Volume 1: Enrollment at Magias Academy of Magical Arts
Chapter 14: Your Teacher Will Take Care of It
The following day.
I sat on a bench in the central plaza and stared at the sky, doing nothing.
I would ordinarily have been eating with someone, but I wanted to be alone.
Mercedes was absent today.
She seemed like the sort of woman who’d come to school even if meteors were falling.
Whatever she was thinking after yesterday’s incident, I was surely the cause.
Fily’s magic sword had succeeded so perfectly that I lost sight of something important.
To Mercedes, I must have appeared to betray her in the worst possible way.
Regret couldn’t reverse time.
Honestly, I wanted to take the day off too, but I’d already missed several days for my magic swords.
Missing more would interfere with my lessons.
Not that I’d been able to concentrate in class.
“Bren. So this is where you were.”
I immediately recognized Gary’s voice.
Even so, I took longer than usual to turn around.
“I’ve been looking for you. Aren’t you eating?”
Gary sat beside me as he asked.
“I’m not very hungry today.”
“Is that so?
“More importantly, Vandenberg said you weren’t entering the Freshman Tournament.”
I vaguely remembered giving Amae an ambiguous answer along those lines.
“I understand that you’re engrossed in research, but apparently only three people from our faculty are entering, including me.
“It’s just… there won’t be much competition.”
Gary cared about things like that?
But three?
The confirmed entrants were Mercedes, Amae, and Gary.
Fily aside, Gerald and Luluk weren’t entering either?
“…No. I’m entering the Freshman Tournament.”
“You are!?”
Gary usually refused to show honest happiness, but today his delight was too great to hide.
I couldn’t break my promise to Mercedes.
The deadline had nearly passed, but I’d managed to force my application through.
“That’s how a man should act!
“If you’re entering, I won’t be bored!
“Good, good!
“I’ve wanted to fight you too!
“Now that you’re in, don’t hold anything—”
Gary’s voice stopped.
Looking at my face, he finally noticed something.
“…Did something happen?”
My feelings must have been painfully obvious.
I couldn’t burden Gary with my problem.
If I asked for advice, he might be dragged in just as Fily had been.
“Sorry. Professor Blanchard is expecting me. I need to go.”
“H-Hey…”
I hurried away with his voice calling after me.
It wasn’t a lie.
The professor truly had summoned me.
I simply didn’t feel capable of speaking with anyone right now.
◇
Naturally, professors had research rooms too.
Professor Blanchard’s was larger than mine.
And because it was larger, it was also messier.
“You’ve saved me. This takes three days when I do it alone.”
“Three days?”
“I get bored halfway through.”
We sorted and filed research materials by subject.
Why had Professor Blanchard asked me to help with such a task?
She’d never seemed this careless.
It didn’t matter.
Working like this prevented me from thinking about unnecessary things.
Perhaps the timing was perfect.
“How are you doing as faculty representative?”
“…………”
“Anything troubling you?”
I closed one completed file and reached for the next subject.
“I feel as though I only cause trouble for everyone.
“I haven’t done much that seems representative-like.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“I wonder whether I can really handle the role.”
What was I saying?
Of course I couldn’t handle it.
I could’ve explained yesterday in countless ways.
Why hadn’t I?
There was only one answer.
I was immature and childish.
“I believe you’re working hard.”
Professor Blanchard said that, but I couldn’t meet her eyes.
“It’s still early, but you understand the lessons properly and possess strong motivation to learn.
“You resume research immediately after class.
“Your manner is gentle, so everyone eventually listens to you.
“I believe they trust you and think, ‘I should follow Bren’s example.’”
Even if that were true, I’d betrayed that trust.
“At the very least, I believe choosing you was correct.
“Honestly, seeing Emperor Faculty students eat lunch with their classmates in April surprised me.
“Compared with the recent past, my work is incredibly easy.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“Not really.”
Professor Blanchard removed a document and placed it where I could see it.
It appeared to be a student record.
The name was—
“Wilhelm Braham.
“Like you, he was an Emperor Faculty student. He was expelled last year.
“He was brilliant, but frequently clashed with those around him and gradually grew unstable.”
I’d read this man’s papers.
I hadn’t paid much attention at the time, but he’d been a Magias student?
“Extremist discriminatory beliefs.
“Embezzling enormous amounts of research funding.
“Deliberately repeating years to continue that embezzlement.
“Forcing through dangerous research.
“The school could still stop matters at that stage.”
“Still?”
“Yes.
“At some point, he came under suspicion of conducting human experiments on homeless people and orphans from overseas.
“Then it ceased to be a matter the academy could handle internally.”
Human experimentation?
This country supposedly followed the rule of law.
“…And he was only expelled?”
“He belongs to a distinguished noble family.
“They covered one thing after another, selling off family assets and credibility until they somehow forced the sentence down to probation.
“No one knows where he is or what he’s doing now.
“He’s one reason the Emperor Faculty is managed so strictly.”
“So you’re here to prevent us from becoming like him…?”
“Oh, sorry. I phrased that poorly.
“I’m not worried about any of you. Not at all.
“I simply thought you should know that someone like him existed.”
Compared with Wilhelm’s generation, ours was certainly healthy.
At minimum, our current students could distinguish right from wrong.
From what I heard, this mage had crossed that line entirely.
He was thirty—
Wait. When had he enrolled, and how many years had he spent at Magias if they’d only expelled him last year?
“He was my senior.
“I wish someone had been available for him to consult.
“But no one could become that person.”
Professor Blanchard usually behaved lightly, but her expression darkened.
So she’d enrolled after him and overtaken him?
Perhaps matters weren’t that simple.
“But you and your classmates try to understand one another and help others understand you.
“Sometimes honest feelings collide in unhealthy ways, but I don’t believe you’ll leave the tangled threads untouched.”
“…Did you hear about Mercedes and me?”
“Yes.”
Professor Blanchard admitted it immediately.
Thinking normally, there was no other reason she would’ve summoned me.
“Fily asked me to speak with you.
“I don’t know every detail, but she was extremely worried.”
“I see…”
Fily.
When I placed her at the center of my thoughts, what I needed to do became slightly clearer.
I still hadn’t repaid her anything.
I owed her a great deal.
Leaving my relationship with Mercedes like this was also wrong.
“Mercedes has great pride, but she isn’t foolish.
“If you speak properly after she calms down, I believe she’ll understand why you acted as you did.”
Speak.
Speaking, huh?
I’d spoken with more people since arriving here than ever before.
Yet believing I could handle it only proved that I’d underestimated human relationships.
“Honestly, I’m not very confident.
“Mercedes is frightening.
“But I’ll try speaking with her.”
“Good. If that still fails, tell me.”
The professor rested an elbow on her cluttered desk and smiled.
“Your teacher will take care of it.”
The tension drained from my shoulders.
There was a limit to what I could do anyway.
I only had to do what I could.
“Thank you for worrying about me.”
“I should thank you. You always work so hard for us.
“Besides, I need to act like a teacher occasionally.”
At that moment, someone knocked on the research-room door.
“You can come in,” the professor answered without moving.
Gary appeared.
“Excuse me—Bren! I knew you’d be here!”
“Gary?”
“Have you seen the tournament bracket?
“You’re fighting Mercedes in the first round!”
Gary’s sudden excitement sent a different kind of tension through me.
“I’ll help you practice. Come on!
“As representative, show everyone which of you stands above the other!
“That’s fine, right, Professor?”
“Yes, yes. We’re finished, so you can go.
“Thank you for helping, Bren.”
Gary and I left the research room together.
My steps felt slightly lighter than when I’d arrived.
◇
Mercedes swung her sword alone in the garden of her secondary residence.
She’d already been swinging it for nearly a day.
Whenever Mercedes felt troubled, she practiced.
Swinging a sword calmed her heart.
Swords were good.
Simply swinging one revealed her current self.
Usually.
But this time, no matter how long she practiced, she couldn’t see what she wanted.
Looking at her opponent in the tournament’s first match filled her with confusion rather than delight.
Mercedes had believed destroying that man’s magic sword would restore her dignity.
Now, she doubted the act itself.
Brendan Walker had looked down upon her.
If she thought of it that way, her anger became simple.
He’d deceived a Meltzeria and forged a magic sword for another classmate.
Looking only at those facts made him unforgivable.
But even though she should’ve looked only at those facts, Filiestra’s words interfered.
That logic without evidence, resembling a desperate fabrication.
“…Brendan Walker.”
She stopped after whispering his name an unknowable number of times.
More importantly, no one had told her Van Walker was dead.
Her father hadn’t known.
Neither had Gorafim, Van’s former comrade.
If she’d known, she never would’ve said those things—
Continuing would produce nothing good.
That was enough for today.
Mercedes sheathed her sword and began her daily measurement of her magical coefficient.
The instrument was identical to those owned by Magias.
Ordinarily, no student could afford one.
But because Mercedes’s research objective was her own strength, it was essential for daily self-observation.
The instant she poured in mana, the needle jumped.
It easily surpassed the number she displayed during the entrance examination and continued farther.
The final value was 1,800.
This wasn’t the demonstration she’d given then.
Whether Brendan Walker was someone worthy of receiving her full power would become clear when they fought.
For now, she would concentrate on the match.
Yes.
If she crossed blades with him and won, she would surely understand what she wanted.
The original reason no longer mattered.
If she cut him down completely, everything afterward would somehow work out.
Everything would go well.
Convincing herself of that was the best Mercedes could manage.
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