The Professor You Chose (6)
Nightly had barely stepped out of class when she was forced to a halt. The crowd ahead had bottled up in the doorway, and no one was going anywhere.
She rose on her tiptoes. Students were packed together up front, murmuring in a restless cluster. What was going on?
"The Combat Chief Professor is standing right up there!"
A few students shoved past Nightly's shoulder in a fluster of excitement and pushed forward. Combat Chief Professor — that meant Professor Dian?
Dian, the Combat Chief Professor who had appeared out of nowhere not long ago without so much as an introduction.
The first time he had shown himself to the student body was during the graduating class's comprehensive combat lesson. He had summoned the Magic Countermeasures professor and, in a spectacular debut, proceeded to rain attack magic down on the students — a stunt so outrageous it still hadn't quite left anyone's memory.
After Professor Dian's arrival, Combat Department classes had changed completely. Before, instructors had rarely bothered going outdoors at all, content to muddle through in a lecture hall watching a teaching assistant demonstrate the forms. Not anymore.
Every combat class was now held at the outdoor training grounds unless something extraordinary intervened, and students drilled in full kit under conditions designed to resemble an actual field. Which made the whole affair considerably more dangerous.
Injuries had poured in among a graduating class that hadn't seen a proper outdoor lesson in years. Everything from twisted ankles and bruises to gashes that bled freely.
A handful of students had raised objections. Professor Dian had not so much as blinked. He just kept repeating the same line: a drop of sweat in training is a bucket of blood in the field.
That didn't mean he was some brute shoving them forward with no thought at all.
The proof was the recent, highly publicized recruitment of a Holy Order priest. Professor Dian had gone to the Church and brought back an Oracle Priest, of all people, and the Academy had erupted.
An Oracle Priest. The protagonists of those half-legendary stories in which a god itself marked someone for the priesthood. Children who wielded holy power before they could walk, and who, at the peak of their gift, could work miracles as living proxies of the divine.
He had recruited a priest of that caliber not long after taking the post — at an Academy that had, once upon a time, sent a priest packing on the grounds that they didn't need one.
The young priestess, Maya, could wield holy power befitting an Oracle Priest. Students were still picking up all manner of minor injuries, but not a single one went untreated, and not a single scar remained. They were back in class the next day.
Around then, a curious rumor had begun circulating through the Academy. It concerned Professor Dian's true identity.
Baseless speculation ran in every direction. The last surviving member of the Valderant family. An exile from the Kingdom of Sadirian. A former instructor from Liantal. And so on.
The most preposterous theory of all was that he was the current Emperor's hidden son. And, being the most preposterous, it was also the one that passed through the most mouths.
The Empire had a rumor of that sort. That besides the princes and princesses currently acknowledged, the Emperor had one more son — a boy of such thoroughly rotten character that he had been locked away somewhere in the Imperial Palace.
A variant of the tale made him a bastard: a child born not of the Empress, not of a concubine, but of some third party of common blood. Imperial blood still ran in his veins, so they couldn't quite bring themselves to kill him, and had instead banished him to some far-off foreign land.
The Imperial Palace had never issued an official statement, apparently deeming the matter unworthy of comment, and so the story lingered as a kind of urban legend, circulating only among the public.
Perhaps that was why, whenever some exceptional figure appeared, people would start pinning the Secret Imperial Prince rumor onto him, grabbing at whatever scraps they could find.
The most recent example was Linus, Hero of the Continent. The moment he began drawing the public's attention, people decided he must be the Secret Imperial Prince.
Anyone who actually saw Linus realized at once how absurd the guess was.
Golden hair, blue eyes, a face and physique that looked carved from marble. A just, upright character, and genuine humility besides. Linus was not a man the Imperial Palace would have any reason to hide in shame. If anything, they would have put him forward as heir in broad daylight.
The Academy was now in a similar situation, and the subject this time was Dian. A course of conduct that looked, at first glance, like eccentricity — and yet one that had, in the end, begun to transform Combat Department instruction from the ground up.
The Academy had already sent a priest away once, and still he had extracted a priest from that famously proud Church. An Oracle Priest, no less.
He had beaten Nightly Toulouse — whom no one in the Academy dared to touch — with a wooden sword, and then exchanged cheerful greetings with the Duke himself when the man stormed in, furious enough to spit fire.
On top of that, a rumor was going around that Principal Kirlin had, in her own office, begged Professor Dian to please, please help her.
And the most important factor of all was a purely external one: Professor Dian was a remarkably handsome man.
He didn't have the silver hair that marked the imperial bloodline, but if he were a bastard of mixed parentage, the unkempt brown hair made a certain sense. Lively eyes, an easy smile that never quite left his face. And swordsmanship deranged enough to put Nightly on the floor in a handful of wooden-sword strikes.
All of it had mixed together, and Professor Dian was now the single greatest object of interest at the Academy. So it was hardly surprising that students would swarm the moment he made an unexpected appearance.
When would they get another chance to see the Combat Chief Professor of the hour up close, instead of from a distance? What student was going to just walk past?
"Chief Professor! Hello!"
"Yeah, yeah. Hello. Your skirt's too short, though. Fix it or it's a demerit."
"Chief Professor! You're so handsome!"
"Mm. I know."
"Chief Professor! Are you the Secret Imperial Prince?"
"If I were, you think I'd be grinding it out here?"
Professor Dian answered them one by one, then spotted Nightly and raised a hand.
"Nightly Toulouse. I need a word."
Every gaze in the hall swung toward her. The weight of that attention might have unsettled someone else. Nightly didn't so much as twitch an eyebrow. She met it with a look of pure arrogance.
"What is it?"
"Not something I want to say here. Come with me."
Professor Dian turned and slipped through the crowd. The students made disappointed noises in his wake.
"Chief Professor! Teach us swordsmanship next time!"
"Anyone ready to get their ass kicked, come on over."
"Can we visit your office?!"
"I've got snacks stashed in there, so no."
The students laughed and giggled, and Dian waved back with an easy, good-natured smile. He had been at the post barely a month, and in that time he had proven his ability and happened to be good-looking besides. His popularity was considerable.
Compared to Principal Kirlin, whom everyone quietly avoided, Professor Dian looked more like a principal than the principal did.
Nightly shoved through the students blocking her path and followed him.
I opened the office door to find Olicia already in the middle of dusting.
"Olicia. Two cups of something sweet. I've got a student here for a talk."
"Got it, Dian."
Olicia bustled off, cups clinking as she set about making tea. Nightly, who had followed me in, stared at her openly.
"You keep a little girl as an attendant, I see."
"Not an attendant. A maid. Don't you have plenty of those at your house?"
"We do, but we don't put a child that young to work. Did you acquire her through a slave trader?"
"No, I did not."
I was about to answer properly when Olicia cut in first.
"Dian would never do something like human trafficking! Do you have any idea what an incredible person he is? He might act like a slacker, but to me he's more of a hero than Sir Linus!"
Olicia poured it out in a storm. Nightly blinked, startled.
"Don't you ever talk about Dian like he's some kind of villain again!"
Nightly's mouth opened and closed a few times before she managed to get the words out.
"What a... spirited personality."
"All right, that's enough. Olicia, bring the tea. Nightly, sit."
Olicia was still fuming, huffing as she clattered through the tea service. Nightly glanced at her several times as she took her seat.
"Thanks. You can head back to the residence now."
The moment Olicia set the cups down in front of us with two sharp taps, I steered her toward the door by the shoulders.
"And let's have that for dinner tonight. You know, the one. Gambas with shrimp, bread for dipping."
"All right, Dian. Don't be too late getting home."
Once Olicia was gone, Nightly looked at the closed door.
"Does your maid reside in the faculty office?"
"No. We live over in the faculty residence. She just comes by now and then to clean."
"I see. Even so, I think you ought to train your servants properly."
I gave her a look. Nightly, teacup in hand, elaborated.
"Noble houses educate their staff thoroughly in speech and conduct. Talking back to a guest like that is simply not done."
"I'm not a noble, so it's fine. I don't do a lot of receiving guests anyway. She just lives with me and earns her keep."
"Is that so. Then how did you come to take her in?"
I couldn't imagine why she wanted to know, but it seemed like decent enough icebreaking, so I told her Olicia's story.
Olicia was a war orphan. Fleeing with other refugees, she had been tricked by a captain who promised to take them somewhere safe, put on a ship, and handed over to a slave trader.
The slave ship carrying her had happened to dock at Brunswell. Olicia had escaped, been recaptured, and was being beaten in the middle of the street when I pulled her out of it.
That was why she was so fiercely devoted to me, and why she couldn't stand hearing anyone speak ill of me. Nightly had made it sound as though I were a slaver exploiting a minor, and that had slammed the panic button.
Not that Nightly had meant it that way, of course.
"So what you're saying, Professor, is that you had no need of a servant at all, and purchased a young girl purely out of pity."
"I did need one, actually. I really hate housework."
"In that case, it would have been more sensible to hire a trained professional."
"Well... I don't know. Figured I could just teach her as we went?"
"Don't tell me young girls are simply your preference—"
"If Olicia had heard that, she might have killed you on the spot."
"Hah."
Nightly snorted and lifted her teacup. That put an end to the conversation, and for a while we sat in silence, taking a few sips of tea.
Watching her drink, I recalled the contents of her student file, which I had looked up before calling her in.
Nightly Toulouse. Daughter of the Toulouse ducal house, enrolled at the Academy of her own will. Outstanding in every subject, currently serving as class president of the graduating class.
Notable entries included several withdrawal demands from the Duke, all of which Nightly had refused.
Academy regulations made it impossible for outside parties to pull a student out unless the student herself decided to leave, or there were serious grounds for expulsion.
But the Duke of Toulouse was a high noble whose name carried real weight in the Empire. When a parent of that stature threw a tantrum, how many schools could actually hold the line?
The Special Operations Academy, however, was not some private institution. It was managed by the Second Princess, head of the Post-War Power Faction. The situation was entirely different.
They might not be able to pull a "a mere duke" on him, but they could certainly cite the regulations and send him packing.
And then there was one highly unusual record that had caught my eye.
Conducts personal combat drills at the outdoor training grounds during free periods and individual rest time.
I had asked the other professors. Nightly, dissatisfied with the combat curriculum Principal Kirlin had butchered into a theory-heavy mess, had been practicing on her own.
That was why, when I had dropped into the armed combat class without warning and ordered a sparring match, Nightly had flattened every other student in the room.
"All right, Nightly. I've heard the whole story. You asked the Principal to assign me to you exclusively?"
"That's right."
Nightly set down her teacup and spoke.
"I did. You'll do it, of course?"
Oh. Look at this.
"And why would you think that?"
"I currently have the highest grades in the Academy. And I am the daughter of an imperial ducal house. Taking on a student like me would surely benefit your career as well, Professor."
Her file had an additional note: As befits a scion of a great house, considerably arrogant and self-righteous. Turns out that was accurate.
"Well, fine. It's true your grades are excellent, and it's true you're a duke's daughter. But one of those things isn't true."
"Which?"
"Babysitting the Academy's top student and a duke's daughter isn't going to do a thing for my career."
"...Excuse me?"
"If anything, it'd water down the average."
"I beg your pardon...?"
The corner of Nightly's eye twitched.
