A beautiful woman with long blonde hair walked toward them. She wore a white noble's dress with silver accessories, none of it excessive. The most striking piece was a pendant bearing the symbol of a sun surrounded by stars.
The emblem of the Sanctum of Eternal Light.
"Ard! I never expected you to become a professor here! This is wonderful! Now you can teach my future successors directly!"
She laughed, loud and unrestrained.
"Ugh... Headmaster, let go of me." Ard's voice came out slightly strangled. "I need to get to my next class."
An absolutely unbelievable excuse.
Elisha stared at him with open amusement. The idea of Ard voluntarily caring about his next class was something neither of them could take seriously.
"Eh~" She tightened her grip. "That is rude. Tiffany has been waiting a long time just to see you."
"Exactly. And I heard you hate teaching because it conflicts with your dream of living lazily," Tiffany added.
The woman was Tiffany, a Saintess of the Sanctum of Eternal Light, and one of the very few people Ard made a genuine effort to avoid. The reason was simple. Once Tiffany started talking, she did not stop. And she had a rule about that.
"Suddenly, I feel extremely motivated to teach. So if you will excuse me, Headmaster, Saintess, I will be going now!"
"Nope!"
Elisha wrapped both arms around him from behind, anchoring him in place.
"T-this is bad..." Ard's voice dropped. "If Tiffany starts talking, it will take a full three hours before she finishes! And no one is allowed to leave before she does!"
"But I think Tiffany is quite charming when she talks."
"Charming is not the word I would use!" Ard said with increasing desperation, glancing toward Tiffany, who was already beginning to gather her thoughts for what would surely be an extended monologue. "Anyone who tries to leave before she is finished gets labeled a heretic!"
"Wah, really? She still seems the same as when she was a student here."
"Oh, come on, Headmaster!" Ard turned to look at her sideways, voice cracking slightly. "You think everyone is still a child because of how old you are!"
"It is rude to talk about a woman's age."
She pinched his stomach.
Ard flinched.
"My apologies..."
A pause. Then, muffled against his back, very quietly.
"But... I do see you as a man now."
She had not meant for him to hear it. Her voice was low, her face buried into his back. Under normal circumstances, it would have been swallowed entirely by ambient noise.
But Ard's senses had long since surpassed normal limits. He heard everything.
His face went red.
Elisha felt his heartbeat spike. Then she felt the warmth.
She realized it immediately. He had heard her.
"T-that is not what I meant!"
She shoved him.
The wall on the receiving end did not survive the impact. Dust exploded outward. A moment later, Ard rose from the rubble, brushing debris from his shoulders with a calm that felt almost insulting given the circumstances.
"You know."
He pushed his hair back with one hand.
"Do you think I am an orc?"
His expression was mildly annoyed. Somehow, inexplicably, it made him look even more unreasonably handsome.
The combination hit Elisha like a second shockwave.
"M-MY APOLOGIES!!"
She fled. Full speed. Airborne within seconds.
Ard watched her disappear and said nothing for a long moment.
"...What is wrong with her?"
Tiffany approached from beside him.
"No idea."
He closed his eyes and smiled weakly. A single tear traced down his cheek.
"But more importantly... She abandoned me here. Alone. With you."
"Wow! You are crying just from seeing me? Did you miss me that much? Ho-ho-ho!"
Tiffany began talking.
Ard stood in place, perfectly still, the expression of a man whose soul had quietly packed its things and left.
'I want to go home.'
And so, Ard listened to Tiffany's endless words for quite some time.
---
Meanwhile, in her room, Elisha had buried her face into a pillow and was not planning to surface anytime soon.
"Wh-what is wrong with me...?"
She was thinking about it again. His hand pushing his hair back. That look on his face.
'Do you think I am an orc?'
"Of course not!!" She sat up and punched the pillow several times. "Fine, I admit it! You are obviously a man!"
Her face was completely red. Hot enough, perhaps, to cook with.
After thoroughly destroying the pillow, she sat quietly, arms around her knees, still flushed.
"I never paid much attention before. Even though I kept holding his arm all this time, I never once thought about it. And when I pinched his stomach just to tease him, I was... honestly surprised." She covered her face immediately. "Kyaa, what am I even thinking?!"
She groaned.
"I have always known he was handsome. But why now, why is it suddenly..."
She dragged a hand through her silver hair.
"This is so frustrating."
---
Across the academy, in the cafeteria, the students from Ard's class had gathered for lunch.
Noble families tended toward quiet meals, voices kept to a certain register, laughter measured and contained. Others were louder, more comfortable, less concerned with appearances. And then there was one who barely spoke at all, and never laughed.
"Professor Ard is something else, is he not?" Luna said, cutting into a piece of meat. "Making magic like that with only two words."
"What is so impressive about that? I could make magic just as powerful. Two words is nothing." Tesslon said this with his mouth full.
"Someone as muscle-brained as you knows magic?"
Tesslon wagged a finger at her.
"You are being shallow. Just because I am a barbarian does not mean I cannot use magic."
"Then prove it."
Tesslon went quiet. His expression shifted into something theatrically serious. He laced his fingers together. His eyes sharpened.
"Are you absolutely certain?"
Luna swallowed. "Yes. Go ahead."
Tesslon exhaled slowly. He closed his eyes. His right hand came up from his stomach, palm facing upward, rising with agonizing deliberateness toward his chest. His face contorted with effort. Veins showed. The table watched him.
His hand reached his throat.
"I am fu—" BURP!
He belched directly into Luna's face.
"YOU FUCKING IDIOT!!"
Luna was on her feet, magic already forming at her fingertips, aimed at her brother with the focused intent of someone who had made a decision and was committed to it. It took three people to stop her.
"Unbelievable," Anna said, watching the chaos with a flat expression.
"I think they are a little funny, actually."
"You always say that, Rena Henfeld."
The girl with long black hair and slightly narrow eyes smiled the way she always did. Warm. Open. The kind of smile that made people feel comfortable, which was precisely why it was worth watching carefully.
Her name was Rena Henfeld, of the demon-race Henfeld family. She seemed approachable. She seemed friendly. Behind that smile, however, was a mind that had been quietly cataloguing everything around her since she sat down.
'I will need to be careful with her.'
Racial tensions had been officially neutralized by Elisha. Officially. In practice, the competition continued beneath the surface, invisible to outsiders, known only to those directly involved.
"What do you mean I always say that?" Rena asked.
"Nothing," Anna said, cutting another piece of food. "Anyway. Professor Ard really is something, is he not?"
"Honestly, yes. I could not stop being surprised. His knowledge, his power." She paused. "Though I have heard he is actually more dangerous with a sword than with magic."
"Really?" Luna looked up, having finished dealing with her brother.
"Yes. Apparently, during a mission to eliminate a certain organization, he went alone. No equipment. Just his sword. Two days later, the organization no longer existed."
"You mean the one that was abducting people from different races and harvesting their organs?!" Luna's voice climbed.
"Is that true, Claire?" Anna asked.
Claire set down her fork and knife.
"Yes. It is true." She exhaled. "We were ordered by our supervising professor at the time to follow after him. They were worried. He had left alone, no supplies, nothing but a sword."
It had been deep into the night. Claire and the others had run through a dark forest in the rain, moving faster than horses could carry them, pushing through the black and the wet and the cold.
When they reached the organization's base, they stopped.
The ground was wet from rain. But there was another color soaking into the earth, darker, and the air carried a sharp, metallic smell. The temperature of the water at their feet had risen. Warm. Wrong.
They went further in.
And then they stopped again, and did not move for a long time.
Above them, lit by a moon that had turned the color of rust, Ard sat atop a mountain of the dead. One eye burning red. The other black, with dark flames where the iris should have been. Both eyes fixed on Claire and the others standing frozen below him.
Nobody spoke.
Nobody breathed.
The scene had been quiet in the way that only truly terrible things are quiet, the kind of quiet that does not feel like peace but like everything in the world holding very still.
Claire set her utensils down with a soft click and said nothing more. The table had gone completely silent.
Outside the cafeteria windows, the afternoon light had begun to soften into the early gold of evening. Students passed in the corridors beyond the glass, unaware, laughing about ordinary things.
And inside, around a table full of people who had spent a single day under Ard Le Ventias, not one of them could quite bring themselves to finish eating.
* * *