Chapter 23 – A Puppy and a Cat Can Never Get Along (2)
The lecture ran its full three hours, packed to the brim.
"Haha, it's been a while since I last taught theory, so I may have gotten a bit carried away. But everything I covered will become bone and flesh for you all, so please don't forget to submit your assignments."
Every time I explained a new circuit, I added another assignment to the pile. There had only been two to begin with—the circuit for the barrier spell and the circuit for the healing spell—but I'd twisted myself into knots splitting the directions of those circuits into ten separate branches.
Call it assignment replication magic.
I suffered for it, I'll tell you that. I offered my closing greetings and told them I'd see everyone at the next lecture—though the students were all staring blankly at the blackboard.
Tap, tap— the sound of my shoes echoed down the corridor.
And behind me came the click-clack of an entirely different pair of heels, following in my wake.
"…Professor."
"Ah, Sister. What can I do for you?"
"Is it really true that you hold no ill will?"
Plenty of it.
"Haha, surely you don't think I'd harbor any ill will. Everything was a lecture for the sake of my brothers and sisters."
"Those eyes of yours, trembling away like that, are extraordinarily suspicious."
I blinked and smiled. That hardly qualified as evidence, after all.
So I simply looked at her. Her expression was calmer than usual, but the strain of those ten reports was plainly visible beneath the surface—a flicker of unease she couldn't quite hide.
Hmm.
Truth be told, I had originally planned to push Bellatrix even harder. She was more capable than anyone else, and there was nothing wrong with her growing stronger.
But I'd had second thoughts. Frankly, someone like her had no need for basic assignments that did nothing but eat up her time. Talent like hers deserved better—cutting away the busywork so she could be stretched properly seemed the wiser course.
Besides, I'd heard that on the day of the terror attack, after perfectly blocking the explosion, she had collapsed from mana exhaustion. That was hardly surprising—her mana barrier alone hadn't been enough, so she'd apparently pulled on her divinity as well to shore up the shield.
That was probably where this thought had come from. My last remaining shred of conscience, the one that kept jabbing at my chest and insisting that failing to show gratitude for what she'd done was a betrayal of basic human decency.
"Sister."
"…What."
There. A little generosity.
"Sister Bellatrix, you are exempt from the reports. You'll work with divinity like the other students, of course, but there's no need for you to write reports on top of it."
"Professor…? What are you scheming this time, that you're saying something so ominous? Surely you're not planning to use this as leverage to dodge explaining what happened at the ceremony…."
Really, I have to wonder—does she think I'm that mentally unhinged of a professor? Looking back at the past, well… from Bellatrix's perspective, I suppose I genuinely was a madman. But this time, I was truly nothing but grateful to her for helping with my request so faithfully and sincerely.
And this is how I get repaid.
"I will explain. If you wish, come by my office—or, as before, we can meet outside the Academy."
"Then can't you at least tell me what kind of insane scheme you're cooking up now?"
Oh, come on.
Would it kill the woman to trust me a little?
"Honestly, Sister, an assignment of this level is a waste of your time. By the end of the lecture, you seemed to have understood most of the circuits already."
"…Is that truly the only reason?"
"Yes. So think of it simply as a token of my gratitude. Thanks to you, Sister, no lives were lost on the day of the ceremony."
Though with the reports gone, she'd only be worked harder in other ways—so she'd best not get too comfortable.
I gave a short bow and turned away, then set off down the hall. Tap, tap— my footsteps carried me forward, but no heels followed behind me.
All I heard was a single, uncharacteristically adorable, "Eh…?"
These days, whenever I found myself with nothing to do, I would come sit in on Elia's lectures.
When I showed up again, Elia had stared at me with wide, startled eyes—and the students had cheered just as they had that first time. But her reaction was remarkably different from before. Blushing, her face still flushed red, she had nonetheless raised her hand boldly and carved a victory sign into the air. Then, wearing the smug expression of a triumphant conqueror, she had beamed out at her students.
How could a person possibly shine that brightly? We'd been talking regularly and leaving work together for some time now, yet I still found her personality fascinating.
Of course, I more or less knew the reason. She was smiling like that because I was beside her—more precisely, because the handsome Niger was beside her.
And because of that, even in the middle of teaching her students with full devotion, Elia would occasionally sneak glances my way and smooth her hair. When our eyes met and I smiled at her, she'd dissolve into a bashful grin. Sweat-drenched as she was—more vividly beautiful than usual, in fact—she would cover her face with a towel, self-conscious under my gaze. And whenever she swung her sword for a demonstration and it rang out with a sharp crack, she would glance over at me, embarrassed.
She was, unmistakably, a woman in love.
Then again, I'd come to the lecture hall precisely to watch her be like that, so it wasn't as if she alone was the one grinning foolishly.
"Ah, damn it. You startled me."
The curse slipped out before I could stop it. It was a mercy that I was sitting in the far corner of the lecture hall, well away from the students. If I'd been standing close to them at that moment, priest of the Church or not, the devout image I'd spent all this time building would have crumbled into tragic ruin.
Oh, I'm sorry—a man who commits murder is lecturing me about a single swear word? Where exactly did your conscience go? Because I'm fairly certain killing people doesn't automatically kill the conscience along with them.
So I whispered quietly.
"…I told you not to startle me like that out of nowhere."
That's rich, coming from you.
As I said before, a murderer holding forth on proper conduct is wrong from the very first word. This is roughly the equivalent of a dog covered in filth barking at someone for having a speck of dust on them. I wanted to spit all of that right back at him.
But one cannot simply provoke a killer's temper, so I had resolved to answer in the gentlest tone I could manage. And then—
"Absolutely insane."
The curse escaped me a second time.
"…"
No, seriously. None of this would have happened if you hadn't said it so damn proudly, sir. Why do you insist on spouting lunacy?
When Elia's lecture ended, the two of us left together right at the end of the workday. My heels rang out against the ground, and hers rang out beside them. We wove our way through the crowd, walking shoulder to shoulder with our steps in rhythm.
And as always, Elia struck up the conversation. Idle chatter, mostly—pointless little topics drifting back and forth. Yet never once did it feel like wasted time. Conversation, after all, was always meant to be carried along by trivial, useless subjects like these.
All the more so when I was walking beside a woman who kept gazing at me with soft, melty eyes.
Our footsteps slowed. Not because we were tired, and not because the crowd had grown too thick to push through. Whenever we shared the walk home, Elia would always, without fail, secretly slacken her pace. Honestly, "secretly" was generous—she slowed down in the most obvious way imaginable—but the look on her face beamed like that of a conspirator whose covert plan had just succeeded.
I matched my stride to hers, and that was when Elia, still smiling that sweet, shy smile, spoke.
"Professor Niger, do you have any plans this weekend?"
"Hmm, nothing in particular."
The truth was that I still didn't want to do anything on weekends. I was busy enough scrambling through the weekdays without adding more—I couldn't shake the feeling that if I tried to squeeze in one more thing, I'd end up taking a mace to someone's skull for it.
Picture it: I go out on a weekend for no good reason, have the spectacular misfortune of running into some absolute scumbag, and there goes Niger, declaring his desire to cave in a head with the mace. Absolutely not. I hated that storyline with every fiber of my being.
"Then you haven't forgotten, have you? We were supposed to have dinner this weekend—it got pushed back because of the terror attack."
"…Ah."
Oh. Um. No.
"Don't tell me. You couldn't possibly mean that you'd actually forgotten."
O-of course not.
"…How could I possibly have forgotten? I remember it well."
"Whew… Right. I'll choose to believe you remembered. Anyway, then—how about this Saturday?"
I nodded my head vigorously at her words. And how could I not? I'd just openly exposed the fact that I had forgotten, and her narrowed, dangerous eyes had turned a touch frosty.
"Of course. Even if work comes up, I'll clear my schedule."
"Professor Niger, I'm letting this slide once because you're a professor. Don't forget again."
Right.
You are terrifying, you know that?
And so I sweated cold drops all the way home, watching her mood like a hawk. Though in truth, Elia wore nothing on her face but pure, radiant happiness.
Then I arrived home—and found myself breaking into a fresh sweat for an entirely new reason.
The silent room, sealed in stillness. The darkening view beyond the window. Amid all those familiar, unchanging sights, something alien stood out. A sheet of stationery—familiar and yet not—had been laid out on my desk, waiting to greet me.
The crest of the House of Feltner.
Unlike last time, it hadn't come through the mail slot. It had been placed directly on my desk. The only difference was that at the bottom of the letter, a name had been written: Bellatrix Feltner.
Not that that detail surprised me, particularly. The letter from Bellatrix was expected—when I'd told her to do as she pleased if she wanted an explanation, I'd figured that someone like her would prefer meeting outside the Academy over traipsing to my office.
But seriously.
Delivering a letter and breaking into someone's home are two entirely different things, gentlemen.
No, seriously—this is breaking and entering. That's what this is.