The Extra’s Academy Survival Guide - Chapter 136

“You’re using a classic and obvious method that is rather unlike you. Are you planning on cornering the entire market for school supplies?”

“Yes, well. I guess people that are quick-witted would have sniffed it out by now.”

The education district at night.

A place where classes were held in broad daylight, while in the late evening, research activities were in full swing instead.

The height of all the buildings was definitely much higher than those in the commercial district.

As the name suggested, the commercial district had a stronger smell to it. Meanwhile, the education district definitely had a more organized feeling to it.

The roads were lined with bricks and prettily prepared flowerbeds, clean and tall buildings, and even tree-lined streets to welcome the students.

I was used to it, since it was a sight I saw every day, but it was actually very rare to find an educational facility of that size anywhere else in the world.

Lortel took a walk outside at night, so I followed along and ended up in the education district with her.

It was quite a long distance to walk for a nighttime stroll, but it was fine because there was a lot to talk about.

“I never thought that you would be curious about the internal affairs of the company, Ed. Perhaps you were worried about me?”

“Well, I guess that’s true. I did worry about you a bit.”

“Even now, you still can’t just emptily say that you were worried about—”

Lortel, who was walking ahead, suddenly stopped talking and looked back. Clearly, my answer wasn’t what she expected.

She glanced at my expression and spoke, bewildered and trying to avoid eye contact.

“D-Did I hear that wrong?”

“However, no matter how far ahead you think things through, that doesn’t mean you won’t end up making a mistake.”

“Well, there’s always going to be a risk involved in any choice. I was just taken aback, as I didn’t expect that you would be able to tell me that you were worried about me in such a straight-forward manner.”

Lortel’s eyes were jumping around, a puzzled expression on her face as she kept making a fuss. She fanned her face before taking a step forward again.

“My attack and defense are completely separate. So, I think I need to train in this area a bit more…”

Mumbling nonsense like that, we continued to walk the streets at night.

***

“Exchange of weakness.”

In the end, our destination was a wooden bench in the center of the student square.

It was always full of people during the day, so I had never had the chance to sit on this central bench next to the fountain. After all, it was always full of people.

However, late at night the atmosphere—which was loud and bustling like a market in daytime—was unbelievably quiet.

The darkness spread over the entire school, making the tall buildings look rather eerie.

Nail Hall, Glockt Hall, Obel Hall, Delen Hall. From the grand buildings right next to the Student Square, to the smaller facilities like the Student Library and Trix Hall—which was on a hill off in the distance—and even the buildings where the Magic Department students rarely visited, like Peson Hall, where the Alchemy Department had classes, and Marel Hall, where the Combat Department students trained.

Each building stood silently tall in the middle of the night. Despite seeing them every day, they looked strangely different at night.

When I was in high school, I used to go to school in the middle of night.

I guess when it changed from day to night, no matter where you were it would always feel like a different world.

“When children of noble families hold a wedding, there is a ceremony where you exchange weaknesses. Since they will come to know each other even more, their relationship will grow even stronger… It sounds reasonable and romantic, but—”

“There is such a tradition…?”

“Even though a lot of things have been lost these days, I heard that there are still some things that are left in old or long-established houses. Surprisingly, I guess there doesn’t seem to be such a thing in House Rothstaylor?”

“I’m not sure. I’m not old enough to get married quite yet.

“That is true, but… Anyway.”

Lortel sat on a bench as she pulled up her hood. As always, her bluish rose-shaped pin shone softly in the moonlight.

“Would you like to trade our weaknesses?”

“…So suddenly?”

“If I am to explain the details about the incident this time, I won’t have any choice but to expose my own inner weakness as well.”

Naturally, Lortel’s insides were deep and dark, but I never had the thought to dig them up.

“Well, there’s nothing much to show you, but I still feel like I would be losing.”

“……”

“You know it, too. I can’t live taking a loss.”

Lortel smiled as she waited for my answer.

In fact, even exchanging weaknesses was a bit difficult for me. Weaknesses of the sons from noble houses were usually dirty and horrific. They were sometimes to the extent that it was difficult to speak of them to others… Of course, for me, there wouldn’t be such a fatal weakness.

I could show a weakness of mine that wasn’t a big deal, but to Lortel, who was expecting a deep and dark weakness just as she would tell me, it wouldn’t make sense. It didn’t matter all that much to me, but to Lortel, it could be seen as disrespectful.

So, I fell into deep thought.

“Well, you don’t have to think about it so deeply. I’ve only heard of people doing these types of strange things myself.”

“…What are you trying to get out of me?”

“I have ears too~. It’s just that I can hear a little wider and farther away than an ordinary person’s ears could~.”

To say that it was only a ‘little’ wider is an understatement. She could hear every single sound across the entire commercial district.

In other words, she must have heard rumors recently about me looking depressed or seeming to be out of energy.

I went around telling everyone I was fine, but the way Lortel would have taken the news was a different matter.

I closed my eyes.

Even though it was a dark night, when I closed my eyes there really was only darkness in front of me.

What was subtly reflected in the darkness beyond my retina was my past.

The Joint Combat Practice, the Student Council Election, the First Year Class Placement, the Glast Subjugation, the Glasskan Subjugation, the Ophelis Hall Expulsion.

From that moment even further into the past, I saw myself settling down in the Northern Forest. The days I spent clenching my teeth to survive as Ed Rothstaylor… And the days I spent before I became him.

I then opened my mouth.

“A lot of people around me died.”

Lortel didn’t bother to ask in any detail.

“It was because of the environment I lived in. For years, I traveled on a battlefield in a distant foreign country. However, I ended up getting a little hurt. Thanks to that, I was able to spend my last years in leisure.”

“Oh my, that’s surprising to hear.”

“Believe it or not, it’s up to you.”

Lortel shook her head softly. Like she would believe it.

News that the eldest son of House Rothstaylor had war experience—she would have never heard of such a thing from anywhere.

“I was just traveling through the battlefields, and because of that, the people around me were often killed. At first, I struggled emotionally. The more people I became attached to and interacted with, the worse it got.”

“That would make sense. The more extreme the environment, the closer the people become.”

“Which is why I tried to clench my teeth and save them at first. Running through the battlefield, carrying a severely wounded person. Lifting them up even though I knew I would fall from exhaustion on the way back. Hugging an ally that was taking their last breath. Watching them to the end, trying to hold back my tears… In fact, it’s an experience anyone on the battlefield would have gone through. It’s like a rite of passage.”

When I opened my eyes again, I saw my shoes.

With my arms on my knees and my back hunched over, I watched a swarm of soldier ants crawl underneath my shoes.

“Then there comes the moment you realize it’s all useless. Your heart will only be in pain, and they will all be replaced later anyway. Having affection towards another is an act that holds a great risk. It’s just like your favorite phrase—risk management.”

“I don’t like it either. Who would like that?”

“Well, in any case, internally the decision I came to was right. It happened such a long time ago I forgot about it.”

I looked up and saw the starry sky that was always there. It had a strangely different feeling from when I looked at it through the trees in the forest.

“I tried to save them, so if they die, I end up heartbroken.”

“……”

“In the first place, if I didn’t want to save them, I wouldn’t be so heartbroken.”

Lortel was silent.

“By thinking that way, I was able to keep my mind straight. At that point, I finally came to understand why the commanders were all so cold-blooded. Since even I understood that fact, everyone else must have known as well.”

When I closed my eyes again, I remembered the corpse of the girl leaning against the wall of Glockt Hall, bleeding out.

She was someone that was moving around in a hurry, taking care of all the incidents and hardships in her way. But in the end, none of it made a difference, and she couldn’t be saved. That memory started to pile up with similar ones from my distant past.

I looked at my fist, my back hunched over. I tried to clench it before opening it again.

“I’ve also lost a lot of my senses.”

In the first place, since I tried to save them, I ended up heartbroken.

It might have been because of that romantic school that I forgot about the inherent decision I made before.

As I walked around the campus, my head ended up filled with the rosy aura of a flower garden because of these students around me, who are filled with hopes and dreams.

However, for me, reality had always been a hardship. Life had always been more about ‘surviving’ than ‘living’.

Constantly doubting the world. That was the way I lived from that day on.

“This is my weakness.”

Reaching that point, I came to a conclusion.

If exchanging weaknesses was just justification, then wouldn’t that be enough to use for negotiating?

It was something I had never revealed to anyone else, although I ended up saying it quite bluntly.

Lortel didn’t say a word for some time. Sitting on the bench, looking up at the night sky, she brushed her reddish-brown hair back and spoke slowly.

“What meaning death has… It’s different for each person. So, I will not try to thoughtlessly go against your judgment.”

However, looking at me as if there was anything else I was going to say, she smiled. It wasn’t her usual cool and composed smile—rather, it seemed a bit faint. Maybe it was from the dazzling moonlight above us.

“A lot of people around me also died. And most of the time, it was because of me.”

Lortel reclined against the back of the bench as she looked towards the top of Obel Hall, which was in front of her. It was the same building used for the Student Council.

“My parents were incompetent. Spending the entire day begging for bread, we lived in the corner of a slum off of rotten bread alone. Still, I think they were kind people. At least, they were until they got involved with the Elte Company and I was sold to an orphanage.”

“…It’s hard to make a comment on that.”

“Well, now that things ended up like this, I’m not offended by it. People that are cornered naturally become easily corrupted through a few gold coins. Without knowing that they would soon be killed to keep them silent, they naively fell for the sweet whispers from the Elte Company. Poor people.”

“……”

“Well, that’s how I became a pawn for the Elte Company. And now, I’ve even become the deputy director.”

She couldn’t remember their faces any longer.

However, Lortel’s biological parents, who stayed on one side of her heart… It seemed that she still thought of them as kind people.

Even though they sold her off, to her it was only proof of the disgusting corruption in our lives.

Lortel had experienced being trapped in a corner, so she probably fully understood the mindset of such people.

“Do you know how much money my parents got for selling me? It was only three gold coins. Not thirty, not three hundred. Just three.”

Three gold coins.

It wasn’t a small amount of money. Especially when you considered the position of a poor person, it was enough money to live comfortably for a few months if they used it well.

However, whether it was enough money to sell your one and only blood child… One would have to shake their head.

“It was then that I realized it. The people that are pushed into a corner, falling down into an abyss—to them, it’s not about the billions of coins that pile up. Rather, it’s all about the few coins that they urgently need.”

Lortel continued talking before finally taking a breather.

Though, she didn’t particularly talk long enough to need to catch her breath.

The silence was peaceful, as the atmosphere in the sleeping education district was relaxing.

“After that… I stopped trusting anyone.”

It was years before Lortel made a name for herself in the Elte Company.

During that time, she taught herself how to read books, memorized daily exchange rates, responded to the market changes, HR management, crisis management, business management… She learned all the necessary qualities to lead the company.

The amount she learned was at a rate that could be considered incredible.

There are other fields, such as combat, magic, alchemy, and academics—but in the end, her true worth showed when dealing with gold coins. That was why people called her the Golden Daughter with such reverence.

“After spending my life like that, there were times where I no longer saw people as humans. Rather, they were more like machines that responded to offers and negotiations. If I spoke in a certain way, they would react in a certain way… Robot that was designed in such a way.”

“……”

“Maybe that has something in common with the commanding officer that you were talking about, Ed. If you trust others easily, you will be betrayed easily. That’s why you don’t want to believe in others in the first place. But in the end, that means there will be no one else around you that you can trust. In the end, the only person left in the world you can trust is yourself… Look.”

Only then did Lortel raise her head, looking up at the night sky over the school again.

I could now see the reason Lortel had brought me to the education district in the middle of the night.

“The school during the night is rather eerie and quiet, isn’t it? Seeing nobody else here in this normally crowded place makes me feel like I’m all alone in the world.”

“…That’s right.”

“It feels like this to me even in the day.”

Solitude in a crowd.

A disease that slowly corroded one’s mind.

“Well. Now I have a friend.”

One day, when I was climbing up the hill, I suddenly looked down at the brutal battlefield. That view of my back looking down at the scene seemed to flash in front of my eyes.

Maybe young Lortel, looking down on the commercial city of Oldek, was not that different from me.

“It’s like you said before.”

Lortel learned her head on my shoulder… She quietly closed her eyes, enjoying the soft moonlight.

“We are the same sort.”

***

“I got a report that a rat has been hiding inside the Store. So, I’m in the process of catching them.”

Lortel rested her head on my shoulder as she quietly shared her plans.

“A few days ago, the number of items for sale in the warehouse didn’t match our books. I also feel that the books were not normal, and that they are being manipulated, so I looked into it… And it turns out, someone was constantly stealing funds from our branch. As the scale of it starts to slowly get larger, cracks in the ledger are slowly appearing.”

“Isn’t it Dune? Didn’t you say that he bought the alcohol with embezzled funds?”

“The amount Dune takes isn’t that large. He always stays within his lane, buying small luxurious items for his own interests in the same method. I think there is someone that is much worse than Dune involved.”

Lortel leaned her head on my shoulder before suddenly fixing her posture, sticking even closer to me.

I glanced down at her as she wrapped her upper body tightly around mine, saying ‘I feel more safe than I thought I would…’

“The fact that proof of it is starting to appear in the ledger means that they are slowly reaching the limit of how much they are stealing. Sooner or later, they will try to go for a big swoop and run away.”

“Then, this time you’re going to corner the market for textbooks…”

“I’m going to try and bait them with a big catch. When the price of textbooks slowly goes up… before our company puts it back on sale, they will try and do so first. They’ll try and make some quick cash before running away. So, by asking ‘individuals’ that are actively buying books, we will be able to uncover the identity of that bastard.”

In the end, she would be in a situation where she would have to fire a long-term employee she was working with.

However, Lortel had no issue in doing so.

“Like I said, my weakness… is that I don’t believe in anyone. Even if the loneliness eats away at me, I still won’t trust people recklessly. No matter how good they might seem, their goals are obvious.”

“……”

“It’s all because I’m afraid of being betrayed.”

In the end, fear was the underlying issue behind Lortel’s mindset.

It was the same for most people… And the same was true for Lortel.

“Still, at least right now, I think I’m happy. It feels like just yesterday I was sold for three gold coins, but now I’m a person that can hand out three gold coins a day to a single person I want to hire.”

“…Still, isn’t three gold coins a day too much?”

“Well, I feel like I need to start off strong. I thought she was going to decline, anyway. Well, it doesn’t matter if I get rejected. It just means that I will be short one person.”

Rubbing her face on my shoulder, Lortel smiled bewitchingly.

“It doesn’t matter though. Having one less person of mine.”

She didn’t really need to explain the reason why. She just wrapped her arms around me as she looked up with those mischievous eyes of hers.

“As for the reason, you know about it well, right?”

No matter how I answered, it would be senseless.

So, I let Lortel cling to my arm quietly for a while longer.

***

“I’m sorry, Lady Lortel. I am grateful for the offer, but…”

The next morning, Head Maid Bell Maya went to visit Lortel at her room in Ophelis Hall.

“I am worried about you leaving Ophelis Hall, as you always require the assistance of the maids. Your decision to leave Ophelis Hall… I think it is rather drastic.”

“……”

“Being paid three gold coins a day is a bit burdensome as well… Well, if the amount is large, it’s great for me, but… I am proud to work at Ophelis Hall.”

Bell Maya bowed her head.

Lortel had just woken up, coming out after getting lightly dressed.

Now, Lortel knew.

In the world, there were people that couldn’t be bought with money.

The first person that came to her mind was a blonde boy that was alone in his camp in the forest, sharpening his arrows.

“Of course, that doesn’t mean that I am always treated fairly here. There are times when I am unhappy, and other times when I am tired and exhausted… Still, I want to continue taking on my responsibilities here at Ophelis Hall.”

“Oh my…”

Lortel looked at Bell Maya, who had her head down, with a disappointed expression.

“Three gold coins a day is a really strong offer from my point of view… So, it’s disappointing to be rejected like this.”

“Ughk…”

“Of course, the noble beliefs you have in your work cannot be quantified into currency… Still, won’t you reconsider? I don’t want to lose out on a maid that is as capable and that I am as confident in as you, Miss Bell.”

Seeing Lortel’s depressed eyes, which were quite unlike her usual self, Bell felt her heart pounding louder.

However, Bell shook her head as she bowed once more.

“I’m sorry.”

“I see. If you say so, then it can’t be helped. Then… how about working two jobs?”

“What? Working two jobs…?”

Lortel held Bell Maya’s hands as she spoke in a wet voice.

“I will reduce your pay by a third and you will come to manage my villa and the nearby camp whenever you have free time. After all, aren’t you also interested in doing practical work, Miss Bell?”

“Y-Yes…?”

“I heard that these days you also take care of Yennekar. Just like you do with her, you just need to come by once in a while on a regular basis to take care of things. You only have to work whenever it’s comfortable for you and you have the time. Maybe we can specify the number of times a week… Maybe that way… Or is this… also not good…?”

Bell was bewildered by the unexpected offer.

However, it wasn’t a bad offer. Bell, who was diligent by nature, managed her time so carefully already that she managed to take care of Yennekar in her spare time while still taking care of her busy schedule as the Head Maid.

Plus, her desire to do some practical chores had built up. The work schedule was going to be up to her, and above all else, the girl holding her hands and offering her the job looked like she was going to burst into tears.

The girl even offered her three gold coins. That was why she had to think about it so carefully.

That strange mindset started to take over Bell Maya’s mind.

“I-If it’s that amount… and with conditions, then….”

“Yay…! Thank you, Miss Bell!”

Lortel smiled widely as she clapped.

“Then…. I’ll send a contract over to you with your name on it!”

Taking care of the work in a flash. In the first place, the contract was already prepared beforehand.

Watching Lortel go back to her room with a smile on her face… Bell came to a realization.

From the very first offer, it was a trap.

Having Bell ‘reject’ her offer would act as a shackle and a debt, pushing her to accept the contract.

Well… In the first place, she was always that type of person.

It wasn’t that she didn’t know.

It was just absurd seeing it happen.

Seeing Lortel go back to her room with a foxlike smile on her face, Bell gave a frustrated smirk.