The Magic Academy's Physicist

No, Rosemary wasn’t that stupid.

Lips curving up, Rosemary continued as if she’d finished figuring out the relationship between me and Lotte.

“Right, it’s better if you don’t go. Studying at a partly ruined academy would just make you feel restless and prevent you from learning properly. Then you might as well postpone it to next year, right?”

“Uh, no, that’s.......”

An unexpected suggestion came out of Rosemary’s mouth. Lotte was surprised, obviously, and to be honest, I hadn’t expected it either.

As expected of the one who annihilated three countries. The speed at which her mind worked was something else.

Lotte pursed her lips and tapped her finger on the desk. It was clear that she was thinking about it.

“What is it, Saliere? You want to drop out of the exchange program?”

“No, I mean it feels like I shouldn’t after hearing that kind of news all of a sudden.......”

“If I’m being honest, I’m also reluctant to send you guys to Iliad since it’s become a dangerous place.”

With a wry smile, Heerlein patted Lotte’s shoulder.

“This is being looked into by the board as well. You can cancel even the day before if you’d like, so think it through and then decide.”

“...... Yes, Miss.”

The storm of a Tuesday morning assembly ended with that.

Afterwards, it was the same as usual. Lotte would act jealous every so often, but, hm.

It definitely wasn’t as strong as it was before the morning meeting.

Probably because she was thinking about the exchange student matter.

Although she had become more attached, Lotte was still Lotte. Basically, she had great interest in her studies.

So for someone like her, the academy of Elemental Magic would be a fascinating experience. After all, her father was an Elemental Mage.

Then Lotte would want to learn Elemental Magic as well.

But Iliad Academy was partly destroyed, and here at Tilette, an enemy by the name of Rosemary had shown up.

So for Lotte, it would be a dilemma.

“Will you be okay at school while I’m gone?”

“What, it’s not like I’m a kid.”

“It’s because I’m worried, seeing the way you do things....”

“I can do that much myself. I even lived through being a slave without anyone’s help.”

In fact, Lotte knew this, too. That as clumsy as I was, I knew how to do the basics.

“You’re going to be a noble once you graduate so you have to start learning now. From making your bed as soon as you get up to how you dress, table manners, and.... and.......”

“Lotte.”

I quietly called her name.

“There’s still time.”

“.......”

“And you know that. We have three more years to go until graduation. And it won’t be too late to learn after graduating and being commissioned as an ensign. I’m not so dependent on others that I won’t be able to learn those things just because we’ll be apart for a semester.”

Lotte dropped her head at my words.

Aether’s going to be a noble as soon as she graduates so I need to teach her etiquettes and such in advance.

She was definitely thinking something along those lines.

But that was only a defense mechanism, trying to come up with whatever decent excuse in order not to be separated from me.

She might be afraid on the inside, that Rosemary would show up and take me ‘home’. And that I’d never come back.

A normal person wouldn’t think that far, of course. Would that really happen? Aren’t you being delusional? they’d think and move on.

But Lotte was different; she had extraordinary intuition.

It was Lotte who had instinctively suspected Akasha and my identity. Although I’d managed to dodge it with alcohol at the time.

Anyway, losing a best friend was something scary even to a sociable person like her. Imagine that someone was trying to take away this person who you were wanting to maintain a special relationship with.

And Rosemary was actually planning to do so, even.

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In that sense, I was deceiving Lotte in many ways. That was why I had given her a two-day free pass the other day because I felt guilty about it.

But this seemed to be its own problem.

The ‘free two-day Aether pass’ had ended up being bad for both our mental health. At this rate, Lotte could end up developing a dependency.

It was for the mental health of my friend. I took a deep breath and spoke with a firm tone.

“Lotte.”

I called my friend’s name. Lotte, who’d been mumbling something with her head down, looked up at me with miserable eyes.

“Isn’t it important to make lots of friends?”

“...Right?”

“Try to get along with our other classmates and Lady Blanton. And make friends with the elves who’ll be coming as exchange students, too.”

“I’m going to. But still....”

“Still?”

Fingers fidgeting, Lotte continued.

“I’ll never be able to make another friend like you if we part ways.”

Lotte’s eyes were dejected as said that. My eyes narrowed at her unexpected words.

It seemed I needed to revise my hypothesis.

To one where Lotte had a rough idea of Rosemary’s identity.

After school finished, I went to bed earlier than usual and organized my mind by piecing thoughts together like a puzzle.

There was a figure that unexpectedly played a role here.

It was the hardcover.

[If you think about it, isn’t that the answer? The average person has no idea why Rosemary follows you around going ‘sis, sis’. Isn’t the red-haired girl acting like this because she suspected as much?]

What, so it wasn’t an obsession but she was being cagey around Rosemary because I might actually leave?

But this was too out of the blue. Rosemary had been here since the beginning of the semester, after all.

[It takes longer than you think to realize a sense of energy. Even for an Elite Elemental it takes time to detect and identify a Beast if it doesn’t explicitly show hostility.]

Yeah? You know more about Elementals than I thought for a book.

[Of course. I’m the artificial intelligence personally created by the Goddess.]

According to the hardcover, Lotte could possibly have an Elemental inside her already. So with incredible intuition, she might have unknowingly figured out my and Akasha’s, and even Rosemary’s identities.

That was how threatened she felt.

“...Then that makes sense.”

Now it felt like things were falling into place. I see, the problem lied with me, too.

I somehow had to make changes to my relationship with Rosemary. She listened to me well, so I could either convince her to be on the side of humans or I would have to go back to the Beasts’ camp.

To be honest, the latter was easier than the former.

Come to think of it, my original goal was to learn every magic. Then if I removed all the magic in the world, wouldn’t I go back automatically?

[Uh... that would be cheating.]

So does that work or not?

[It does. If you blow up a few magic towers, then what you need to learn would be cut down by chunks of dozens, probably?]

“Oho.”

Then if I wiped out the area surrounding Iliad known for Air Magic...

“...my ass.”

I wasn’t a crazy psychopath, so why would I do that? If I did something like that, I’d be a monster not human.

[I don’t really recommend that method either. You would be going back to Earth either way, but....]

I know, there would be bad consequences.

A sigh echoed in my head. The hardcover said it was going to go take a break and disconnected the bluetooth.

Just then, the bathroom door opened with a click. Lotte spoke as she dried her hair with a towel.

“You can go in.”

She was still a good friend as long as Rosemary wasn’t involved. A sweet, considerate kid.

I was going to ask Lotte if she knew about Rosemary’s identity, then dismissed the idea. She probably wasn’t aware of it herself.

If she did, would she have questioned why I lied? I couldn’t say.

I took off my clothes carelessly and went under the shower. Even if I turned on the hot water, it barely felt hot. That was the kind of body I had.

Was I going to keep my humanity and take the hard way of developing a nuclear weapon and return?

Or was I going to side with the Demon Army for efficiency’s sake, destroy everyone, and get back to Earth?

Up until a year ago I would’ve chosen the second option. But now, I was in a rather awkward position to make that kind of choice.

It was a day where I had lots to think about.

**

Time moved slowly when it wanted to, but when it flew, boy did it fly.

The exam season was just like that.

It would soon be midterms, but the arts fest overlapped it. Thanks to that, it was one busy day after another in a lot of ways.

Research? I was still at it, of course. Even yesterday I was scolded by Lotte because I was researching at Professor Cai-Lussac’s lab until late.

I didn’t know it would take that long, either–was what I tried to excuse myself with, but it had been useless.

And so a few days went by like that. White Night was nearly finished, and all that was left was to carve the scroll and make it whole.

Might be able to see something interesting soon, was what I was thinking.

“Alright, everyone, say hello. These are the elves who will be studying with you for half this semester.”

A surprise came out of nowhere during the morning assembly.

Miss Heerlein picked up the chalk with a face flushed with excitement. Tak, ta-tak–moving her hand quickly, she began to smear white powder onto the chalkboard.

On the chalkboard that was usually chock-full of equations, four names in elvish were written in order.

Merilda, Erika, Jarod, Romel.My eyes that had been looking over the four students in turn stopped at the last one.

“...Oho.”

The one on the very right was quite good-looking.

So much so that I wanted to beat him to death.