[Exchange]
It had been a week since I had been forced to put my name down for the common-sense course.
The professors of the Humanities Department, elf professors, and spirit professors prepared the lecture material together.
So I had thought all I had to do was read the material out entertainingly.
“Teachew! Teachew!”
“Play with us!”
“Pleeease!”
Why did I feel less like an academy teaching assistant and more like a kindergarten teacher?
It was useless no matter how many times I explained that I was not a teacher, but a teaching assistant.
“Kids. Class is over.”
“It’s over, so—”
“Play with us!”
“Pleeease!”
Three spirits grabbed the hem of my clothes.
Did they know no words besides ‘play with us’?
Spirits were an inherently pure and optimistic race.
They were the kind of children who burst into peals of laughter when wind blew across an empty snowfield. That said it all.
When people said that simply watching a race was healing, they meant spirits.
But it was a different matter when those children clung to me.
“I haven’t even eaten yet.”
“Food!”
“Humans need food!”
“Or they die!”
The spirits surrounding me made a great fuss.
“No, I won’t die from missing one meal.”
At my words, the spirits’ eyes shone again.
“You won’t die?”
“Then will you play with us?”
“Pleeease?”
“I’m still hungry, though?”
Being around them made even the ends of my sentences rise.
They said kindergarten teachers began to sound like their children.
It was true.
“You can come to the cafeteria with me if you promise to behave.”
“Will we eat too?”
“Money! We need money!”
“Humans like money!”
I patted the heads of the chattering spirits and left the grand auditorium.
“Yes. You studied well.”
Spirits understood the concept of ‘exchanging,’ but the concept of ‘buying’ was faint to them.
Even their concept of exchange differed greatly from humans’.
There was no objective value in a spirit’s exchange.
Pure goodwill was all that mattered.
I could give a spirit gold, and it might give me a beloved pebble.
Those innocent children were slowly adapting to human society by attending my course.
It was far more rewarding than cutting down enemies.
‘Maybe it unexpectedly suits me?’
I had accepted it half by force because of the quest, but it did not feel bad.
Though getting up for work each morning was still troublesome.
Even elf students I met while leaving the grand auditorium lowered their heads in greeting.
“Thank you for the lecture.”
“You worked hard listening too. Do not be late for this afternoon’s Exchange Meeting.”
“Yeees.”
The elf students answered in their slow, languid voices and disappeared down the corridor.
Even while heading somewhere, they would spot a sunny window and stand there blankly.
No wonder there were so many latecomers every time.
They were closer to humans than spirits, but they were undoubtedly another race.
‘It will not be easy to mix together.’
Races severed from one another for hundreds of years were meeting in harmony for the first time.
Naturally, various incidents would occur.
The signs were already showing.
“...So lacking in dignity.”
“Why should we take care of them?”
“They are a race that is dying out anyway.”
“They could threaten humans in the future.”
A group of human students glanced at me.
More precisely, they were looking at the spirits clinging to me.
Their eyes held a clumsy hostility.
“Umm...?”
“I don’t like them.”
“Pleeease...”
Spirits were not stupid.
Being as pure as they were, they were sensitive to hostility aimed at them.
The three spirits who had held my hem pressed themselves flat against my body.
I had to go to the cafeteria and eat in that state.
By the time the meal was nearly over, the spirits had calmed down. They smiled brightly and went outside to play.
As I watched them recede fondly, Hans spoke behind me.
“It looks as though some cleaning is needed.”
“Ah! You startled me!”
I spun around in shock.
Hans was staring straight ahead with cold eyes.
“Why are you sneaking around without making a sound and scaring people?”
“I cannot kill you, can I?”
“......?”
Was that supposed to be a joke?
When I stared at him, Hans discreetly looked away.
“Do not make jokes anywhere. You are genuinely frightening.”
“Ahem.”
“By the way, what do you mean by cleaning?”
“The students. Recently, some have been intentionally disrupting the harmony of the three races. Mostly human nobles.”
I thought of the students we had met in the corridor to the cafeteria.
“There are some, though only a few.”
“You cannot dismiss them because they are few. Twisted beliefs are highly contagious.”
It was easy to tell how serious Hans was from his rigid voice.
I did not intend to ignore them either.
I was a man who had been possessed from twenty-first-century Korea.
I understood better than Hans how dangerous people blinded by wrong beliefs and ideologies could be.
“That doesn’t mean we can deal with children coldly.”
They were not even adults yet.
By Earth’s standards, they were only just at the age for eighth-grader syndrome.
But Hans seemed to think a little differently.
“Before they are students, they are nobles. And before they are nobles, they are sprouts that may betray humanity.”
For Hans to go this far, it was not an ordinary matter.
There were definitely people inciting the students from behind the scenes.
They might even be connected to the Underworld.
But that was adults’ business.
Not the children’s, was it?
“Would it not be better to sort them out as much as possible before the academy opens?”
“No. It wouldn’t.”
I immediately shook my head.
“Wrong ideas only need to be corrected. Isn’t that why there’s an academy?”
“There may be great casualties before we can correct them.”
“So you want to dispose of young children because of that? That’s too much. You’re not a psychopath.”
Familiar faces were crossing the garden just then.
Human students gathered in little groups, whispering and glaring at spirits and elves. Other human students also edged away from them.
“I agree that they need correcting. We need to give them a sharp scolding before they cross the line.”
“That alone will be too late. Blood may be spilled.”
“A great deal of blood has already been spilled.”
Why so many people had bled while standing against demonfolk overwhelmingly stronger than humans.
The reason was not power, gold, or treasure.
It was only to preserve a place where the next generation could live in peace.
And the children radiating a gloomy mood over there were part of the next generation we had tried to protect.
“Lewis.”
Hans called me in a hard voice.
“Are you thinking of Sir Roland?”
Meddlesome Roland.
A mid-ranking knight of the Golden Mane Knights, an older man who habitually said he would become an academy professor when he retired.
He was also endlessly weak toward children.
“I know Sir Roland’s wish as well. But you do not have to carry on his legacy—”
“It’s not like that.”
“What do you mean, it is not? The fact that someone who is always saying something is troublesome is acting like this...”
I cut Hans off.
“It’s because this is nothing much.”
“......”
“Really.”
Perhaps realizing I wanted to change the subject, Hans nodded readily.
“In any case, it is not a matter to take lightly.”
“It’s light to me.”
In the original story, there was an incident in which demonfolk infiltrated directly, incited students, and sabotaged the academy.
Dozens of casualties came as a bonus.
This was only petty stirring of trouble.
***
The Skadivia Kingdom had been absorbed by the Afernia Empire.
Griam Ganiv was the son of a Skadivian provincial noble.
This boy, only twelve years old, could not truly understand the disappearance of a nation.
“......”
But Griam Ganiv glared out of the dormitory window with dark, hate-filled eyes.
“Griam. What are you doing?”
Griam turned at the voice calling him.
Five more children of a similar age were there.
“Spirits and elves are still wandering around even though curfew is near.”
They themselves were in another student’s dormitory though curfew was nearing, but they complained as if that did not occur to them at all.
“The spirits are so noisy I could die.”
“The elves are stuffy too. Why do they have no concept of time?”
“They say they even live longer than us. Do they have some problem with their intelligence?”
“Right. They seem like an inferior race.”
What began as ordinary complaints gradually grew harsher.
“My father said that spirits and elves were behind the destruction of our Skadivia Kingdom.”
From Griam Ganiv’s words onward, the complaints became close to denunciations.
“They pretended to love peace while plotting something like that behind the scenes?”
“They are a race that cannot be trusted after all.”
“Why else would the Yggdrasil War have started? Something must have given them a pretext.”
“It would have been better to let them perish as they were. Why is the Empire trying to help elves and spirits?”
The young students’ knowledge of spirits and elves was scant.
They repeated distorted knowledge heard from their parents like parrots.
“My father told me the Empress plans to use elves and spirits as weapons of war.”
“My mother said the same. She is very interested in war.”
Distorted knowledge grew and was reproduced through the children’s imaginations.
“Well, that must be why she crushed Skadivia and Croxia.”
“I heard Nocardia is the next target.”
“There is even a rumor that she is going to wage war on the whole continent.”
“The Empress is mad. She is completely mad about war.”
“Right. A noble should focus on looking after the people!”
Hildegard had conquered Skadivia and Croxia because they joined hands with the Underworld.
She had only punished people who offered not only knights but ordinary citizens as sacrifices for dark magic.
Nocardia, too, was closer to a rescue from the demonfolk’s manipulation.
But those who had lost their country and feared losing their noble status did not care about that.
They only wanted to return to the past.
Even if it meant using their young children.
The children talked for a long time, each displaying their bits of knowledge.
When they were finally growing tired of talking, Griam started again.
“By the way, did you get letters too?”
“Letters? What letters?”
Some children tilted their heads.
Others nodded as though they understood.
“I did.”
“You mean letters from our families?”
In an instant, the topic changed to letters.
“Yes. If we do well, Skadivia might be restored.”
“My family head told me the same thing.”
“They said several houses are cooperating.”
“Right. And we will be recognized for our contribution.”
The students gathered there were only twelve and thirteen years old.
They vaguely knew what it meant to seek the restoration of a Skadivia already absorbed by the Empire, but they looked away from that truth.
Because the fantasy of being great nobles who performed great deeds flickered before their eyes.
“Our task is to tell our kin, who are being deceived by the Empire, how dangerous spirits and elves are.”
At Griam’s words, the children all nodded.
Some had received the same instructions.
Even some who had not received them thought Griam was right.
The desire not to be ostracized also played a part in their nodding.
“And if possible, we need to stop humans from being corrupted by the other races.”
The academy had been created for the harmony of three races.
Yet Griam was openly saying they should sow division at such an academy.
Naturally, this was not Griam’s own idea.
It was the instruction of the head of the Ganiv Family, who had commanded him, and of the resistance seeking Skadivia’s restoration.
Peel back one more layer, and it was Yuel’s scheme; Yuel had taken control of the Skadivian Resistance.
“Let us begin tomorrow.”
At Griam’s words, the children in the room raised their voices in agreement.
But one large boy, leaning in the corner with an unreadable expression, did not.
“Jerome. What is wrong? Are you afraid of the professors and teaching assistants?”
“...No.”
Jerome shook his head at Griam’s blatant provocation.
“I was just thinking about something else.”
Jerome recalled the letter he had received that morning.
‘Right. I am worrying for no reason. Father would never tell me to do something wrong.’
***
The Exchange Meeting was run in multiple groups.
The professor was the group leader, but a teaching assistant handled the actual proceedings.
Thus, the number of people in a group varied according to the number of teaching assistants.
“Let’s see. Fifteen in total. Everyone is here.”
Naturally, few students were assigned to Kanibara’s group, because I was her only teaching assistant.
‘I heard that some professors with a platoon’s worth of teaching assistants were assigned dozens of students.’
But perhaps because I was good at dealing with elf and spirit students, thirteen of the fifteen were elves or spirits.
Only two were human.
Perhaps that was why the human students’ expressions were so awkward.
Elves and spirits were minorities on the continent.
But in this group, humans were the minority.
“Today, just as I told you yesterday, I will give you a quiz. Everything is in the lectures you have learned, so do not be too nervous.”
The spirits’ eyes sparkled at my words.
The elves also quietly burned with enthusiasm.
I liked it when they were that eager.
After all, a quiz was a class format overwhelmingly easier for the person asking the questions.
“All right, first question. At what age do humans become adults?”
Elves were a long-lived race that lived at least five times as long as humans.
Spirits barely had the concept of age at all.
Could the children answer this question?
“Adults?”
The spirits tilted their heads.
Their reaction asked what that was.
Spirits were classified by evolutionary rank rather than age, so it was unfamiliar to them.
Watching them, the two human students whispered.
“Do spirits even age?”
“Who knows?”
While the others thought hard, I told the two students.
“Spirits are distinguished more by rank than age.”
“Ah, lower-ranking, middle-ranking, and high-ranking?”
“Yes. But that too is actually a human classification. Young spirits are not called lower-ranking. They are just called spirits.”
Time was not important to spirits.
Their power naturally increased according to how mentally mature they became.
After they accumulated a certain amount of power and completed a clear sense of self, they became middle-ranking spirits.
“Teachew!”
Just as I finished explaining spirits, a water spirit raised their hand.
“All right, Suni. What is your answer?”
“A hundred!”
“What a noble heart you have, trying to push the human lifespan past its limits.”
“Hehe.”
“But that is wrong. And you should speak politely to your teacher.”
“Gasp?!”
The young water spirit was startled at being told they were wrong.
Had they really thought that was the answer?
The Exchange Meeting had already been running for ten days, yet the road ahead was vast.
The spirits especially displayed their miraculous memory, forgetting things the moment they turned away.
Though they remembered anything they cared about quite well.
‘Should someone make an educational method that works effectively on spirits?’
For a moment, a fairly educator-like concern occurred to me.
‘Well. The professors will take care of it.’
I immediately discarded it.
I was only a teaching assistant in disguise.