48 . School Reopens (2)
The exterior of Alchemy Citadel called to mind a majestic medieval fortress, but its interior was designed in a remarkably modern way. The white-painted corridors were divided neatly into a cross-shaped layout, so even first-time visitors had little chance of losing their way.
There were guidance signs posted throughout every floor and hallway.
“All right, everyone, let’s make Alchemy Citadel even cleaner today!”
“Yeees…….”
Lakan was a janitor at Alchemy Citadel.
A perfectly ordinary day laborer in his twenties, burdened by the overflowing zeal of a section chief who took an unusual amount of pride in the profession of being a janitor at Alchemy Citadel.
“Lakan! Let’s work hard today too! You can’t go around looking that unmotivated!”
“Sure……”
He had become a janitor because there wasn’t anything else he could really do, and because he was timid by nature and especially bad at getting along with other people, the only person who ever really looked out for him was the section chief.
“All right then, everyone to your own areas!”
As the section chief clapped his hands and spoke, the janitors scattered, each pushing their own cleaning cart away. Lakan, too, rolled his eyes nervously beneath his shaggy hair and hunched his back as he watched the others, when someone brushed roughly past his shoulder and nearly knocked him over.
“Woah!”
“Heh heh, watch where you’re going.”
“Can that bastard even see in front of him walking around like that?”
“Who knows. Just ignore him. He’s an idiot.”
“Ah……”
Lakan was timid, and to be honest, he wasn’t even very good at cleaning, so he was an outcast even among the janitors.
The section chief merely clicked his tongue and did not intervene.
He couldn’t interfere in their personal relationships.
All he could do was feel sorry, thinking that it would have been nice if janitors, at least, could pull together and help one another out.
“Everyone, be careful not to upset the alchemists, and let’s be back again before work hours begin.”
The system was that they would conduct a major cleaning before the alchemists arrived for work, then gather together to rest before changing shifts.
Following behind the other janitors, Lakan pressed his magitech-powered vacuum mop cleaner against the floor.
The primitive method of washing rags in a bucket and scrubbing the floor by hand was not used here in Alchemy Citadel, the place that led the continent’s cutting-edge scientific civilization.
Cleaning had certainly become easier, but it was still hard work all the same.
As Lakan sweated heavily while cleaning an entire section of corridor, he suddenly felt a sense of doubt and lifted his head—only to see the other janitors gathered together across from him, loafing around among themselves.
‘……I should go the other way.’
There was nothing good to be gained from catching their attention.
The sort who couldn’t even straighten their backs in front of alchemists, yet strutted around like thugs in front of fellow janitors.
They were the kind who were strong only toward the weak and endlessly weak toward the strong, and he found them disgusting, but because he himself had no strength, he had no choice but to avoid them.
“Oh, isn’t that Lakan over there?”
“Hey. Come here a second.”
Damn it.
Cursing inwardly, Lakan carefully turned his gaze toward them.
“I-I’m…… cleaning here right now……”
“Yeah. That’s why we called you. Clean our section too.”
“That’s your section, though…… I still have to finish mine……”
Squeeze!
The janitors slung their arms over Lakan’s shoulders and grinned.
“Come on now. We’ll help you next time. If you suffer just a little now, then you’ll get to relax next time too, right?”
“But still……”
“Hm? You’ll do it, right? Thanks, man.”
“Lakan really is such a nice guy.”
After dumping their cleaning tools onto him, the janitors all disappeared in a noisy cluster.
Left alone, Lakan let out a deep sigh and began weakly pushing the cleaner.
Today, even this cutting-edge cleaning machine—which made no sound and mopped at the same time—felt strangely resentful.
Then a question suddenly came to mind.
‘……If they put a Wind Secure spell on this, it would be much more efficient.’
Why had the magitech engineer who co-developed this thing chosen such an inefficient method?
He didn’t really know……
but if someone had developed something like this, they had to be smarter than him, so there must be a reason.
Still, that wasn’t the only thing he had found questionable.
Anything related to alchemy was perfect, thanks to the genius scholar Alterisha.
But magitech was not.
The magitech Lakan saw throughout Alchemy Citadel was so pitifully clumsy that he couldn’t even begin to understand why it had been made this way.
‘……Who do I think I am, anyway?’
Had he become arrogant just because he had secretly read a few magitech books?
People always said the convictions of someone who had only read one book were the scariest.
I only have one sliver of knowledge, so perhaps I’m just seeing only what I’m able to see.
So just stay quiet.
[Today’s Planned Experiment / Results Sheet]
But this time, he truly could not stand it.
Lakan stared fixedly at the experimental results sheet hanging in the corridor.
Previously, he had once disliked the result of an alchemagic engineering experiment so much that he went ahead and corrected it on his own, then fled in a panic in case he had ruined it.
But this case was even worse.
No, why on earth would they……
The results sheet was filled with shabby-looking figures and transmutation formulas, but how had the alchemists not questioned any of this at all?
Had they perhaps overlooked it by mistake?
Swish, swish!
After quickly checking his surroundings, Lakan pulled a cheap pen from his pocket and brought it to the results sheet.
He smoothly adjusted the transmutation formula and terminology, changed part of the enchantment spell, stuffed the pen back into his pocket, and hurriedly fled.
‘Ahhh…… I did it again……’
Surely even that sloppy-looking transmutation formula must have had some sort of meaning, and yet someone like him had gone and changed it however he pleased.
If he got caught, he would be in really serious trouble.
And yet even while thinking that, he could not restrain that boiling urge inside him, the one that refused to leave all that knowledge in his head untouched.
And so Lakan went and did it.
‘B-but I ran off quickly, so nobody will know!’
That was what he thought.
But he did not know.
That there just so happened to be a CCTV camera monitoring exactly that one spot where the results sheet had hung.
That evening.
In the end, Lakan had taken over the cleaning areas of his coworkers, and because of that, he had failed to clean his own section.
“Lakan. I overlooked things because even if you’re a bit timid, you’re at least diligent…… but if this keeps happening, it puts me in a difficult position too.”
Even the section chief, who usually looked on him favorably, seemed slightly angry now.
The truth was that he had been cleaning a section meant for three people all by himself.
That was why he hadn’t been able to get to his own area.
But the section chief didn’t know that.
“The same goes for the rest of you. We work with a sense of duty to keep Alchemy Citadel cleaner than ever. Where do you think all the technological advancement on the continent of Aether comes from? From this place—this place!”
The trio who had dumped their cleaning onto Lakan were also forced to get scolded by the section chief.
After all, no matter what, no one could clean three people’s worth of area alone.
And on top of that, Lakan had spent a great deal of time solving that formula midway through.
How could the cleaning possibly have turned out properly?
The trio twisted their expressions in red-and-blue embarrassment and lowered their heads.
“Yes.”
“Sorry.”
There wasn’t the slightest sincerity in them, but since they were always like that, the section chief merely let out a deep sigh as if he had expected no better.
Then, after pretending to scold them, he patted Lakan on the shoulder and comforted him.
“I know well enough that you’re not the sort to skip your cleaning duties. There must have been a reason. If you’ve got concerns later, come find me separately.”
As he said that, the section chief shot a glance toward the trio.
He too had already guessed what had happened, but because there was nothing he could really do about it, he had no choice but to let it slide.
“See you tonight.”
When the section chief left the janitors’ waiting room, the trio stared at Lakan with cold eyes.
“Hey. Are you not going to straighten up?”
“Damn it, why do we have to get chewed out because of this bastard?”
“I don’t even like that crazy old-fashioned prick, and now we wasted our break time for no reason too.”
The trio began poking at Lakan’s shoulders threateningly, but the other janitors only watched the mood, slipped away, or snickered and laughed.
No one helped.
It wasn’t as though he had expected help to begin with, but seeing himself living the life of a janitor while getting treated like this filled him with a kind of self-disgust.
He liked cleanliness.
He liked organizing things.
He’d thought that being a janitor would suit him at least in that sense……
but from the level of human relationships onward, everything creaked badly out of place.
“Hey, say something.”
“Ugh, what an infuriating bastard.”
“How about we just……”
Under the trio’s threats, Lakan’s shoulders curled in tighter and tighter.
The gazes of others were humiliating.
If only he could hide somewhere, anywhere.
“This won’t do. Come with us, you little shit.”
When Lakan lowered his head and said nothing at all, the trio, having lost patience, tried to drag him into the corner of the storage room.
Or rather, they were about to.
Clack!
The door suddenly opened, and the section chief, who had left earlier, came back.
“Ah, haha. Section Chief. What brings you here…?”
The section chief was not someone who ordinarily interfered much in the janitors’ break room.
The trio asked with awkward smiles, but for some reason the section chief said nothing at all, his face gone pale.
“Ah……!”
Then, as if belatedly coming to his senses, he hurriedly stepped aside.
Tok.
And from behind where he had been standing, there appeared a woman in a pure white coat.
Cries of shock erupted here and there among the janitors.
With her bright and beautiful appearance—so striking that one could never imagine seeing it in such a dim and dreary alchemical research facility—she could only be Alterisha, the head of the Alterisha School and the very first Alchemagic Engineer.
‘W-what……?’
She stared fixedly at Lakan, then tilted her head and turned around.
Behind her stood a boy in a Stella cadet uniform.
“Is that him?”
“Yes. That’s him.”
The boy approached Lakan, looked him up and down, then nodded.
“He really does have the right look for a researcher.”
“……Huh?”
Was that supposed to be a compliment, or an insult?
Lakan’s gaze slipped downward to the nameplate pinned to the boy’s uniform.
And then his mouth fell open all over again.
‘B-Baek Yuseol!’
Though he hardly ever showed himself, inside Alchemy Citadel he was a teenage boy who wielded absolute authority.
‘Wh-why is he here……?’
Baek Yuseol stared at Lakan, then pulled a single sheet of paper from his chest and held it out.
On it was……
the experiment sheet Lakan had secretly solved earlier while pretending to clean.
“Ah, ah, ah?”
Lakan was so flustered that all that came out of his mouth were stupid noises, and Baek Yuseol laughed as though he found the whole thing amusing.
“You were the one who solved this, right?”
“I-I-I mean… i-it wasn’t, I wasn’t trying to ruin it……”
Only then did the janitors fully grasp the situation, and they all shook their heads.
They had already known something was off back when he kept secretly reading magitech textbooks, but to think he had actually dared lay hands on the alchemists’ experimental results sheets.
It felt as though mocking laughter was breaking out from every direction.
Lakan’s mind went white.
He needed to say something, some kind of excuse, but nothing came to him.
“I, um……”
As Lakan kept stammering without managing to answer properly, Baek Yuseol tilted his head and said,
“I think you may be misunderstanding something. We’re not here to scold you. Quite the opposite, actually—we came to praise you.”
“……What?”
What was that supposed to mean now?
Not just Lakan, but all the janitors, trio included, wore expressions of disbelief.
Baek Yuseol didn’t care at all.
“Even though you lack basic foundational knowledge, for you to come up with this kind of idea means there’s definitely potential here. Mr. Lakan.”
“Y-yes……”
“Would you have any interest in officially working at Alchemy Citadel as an alchemagic engineer?”
“……Huh.”
What?
Had he heard something wrong?
His mind had gone numb, and he couldn’t even form a proper answer.
Then, at the sound of the other janitors sucking in sharp breaths beside him, he barely managed to recover his senses.
‘M-me…… an alchemagic engineer?’
A specialist who had studied both alchemy and magitech at the same time—
the greatest kind of technician of this age was called an alchemagic engineer.
For an ordinary janitor to become an alchemagic engineer……
that was the highest status climb available to a resident of Alchemy Citadel.
It was no exaggeration to say it was like going from a commoner to a noble.
Lakan slowly glanced around him.
The trio were sweating profusely, nervously checking his expression, then quickly avoiding his eyes.
The same was true for all the other janitors who had ignored him until now.
He hadn’t looked around for that reason in particular……
but the moment he realized that all those people who had looked down on him were now afraid of him, confidence suddenly welled up from somewhere inside him.
“Y-yes……. If you’ll have me, I’ll do anything.”
“Not anything.”
The one who spoke next was not Baek Yuseol.
It was Alterisha.
Wearing a gentle smile like an angel’s, she took hold of his hand and then…… stacked dozens of major textbooks on top of it, each one thicker than the torso of a grown man.
Thunk!
“Urk!”
The weight felt as though it might rip his arm right out of its socket.
How had she lifted all this with that slim body of hers?
Before he even had time to process that question, Alterisha gave him a radiant smile and said,
“From today on, let’s study hard!”
“……Huh?”
All of these?
He wanted to ask.
But he felt some indescribable pressure and ended up shutting his mouth.
“Fighting!”
Why did Alterisha’s beautiful smiling face somehow feel so terrifying?
He could not understand the reason.
[Read only on MugenCodex.]
