CHAPTER 235: THE FIRST CLASS (1)

Aether poked her head slightly over the window.

Two students were sitting in the very front row.

One of them was a human girl, and the other was a Golden-Eyed.

A Golden-Eyed girl, hm.

That child must be Leninya who President Cecil Renay had been talking about.

She had heard that she was being bullied by the High Elves, but she didn’t look too bad considering.

Anyway, it was the girl sitting next to her who was the problem.

Lotte Saliere.

If she realized that she was a Beast and reported her or something, that would be the day she’d have to pull out of Kaurelia.

No, forget pulling out; that was too optimistic.

If she got caught here, it was more likely that she’d be surrounded by Elite Elementals and meet a tragic end.

Being killed by Elementals before completing Dark Day... it made her teeth clench just imagining it.

“Ahem.”

Calm down.

Now that she knew the situation wasn’t good, she had to calm herself.

─ Whether you’re happy or sad, you must not be shaken. You must always remain calm.

She recalled the words of the technician who changed her eye color and looked into the hand mirror.

She must’ve been shocked at seeing Lotte as her eyes were glowing softly. The irises even glimmered yellow for a brief moment, but soon returned to what it was.

“Damn it.”

Being Lotte Saliere’s homeroom teacher, what twist of fate was this?

The Goddess must have pulled some strings.

Basis?

There was a good one.

The president of Iliad Academy, Cecil Renay, was a juggernaut with four Elite Elementals. The Elementals in her command might have let the Goddess know about her.

Of course, Cecil wouldn’t have let her get away with this if she knew.... But so what. She was going to go insane with frustration if she couldn’t even think this way.

Not a single plan was to go wrong. She’d play professor as needed and then burn the World Tree with Akasha when they were given the signal.

“Huu.”

Aether smiled bitterly and opened the door again.

Sliiide!

“Good morning, Miss.”

“Y-yes, good morning.”

She exchanged greetings with Lotte Saliere. Lotte smiled warmly like the sun, but it was poison to Aether.

It was uncomfortable no matter how she thought about it–to think that she’d be teaching the girl who had been her schoolmate only three months ago.

In the same class, at that, as her homeroom teacher.

Aether suppressed the sigh that was up to her throat and placed the teaching materials on the desk.

In the meantime, Lotte was also surprised.

She’d greeted her, but hadn’t imagined that her friend would come here as a professor of the academy.

For Lotte who had been searching desperately for Aether, being able to spend a year together in the same class without the other having to come find her or her going out searching, there could be no better a miracle.

Had the Goddess had a hand in this?

Yeah, right.

“Miss.”

“...Hm?”

After a moment of going through those thoughts, Leninya got up from her seat and walked up to the teacher’s desk.

“Nice to meet you. My name’s Leninya. Um.......”

“Go ahead.”

“Are you the homeroom teacher?”

“I am. Why?”

“No, it’s just that you’re here early so I thought you were just coming and going like the other teachers.”

Leninya hesitantly continued.

“Do you hate Golden-Eyeds like me by any chance?”

Aether’s eyes clenched shut at those words.

An unexpected attack.

At Leninya’s uppercut which would’ve had her spraying water everywhere if she had been drinking, Aether short-circuited for a moment.

“...Why, why do you think that?”

“Well, because there are other professors who don’t like me.”

“Because you’re a Golden-Eyed?”

“Yes.”

Her breath caught like all the oxygen in her lungs got expelled.

What should she do about this child.

She didn’t know. ‘Aether’ only knew how to research or pass on knowledge, not how to be a teacher towards a student.

“No, there will be no discrimination on my part.”

That was the best answer that Aether could give, and when she said so, Leninya’s face began lighting up like a bright lamp.

Gold-colored eyes sparkling, Leninya placed something on the desk with a near-expressionless face.

“I looked forward to the year with you, Miss.”

It was a small glass jar full of mint-flavored star-shaped candies. The pink ribbon on the neck of the bottle could be considered the highlight.

“What’s this.”

“A present.”

“I-I see. Thank you.”

“Alright then....”

Leninya returned to her seat next to Lotte, ears flapping.

That’s supposed to be my seat.

“......?”

For an instant, she was stunned.

Aether untied her hair and shook it loose. It was only March, but it seemed she was getting a heatstroke already.

“Haah.”

Right, just calm down again.

She already wanted to quit and hole away in the lab, but she at least had to try.

There was still a bit of time until the morning greeting, so she had time to relax.

Aether avoided Lotte’s gaze as much as she could and pretended to be busy, spending time by checking the chalk or looking over today’s orientation material and such.

Eventually, the students starting coming into the classroom one by one.

The gifted class that Aether was in charge of was an unplanned–that is, a hastily put together class so there wasn’t a class list yet. As such, it was fun to see the faces of each student who entered.

Yes, really.

The faces that were entering were something else.

“Vermel and Freyr? What are you guys doing here?”

“They combined the schools! Miss Heerlein said I could study here!”

The three of them hugged each other and made a ruckus in the quiet classroom.

Aether broke out into a cold sweat.

Lotte, then Vermel and Freyr. Three people who remembered Aether had already gathered.

No, four, now.

“Ah.”

A girl with white hair like snowflakes on a dirt floor followed. Everyone’s gazes gathered on her.

Because she was an incredible beauty? That, too, but there was another reason.

“Hey, that girl over there. Doesn’t she look nearly the same as the professor at the front?”

When someone said that, Aether had to close her eyes for a minute.

One, two, three familiar faces....

And including Akasha, four.

Akasha may be on her team, but the same appearance gave the other three a clue.

Especially Lotte, as she was the only person who had seen her and Akasha at the same time.

And Aether herself had also once mentioned to Vermel that she had a younger twin, so surely he was going to notice right away.

The one easiest to fool would be Freyr....

“I smell someone familiar.”

She had forgotten that Freyr was a fox beastkin.

Being a Beast didn’t mean they didn’t have a scent. If one stayed in an environment for a long time, they’d pick up a scent accordingly.

And Freyr remembered that like a dog. With things like this, being in the same room as Akasha was completely poisonous.

So.... that was one, two, three, four groundwork elements.

It wasn’t just a simple ‘gotcha’, but they had gotten her good.

Her other self was far better at scheming than she had imagined. There was no way she wouldn’t be discovered. If even one person out of Vermel, Lotte, and Freyr recognized her and reported her, it was game over. At the thought, she had trouble calming her pounding heart.

“Oh, were you beastkin, Freyr?”

“Oh, right.”

Come to think of it, Freyr wasn’t wearing her hat.

Lotte appeared to be a little surprised as she hadn’t known that Freyr was a Youko.

“Are you disappointed that I’m like this?”

“No, it’s cute.”

Still, Lotte accepted it without much animosity. Her compliment had Freyr grinning and wagging her tail back and forth.

It was the same with other students. Although Freyr was a beastkin, they didn’t seem to mind it all that much.

Understandably, as it was mostly humans who hated beastkin.

The Wood Elves who had an affinity with forests got along relatively okay with beastkin as well. Of course there were times that they fought them seriously, but their perception wasn’t completely ruined like it was of the Golden-Eyed who were currently being labeled as Beasts.

Rather, elves hated those who couldn’t use magic even more, because they believed magic to be a way to communicate with the Goddess and Elementals.

“Hello, I’ve never seen you before. Do you guys want some, too?”

Leninya handed out star candies to Vermel, Freyr, and Akasha. She could now see that it was Leninya’s way of expressing that she wanted to get to know someone.

It even made her wonder that perhaps she wasn’t able to get along with the elf students if she didn’t do that.

Anyway.

“Ahem.”

After checking the clock, Aether cleared her throat.

At that, the students’ gazes focused on her.

It was soon time for the orientation.

“Welcome, second years, to Iliad Academy’s gifted class. I am your homeroom and mathemagics professor, Asteya Heisenburg.”

She first prattled off the speech she had prepared beforehand.

Of course, it was nothing more than a perfunctory greeting that didn’t really require a script.

“As you all know, Iliad and Tilette were both hit hard by the Beasts around the same time. So the president went against opposition and worked together with the Empire to take special measures, which is temporarily running Iliad and Tilette together.”

A few students nodded.

In particular, the eyes of a female elf student in the right-hand corner were shining bright.

“...And so, you are composed of different races as per the president’s instructions. Elves, humans, beastkin, and there is even one Golden-Eyed. I ask that each race seek to help each other in these hard times rather than fight or hate one another.”

It somehow ended up sounding like she was commanding children.

Still, she thought that this was good enough for her first time.

Aether checked the clock and opened her mouth.

“Any questions at this point?”

There was no better way to kill time. The professors when she had been undergrad had used it often so she had wanted to try it, too. It was more useful than she thought....

“.......”

Her head hurt again.

A feeling like her memories were all mixed up.

But she couldn’t just stop the class because she was getting a migraine.

If Vermel or the others exchanged information or talked to Akasha, then it might become impossible to set the World Tree on fire.

“If you don’t have any questions, let’s move on.”

Aether’s mind followed a separate line of thought as she went through the rest of the orientation.

After a little bit of thinking, she might have gotten it.

Getting caught was completely a matter of time. Once today’s orientation was over, it was inevitable that she and Akasha were going to be bombarded with personal questions.

Then how could she overcome this situation?

Although it would be a temporary measure, a decent solution came up.

“That’s the end of the orientation. And now.......”