小嫂子的味道

"So this came through a pigeon?"

"Yes. I guess is a sort of custom magic used to deliver messages," said Anya as she stared at the piece of paper in her hands.

"You are indeed right about that. This is a spell used to deliver messages and well, it is very common. You were not from the capital, right? Then it explains why you haven\'t heard of it," Ryfin explained as he stared at the paper in Anya\'s hand.

They were in the room provided to Ryfin inside the academy building—it was an office of sorts. Leon and Ellyn were also there and all of them were talking about the paper Anya got.

As Ryfin-sensei said, the pigeon that came to Anya and then turned into paper was indeed the result of a custom magic spell. This was used all over the capital and mostly by merchants, higher-class nobles, and the royal family.

You have to first take a paper and write whatever you want on it, and then by the effect of the spell, it\'ll turn into any kind of bird and will then reach the person you want to give the message.

Though similar to the concept of teleportation magic where one would have had to visit the place he wanted to teleport to, in this spell you\'d have to visualize the face of the person of want to send the message to.

Anya had received a message via the same spell too and it was from Challes Alderman, class 1C\'s homeroom teacher.

It said that he had Zero with him and if Anya wanted to take him back alive then she would have to come to take him before the end of this day—the place where she\'d to come was also mentioned.

After getting the message and reading it by herself she went straight to Leon—who was still with Ellyn, and then the trio went to find Ryfin who was coming back after meeting with the academy\'s director.

Ryfin\'s meeting, well, you can say it kinda went good. He explained the situation to the director and asked can the students go to find Zero, it wasn\'t easy to convince the director; he was not even ready to accept that a student was kidnapped from this academy.

But he soon had to admit it after the dead bodies of the guards were found outside the gate, and Challes was also missing. Then the director was able to connect the dots by himself but Ryfin also provided him with the information that he saw Challes taking a student out of the academy.

When asked that why he didn\'t stop him, he replied "He was already gone by the time I reached there. The next thing I did was come to you after meeting with his sister."

He didn\'t exactly tell that he straight-up had a fight with Challes but let him go because Zero wanted that, so he presented a fabricated story. The director sent the orders to search for Challes all across the academy campus but he was not found, thus making him the prime suspect.

As for the grant for the students to go find Zero, the director was thinking about it when Ryfin told him that if the news of this kidnapping incident came out then the reputation of the academy will face a huge backlash and the king won\'t be pleased by that.

"Even if we sent a search party and found Zero, it will only lessen the amount of hate we will get not erase it completely. That\'s why I think it\'s better to first handle this matter without anyone noticing," said Ryfin.

It was true. After all, if the academy which is said to be the best in the whole kingdom lets one of their students get kidnapped and even by their own teachers…the amount of hate they receive from the public is unimaginable.

And the other academy won\'t lose the chance to make a profit from this hence it wasn\'t a good idea to get it to be revealed publicly that a student had been kidnapped.

"But the only thing I can do is give my advice, the rest is up to you," Ryfin stated as he looked at the director.

The director leaned back in his chair and thought for a while, then leaned forward again he said,

"I know you aren\'t doing this out of your concern for the academy, that much I can understand after all these years. But even if you have some kind of the second plan, I can\'t go against you. Since what you\'re saying, after all, is true. We can\'t afford to ruin the academy\'s reputation at this point; it has taken years to build it but once it gets stained, it won\'t be cleaned again that easily."

Like that, Ryfin got permission to send the students to search for Zero. Though there was a condition; if there weren\'t able to find him within 12 hours then, in the end, a search party will be sent.

When Ryfin was coming back from the director\'s office he was only concerned about one thing and it was how they will find Challes and Zero. Fortunately for him, the worry was also washed clean when he saw Anya, Leon, and Ellyn standing in front of his room.

"So…is this really the location where he is?" the one to ask this question was Leon, he said as he pointed at the address that was written on the message Anya received.

"Looks like it. But what I\'m confused about is why Mr. Challes will do something like this!? I mean, isn\'t he the homeroom teacher of class C?" said Ellyn.

"I won\'t bet on that," Ryfin interjected. "You can\'t tell what a person really is just by their looks and how they behave—or which job they hold onto. Almost everyone has two sides; one to show to the world and one that depicts what they truly are…that side is mostly hidden deep inside."