The man calling himself Shivan had cold, severe features. His eyes were deeply sunken in their sockets, with dark circles beneath them blending into the shadows cast by his brow bones, making his pupils look like little boats floating on a black sea.
When he spoke, his lips pressed tightly together, the sharp lines of his mouth intersecting with his jawline and giving him an unapproachable coldness. So even though he spoke with a smile, he still seemed difficult to deal with.
"Has the teaching work been going smoothly, Professor?" Shivan asked with concern. "Have you had any trouble adjusting to the new campus?"
Schiller shook his head. "Everything has been fine. How is the Football Team doing? Can our invitational tournament still be held on schedule?"
"Of course. That will not be a problem. The school's finances are indeed somewhat tight, but I believe the city government will provide us with sufficient support. Sporting events have always been the city's calling card..."
Shivan went on at length about the Football Team. He seemed to have noticed that Schiller was particularly concerned about the state of the athletics department, then moved on to discuss psychology course arrangements, mentioning whether the rotating-class system should be changed to a fixed-class system and so on.
Schiller was relatively reserved in his attitude toward the new principal. Shivan was hardly a common surname, and the name Thaddeus Sivana indicated that he was no ordinary person, quite possibly a named character from the comics.
But precisely because he was famous without being all that famous, Schiller could not recall who he was for the moment. Nor did he have time to search through the memory archive, so he merely treated Shivan with the attitude a professor ought to have toward a new principal. Shivan, however,