Chapter 8

Chapter : 8

I was on my way out of the building after the entrance ceremony ended.

There was one student who had enrolled alongside the rest of us, yet had not attended the ceremony. I had thought, What kind of attitude is that right from the start? But then he shook his head and looked at me.

Jefrin, Bishot’s escort.

He walked toward me wearing a haggard expression. Dark circles hovered beneath his eyes, and whether he had lost weight since the last time I saw him or not, his face looked noticeably sharper.

The moment he saw me, Jefrin began to speak.

“It seems you have been doing quite well. You look pleased. Ah... I heard you took the top spot. Congratulations.”

“And you? Have you been well too?”

It was obvious at a glance that he had not, but I asked out of courtesy. Jefrin shook his head.

“No.”

Jefrin smiled in a manner that did not suit him. The corners of his eyes folded thinly. It was resignation.

“I have not been well. How could I possibly have been well after losing like that? Since that defeat, I have thought about it a great deal. Why did I lose? What was I lacking? I could not understand it. And I do not think I ever will.”

“Why did you lose even though your technique, speed, and strength all surpassed mine?”

“Yes, you understand exactly. That is right. Why did I lose? Why?”

“Ah, that? There is no need to worry about it.”

I smiled back at Jefrin and said,

“Because you will never know.”

How could he ever imagine that this world was actually a novel, and that his opponent had countered him because he knew his character settings?

No matter how long Jefrin thought about it, he would never discover the answer.

Jefrin smiled once more. He was not originally this sort of character, so what was wrong with him?

“Do you know why I enrolled in the Academy? It was because of you. I came here to protect Lady Bishot, because I did not know what you might try to do to her.”

“Ah, really?”

“And yet, over the past two weeks, there has been no point of contact whatsoever between you and Lady Bishot. Far from trying to meet her, you devoted yourself only to swordsmanship training. You made no attempt to approach her, nor did you pry into anything about her.”

Jefrin took a step back from me, then tilted his head up so that his chin pointed at the sky. Looking into the blue above, he said,

“I thought that, in swordsmanship at least, I was the best. Even if there were many stronger than I in the world, I believed that once I came of age, I would surpass them all.”

What was he trying to say?

Since I merely listened without replying, Jefrin continued.

“I was mistaken. I lost to you. To someone my own age, who has spent even less time holding a sword than I have.”

“So?”

Jefrin lowered his head again and looked at me.

“I was arrogant. I overestimated myself, thinking that my pitiful talent was everything. I agonized over what I should do about that for a long time, and at last I came to a conclusion.”

“A conclusion? What are you going to do?”

“I am leaving the Academy.”

“What?”

“I will return once I have grown stronger. Stronger than anyone. At that time, things truly will be different from how they have been until now, so I suggest you look forward to it.”

He was leaving this easily?

I felt oddly dazed.

Several of Jefrin’s major power-up events had been set within this Academy. Starting with Katarina’s instruction, I had intended to steal them bit by bit and leave him weakened, but now he was removing himself altogether.

It was good that he was disappearing from in front of me, but there was no telling what variables he might create while roaming freely elsewhere.

For a moment, I calculated whether it might actually have been better to keep him here inside the Academy.

In the end, I reached this conclusion.

I smiled and waved at him.

“Good. Take care. See you next time!”

Though it would be even better if I never did.

It felt strange that he was suddenly leaving the Academy, but for now, it seemed to be a cause for celebration.

No matter how things turned out, Jefrin was still one of the many male lead candidates.

He had, of his own accord, kicked his way out of Bishot’s orbit of admirers. That could only improve my chances of survival.

For now, I had to see it as a positive development.

“Very well. I will return stronger.”

“I will look forward to it.”

Thinking that it would be best if he never came back at all, I saw him off.

The number of people threatening my life had decreased by one.

It had not happened as I intended, but perhaps things had turned out well.

Perhaps.

---

Humans might have many desires, but was there anything stronger than the desire for sleep?

Perhaps there was, but as far as I was concerned, I could not even imagine what it might be. Sleep played that important a role in sustaining daily life.

And then, to suffer a disorder in that very area?

It was enough to drive a person mad.

Ian Roadbreaker was already someone who found human relationships difficult and tiresome because of his dulled emotional sensitivity, and on top of that, chronic insomnia had left his nerves permanently frayed.

He was, in every sense, a bomb prepared to go off at the slightest touch.

That was what Ian Roadbreaker was like now.

The private dormitories for the top entrants were all clustered together in one place, and because of that, Ian was in the room right next to mine.

I called him over to my room, and he arrived wearing the expression of a high-schooler swaggering into a corner shop to buy cigarettes.

In other words, all manners had deserted him.

His entire attitude said that I should get straight to the point, so I gave him the words I had prepared.

“Do you know someone named Navier among this year’s incoming class?”

Navier was the sort of person one might call the hub of high society.

Her name could be dropped in any circle without seeming unnatural.

Moreover, considering Ian’s personality, there was no chance he would realize that Navier had been used as my source.

Ian reacted just as I had expected.

“Who is that?”

“Well, she is a freshman too, but she is the sort of person who always has information about one thing or another.”

I waited for Ian to play along.

But contrary to my expectations, Ian simply took hold of his own jaw and rolled his neck from side to side, loosening the joints. With a faintly mocking expression, he said,

“Say what you want to say. Stop circling around it.”

“Hmm... You might find this strange, but I heard a few things about you from Navier.”

Even though it was the sort of subject that would ordinarily have offended anyone, Ian merely jerked his chin as though telling me to continue.

“I know that you are the master of the Azure Magic Tower.”

“Do you? How interesting.”

“I also heard that the master of the Azure Magic Tower does not know how to sleep. I think I might be able to fix that.”

Ian tilted his head. His expression did not change, but I could tell that he was taking me seriously in his own way.

“How amusing. And what exactly are you, that you think you can cure my illness?”

“I would not say it if I were not confident. We can even make a wager.”

“A wager on whether you can cure my illness?”

“Yes. If I succeed, then grant me just one request.”

Ian nodded as though he had no interest whatsoever in what I might ask for. In a tone that implied he found the whole thing laughable, he said,

“A wager, is it? Then there should be a penalty if you fail.”

“It may be a strange thing to call a penalty, but in that case, I will tell you why Master Katein died.”

At once, the atmosphere reversed completely.

Ian, shaken out of his composure, had released his mana.

Powerful mana, fitting for the title of Master of the Magic Tower, seized the entire area around us and wrapped tightly around my body.

In an instant, he scattered spheres of mana around us, making them vibrate as though primed to fire at any moment.

“What did you just say?”

“I said I would tell you why Master Katein died. Does that not seem strange even to you? If he had simply died of illness, then at the very least they would have said what illness it was.”

The mana bullets Ian had primed spun savagely.

“Speak. Why did Katein die? If you do not answer, I will kill you.”

“Are you angry?”

“Be quiet. And answer me. Why did Katein die?”

It was rare for Ian, whose joy, anger, sorrow, and delight were all faint, to react so violently.

Even so, there was no reason for my heart to pound.

He could not kill me.

If I died, it would become difficult for him to find the culprit.

“Could you not put those away before we talk? If I die, there will be no one left to tell you. You know that too.”

Just in case, I reminded him of that fact. Ian withdrew the mana bullets.

I knew many things about Ian.

That included why someone more proficient in magic than most professors had bothered to enroll in the Academy in the first place.

Ian could not feel emotion.

He had been even more so as a child. The moment he emerged from his mother’s womb and looked up at the ceiling had been the first and last time he ever wailed and shed tears.

He did not cry.

An infant was supposed to cry when it was hungry, cry when it had soiled itself, cry whenever even the smallest desire went unmet.

Ian did not cry.

He did not laugh.

No matter how much his mother shook toys before him, no matter how many marvelous places his father took him, no matter how delicious the food placed in his mouth, he never laughed.

Ian did not laugh.

That was why he was abandoned.

He was seven years old when it happened.

By chance, he discovered that he could touch the blue energy floating through the air and compress it into projectiles he could throw, and that was how he survived. Then, by a stroke of luck, he was taken in by the former master of the Azure Magic Tower and brought into the tower.

He learned many things from the Master of the Magic Tower.

Even if emotion itself could not be learned, he memorized the actions appropriate to given situations, as well as what was just and what was unjust.

Ian felt gratitude toward the Master of the Magic Tower.

Dryly though it was, he recognized the emotion.

But not long after that, the Master of the Magic Tower died suddenly and left Ian these final words:

“Go out into the wider world and experience many things. If you do, a new world shall open before you.”

Ian took that ‘wider world’ to mean the Academy.

And so he enrolled here.

That was Ian’s background setting.

“Let us set the limit at one month. If I cure your insomnia, I win. If I fail, you win.”

“One month is too long. Make it two weeks.”

“Fine. Then two weeks it is.”

Even after cutting the time in half without hesitation, Ian seemed vaguely displeased when I agreed so easily. He left the room, and the moment he was gone, I carefully recalled the recipe for the sleeping draught.

Naturally, that too had been one of Bishot’s creations.

Bishot was a genius in alchemy.

Every semester, without fail, she made at least one discovery or invention that changed the course of alchemy or advanced it significantly.

This time, I intended to make something she would not attempt until her second year.

The very thing that cured Ian’s insomnia.

To Bishot, Ian was the only close friend who truly understood her heart.

And in that situation, Ian, suffering terribly from insomnia, had needed her. That had filled the gaps in Bishot’s wounded self-esteem and become the moment she realized that the alchemy she had chosen could save someone.

Wishing that Ian could always sleep soundly, even without her, Bishot created the sleeping draught.

The episode ended with Ian drinking the draught, then lying that it had no effect so that he could draw closer to Bishot, but in truth, the sleeping draught had been extraordinarily effective.

“Two weeks...”

Within that time, I not only had to make the sleeping draught, but also make Ian use it, see the effect, and acknowledge it.

In one sense, the schedule was tight.

But in another, I still had room to breathe.

In the original, Bishot had created the sleeping draught only after endless trial and error and all manner of setbacks. No matter how talented she was, this was the sort of field in which failure was inevitable.

That is, unless one already had the answer sheet in hand.