Johan Jenkins (1)

“Mnh.”

It was half past six in the morning. Early, but for some reason Johan had woken up anyway.

The faint, sweet scent of mana potion prickled at the tip of his nose, and mixed in with it was the sour reek that only vomit gives off. Johan forced down the nausea rising in his throat and got to his feet.

— Trundle.

An empty bottle his toe had caught went rolling away with a clear ring. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he began to make out, bit by bit, the students sprawled around him, dead to the world.

“Hey.”

He tried talking to them, but all he got back was groaning and snoring. So, 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, where the clear air of the forest around the dormitory greeted him.

“…Off to class again?”

One of the students lying sprawled across a bed had apparently been woken by the rustling, and asked it while rubbing their sleepy eyes.

“Go back to sleep.”

Johan’s answer was curt, and he slipped out of the room. He walked for about ten minutes along an empty footpath by the light of the faintly flickering street lamps, and as he drew near the main building, students who recognized him began to appear.

“It’s Johan.”

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

As Johan came closer on his way to the lecture hall, the crowd split in two as though to clear a path for him. Just then, he caught the sound of someone chattering away somewhere.

“Did you hear? Apparently last month Johan beat up some perfectly harmless third-year, just out of nowhere. How’s a guy like that still at the academy without a scratch on him?”

It was two students, wholly wrapped up in their gossip. They were so deep in it that they hadn’t noticed Johan’s eyes on them at all.

“What can you do? Who’s going to mess with someone from the Jenkins house? Forget the professors, 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 direction and headed for the two of them. The rest of the students sensed this was about to get out of anyone’s control, and they shrank back one step at a time in fear.

“…His house made a donation when he enrolled, see. That’s why everybody just stands around and watches.”

“Guess so. If he’d never done anything wrong, nobody would be talking like this in the first place…”

Then Johan spoke up.

“Oh, is that so?”

The student who’d been prattling away to a friend clamped his mouth shut.

A bleak chill settled over his shoulder, and the other friends were staring at him with faces gone ashen. When he turned and met Johan’s eyes head-on, eyes as dry as a corpse’s, he was so startled that a hiccup burst out of him.

“Hic.”

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

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

“If you’ve got something to say, step up 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?”

Just then Sophia appeared at the end of the corridor and asked it in a loud voice. She looked from Johan to the student and back, seemed to grasp the situation at a glance, and gave the rest of the students a jerk of her chin.

“If you have time to chat, then move along, quickly. Class starts in two minutes.”

Flustered, the students hurriedly gathered their things and began to clear out. The student Johan had let go took the chance as well, muttered some curse and vanished.

“Are you all right?”

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

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

“That wouldn’t do.”

Sophia put on a fierce expression.

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

“No, Professor.”

Johan said it without a moment’s hesitation.

“A son who bleeds his parents dry, trash with a rotten temper… I like things as they are. Unless something goes wrong, I intend to keep them exactly this way.”

“Even so…”

“This is what I wanted.”

He declared it flatly, swung the backpack around onto his back and slowly turned away.

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

“Ah, no. Nothing.”

Startled by his classmate’s remark, Leonard took away the hand he had unthinkingly laid on his chest. Yet as he recalled the outline of the object sitting in the lining pocket beneath his uniform, he couldn’t help a satisfied smile.

Graham had turned himself in, and an enforcer had seized him and hauled him off to prison. Not only had Leonard cleanly cut out a man who was nothing less than a cancer on the academy, he’d also come away with a precious magic item as a bonus, without spending a single coin.

Could there be a more satisfying result than that?

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

“Something’s off about that class.”

When his classmates brought it up so carefully, Leonard gave them a puzzled look and asked back.

“Third period?”

If he remembered right, the next class, third period, was the “exchange lesson” held exactly once a month.

First-years with fourth-years, second-years with fifth-years, and third-years with sixth-years. It was a special occasion where the upper and lower years of the same class, leaving out the graduating seventh-years, gathered together and shared the magical knowledge and technique they’d learned so far.

It narrowed the distance between students and let them share the know-how they’d built up, so its intent, at least, could be called admirable.

“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 something hard to put into words. Leonard pressed them a few more times after that, but they kept their mouths shut right up until they reached the lecture hall.

— Rattle.

When he slid the door open, he could take in the whole lecture hall at a glance. There were plenty of students inside, but the desks and chairs had been pushed into the corners, so the space felt roomy rather than cramped.

“Hm?”

Leonard noticed something at once and frowned.

With this many students gathered in one place, it should have been at least a little noisy, yet for some reason every one of them was keeping to an unnatural silence. Their eyes had nowhere to settle and darted about at a loss, and there was a strange tension in the air.

It was as though they were frightened of something.

“Um…”

“Now that you’re all here, listen up.”

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

“Today’s the second exchange lesson… but looks like we’ve got a first-year here for the first time today, so I’ll go over it again separately. The rest of you, pick up where you left off last time.”

While the students scattered into little knots and paired off, the professor jerked his chin at Leonard to come closer.

“Mark Fuller. You’re Leonard Felix?”

Leonard nodded at Professor Mark’s question.

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

“No, nothing in particular…”

Leonard ran a slow eye over the students, and partway through, one upper-year with an air unlike the rest caught his attention.

“Hm?”

While everyone else was busy finding a partner and talking, he stood alone.

He had nervy, high-strung features and hollow eyes, and he gave off an aura in every direction that somehow made him hard to approach. He was, it seemed, the reason everyone in the room was so uncomfortable.

“Ah.”

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

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

“Uh… why?”

Only then did it hit 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?

But Leonard had made up his mind 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 the five great houses of today. There isn’t a house anywhere that can match the history and knowledge they’ve piled up.”

The five great houses.

Setting the Emperor aside, they were in practice the houses that held the real power in the Citra Empire. Each of them now had its grip on one of the Empire’s industries or fields of magic, and wielded influence that nothing could check.

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

At Professor Mark’s words, Leonard looked at Johan again with fresh eyes.

The second son?

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

Why have I never heard of him?

That was just it.

If a big fish like Johan had been at a place as lowly as Kestral Academy, the talk about him would have gone from mouth to mouth even after graduation, and it would have reached Leonard’s ears.

But he knew nothing whatsoever about “Johan Jenkins.”

The Jenkins house’s eldest son and eldest daughter showed their faces in society so often that he’d known them until he was sick of them, but the second son? This was the first time he’d even heard the name.

Was that something that normally happened?

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

It was a bit of a stretch, but short of that, nothing could explain the contradiction. But why? No, come to think of it, a son of the Jenkins house being at Kestral Academy made no sense in the first place.

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 there are rumors everywhere about the trouble he gets up to behind the scenes, so… huh?”

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

“Wh-why, that—!”

He’d gone to the trouble of warning him, and that damned brat! The horrified Professor Fuller shot upright, and in that same instant Leonard’s loud, clear voice struck his ear.

“Teach me a thing or two, Sunbae.”