The Lord Is With You (6)

The Academy was vast.

So vast that even students who stayed at the Academy all year could not begin to guess its size.

When freshmen tried to learn the geography, most only remembered the areas around the academic buildings they frequented. Few knew the other places by heart.

By around their second year, students came to know the Academy's more secretive locations as well. They either heard about them from upperclassmen or explored every corner of the Academy because they were unusually curious.

From then on, groups of friends who traveled together would often develop what they called a shared ‘route.’

By their third year, students even ventured freely down shortcuts and alleyways between buildings. It was around then that they gradually mastered the Academy's geography.

Fourth-year students spent more time away on practical assignments than at the Academy, so it was fair to say that third-years knew the Academy's layout best in practice.

Leto and I were third-years. We had not explored the Academy grounds all that actively, but we still knew a few of its more remote corners to some extent. The web-like ‘alleyways,’ for example.

All sorts of buildings clustered in the center of the Academy. Inevitably, there were stretches where the spaces between buildings were especially narrow. Since they resembled alleys, those places were called the ‘alleyways.’

Rumor had it that a club of eccentrics had even hidden the door leading to its clubroom there, but I did not find that particularly interesting...