They say things move along smoothly, but no matter what, this felt a little too fast.
Three days after that grinning priest left the estate with a serious face, my enrollment was decided through what was basically a one-sided notice from Father.
The problem was—
"An army school? That… isn't that still the military…?"
How? No, seriously—how does "I want to go to university" turn into "go to the army"?
I wanted to become an "unprecedented genius," not do "unprecedented backbreaking drudge work"!
And if we were talking about drudge work, I'd already done more than enough of it in the Republic of Korea Army thanks to that solidly built bastard. I was declining. No more.
Two rounds of military service in one lifetime—what was I, a dance singer or something?
More importantly, if I became a soldier, didn't that mean I wouldn't be able to kick Pierre and Georges's fat, sagging asses?
A soldier beating up civilians? Wow. That was a straight trip to court-martial and a firing squad.
In my head, an image overlapped of me getting dragged out of a military courtroom by military police.
In the end, after spending the night wide awake thinking about this and that, my worries settled down the next day when that grinning priest came back.
After hearing my concern, the priest laughed loudly and said,
"Haha, Guillaume! I'm not sending you to become a soldier. I'm sending you so you can receive excellent education in a systematic way until you reach an age suitable for a higher education institution."
"I-I see. Thank you for your thoughtful words."
"Yes, yes. If a talent like you entered the military gate and happened to die on a battlefield, what an enormous loss that would be for France. Don't worry!"
"Ah… yes…"
That was one hell of a comparison. What was eighteenth-century France, exactly? Some inhuman hellscape where only the strong survived?
Ah—come to think of it, they said the countries in Europe used to fight each other now and then up until before I was born.
Since I was born in 1771, that meant it was an era where gunfire had still been ringing out as recently as about eight years ago.
Mm. I understood. A very, very violent era. My hair was practically standing on end.
Seeing me like that, the priest clasped his hands, bowed his head, and said,
"Oh God. Please let this young lamb arrive safely in Paris without incident."
Did this man seriously think my goosebumps were from being nervous about going to Paris alone, and not from his savage wording? Damn, France was brutal…
And then, at what he said next, I—lost in thought—jerked in surprise.
"Mm… As a servant of God, how could I send this child into danger alone?
It may be frightening, leaving your parents for the first time and going far away alone, but don't worry! To your boarding house in Paris, I, Serge, a servant of God, will accompany you!"
Huh? No—why were you coming with me? Why were you linking arms with me?
With the whole series of events unfolding so suddenly, my mind could only go blank.
And because of that, before we got into the carriage, I failed to notice Bishop Serge pulling a strange bottle from his pocket and dripping a little of its contents into his eyes.
"Ugh. Urk—!"
"Bwahaha. Guillaume, is this your first time riding in a carriage for this long?"
"P-please… save me."
"Now, now. Isn't this the road to the school you chose? There, no one will go easy on you. Starting now, learn how to overcome the tasks before you with your own strength."
"Guaaaargh!"
Even while I kept leaning out the carriage window to visually confirm my breakfast menu one more time, Bishop Serge kept talking nonstop.
Listen to him. Was he sure his job wasn't actually the Marine Corps, not the clergy?
No—more than that, how was he riding this rattling carriage like it was comfortable?
Eighteenth-century roads—especially provincial roads that weren't even in the capital—were horrific from a modern twenty-first-century perspective.
No. Very, very, very, very horrific.
I mean, seriously: if every five meters the carriage wheels bounced up and down over fist-sized gravel, how could anyone call that a road?
Did this man actually take motion-sickness medicine? No way. What motion-sickness medicine even existed in this era?
"Bishop… you look very comfortable. Ugh."
"Haha. It's because of the nature of being a priest. Moving from place to place is daily life.
"Before I received the position of bishop, I often drifted from city to city. A priest ordained in his hometown or where he lived usually stays in that region, but a priest ordained at a university is appointed to various places under the archbishop's command."
They say humans are animals of adaptation, and Serge seemed perfectly adapted to these suspiciously uneven roads.
"Bishop. Maybe…"
"Hm? Do you have something to ask?"
"Do you have any tips… to cure motion sickness…?"
"Haha. I don't have anything like that either!"
Thinking about how this long trip from the far south of France to Paris in the far north had to be endured along roads this bad, my mind went blank all over again.
From the day he received the bishopric and came to Gehenne until this trip, every time Serge left Gehenne, it was for work.
Clergy meetings, regular general assemblies, miscellaneous errands, and so on.
Not once had he left Gehenne with an easy heart.
Serge was the kind of man who comforted himself by thinking that even playing lonely hide-and-seek alone in an empty chapel to forget boredom was better than being busy.
What went out was effort; what came back was only an exhausted body. In this world, who liked business trips?
So Serge—finally beginning a trip that felt like a trip for once—was in very high spirits.
From the mild autumn sunlight and breeze gently brushing over the hand he stuck out the carriage window, to the golden harvest fields he was seeing for the first time in nearly a year—everything loosened a person's heart.
The vineyards that made up most of Gehenne's farmland also showed off their luscious purple, but the gold of wheat—the foundation of people's diet—might be the most beautiful color nature bestows.
That was Serge's thought as he gave himself over to leisure.
But—
"Urk—! Ugh!"
The thirteen-year-old boy beside him did not seem very leisurely.
"Bishop… I think I'm going to lose it. I think I'm going to lose my mind. Urk—!"
"Ehem… Guillaume, suffering when you're young is part of it. Don't be so weak. Ahem."
In truth, Serge belonged to the category of people who got terrible motion sickness.
Then why did he look so fine?
Because of Serge's trump card.
"Who in the world gets used to motion sickness? That brat. Hahaha. Good thing I still had some belladonna left over from the last trip."
Atropa belladonna. The flower of the beautiful lady, and the herb of assassins, witches, and devils.
In other words, a poisonous plant.
How many Renaissance men had fallen victim to this cruel poison? How many witches had summoned demons with it?
If someone ignorant heard that, they would shout, "What!? Burn that flower right now!"
But all things exist for a reason God created them.
If diluted and used in the proper amount, this poisonous plant becomes not Lucifer, the devil who kills people, but the archangel Michael who protects people from the demon called motion sickness.
He suddenly remembered the senior priest who had taught him this trick.
"Ugh—! Brother… how are you fine!?"
"Now, now. Isn't it just that your faith is lacking? Tsk tsk."
"Three days ago, you were emptying your stomach with me, and now you're suddenly fine. So are you saying the brother from three days ago was an unbeliever?"
"What? You insolent brat. I was going to tell you, but I guess I'll pretend it never happened."
"If you keep that up, I'm going to go around telling everyone you have that kind of relationship with the café worker next to the school."
"Hey!!! That's cheating!"
"Then hurry up and hand over the secret. Hahah!"
That senior—who had some sort of relationship with the regular café worker—noticed one day that after kissing his girlfriend, he strangely stopped getting motion sickness.
After testing it in his own way, he discovered that the diluted belladonna solution his girlfriend used in her eyes stopped motion sickness.
And thanks to that senior's "secret," learned after everything was smoothed over, Serge had been able to endure those many days of travel comfortably.
"I'm sorry to Guillaume, but they say you even buy hardship when you're young. Since I only learned this after being ordained at twenty-five, I'll tell Guillaume then, too."
While Serge thought that, the boy was learning—through his whole body and down to his bones—just how precious motion-sickness medicine was.