The inside of the academy was noisy.
The club festival had begun, after all.
One month—no, exactly three weeks—had passed since my sparring match with the Huntress. With Lucia.
Those three weeks had gone by several times faster than I expected.
Contrary to Levan’s warning, the Luna family didn’t do anything to us in particular.
I hadn’t been able to ride Ailey for a full three weeks, and yet I hadn’t had even the slightest chance to feel that loss.
“I’m sle, sleepy, so sle— I’m glad I’m not dozing off….”
“It’s the second semester.”
Was the difference between the first and second semesters at the academy really this drastic?
I should have listened more closely when my friends who went to college talked about eighteen credits, twenty-two credits, and all that.
Aaron looked down at me with an incredulous expression.
“You didn’t plan that sparring match at the start of the semester knowing all this?”
“I-I told you, I didn’t.”
I hadn’t known, but apparently, sparring had been in vogue for a while right after the second semester began.
Compared to the first semester, the amount of studying and assignments first-years had to do in the second semester increased sharply.
So, in the first week of the second semester, when lectures and assignments weren’t yet in full swing, people pulled ahead on their sparring scores in advance.
Aside from that, the only sparring they could do was the simulation battle scheduled for Friday.
“I feel like I’m going to die.”
There was no time to sleep.
After morning lectures ended and I ate, afternoon lectures began right away.
After afternoon lectures ended, I went to the chairwoman’s office and listened to lectures on noble culture while eating.
During those, I endured by biting my tongue so I wouldn’t doze off.
Once the chairwoman’s lecture ended, I worked part-time at the Servant Club café.
After work, I went to the gym and exercised while listening to my notes with Ailey’s help.
When even that was done, I returned to the dorm, washed up, did a bit of homework, and went straight to sleep.
I had been doing this for three weeks now.
“Still, you submitted most of your assignments, didn’t you? Shouldn’t you be able to rest until midterms?”
“I did. I did, but. H-how are you so perfectly fine, Aaron?”
“For nobles, dividing up our time is fundamental.”
No, that couldn’t be. It wasn’t as though nobles didn’t sleep.
Maybe Aaron’s stamina was just abnormal.
Amid the surrounding commotion, I saw people moving toward one place in particular.
If I could, I wanted to go against the crowd, skip lunch, head to the dorm, and take a nap.
I wanted to sleep, but.
“What, where are you going?”
“I heard there’s a place selling snacks at one of the clubs.”
“You’re going to eat snacks? You’ve never done that before.”
Aaron’s eyes widened.
It was true. I had never once bothered to snack on anything at the academy.
Partly because I was short on money, and partly because it suited my situation so terribly badly.
But right now, I had a little financial breathing room, and I had no intention of dragging myself all the way to the academy cafeteria.
“The cafeteria doesn’t have anything sweet.”
More than anything, the cafeteria had no sugar that could immediately replenish my stamina.
I needed to force sugar into my body.
Judging by how people were flocking in one direction, the Engineer Club’s presentation must have started around now.
I had to hurry, eat something, and head over there.
“So, what are you going to eat?”
If I had to name the easiest sweet thing to get in this godforsaken world.
And if it also had high caffeine.
“Mint chocolate.”
This was dystopia.
“With an extra shot of espresso.”
A mint-chocolate affogato.
***
Ugh, I feel like I’m going to throw up.
It wasn’t just because of the mint-chocolate affogato.
I didn’t say it wasn’t. About half of it was because of the mint-chocolate affogato.
If you asked whether it tasted bad, it was actually better than I expected, but it was the kind of taste that made me hate myself more and more for thinking it was good.
Were my tastes gradually adapting to this world?
Would there come a day when I drank cucumber soda and thought it was delicious?
What a horrifying thought.
In any case, the reason I felt like throwing up was because of the crowd.
“I-I’m passing, th-through.”
The cadets of Bethesda Academy were fundamentally interested in Titans.
Which meant they all had at least a minimum interest in engineering by default.
It was only natural that the Engineer Club was quite large and drew the attention of many people.
On top of that, it wasn’t just the club advised by Professor Sumeragi; there were several different kinds of engineer clubs, differing only in name.
All of those engineer clubs, the cadets who had come to see their works, and the outsiders who had come to make contracts over those works were all—
“I’ve never seen the main auditorium this packed before.”
“Y-yeah.”
—gathered in the main auditorium, so of course it was cramped.
“They say that’s the authorized personnel passage over there.”
“Oh.”
Sure enough, there were noticeably fewer people near the authorized personnel passage.
“Do you want to go together?”
I was on the same team as Ian, so I could clearly be considered someone involved.
To begin with, the piece Ian had submitted was my core itself.
So wouldn’t it be fine to bring one companion?
Aaron thought for a moment, then shook his head.
“It’s fine.”
“It’s v-very crowded, though.”
“I am not involved. If I break a small rule like this, thinking one person won’t matter, that’s where things are bound to go wrong. Even if they seem trivial, moral rules must be upheld.”
Then he turned his head back.
“Princess Saya is definitely inside the main auditorium. That woman struggles with crowded places, but she never misses things like this.”
“Maybe she has an attendant….”
“Would she? If she were the kind of woman who brought someone like that around, I wouldn’t be worried.”
He was right.
I had never once seen Princess Saya accompanied by an attendant or anyone of that sort.
“Then, if I find the princess, I’ll look after her and come visit at least once.”
“T-then I’ll see you in a bit.”
Aaron turned around and immediately disappeared into the crowd.
I went through the authorized personnel passage without hesitation. With fewer people around, it definitely felt like I could breathe.
After passing by several pieces of equipment and supplies, it didn’t take long before I saw Ian.
“Ah, Deep. Over here.”
Ran, who was standing beside him, waved.
“S-so this is the core.”
It was my first time seeing a core this close.
It wasn’t as huge as I’d expected.
Should I say it was about the size of a water tank from an old apartment building?
Maybe water tank wasn’t an inaccurate comparison. Most of the inside of the core would be filled with that crimson liquid, after all.
There were stands all around the core, and all sorts of sensors were fixed to them.
“Is this an image sensor?”
“That’s not all.”
Clack.
Ian set up another stand beside it.
“Image sensor, LiDAR, thermal imaging sensor, radar, magnetic field sensor….”
“Magnetic field sen-sor?”
“There’ll definitely be a use for it. I’d bet on it.”
I had made a bet recently, so I wasn’t thinking of doing it again.
When I shook my head, Ian stared at me for a moment, then continued.
“An augmented reality layer program that organizes all of that and displays it on the screen at once. A hologram program that immediately projects that layer outside the screen. Additionally.”
Ian’s hand pointed at my wrist.
“Even an additional hologram device that can make Ailey’s appearance visible in real time, though I have no idea why this is necessary.”
Sparkle.
“Because I’m pretty!”
At Ailey’s prompt appearance and declaration, Ian’s face scrunched up.
“Technically, tampering with the inside of the core is prohibited, so I installed all the circuits indirectly, bypassing it. Honestly, it’s a design where efficiency has been completely thrown out the window, but.”
Thunk.
Ian set up one more stand.
“As far as what can be done without touching the inside of the core, this is the best.”
“The best?”
“Not final. Best. No one but me could do this.”
It was a truly absurd statement.
But it was the statement of the top student.
If Ian said that, it meant that, truly, no one other than Ian could even attempt this.
“Even if the Luna family came?”
“Them.”
Ian’s expression scrunched up again.
It was different from the way he had frowned while looking at Ailey.
It was a genuine, fundamental revulsion, as though he had heard someone talking about cockroaches.
“They wouldn’t even think of doing something like this.”
“You really hate them.”
“Engineers fundamentally value advancement, but they only value maintaining the status quo. No matter how outstanding an engineer is, once they go to the Luna family, all they do is maintain the status quo.”
“That’s—”
Click.
At the sound of dress shoes, the surrounding cadets turned their heads all at once.
Most cadets wore combat boots or sneakers.
If there was the sound of dress shoes, it meant one of two things.
One was an outsider.
The other was—
“Professor Flavia.”
A professor.
“I told you to always attach an honorific after ‘Professor,’ and to add the family name as a sign of respect toward the other party.”
“P-Professor Flavia Luna.”
Flavia Luna.
“I find this more unpleasant than I expected.”
I knew who she was.
She was the advisor of another engineer club, and a professor with a bad reputation in a different direction from Sumeragi.
An aristocratist.
It wasn’t that she was obsessed with the honor and rights of nobles; it was a nickname born from the fact that she genuinely favored only nobles, purely and simply.
Since nobles made up the majority at the academy, no one interfered with Flavia Luna’s behavior.
She was nothing more than a target consumed for gossip among a few commoner cadets.
However.
Only so long as she didn’t stand before the lowborn.
“I heard about this, Ian. You said you wanted to introduce technology into a core that the Luna family has not officially recognized.”
I knew she was from the Luna family.
I had expected, to some extent, that she would dislike us.
But if she hated us that much, shouldn’t she have heard about it during the development stage and come to interfere then?
Why, exactly, had she come only now, when everything was already finished and the club festival had begun?
“That’s right.”
“In truth, it isn’t a matter that needs to be taken quite so conservatively. The advancement of core technology, the pride of the Luna family, is always welcome.”
At Professor Flavia’s smile, the atmosphere loosened slightly.
Professor Flavia’s mood wasn’t as bad as I had expected.
The thing I had been most worried about for this club festival was none other than an attack from the Luna family.
When someone bearing the Luna name actually reacted positively, the tension drained out of my body, and fatigue suddenly washed over me.
Had my premonition been wrong?
Or had Levan frightened me for no reason?
“This is technology you intend to sell to the Luna family, correct?”
“Not exclusively to the Luna family. Since it isn’t technology that directly affects the core, it can be sold to any family.”
“Did you receive an inspection from a member of the Luna family during the production process?”
“That…”
Ian’s eyes shifted briefly toward me and Ran.
“I did not.”
“Then it is impossible to know whether it actually directly affected the core, or whether the core circuitry was tampered with.”
No.
My premonition hadn’t been wrong.
Levan hadn’t warned me with useless fearmongering, either.
Flavia had clearly come here to ruin this.
“Don’t make that face. I fully acknowledge Cadet Ian’s academic excellence. However, you must admit that the Luna family needs to carry out a comprehensive inspection of this technology.”
“You can see that much from the blueprints….”
“The blueprints and the actual product could be different, couldn’t they?”
“Are you saying I’m deceiving the seller?”
When Ian gritted his teeth, Flavia smiled lightly.
“I am trying to help Cadet Ian right now. After all, I am merely proceeding with the inspection Cadet Ian should originally have undergone.”
“That much is—”
“However, it would have been better if the inspection had taken place during the production process. Since this is a finished product, inspection will be quite difficult.”
Her eyes turned toward Ailey’s core.
“We will need to move this core to the Luna family and inspect it over an extended period. I do hope the inspection can be finished within this semester.”
What?
“For the inspection of this core, the Luna family will be taking it.”
Only belatedly.
Flavia’s eyes turned toward me.