A Headache (1)

— Thump!

“Move it, you morons.”

“Ugh!”

Amon shoved his way roughly through the students. A few of them glared at the back of his head, plainly offended, but with his big build and harsh features, not one of them dared to argue.

He was headed for the academy’s upper floors, where the professors kept their research offices. Running a quick eye over the nameplates beside each door as he passed, he soon arrived at an office tucked away in the most secluded corner of all.

— Knock, knock.

“Uncle. It’s me.”

Amon pressed his face right up against the door and spoke in a low, quiet voice. A brief, awkward silence hung there before someone answered from inside.

“…I believe I told you not to call me Uncle until you were inside the room?”

“There’s nobody around here anyway.”

Amon grumbled and went in.

Strange light spilled from the lamps and flasks set all about the place, and a peculiar smell hung in the air, one he couldn’t put a name to. The research office was thoroughly unpleasant in more ways than one, and Amon shuddered on instinct.

“So, why did you call me in?”

He wanted out of this god-awful room as fast as he possibly could. When he tossed out the question with that thought in mind, Graham looked him over with a displeased eye and slowly began to speak.

“I have a job for you.”

“Who does? You do, Uncle? Then the sun must be coming up in the west tomorrow.”

Genuine anger laced the sarcasm Amon spat at Graham.

“You’ve ignored me all this time, and then you call me in out of nowhere, and what you have to say is ‘I’ve got a job for you’? Honestly… Do I even look like a person to you, Uncle?”

“Why, you little worm!”

— Thump!

The thick end of a staff drove square into Amon’s chest, and he sank down with a cry of “Agh!” Graham glared down at his panting nephew in disgust, as if to say how pathetic he was, and barked at him.

“Do you still think this is Everforce Academy? Learn your place!”

Amon had no reply at all for his uncle. He had already been branded a stain on the family once, and whatever he said in a situation like this would only sound like an excuse to the man.

Graham allowed his nephew a moment to pick himself up off the floor, then cleared his throat and came to the point.

“You’ll know about the new student who enrolled at the academy this time, I take it?”

“…More or less.”

“We have to get hold of that boy, whatever it takes.”

Graham wore a more serious face than Amon had ever seen on him.

“Part of Leonard Felix’s personal record was disclosed at the faculty meeting. They say he has ability equivalent to the third Circle at the very least.”

“Sorry?”

What kind of nonsense was this? Seeing the disbelief on Amon’s face, Graham handed him a document file.

“Sounds like a joke to you, does it? And yet the moment that boy’s mana bloomed, he held off several hundred Maulers single-handed. He even played an enormous part in cutting down a High Class monster, a Woodsman.”

When it sank in that this was no joke, the shock emptied Amon’s head entirely for an instant. Blooming at nine was tremendous enough on its own, and on top of that, the third Circle?

At this point, calling him a genius almost seemed like an understatement.

“Thanks to the gag order the students still don’t know what he’s really worth, but the professors do. By now the others will have started moving behind the scenes as well. We have to get to Leonard Felix before they do.”

The imperial house owed its recognized legitimacy to the magic its bloodline was born with. If Leonard’s potential was real, he could wield no small influence over an imperial court that had been entrenched for hundreds of years.

An opportunity this perfect was hardly one to let slip, was it?

“It would be ideal if I stepped in myself, but a professor approaching a student first looks very bad. Which is why you are the one who has to bring him over to our side.”

“…”

— Crrrk.

Amon clenched his fist hard. Some emotion he couldn’t name seemed to be boiling up from deep in his heart. Graham, apparently noticing nothing, went on talking with enthusiasm.

“You and I have both suffered quite enough in this godforsaken cesspit. Pull this one job off and the family will look at you differently too.”

Revolting.

Hearing words like those from the uncle who had looked on him with contempt and ignored him all this while was unbearably revolting. Still, proving his own worth to the family mattered far more to Amon than his loathing of the man, so he decided to help.

“What exactly am I supposed to do?”

“…I’m aware you’re not the type to play friendly with people. But in the end the other party is a nine-year-old brat. Genius or whatever he may be, he’s sorely short on knowledge and experience. Try digging in there.”

Graham stroked his chin, thought for a moment, then added:

“Whatever you do, avoid hard-line measures as far as you possibly can. One slip and we could find ourselves buried alive before anyone gets around to weighing the family’s honor. Move carefully.”

— Creeeak.

A little later, Amon slipped quietly out of Graham’s research office.

“…Fuck.”

He let out a heavy sigh and leaned back against the wall.

It had been so long since he was last summoned that he’d figured there must be something to it, but he had never dreamed he would be handed a job this awkward. However carefully he pitched it, would a kid of only nine even grasp what it meant?

Besides, Amon was a fifth-year now, seventeen years old. If someone like him went barging up to a lower-year student out of nowhere, anyone would find it suspicious.

First, let’s go over all the information I have.

Amon spread out the documents Graham had given him once more.

Leonard Felix. Status, commoner; place of birth, Keld Village. Family: two people only, father and mother, both of them farmers… Hm? What’s this?

Reading further down, Amon was thrown to find that the text simply stopped.

He turned the paper over, front and back, but astonishingly, that was all there was on Leonard Felix. It was more than ordinary thin; it was infuriating.

“Haah… What on earth am I supposed to do with this?”

There wasn’t a single opening left to dig into, was there? Amon sighed heavily again and rubbed his bristly chin. His eyes, fixed on the far end of the empty corridor, flashed sharply.

When Leonard was formally assigned to the Raven class, the students of that same class all seemed delighted about it.

Sharing a timetable meant more chances to cross paths with Leonard Felix, so they must have expected to see his genius and his exploits from a little closer up.

Contrary to their expectations, though, Leonard kept his head down and took care not to stand out. The fever around him dwindled as time went on, and by now only a handful of students remained at his side.

“Leonard, let’s go get lunch!”

“Once lessons are over, how about we do our homework together in the library?”

The moment morning lessons ended, students gathered around him as a matter of course. Leonard kept them company well enough while sizing up each of them in turn.

Perhaps he ought to seize this chance to join forces with the scions of the academy’s influential houses. If he built a faction and grew it, changing the academy would come far more easily.

But the easy road always carries its risks.

Accepting help creates a debt. A relationship built on profit and loss ends up as a hierarchy of creditor and debtor, and that, exactly as Ethan had said, would come back to bind him in place.

In short, what Leonard needed was not someone who moved in expectation of a reward, but a true “friend,” someone with whom help could be given and received in every way, materially and morally alike.

Yet most of the students saw Leonard as nothing more than an investment in their own success. What was more, in his previous life he had gone through his entire academy career without making a single companion.

Is it even possible for someone like me to get genuinely close to anybody?

Leonard was sunk in thought and had just let out a groaning “Nnngh—” when a voice broke in.

“—onard? Leonard!”

“…Ah, aah… Hm?”

He looked around to find the students all staring at him as if something were off. Leonard put on an awkward smile.

“Ah, sorry. My mind wandered off for a moment… What were we in the middle of talking about?”

“I said we should go and see a projector show or something downtown next week, didn’t I?”

“Honestly… Don’t make me say things twice, it’s exhausting.”

Downtown?

When Leonard tilted his head, the students told him, exasperated:

“Next week’s the day we go out into the Everton town center. You didn’t know?”

“Go out…? Ah!”

Everton was a city that had grown up around Kestral Academy, and one of the Citra Empire’s centers of commerce. Students were given the chance to go out into the town center exactly once a month. They could escape the stifling academy and work off their stress to their hearts’ content, while Everton’s merchants secured potential customers, so both sides came out ahead.

“I think having a look at the new staff-maker’s workshop that’s opened wouldn’t be bad either… What about the rest of you?”

Seeing the excitement on their faces, Leonard couldn’t help a wry smile.

Students’ interests never change, do they.

Everton had been a popular place for students to unwind in his previous life as well. But that only held for those without money troubles, and it had never been Leonard’s world.

The Leonard of those days had lost his parents early. Far from having spending money for amusements, he hadn’t received so much as a single letter. Whenever he went out onto the main street, the most he managed was buying books with the academy stipend he’d saved up.

Fortunately both his parents were alive now, but he was just as short of money as ever.

“Er, sorry to interrupt while you’re all enjoying yourselves, but…”

“Hmm?”

“Sadly I’ve got almost no money I can spend freely. …You know what I mean, right?”

The students exchanged slightly blank looks, then burst into loud laughter and clapped Leonard on the shoulder.

“Is that what you were spacing out about earlier?”

“Don’t worry about it! Fitting one more person in for a day out is no trouble at all.”

…Huh?

Leonard was genuinely thrown.

He hadn’t even considered going out in the first place. More than anything, he simply wasn’t used to having fun. Perhaps because he had lived a life so far removed from amusement, he felt more at ease reading one more line of a book.

But the students were far more open-handed with their money than he had expected.

“Don’t worry, Leonard!”

“The first round’s on us!”

“Ha, haha…”

So this was what real respect for the elderly looked like?