[False Rumors]
After Suni, several more spirits raised their hands, but no one got the answer right.
“It looks as though we need remedial lessons.”
What was I supposed to do when they even lit up at the words remedial lessons, you little spirits...?
“Ahem. Does anyone know the answer? At what age do humans become adults?”
Then an elf student raised his hand.
“I do.”
“All right, Forein. What is your answer?”
“When an apple tree reaches the end of its lifespan.”
For a moment, I blinked at the answer from another dimension.
Then I asked Elaine.
“How long does an apple tree live?”
“It depends on the variety, but usually fifteen years.”
“Should I call that right or not?”
On Teruna Continent, humans came of age at fifteen.
But was it right to call that an apple tree?
“...Half right. Next time, say fifteen years old.”
“Is that not the same thing?”
“It is different to humans. No, only a few people will understand what you mean.”
That strange author who caused the resentment of many readers by making orchards would perhaps understand.
Still, Forein knew the correct answer itself, so I gave them a prize.
It was a small piece of World Tree Amber I had broken up.
“If you had answered properly, you could have received a larger piece.”
“......!”
Forein’s ears fluttered at my words.
“All right, shall we move on to the second question?”
Perhaps because they learned there were prizes, the students’ eagerness filled the small classroom.
“Spirits are born from eggs at Elysia Sanctuary. Elves are born from World Tree flower buds. But humans, as you learned, are born from other humans, right?”
Perhaps because of this fundamental difference, humans and the other races had very different social structures.
“Then what do humans call the people who gave birth to them?”
It was the most basic of basics to humans.
No, calling it basic was almost embarrassing.
After all, the first words babies said were very likely to be ‘dad’ or ‘mom.’
But it was an exceedingly unfamiliar term to other races with no such concept.
Just as I expected, the children were confused by the unfamiliar concept.
“...Teachew?”
Oh, Suni.
You have turned me into a parent in an instant. Me, who has no dating experience and cannot get married.
“Teruna?”
Yes. Teruna was the parent of all the people of this continent.
But if you called your parents that, the Holy See would come running and shout, “You rascal!”
“Mister!”
Oh dear. Calling one’s parents ‘mister.’
A child who knew not a single curse had achieved filial impiety on their own.
The road to racial harmony was this long and arduous.
“Pfft...!”
Kanibara, watching from behind, shook with suppressed laughter while holding her stomach.
Several wrong answers followed.
Still, thanks to some students who had studied hard, the quiz progressed reasonably well.
An hour passed just solving ten questions.
It was almost time to end today’s Exchange Meeting.
“All right, shall I make the final question a little harder? If you get this one right, I will give you a whole bag of cookies!”
“A whole bag!”
“Aaaaah!”
“I’ll get it right!”
“Pleeease!”
The spirits went wild.
The elves looked a little indifferent.
But when I drew a piece of World Tree Amber the size of a finger joint from my pocket, their eyes changed.
“Of course, the elves will get amber if they answer correctly.”
“......!”
Was that what silent screaming looked like?
The elves clenched their fists, their ears fluttering.
They were so enthusiastic that even the branches of ornamental plants, reacting to their emotions, bent toward me.
“All right, then. The question! You are on a date with your lover, and a friend of the opposite sex is walking by over there. What should you do?”
It was an advanced question.
So advanced that even I, who had lived more than twenty-four years, had never experienced it!
Even after traveling the continent for ten years, I had only read about it in books!
“Lover?”
“Date?”
The spirits tilted their heads as though they could not understand the question.
An elf student explained to them.
“We learned it a little while ago. Lovers are people who love each other.”
“Love!”
“We love each other!”
“Then are we lovers?”
“I’m a lover too!”
Spirit couples appeared in an instant.
An amazing kind of romance where everyone became everyone else’s lover was happening.
One spirit even clung to an elf.
“No. Loving one another as members of the opposite sex... Um, but is that different from the other kind of love?”
The elf student looked at me.
“What is love between lovers? Is it different from loving one’s own kind?”
“...Who knows?”
It probably was different...
But I did not know how it was different.
The limits of my knowledge...!
Was this why I was only a teaching assistant?
“Help me, Professor!”
I looked at Kanibara with desperate eyes.
Kanibara had even earned a doctorate.
She surely possessed more abundant knowledge than an adult who had not finished kindergarten like me!
“Sigh. You do not even know that?”
“Ohh!”
“Love between lovers is, you see—”
Kanibara’s tongue swept over her lips.
For some reason, a terrible premonition shot down my spine.
“Whether they can se—!”
“Waaaaaaaaah!”
“...do it with each other!”
I screamed and cut Kanibara off.
“What are you telling the children?!”
I was so flustered that I used casual speech without thinking.
We needed to look like an ordinary professor and teaching assistant in front of the children.
“Why? You said there would be sex education once the academy opens. It is preparation. Preparation.”
“It is a lecture required purely for academic reasons! Saying things that provocative will not help!”
“Come on. The ones old enough to know probably know already. I hear graffiti is still found sometimes.”
At that, I remembered the graffiti we had discovered on the academy’s first day.
The sexually explicit graffiti that had enraged the Chancellor and Hans because it lowered the academy’s dignity.
‘Ah, right. Elves and spirits drew that...’
The moment that thought reached me, I quickly turned to the children.
Grin.
Some children wore sly smiles among the group.
‘Now that I look, they knew everything and were playing around?’
Some children understood what human love was, but they were teasing their innocent friends.
They were still cute, since it was just cute children smiling a little wickedly.
“Tomi, Susan, Hwabi, Morein, and Dorein.”
“?!”
They jumped when I called each of their names exactly.
“After the Exchange Meeting, you will study the rest with your teaching assistant.”
After subduing those mischievous children, I continued the quiz.
“All right. Does anyone know the answer?”
“I do.”
Elaine raised her hand among the children.
Right. Elaine would know the answer—
“Greet them warmly, then play together.”
“Nonsense!”
Elaine looked dazed at my shout.
“Huh...? It is good to play together. We are all friends.”
“Friends? Good heavens! You are one of those people who believe men and women can be friends! The correct answer is to ignore them without even greeting them!”
To think Elaine was one of that horrifying group!
I could never have imagined such a serious situation!
“Children. Listen carefully.”
I spoke in a voice more serious than ever.
“Men and women cannot be just friends. There is no such thing in the world! If someone claims otherwise, they are after your lover—!”
“That is enough.”
Hans’s voice sounded, and my body was pulled sharply backward.
“Students, Assistant Lewis was joking just now, so please do not think too deeply about it. Today’s Exchange Meeting is over.”
“No! I’m not done talking—!”
“All right. Everyone, disperse.”
When Hans clapped his hands, the students whose names I had called earlier were the first to dart out of the classroom.
“Tch... To interrupt me! Do not tell me you believe male friends and female friends exist?”
I raised both arms and took a fighting stance.
I did not want to use violence against an old friend, but if it was for enlightenment!
“Today of all days, you are overflowing with even more bullshit.”
Hans openly showed how pathetic he found me.
“May I tell Her Majesty that you said you do not want to be friends with her?”
“W-When did I say that?”
“You said men and women cannot be friends.”
“...Now that I think about it, I think they can.”
“Good grief.”
When I raised the white flag, Hans shook his head tiredly.
“At first, you found the Exchange Meeting such a bother, but it seems you are enjoying it quite well.”
“It turned out to be fun. The children are cute too.”
“Well, they are cute.”
Hans nodded.
Kanibara asked him, “But what brings you here? You had tried not to make contact with Lewis during the day.”
The setting was that teaching assistant Lewis was a friend from the same hometown as Academy Inspector Hans.
Still, if an inspector and a mere teaching assistant acted too close, they would attract attention. We had barely talked for some time, so something must have happened.
“We received information that some students are going to spread malicious false rumors about the other races.”
Information that they would spread rumors, not that they had done so?
What was that? How had they acquired it?
Scary.
Perhaps he read my expression, because Hans furrowed his brow.
“I do not know what you are thinking, but this was an extension of the investigation into the life force sphere.”
As if making excuses, Hans explained quickly.
While investigating suspicious families, they had spotted correspondence with students attending the academy. When they opened the letters, they found instructions to spread malicious rumors about the other races.
“Even so, opening people’s letters indiscriminately is a bit...”
“Those are families that may be connected to demonfolk. It is a natural measure.”
“So decisive. You are like a hard pumpkin.”
“Can you make jokes in this situation?”
I shrugged at his words.
“If you even opened the letters, were you not planning for Special Division 4 to resolve it anyway?”
He was probably only telling me as a consideration, so that I would know beforehand.
But Hans shook his head, proving me wrong.
“No.”
“Huh?”
“Even if we arrest or expel academy students, it will not hurt the people behind them at all.”
“...You are going to use them as bait?”
“Yes. I intend to lure out those behind them.”
Hans must have had a reason for saying this.
“What do I have to do?”
“I would appreciate it if you prevent the students from being swayed by the false rumors.”
I nodded without thinking.
“It is human instinct to gather around and be swayed by provocative stories.”
It was even worse for children whose identities had not yet properly formed.
Protecting elf and spirit students from false rumors and regulating human students.
That was what Hans wanted from me.
Other professors would cooperate too, so I would not need to go out of my way more than necessary.
Hans had probably only told me so I would know.
“But will that be enough? How are you going to lure out the people behind it?”
“There will be a disturbance of the scale they want. If false rumors are insufficient, they will take the next step.”
The bolder they became, the more the people behind it would reveal themselves.
The moment Hans finished speaking—
**[S. Seeds of Malice]**
A new Sub Quest appeared.
And I knew this quest.
It was a quest in which some human students became jealous of the other races and started a violent incident.
There were even deaths.
‘The timing of the quest’s appearance and those causing trouble differ from the original story, but...’
That was natural, because history had changed.
Rather, the fact that the quest title stayed the same made the intention obvious.
This quest was Teruna’s warning to me.
A warning that if I tried to stop it half-heartedly, the students could be hurt instead.
“Lewis?”
“Ha. Damn Teruna.”
“Why are you blaspheming after trailing off?”
“Forget it. I will take care of the students’ safety, so you focus on finding the people behind it.”
“?”
Hans stared at me, puzzled by my sudden change in tone.
But he soon nodded.
“I will trust you.”
“Yeah, little brother. Trust your big brother once.”
“...Just die.”
Thud!
Hans kicked my shin.
“Ow! It’s the end of term!”
“That was not funny.”
Hans kicked my shin once more, then turned away.
As she watched his back leave the classroom, Kanibara tilted her head.
“Does he not seem angrier these days?”
“Ugh... Yeah. That really hurt.”
“Did something happen?”
“No? Nothing happened.”
I had an idea why he was so sharp.
It was probably because of Special Division 4’s work.
But that was Hans’s domain, so I should pretend not to know.
Kanibara wondered aloud, “Are you still drinking with Yureph and Sonya?”
“We get along better than expected. It is good for being introduced to other professors too.”
“Do not drink too much.”
“Are you worried about me now?”
Kanibara smiled and put an arm around my shoulders.
“Do not worry. I am never going to get hurt or sick.”
“Of course you are not.”
Even including every possible hidden master, there was a ninety-nine-percent chance Kanibara was humanity’s strongest.
“Anyway, you are friends with the other professors too?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I thought I might borrow some help for a while.”
***
“Hey, does it not smell around here?”
“Yeah. It smells fishy.”
In one corner of the grand auditorium, where the Exchange Meeting lecture was underway, human students whispered while looking at spirits.
“Spirits do not even wash.”
“That is why they smell.”
“Filthy.”
They were Griam and the children of Skadivian nobles.
As they kept talking about the same thing, the students around them began to tilt their heads too.
Nothing actually smelled.
But they had never heard of spirits bathing either.
And when the people around them kept saying there was a smell, it began to seem as though there really might be.
“Do spirits really not wash?”
At one student’s question, Griam, at the center of the group, nodded.
“That is what I heard. Have any of you ever seen a spirit washing in the communal bathhouse?”
“I have seen them come to play...”
“But I have not seen them wash.”
“See? I told you.”
Griam’s words were only half true.
It was true that spirits did not wash like humans.
But that did not mean they kept dirty bodies as they were.
Their bodies had almost no substance in the first place, so there was no need to wash.
Even if contamination stuck to them for some reason, they could simply shake it off.
Unless their very energy became tainted, the concept of ‘dirty’ did not apply to spirits.
But no human student knew that.
The spirits themselves sensed the malice from Griam’s group and avoided approaching them altogether.
Thus, the first rumor Griam’s group spread began to circulate among the children.
The students did not stop talking even while the lecture continued from the podium.
Just as the disturbance that started among the human students was about to grow—
“Ah. Speaking of culture, I have remembered one other major difference between human and spirit cultures.”
The professor on the stage raised his voice slightly.
“From a human perspective, spirits possess a truly enviable body. They are always pure and clean without bathing. They do not even grow old.”
The words seemed aimed directly at the false rumor Griam’s group had spread.