All I was doing was measuring by eye and throwing some leaves into hot water. I couldn’t find the passion to figure out the proper procedure or the mountain of little tricks to bring out the best flavor. Both Mewi and I could drink it just fine like this, so I was pretty sure it wasn’t bad. I would never claim that was suitable for the palates of upper society, though. If Lucy ever asked me to make her tea, I would firmly refuse. I could easily picture her berating the quality.
I was somewhat hesitant to make tea for Allucia too, though it would probably be fine with Ficelle or Curuni. With those thoughts in mind, I realized I hadn’t really needed to give it any thought for Surena. The fact that I’d spent a short time looking after her during her childhood played a big role in that. As always, maybe I didn’t really see her as one of my pupils. But that was a good thing in my book, so it wasn’t a problem.
“Here you go,” I said, placing two cups on the table.
“Th-Thank you...”
Mmm... Despite being cheap, it definitely has a nice tea aroma. Maybe that was perfectly obvious, but my life before Baltrain hadn’t involved such luxuries, so even something so minor was a fresh experience for me.
“Hee hee... I never thought the day would come where you served me tea every now and then.”
“Neither did I.”
We continued chatting while sipping our tea. Truly, who could’ve predicted such a future? Here I was, personally making tea for Surena after she’d set up residence in Baltrain and had become a black rank adventurer. It was nice.
Had Allucia never dragged me out of Beaden, I would’ve surely still been bound by my dad’s curse and living peacefully in the countryside. That wouldn’t have brought me sorrow—I would’ve lived the normal life of someone who’d grown up in a village. But reality saw me in Baltrain instead, making all sorts of new connections with all kinds of people. And now, it was difficult for me to say that I wanted to shut myself back in Beaden. I simply had no intention to. That was how drastically my life had changed and how positively I now viewed this change.
“Oh, right,” Surena said, straightening up a little. “There is something I wanted to ask you, Master.”
“Hm? What is it?”
“It’s about...Ebenrain being your pupil too.”
“Aah, Joshua...”
The topic shifted to the black rank adventurer based in the Salura Zaruk Empire, Joshua Ebenrain. I had, in fact, taught him swordsmanship for a period. Neither he nor I had really made it public, so it made sense that Surena hadn’t known about it. Actually, pretty much the only ones who knew were the pupils who’d attended the dojo at the same time as him.
“It’s true,” I confirmed. “However, I was pretty young back then. I...threw him out.”
“What...?”
“He was expelled.”
Surena’s brow twitched.
Joshua was a genius with a blade. Looking only at his swordplay, he was probably on the same level as Allucia, though his style was different. He was extremely good at controlling his body and applying his physical strength.
At first, I’d had fun teaching him. He’d absorbed everything instantly, which had only made him stronger and stronger. In the end, I’d never found out whether our style suited him, but his talent had been outstanding nonetheless.
“It wasn’t because he was acting like a big shot or bullying those weaker than him or anything,” I continued.
“True... He can be haughty every now and then, but that comes from confidence... It isn’t really something to fault him for.”
“Yeah.”
He was serious when it came to swordsmanship. He never belittled or teased his opponents. That was why it’d taken me too long to realize—I’d only figured it out when his techniques had started overwhelming others.
“Joshua was strong...that was why he was so eager to kill.”
“Wha?!”
He hadn’t been bullying the weak—he’d simply paid no attention to those with less skill than him. However, against those he saw promise in...he’d shown no mercy. Even against fellow pupils in our dojo, he’d gone after them with the intent to kill.
In a sense, this was a bit of a contradiction, but in his heart, he’d seen this type of training as a way of polishing his art. Had he been blessed with a talent for magic instead, he would’ve surely become a peerless wizard. It wasn’t hard to imagine the number of victims he would’ve left behind in his rise to power.
“I did try to remedy this, of course,” I added. “But I couldn’t get him to change.”
“Is...that so...?”
There was nothing wrong with the desire to win. Frankly, it was an absolute necessity to those who studied the martial arts. However, in Joshua’s case, he’d wanted those with power to succumb to him. He’d wanted to kill them, to stand at the top. His temperament had been too extreme. That was why I hadn’t been able to teach him more of our techniques, why I hadn’t been able to let him carry our name, and why I had ultimately expelled him.
In a sense, I was at fault. I couldn’t object to any claim that this outcome was because of my lack of ability as an instructor. But people changed with time—that was what I believed.
“He seems to be doing fine now, right...?” I muttered casually.
“I wonder about that...” Surena said, her expression and tone somewhat meek.
“What do you mean?”
“Ebenrain’s skill is unquestionable. The guild trusts him too. However...there are wicked rumors about him.”
“I see...”
Wicked rumors, huh? Well, it was probably something only high-ranking adventurers knew about, and I had no intention of prying too far. I doubted Joshua and I would ever cross paths again.
I suspected it was nothing like him swindling people out of their money, and he wouldn’t have started to believe in weird ideologies. He was similar to me in that he had no fixation on those kinds of things. These wicked rumors were almost guaranteed to concern reports of people dying. That would be the case if he was still the same Joshua Ebenrain I knew.
“Do you believe them?” I asked.
“It’s hard to say. He does his job as an adventurer properly. Some might say that the rumors were born of jealousy and resentment. And above all else, there’s no evidence. Until now, I always believed them to be utterly fake.”
“Hmmm...”
Had Joshua tried to sate his desires haphazardly, he would’ve been tossed into prison long ago. Strong people were famous, after all, and those were the kinds of people he wanted to face. Those were also the people in the public eye. As a somewhat absurd supposition, if he’d ever set his sights on Allucia or Lucy, news of the matter would’ve definitely spread. The same went for if he’d targeted Surena.