[Division]
Curfew was drawing near.
No one was around the flowerbed in the deepening darkness.
Except for the three students approaching from far away.
“See? I told you no one would be here.”
“It would be stranger if anyone were here at this hour.”
“The elf dormitory wardens must teach them strictly to obey curfew.”
“Heh heh. Even so, the ones who sneak out will sneak out.”
The students whispered among themselves.
Elaine’s long ears perked up.
“They certainly sound proud of breaking the rules.”
“You broke them too.”
“Me? I was with Lewis....”
“No. When you cut off the World Tree Branch.”
“Oh, come on. I really needed to do that, and the World Tree wanted to come with me too.”
Surprisingly, that was not a lie.
There had even been a game script in which the World Tree wanted to learn more about the human world through Elaine.
If it had refused to be held in Elaine’s hand, it would have turned to earth and vanished.
“I’m joking.”
“Anyway, are we going to leave them alone?”
STOMP! STOMP!
Grind, grind.
The children had already completely ruined the flowerbed.
Darkness had already fallen, so the flowerbed was barely visible.
Even so, the students kept stomping and grinding something pale beneath their feet.
It was not a pleasant sight.
WHOOOOSH—
The bitter winter wind brushed past my ears, making me hunch in on myself.
“Man, if only we could record things, we wouldn’t have to go through this much trouble. We have communication orbs, so why is there no recording?”
“Recording? What is that?”
“It exists. It’s very useful.”
As I said that, I straightened the legs I had been crouching on.
“Let’s go.”
“Yes. I’ll teach them a proper lesson.”
“Take your hand off that axe.”
“Oops. I did it without thinking. Hehe.”
Elaine smiled and approached behind the children.
The children were still happily trampling the flowerbed.
Elaine was a genius who had escaped Yggdrasil while evading even the pursuit of elf rangers.
I had rested for a long time, but there was no way a few academy students could notice me.
Naturally, the children noticed nothing until we came right up behind them.
“What are you guys doing?”
Only when I hooked an arm around their shoulders and spoke did they jerk upright as though about to faint.
“Aah!”
“Eek!”
“Shh.”
I lightly tightened my hold around the children’s necks.
“It’s late. Why are you screaming like that?”
“T-Teaching Assistant?”
One of the two children recognized me.
“Yeah. It’s your teaching-assistant big brother.”
“Th-This is...!”
“It’s fine. You can make excuses in the professor’s office.”
At my words, the children twisted as though they wanted to run away.
“Now, now.”
I put strength into my arms and restrained them.
“If you come along now, it’ll end as a small disturbance, but if you run, you’ll receive an aggravated punishment. Got it?”
“......”
“You wouldn’t want the dishonor of being the first students to be disciplined before the academy has even opened.”
Only then did the children go limp.
“Good choice. If you’d resisted, Elaine would’ve brought her axe down on your heads.”
As if in response, Elaine placed her hand on the axe at her waist, making it clink.
“M-Murder is a grave crime....”
“It is, but you know that royals and imperials can do it as long as they have a justification.”
The children’s faces filled with confusion at that.
Why were royals suddenly involved, and what did justification have to do with anything?
They clearly did not understand at all.
“Elf society is a little different from human society, but if you really think about it, Elaine is royalty.”
Depending on her Awakening Route, she could even become queen, so it was not a lie.
“......!”
“And the flowerbed you just trampled belongs to Elaine.”
At those words, the students still trapped in my arms began to struggle.
“That’s a lie! This is Forein’s flowerbed....”
“So you were aiming for Forein’s flowerbed after all?”
“N-No, that’s....”
“But what should we do?”
At my signal, Elaine flicked her fingers lightly.
A sphere of mana the size of a fingernail formed in midair, casting a faint light around us.
In the dimly lit flowerbed stood a precariously tilted sign marked [Elaine].
Clear footprints had been stamped on top of it.
“......!”
The children’s faces, already pale from the winter cold, grew even paler.
“Do you understand? In human terms, you trespassed into a princess’s private flowerbed and trampled her treasured plants all over the place.”
“You even left footprints on the sign that bears my name.”
When Elaine joined in, the children desperately tried to excuse themselves.
“W-We didn’t know! We thought it was Forein’s flowerbed!”
“Not knowing doesn’t erase the crime.”
I pressed the children in a stern voice.
“The fact that you tried to ruin Forein’s flowerbed in secret means you know exactly what plants mean to elves.”
“We don’t! How would we humans know that?”
“It was just a prank! A prank!”
“That can’t be right.”
Those children had known exactly what they were doing.
“Bred. Jowin. Yaltu. You got question seven on yesterday’s pop quiz right. I wrote that one.”
It had not even been a difficult question.
It was a true-or-false question about whether elves cherished plants as they did their own bodies.
“If you tried to get out of this by lying, that’s another aggravated punishment.”
By then, the children seemed to have realized there was no way out.
“Come on. Follow us quietly.”
Elaine and I brought the three students to Kanibara’s professor’s office.
As expected, Kanibara was not there.
Recently, she seemed to spend hardly any time in her office.
“All right. We need to write a statement of events....”
When my gaze turned toward them, the three students shifted uneasily.
“You’re the ones who hang out with Griam, right?”
“......!”
“A while ago, I was going to let spreading false rumors pass as something that can happen among children. But you’ve done this too, so I can’t let it pass.”
I took a sheet of blank paper from beneath Kanibara’s desk.
I intended to pretend to write something and test the children.
After all, Griam was probably both the core and the ringleader.
If possible, it would be better to catch Griam.
“G-Griam told us to do it!”
“That’s right! We gathered in Griam’s room before going to the flowerbed!”
“Griam taught us that ruining a flowerbed was the best way to harass elves!”
I had not even properly pressed them yet, but Griam’s name spilled from their mouths.
“Really? Then we should hear Griam’s side too.”
I contacted the dormitory warden and summoned Griam.
And when Griam arrived at the professor’s office—
“I don’t know anything about it.”
He feigned ignorance.
“It is true that they were in my room, but it was only to strengthen our friendship.”
“They say you taught them how to harass elves.”
“Me?”
Griam shook his head as though he knew nothing at all.
“If you ask whether I like elves, I do not. But I’m not so active that I would harass them like that.”
“Hmm.”
“Of course, I did go around repeating false information I heard from others. But I have reflected on it, and I will not do such things anymore.”
Griam cleverly concealed the truth and insisted that he was not involved.
He was far worse than I had expected.
‘Should I just leave him to Hans?’
That thought suddenly came to me.
Would the comrades who died on the battlefield not feel self-reproach if they saw that child?
There could not have been a bad seed like that among the category of humanity they had tried to protect.
‘No. No.’
I let out a faint sigh and shook off the stray thoughts.
If I let my temper take over and acted harshly, I would only feel better for the moment.
If even someone like him had room to reform, I should care for him.
That would be the path that honored those who had sacrificed themselves for this continent.
“Lewis... Teaching Assistant?”
Elaine began to call my name, then added “Teaching Assistant” because the other students were there.
It was nothing special. It was natural.
But it was also quite novel.
An elf who had lived over fifty years was calling me, someone in his twenties, Teaching Assistant.
If there were forces like Griam’s family that actively rejected harmony between the races,
then there were also beings like Elaine who actively pursued it.
I felt that fact anew.
“Fine. When the claims differ over something like this, it’s best to suspend judgment for now. But, Griam.”
“......”
“I have personally warned you twice. If you’re caught one more time, don’t think this will end with a half-hearted punishment.”
My direct words twisted Griam’s expression.
His face seemed to say, ‘How dare a commoner like you say that to me?’
“What? Does it offend you to hear that from a commoner?”
“...No.”
“Good. This is an academy. Even the Empire’s old noble houses respect the academy.”
Of course, Gloria Academy was a newly established academy.
But it possessed an authority that transcended its newness.
It was an academy directly founded by the first Empress of Afernia, which had risen to become an empire.
And it was a place where the three races came together.
Before that authority, even a count had to watch his step.
Needless to say, the barons and viscounts of a fallen nation had to do the same.
“I will be careful. I will tell my friends as well.”
“All right. Go.”
When I nodded, Griam hurried out of the professor’s office.
Still a child at heart, he could not hide the pounding of his footsteps.
“......”
The three students Griam had betrayed wore shocked expressions.
“Th-The evidence....”
One of them even began to pull something from his clothes.
“H-Hey!”
Only when his friend urgently jabbed him in the side did he come to his senses and close his mouth.
I could guess what he had been about to take out.
He was likely going to show the letter he had received from his family.
And that letter would contain something about the Ganiv Family, to which Griam belonged.
But I pretended not to notice.
If those children sincerely reflected, they would not do anything like this again.
And if they did not sincerely reflect, that letter would be used as evidence to overturn their families.
While the children trembled as they waited, I wrote a statement summarizing what had happened today.
“I wrote down what happened today. After I report it to the professor, it will go to the Student Discipline Committee.”
“Th-Then what will happen to us?”
“If it is deemed a minor matter, the Student Discipline Committee will impose the punishment. But deciding that is—”
I gestured with my eyes toward Elaine, who was drinking tea on the sofa.
“Not up to me. It’s up to Elaine, because Elaine is the victim.”
“......”
“If it is not handled by the Student Discipline Committee, the professors will discuss punishment at a faculty meeting.”
Many professors held noble titles, even if only honorary ones.
They had substantial knowledge and connections, and they formed one pillar of high society.
Moreover, Gloria Academy was a place the Afernia Empire had built through gritted teeth.
There were not only many eminent professors from the Empire, but a great number of professors invited from foreign nations.
Only now, perhaps, did the three students realize that such professors would learn of their petty conduct. Their faces crumpled.
“We were wrong.”
“Please forgive us....”
At last, the three students began begging Elaine.
But Elaine turned her head with a cold expression.
“Do you think I’ll feel any sincerity just because you beg for forgiveness now?”
“......”
“Of course, how you earn forgiveness is something you need to think about too. Sign this and go back for today.”
I had the children sign the statement and stamp it with their family seals.
Then I spoke to them as they turned and left the professor’s office.
“If any of your friends are planning to do something similar, stop them.”
“......”
“Then I might think you’re sincerely reflecting.”
Elaine nodded faintly at my words.
The children bowed deeply too, then left the professor’s office.
Creak— Click.
The door closed. Elaine, who had watched their departing backs, let out a small sigh.
“Punishment must be frightening to humans.”
“Punishment is frightening too, but having their reputation collapse around them will frighten them more. It is connected to their families as well.”
What choice would those children make?
Would they value their individual reputations and safety within the academy?
Or their reputation within the Skadivian Noble Alliance?
That much, I did not know.
“By the way, is your flowerbed all right?”
Originally, I had planned to switch the sign and lure those children to an empty flowerbed.
But Elaine had said it would be better to lure them to her flowerbed, which was close to Forein’s.
And she had readily offered her own flowerbed.
“It’s all right. It’s actually a good thing.”
“A good thing?”
“The plants I’ve sown in that flowerbed are the kind that grow bigger and stronger when they experience hardship.”
Elaine explained that the plants in her flowerbed were that type.
It was like trampling barley.
‘Though that was much more extreme....’
Elaine looked as though it did not bother her at all.
“Then that’s a relief.”
“But I really don’t understand their intentions: why they wanted to ruin plants that were growing well.”
“We humans are sorry.”
Of elves, spirits, and humans,
humans were probably the most evil by nature.
Seeing how people like Griam kept appearing, that was clear enough.
As I thought that, I suddenly became curious.
Teaching angelic children was not difficult.
It was fun to play with them, too.
But not all children were like angels.
‘What did Roland think?’
Sometimes Roland would deliberately let himself be pickpocketed in the slums.
Each time, Roland prepared dozens of pouches containing a few coins and carefully written notes.
The sight of him putting those in his clothes and setting out into the streets made me think he was truly sincere about children.
The notes contained all kinds of things.
Ways children could find work.
Ways to escape the back-alley delinquents.
Words to encourage courage.
‘He even wrote down the characteristics of people you needed to watch out for when pickpocketing.’
I had once asked him whether there was a need to teach them that.
Roland’s answer had been simple.
He could not do everything for them, so he was only giving them choices.
Whether they gave up pickpocketing and sought work,
or became more cunning pickpockets.
He could not teach them in detail what might come to them in the future as a result, so should he not at least give them choices?
But even Roland sometimes left wearing a frightening expression.
And when he returned, I remembered that he carried the faint smell of blood.
‘It seemed he had his own standards....’
Unfortunately, I had never asked what those standards were.
I had been preoccupied with other things then.
‘I should not have tried to imitate Roland half-heartedly.’
Since I had come to the academy, and since I had no choice but to live at the academy,
I had thought it might be good to fulfill the wish of Roland, who had died because of me, in his place.
But it was not easy.
“Lewis?”
Perhaps wondering why I had suddenly fallen silent, Elaine called me.
It was already late, so I should quickly finish what I needed to say and send her back.
“Protect your elf friends for a few days.”
“Will they do something like that again after getting caught by you?”
“Some children will grow bolder precisely because they have been caught.”
They would think it was all or nothing, after all.
“This time, only a flowerbed was ruined, but next time, it might be more than a flowerbed.”
“They did not seem foolish enough for that....”
“Even intelligent people sometimes act like blind fools.”
At my words, Elaine gave a grave nod and said she understood.
“Still, don’t worry too much.”
“You have a plan, right?”
“Yeah. I’ll do everything I can too.”
The key matters would be handled by Hans and Special Division 4, of course.
‘I can’t simply sit here and do nothing.’
For now, I planned to meet the Chancellor first.
I should take some of the spirit children with me when I went.