How to Survive at the Academy Chapter 136

Three Gold Coins (4)

“Unlike you, he used a classic and obvious trick. Are you planning to hoard all the school supplies?”

“Yes, well. Those who want to be quick-witted must have smelled everything.”

The place is a professor’s building in the middle of the night.

Classes are held mainly in broad daylight, and research activities are in full swing in the late evening, but it is a place where only silence reigns in the middle of the night.

The height of the buildings is definitely higher than that of the living quarters.

If the Living Building has more of a lifelike scent, as its name suggests, the Professor Building has a clear sense of order.

Roads and flower beds lined with bricks, neatly raised buildings, and even avenues that seem to welcome students.

I’ve gotten used to it because it’s a sight I see every day, but in fact, an educational facility of this scale is really rare in this world.

Lortel asked me to go for a night walk, so she led me to the Professor Building at night.

I feel like I’m a little far away for a night walk, but I think it’s because I have a lot to say.

“But I never thought that senior Ed would be curious about the internal affairs of the store. Are you worried about me by any chance?”

“Well, that’s how it is. I’m a little worried about you.”

“At that time, even with empty words, I became worried about you—”

Lortel, who had been leading the way, stopped talking and glanced around. I guess my answer was different from what I expected.

He glanced at my expression, and then talked as if he was embarrassed while averting his gaze.

“My, did I hear wrong?”

“No matter how deep you think, it doesn’t mean you don’t go crazy.”

“Originally, every choice is accompanied by a risk. It’s just that I was embarrassed for a moment because I didn’t know you would say that I’m worried about you so straightforwardly.”

Lortel rolled her eyes with a sullen face and made a fuss. He fanned his face for no reason, and then he stepped ahead again.

“They say attack and defense skills are completely separate, but I think this side needs to be trained a little more…”

Muttering that, I walked for a long time down the street in the middle of the night.

“Weakness exchange.”

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

It’s always full of people in broad daylight, so I’ve never sat on this central bench right next to the fountain. Because it is always full of people.

However, when we come here late at night, the atmosphere that was like the market in broad daylight is so quiet that it is colorless.

The darkness that has fallen on the academic building makes several tall buildings eerie.

Neil tube, Glockt tube, Obel tube, Delen tube. From these luxurious buildings right next to the student plaza, to facilities such as the student library and Trix Hall on the hill far away, as well as the Pesson Hall, where most of the alchemy classes are held, and the Marel Hall, where combat units train, students of the Ministry of Magic rarely go. to non-existent buildings.

The silent figure in the darkness of the night creates a strange sense of incongruity even though it is a scene seen every day.

Even when I was in school, I used to go to school in the middle of the night.

Even everyday scenery, if you change the time zone to night, you feel as if you are in another world.

“When children of noble and prestigious families hold weddings, there is a ceremony where they exchange weaknesses. They know each other’s hardships, so their relationship grows that much… It sounds nice and romantic, but in fact, if you think about it, it’s insidious. It’s a custom.”

“Is there such a custom…?”

“It’s said that a lot of them have died recently, but I’ve heard that some of them remain in old-fashioned or long-history families. Surprisingly, the Ross Taylor family doesn’t have anything like that?”

“Well, I’m not yet old enough to get married.”

“I do, but… anyway.”

Lortel sat down on the bench and pulled down Jerob’s hat. As always, the bluish rose-shaped hairpin glows softly in the moonlight.

“Do you want to trade our weaknesses?”

“…suddenly?”

“If I’m going to explain my circumstances about this incident, I have no choice but to show you my mental struggle.”

Of course, Lortel’s inside must be deep and black, but she never thought of digging it out.

“Well, there’s nothing I can’t show you, but it still feels like a loss.”

“…”

“You know. I can’t live without losing money.”

Lortel smiled and waited for my answer.

In fact, even if it’s a weakness exchange, it’s a bit difficult. The weaknesses of the children of noble families are so shady or dirty that they are often fatal enough to be difficult to disclose to others… As for me, there is no such thing as a fatal weakness.

I showed a flaw that was nothing, but on the Lortel side, if you show a deep and dark weakness, isn’t it rather unreasonable? It’s nothing to do with me, but it could be a big disservice to Lortel.

So I got into deep trouble.

“Well, you don’t have to think too deeply. In fact, I’m doing strange things like this because I’ve heard.”

“…What is your intention?”

“I have ears too~ I can only hear a little wider and farther than normal people~”

To say that it is ‘slightly’ wider, that ear can hear all the sounds of the entire living area.

In short, I’ve heard rumors that I’ve been feeling depressed lately, or that I’ve lost a lot of energy.

Hansako said it was okay, but how Lortel would have accepted it was another matter.

I gently closed my eyes.

It’s already a dark night, but when I close my eyes, there’s only complete darkness in front of my eyes.

What is reflected subtly in the darkness beyond the retina are things of the past.

Joint combat training, student council president election, freshman class placement test, subjugation of Glast, subjugation of Glaskan, expulsion from Ophelis Hall.

From there, go further into the past. Settled in the northern woods, before I gritted my teeth and lived, before I was Ed Roth Taylor, I walked straight through the roads I had passed through.

Eventually, he opened his mouth.

“A lot of people around me died.”

Lortel didn’t bother asking in detail.

“The environment was like that. I’ve been rolling around for a few years in a distant foreign battlefield. Then I got hurt a little. Thanks to that, I spent my last years at leisure.”

“Oh, that’s surprising.”

“Believe it or not, you are free.”

Lortel shook her head gently. It’s a story to believe in.

You wouldn’t have heard anywhere else that the eldest son of Ross Taylor Mansion had war experience.

“It’s just that people around you often die when you roll on the battlefield. At first, you suffer a lot emotionally. The more people you bond with and interact with, the more it’s like that.”

“That’s right. The closer the environment is to the extreme, the more people stick together.”

“That’s why at first I grit my teeth and try to save it. Carrying a severely injured person on my back and running through the middle of the battlefield knowing that I will collapse from exhaustion on my way, hugging a comrade who is losing his breath and watching the end while weeping… Actually, on that floor… It’s an experience that everyone who’s been through. It’s kind of a rite of passage.”

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

As I crouched down with my arms resting on my knees, I saw a swarm of soldier ants passing between my shoes.

“Then the moment comes when you realize that all of that is futile. Only your heart hurts, and people are hired anyway. Giving affection itself is an act accompanied by great risks. It’s your favorite word. Risk management.”

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

“Well, internally, the conclusion was just right. It was a conclusion made so long ago that I forgot about it these days.”

I looked up and saw the starry sky I always see. I felt a strangely different impression than when I looked up through the trees in the forest.

“Because I tried to save him, I’ll be heartbroken when he dies.”

“…”

“If you don’t try to save it in the first place, there’s nothing to be heartbroken about.”

Lortel was silent.

“Thinking like that was the only way to keep my spirits upright. At that time, I understood why the commanders were all cold-blooded. Even I, a lowly person, understood it, so everyone must have understood it.”

When I close my eyes again, I remember the corpse of the girl who was bleeding while leaning against the outer wall of the Glockt tube.

He moved quickly without opening his eyes and solved all the trials and challenges, but he was the only one who couldn’t be saved by a single difference in the end. Those similar memories were piled up in the distant past to the point of being sick of it.

I looked at my fist with my back bent, and tried to open and close it for nothing.

“I’m also very depressed.”

I was heartbroken because I tried to save him in the first place.

It may be because of this school full of romance that I forgot the conclusion I made inherently.

When you walk around the campus, your hair becomes a field of flowers because of the rosy aura of the students who are full of dreams and hopes.

However, for me, reality has always been an ordeal. Life is not ‘living’, but ‘surviving’.

It was the way I lived that day, maintaining a sense of line and constantly doubting the world.

“This is my reverse.”

I’ve come to a conclusion here.

If exchanging weaknesses is the justification, wouldn’t this be enough as a negotiation distance?

It’s a part that I’ve never revealed to anyone, so I threw it out quite boldly.

Lortel didn’t say anything for a while. Sitting on his bench, he looked up at the night sky, and then he spoke slowly, brushing his auburn hair.

“What meaning a person attaches to death… It must be different for each person. I will not recklessly argue with senior’s judgment.”

However, as if he had something to add, he looked at me and smiled. It wasn’t a cool smile like always, and it looked strangely vague. It may have been because of the dazzling moonlight.

“A lot of people around me died, too, although I was the cause of most of them.”

Lortel leaned back on the hard backrest and looked at the top of the Obel tube in front of her. It was used as a student council building.

“My parents were incompetent. I lived on rotten bread in a corner of the slums with the money I begged all day. Still, I think people are nice. At least until they sold me to an orphanage after being bought by Elte.”

“…It’s hard to react.”

“I’m not offended now. Originally, the more cornered a person is, the more easily corrupted they are by a few gold coins. I innocently fell for the whispers of the Elte Company, not knowing that I would be killed soon because of silence. Poor people.”

“…”

“Well, that’s how I became a pawn of Elte Firm. Now I’m the acting head of Hoeju.”

I won’t even be able to remember his face anymore.

However, on the other side of Lortel’s heart, those old parents… It seems that he remains a good person at heart.

Even if they were the ones who sold themselves and got rid of them, they affirmed their filthy depravity.

Lortel also has experience of being cornered, so she must have fully understood the psychology of such people.

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

Three gold flen coins.

Little money is never If you use the consumption of the poor as a standard, it is enough money to live comfortably for a few months if you save it well and save it.

However, when asked if it was an amount worth selling off my one and only flesh and blood, I shook my head.

“That’s when I realized. It’s not blindingly piled up hundreds of millions of dollars that pushes people who are cornered into the abyss, but a few pennies in a hurry right away.”

Lortel talked to that point and took a moment to catch her breath.

In fact, I didn’t even talk long enough to catch my breath.

It was a low whispering tone, and the atmosphere in the sleeping professor dong was only relaxed.

“After that… I didn’t trust anyone.”

The years before Lortel rose to prominence at Elte Corporation.

In those few years, she taught herself how to read books, memorized the exchange rate every day, responded to market changes, personnel management, crisis management, and business management… It absorbed all the necessary abilities to lead a superior society.

It must have been the absorption power that can only be said to be phenomenal.

There are many fields such as combat, magic, alchemy, and academics, but in the end, her true value comes from handling gold coins. That’s why people call her with respect, she is the daughter of gold.

“After living like that for several years, there are many times when people don’t look like people, but rather like a mechanism that responds to offers or negotiations. When I say this, it’s designed to react that way… such a device.”

“…”

“Perhaps, it might be in line with the commander Ed-senpai talked about. If you trust others easily, you are easily betrayed. That’s why you don’t want to trust people in the first place, so in the end there is no one you can trust around you. In the end, the only person you can trust in the world is me. There’s only one left… see.”

Only then did Lortel raise her head and look at the bachelor of the night again.

I could finally see the outline of why Lortel had brought me to the faculty building in the middle of the night.

“The Bachelor of the Night is so eerie and desolate, isn’t it? It’s like you’re left alone in the world because there’s usually no one around that crowded place.”

“…That’s right.”

“For me, it feels like this during the day.”

Loneliness in a crowd.

It is a disease that slowly eats away at the mind.

“Well, I have a companion now.”

One day, while climbing a hill, I suddenly looked down at the cruel battlefield. Looking at the scene, it seems that my back is shimmering in front of my eyes.

Perhaps the back of young Lortel looking down at the commercial city of Oldeck was no different from him.

“I told you.”

Lortel leaned her head on my shoulder and… She closed her eyes and bathed in the soft moonlight.

“We are kin.”

* * *

“I received a report that a rat was sneaking into the store. It’s the process of catching it.”

Lortel put her head on my shoulder and quietly revealed her plans.

“A few days ago, the number of items for sale in the warehouse was not correct, and I had a feeling that the ledgers had been manipulated unnaturally, so I looked it up… and found out that someone was steadily stealing funds from our branch. That’s it.”

“Isn’t that the guy called Dune? He said he bought the distilled liquor with embezzled funds.”

“Dune doesn’t have a very large distribution. In the line of small luxury, they always take care of their own interests in the same way. I think there are people who are much more evil than Dune.”

Lortel rested her head on my shoulder, then suddenly corrected her posture and clung closer to me.

When I glanced at him, he said, ‘It’s more stable than I thought… .’ He wrapped his upper body tightly while turning around.

“The fact that the ledger is starting to show signs of it means that the trick is reaching its limit. Sooner or later, they’ll try to run away with a big bang.”

“Then, the reason why I bought and sold books this time…”

“It was a big deal. If the price of books goes up a little bit… Our store will try to sell the property first, withdraw cash, and then run away before selling it. We should be able to uncover the rat’s true identity.”

In the end, it becomes a situation where you have to cut the head of the employee of the company you have been working with.

However, Lortel has no qualms.

“As I said, my hardship… is that I don’t trust anyone. Even if that loneliness eats away at me, I don’t carelessly trust people.

“…”

“Because I’m afraid of being betrayed.”

In the end, what underlies Lortel’s underlying psychology is fear.

As usual, most people… The same goes for Lortel.

“But I think I’m lucky now. It seems like yesterday that I was sold for three gold coins, but now I’m a person who can call for three gold coins as a first rate to scout a person I like.”

“…Anyway, isn’t three coins a bit too much for a first rate?”

“I have a feeling that I tried hard.

Rubbing her face on her shoulder, Lortel smiled coquettishly.

“It doesn’t matter though. At least one of my people will be reduced.”

It doesn’t bother to explain why. He just wrapped his arms around me and looked at me with mischievous eyes.

“The reason, you know better, right?”

No matter what you answer, it will be a sensible answer.

Just like that, I just let Lortel stick to my arm for a while.

* * *

“I’m sorry, Miss Lortel. Thanks for the suggestion…”

The next morning, Bell Maia, the head maid, came to see Lortel after leaving the room in Ophelis Hall.

“I’m worried that Lady Lortel, who was always waited on by the maids, will leave the Ophelis Hall, but I think it’s too bold a decision to leave the Ophelis Hall as well.”

“…”

“Three gold coins a day is a bit daunting… Actually, a larger amount would be nice for me… I take pride in working for the Ophelis Hall.”

Bell Maia bowed her head.

Lortel had just woken up and dressed up briefly before coming out.

Now even Lortel knows.

There are people in the world who cannot be bought with money.

The first person that comes to mind is a blonde boy who was sharpening an arrow alone in a camp in the forest.

“Of course, I don’t always get treated fairly. There are times when I’m dissatisfied, and there are times when it’s hard and exhausting… but I want to continue taking responsibility for this Ophelis tube.”

“oh….”

Lortel looked at Belle Maia, who had her head down, with the most tear-stained expression on her face.

“Three per day is a bold proposal from my point of view… It really hurts to be rejected like this…”

“I’m sorry…”

“Of course, Mr. Bell’s lofty belief in work can’t be converted into money… But, can you think of it again? I don’t want to lose a maid who is as reliable and capable as Mr. Bell…”

Uncharacteristically for Lortel, Bell felt her heart skip a beat at the dim eyes.

However, Bell shook her head and bowed her head again.

“sorry.”

“I see. If Mr. Bell is like that, then it must be inevitable. Then… how about a dual job?”

“Yes? A dual job…?”

Lortel held Bell Maia’s hands together and spoke in a voice full of moisture.

“Cut the amount I pay by one-third, and instead, whenever you have free time, come over to take care of my villa or the surrounding camp. Mr. Bell is also very interested in practical work.”

“yes…?”

“I heard that you are going to nurse Yenica sunbae-nim in the middle of the day. Just like that, they only stop by once periodically to take care of you. You just have to come and take care of things whenever you have free time. In this way… even like this… can’t it…?”

Bell was taken aback by the unexpected offer.

However, it’s not as bad a suggestion as you might think. Belle, who is diligent by nature, manages her time delicately to the extent that she goes to take care of Jenika in her spare time while managing her busy schedule as a maid.

In addition, the desire to do some practical work has piled up, the work schedule is autonomous, and above all, a girl holding her hands and talking with her eyes full of moisture is right in front of her nose.

She is the girl who sang even three gold coins. That’s how special I think.

That strange fan consciousness takes place in Bell’s mind.

“That… that much… if that’s the condition…”

“Wow…! Thank you! Mr. Bell!”

Lortel smiled broadly and clapped.

“Then… I’ll send the contract in Mr. Bell’s name!”

Dealing with the work that is going on in one fell swoop. Even the contract is prepared in the first place.

Watching Lortel go back to her room with a smile… Bell then realized.

In the first place, the first offer was bait.

It was a shackle to fill the debt consciousness of ‘rejection’ to Bell, and to make her accept the next contract.

what… He is such a person in the first place.

I didn’t know.

It’s just absurd that I was hurt even knowing it.

Seeing Lortel smiling like a fox as she returned to her room, Bell let out a devastated laugh.