Johan Jenkins (1)

“Mnh.”

It was half past six in the morning, early by any measure, yet for some reason Johan had woken up.

The sweet scent of mana potion prickled faintly at his nose, cut with the sour reek that only vomit gives off. Johan forced down the rising nausea and got to his feet.

— Trundle.

His toe caught an empty bottle and sent it rolling away with a clear ring. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, the students sprawled dead asleep around him took shape, one by one.

“Hey.”

He tried rousing them, but all that came back was groaning and snores. With no other choice, Johan fished his backpack out of the rubbish strewn across the floor, opened the door and stepped out into the dormitory corridor. The clear air of the forest around the building greeted him.

“…Off to class again?”

The rustling must have woken one of the students sprawled across a bed, who was rubbing sleepy eyes.

“Go back to sleep.”

Johan answered curtly and slipped out of the room. For about ten minutes he walked an empty footpath under faintly flickering street lamps, and as he neared the main building, students who knew him by sight began to appear.

“It’s Johan.”

“Was today one of the days he comes to class?”

As Johan made his way toward the lecture hall, the crowd split in two ahead of him as if clearing a path. Just then, someone’s chatter drifted over from somewhere nearby.

“Did you hear? Last month Johan laid into a perfectly harmless third-year out of nowhere, they say. How does somebody like that get to stay on at the academy without a scratch on him?”

Two students were so wrapped up in their gossip that they hadn’t noticed Johan’s eyes on them.

“What can anyone do? Who’s going to lay a hand on someone of the Jenkins house? Never mind a professor — not even the Dean could touch him.”

“This academy’s in a fine state, all right.”

Just as the talk was about to cross a line, Johan abruptly changed course and started toward the pair. Sensing that things were about to get out of hand, the other students shrank back in fear, one step at a time.

“…The house paid a donation when he enrolled, see. That’s why everybody just stands by and watches.”

“True. If he hadn’t done anything wrong to begin with, there’d be no talk like this in the first…”

That was when Johan spoke up.

“Oh, is that so?”

The student who had been prattling away to a friend clamped their mouth shut.

A chill ran down the student’s spine, and the friends in front of them stared back with faces gone ashen. The instant the student met Johan’s eyes head-on, eyes as dry as a corpse’s, the shock jolted a hiccup out of them.

“Hic.”

“You. That’s an interesting thing to say.”

Johan seized the student by the hair and dragged their face up close to his own. He looked ready to chew them up on the spot, yet the voice that came out of him was strangely calm.

“If you’ve got something to say, come out front and say it to my face like you mean it. Don’t go muttering behind my back like some gutless little shit.”

“…”

In the blink of an eye, the whole corridor went dead silent.

“What is everyone doing here?”

Sophia had appeared at the end of the corridor, her voice ringing out loud. She looked from Johan to the student and back, seemed to take in the situation at a glance, and jerked her chin at the rest of the students.

“If you have time to chat, get moving. Class starts in two minutes.”

Flustered, the students hurriedly gathered their things and cleared out. The student Johan had let go seized the chance as well, muttering some curse before vanishing off somewhere.

“Are you all right?”

Once the two of them were finally alone, Sophia asked, and Johan let out a deep sigh before he answered.

“…Thank you. If you’d come along a moment later I really would have thrown a punch.”

“That wouldn’t do.”

Sophia’s expression turned stern.

“Johan. I understand well enough what you’re thinking, but I’d like you to leave it at this much. It must have been hard enough on you already, and to spend what time you have left being cursed at like this… that’s just too…”

“No, Professor.”

Johan didn’t hesitate for an instant.

“A son who bleeds his parents dry, trash with a ruined temper… I like things as they are. Unless something specific comes up, I’m keeping things exactly as they are.”

“Even so…”

“This is what I wanted.”

With that flat declaration, he swung the backpack onto his back and slowly turned away.

“Did something good happen? You’ve been grinning away to yourself for a while now.”

“Ah, no. Nothing.”

Startled by his classmate’s remark, Leonard lowered the hand he had unthinkingly laid on his chest. Even so, as he recalled the shape of the object sitting in the inside pocket beneath his uniform, a satisfied smile crept onto his face in spite of himself.

Graham had turned himself in, and an enforcer had seized him and hauled him off to prison. Leonard had cleanly removed a man who was nothing short of a cancer on the academy, and on top of that he had picked up a precious magic item without spending a single coin.

Could there be a more satisfying result than this?

“…Anyway, Leonard, whatever you do, don’t do anything that stands out in the next class.”

“The mood in there isn’t normal.”

His classmates raised it cautiously, and Leonard gave them a puzzled look.

“The third-period class?”

If his memory served, the next class, third period, was the “exchange lesson” held exactly once a month. First-years with fourth-years, second-years with fifth-years, third-years with sixth-years: on this special occasion, the upper-years and the lower-years of the same class gathered together to share the magical knowledge and technique they had learned so far. Graduating seventh-years were excepted. Since it narrowed the distance between students and let them pass on the know-how they had built up, the intent behind it, at least, deserved some praise.

“How am I supposed to explain this one.”

“Well, you’ll understand once you see it for yourself.”

The students trailed off vaguely, as though it were hard to put into words. Leonard pressed them a few more times after that, but they kept their mouths shut all the way to the lecture hall.

— Rattle.

He slid the door open, and the whole lecture hall came into view at once. There were plenty of students inside, but with the desks and chairs pushed into the corners, the room felt spacious rather than cramped.

“Hm?”

Leonard frowned, suddenly noticing something.

With this many students in one place, there should have been at least a little noise, yet for some reason every one of them was holding to an unnatural silence. Their eyes darted about with nowhere to settle, and a strange tension hung over the room. They looked frightened of something.

“Um…”

“Now that you’re all here, attention.”

Just as Leonard was about to speak, the professor who had been leaning against one wall of the lecture hall raised a hand slightly.

“Today is the second exchange lesson… but it looks as though we have a first-year joining for the first time, so I’ll go over it once more on the side. The rest of you, carry on with the lesson from where we left off last time.”

While the students broke off into little knots and paired up, the professor jerked his chin at Leonard to come over.

“Mark Fuller. You’re Leonard Felix?”

At Professor Mark’s question, Leonard nodded.

“The exchange lesson isn’t me teaching. It’s time for student to learn from student. Think of it as self-study, or a study group. Pick a fourth-year and try talking to them. Any questions?”

“No, nothing in particular…”

Leonard ran a slow eye over the students. Partway through, his gaze caught on one upper-year student whose air set him apart from the rest.

“Hm?”

While everyone else was busy finding a partner and talking, he stood alone. He had nervy, high-strung features and hollow eyes, and something about him somehow kept people at arm’s length. He was most likely the reason everyone in the room was so uncomfortable.

“Ah.”

Realizing what Leonard was looking at, Professor Mark scratched the back of his head in irritation.

“Not that one. Pick a different upper-year.”

“Uh… why?”

Only then did it dawn on Professor Mark that Leonard was commoner-born and knew nothing of noble society.

“Have you heard of the five great houses?”

How could he not have heard of them? Still, Leonard had resolved to play the innocent nine-year-old who knew nothing, right to the end.

“No.”

“Long ago, five mages founded an empire on this land and became its founding heroes. The houses those five built under their own names are precisely the five great houses of today. There isn’t a house anywhere that can measure up to the history and the knowledge they’ve piled up.”

The five great houses. Setting the Emperor aside, they held the real power in the Citra Empire, and each now had its grip on one or another of the Empire’s industries or fields of magic, wielding influence that nothing could check.

“That student’s name is Johan Jenkins. The second son of the Jenkins house, one of the five great houses.”

Leonard took a fresh look at Johan.

The second son?

That went some way toward explaining why the students couldn’t shake their tension. Get tangled up the wrong way with one of the five great houses, and your life could be on the line. Even so, there was one part of it Leonard couldn’t make sense of.

Why have I never heard of him?

That was just it.

If a big fish like Johan had passed through a school as lowly as Kestral Academy, word of him would have gone from mouth to mouth long after graduation and reached Leonard’s ears.

Yet he knew nothing whatsoever about “Johan Jenkins.”

The eldest son and eldest daughter of the Jenkins house showed their faces in society so often that Leonard had been sick of the sight of them, but the second son’s name was new to him. Was that something that normally happened?

Unless the house stepped in itself and erased every trace of him…

A stretch, perhaps, but nothing short of that could explain the contradiction. But why? Then again, come to think of it, a son of the Jenkins house had no business being at Kestral Academy to begin with.

There’s something here.

Leonard felt it in his gut: this very moment might just be a great fork in the road, one that would weigh heavily on the future.

“Anyway, don’t go near that one. His temper’s garbage and the rumors about the trouble he gets up to behind the scenes are everywhere, so… huh?”

By the time Professor Fuller, caught up in his own talk, came back to himself, Leonard had already slipped off somewhere. He looked around in alarm and, sure enough, at some point the boy had planted himself in front of Johan and was one step from speaking to him.

“Th-that, that!”

He had gone to the trouble of warning him, and that damned brat! No sooner had the horrified Professor Fuller shot upright than Leonard’s loud, clear voice struck his ear.

“Teach me a thing or two, Sunbae.”