The Suspicious Pink-Hair (3)
After lunch, the afternoon evaluations got underway.
For the Combat Department, that meant Genev's Basic Armed Combat. Each applicant would spar against one of our teaching assistants with nothing but a wooden sword, and we would judge them on the quality of what they showed.
The theory evaluations were none of my business, so I clasped my hands behind my back and ambled off toward the outdoor training grounds.
Over on the far side, I spotted Ismera among a cluster of theory teaching assistants carrying stacks of exam papers. Being a pureblood elf, she was so strikingly tall and radiant that she looked like a peacock that had wandered into a flock of chickens.
Ismera, who had been leading the assistants along, caught sight of me and offered a smile so beautiful and elegant it could melt a heart on sight — a mere crinkle of her eyes.
"You've been working hard, Professor Ismera."
She dipped her head slightly toward me, and in that instant her expression turned as cold as the grave. It was a flicker so brief that no one but me could have caught it, and we passed each other as if nothing at all had happened.
Honestly, that elf lives such an exhausting life.
I arrived at the outdoor training grounds just as that pink-haired girl, Sophie, was standing across from a combat teaching assistant with a wooden sword slung over her shoulder.
"You're here."
Genev, who had been watching the pair with his arms crossed, greeted me without taking his eyes off the field.
"Just came to watch. That girl."
"We'll begin."
A whistle cut the air, and the sparring match started.
The teaching assistant moved first. With short, snapping strides he closed the gap in a heartbeat and unleashed his attack. Our combat teaching assistants were all people who had lived by the blade out in the real world, and the kind of assault they threw was something no ordinary person could possibly stop.
The girl, however, turned her body in little slipping motions, almost as if she were dancing, and let every blow slide harmlessly past her.
The assistant had been told beforehand not to hold anything back, so he pressed her even more ferociously, driving her all the way to the edge of the sparring ground.
No matter how I look at it, she's just going through the motions.
"She's not a real applicant, then."
Genev had picked up on it too, and his assessment lined up with mine.
The girl, who had been giving ground the entire time, suddenly dropped her upper body to the left in a threatening motion. The assistant flinched and shifted his foot in that direction.
"Oh, dear."
He fell for the feint.
The wooden sword that had been resting on the girl's shoulder dropped at an angle that should not have been possible and smashed down on the assistant.
"Ghk!"
The blade struck his shoulder before he could even raise a guard, and he dropped to his knees on the spot. Other teaching assistants helped him off the field, and Genev silently scribbled on his evaluation sheet.
Left standing alone in the middle of the ground, the girl stared straight at me with that peculiar smile of hers. After holding my gaze for a moment, she tossed the wooden sword onto the dirt, turned, and walked off the sparring ground.
Can't tell if she knows me, or if she's just staring because I'm good-looking.
That evening, after the afternoon evaluations had wrapped up, the entire faculty gathered in the grand conference room under Kirlin's direction to go over the progress of the selection process.
Thirty applicants had survived the day. Kirlin had a ranked roster drawn up from the detailed scores and went down the list one item at a time, confirming what evaluations were scheduled for tomorrow and whether the preparations were in place.
The name sitting at the very top of the roster was Sophie. Was that the pink-haired girl?
"I'd say so."
Pelemiya, the Psychological Warfare Professor sitting beside me, answered the question I had barely finished forming.
"She stood so far above everyone else that I took a look at her application."
"Anything unusual about her?"
"Apparently she belongs to the Leblanc Mercenary Corps."
The Leblanc Mercenary Corps was a large-scale mercenary syndicate infamous throughout the Empire. They had not started that way, though. Originally they had been a kind of organized street gang — maybe ten-odd thugs operating out of the Leblanc region.
Vicious, cruel bastards who would walk through fire for a payday, they had carved out their niche handling the kind of dirty work nobles did not want their own names attached to, and their ranks had swelled accordingly. Word spread, and every washed-up piece of human garbage within walking distance started drifting in. They grew and grew until they finally dropped the gang label and started calling themselves a mercenary corps.
Then came the Four-Year War, and they scooped up every contract the regular army found too distasteful to touch, piled up the military honors, and ballooned into the massive outfit they were today.
And a twenty-year-old girl from that mercenary corps... yeah, that definitely counted as unusual.
"Does Leblanc even take female mercenaries? I don't remember them ever doing that."
"They haven't, until now. This girl must have joined recently."
"You know anything else?"
"I did come across a piece of intelligence through various channels."
Pelemiya adjusted her glasses and told me what she knew.
A few years after the war ended, the girl had apparently stormed into the corps headquarters and demanded, then and there, that they take her on. At first the mercenaries figured she was some lunatic and told her to get lost. Instead of backing down, she announced that if they did not accept her, she would take the mercenary captain's head.
One of them, furious, went to backhand her across the face — and wound up with a broken neck, a vegetable for life.
What kind of plot development was that?
Anyway, having proven her skills, the girl was taken into the corps immediately and went on to rack up considerable results wherever they sent her.
A woman could wield a sword and kill people, sure. But even granting that, the way she had gotten into the mercenary corps was completely absurd. If she was twenty this year, she would have been even younger a few years ago — and she had snapped the neck of a Leblanc mercenary who had been through hell and back?
"Is that confirmed?"
"If the Chief Professor chooses not to believe it, then it's a lie. If you trust it, then it's the truth."
Pelemiya gave me an ambiguous smile. So she could not confirm it herself, either.
"Still. A girl this age in Leblanc. That's one hell of a resume."
"It is, isn't it?"
"So why did she apply here?"
"She applied together with three other Leblanc mercenaries. They're all twenty, too."
"Hrm. Right... Hard to see it as four of them trying to leave the corps at the same time. So maybe, like Waiver guessed, they tagged along to bodyguard someone."
"Here. This."
Pelemiya pulled out one of the applications and showed it to me.
"What's this? The Zenobi Trading Company? Aha."
So the young lady of one of the continent's wealthiest merchant houses had applied to our academy as a Special Talent Cadet. That meant the Leblanc mercenaries had enrolled as applicants themselves in order to escort this precious young lady all the way inside. Regular bodyguards would have been stopped at the front gate, after all.
Now everything made sense.
Alright, let's see. The daughter of the Zenobi Trading Company on today's passing list... was not there.
Then the Leblanc mercenaries who had come along as her escort would all drop out midway and head home. A bit of a shame.
Having finished checking tomorrow's evaluation preparations, Kirlin moved on to the matter of sending today's rejected applicants home. Ordinarily they would be turned out, but it was already so late that if they were released now, most of them would just end up lodging somewhere nearby for the night. Kirlin's position was that since they had come all this way to take the exam, the academy should take responsibility at least that far.
She was right, and doing so would also help improve the academy's image, so I voiced my agreement. The Combat Department professors all followed my lead and expressed their support.
Across the table, Professor Ismera's eyelid twitched as she tittered politely. She clearly wanted to oppose anything Kirlin and I proposed on principle, but it was such an objectively good idea that she could not bring herself to tear into it outright.
"What do you think, Professor Ismera? We need to hear your opinion as well."
"Hehe... The Principal is so very thorough, isn't she? Attending even to those delicate little details the rest of us, run ragged by the schedule, never even thought of."
Whatever she was thinking on the inside, Ismera had no choice but to go along with it. The consensus settled: today's rejected applicants would all be given room and board at the academy and would depart tomorrow morning.
"Good work today, everyone. Let's give it our all again tomorrow. That's all."
Kirlin left, and the meeting was over.
I looked out the window. Evening had fully settled into darkness, and I was starting to get hungry. I wondered what Olicia had cooked up today.
The academy was a school, so of course it had a cafeteria — large enough to feed both faculty and students, with food that was edible enough. It was not bad, exactly, but it was not good enough to skip a home-cooked meal for, so I always went home and ate dinner with Olicia.
When we had set up the shopping district, branches of some well-known restaurants had moved in, but those places were always packed to bursting, which made eating there a hassle. I would probably need to clear out one of the adjacent buildings later and expand the shopping district.
"See you all tomorrow."
"Have a good evening."
"Get some rest, Chief Professor."
I parted ways with the professors at the faculty district crossroads and headed home alone. Walking into the pleasantly warm night breeze, I found myself thinking about the girl named Sophie.
I wanted her as one of our academy students. Whether it was the physical fitness test or the Basic Armed Combat evaluation, she was a talent I would truly hate to let slip away. If a Special Talent Cadet like her enrolled at the academy, it would generate publicity, and next year even more applicants would pour in, letting us select even better material. And with the improved quality of our graduates, the Second Princess would think that putting Dian on as a professor and leaving Kirlin alone had been the right call after all.
But this was not ten years ago, and I was an academy professor. Forcing my will through would be difficult. Still, I could not help feeling disappointed.
Wait a second.
She was not leaving today — she was staying at the academy. What if I went to her lodging and tried to persuade her? If she was going to put her life on the line anyway, I could probably sweet-talk her into seeing that the special operations track had more to offer...
But what was her real identity?
The knowledge I had from the original novel had been discarded as of ten years ago, when the Demon King died. I did not know anything about the story after that. Back then, Sophie would have been a ten-year-old kid, and even if she had stood out, I would have known about it right away. Joining that utterly vicious mercenary corps before she even turned twenty, among other things — she was a girl who piqued my curiosity in all sorts of ways.
I was walking along, lost in these thoughts, when I suddenly stopped. Looking toward the far end of the darkened street, I spoke quietly.
"Come out."
Someone slowly stepped out from behind a wall on the other side. Pink hair, vividly visible even in the evening gloom. It was Sophie, the Leblanc mercenary who had entered the academy as an escort for the Zenobi Trading Company's daughter.
"Long time no see, Dian."
Sophie blocked the path with one hand on her hip, her weight cocked onto one leg, and grinned.
Just barely twenty. A girl who would have been a mere ten-year-old brat back when I was in my prime... knew my name. And she said it as if we had known each other well for a long time.
What was this situation?
I weighed the possibilities, and in the end I arrived at a guess that actually made sense.
So it was that, after all...
Nothing else could explain what was happening right now. Not unless she was a dragon who had used Polymorph to take the form of a human girl.
The moment I recognized her for what she was, Hindrastar's smile grew even wider.