“...The first floor of the main building connects to a total of six corridors. Of those, the enormous door you were trying to go through is connected to the central corridor, and the corridor we’re walking down now is the one on the far left.”
Jude explained kindly and methodically to us as we trailed after him, like a guide explaining historic ruins to his clients.
“Because of the main building’s structure, the first floor is the widest, you see? That’s why most of the large lecture halls are on the first floor as well. If you learn which lecture hall is in which corridor, you won’t get needlessly confused.”
As soon as Jude finished speaking, he pointed at the door of one lecture hall set into the corridor wall.
“Now, look. That lecture hall over there is one of the large ones that can hold about a hundred people. You’ll probably be going in and out of it constantly during your first year.”
“...I see.”
“Right. Normally, telling new students the geography of a school like this is someone else’s job, but I’m nice, you know. Even though you were all so wary of me, I’m such a kind senior that my desire to help you won out, so I’m explaining everything in such a friendly manner.”
Jude nodded as though praising himself, then walked on ahead.
Hwaryeong and I quietly watched his back, then whispered in voices small enough that he wouldn’t hear.
“He’s guiding us surprisingly properly, isn’t he?”
“...Indeed. He is showing nothing but goodwill, to the point that I wonder how this is even possible.”
“Were we being too wary?”
“No. A stranger of unknown identity appeared right beside me without being caught by my senses. He is certainly no ordinary man. Letting down our guard would be foolish.”
Hwaryeong swept her red hair back once, then looked at Jude and Isil, who was trotting after him, and spoke with an expression of incomprehension.
“But when that man called Jude appeared, unlike you and me, who tensed up, was Isil not calm?”
“Hm?”
“A normal person’s reaction, when a stranger appears right beside them without any presence, is to tense their body. It is a physiological response, so unless one has received training to suppress it, it will appear without exception.”
Intently.
Hwaryeong narrowed her eyes, which glowed faintly in the dark in the manner unique to her beastfolk race, and stared at the back of Isil’s head, hidden beneath her silver hair.
“And yet when that man appeared beside us, Isil treated him without the slightest hesitation, as though she had met an old friend. Do you remember?”
“Mm, she certainly had a calm expression compared to us.”
“Yes. Judging by Isil’s gait and breathing, she has not received assassin training, so what remains is that she is accustomed to such situations.”
Accustomed to situations where a voice suddenly speaks up.
Step, step.
Amid the silence of the corridor, where only the footsteps of the three of us echoed at regular intervals, Jude’s steps came to a stop.
“It’s here.”
“...Here?”
“Yes. Hey, you two juniors over there! Hurry up and come here!”
When Jude stopped walking, turned around, and beckoned to us, we cut off our conversation and quickly trotted up right behind Jude and Isil.
“You two get along quite well for people who only just met, don’t you? Usually, when people have only just met and things are still awkward, it’s not easy to huddle together and talk like that.”
“Well, I suppose Hwaryeong and I are people who are on the same wavelength.”
“Mm. It is true that when we speak, there is no friction. It is as smooth as water.”
“Really? Usually it’s hard to be on the same wavelength as a beastfolk. Noble junior, you have quite an unusual personality, don’t you?”
Jude looked at me and muttered softly, “Is it because he has fairy blood?” before lifting his head slightly and speaking to all of us.
“As you can see, this is where the stairs leading up to the second floor are. You see these stairs, right?”
Just as Jude said, behind him were old, narrow stairs leading to the upper floor.
Like the surrounding objects, they were made of white marble, and the shape of the stairs was rounded like waves.
“Students don’t usually use these stairs. Because if you go up to the second floor through here, you’ll come out onto an old terrace that’s quite far from the area where the lecture halls are gathered. So on rainy days or days when they’re short on time, almost no students come this way.”
“Sniff, sniff. There is indeed the scent of various grasses above. It is highly likely that what he says is true.”
“You can smell the plants on the terrace upstairs from here?”
“Mm? In any case, it contrasts with the smell of a smooth, cold stone building, so it is simply easy to pick out. It is a smell so distinct that any beastfolk could detect it.”
At Hwaryeong’s calm answer, Jude looked at her with an expression of utter astonishment.
“I knew it from reading books, but the senses of you beastfolk really are incredible, aren’t they? If humans didn’t have cannons, we’d have lost long ago, wouldn’t we?”
“Hmph. I do not know what is so prideful about relying on such external tools that you would say it with your own mouth.”
“Ahaha, sorry. That wasn’t something I should say in front of a beastfolk. Ahem!”
Jude bowed his head to Hwaryeong as though apologizing for his words.
And at his attitude, Hwaryeong merely snorted lightly.
“...Jin.”
“Hm? Did you call me?”
“Yes. Why did Senior Jude apologize to Hwaryeong?”
“Ah... That’s.”
At Isil’s sudden question, I drew out my words while glancing at Hwaryeong’s face.
Then, perhaps noticing my gaze, she turned her head, looked straight at me, and said,
“...It is fine, so do not look at my expression with that face. You have already made my acquaintance, so you do not need to shorten your words while gauging my mood.”
“Mm, if that’s the case.”
After confirming that Hwaryeong’s expression was not displeased, I quietly began telling Isil what I knew.
“Isil, as you know, there are colonies outside the empire we live in, right?”
“Yes, I know that.”
“Right. But in the past, when they had just begun establishing colonies on the southern continent, explorers who went east discovered a distant continent where beastfolk lived, and it became a huge topic of discussion. At the time, they were in a frenzy over establishing colonies across the sea, so it drew even more attention.”
“Yes.”
“And this isn’t an established theory, but when humanity was unified into a nation called the Empire, the wars that had been going on until then came to an end. So there was a need to reduce the size of the military. Because armies consume a tremendous amount of money. They could no longer maintain the massive wartime military indefinitely.”
“I see.”
Isil nodded eagerly at my explanation, like a student listening carefully to her teacher.
Suppressing the urge to stroke her head at the sight, I continued explaining.
“But they couldn’t suddenly reduce the army, which had been the main force behind unifying humanity and founding the Empire, could they? The emperor himself was a former soldier, too... So, in order to expend the troops within the Empire, to put it bluntly, they went to invade the continent where the beastfolk lived.”
“Ah... Don’t tell me, for no reason at all?”
“Right. There wasn’t even a plausible justification or any grand cause. It was simply because the influence of the soldiers in their own country had become too strong, so they sent them east to restore balance. You could say the beastfolk were sacrificed for the sake of maintaining political balance within the Empire.”
Whenever I recalled the history of the Empire that I had heard from the butler when I was young, I felt truly strange.
Perhaps it was the thought that humans were very human no matter what world they lived in, and the contempt that, in the end, countries that gained power were all the same.
Especially since I, in my past life, had been a person of the Republic of Korea, a country with the pain of colonization in its history, I could not help but view a nation called an empire negatively.
Even if beastfolk were a different species from humans, aside from having ears or tails like Hwaryeong standing beside me now, they appeared exceedingly human, which made the Empire’s conduct all the more contemptible.
“So, partly to reduce the size of their own army and partly to establish another colony, the Empire organized a large force and invaded the beastfolk’s land. That’s why Senior Jude apologized to Hwaryeong.”
“I see.”
After hearing my explanation, Isil looked at Hwaryeong with a complicated expression that was difficult to describe.
Then Hwaryeong tapped her tail against the floor, as though displeased by Isil’s gaze, and said,
“Do not pity us with such eyes. Whether the cause of the war was ugly or not, we and the Empire fought a fair and honorable war, and as a result, the beastfolk simply lost. The Empire did not decide the outcome of battle through despicable acts like poisoning our royal family or taking hostages. Though they relied on external tools called cannons and guns, they defeated us through strategy and tactics without any petty tricks.”
Hwaryeong looked at Isil and me and said that although she had not been born in that era, even the old people who remembered those days did not say much about that part.
Because to the beastfolk, the fairness of the battles that occurred within the war itself was a more important value than the justification for the war.
“And though the Empire won the war, in the end, because of the distance, it ended with us handing over ownership of a few port cities, did it not? Compared to wars among us beastfolk, such a demand is extremely gentlemanly. In wars among beastfolk, the victors may demand anything of the defeated.”
And at the very least, the Hua clan held no grudge against the Empire, Hwaryeong quietly concluded.
Isil silently looked at Hwaryeong.
The gaze Isil gave Hwaryeong seemed like one of kinship, or perhaps one filled with pity.
At the very least, unlike when they had first met, the negative emotions in it felt considerably fainter.
“...”
“Ahem! The atmosphere is getting awkward. Hey, you who claims to be our senior. Hurry up and tell us about that secret place you said you would show us.”
“Shall I?”
At Hwaryeong’s awkward expression, Jude quickly nodded, as though he had been waiting.
Then he pointed with his hand at the side of the stairs made of white marble and said,
“There’s a hidden door here. Want to try opening it?”
At his instruction, I groped along the side of the stairs, and at my fingertips, I felt a handle where the level was minutely different.
When I pressed that spot lightly with the strength of my fingertips—
Grrrrrrng.
A small sound like a millstone grinding rang out, and a narrow passage, just wide enough for one person to barely pass through, opened in the side of the stairs.
It was a space concealed so secretly that it was like a hidden passage.