Rian Tryce
Rian Tryce.
A character who appeared in the web novel Academy's Sword, and the person whose body I had transmigrated into.
The character named Rian was, put simply, the kind of common villain extra number one. You know the type. The villain who shows up briefly at the start of an academy web novel, gets beaten senseless by the overpowered protagonist, and exits the stage. There was no better way to describe the character known as Rian Tryce.
An irredeemable scoundrel. Someone you absolutely should never get close to if you wanted a healthy academy life. Those were the kinds of things people had been calling me ever since I transmigrated.
I had nothing to say about that. What could I do? It was the truth. Before I transmigrated, this damn Rian Tryce had already gone and done all the scoundrel-like things from the original work. What was I supposed to do about it?
Spilled water could not be scooped back up. There was a reason those old sayings had been passed down to us.
That did not mean I had not tried to shake off the scoundrel frame. I had withdrawn from the unsavory club I was a member of. I had cleaned up all the illegal activities I had been committing by abusing my position as the heir to a count's family. There were plenty of other things too—hard to list them all—but in any case, I had cleaned up every last one of the scoundrel acts the original Rian had committed.
"…So what."
Of course, looking at it now, it had not been a particularly meaningful act. What good was cleaning it up? It was not as if other people's perception of me would change just because I had cleaned things up now. In fact, I had only ended up taking more insults.
He's trying to whitewash his image now.
He's pretending to clean things up on the surface while doing even more illegal stuff behind the scenes.
People don't change.
There's no way 'Rian Tryce' would change.
All of that was just a fraction of the things I had heard since transmigrating. Yes, a fraction. Those were only some of the words I had heard after transmigrating. The reason I had endured those words and still cleaned up the traces of the original Rian Tryce was simple.
"…I thought if I tried, things would change."
Belief. The belief that if I put in the effort, other people would recognize it. I had spent a whole year bowing my head like a dog, clinging only to that single belief.
But as I said earlier, it had not been a particularly meaningful act. With just that one sentence—people don't change—my efforts had been completely denied. The people who had originally hated 'Rian Tryce' now simply hated me. That was the reality.
And today.
"…At most, one year."
I received a terminal diagnosis.
Whir—
The automatic door of the overly modern hospital opened, and a cool breeze greeted me.
Cool. Maybe because it was autumn. Quite some time had passed since the academy's second semester started, so the weather outside was starting to feel like it could properly be called autumn.
I watched the clouds floating in the sky for a moment, then suddenly wondered what time it was and opened the watch the academy had distributed.
1:23
"…"
Hmm. When had it gotten this late? I was sure I had come to the hospital the moment lunch break started, without even eating. The academy's lunch break was from 12:30 to 1:30. That meant that unless I ran back to the academy like lightning right now, I would be late.
"…Should I skip?"
But this fact did not instill even a shred of urgency in me. If it had been me up until yesterday, I probably would have dashed off saying that my image was already bad enough without being late on top of it.
It felt like something inside me had snapped cleanly. The moment the doctor told me it would be one year at most just a little while ago, something inside me had broken.
I had known. When Rian Tryce exited in the original work. Because of his scoundrel-like behavior, he got dumped by his fiancée. Then when that fiancée started getting close to the original protagonist, he began picking fights over every little thing. And in the end, the original protagonist, unable to take it anymore, taught him a lesson and got him expelled from the academy. The Tryce family, who had already been sick of Rian's scoundrel acts, took this as an opportunity to erase Rian's name from the count family.
That was the end. After that, Rian never appeared again in Academy's Sword.
"…But that was the original."
Of course, that was only the original Rian's ending. I was not crazy enough to pick a fight with the original protagonist. I had thought my ending would be better than that.
"…I never expected it to turn out like this."
But who would have thought I would face an ending not all that different. The setting that Rian Tryce had an incurable disease had never appeared even in the original work. That was why I had tried so hard to shed the title of scoundrel. I had tried to live as Rian Tryce who was not a scoundrel, after shedding that title.
"…It's meaningless."
Now that I had received a terminal diagnosis, what was the point of any of it? It was not as if putting in more effort here would erase my scoundrel image.
"…"
Hmm, fine. I hated the idea of going back to the classroom even more. If that was a talent, then it was a talent. I had been deliberating a bit, but it had vanished without a trace. What was the point of going back to the classroom and attending academy classes? Whether I returned on time and attended class or not, people's gazes would not change. In that case, would it not be better to savor this long-lost sense of peace?
I had been living pretty busily all this time. That crazy bastard Rian Tryce had stirred up so much trouble, after all. But there was no need to deliberate any longer. I had just finished cleaning up the last of Rian's legacies yesterday, as it happened.
"…The timing is a bit ironic."
I said it was just ironic, but honestly, the timing was absurd. Of all days, today. Why did I have to receive this notice the day after I had finished cleaning up all of original Rian's mess?
"…"
Hmm. I resented the world. Until just a moment ago I had been mentally victorious that it did not matter, but once I started breathing the outside air, the sense of injustice that had been locked up until now began to cry out.
"…But there's nothing I can do about it."
Of course, that did not change anything. What was I going to do just because I felt wronged? It was my fault for transmigrating into a body like this. …My fault for transmigrating into a body that was right on the verge of suicide. If it was not my fault, whose was it? If I had to pin the blame, it was original Rian's fault, but since I had already transmigrated as Rian, it ultimately meant it was my fault. And this fact was proven all too well by the scar engraved on my right wrist, which stung.
A sidewalk with trees planted here and there. Maybe because it was the time when office workers were at work and students were at the academy.
"…It's nice how empty it is."
I was the only one walking on this wide sidewalk. Or maybe not. Maybe there had never been many people walking here to begin with. The setting of this place had highly developed engineering, with transportation like portals existing, after all. Even so, for there to be no one but me walking around here even on a weekday, there had to be a reason.
"I used a portal myself when I arrived at the hospital earlier."
A world where engineering was so advanced that people had no need to walk around. And yet a world where titles like count and duke still existed, and cultures like engagements remained. …Even a world where strangely shaped monsters existed.
"…"
Come to think of it, the setting was this much of a chaotic mess. The author had really crammed in every background element they wanted. Well, I did not think it was bad. As long as they wrote a novel that readers enjoyed reading, no matter what was in the background, that was the end of it. It was just that I did not like having transmigrated into a novel with such a hybrid setting.
As I muttered to myself like this and walked endlessly down the road, my legs started to hurt.
"…Maybe I should have just taken the portal nicely."
A small regret that came belatedly. But I quickly erased it from my mind. If I had taken the portal, I would have had to attend class. I had traded attending class for leg pain one-to-one right now.
Mental victory. It was literally a mental victory. The mental victory that leg pain was better than attending a class that was meaningless even if I attended. …It was a truly meaningless thought.
Vroom—
As I was organizing all these useless thoughts, a black sedan passed by beside me. I wondered what the person riding in that was thinking while looking at me. Were they thinking, what kind of person is this, walking around here at this hour?
Screech—
Then, the sedan that had been about to pass me by suddenly stopped on the road. What. Why did that suddenly stop. Did it run out of fuel all of a sudden?
While I was still trying to figure out the intention of the sedan that had stopped right next to me, the window of the sedan slowly rolled down, and a very familiar face peeked out from inside.
"Get in. I'll give you a ride to the academy."
"…"
"Ah, stop annoying me and get in already."
"…Elice?"
A woman with deep ash-gray hair and bright red eyes was looking at me with an annoyed expression.