Saddle Up, Knightly (3)
After the night infiltration class, things were surprisingly quiet.
Knightly had expected the student body to whisper about how she hadn't even made it onto Academy grounds—how she'd passed out and been hauled off to the infirmary. Instead they treated her exactly as they always had: some idolized her, some feared her, and some despised her behind her back.
That was entirely thanks to Priestess Maya and Professor Dian.
Maya, tight-lipped as ever, told no one what had happened in the infirmary. Dian, for his part, spread a rumor anyone could believe: Knightly was simply so far ahead of the others that she'd been given a separate advanced course.
And so Knightly was able to go on with Academy life as if nothing had changed. But not everything could stay the same.
"Professor. You did that on purpose to mess with me, didn't you."
That night in the infirmary, once the holy priestess's treatment had brought her back to her senses, Knightly confronted Professor Dian.
"You sent me somewhere completely ridiculous just to take me down a peg."
"You really think I'd pull something like that? If that was the idea, there are plenty of easier ways."
"Then why on earth did you do it?"
"Because that's everyday life for the agents you so desperately want to become."
Dian smiled faintly as he told her what field operatives actually did. Knightly's expression shifted by the second as she listened—from interest and curiosity straight into shock and horror.
"You mean they... they actually do things like that...?"
"I can't get into specifics, but yes. And that's just a standard assignment. The 'special ops' agents you're talking about have it even worse."
"How could they possibly... Even special ops agents are still just people. They're not polymorphed dragons..."
"Haha!"
Professor Dian's loud laugh made Priestess Maya look up from the patient log she was writing.
"Please maintain silence in the infirmary."
"Sorry, Priestess."
Dian dipped his head slightly toward Maya, then turned back to Knightly with a suppressed, low chuckle.
"You're right—they're just people. And if you take my instruction, you'll be able to do it too. Assuming you've actually got the will for it. And today really was a kind of test, to see whether you'd made up your mind."
Knightly couldn't answer right away. She closed her mouth.
The steep terrain she'd crawled up by moonlight, only to fall. Branches slapping her across the face. The charcoal face paint long since washed away by pouring sweat. Her thigh muscles had felt ready to burst, and the metallic taste of blood had risen in her throat with every gasping breath.
It was a level of physical agony and mental exhaustion she had never once experienced in her entire life.
And I'm supposed to do this once a week? Can I... actually do this...?
Scratch, scratch. The sound of Maya writing in the patient log seemed unusually loud. Knightly bit her lip.
I have to. I've come too far to back out now.
I have to become a field agent, no matter what. If I don't, Father will use every ounce of his power to drag me back to the family. I already ran away once. Running a second time would be impossible—I'd end up in a political marriage I never wanted. I can't let that happen.
And more than anything, seeing Professor Dian's smile had ignited a strange competitive fire in her.
Knightly had never once been beneath anyone else. Everyone had grovelled to stay in her good graces. Not a single person had ever gone against her wishes. She'd assumed Professor Dian would be the same—a pale, unassuming man who went around grinning at everything. She'd thought she could twist him around her finger the way she always had with other people.
That had been a colossal mistake.
She'd been certain she'd gotten a hold of him. Instead, she was the one who'd been had. There was an invisible, solid wall around Professor Dian, and the sheer impossibility of climbing over it left her feeling helpless. It was a wretched, humiliating feeling she had never experienced before, and it made her furious.
She wanted to wipe that smile off that handsome professor's face. She wanted to make him scramble and fawn over her the way everyone else always had.
I want to surpass that man and crush him underfoot!!
Which meant she needed to throw herself into those private lessons—and yet that man was out there cracking jokes with the students. How pathetic!
This is a failure to fulfill the contract. I should file a formal complaint.
"Ugh...!"
Knightly had been striding toward Dian when a cluster of students who'd appeared from somewhere shoved her aside, and she nearly went down.
"Hey! Watch where you're going!"
But the students didn't even seem to notice she was there, their eyes locked on Dian.
"Move! Let me through!"
She tried to squeeze into the gap, but one person forcing her way through that crowd was impossible. Instead, someone's elbow caught her, and she staggered and bounced right back out.
Knightly's eyes flared with disbelief—then she spun on her heel.
Getting to Dian right now looks impossible. I'll just go to his office later.
With Kazadar, the dwarf Combat Equipment Professor, inserting himself into the work in what could generously be called "supervision," construction inside the commercial district tore ahead at a staggering pace. In the end, the job was finished in less than a week, and shops began moving in one after another.
A salon, a bakery, a bathhouse, a general store, any number of restaurants—and, most important of all, a dessert café.
They hadn't filled both of the buildings designated for the commercial district yet, but that could come in time. Some of the floors were set aside as practical workshops for the Theory Department: shops selling school supplies and materials needed for exercises, to be managed by one of the Theory professors, with students rotating through after hours in groups to run the counters themselves.
And so the first phase of the commercial district was complete, and they even held a proper ceremony for it.
A dais had been set up in the road between the two commercial buildings, which faced each other across the way. With the entire faculty, the student body, and the newly arrived shopkeepers all gathered, Principal Kirlin stepped up onto the platform and cleared her throat.
"Um, ah... Good day. I am Principal Kirlin Nemera."
Magic Countermeasure Professor Orendi amplified her voice with a spell, and it rolled out over more than a thousand people.
"Today is the day a commercial district has come to our Special Operations Academy for the first time. Um, I hope this change will make your school lives all the richer. And, um..."
Principal Kirlin hesitated, then pointed at me, standing right in front of the dais.
Oh, Principal. Please don't.
"Combat Chief Professor Dian here has made a particularly great contribution. If it weren't for Professor Dian..."
"Waaaaaah!!"
The students erupted in cheers before Principal Kirlin could even finish. She climbed down from the dais with an awkward little smile, and Orendi flourished his hands in a dazzling sweep, bursting firework magic over the heads of the crowd.
"Dian! Dian! Dian!"
Bang— bang— As brilliantly colored magical sparks rained down and the students chanted my name, I had no choice but to wave back at them.
"Anyone watching would think the Chief Professor was the Principal. Oh my, slip of the tongue."
Infiltration Professor Lina covered her mouth, glancing sidelong at Kirlin off in the distance.
"All right. Since we're celebrating, it's on me today. Combat Department, all of you, assemble at the dessert café!"
"Yahoo! This is awesome!"
At my announcement, the Combat Department professors and even the junior teaching assistants lit up and charged for the dessert café in what could only loosely be called an advance.
"Professor! Professor Dian! Wait a moment!"
Someone called after me urgently from behind. I started to turn around, but never got the chance.
"Let's go already! Brog wants mango cake!"
Brog, the orc Unarmed Combat Professor, was shoving me relentlessly forward. Whoever it was, if it was urgent they'd come find me later.
"Shall we try the café as well, Chief Professor?"
"That sounds lovely."
When one of the Theory Department professors asked, Professor Ismera smiled with her eyes.
"I actually stopped by for a look a moment ago, and the desserts in the display case were so pretty and appetizing that even a vegetarian like myself found my mouth watering."
"Ah, haha... perhaps we'd better not..."
"Professor! Professor Dian! Wait a moment!"
The instant the ceremony ended, Knightly shoved through the crowd, shouting after Professor Dian. She meant to request a meeting. Getting a little popular was no excuse to get cocky—he needed to get on with the private lessons. She fully intended to protest, hard, that this was a breach of contract.
But Professor Dian vanished from her sight, propelled along by the massive Brog shoving him from behind.
"No! Stop!"
Jostled this way and that by the crowd, Knightly kept pushing forward. Ever since construction on the commercial district had begun, she hadn't had a proper chance to see Professor Dian at all. He was always talking with students or poking around the construction site sticking his nose in, never sitting still in his office.
That relentlessly outgoing, sociable man was never alone for a single moment, so Knightly had started to say something more than once and given up. The private lessons were a secret between the two of them; a third party couldn't be allowed to overhear. That was why she'd meant to catch him on his way back the moment the ceremony ended and at least lock down an appointment...!
After somehow forcing her way through the people, Knightly had no choice but to stop.
Professor Dian was sitting at an open-air table in front of the bustling dessert café, together with the other professors and the Combat Department teaching assistants. Knightly watched him laughing and chatting for a moment, then made up her mind and strode forward.
"Excuse me, Professor Di—"
"Chief Professor! What would you like to drink?"
"Ah, I'll go look at the menu and pick it out myself!"
Just as Knightly drew close enough to open her mouth, Dian stood up and went inside the café. She tried to follow him in, but Brog the orc professor chose that exact moment to stand up as well, completely blocking the way. And then, to make a bad situation worse, the bell signaling the start of class began to ring. Knightly bit her lip and turned around.
We're in the same Academy—why is it this hard to get a word in with him?! Does that man never get tired? How does he keep that up all day? He's insane.
Fuming, Knightly was heading for the lecture halls when a brilliant idea struck her, and she stopped in her tracks.
That's right... If he's busy during the day... I just have to meet him after hours, don't I?
Why didn't I think of that until now...?
Late that night, a single student slipped out of the dormitory wrapped in a cloak. Hood pulled down, she glanced around, then hurried into the shadow of a building. She checked her surroundings again, then moved to the next building's shadow, and the next after that.
Crossing the grounds like stepping-stones, the student arrived at the faculty residential quarter on the Academy's southern side—a little village within the Academy itself, lined with a few dormitory halls and houses for professors and married staff.
Crouched beneath a signpost at the entrance to the quarter, Knightly took her bearings, then ducked low and ran.
Using her authority as class president of Graduating Class One, she had already tracked down the location of Professor Dian's house through various channels. It was probably that two-story detached house over there.
On her way, Knightly found herself worrying that Dian might have invited the other professors over for a barbecue in the garden. Fortunately, no such racket could be heard from Dian's house—or anywhere else in the quarter.
Arriving at the front gate, Knightly confirmed the nameplate and pressed herself flat against the wall.
Combat Chief Professor Dian
Check the situation inside first, then ring the bell. It'll be a problem if some other student or professor is already there.
She was carefully poking her head over the wall when a strange sound from somewhere nearby made her body go rigid.
Scratch-scratch-scratch-scratch. It was the sound of a pen writing on paper, coming from right beside her.
"Kyaaaaaaah!!"
Slowly turning her head, Knightly let out a scream.
Priestess Maya—who was supposed to be lodging at the infirmary—was standing there. She had climbed up on a neatly cut foundation stone from who-knew-where and was peeking over the wall into the yard, busily scribbling something in the log in her hands.
That's... the infirmary's patient log...?
At Knightly's scream, Maya turned to look at her with indifferent eyes, then hopped down from the foundation stone. As if nothing at all had happened, she tucked the patient log into her priestly robes and toddled away at a quick little walk...?
"Master! There's a strange noise outside! I think it's a burglar!"
A girl's shout came from inside, followed by a clattering of footsteps, and the front gate burst open.
"It's a burglar!"
Olicia, Professor Dian's maid, scanned the area with a cast-iron pan in her hand—and her eyes met those of Knightly, who was slumped against the wall.
"Huh...?"
"Ah..."
Knightly and Olicia stared at each other, neither able to find another word.
"Hey, Olicia. Don't get so worked up. You really think a thief's going to break into the Academy?"
Dian ambled out belatedly.
"It's probably just a cat in heat, this being spring and all... wait, no..."
"Ah... hello, Professor..."
Knightly offered an awkward greeting to a wide-eyed Dian.