"All that aside," I redirected the conversation with Cesarina. "I wanted to ask you to teach me."
"Teach you?" She probably thought I was making fun of her. "I was confident that my rune was as powerful as it could get. I was wrong. You infused a divine word of power that was previously lost to humanity into a rune, something that even the greatest mages will tell you is impossible. What could I possibly teach you? What do I know that you don't?"
"Regarding magic and the divine tongue, everything."
"You're not funny. Are you mocking me?"
"I'm serious. Can you keep everything I'm about to say between just you and me?"
"I'll take it to the grave."
"Including my real name? Unless we're alone, I'm Kisaragi Reon. I need to keep up the act or else things could steer wildly out of control. I'm sure your royal status has earned you information about what's happening."
"Of course, your real identity will be a secret as well. Although... Why are you taking my word for it? You realized that I'm also involved in this. What if I decide something you say needs to be reported?"
"Trust. There's no friendship without it. You could have espionage listening in right now, but you don't. You could report anything you see or hear in this room to high-ranking officials if you feel it's necessary. You could stab me in the back once you get what you want from me, but you won't."
"Do you have proof?"
"Nope, but I trust you. You can demonstrate your trust in me by keeping everything we say and do here a secret."
Cesarina gave me a reassuring smile. "I'm bound to you now. Orders don't mean anything. Status obviously never meant anything. I trust you."
I despise that terminology. I didn't want anyone to be bound to me. The ring serves that purpose and the power of it is revolting. I understood that Cesarina didn't mean 'bound' in that sense so I didn't say anything, but it certainly unnerved me at the thought of her being put under the ring's effect as well.
"Good. Please just listen to me and wait until I finish talking to say anything."
I didn't know why I knew anything about runes, or the divine tongue, or anything at all. I never learned any of it. I came to the academy with no knowledge of magic hoping to pick it up. I just all of a sudden knew the rune was incomplete, and how to complete it. I had never heard of runes or the divine tongue before that. It's like the knowledge reacted to the rune and unlocked itself.
"Hard to believe, but I know you're telling the truth. I have an idea. Maybe you have other untapped knowledge that you haven't found yet because it hasn't reacted to anything you've seen. All of this sounds impossible, but impossible has become possible a lot lately, so anything is worth a shot at this point. Here, fill this out. It's the hardest written exam the academy has to offer. Don't worry if you don't know the answers. Just do your best.
"Okay." I picked up the pencil and began analyzing the questions.
A little later.
"A perfect score, and in two minutes. I'm not surprised at this point. Did you know the answers to the questions before you looked at the test?"
"Not a single term on there. The answers came to me as I went through each question."
"Do you still know the answers to the questions?"
"Yeah, I remember them."
"I'd say that proves my theory. Wait here." Cesarina asked as she left the room. "I'm going to grab everything that I think might awaken your knowledge."
When she figured out how to resurface my knowledge, she immediately started doing everything she could to help. Following the events that occurred after I awoke in Kilead, I was really glad to have someone who would support me to the best of their ability, so I decided to help her out in return.
I planned to start cleaning her classroom as a surprise for when she got back. It was desperately needed, but to her credit, everything important was organized and nearly stored. I also created a miniature jet engine inside the classroom earlier that day so I felt that the stuff laying around was partially my fault. I straightened the desks, cleaned the chalkboard, and moved various objects I had never seen before off of the floor onto shelves. Speaking of shelves, all of the books were already organized and nearly stored on their proper shelves, except one. A very strange book laid on the floor next to Cesarina's podium. I reached out my arm to grab it, but I felt a freezing vibration expand through my body. I considered myself to be a logical and rational person, so I continued to pick the book up, just as anyone else would do in that situation. When I held the book I saw that the text on the cover was written in an unusual language that I never learned but could still read.
Cesarina returned as I flipped the book open. I looked back and saw her carrying a large box. She said she didn't need help carrying it, so I watched her place the box in front of her podium where I was standing. The box was filled to the brim with more random objects I hadn't seen before as well as some miscellaneous books and documents. "Do you know what any of these are?" Cesarina asked me while I sifted through the box with one hand.
It was my first time seeing anything inside the box. If you described an object in the box to me beforehand, I wouldn't be able to tell you what you were talking about.
"I do now." I suddenly knew about each object in great detail when I first glanced at them, but there was something I didn't know: Where the box came from. The stuff inside was so random that there wasn't a chance somebody already had all of it boxed together. Well, that could've been the case, but only if the person who put everything in the box was disorganized to a subhuman degree. My guess, and the most likely scenario, was that Cesarina went from room to room shoving things in a box as she saw them. While was thinking about how the assortment of miscellaneous objects came to be, Cesarina looked around the classroom. "Did you clean around here?"
"Yeah. It's doesn't even begin to compensate you for the bounty of knowledge I got just now, but I felt like I should start helping you in return. I don't think I did that bad of a job either."
"You did great. I really appreciate it. I've been meaning to clean for a while but the rest of the class has kept me busy. The headmaster is also a frequent pain in the ass."
"I know how you feel."
"That woman's audacity gets on my nerves. I get ordered around all the time to do her busy work when my class is enough to deal with. Managing my work and hers that she pushes on me gets overwhelming and one of the two always ends up not completely done so I either get shit from the class or the headmaster. And it doesn't happen to just me! The rest of the faculty are given her work too! Not only does she make us all stressed over whether or not we'll be able to do our own jobs, she doesn't even burden us with the work ourselves. We don't even get an email. It's always her secretary or someone who works closely under her who gives us her orders, which blows my mind considering it's a secretary's job to do the things the headmaster orders us to do! What does her secretary do all day? I'd imagine nothing because the teachers do all the secretary's work and the headmaster's work! The least the headmaster could do is dump her work on us in person once in a while, but apparently, we're not worth talking to. Nobody has seen her in ages, which I think is quite unprofessional! It's not like she's so busy with her work that she doesn't have time to check in with us!"
"When was the last time you saw her?"
"I've never seen her!"
Wow, that is unprofessional.
"Few people still working at the academy have seen her. Supposedly, after her husband died, she came in wearing a black dress and a large bamboo hat with a black veil surrounding her head. She went into her office that day and hasn't left since. I get that losing someone you love is crushing, but I think twenty-seven years is enough time to process it and start doing your job again, because there is no way she has done anything important to her job after her husband died."
Even mourning has a limit that any longer is unhealthy. The headmaster was a horrible boss. She was supposedly a horrible boss, I should say. Considering that she could've been anywhere between twenty-something years old and seventy years old or even older, I understood why she might get help with her work from the teachers, but pushing most of it onto them and not coming out to say hi once is the behavior of someone unfit to be in any authoritative position.
"Sorry about suddenly venting. Anyway, I never pegged you as the type who worries about returning favors to others."
"I never pegged myself as the type either, but I discovered that I'm not the same person I was before I started dating my girlfriend. I just went with it instead of trying to figure it out. I try to treat others how they treat me. I'm still unsure about who I am now, but there's not much I can do about it."
"You changed after you started going out with your girlfriend, huh? Nothing unusual."
"To be honest, we haven't done much going out. I want to more than anything, but my life has been nothing but cleaning up other people's messes ever since we became official. It doesn't help that I woke up in Kilead with none of my stuff. I can't contact her and I have no idea if she knows I'm here."
"It's fine if you're not entirely sure what you're doing here. If you follow whatever instructions you were given, you can figure out what you want to do next. When you get back to wherever you came from, make sure to take care of everything you need to and then spend as much time with your girlfriend as she wants."
"Will do."
"That means that while you're here, you should spend all the time you can with me."
I thought the same, but not because I saw Cesarina as my girlfriend from Kilead and Ms. Kamiya as my girlfriend from Hwen. Cesarina is a friend who I quickly came to treasure, so it made sense that I should spend as much time as possible with the people close to me before I'm not in the area anymore. I didn't have a solid plan yet, but I knew I was going to return to Hwen somehow.
"We're doing that right now."
"Are you enjoying it?"
"I now know a lot of things that I didn't know I knew until a few moments ago, so yes."
"Obviously you would enjoy plentiful knowledge that came to you with no effort. I'm asking if you're enjoying spending time with me."
"Of course. We could be doing just about anything and I would still enjoy it because I'm doing it with you. That wouldn't have been the case less than a month or two ago. I used to hate people."
"Just about anything? What about dying?"
"It's a little concerning that you'd suddenly say that, but it would be better than dying alone."
It was a little concerning that she'd say it at all, sudden or not. It was also pretty morbid.
"That reminds me, in case the knowledge didn't come to you, you'll probably die if you try to say any words in that book out loud or any other words in the divine tongue. So don't do that."
I actually didn't know that, surprisingly. I was given the knowledge of the divine tongue but not the knowledge that I'd die if I tried to speak it. That seemed a little too important to not know, so why wasn't that included with the knowledge of the divine tongue?
I'm noticing that the way I'm talking about the knowledge I'm suddenly remembering I know makes it sound like a knowledge pack that I download to my brain or something, but I don't know how else to describe it. I suppose it's more like different bits of knowledge are switches in my brain that get flipped on when I see an object relevant to the information.
"Looks like a dictionary of known divine words of power. Why will I die if I try to say these words?"
"The story is that there was a mortal who grew powerful enough to rival god. The mortal was careless in his hubris and spoke a word of power that split Heaven. Despite being as powerful as god, he wasn't powerful enough to withstand the effects of that divine word of power, so he died. After his death, god placed a seal on the throat of all mortals. Attempting to speak a word of power causes all the blood in your body to spew from your mouth. The story is a little different depending on the religion, but that's how it goes."
I wasn't expecting the conversation to become even more morbid, but it did. That just wasn't something I expected to hear at all. Also, for whatever reason, I interpreted that as a direct challenge from Heaven to mortals.
"Whatever gods there are should have known that the best way to get people to do something is to tell them they can't do it. Hang on for a second. I think this will get the headmaster to come out."
"Even you wouldn't think about actually trying that..."
Cesarina looked right at me. I could tell from the look in her eyes that she was trying to laugh away the sudden concern that overcame her, but her laughter failed as her concern turned into fear and fleeting despair. She realized what I was doing, and her mind was taken over by what was about to happen. I saw how truly broken she looked in that moment, and I promised myself that if I survived, I wouldn't make her feel like that again. I already put her through enough, to begin with.
It was too late, and even though she knew it wouldn't do anything, she shouted in desperation because it was all she could do.
"Don't!"
The sound of shattering windows permeated the classroom and traveled down the hallway. A deafening explosive noise that could be heard by the whole school followed after the broken glass, but there was no fire. The strongest wind that can only be described as truly divine entered the room and danced around my hand before taking the shape of a compound bow. The entire bow was enveloped in the brightest white I had ever seen as if I was wielding light itself, but there was a black aura swirling around it.
"On second thought, I think I'll learn magic. I'm not willing to deal with the consequences of this."
Cesarina stared at me. She was bewildered instead of afraid and sad. "...Virtue. You spoke a divine word of power. You broke the seal."
"I wish I didn't. This was not my intended result. Now I have to pay for all the windows I broke. The gods are way too over the top. Did they all have to shatter? It's not like the glass was used to make the bow. Well, on the bright side, I guarantee the headmaster is going to be here any minute. You'll be able to get the recognition you deserve!"