Ch. 33

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"Benjamin, you know today's Professor Elin's class, right?"

"Yeah."

"I read the paper the professor wrote yesterday, and in it..."

Was the problem that I'd been eating my sandwich slowly?

I shoved what was left of the sandwich into my mouth, shot up from my seat, and fled to the lecture hall.

Most of the students were already in the lecture hall, and only then did Aria finally peel away from me and head to her own seat.

All that had changed was that her chattering voice was gone, yet it felt like inner peace had arrived.

It was a sense of stability almost on par with the calm of what people call sage time.

Just as I was savoring the quiet, Professor Elin's class began, and, like a miracle, the comfort I'd felt moments ago vanished like dust.

It was a stream of words that were unmistakably in the continent's common language, yet I couldn't understand a single thing they meant.

My mouth fell open on its own, and my eyes gradually lost their life.

How long had I been listening blankly to words I couldn't make out like that?

In my head, which was turning whiter by the moment, a memory of my old mentor suddenly began to surface.

"There are three types of people in this world you need to be careful of."

"Women, old people, children... is that what you mean or something?"

"Why be careful of people you should be protecting in the first place? I thought only your face was the problem, but your whole character is rotten, you brat. Tsk, tsk!"

"Ugh, then what is it?!"

"Someone who'll beat you up, someone who'll take the money in your pocket..."

"Then what's the last one?"

"That would be me."

"What? Ugh! Aaagh!"

He truly swung his scabbard at me out of nowhere, beating me as if he meant to kill me, and then stole the money from my pocket and ran off.

Apparently he used that money to buy booze or something.

Anyway, fine.

I'd made up my mind to pass my mentor's teachings on to that kid called Sili, who I'd be disciplining at Anna's request.

I couldn't be the only one to suffer, heh heh.

"Benjamin... Benjamin?"

How long had I been deep in thought about the discipline process?

At the sudden voice, I snapped back to my senses, and Aria was standing in front of me, waving her hand.

"Benjamin, class is all over!"

"Huh? It's already over?"

"Yep!"

"Where's the professor?"

"The professor left right after class ended."

"Damn it!"

I hurried toward Elin's office.

If I missed her here for no good reason and things got twisted up afterward, it would become a hassle.

"Benjamin, where are you going!"

"Hey, let's part ways for today. Bye, go away!"

"No way! We promised to have dinner together!"

"When? I never made any such promise?"

"When I asked, 'If you don't answer me earlier, we're promising to have dinner together, okay?' you didn't answer!"

I wondered what kind of logic made not answering mean eating together.

Was it some kind of entrapment operation, no, an entrapment question?

As I simply stared at her in disbelief at the absurd claim, Aria smiled brightly and asked me.

"So what do you want for dinner?"

Didn't she realize I normally never listened to a word she said?

At this point, I was almost impressed.

Fine, let's just give up on understanding her!

"Benjamin, where are you going!"

Having given up on a lot of things, I headed for the office, and though I could hear her chattering something behind me, I ignored it.

Right now, Elin Creek mattered more to me than Aria did.

Professor Elin, who had been going around talking about me everywhere to an unusual degree.

There had been a time when I'd thought she might just be a chatterbox, but if that chatter was connected all the way to the Tower Master, it was a different story.

Knock knock.

"Who is it?"

"It's Benjamin."

At the permission to come in, I gently pushed the door open and stepped inside, and, true to her fastidious nature, the bare minimum of furniture needed for work was arranged with razor-sharp angles without a speck of dust.

The inside of the office, showing extreme minimalism and obsessive cleanliness at the same time, came into view at a glance.

"What brings you here?"

To her, pushing up her rectangular glasses as they slid down, I decided to ask the things I'd been curious about all this time.

"Professor, by any chance, do you like me?"

"...Excuse me?"

"No?"

"Me? A student? Why would I?"

She didn't even say "no." She asked "why."

It was the kind of reaction that could only come from someone who hadn't spared even the slightest thought for the possibility of liking me.

Anyway, looking at those eyes in which not a single trace of romantic feeling could be found, it didn't seem that she'd been going around talking about me out of personal fondness, at least.

"Then why have you been talking about me to the other professors? Is it really just because I copied your Talent exactly?"

At my question, she seemed to need a moment to collect her thoughts, lowering her eyes and starting to twirl the pen in her hand.

"Let me first get a handle on the situation. Is the reason you came here that I've been talking to other professors about you?"

"Yes."

"How did you find out that I'd been talking about you?"

"Everyone said they'd heard it from Professor Elin, so I naturally found out."

"Hmm, I see."

She fell silent for a moment, then opened her mouth again.

"I don't know how you'll take this, but actually, I thought that if Mr. Benjamin got attention from the professors, he'd naturally form various connections, and as those connections built up, he'd come to find magic interesting too."

"Interested in magic?"

It was only that I couldn't use it freely; I already felt that plenty.

If I'd had a body with mana, I'd undoubtedly have been firing off spells without sleeping, until I was sick of it.

"And if you build up various connections, then even if one or two of them break off, there would be other people, so you'd never lose your attachment to the Magic Department."

I understood what she was saying, but I didn't understand why she'd been worrying about this over me, of all people.

"Have you become close with any of the Magic Department students?"

Truthfully, forget becoming close, I hadn't even had a proper conversation with the other Magic Department students yet.

Thinking about it now, strangely enough, no one had spoken to me.

Don't tell me I'm being ostracized?

"I'm fairly close with Aria, at least."

Actually, I didn't consider having a narrow circle of friends much of a problem.

It meant I could focus my friendship all the more, and aside from that, I had no particular desire to make friends anyway.

But since she'd gone as far as to tell the professors about me so I'd build connections, if I were perceived as being outright ostracized, there was no way of predicting how far talk about me would spread, so I brought up the name of Aria, who at least had a speck of closeness with me.

"So you're close with Miss Aria..."

But at my answer, her cold impression softened, and she put on an expression as if something were deeply pitiable.

"Professor, why that expression?"

"My expression? What about my expression?"

Elin was startled and straightened her face.

She'd tried to hide it, but apparently she hadn't known her face was showing.

"I don't know why, but... just a moment ago, your expression was overflowing with sympathy."

When I asked with a dubious look, she let out a deep sigh, and as if having resolved something, looked me straight in the eyes.

"I'll ask you directly. Mr. Benjamin, you like Miss Aria, don't you?"

"Me? Why?"

I asked back the same way she'd asked back earlier.

Wow, when the possibility itself was this unimaginable, the question of "why would that be?" came first rather than a denial.

"...Huh? You don't?"

"Of course not. I can't even imagine what you saw to make you feel that way?"

"Of course Miss Aria is pretty, and... um, what I mean is..."

I mean, come on, just because a girl is pretty, does that settle it?

Yeah, okay, sure, that's true.

That may be true, but there was a clear reason why Aria and I didn't see each other as the opposite sex.

"I don't know why you thought that, Professor, but there's no chance I like her or anything like that. And there won't be in the future either."

Thinking of her having kept up this misunderstanding while looking at me, I let out a sigh without meaning to.

"And there's not the slightest room on either side. To me, Aria is just a loud airhead with a head full of flowers. And she regards me as something on the fringes of a horror thriller."

"Something on the fringes of... a horror thriller?"

"Yes. I heard it directly from her."

Since she'd thought I liked Aria, she'd probably worried that if Aria rejected me, I might lose my attachment to the Magic Department.

So that's why she was saying things like connections and all that.

Seriously, how on earth had she come to such an absurd idea?

"Haha... a horror thriller... Miss Aria's e-expressiveness is really rich!"

She'd even dressed it up by calling her "my student."

For some reason, it seemed to hurt even more.

"Please don't think too badly of it, Mr. Benjamin. Still, it means you've been left in someone's mind as a genre of their own, doesn't it?"

Oh, great, she's even comforting me?

But what on earth was the reason not to think badly of becoming someone's horror thriller?

However I thought about it, it was bad?

"Haaah... anyway, I roughly understand why you were worried about me and why you tried to create connections between me and the professors. It's true that Aria is pretty, so it's possible you mistook me for being smitten."

"Hmm... that is... I suppose I should say it's a relief that you understand, if anything."

"Is that the same reason you reported about me all the way up to the Tower Master?"

"You could roughly say so."

That was a lie.

By common sense, she should have given some other reason.

Something like having discovered an unusual student, or wanting to introduce me because she'd seen my potential for Perfection, as she'd done with Professor Evin; that would have been easily accepted.

But no matter how much the academy was under the Tower's protection, an act motivated by hoping I'd build connections within the Magic Department wouldn't lead to a report to the Tower Master.

There had to be some other reason, and I felt I roughly knew what it was.

The fact that she deliberately dodged the question to hide her connection to the Tower Master actually made that part clear.

"Professor, you know about Silver Ring."

All the Magic Department professors came from the Tower, but not everyone from there kept in contact with the Tower Master.

Yet the man I first met had known about me in detail, and he'd said Elin was the one who told him.

In other words, it meant she had a private connection with the Tower Master.

Which meant there was also the possibility that she was included among the forces, acting on the Tower Master's orders, who kept Silver Ring in check.

If she weren't, she wouldn't react to the word Silver Ring.

But unfortunately, at the words Silver Ring, her eyes shook greatly, and I saw it.

"In the first place, wasn't the reason you went around telling the professors about me to figure out just how abnormal my abilities are?"

"No, that was really out of concern..."

"Don't lie. There isn't a woman in this world who worries about me."

"..."

There had been many women worried that I'd talk to them, but I had never once seen a woman who felt genuine concern about me.

"Oh come now, surely at least your mother worries about you, doesn't she?"

"I don't have a mother, though?"