"Why on earth are you trying to go to the School of Administration? That is where students who lack the grades to apply to other schools go."
"Are you, an interviewer for the Imperial Patronage Association, making disparaging remarks about an academic school right now?"
"......No, that is not what I meant!"
Marta flinched, looking as though she had walked right into a trap.
Honestly, it was not a reaction I could not understand.
If South Korea had its medical, dental, and Oriental-medicine departments—its so-called med-dent-Oriental-med trio—then the academy had its Knight and Magic Schools, its knight-magic duo.
And now an Imperial Patronage Association scholarship recipient was using the association's connections to win over professors while deliberately targeting the lower-ranked School of Administration?
"It is not a school worth going to the trouble of adjusting my grades for?"
"You know all that, and you are still doing this on purpose? Is today's concept obnoxiousness instead of confidence?"
"My only concept has always been sincerity."
"......There you go again."
Of course Marta could not understand.
And that was precisely.
The reaction I was aiming for.
Chapter 02 - Wise Preparations for Enrollment
The world was astonishingly indifferent to things that were 'only natural.'
Just as it had shown no interest in the entirely natural fact that an orphan whose parents had suddenly been killed by a drunk driver in a hit-and-run had grown up decent and upright instead of going astray.
But when that orphan ran for the National Assembly and won a seat, it poured attention on him like the summer monsoon.
Because that was not 'only natural.'
'Therefore, if I want attention, I need to do something that is not only natural.'
And a freshman with high scores on the academy placement test choosing the Knight or Magic School.
Was an ironclad rule, as natural as could be.
"I know this might sound a little crass."
"Boo, crass."
"At a minimum, graduates of the academy's Knight and Magic Schools earn twice as much as graduates of other schools."
"The academy is a cold place."
That was because the difference in their futures after graduation was like heaven and earth.
And as Marta had said, this was not merely a matter of salary.
The greatest outcome for graduates of every school other than Knight and Magic was becoming a civil servant from beginning to end.
But the Knight and Magic Schools were a different story.
For one, Knight School graduates were consistently assigned to the cavalry corps, where they saw live action against monsters in the Imperial Army.
And monsters appeared more often in the provinces than in the Imperial capital or the directly governed territories.
'And those provinces naturally have the domains of hereditary nobles.'
All one had to do was deck oneself out in taxpayer-funded matching plate armor, then sweep the monsters away with needlessly flamboyant lance charges.
Then getting a call from a hereditary noble drunk on cavalry-corps hype—something like, 'Hm, would you perhaps consider becoming my knight?'—was no longer a dream.
'And Magic School graduates are like public-service doctors. They do not even need to put on that sort of performance.'
They worked a reasonable stint as public-service mages, sucked research funds dry from tax revenues, and completed their mandatory service.
Then, depending on their papers and research achievements, moving to a mage tower was the standard career path for Magic School graduates.
Thus, even when they were both civil servants, academy graduates from the Knight and Magic Schools were in a different class.
"You know that the academy's first-year curriculum is run as a general-studies program, correct?"
"Of course."
I did not.
I had never seriously played the academy seed.
But Marta did not know that I did not know, so nothing changed.
"Then you must also know that strong first-year grades give students priority when they choose their specialized school in their second year."
Naturally, she had no choice but to think I was adjusting my grades to enter the Knight or Magic School.
"Yes, I know."
"But you would use the priority gained by adjusting your grades to go to the nearly lowest-ranked School of Administration?"
"If I use adjusted grades to enter the Knight or Magic School, someone else will fail to get in. From that point onward, it is clear misconduct."
"Hmmm......"
Choosing one of those top schools, graduating, then completing only the mandatory civil-service period required by the scholarship before moving to a hereditary noble's territory or a mage tower.
That was probably the future plan she expected of me.
It did not seem like a bad plan at a glance, but it was also a plan I had no intention of following.
"Even so, why?"
The answer lay in what she had said.
"Marta, just call me Marta. This is not a scholarship interview anymore."
"Even so, I cannot simply throw around the name of someone older than me."
"Did you know older people are always armed?"
"Marta is a name that could not possibly be any easier to say, or any more dignified."
"You certainly know how to talk."
First of all, the Knight School was absolutely out.
Not only did I have no intention of being drafted by a hereditary noble.
There was no reason to walk willingly into a school whose every graduate joined the military, as its name, cavalry corps, made clear.
And while the Knight School was a lack of inclination, the Magic School was a lack of ability.
'I cannot use magic!'
I was a wholesome possessor with no talent or special perk related to magic at all. I was basically one of those Te○san-style possessors.
"So what does it mean that the answer lies in what I said?"
"You were curious, were you not, Marta?"
"Pardon?"
"Why I would choose the School of Administration and devote my life to being an Imperial civil servant even if I earned good grades."
"Uh, yes?"
"That is exactly why. To provoke curiosity."
Actions that were not only natural inevitably drew the attention of others.
"From the placement test all the way to graduation, why would a talented person who consistently earned outstanding grades choose the School of Administration? Everyone would have no choice but to wonder."
And the Emperor attended the academy's graduation ceremony.
To commend the top graduates of each school.
In truth, the primary purpose was to award them their civil-service appointments right there, so they could not escape elsewhere.
The seed I had played most was Chancellor, and a Chancellor had no choice but to become involved with the Emperor even if he did not want to.
That was why I could not help knowing where he was and what he was doing, even if I did not want to.
'And the current Emperor, Solarian III, is an unthinking suspicion machine.'
He was human, too, so he paid no attention at all to ordinary Knight and Magic School graduates. He merely awarded their appointment letters with the same old commendation and moved on.
But then!
'The instant a graduate appears who earned grades good enough to become either a knight or a mage, yet deliberately chose the School of Administration.'
'His suspicion switch will flip right on,'
Naturally, he would plant that person close to himself and watch every movement he made. At the very least, I would be certain to catch his interest.
Even the same accomplishment needed to be displayed near one's superior to be recognized.
If I enjoyed the Emperor's attention while using my Chancellor-grade experience to propose policies tailored to strengthening imperial authority, I could rise to Chancellor in the shortest possible time.
There was no need to honestly reveal all of that to Marta.
"I simply seek to gain the maximum profit from the minimum investment."
I wrapped an ambiguous explanation in a neat line.
I had obtained the documents I needed and even secured tacit consent for adjusting my grades.
The purpose of today's meeting had already been thoroughly accomplished.
And judging by the atmosphere of our conversation today, I could be certain that, at the very least, Marta did not dislike me.
If she had disliked me, she would have handed over the papers with a strictly businesslike attitude, or opposed the grade adjustment itself.
Therefore, this much was enough for now.
'Food, politics, and relationships all taste bad when they are underdone.'
The rest was something time would settle.
After parting with Marta, I returned home and looked through the documents.
"Oh-ho."
Before long, I found a suitable mark.
Along with inspiration for how to work on her.
***
- Seong-min.
- Yes, Representative.
- Did you see the news this morning?
- If you mean the breaking news about the director of the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service taking bribes, then yes, I did.
As I recalled, Representative Han Gyeong-su wore a satisfied yet slightly irritating smile.
In a tone that seemed as though he were threading a worm onto a hook, he asked.
- What is so breaking about that? Everyone who matters already knew. Anyway, why do you think people give and receive bribes?
- They are buying and selling what each side wants.
- Now, that is a good answer too, but I ought to change the question a little.
- I am listening.
- That Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service director who got caught this time was an educated man, too, was he not?
- He was.
- So why did a man that intelligent and well educated take a bribe that would send him to the big house if he got caught?
PLOP!
The fishing rod Representative Han Gyeong-su cast traced a graceful arc as it splashed into the water.
The future of the bait at its end, and of the fish that would soon bite it, was decided that very moment.
Just like the content of the conversation that followed.
- Just as no member of the National Assembly runs in an election expecting to lose, perhaps he thought he would not get caught.
- What? Hahahaha! In this day and age? If the prosecution decides to dig, there is nobody who does not get caught.
- Ahaha, is that so?
- They refrain from exposing it because they do not want to deal with the aftermath when the administration changes.
- Hm, then perhaps he accepted it without knowing it was a bribe.
- Seong-min, you really are Jin-ho's grandson....... You are offbeat, yet sharp.
Not knowing that he had accepted it did not exempt him from guilt.
Since I could not understand that at the time, I asked again in a daze.
- Is that the right answer?
- Yes, that is right. Shall I give you a simple explanation? Let us say you are the owner of the sashimi restaurant we will go to later. Then you would have a supplier who delivers fish for sashimi, yes?
- That is right.
- Let us call that supplier Supplier A. Every time Supplier A comes by, he puts an extra flounder in your tank, as a service, to thank you for doing business with him.
- That sounds like a situation that could commonly happen between small-business owners.
- Oh dear, Owner Lee has been caught for bribery.
- Pardon? It is only one flounder.
- The director who got taken down this time probably thought that too. Only this much, just a little. He might not even remember it. To the person receiving it, it may truly be pocket change.
- Wow....... Should I take some beer out of the icebox?
With a visibly brighter expression, Representative Han Gyeong-su took a swallow of carbonation and continued.
- Ahh. Anyway, that is why slipping someone a bribe is not a skill but an art. It has to be so natural that the recipient does not even realize he has accepted anything.
He would sometimes take me fishing on weekends and tell me all sorts of things.
- Even if it is not specifically because of the service flounder, the sashimi restaurant owner keeps doing business with Supplier A, so if someone wants to make trouble, they can find all sorts of grounds to do so.
- Exactly! But then you cut Supplier A off? If Supplier A says, 'To hell with it,' and blows the whistle while incriminating himself, it becomes a real headache. So......
We had not known each other for very long.
But to me, who had grown up without a father, he might have been the person closest to a father I had ever had.
***
"Haa......"
An alcohol-scented sigh poured out as though it could cave in the ground.
Every time she chugged straight from the bottle, her head swayed like a doll whose strings had been cut, making the Academy assistant professor identification card hanging around her neck swing along with it.
"Will a lightning bolt not strike the academy or something?"
It was a curse that would horrify students waiting eagerly for the semester to begin.
But there was no one other than her in the workshop-cum-store with the sign reading 'Cotiar Workshop.'
"Gulp."
Like the wine bottle that had somehow already become empty, it was nothing more than a hollow echo.
"The steam alchemy boom is coming!"
Sophia Cotiar, owner of Cotiar Workshop and an Academy assistant professor, rolled the empty bottle aside and rose to her feet.
She shuffled toward the workbench like a fisherman heading out for the morning catch, but she had no choice but to return to the counter almost immediately.
"Is the steam alchemy boom really coming?"
The expensive steam-alchemy materials, which she felt she had barely used for a few days, had already all run out.
In the end, even steam alchemy was a cold field that required money.
And for an assistant professor like her to earn money, she had to go to the academy.
The problem was that when she went to the academy, there was so much work that she had no time for personal research.
Until last year, she had been able to receive research funding from the Imperial Patronage Association because she had accumulated quite respectable research achievements in advance.
"Ah, will some rich young nobleman who has taken an interest in steam alchemy not appear somewhere?"
Once the academy began its term, she would be crushed by reality and unable to conduct any research.
If things went badly, she might fail the review for next term's research funding.
She worked as an Academy assistant professor to earn research funding, but then the assistant-professor work was so busy that she failed to qualify for research funding.
The contradiction.
Just as the flame of 'I quit' began to smolder in Sophia Cotiar's heart.
DING!
The door to Cotiar Workshop, which should not have opened at this hour, opened brightly.
"Welcome!"
Sophia Cotiar, who had instantly donned capitalism, broke into a radiant smile.
There might have been a faint hint of wine in that smile, but what did it matter?
The 'walking research fund' who had entered Cotiar Workshop was scooping up all manner of goods by the armful.
She did not know why such a tall, striking young man had gotten into something like steam alchemy, but.
"Could you put these in a bag, please?"
"Of course!"
Sophia Cotiar had long since been captivated by the splendor of the gold coins the young man held out.
'Business is over for today!'
The young man completed his purchase as swiftly and coolly as he had come in, then left the workshop after offering a polite farewell.
Already completely sober, Sophia Cotiar immediately placed an order for experimental materials through a steam carrier pigeon.
"There are still more than a hundred hours until the academy begins......"
If she reduced the time she slept a little, she had more than enough time to devote to steam-alchemy experiments.
After all, she could sleep forever once she was dead.
"Ah, I hope only big spenders like that come tomorrow too."
Sophia Cotiar let out a silly laugh and waited only for the materials she had ordered to arrive.
And then the next day came.
"Oh?! You are back again?"
"Hello. The things I bought yesterday were so fascinating and impressive."
"To recognize the true worth of Cotiar-made steam orbs! You have an extraordinary eye, do you not?"
Amazingly, the tall, striking big spender who had come the day before, and who had introduced himself as Lloyd Schultz, had returned.
And he bought even more than he had the day before!
Sophia Cotiar vowed to celebrate the day before the academy opened with expensive wine.
Then another day came.
"Steam alchemy is quite fun."
"Phew....... Do not get into things like this, customer."
"Pardon?"
"I am joking. What would you like today? I happen to have just finished an experiment, and......"
Once again, Lloyd scattered gold coins like water and vanished like the wind.
"Is this a dream? If it is a dream, please do not wake me!"
Thanks to her fattened purse, Sophia Cotiar went all in and replaced every experimental tool she had long been eyeing with the latest model.
As steam carrier pigeons flew busily back and forth and wagons loaded with goods arrived at Cotiar Workshop.
"The service flounders keep pouring in."
Lloyd watched from across the street with a meaningful smile.
Academy opening: D-2.