Battlefield Tour (8)
After they stepped off the lift, Kirlin stayed glued to Dian's side the entire time.
This was a tourist site with safety guaranteed, and plenty of professors and teaching assistants were already keeping the students in line. There was nothing the principal particularly needed to step in and do. A guide from the castle's tourism office handled the commentary, while Professor Ismera took the lead on any additional explanations. That left Kirlin free to stick right next to Dian without a care in the world.
"You're not a student. You should be up at the front. Why do you keep coming back here?"
"Mm. I'm watching from the back to make sure nobody falls behind."
Kirlin offered the flimsiest excuse imaginable and beamed up at him. When Dian gave up on pressing the matter, she trotted along happily in his wake.
"When the Demon King's army seized the castle, everyone still remaining here was taken prisoner."
The guide paused in the inner courtyard to introduce a group of elderly caretakers — veterans who had been captured as prisoners of the Demon King's forces at Ivronik Castle and had, against all odds, survived.
Worried they might take one look at a dark elf and fly into a rage, Kirlin pressed herself tight against Dian's back.
"All right, we'll head into the main keep now!"
The column filed into the keep. Dian and Kirlin, bringing up the rear, were just passing in front of the veterans when the old men suddenly grew agitated and rushed toward him.
"Ugh! This is bad!"
The veterans were coming at them with sharp pruning shears in their hands, and Kirlin's courage evaporated on the spot. But the scene she had dreaded — those shears plunging into her stomach — never came. The old men dropped the tools, seized Dian's hands in both of theirs, and began to weep.
Kirlin could not make sense of what she was seeing. Just looking at them, the age gap was that of a grandfather and a fully grown grandson. One was the Combat Chief Professor of the Special Duty Academy; the others were elderly men employed as war pensioners. There was no common ground between them. No overlap at all.
"I'm glad to see you're doing well."
Dian soothed the weeping veterans in a gentle voice, wrapping an arm around their shoulders.
"I'm a professor at the Academy now. We came on a tour of the old battlefields. I was shocked at how much it's changed since then."
He kept talking, and the veterans nodded again and again, unable to stop their tears.
Kirlin had heard from the Combat Department professors that Dian had fought in the recapture of this castle. They must have known each other from back then.
Watching him comfort the old veterans as they wept, she felt something almost sacred wash over her. Her chest swelled, and tears sprang to her eyes unbidden. She had always thought of Dian as someone who took everything lightly — a man who was nothing but cheerful. She had never imagined he had a side like this.
"Ah..."
Pelemiya, who had just caught up with the group, let out a low gasp the moment she saw him.
While Kirlin sniffled and wiped her tears, Pelemiya stood staring at Dian as if she had been put under a spell.
She had only just received Divine Healing from Priest Maya and caught up with the group. When the guide began explaining Sir Linus's infiltration route, that memory had surged up without warning, bringing with it a violent wave of dizziness and nausea.
That memory was Dian's inner world — the one she had looked into at the tavern a few days before.
After seeing Dian's inner world, Pelemiya had been so stunned she nearly blacked out. She bolted from the tavern and vomited noisily against a wall. The atrocity had unfolded without the slightest warning, and she had come within a hair of fainting on the spot.
She had always prided herself on being a master of psychological warfare — a woman who never so much as flinched, no matter the circumstance. But there is no such thing as "never" in this world.
What did I just see? Whose memory was that? Don't tell me it was Professor Dian's...?
But that's impossible... That wasn't Professor Dian's memory...
"Wipe your mouth."
The voice came out of nowhere. Pelemiya startled so badly she nearly sat down on the ground. A hand of considerable strength caught her by the arm and held her up.
"Here. Wipe your mouth."
Dian had followed her out at some point, and he held out a tissue.
"Th-thank you..."
Pelemiya wiped her mouth, looking up at him with frightened eyes.
"Professor... who are you...?"
"You saw it all just now, didn't you?"
"But that... that isn't your memory. It's Sir Linus's."
The only person who had ever climbed the cliffs of Ivronik Castle while it was occupied by the Demon King's army was Sir Linus, the Hero of the Continent. That was definitely Sir Linus's...
A shiver ran through Pelemiya from head to toe.
The testimonies she had taken ten years ago, interrogating demons — statements about two unidentified humans. A blond and a brown mop-head who were always together. The blond was certainly Sir Linus. Which meant that brown mop-head was truly...
"Professor... you were Sir Linus's comrade..."
"That's right. I've been with Linus since we were privates."
Dian admitted it with surprising ease.
"What you just saw was the memory of climbing that cliff with Linus during the recapture of Ivronik Castle. Pretty shocking scene, right?"
"Yes..."
"Even soldiers who'd been through hell on the battlefield lost their minds that day. For someone like you, who handled psychological warfare from the rear, it would have been more than you could take."
Pelemiya bit her lip and squeezed her eyes shut. It was a memory she never wanted to recall again.
"I enlisted as a Private in the 8th Corps, landed in the Kingdom of Avoca, met Linus for the first time, and from then on the two of us carried out all kinds of missions together. Of course I can't go into most of it. Even as the one who was there, I can't just go around spilling imperial secrets."
"Then... Professor, even the Demon King Assassination Special Task Force..."
"When I was appointed, the Imperial Palace didn't provide the Academy with any information about me."
Pelemiya tried to speak, but Dian kept going.
"I don't know why. I've never asked. Whether it was political, or just to keep the Academy's hierarchy intact. But the Palace doesn't do things without a reason, right?"
"That's true..."
"I feel the same way they do. I don't want unnecessary attention. The kind of attention you're giving me, Pelemiya."
He didn't put it bluntly, but Pelemiya understood the warning perfectly: Don't make this a hassle.
"So what you saw today and what I just told you — that stays with you and you alone. Even if you told someone else, they wouldn't believe you. Not unless they looked inside the way you did."
What Dian said was true. If Pelemiya ran back into the tavern right then, grabbed the other professors, and announced that she had just seen Professor Dian climbing the cliffs of Ivronik Castle with Sir Linus — that the two of them had been operating together since their days as privates — that Professor Dian was, in fact, one of the heroes who had saved the continent alongside Sir Linus — how many of them would take her at her word?
Even the truth feels like a lie when it is too absurd.
"We done? If you're curious about anything else, just say so. I'll open my memories for you anytime."
"I-I'll pass..."
Pelemiya stammered, terrified, and Dian let out a big laugh and went back into the tavern.
From that day on, Pelemiya never again spoke a word of suspicion about Dian's past. She had no desire to. Dian's warning was part of it, but more than that, the scene she had looked into had been too shocking. The thought that some careless remark might set off a chain reaction and drag those memories back to the surface terrified her more than she could say.
That was why she had not wanted to come on this battlefield tour at all. But she could hardly skip the first tour in the Academy's history. She had barely pulled herself together, followed the column into the inner courtyard — and there she found Dian, comforting the veterans.
All across the Empire, paintings and statues of Linus as the Hero of the Continent overflowed from every square and gallery. Linus radiating a halo of light as he led the human alliance through the chaos of the battlefield. Linus holding the Demon King's severed head. Pelemiya had seen more of those works than she could count. And she could swear she had never been as moved by any of them as she was looking at Dian now.
Standing in the sunlight that poured down through the narrow canyon, gathering the old veterans into his arms — the sight of him was as beautiful, and as sacred, as any of those countless artworks raised in Sir Linus's praise.
Only then did Pelemiya understand.
Combat Chief Professor Dian was one of the heroes who had saved the continent alongside Sir Linus. An unnamed hero, living quietly, with every one of his achievements left behind him. And yet there was not even a single modest monument anywhere that honored that hero. It was a truth she had failed to see, buried as she had been in the horror of the atrocity she had witnessed.
Pelemiya took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes with her sleeve.
I'll keep Professor Dian's secret quietly to myself, just as he wished. Until Professor Dian — or the Imperial Palace — chooses to reveal the whole truth. For someone like me to go around talking about him would be a vulgar insult. A grave discourtesy, and nothing less.
She bowed her head in silence.
But contrary to Pelemiya's intention to keep the truth silent out of respect for Dian, several other people had already witnessed that scene.