Chapter 11
I had expected that we would meet again someday.
And I had also resigned myself to the strong possibility that it would be today.
But when we actually met, it felt as though my mind had been bleached completely white.
It felt as though someone had opened my ears and poured hydrochloric acid straight into my brain. In the middle of that dazed sensation, as if my entire mind had melted away, only the heavy thudding of my heart echoed: thud, thud.
“…Why are you here?”
Rex’s voice echoed haltingly. With every syllable I heard, the guilt in my heart took one step forward.
Just as Rex reached out a hand toward me.
“Oh, aren’t you Lord Rex?”
The other instructors all surged toward Rex at once.
“Aren’t you the hero of the Western Front?”
“Why is the White Flame Knight here….”
“So the rumor that you’d been appointed as an instructor was true!”
“Wait, rumor? Where exactly did that rumor come from….”
In an instant, the waiting room became a madhouse, with countless instructors jostling and crowding around Rex to speak to him.
“Ah, whoa.”
Thanks to that, I was pushed away from Rex and able to make my way farther into the waiting room.
Though I wasn’t sure whether I could really call that something to be thankful for.
“…Phew.”
I let out a sigh of relief and took a seat at an empty table in the corner.
Simple refreshments had been laid out on the table. I remembered that I had skipped breakfast because I had been hurriedly trying to memorize the students’ faces right up until then.
I sat down in front of the table and picked up one of the cookies on the plate. It was a light-brown cookie studded with thinly sliced nuts.
As I nibbled on the cookie, I kept sneaking glances toward where Rex was standing.
The Rex I was seeing again after seventeen years was completely different from before. His voice had grown so deep that he seemed like an entirely different person, and whenever he opened his mouth, his prominent Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.
His short-cropped hair looked unchanged at first glance, but the impression it gave was quite different.
If his old hairstyle had been a messy, hedgehog-like or buzz-cut look shaved short simply for ease of maintenance, his current hair was short but neatly trimmed, closer to a crew cut.
More than anything, he had grown tremendously tall. Even compared with the other instructors surrounding him, he was at least half a head to a full head taller.
‘He looks about two heads taller than me.’
As I thought that, I hurriedly lowered my gaze. For an instant, I had the feeling that Rex’s eyes had turned in my direction.
‘Was I imagining it…?’
I cautiously raised my head again and glanced over. Rex was chatting endlessly with the other instructors, as if he had never looked my way at all.
I averted my eyes from him and thought,
‘We’re living in completely different worlds now.’
Even the prestigious post of instructor at Magnus Academy would be nothing more than a place for Rex to catch his breath and rest for a while. Or perhaps merely a place to escape. Rex could obviously soar even higher—like Logis, who had resigned from his post as an academy instructor, joined the military, and risen to a high-ranking position.
But what about me? This was the end of the road for me. Being an instructor at Magnus Academy was my final destination. Of course, that wasn’t to say this was a lowly position. Quite the opposite. A job as an instructor at Magnus Academy was more than worth making a lifelong career of and working tirelessly at.
But that was the end of it. In seventeen years, we had grown irretrievably far apart.
There would be no harm in clearing up the misunderstanding from the past someday. Of course, it would take tremendous courage just to bring it up, but I believed that sooner or later, I absolutely had to say something.
But I couldn’t bring myself to think about becoming close to Rex again, as we had been long ago.
Because that would be presumptuous. I was the one who had kicked that relationship away myself, after all.
If I clumsily invoked our old connection and tried to force my way into Rex’s life here, I really would end up like the ex-girlfriend in one of those regret-and-obsession stories.
I reminded myself of that fact and took a large bite of one of the snacks on the table.
The cookie was sweet and dry.
I chewed the lump of flour, butter, and sugar for a long while.
=
‘Haa….’
I sighed inwardly and trudged down the hallway.
The entrance ceremony ended without much incident, surprisingly. No outside enemy invaded during the ceremony as often happened in academy stories, nor did the principal create monsters with illusion magic to stage a fake attack in order to test the students.
It was an utterly boring and monotonous entrance ceremony—the kind of entrance ceremony one would expect.
If there was one thing that stuck in my memory, it was probably the introduction of the new instructors.
The moment Rex’s name was called, the cheering was so loud that it felt as though the entire building would be torn apart. The sound was still vivid in my ears.
But seeing those same people who had merely applauded a little when it was my turn cheer so passionately made me feel, well…
‘I expected it, but even so, this really hurts….’
Rubbing my strangely stiff neck, I quickened my pace.
Magnus Academy used a credit system rather than a grade-based system, so most students dispersed according to their own schedules as soon as the entrance ceremony ended, leaving before the instructors did.
However, that only applied to students up through the advanced classes. Unlike the other students, the main activity of the practical combat class was carrying out missions outside the academy as magic-knight trainees, so after the entrance ceremony, they were to gather in their classroom and introduce themselves to one another.
It was something like an orientation, I suppose.
‘The classroom for Class E was… Building R3, Room 405, right?’
Although it was an empty classroom temporarily assigned for today alone, and this was merely an orientation rather than a proper lecture, my heart still pounded violently at the thought of standing at a lectern for the first time as an instructor.
“Hhh, I’m nervous….”
“Haru.”
“Eek!?”
At the unexpected voice from behind me, I jumped and let out a shriek.
‘I—I didn’t sense a presence at all…!’
That was the first thought that came to mind in that brief instant. Perhaps I had been too preoccupied with the thought of meeting the students, or perhaps I had let my guard down. Even so, the fact that I had failed to sense a presence at all filled me with indescribable terror.
“W-who are you…?”
Trembling, I turned my head back. Then I saw a familiar face.
“It’s me, Rex.”
My startled, pounding heart instantly sank as if it had frozen solid.
“…H-hi.”
I awkwardly raised a hand and waved. Rex gave a short nod in reply, then asked me,
“Are you on your way to the classroom for Class E?”
“Ah, yeah.”
I slowly nodded.
“I’m on my way to Class A too. Let’s walk together until our paths diverge.”
“S-should we?”
I answered in a trembling voice as I looked up at Rex.
.
.
.
-Step, step.
Only the sound of shoes echoed softly through the empty hallway. Naturally, they were Rex’s footsteps. My shoes were traditional Eastern footwear made of relatively soft material, while Rex’s were stiff shoes more akin to military boots.
‘By the way….’
For someone who had suggested that we walk together, he wasn’t saying anything. I glanced at the back of Rex’s head and thought to myself.
‘If we could just keep walking like this without saying anything, maybe that would be all right….’
“It’s been a long time.”
“Uh, what?!”
The moment I thought that, Rex opened his mouth. I should have kept my thoughts to myself. I grumbled inwardly, cursing myself.
“Has it been seventeen years?”
“I-I guess so. It has been seventeen years.”
I nodded with an awkward smile.
“Where have you been, and how have you been living all this time?”
“Uh, just… this and that.”
I gave a vague answer and glanced up at Rex.
“A-and you, Rex…? What about you?”
“….”
“They said you were a hero… Everyone was saying you were the hero of the Western Front.”
My stomach churning, I blurted out whatever came to mind.
Rex did not answer right away. My heart lurched. I lightly tapped my fist against my chest and screamed inwardly.
‘Aah, what kind of stupid question is that?!’
So what if he was a hero? It sounded like I was saying, Why don’t you show off for me right here?
And to top it off, if you really thought about it, I was the reason Rex had become a knight in the first place.
“…A hero, huh. I suppose so.”
Just as I was beating myself up inwardly, Rex opened his mouth.
“I was only doing whatever they told me to do from above, but when I came to my senses, everyone around me was treating me like some hero or other.”
Rex let out a quiet laugh. It was laced with considerable self-mockery.
“When you put it that way, being a hero is pretty manageable. Even if you get a little shameless, everyone around you props you up, saying that’s just like a hero and whatnot.”
Saying that, Rex turned his head, glanced back at me, and asked,
“What about you?”
“Uh, what?!”
“You must have fought in the Seven Years’ War too.”
“…What?”
My heart dropped with a thud.
“H-how…?”
How had he known? I looked up at Rex as though I were looking at a ghost.
Rex gazed at me for a moment, then turned his eyes forward again and replied as though it were nothing special.
“You can tell at a glance. To make a name for yourself and be recognized enough, at the young age of twenty-nine, to take on the important post of practical combat instructor at Magnus Academy—not just an ordinary instructor—and even obtain a letter of recommendation, what other possibility is there besides having seen plenty of action in the war?”
“…That’s it?”
“And if my guess is right, you fought on the Eastern Front.”
“….”
“You’re from the same hometown as me, aren’t you? If someone born and raised closer to the royal capital than the East suddenly reappears dressed head to toe in Eastern-style clothing, there’s no choice but to reason it out this way.”
Rex rattled it all off as though it were nothing.
“…Uh, yeah. I guess that… could be true.”
With my mind completely blank, I mumbled something that was neither an affirmation nor a denial.
What was this, anyway? I struggled to think as I looked up at Rex with my emptied-out mind.
‘He doesn’t feel like the Rex I knew.’
The Rex standing before me was not the little boy he had been seventeen years ago.
He was no different from me. Just as I had changed on the Eastern Front, Rex had changed through the war.
“And that thing at your waist. That’s a magic sword, right?”
Rex pointed at my waist and continued,
“A greatsword of a bizarre form, with no blade and only a hilt and guard. The grip alone looks fifty centimeters long, but since you’ve wrapped cord around the handle to keep it from slipping, it isn’t a naginata. It seems to generate a blade by some method, and given how long the grip is, even at a minimum, the blade must be twice as long. That means you wield a sword as long as you are tall, which means that even at the absolute minimum, your swordsmanship is at the level of an upper-tier magic knight.”
Every word was correct. Not a single detail was missing. I forgot what to say and merely opened and closed my mouth.
By then, Rex had stopped walking too and was quietly looking down at me as he asked,
“May I ask you just one question?”
I blankly nodded. But it did not take long for me to regret it.
“That nameless wandering swordsman known as the hero of the Eastern Front… Was that you?”