Chapter 69
*
On the car ride home.
The car was steeped in an odd silence.
I wanted to use that silence as background noise and close my eyes for a bit.
That was how intense everything that had happened today was.
But I couldn’t bring myself to fall asleep so easily.
Because there was still something we needed to finish talking about.
When I raised my head, I saw Freya looking at me in silence.
Her glacier-blue eyes were quietly fixed on me.
She knew I still had something left to say.
“… Freya.”
“Yes, older brother.”
In the end, I was the one who broke that uncomfortable silence first.
“Just now, I said I’d draw a line between the identities of Shun Isa and Yulian, right?”
Freya nodded without a word.
For her sake, I began explaining the reason.
“Actually, I’d been thinking hard about this on the way to pick you up. About what the black mages might be after.”
I still didn’t know the masterminds behind this incident, or what their goal was.
I could only vaguely guess at their purpose from the fact that they kidnapped my scholarship students and that they dealt in black magic.
“They’re probably after Shun Isa. The reason they caused this incident is that black magic includes spells that curse a target using kinship or a body part as a catalyst.”
To cast a curse, you have to use some part of the person you’re cursing as a catalyst.
It’s easiest to understand if you imagine the classic scene of tying hair to a doll and cursing it.
At that point, the stronger the catalyst is—from hair to bodily fluids to a body part—the more powerful the curse becomes.
And kinship can substitute for that body part.
“They probably targeted the scholarship students for that reason too. Publicly, those students are the only connections Shun Isa has.”
Out in the open, the only people Shun Isa keeps in a close private relationship with are those scholarship students.
The black mages must have learned that and immediately put their plan into action.
“So when I heard the students had disappeared and you’d vanished with them, my heart sank too.”
Of course, even then I wasn’t worried about the curse reaching me.
I have the knowledge to trace black magic back as well as the knowledge to block it.
That’s why I wasn’t especially afraid of the black mages targeting me.
But if they target the people around me instead of me, that’s a different story.
“So I spent a lot of time thinking on the way here.”
— “There will come a day when you understand that too.”
Only after thinking that far did I finally understand what my master had meant.
“Freya. Isn’t it better to prevent an illness than to cure it after you’ve already fallen sick?”
Why doesn’t Master introduce his family or me to the other tower lords?
Why are the identities of imperial royalty kept secret until they begin acting publicly?
Why would people like the Great Sage or the Emperor hide their families, if not out of fear?
The answer is simple.
If countless chances to thrust a spear are guaranteed, then eventually any shield will be pierced.
From the defender’s side there is only one chance, but the attackers are so many you can’t even guess how many.
And they know how utterly exhausted daily life becomes under all those countless attacks.
That’s why even such people choose to hide instead of standing proudly in the open.
To protect not only themselves, but the ones they love.
“So I’ve made up my mind. From now on, I’m going to separate Shun Isa’s and Yulian’s identities.”
So I decided to imitate them in my own way.
The first step is to make sure my family’s names don’t end up on the target lists of anyone after Shun Isa.
Because I concluded that it would be better to make it impossible for anyone to know Shun Isa’s personal connections.
“The scholarship students, whose connections are already public knowledge, are going to apply to the Inspectorate for protective supervision in the near future.”
That was the place that neatly severed the link between Shun Isa and Yulian when I made the vaccine.
Their work is reliable, so I can leave it to them.
Though it will cost a fair amount in donations.
“The reason I delayed explaining it there was also this. Shun Isa came here, after all, by leading private troops with Yulian’s help. The discovery of the black mages’ methods should be Yulian’s achievement.”
And the first step toward that.
That was to sort out the two of them so their specialties didn’t overlap.
Yulian’s field is forensic medicine and black magic.
Shun Isa’s field is medicine and alchemy.
Of course, we can’t divide them perfectly.
There are times when Yulian acts as a doctor, and times when Shun Isa works as a forensic specialist.
But that isn’t a problem.
You don’t call an internist a surgeon just because they can recognize a surgical condition, do you?
After all, their fields overlap, so they can cross over now and then.
What matters is what the public thinks of when they hear the names Shun Isa and Yulian.
“So, Freya, I’m counting on you. Help me keep our story straight.”
“Understood, older brother.”
Freya’s reaction was unexpectedly calm.
“You aren’t surprised?”
“I’d thought this might happen someday. From the day you healed me, I guessed it would turn out this way. There are already other nobles I know who live like this, too.”
A bitter smile spread across Freya’s face.
“It’s a shame that I have to keep your greatness secret, but I respect your intentions, older brother. So I’ll be careful too.”
This secret isn’t something I can protect on my own.
Because that means my family—the people who already know Shun Isa’s identity—also have to live while hiding my secret.
Fortunately, Freya seemed to understand that situation immediately.
“Still, older brother. There’s one thing I want to ask you.”
“Go on.”
“If I’m going to keep this secret, I think I need to properly know what kind of position Shun Isa is in.”
“Hmm? I’m surprised you don’t know that.”
“I’m not the only one who doesn’t know. I think the rest of the family is pretty clueless about it too.”
Really?
I hadn’t really hidden my income from my family, though.
“Even Father doesn’t know? That’s odd.”
“Father only knows a little because he holds a joint stake in Quinin. He doesn’t know the specifics of the other medicines at all. We’re laypeople when it comes to the healer’s domain.”
Come to think of it, that was true.
People outside the medical field would have trouble gauging Shun Isa’s social standing.
Newton’s mother still told him to go work the farm even after he discovered universal gravitation.
And Einstein’s wife supposedly typed his papers for him without understanding how great they were.
When something is outside your own field, it’s natural not to feel just how amazing it is, no matter how amazing it actually is.
All the more so for close family.
“Hmm.”
That was why I paused to think for a moment.
What was the quickest way to make Freya understand Shun Isa’s social position?
After thinking it over, I chose the simplest method.
“Freya. How much do you think this number is worth?”
“It’s this year’s total budget for the academy’s upper division.”
“This is our trade company’s one-day weekend revenue.”
….
For reference, the weekend is our company’s day off.
Freya fell silent.
Her glacier-blue eyes moved back and forth twice between the notebook with the numbers in it and me.
Then she opened her mouth very carefully.
“Older brother.”
“Mm?”
“Could you maybe raise my allowance a little?”
“How much do you want?”
“Twice what I get now….”
“Is that enough?”
“… Four times?”
“I’ll give you one last chance. I’m not raising it any more for a while.”
….
That day, Freya was promised an allowance fit for a duke’s daughter.
*
Before long, the car arrived at the academy’s upper division building.
In the Empire, they call it the academy’s upper division, but by my past-life standards, it’s basically a high school.
Although the level of study is more like what you’d learn at university.
I decided to chalk that up to this being an era where romance still breathed and lived.
The high school’s name was Adler Kolleg.
Literally, it means Eagle Academy.
What a naming sense.
Anyway, we had arrived at Adler Kolleg.
“Let’s get out.”
Section Chief Shen got out first to secure the area.
Then I got out, and the others followed.
Of course, I didn’t forget my top hat when getting out.
How ridiculous would it be to go in as Shun Isa and come out as Yulian?
As soon as I stepped out of the car, I saw the people waiting for us.
The academy’s upper division headmaster and five or six teachers.
They were all dressed in formal suits even in the middle of the night.
“Oh, Mr. Shun Isa. You’ve returned safely.”
The headmaster greeted me and walked over.
He was a middle-aged man with half his hair already gray.
If I remember right, he had been the second son of some count’s house.
It wasn’t unusual. Usually, second or third sons with awkward positions in the family ended up as upper division teachers.
“Are the students safe? Ah, as soon as we heard the news, we were investigating day and night. We were just about to dispatch the knights.”
A lie.
The only reply I got when I contacted the academy right after hearing the students had disappeared was a one-line message saying they were ‘investigating.’
The problem was that when I checked the scene, there wasn’t a single investigator in sight.
I still wondered whether that so-called investigation had actually been carried out at all.
One of the teachers standing behind the headmaster added his own comment.
“We also analyzed the residual mana traces around the dormitory and devoted all our efforts to reconstructing the missing students’ routes.”
With all-out effort, huh.
I didn’t see the results of that so-called all-out effort, though.
“It was just yesterday that we detected a suspicious mana reaction near the laundry room, but since you had already left first, the report was delayed.”
Just yesterday.
What a convenient word.
In other words, they only detected the mana reaction in the laundry room after I had already found the fairy ring there, coaxed Brownie into revealing the hideout’s location, and figured everything out.
….
“… Mr. Shun Isa?”
The headmaster quietly watched my expression without saying a word.
He seemed to be trying to read what expression I was making under the brim of my top hat.
I spoke after a beat.
“Headmaster.”
“Yes, Mr. Shun Isa.”
“The students were held captive for two days.”
“… Yes. A truly lamentable matter.”
“Then shouldn’t there be something you say first in a situation like this?”
The headmaster’s eyes twitched slightly.
But the answer I’d been waiting for never came.
In the end, I spoke first.
“Did you discuss protective measures for the students who were harmed?”
Silence fell.
The headmaster opened his mouth once, then closed it again.
The teachers standing behind him exchanged glances.
At length, the headmaster cleared his throat and answered.
“That part… we plan to discuss it later at a faculty meeting.”
“How truly reassuring.”
I said it sarcastically.
And I meant for it to sound sarcastic.
I took a moment to sweep my gaze over each of their faces one by one.
The headmaster’s face looked embarrassed, but not frightened.
The teachers were the same.
They looked uncomfortable, but there was no sense of crisis in their expressions.
Their faces seemed to be saying this.
— What could a commoner businessman possibly do to us?
Maybe because this isn’t a democratic society.
They seemed to believe that capital couldn’t overpower status.
And they weren’t entirely wrong, either.
In the end, I gave up on having a constructive conversation with them.
“Headmaster.”
“Yes.”
“The person who should be discussing this incident isn’t me, but Yulian.”
“Of course it should be.”
The expressions on the headmaster and teachers’ faces brightened in a strange way.
I can’t read minds, but it looked like they were confident that a mere baron’s son wouldn’t be able to do anything to them.
They probably thought the most I could do was protest under the baronial family’s name.
Thanks to that, I was able to steel my resolve.
“And the students are both mentally and physically exhausted. I don’t feel at ease sending them back to the dormitory like this.”
The headmaster’s eyebrow rose slightly at my words.
“I’ll personally protect them. I’ll take care of them at our trade company’s lodging until they’ve recovered enough, and I’ll send them back only after their safety has been confirmed.”
A subtle look passed between the headmaster and the teachers.
That was, in effect, a declaration that I didn’t trust the academy’s ability to manage its students.
They couldn’t have been pleased about that.
But they had no reason to refuse.
If I was going to protect the students with the trade company’s money, what reason was there to stop me?
In the end, the headmaster nodded reluctantly.
“… I understand.”
The headmaster licked his lips once and nodded.
It was the face of someone swallowing his discomfort.
Their attitude was oddly irritating.
“Thank you.”
After bowing my thanks, I guided the students back to the car.
While Section Chief Shen was loading the students in, I stopped just before getting into the car myself.
Then I looked back.
The headmaster and teachers were lined up in front of the main gate to see us off.
They still hadn’t spoken to the students even once.
That made up my mind.
“Headmaster.”
“… Yes.”
“I would have preferred it if the people you showed interest in were the students behind me, not me.”
With that, I got into the car and closed the door.
I didn’t check their expressions.
After all, I wasn’t going to be seeing those faces again anyway.
***
The next day at noon
Adler Kolleg headmaster’s office.
Headmaster Creon was seated at his desk, tilting a teacup.
He’d tossed and turned all night, so he had dark circles under his eyes, but his expression itself wasn’t bad.
Last night’s final remark from Mr. Shun Isa had been a little nagging.
The bit about him speaking to the students before speaking to Creon.
It wasn’t wrong.
It wasn’t a desirable attitude for a teacher.
But so what?
Even if he were reprimanded for neglecting student supervision, the maximum punishment he could receive was already fixed.
So the headmaster wasn’t all that worried about the aftermath of this incident.
Knock, knock.
At the sound of the knock, the headmaster lifted his head.
“Come in.”
The door opened and three teachers came in.
They all looked as though they’d been up all night, but their eyes held more relief than tension.
“Headmaster, we wanted to talk to you about last night.”
Senior teacher Hight said as he perched on the sofa.
“Shun Isa taking the students away is a bit of a problem, but in the end the situation isn’t that bad. I looked into it; Shun Isa apparently doesn’t hold any noble title.”
“That’s a relief. Then what about the one called Yulian? I hear he’s the brother of the student discipline chief.”
“I looked into the Nichirit family. They’re just an ordinary family of judicial officials.”
In a place like this, the first thing you look at when something happens to a student is the victim’s family.
Because what the teachers can do changes depending on the student’s family title.
And a baronial house was just an occasionally troublesome parent.
The headmaster set down his teacup and nodded.
“The incident report?”
“I’ve got a draft ready. The academy began investigating as soon as it became aware of the incident and actively cooperated with Shun Isa’s swift response—that should do it.”
Vice headmaster Müller, arms crossed, cut in.
“Honestly, Shun Isa’s influence is frightening, but in the end he’s a commoner. There are limits to how much pressure he can bring to bear.”
“Still, it would be better to be careful.”
“We should be careful, yes. But Headmaster, where do you think this is?”
Vice headmaster Müller jerked his chin toward the window.
Beyond the academy grounds, the flags of the training field could be seen.
“Adler Kolleg also doubles as a military education institution. Every staff member here has military records. What can a trade company director do to a soldier?”
“Exactly. At most, he’d issue a statement.”
The military’s influence in the Empire was absolute.
All industry and administration were founded on the premise that the military protected them from the monsters beyond the walls.
A bit of noise within the military could easily be ignored.
It had always been that way, and it would remain that way.
“Even Shun Isa or judicial officer Yulian Nichirit wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.”
Of course, it wasn’t something that could simply be swept under the rug.
Even now, Shun Isa’s reputation within the military was by no means low, and the judicial officer was, after all, a central bureaucrat.
They’d probably get docked pay and a few months of suspension.
But that would be the end of it.
This was the military, and the influence of commoners and judicial officials had its limits.
At the very least, they wouldn’t be forced out.
That single fact was enough to reassure them.
What they wanted was one thing.
As long as they could keep their faculty positions and live in Sanctum Hill, they didn’t care what happened after that.
“Ah. Then at the morning faculty meeting….”
It was then.
Bang.
The headmaster’s office door was flung open violently.
An administrator rushed in, his face pale.
Creon frowned at the man, who was so out of breath he couldn’t go on.
“What is it? And without knocking.”
“H-headmaster.”
The administrator barely managed to steady his breathing before speaking.
“The supreme commander of the Southern Recapture Operation has arrived.”
The air in the headmaster’s office froze.
Creon’s hand, which had been about to set down the teacup, stopped in midair.
The Southern Recapture Operation.
One of the largest operations in nearly twenty years, launched to push back the southern front that had been receding.
At the very forefront was a prince who not only commanded the soldiers there, but also displayed overwhelming martial prowess as an individual.
For that achievement, he rose to become the youngest front commander in imperial history, and in the end he succeeded in retaking even the strategic stronghold that had been taken by the monsters 200 years ago.
So anyone at the academy—no, anyone with military status—would know who the title ‘supreme commander of the Southern Recapture Operation’ referred to.
“His Highness Edmund had passed through the main gate.”
The south’s war hero.
Prince Edmund XII crossed the school gate.
*
The sudden appearance of a general threw the academy into chaos.
Why now, of all times?
And right after an unsavory incident like that?
The headmaster had plenty of things he wanted to ask the general who’d shown up without warning, but he didn’t have the courage to ask his true intentions outright.
And so, with no notice whatsoever, Prince Edmund came to the headmaster’s office as if it were his own living room.
With the prince’s arrival, an extra teacup was hurriedly brought in.
Edmund sipped the tea offered to him by the trembling administrative teacher.
“Stronger than I expected.”
“S-sorry. I-I’ll brew another pot….”
“No need. Tea like this has its own merit. Go back to your usual work.”
The administrative teacher was sent away, and Edmund naturally took the seat of honor.
Including the headmaster, who owned the office, the teachers each took a seat on the sofas.
….
….
Only the sound of teacups being lifted echoed through the office.
Edmund was relaxed.
He sipped his tea, looked out over the campus outside the window, swept his gaze over the portraits of past headmasters on the wall, and tapped the leather armrest with his fingers.
That relaxed air slowly gnawed at the nerves of the other four people.
The teachers had their teacups to their mouths, but in reality they were barely drinking.
Soon, Edmund, who had been watching the flags outside, spoke.
“Sorry for showing up without notice. As you know, after my child was born, I moved to the capital.”
“C-congratulations, Your Highness.”
In the Empire, nobles spent their youth burning their lives away on the front lines, and once a child was born, they returned to the capital to raise that child.
Protecting the people was one duty of nobility, but so was raising descendants who would inherit their martial arts or arcane magic.
“Since I was a soldier on the battlefield, sitting still at a desk makes me restless. So these days I’ve been touring military facilities around the capital.”
Edmund tipped his teacup once and added,
“When I go around military institutions like this, I can pick up some of other people’s enthusiasm too, so I’m glad I decided to start.”
“If you need, I can guide you….”
“There’s no need. After I finish my tea, I’ll look around on my own, so don’t follow me.”
Edmund said this calmly.
“Ah, and come to think of it, it looks like my child will be taking their first steps soon. Maybe that’s why. These days, my juniors don’t feel like juniors anymore—they feel like my children. Is it just me? Or is that just what happens once you become a parent?”
“Haha… You’ve come to understand a parent’s heart as well, Your Highness.”
Creon laughed awkwardly.
Edmund ignored the awkward laugh and continued, cupping the teacup in both hands.
“When I was on the front lines, there were times I wondered what the meaning of life was. Every day you cut down monsters, lose comrades, then cut down more. After a while, you suddenly start thinking: why am I here?”
….
“But once I saw my child growing, I understood.”
Edmund smiled with satisfaction.
Fine wrinkles formed at the corners of his eyes.
“I fight so that this little life can live without worry. That alone was reason enough.”
The steam rising above the teacup slowly dispersed.
“And the more lovable that child becomes, the more natural it is to feel gratitude toward the person who brought us this happiness.”
At that moment, Headmaster Creon’s fingers froze over the teacup.
A rumor he’d set aside in a corner of his mind surfaced belatedly.
The infertility of Prince Edmund’s wife.
And the person who had solved it.
‘No way….’
He had heard that rumor.
That at last year’s Founding Festival, the prince and his wife had met Yulian and safely given birth.
But the nobles who hadn’t been there at the time had brushed the rumor off without much thought.
According to the rumor, Yulian had introduced the prince couple to a Viagra that hadn’t even been released yet and solved the problem for them.
Of course, that achievement was amazing.
But he thought it was the sort of thing that should end with nothing more than a reward or a medal.
He hadn’t thought it was reason enough for the imperial family to dote on that healer.
The headmaster had thought the same.
But Edmund’s next words corrected the misunderstanding of the headmaster and the teachers.
“These days, Sir Yulian often comes and goes from the imperial palace. He says babies need vaccinations. Once they get them, they become permanently immune to black magic curses, right?”
There was something the headmaster didn’t know.
That back then, the prince and his wife were far more desperate for a baby than the headmaster could have imagined,
and that the favor Yulian had done for them was not merely ‘just’ a pregnancy consultation,
and that the prince had personally watched everything Yulian had done for the baby and the mother from before the child was born until now.
The headmaster and the teachers hadn’t experienced that pain themselves, hadn’t stood beside them, and hadn’t cared.
So they didn’t know how the prince viewed Yulian.
“Honestly, he knows everything our child needs better than we do and takes care of it. I can’t thank him enough. Sometimes it feels like he cherishes our baby more than we do.”
Even when we pester him at dawn, he never shows the slightest displeasure and always starts by worrying about the mother and the baby while scolding us,
and even if baby poop gets on his face, he never flinches and checks everything carefully,
and every time he examines the baby, he tells us in advance what the baby will be able to do at each stage.
From the prince’s point of view, Yulian was putting in care for the baby greater than even a parent would.
That was why he’d once made Yulian an offer like this.
“I even offered to make him the godfather. But he flatly refused, saying that would make it impossible to maintain a healer’s objectivity, so he would only accept the sentiment.”
The backs of the headmaster and teachers were soaked with cold sweat.
Godfather.
Prince Edmund valued Yulian that highly.
And, of all times, it was the very next day after an incident befell Yulian’s younger sister that the prince visited this academy.
The meaning of that was obvious enough not to need explanation.
Even just hearing this much, some of the teachers had already sensed their fate and squeezed their eyes shut.
“Sir Yulian is that kind of friend. Even if I offered him my name, he wouldn’t even look at it, saying it wasn’t needed for healer work. But….”
Edmund crossed his legs.
“But that friend, after giving our baby a routine checkup this morning, said he was worried about this school in many ways. What a strange thing.”
….
And the doting prince, who had been happily bragging about his baby, had his face harden.
“Tell me. Just how did you do it to make such a friend say something unpleasant? I’m truly curious about the secret, Headmaster Creon.”
The former supreme commander of the Southern Recapture Operation.
The current chief personnel officer of the Imperial Central Army glared at the faculty with cold eyes.
The headmaster thought quietly to himself.
It would have been much better if he had simply finished his conversation with Shun Isa yesterday.