78 – The Seeds Scattered
It’d been a while since he had traveled this path.
Heading towards Haven Seminary, Askal recalled his past memories.
The time when he first bought a sandwich for the original saint, Eileen. The time he sponsored an orphanage in preparation for the future. The sponsorship was so overwhelming that Eileen…
This is it.
“Director Eileen has embarked on a long journey.”
“…You mean she’s dead?”
“No. She left to abandon her past deeds and embark on a life of asceticism. She said she would serve the poor in distant areas.”
“Please be careful with your words that can lead to misunderstandings.”
Upon arriving at Haven Seminary, Askal immediately had an interview with Sirius.
Since he was officially visiting as the ‘Minister of Appraisal’, the doors of the seminary opened like a high-speed pass.
“By the way, how is the seminary? Is it running well?”
Askal felt a pang of guilt.
After such an incident, he was shocked and had stopped sponsoring them. It would prick his conscience a bit if it was because of that, Haven Seminary would struggle with extreme poverty again.
“Yes, please look at this.”
Sirius pointed at a commendation certificate hanging on the wall.
‘Exemplary Academy of the Year – Haven Academy’
Askal almost spat out the tea he was drinking.
Even here, did that spam email extend its reach?
“The seminary is now recognized as an academy. Thanks to that, we receive subsidies from the empire.”
“That’s a relief.”
“We have many talents. Would you like to take a quick tour?”
“Hmm.”
In place of Eileen, Sirius had taken on the role of the academy’s interim director.
Despite his young age, he had deep trust and talent, and above all, being an orphan of Haven – having no parents – it was a feasible situation for him.
Askal observed the academy students as he strutted around with a minister’s characteristic pose, hands clasped behind his back.
Somehow, the face was familiar.
That is, they were faces seen in dreams.
They were obviously more tender and raw than then, but they were clearly the core of the future rebels.
“Heop!”
The young man who’s enthusiastically thrusting a spear over there is Bandy, who took the role of a vanguard.
There was a regretful memory of him fearlessly charging at a dragon only to die after being hit by one of its breaths.
“That guy is Bandy, he handles the spear very well.”
“It seems so.”
“10 gold. Would you like to purchase him?”
“…?”
“Just kidding.”
The next place Sirius guided us to was the magic training field.
“The next person I’ll introduce is a kid named Crina who is very good at magic. She had a scouting offer from the Magic Tower, but she’s a special one who stayed here.”
There was a twinkle in Ascal’s eye.
Crina, she was someone he had seen when he previously visited the orphanage.
A future grand wizard, and the commander of the rebel mage guerrilla force.
She’d clearly said she wanted to be a musician.
“She originally joined the band because she wanted to be a musician, but she returned after a month because she had no talent.”
“Such a sad past…”
“Stop! Who’s digging up someone else’s painful past, Sirius, and who is this man…”
The girl with the auburn hair, Crina, locked eyes with Ascal. And immediately burst into tears.
Then she approached, grabbed Ascal’s arm, and didn’t let go.
“Did you come back, sir? We’re sorry. It was definitely our mistake, right? Now, we’ll be good. Please don’t leave.”
She held onto his arm tightly with both hands and anchored it to a space under her chest, an positioning technique from which it’s hard to escape.
“But, wait. What happened while I was gone, Sirius? Explain it to me.”
Ascal looked at Sirius with pleading eyes.
But.
Sirius was acting strangely.
Sirius, who had a suspicious smile on his face, was looking at a picture hanging on the wall. Ascal’s gaze also went there.
“Uncle Cal”
When I first arrived at the orphanage long ago, the children would praise the generous but mysterious Mr. Karl, constantly drawing and sticking pictures of him everywhere.
Of course, because they didn’t know who he was, the pictures varied wildly in color and style. It was somewhat of a tradition for everyone to draw their own imagined version of Mr. Karl–
“It’s me?”
The person in the picture was unmistakably Askel himself.
It was not the imaginary figure of Mr. Karl they were drawing, but Askel himself.
He had always thought that only Sirius knew his true identity.
Even that feeling was far from concrete.
‘What on earth is going on…’
Sirius slowly approached him.
“Mr. Karl, you were our hope and guiding light. All the children in the orphanage liked you. We gained strength to live through reading your sponsorship letters.”
Askel broke out in a cold sweat.
He had undoubtedly provided the sponsorship money, but the accompanying letters were written by Lia.
This was a misunderstanding.
“If Aileen was our mother, then you were our father. But one day, the sponsorship just stopped.”
“The despair we felt then seemed as if we had been abandoned by our parents, or perhaps even worse.”
“Because we were lazy? Picky eaters? Sleept too much? We all reflected on the mistakes we have made.”
Regret.
And then.
One by one, boys and girls began to enter the magic training ground.
That guy was, Stefan.
That girl was, Luciana.
And that guy is…..
They were all founding members of the orphanage as well as key figures of the rebel army group.
Kriner spoke.
“I couldn’t stomach a loaf of bread for a week, hahahaha. I cried every day in my room until I couldn’t produce tears anymore. You know, there’s a limit to the number of tears a person can produce in a day. I surpassed that. Funny, isn’t it?”
Desolation.
Kriner looked at Askel with a meaningful smile.
“So we came to a consensus. We decided to find out who Mr. Karl really is. Maybe Mr. Karl wasn’t disappointed in us, but had his own unavoidable circumstances?”
“Sirius wouldn’t tell us, even if he died.”
“We traced the letters, analyzed the gifts, ahh. You have no idea how hard it was to find clues from the laundry that had been washed so many times.”
Indeed, Lia. Even in all that, you worked…
“But I finally found him. Uncle Kal turns out to be a more remarkable man than expected. He’s a minister of the empire and a noble, and everyone in the empire knows his name.”
“But what does that matter? To us, Uncle Kal is just Uncle Kal.”
The adolescents who have been growing into the youth slowly approached Ascal.
“We believed. That someday you would return. That you wouldn’t abandon us.”
“Now let’s stay together forever…”
“My Uncle Kal…”
Obsession.
“Li, L-Lia, I’m here! Save me――Agh!”
But the screams fell on deaf ears.
Even Ascal, who had gained the experience of a Swordmaster, couldn’t withstand a group brawl against the future half-imperial troops.
It felt like being attacked by ten golden retrievers.
Everywhere, rubbing their cheeks, hugging, causing a fuss.
Ascal’s outstretched hand seemed to seek help from the crowd.
Sirius turned his face away.
In the end, the Regret, Exhaustion, and Obsession series, which had been growing steadily behind Ascal’s back, decided to pause publication after tense negotiations.
1. Ascal will sponsor the academy again – regardless of the amount, he must include a sponsor letter he has written –
2. Visit the academy at least once every three months – originally once a month, but it was modified after tough negotiations –
3. For a week, Ascal will teach students as an instructor at the academy – it was a ridiculous wage so Ascal whittled it down to minimum wage –
“Kids, could you give me a little space.”
“No. You’re going to run away again.”
“This place is real good.”
Even while stamping his seal on the agreement, the human retrievers were hanging on his arms and legs.
It felt like playing the role of a human carrying delicious treats in a pet café.
“What goes around comes around.”
Lia gave a simple evaluation.
While Ascal was held hostage, Lia was on another mission.
“You’re an accomplice too. How on earth did you write that letter……”
“It reminds me, don’t we have a purpose for coming here? Mr. Ascal?”
Lia changed the subject.
“In a few years, a dragon appears and turns the empire into a wasteland? There’s no evidence though.”
“Yes.”
“So, you gather capable people in advance to preemptively strike the dragon? There’s no evidence though.”
“That’s right.”
From Noble mtl dot com
“So anyway, you’re clearly a talented individual, and you’re asking to join the dragon subjugation? There’s no evidence though.”
“That’s exactly it.”
Sirius nodded his head.
“I see.”
“…Aren’t you too easy to convince?”
Sirius cracked a smile.
“In order to believe what another person says, you need several factors. Is their statement credible, is there evidence to back up their words, and ‘who’ said it.”
Ascal, who had been preparing a hallucination show just in case he wasn’t believed, felt relieved.
“Well then, I’ll be waiting. Mr. Carl.”
Sirius bowed slightly.
Ascal felt a strange sense of responsibility.
Soon Ascal shook his head.
‘I’m really going to retire after catching the real dragon. Definitely.’
“Go, go! Try to catch it!”
“Ugh, I can’t catch the ice cream.”
“hahahaha. Here you go.”
After performing tricks with the ice cream, the man gave it to his customer, which made the surrounding people start lining up in admiration.
‘I guess even a rat hole can see the sun sometimes.’
With the money he saved from part-time work at a steak house, he opened a small ice cream stand.
Spotting that there wasn’t a store like this in the area and taking advantage, he had made a big hit.
‘If it continues like this, recovery might not be impossible……’
Sometimes the man stared into the distance.
He had left so much behind.
“I miss them.”
The man was surprised at his words.
It was a sound that unconsciously came out.
The weather was waning, the sun dropping. The man also started tidying up his shop gradually.
And then he saw a notice fallen on the floor.
“Looking for the prince of the night. If you saw him or are him, please inform the authorities. A generous reward awaits.”
“…. The prince of the night? What a pretentious name.”
“Oh. Are you interested in it?”
A regular customer asked, eating his ice cream.
“But you better be careful. Everyone says they’re the prince of the night, and those who went to the authorities got beaten up uselessly. The guy next door, Hanson couldn’t even walk for a week.”
“Foolish people. hahahaha. I’m not a fool to mimic a ludicrous character.”
“Exactly. Well, isn’t the prince of the night entirely popular in the allied nations these days? Sometimes people get so immersed, they believe they are the prince of the night themselves. hahahaha.”
“hahahaha!”
As the regular customer left, the man’s expression went blank.
He crumpled up the notice and threw it nonchalantly. He still had a long way to go.