The Suspicious Pink-Haired Girl (2)
After a stretch of commotion, registration at the front gate was finally complete.
We'd weeded out everyone who'd submitted a fraudulent application, along with anyone who was obviously unqualified at a glance—missing limbs, illiterate, that sort of thing.
Eyeballing the crowd assembled in the main auditorium, roughly a third of the original applicants had already evaporated. About two hundred people remained. If the physical evaluation knocked out half of those, another hundred or so would be gone before noon.
Whoever survived would be tested through this afternoon and tomorrow, and anyone who failed even a single category would be sent packing on the spot. My estimate was that maybe three people would make it all the way through. I'd set the Combat Department standards brutally high, after all.
Kirrin had asked if that wasn't a bit much, but then Ismera's competitive streak had kicked in and she'd made the theory evaluations ridiculously difficult as well.
This was an enormous privilege—direct transfer into the graduating class, meaning they could earn an official Academy diploma as early as next year and walk straight into a related government post. And since this was the first year the program was being run, the Imperial Palace would be watching closely.
So the right call was to ruthlessly cull anyone who didn't measure up. If nobody impressed us, we simply wouldn't select anyone at all. Pick some mediocre kid, give the Imperial Palace an opening to pick us apart, put a stain on Kirrin's record—and the butterfly effect from that might just land me in the principal's chair.
"Principal. We should get started."
"Right."
Kirrin stepped up to the podium and addressed the two hundred-odd applicants.
"Good morning. I am Kirrin Nemara, Principal of the Academy."
"Nemara...? The dark elf clan Nemara?"
The applicants began to murmur the moment Kirrin introduced herself.
"Thank you for applying to our Special Operations Academy. I hope you all perform well. We will now proceed with the selection process."
Ismera followed, walking them through the overall procedure and the various precautions.
Honestly, standing up there on the podium, Ismera looked far more like a principal than Kirrin did. She had that uniquely elegant, refined presence of a pureblood elf—a voice both gentle and crystal-clear, every word well-organized. On top of that, she held a High Master's Degree, the equivalent of a doctorate or higher. There wasn't a single thing you could criticize.
So it wasn't hard to understand why she despised Kirrin so intensely. Honestly, if I were Ismera, I'd probably feel the same way.
If Ismera became principal tomorrow, our Academy would develop far more rapidly. But what could you do? Once the Emperor had gotten involved, a contest of pure ability was never going to be possible. This was a game that even the Second Princess—war hero and head of the National Security Office, one of the highest posts in the Empire—hadn't been able to overturn. A mere High Master's Degree holder like Ismera didn't stand a chance on her own.
As I slowly scanned the applicants, I spotted that pink-haired girl again. The color was so eye-catching it jumped straight into my field of vision, and this time I could study her face more closely than before.
She stood with her arms crossed and one leg folded over the other, a smile on her face. Her drooping eyes were a pink similar to her hair. The smile at the corners of her mouth was so easygoing that anyone looking would think she was already enrolled here, not an applicant.
Judging by that pale skin and slender neck, this wasn't a body that had been doing mercenary work. But that gear earlier was definitely Leblanc Mercenary Corps issue. So maybe she was an indirect combat type, like a mage?
That was strange in its own way, though. Why would a mage apply to a place like this? If she wanted to learn more magic, she'd go to a mage tower. If she wanted to actually make money with magic, there were a thousand places she could go.
Then maybe a spirit mage or a healer? I honestly couldn't tell. Each profession had its own distinctive vibe, similar to the clichés in comics and games, but I wasn't getting any of that from her. The more I looked, the more puzzling she was.
Then, as if she'd felt my gaze, the girl suddenly looked this way. Our eyes met. She stared at me for a moment, then turned her attention back to Ismera.
The physical evaluation began. The venue was the Grand Parade Ground—an enormous open field right in the center of our Academy, so vast you could run cavalry charge drills without much trouble. Here, the applicants had to pass a variety of physical tests.
The one I valued most was the running evaluation: a wide circuit around the outer edge of the Grand Parade Ground. Field operatives needed outstanding endurance. Endurance meant you didn't tire easily, and not tiring easily meant you didn't despair easily.
And given the nature of an operative's work, it was all too common to find yourself alone in a dangerous area, then having to flee all the way back to a safe zone with zero support. In those situations, the stamina to walk and run without stopping was essential among essentials.
The Combat Department professors and teaching assistants got the physical evaluation underway. Each event had a set failing threshold, and falling short in even a single category meant immediate elimination. As a result, the number of applicants who survived all the way to the final event—the long-distance run—had dropped from the original two hundred to a hundred and twenty. A forty percent reduction in the blink of an eye.
"We'll be starting the long-distance run now. A few safety notes first."
While Waiver briefed the applicants on the safety-related matters, I studied their faces. And there she was again—the pink-haired girl, standing with a few of the Leblanc mercenaries who'd also managed to avoid elimination.
Making it this far meant her basic strength and muscular endurance were above a certain level. Which meant she definitely wasn't a mage. Mage was a profession where a lifetime of study still wasn't enough, so they typically had poor physical ability, like Orendi.
So she really was a mercenary? Well... I'd seen plenty of women on the battlefield who performed just as well as the men, so it wasn't that strange. There were plenty of other girls here besides her, but my eyes kept going back to this one. Maybe it was just that ridiculous hair color.
As I watched, the girl suddenly lifted her head and looked at me, standing behind Waiver. We were making eye contact way too often for it to be coincidence.
"Everyone to the starting line!"
The applicants lined up with tense expressions, and Waiver blew his whistle sharply.
"What the hell is that?"
Bursting through the pack of applicants surging forward, the pink-haired girl shot into the lead at an incredible speed. If she ran like that from the start, she'd burn out halfway. Was she going to be okay?
"She's overdoing it."
Waiver seemed to be thinking the same thing, smiling as he spoke.
"Pacing is everything in a long-distance run."
"She looks like she's with Leblanc. You know anything about her?"
"Leblanc's a famous large-scale mercenary corps, isn't it? You're saying that girl is with them? No way."
"I'm telling you. The gear, and she's been sticking with the other Leblanc mercenaries the whole time. Maybe she's the Leblanc Mercenary Captain's daughter?"
"I don't know. I've never heard anything about him having a daughter."
Watching the pink-haired girl already a half-lap ahead, Waiver snapped his fingers.
"Maybe she's not with Leblanc at all. Maybe she hired those Leblanc guys?"
"As bodyguards, you mean?"
Among wealthy commoners who couldn't keep private armies because they held no title, it wasn't uncommon to hire mercenaries long-term and use them like a private force. Or, as Waiver guessed, they might just be hired short-term for protection.
"I can't say for sure, but that would explain things. Maybe she brought the bodyguard mercenaries in as applicants too, just in case something unsavory happened during the selection process."
"Yeah. That actually makes sense."
In the short time we'd been talking, the girl was already catching up to the last-place runners. She was incredibly fast. I wondered if she could actually keep that pace for twenty laps of this enormous parade ground.
And about an hour later, amazingly, the girl who'd lapped the other applicants several times over was the first to reach the finish line. She was sweating a little, but she barely seemed out of breath. Her stamina was outstanding.
"Well done. You're quite the runner."
I smiled as I spoke to her, and she looked up at me with a somewhat mischievous glint in her eyes.
"I'm pretty good."
"I like that confidence. But the physical evaluation is only the first gate. There are plenty of assessments still ahead, so don't let your guard down until the very end."
"I'll keep that in mind."
Nothing particularly special about her. Like Waiver said, she was probably just some well-off family's daughter who wanted to become a civil servant.
Thirty minutes after the girl crossed the finish line, the rest of the pack started arriving one after another. Every last one of them collapsed the instant they crossed, vomiting and making a complete mess of themselves. Maya, the priestess who'd come out for medical support, bustled around administering Divine Healing.
The total number who passed the physical evaluation: sixty. Two hundred had shown up, a hundred and twenty had made it through registration, and now sixty had survived the physicals. The first evaluation had barely finished, and already seventy percent of the original applicants had been eliminated.
In the end, most of the applicants had been filler who didn't meet our standards. The real evaluation started now. I wondered how many would actually be left by tomorrow afternoon.
I was turning these thoughts over when I got the feeling someone was watching me, and glanced around. There, beyond the applicants sprawled on the ground retching—the pink-haired girl, one hand on her hip, standing at a slant, staring right at me.
I met her gaze, but she showed no intention of looking away, staring back as if we were having a staring contest. As if making eye contact several times wasn't enough, now she was just openly staring.
"Chief Professor. There's a brief meeting about this afternoon's evaluations."
A teaching assistant approached just then, so I pulled my gaze away from the girl and headed for the main building. Looking back as I walked, she was still watching me.
