Of all the people she expected to see in Professor Nygard's office, she was not expecting Rei. the blue-haired boy sat at a wooden desk that was far too large for him, hunched over the thickest book Ilise had ever seen in her life.
"Rei!" Ilise said. "Fancy seeing you here."
"Professor Nygard is a family friend. I thought I'd pay him a visit. He's got some great books in his office. And his tea is pretty good too." Rei didn't lift his head from his book.
Nygard offered Ilise a cup of tea and a plate of stale-looking ginger biscuits. "Help yourself. Kallen tells me you're going to be in my history class. You look like you've got a good head on your shoulders, so take these."
With strength that most certainly did not belong to an old man his age, Professor Nygard hefted a ginormous stack of books and placed them in Ilise's arms. Each one of them was just as thick as the one Rei was currently perusing. They were all leather-bound and yellowed, with countless bookmarks poking out in between the pages. Ilise sneezed a little at all the dust.
"Thank you, Professor Nygard."
"Don't mention it. Go on, sit with Rei. Got to teach Kallen some arithmetic. Won't listen to his other teachers, so it all falls on this old man, hmm?"
Siegfried blushed. "Don't put it like that, old man. You know I like your lessons better than that stupid Davies's-"
"Ah-ah, Kallen. I won't have you badmouthing my colleagues in front of me. Now sit down and do your work. I'll come by to mark it later."
He promptly left the room, leaving the three of them alone once more. Ilise sat down beside Rei. The boy looked around to make sure that Nygard was gone and slammed the book shut. He spat the ginger biscuit he'd balled up in the side of his mouth into a serviette and chucked it into the bin.
"What brings you here, Ilise?" Rei asked.
"Siegfried brought me. He says that my first class is with Professor Nygard."
"That makes three of us. Roza had the foresight to not pick his class. I'd expect that Toby is off somewhere playing basketball." Rei said, sighing. "Don't get me wrong, Professor Nygard is a good man, but his eccentricities and course material can be a little too much. There's a reason his class only has four people."
"Who's the fourth one?"
"Sephia. Head of club activities on the student council."
Ilise groaned internally. Not only did she have to sit in a class that was presided over by an old man who'd 'lost his marbles', but she had to take it with Sephia, of all people. Ilise could just feel the sheer amount of stink-eyes being shot at her.
"Lucky for you, Ilise, Sephia's not coming in today. She fell sick or something." Siegfried piped up. And in a very accurate imitation of Professor Nygard's voice, he said, "Ah-ah, Rei. I won't have you badmouthing my favourite teacher in front of me."
"Of course. Apologies, Siegfried."
Ilise gingerly lifted the cover of one of Professor Nygard's books. It came unstuck with a loud ripping sound, as if someone had glued its front page to its cover at some point in history. The cloud of dust it unleashed was much worse. It sent Ilise into a coughing fit. An entire colony of dust mites appeared to have taken root in the pages of the book.
She had to dust off a few layers of dust for the words to become legible, and even then they were written in a language so odd the words were barely discernible. And yet, it clicked perfectly in Ilise's head. It was like she'd seen these words before.
"This book was written in the year of our lord, 1690 by Sir Otto von Heinrich, Head Archivist of the Most Noble House of Rossweisse." She read out. "These records will dictate the glorious war that the Rossweisse family waged against the evil spirits known as Kaisers, and the warriors of Yggdrasil."
"Are you trying to summon a demon or something?" Siegfried asked. "You sound like you're possessed."
"No, Siegfried. Ilise is speaking in German. The Rossweisses are a German house. It makes sense that she'd be able to speak it." Rei said.
Ilise read on, tuning out her friends. Never mind the fact that she could read German - why did Professor Nygard even have a book like this in his collection? The contents of it detailed a history that contradicted the one she'd been taught. Yggdrasil wasn't a band of noble warriors or anything - it was the name of the shipping company the Rossweisses had founded way back in the 1600s.
That shipping company had eventually evolved into a corporation that was at the frontier of human innovation, but at no point in time had they ever been 'the warriors of Yggdrasil'. The closest things Ilise could think of were Yggdrasil's Einherjar and Valkyrja, but they were just augmented men and women who'd undergone surgery to enhance their physical capabilities.
The book got even more ludicrous as it went on. Ilise knew that the Kaisers and Kaiserin weren't myths - after all, she herself was a Kaiserin, but the book described her kind as 'weapons wielded by the demons of the world serpent, Jormungandr'. Ilise was sure she would've known if she could transform into a giant sword or something.
On a whim, she looked through the other books on the desk. All of them corroborated the same story - that Yggdrasil was a band of warriors that had formed underneath the Rossweisse family, the Kaisers were weapons and that the war had been caused not by the First Kaiser's awakening, but by a group of medieval terrorists called Jormungandr.
Noticing Ilise's expression of disbelief, Rei said, "I told you so. You've read the books, haven't you? They're complete and utter hogwash. Sounds like the plot of one of Roza's comics."
"Maybe Professor Nygard gave you his old novel manuscript or something. I'm sure he wouldn't lie to students about things like that." Siegfried said.
"Lie to students about what?" Professor Nygard poked his head through the door of his clubroom. "I may be getting old, but my hearing's just as good as it was when I was a youngster like you lot. You can save it for later. Class is starting, kiddos."
--
Ilise left Professor Nygard's class with more questions than answers. What he'd taught them adhered perfectly to what she knew of the Rossweisse family's history, so why did the books he gave her tell a completely different story? Those thoughts plagued her as she stalked towards her next class with Rei. Siegfried was taking a different class, leaving the two of them to find their own way.
"You're bothered about the books, aren't you?" Rei asked.
"Yeah. It's like what you said while we were in the med bay, I guess. I've spent my whole life not knowing things, and just when I think I know something, someone comes with a whole set of books that challenges everything I know."
"Don't take it to heart. It's probably nonsense anyway. A lot of history books from that era come off as fantasy stories. It's why King Arthur exists. Most of our myths are just twisted historical events, so I'd wager that Professor Nygard got a little confused. he does have an awful amount of books." Rei rationalised.
"I wanna say you're right, but the book you were reading just now was like mine too, wasn't it?"
Rei nodded. "Hopefully Professor Nygard just wants his students to get into reading fiction."
"Hopefully."
When they entered their next class, Ilise was delighted to find that she would not be greeted with an existential crisis. The math teacher that Siegfried appeared to hate so much, Mr Davies, was a middle-aged man with brown hair and a permanent look of exhaustion on his face. He didn't force any math textbooks onto Rei and Ilise - for his first lesson, all he did was organise a few icebreakers and establish his goals for the year.
"Hello, students. My name is Edward Davies. I'll be your Math teacher this year, and I want us all to get along nicely. I'll break the ice for you guys, yes? I was born on the fourteenth of July, my favourite food is candied apples, I like gardening in my free time and I really hate it when students turn in homework late."
Everybody in his class introduced themselves. When it was Ilise's turn, all eyes were on her. They hadn't forgotten the incident from two weeks ago, it seemed - some of them were staring at her with hatred in their eyes.
"H-hi. My name is Ilise. I'm fifteen years old, and I was born on the twenty-fourth of October. My favourite food is parfaits. I don't really have any hobbies, but I like sleeping and I dislike waking up early." She bowed her head nervously and quickly rushed back to her seat beside Rei.
The muttering that broke up sent a chill down her spine. To her relief, most of them weren't actually remarking about how much they hated her - some of her classmates were a bit disappointed at how mundane a Rossweisse's life was, while others were coming to terms with the fact that Rossweisses weren't gods who didn't need to eat, sleep or defecate. All in all, her little presentation had gone quite well.
The rest of the lesson went on without much incident. Mr Davies called on Ilise a few times, purely because Rei had spent the entirety of their class raising his hand. That had resulted in their teacher getting confused by who was raising whose hand, and he settled for calling Ilise out. Ilise herself didn't particularly like math, but Bianca had taught her well enough.
They were preparing to break for lunch when a tinny voice rang out over the speakers.
"Would Ilise Rossweisse please report to the student council room?"
--