taken on the role of class representative, answered.
Jennifer swept her gaze over us once.
For a homeroom teacher with a military background, she didn't order us to line up in perfect rows or anything like that. She was, in a different way from our homeroom teacher Carolyn Northwood, a free-spirited person.
"Before coming here, I was asked by Carolyn to take good care of you all."
Jennifer, having looked us over, slowly began.
"I don't particularly like people who are high-ranking nobles, but Carolyn is different. You've probably realized this yourselves by now, but setting nobility aside, there aren't many people out there as genuinely good as she is."
At Jennifer's words, I saw heads nodding here and there.
There wasn't a student alive who could dislike a teacher who was pretty, kind, and devoted to her students.
"So, I'd rather not cause trouble for Carolyn. If any of you misbehave or do something dangerous, I will discipline you severely. I can't send students back injured to their own supervising teacher."
And then, after looking us over once more, she continued.
"In Winterfield, there are many places far too dangerous for first-time visitors to go. I'll gather you all at the lodging shortly to explain the details more thoroughly in earnest. First, however..."
Jennifer pulled out a pocket watch and checked it.
"You have about an hour, so you're free to wander around in the meantime. This area is a little removed from the heart of the domain, but it's not exactly a quiet backwater either, so it's a good chance to get a feel for Winterfield. There are plenty of soldiers, so public order is decent."
And as she tucked the pocket watch back inside her coat, she said,
"All right, dismissed!"
That was how Jennifer put it.
As if to prove she meant every word, Jennifer left us with just that single command of 'Dismissed,' then immediately turned on her heel and strode off somewhere else.
Even the students, who'd been a little excited about their first field practicum, hadn't expected this; they began to murmur among themselves.
"Sylvia."
And among those murmuring students was Alice.
Unlike usual, Alice was fully kitted out in her coat as well. The uniform underneath the coat still felt more or less like a school uniform, but the coat itself looked so genuinely like a military-issue greatcoat that you could easily mistake her for an officer cadet at a glance. Well, the academy did also function partly as a military school.
However, Alice had removed the fur trim from the collar, citing discomfort.
"Shall we grab a meal together? It's lunchtime."
"Indeed, it is an opportune time to finish a meal."
At Alice's suggestion, Charlotte cut in.
"A meal, you said?"
"Yeah. We haven't eaten yet."
"...."
Hm.
The truth was, while Jennifer was acting as though she were merely letting the students run free, there was an element of intent for us to investigate the area to some degree.
And the sort of 'meal' most noble students were envisioning didn't exist here. This wasn't a place nobles frequented.
It was a place where public order wasn't especially bad, but it wasn't affluent either.
For the most part, the eateries here did business by selling meals to soldiers.
In true Northern fashion, the food was coarse and under-seasoned.
And wasn't the Empire itself loosely inspired by that meme-ified version of Britain? To the point that the northern cuisine, combining the game's Northern Empire setting with that internet-famous concept of British cooking, was, frankly, the sort of food I wasn't even sure nobles could properly stomach.
"Oh, really? Then let's eat together!"
"Yeah, if we're going to eat anyway, it'll be easier to gather up and eat all together."
Leo and Claire approached Alice and Charlotte, who were talking.
"Sounds good."
Then someone else abruptly inserted himself into our group.
"I didn't have anyone to eat with anyway. Lottie's in another class, after all."
It was Jake Lindbergh.
Supposedly Lottie had entered the academy in the role of Jake's maidservant, but in the end, she was in a different class. She was a commoner, after all.
And in name, all students at this school were equal. No student was permitted to retain a manservant or a maid, much less for that person to be a fellow student. In name, Jake and Lottie were classmates of equal standing.
"Lindbergh?"
Alice looked at Jake with a slightly surprised expression. Charlotte, watching his carefree demeanor, seemed somewhat displeased.
"It's fine, isn't it, Sylvia?"
"Sylvia?"
Alice's eyes widened further.
"We talked a while back and got friendly."
At Jake's words, Alice looked at me with an expression bordering on shock.
Actually, it wasn't just Alice. All the children nearby were giving me the same look.
... Even I had to admit, if they'd thought of me as the girl who'd always been sitting quietly in the corner of the classroom without much to say, and then they suddenly saw me with a blond, tanned delinquent whose attitude was outrageously flippant, they'd have been pretty startled.
But that wasn't how it was.
"Huh? What?"
When I stared at him, Jake gave a slight shrug and said,
"Aren't we close?"
No, we'd spoken for the first time in two weeks just now.
And what we'd talked about two weeks ago wasn't really a proper conversation either—Jake had just unilaterally greeted me.
So... if I had to label it, wouldn't it be more accurate to say we were just acquaintances who knew each other by face?
"Sylvia."
Charlotte quietly came up to me while I was agonizing over how on earth to respond.
She took my arm and tugged it gently as she spoke.
"You probably let it pass because you know little of men, but that kind of man is exactly the sort you mustn't get close to. Here, this way."
No, I meant, we weren't close. He was just acting like he knew me on his own.
I glanced past Jake.
I could see a few girls looking this way and fidgeting anxiously.
... Ah, right.
Jake had fled here to escape the swarm of girls buzzing around him. The girls here were all nothing but the highest-ranked people in the country.
Not only were they highly ranked, but they were also incredibly beautiful.
So if he came over here, the other girls would naturally compare themselves to us and peel away. That was obvious.
"...."
Charlotte had clashed with Jake early on. Well, strictly speaking, it was less that they clashed with each other and more that Charlotte unilaterally disliked Jake's un-noble-like frivolous attitude. She especially detested that he went around with tanned skin.
However, her attitude shifted considerably later on, once she learned whom Jake truly loved. She still recoiled from his flippant manner, but her one-sided, blatant disapproval largely vanished. She'd come to understand why he had no choice but to carry himself with that sort of air.
"Ah, I see."
But in contrast to Charlotte's demeanor, Alice seemed to have figured it out at once from my expression.
That I wasn't particularly close to Jake, and that he was the one talking at me one-sidedly. Had a hint of annoyance leaked onto my face?
Other people might not have noticed, but Alice would have.
"If you're just unilaterally approaching Sylvia, I'd like to step in a little."
Alice slipped into the gap Charlotte had opened between me and Jake and looked him squarely in the eye.
"Sylvia isn't an easy girl, the way you seem to think."
"...."
Just what sort of image did I have among these people?
I'd even gone so far as turning back time to pile up what I thought was a fairly perfect image—
—the moment that thought crossed my mind, I happened to meet the eyes of Mia Crowfield, who had at some point wordlessly blended into our group.
"...."
"...."
Hm, well, not perfectly, I supposed.
Let's call it 'nearly perfect,' then.
Still, except for one person, everyone else had no idea at all.