Harem Training System: Every Girl I Train Makes Me Stronger!

Chapter 50: 50. Got Caught Reading the Board Upside Down, Then Compared Conspiracy Notes

William, who had frozen like a hunter spotting movement in the underbrush, made a split-second tactical decision: the wisest course of action was to appear as though he possessed absolutely zero interest in the conversation happening twenty feet away.

He crossed to the announcement board mounted beside the door with the deliberate, unhurried gait of a man who had spent his entire life dreaming of reading exactly this particular piece of parchment. He adopted an expression of profound, scholarly fascination, squinting at the text as if it contained the secrets of the cosmos.

It took him a solid ten seconds to realize he was reading it upside down.

’Shit,’ he thought, his inner voice dripping with self-loathing. ’Focus, William.’

’Just... pivot! Act like this is a deliberate choice!’

’A tactical assessment of inverted linguistics... Yes! That’s good!’

He was still mentally rehearsing how to flip the paper without making it obvious that he had been staring at inverted text with the rapt attention of a starving man staring at a painting of bread when a voice at his shoulder cut through his panic like a dagger through silk.

"You’re doing a truly pathetic job of that, you know..."

William nearly jumped clean out of his boots. His heart hammered against his ribs as he spun around, nearly knocking the announcement board off its hinges.

Olivia was standing directly behind him, arms crossed over her chest, one eyebrow arched so high it threatened to disappear into her hairline. Her expression was one of pure, unadulterated, unimpressed judgment, the kind reserved for children who had tried to eat paste.

She had apparently slipped in through the side door while he was busy failing at basic literacy, and from the subtle, knowing tilt of her head toward the two instructors whispering in the corner, it was obvious she had been eavesdropping from her own vantage point.

"Huh? Doing a terrible job of what? I have no idea what you’re implying."

"I was simply... studying," William said, adopting the unshakable confidence of a man who knew exactly how unconvincing he sounded.

"Oh, please," Olivia drawled, rolling her eyes. "Enough with the pathetic act..."

"I know you were pretending you weren’t listening to them." She jerked her chin toward the corner where two instructors were still murmuring in hushed tones, completely oblivious to the fact that they now had a small, judgmental audience gathered near the door. "Also, for the record? The board was upside down."

"I am well aware it was upside down," William scoffed, crossing his arms to match her stance, attempting to reclaim some shred of dignity.

Olivia let out a sigh so long and weary it felt like she was carrying the weight of the entire academy on her shoulders. "You were not..."

"Oh yeah? Well..." William paused, his brain scrambling for a plausible excuse. "Uhm, I was testing myself!"

"Like some kind of inverted reading comprehension exercise... You know, keeping the mind sharp." William giggled. "Neural plasticity and all that."

Olivia stared at him. The silence stretched between them, heavy with the sheer absurdity of his lie.

"Neural plasticity... Right... Because nothing says ’elite instructor’ like staring upside down at a notice about laundry schedules to improve brain function."

"It’s called cross-training, Olivia... You wouldn’t understand," William shot back, though his smirk betrayed him.

"I understand that you’re a terrible liar, and you’re an even worse spy just for today," she countered, though the corners of her mouth twitched.

She stepped closer, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper that still managed to sound authoritative. "Enough of that..."

"Now that we’ve established that you’re both spectacularly incompetent at pretending to be casual..." She glanced toward the gossiping instructors before turning her sharp gaze back to him. "We’re both apparently here for the same reason, and since I know you’re dying to know what they were actually whispering about, want to compare notes instead of pretending we’re not both eavesdropping like desperate teenagers?"

"It’s about Catherine... and I’m surprised that I got what I wanted right now..."

William glanced back toward the corner, where the two senior instructors had finally lowered their voices enough to become genuinely inaudible, and decided that further loitering by the announcement board was unlikely to yield any additional intelligence.

He tilted his head toward the door instead, and Olivia followed him out into the corridor, both of them putting enough distance between themselves and the lounge that further conversation wouldn’t risk being overheard in turn.

"The White Sword of Astoria," William said, once they’d found a reasonably private stretch of hallway. "You caught that too, right...?"

"Yeah, it’s hard not to..." Olivia nodded. "I’ve been at this academy three weeks, and I’ve heard that name exactly twice... In fact, both times were in whispers, and both times were cut off the second someone noticed I was listening."

Olivia’s expression sharpened into something more focused, the careful, analytical look William had come to associate with her actual skill set, the one that had nothing to do with combat and everything to do with pulling threads until something unraveled. "You’ve noticed something too, haven’t you...? About Catherine."

William considered how much to say, weighing his instinctive discretion against the fact that Olivia had proven herself reasonably trustworthy already, not to mention genuinely useful in a fight against people who’d wanted to do considerably worse than gossip about her.

"Her hand was shaking this morning," he said finally. "While we were training."

"She covered it fast, blaming it on a cramp, but it wasn’t a cramp because I could tell the difference," William sighed. "I’ve seen enough of those to know the difference."

Olivia nodded slowly, filing the information away with the same careful precision she seemed to apply to everything. "That tracks with what little I’ve picked up..."

"From what I overheard just now, she was apparently something significant once..."

"Huh? Really?"

"Yes... she was a prodigy... maybe more than that." Olivia held her chin. "Fastest blade in three kingdoms was the phrase they used."

"And now she teaches administrative meetings and occasionally does blind sword drills to remember how her own body works." William exhaled slowly, turning the pieces over. "Something happened between then and now."

"Something big enough that an entire academy full of instructors knows better than to say her old title out loud."

"You think it’s connected to the conspiracy...?" Olivia’s voice dropped lower, glancing instinctively down the empty hallway despite the fact that no one else was around. "The operatives mentioned she had administrative access, remember."

"High-value students are attached through her... If something happened to her once before that took her out of active combat, and now the same kind of threat is circling again."

"Maybe..." William frowned, though something in his gut told him this particular thread ran deeper and older than the current conspiracy, something personal rather than strategic. "Or maybe it’s completely separate, and we’re just pattern matching because two mysteries showed up in the same building at the same time."

"Only one way to find out." Olivia’s eyes had taken on the particular gleam of someone who genuinely enjoyed this kind of puzzle far more than she’d probably admit out loud. "I could dig through the archive records."

"The academy keeps files on former ranked combatants, especially ones with royal or noble connections..."

"If she really held a title like that, there’ll be paperwork somewhere, even if it’s buried."

"That sounds like exactly the kind of thing that gets you in trouble."

"I’m aware." Olivia didn’t sound remotely deterred. "I’ll be careful."

"You said that before the maintenance closet incident, too... if I remember correctly."

"Those were different circumstances entirely."

"You were nearly assaulted by disguised enemy operatives, Olivia."

"Yes, and you handled it beautifully, so clearly the system works." Olivia’s mouth twitched with something that was almost a smile, quickly suppressed beneath her usual careful composure. "I’ll be discreet."

She winked. "I promise."

William had significant doubts about exactly how discreet Olivia’s version of discreet was likely to be, given her established track record, but he also recognized a woman who had already made up her mind, and arguing further would probably just delay the inevitable rather than prevent it.

"Fine," he said. "But if you find anything, you come to me before you do anything with it, alright?"

"Not Catherine or anyone else because that’s... for sure going to give you any leverage." William pointed himself with his thumb. Me first."

"Alright, you have yourself a deal." Olivia extended a hand, and William shook it with the strange, formal solemnity of two people agreeing to conduct a small conspiracy of their own within the larger, more dangerous one already unfolding around them.