“Let’s see… Where should I start?” Lucas muttered tiredly, leaning on elbow on the desk and holding his brow. He was in his office in the annex, along with Leticiel and Zeke.
“Why don’t you start by asking what it is you’d like to know?”
“That’s what I mean! There’s too much I want to ask about!” Leticiel was acting nonchalant despite being the cause of the entire situation. Her overly dignified attitude only made Lucas’s headache worse.
After the monster incident in the forest, Lucas had called Zeke and Leticiel to his office after giving orders to the other teachers to clean up the aftermath.
“For starters, can you tell me what kind of power you were using?”
“Yes. It’s a power called sorcery that doesn’t seem to be used in this day and age.”
“I see… I must have bad luck this year.” Lucas had his head in his hands, but that was only natural. Just as Leticiel had said, sorcery did not exist in the Platina Kingdom.
How on Earth could she have acquired a skill that didn’t even exist? Leticiel had been ripping holes in his logic in just the one month she’d been there.
“So, do you have any idea why His Highness was like that?” Lucas asked, hoping that she would have noticed something about the monster incident if she had knowledge that exceeded his own understanding of the world.
“No, I don’t know what that monster was,” Leticiel replied, lowering her red and blue eyes and shaking her head quietly. “Zeke gave me a hint on how to defeat it, but I don’t know anything about it.” Her usually expressionless face was flickering with complex emotions like frustration and annoyance, so it seemed like she truly didn’t know.
“I see… But you were able to suppress a monster of that caliber with magic,” he said to the girl, aiming for a casual chat that would still set the record straight.
“No, like I said, it’s not magic. It’s sorcery. They are similar, I suppose. But unlike with magic, the lower magical power you have, the better. To go into specifics, the formulas are—”
“Wait. Wait, wait, wait. I’ve heard all the important stuff, so there’s no need to say anything else!” Lucas hurriedly called a halt to the speech Drossell had been gearing up to give, his attempt apparently flipping a switch in her.
Drossell wasn’t happy to be interrupted, but he couldn’t let her talk for hours again. He wouldn’t be able to bear a repeat of the conference room tragedy. Instead, he asked, “Why didn’t you tell me about sorcery before?”
“Because you didn’t ask.”
“I see. I was a fool to ask. Or wait, was I a fool not to have asked?” Drossell’s reply had Lucas slumping down on his desk in defeat. This was no use. She completely had the upper hand. Sorcery, a skill that would completely shake the magical world, and modifications that challenged everything they thought they knew about magic formulas.
Lucas had been Lucrezia Academy’s headmaster for over a decade and he had never seen such a ridiculous and frightening student.
What was even more terrifying was that she hadn’t even been there for half a year yet. Lucas was a fine old man, not a baby, but he honestly wanted to cry. I’ve been getting plenty of sleep lately, so why do I get headaches every day?
“For now, please don’t mention sorcery to anyone else,” he warned her.
“Yes, I don’t have any intention of spreading it around, so you can be sure of that.”
“Yeah… I won’t get my hopes up.”
Drossell tilted her head with doll-like beauty as she watched Lucas press against his temples. Why does she look so puzzled? Whose fault does she think this is?
Though he complained to himself, Lucas’s sense of responsibility as the academy’s headmaster and his natural kindness meant that he couldn’t take his frustrations out on Drossell.
His hardships as the genius’s caretaker had only just begun.
✦ ✦ ✦
Lucas’s questioning lasted several hours. Leticiel and Zeke looked weary when they finally left his office.
“Miss Drossell… Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine. Are you tired, Zeke?”
“I was just sitting there listening, so I’m fine.”
Apparently, the news of the monster commotion had already reached the rest of the students.
Naturally, they hadn’t been told what had actually occurred in the forest, but since there had been such a commotion, the academy had been closed for the rest of the day. Many carriages had already been arriving to pick up the nobles when Leticiel and the others had been heading toward the headmaster’s office earlier.
“Ah! Miss Drossell! Zeke!” Just as Leticiel had been thinking that she should head home as well, a familiar brown-haired girl came running up to her.
“Oh? Miss Mira.” Leticiel felt déjà vu seeing the way Mirandalette’s shoulders rose up and down with her pants, her hair stuck to her forehead. Still, she was surprised to see the other girl. “Why are you here? I thought you’d already gone home.”
“Don’t be silly! I was waiting because I was worried about you two!” Mirandalette replied without a moment of hesitation.
Leticiel was taken aback by the girl’s response. That meant Mirandalette had been more worried about Leticiel than her own evacuation. “Oh…,” she said. “I’m sorry for worrying you, Miss Mirandalette.”