DESPITE the commotion, the party continued without a hitch and ended while it was still lively. Cesia shared only the first dance with Marcus; afterward, she danced with other students and had her fill of the food and drinks the party had to offer. She noticed Rosary and a few other ladies staring and hanging around her, but she wasn’t going to tell them the truth. “Selene” had already been punished, and to Cesia, Rosary and the others were strangers.
“Did you have fun?” Marcus asked, sitting on a sofa and undoing his tie after retiring to a waiting room he had prepared.
Cesia nodded honestly. “It was incredible. I might be a bad person, though.”
“Excellent!” Marcus laughed loudly. No matter how many times Cesia looked at him or how much she racked her brain trying to remember, she knew she had just met him that day. Despite that, he felt very approachable.
“Isn’t it about time you told me how you did it?” Cesia asked.
Marcus got up and stood in front of Cesia. He gently smiled and pointed at her hand.
“Can I hold your hand?”
“Sure. Please do,” she replied, confident she had said something similar before. Marcus gently took her bare hand with his. He had a large, slightly cool hand, and his supple fingers were slim and feminine for a man.
“I promised I’d help you with your payback, didn’t I?” he said.
“I don’t think it was you with whom I made that promise.”
Marcus sighed. He gathered magical energy around him. His appearance wavered, shimmering as if under hot air. Cesia stared with her eyes wide, making sure not to miss anything. His red hair grew longer, and his shoulders and the outline of his body subtly changed shape. Marcus’s face visibly transformed, and a woman who might have been his sister appeared. Cesia and Marcus’s hands were still entwined, but now, Cesia was holding hands with that woman.
Cesia hesitated, then said, “Maria.”
“We were both disguising ourselves, so don’t get mad, okay?” Maria said in a voice Cesia had heard a thousand times before, looking just as she always had as she made that same mischievous smile Marcus did.
“You, a prince, attended the Academy undercover, dressed as a woman?!”
“It would’ve been perfect if I could just turn myself invisible.”
Cesia was sitting on the sofa, hanging her head. On the other hand, Maria, sitting next to her, was smiling in high spirits. The way she smiled suited her ephemeral beauty, but… To think that she was that willful Marcus! Just, no.
Cesia looked nervously at Chris standing next to the wall, but his expression gave nothing away. At least she could reassure herself that she wasn’t the crazy one here, that not everyone affirmed Marcus.
“Give me back my friendship! You were a guy?” Cesia’s face went pale as she remembered all sorts of things from the past two years at the Academy. “Wait, huh? Isn’t this bad?”
With a glass of wine in one hand, Maria said, as if singing, “As Maria, I took that into account. I made sure we never changed together, remember?”
“Huh? But… No, this is definitely bad. I…I talked with you about my dream wedding!”
“Oh, Cesia. Even though you’re so free-spirited, you said you wanted to have a traditional ceremony in a cathedral. The dreams of a young girl are so cute!”
Cesia was at a loss, and Maria made a purposeful blush.
“If I hit her head hard enough, I wonder if I could knock out some of her memories…” Cesia wondered aloud.
“Hahaha, calm down, Cesia. I’m a prince, you know? How disrespectful,” Maria said, imitating Marcus’s voice.
“Unfair! You can’t bring that up at a time like this!” Cesia shouted, still at a loss. Maria just laughed again. Somehow, Cesia felt a bit calmer after yelling, and she looked up and glared at Maria. “Why did you attend the Academy in disguise?” she asked.
“Did you know that recently, there’s been widespread fraud, like backdoor admissions and leaked test problems, among a certain segment of the students?”
Hearing that, Cesia remembered what Marcus had said about Raymond’s grades. “And Raymond’s class position was because of that fraud?”
“Correct. He wasn’t brilliant at all; he spent his time chasing girls and piles of money buying his grades and his student council presidency.”
Cesia could see now why Raymond couldn’t answer Marcus’s question.
“As part of the investigation, we also discovered several teachers and members of the Academy’s board of directors were complicit. I had some subordinates attending undercover along with me, and after two years, we finally rounded up the culprits.”
For the children of nobles, entering the Academy wasn’t required. A great deal of prestige came with the diploma, however, and it was the best way to secure a job in the royal castle or, for a lady, to find a marriage partner, among other benefits. Because of that, the Academy’s entrance exams and regular tests demanded high academic proficiency. Exposing that Raymond bought his way through the Academy will make it clear how much corruption has spread through the nobility, Cesia speculated.
“As the investigation continues, we’ll find out who cheated and retroactively revoke their diplomas, and if necessary, deal out the proper punishments.”
“That’s serious.” Cesia shrugged awkwardly. She would never have dreamed that, while she was getting into petty fights with the ladies of the academy, Maria and her subordinates were investigating behind the scenes.
“At first, I thought that Selene Diane, Raymond Chaser’s talented fiancée, was also suspicious, so I approached you, but…” Maria said, and as she spoke, her appearance wavered, and Marcus appeared again. As a man she hardly knew appeared in place of her trusted friend, Cesia stiffened. For an instant, Marcus smiled forlornly. “Marcus” was someone she barely knew, but for him, she was a good friend he had gotten close with over the past two years.
“The Selene I got to know was honest, almost to a fault—a serious student who constantly strove to maintain her high grades, as if she was under pressure. But, in a different way, you broke the rules.”
Attending the Academy while disguised as Selene to manipulate her grades was fraudulent, too, and it was a punishable offense.
“Yeah…” Cesia felt deflated, and seeing that, Marcus held her hand. It felt like Maria’s but was, without a doubt, a man’s hand.
“That’s why Selene’s diploma will be revoked.”
Cesia hung her head. “Yes.”
Suddenly, Marcus, still holding her small hand, lifted it and gave her an audible kiss on the back of her hand.
“Wha—” Cesia was startled.
“And, Cesia, I also have a proposal. Do you want to attend the Academy as Cesia Kathrin this time?”
“What?!”
“You received fantastic grades through your own effort. You’re already at the level where you can apply for a grant as a scholarship student, and besides,” Marcus smoothly explained, “it would be a great loss to the kingdom to let someone with your potential go to waste.”
By this point, Cesia had gotten somewhat used to the prince’s way of doing things. When he didn’t give the other person a chance to get any words in edgewise, it was when he was trying to do something suspicious. To put it plainly, it was when he was trying to trick them.
“I can’t! I’m just a commoner,” Cesia protested.
“You’re a direct relative of the Diane family, and while few, some commoners attend the Academy.”
“I already attended!”
“Selene did. But Cesia, you haven’t.” Marcus insistently drew close to her until Cesia could see his handsome features right in front of her. His green eyes sparkled as he stared at her.
“Someone from the Dianes might say something…” she said.
“What’ll they say? Will they go out of their way to bring more shame upon themselves by acknowledging that they sent you to the Academy instead of Selene?”
They wouldn’t. They never would. Selene’s pride as a lady was in tatters after she publicly attacked the prince’s partner, so there was no way she would pile on the embarrassment even more by admitting she committed fraud.
Cesia frantically searched for another excuse, her eyes wandering around the room. She had planned to disappear from the capital with nothing except the clothes on her back, so having a different path open in front of her caused a fair bit of confusion. Is it really okay for what I did to be pardoned?
“But, you said that fraud wouldn’t be tolerated…” she said.
“It won’t be. But the duty of those in power is to show the way to reform,” Marcus said, unconcerned.
Is that true? Cesia was still disoriented.
Sensing that she was slowly starting to cast away her doubts, Marcus eagerly awaited her decision. One of his many strong points was his ability to seize a good opportunity. As it happens, he had about as many weak points as he did strong ones.
“After all this, basically all relations between you and the Diane family have been severed. Rather than going out to the countryside and living a dangerous life of poverty without any money or connections to aid you, wouldn’t you much rather stay here in the capital, go to the Academy with a prince as your guardian, and after graduation, enter government service in the royal castle?”
“You’re deciding an awful lot about my future!” Cesia interrupted Marcus’s eloquent speech. “And a prince as my… guardian?”
“That’s right. No matter your age as a student, you’ll need a guardian.”
“And, after graduation, government service?”
“Isn’t that normal? You’re not going to inherit any land, after all. Especially for commoners, most enter the Academy with their sights already set on a government job.”
Run away to the country as a penniless criminal, or go to the Academy as herself and get a job afterward. She didn’t even have to think about it to know that the only choice was the latter.
However, there was still one thing holding her back.
“I get the feeling this is too good to be true,” she said.
“That vigilance will serve you well in the future. But, just this time, think of it as a gift from a friend.”
Cesia looked at Marcus with a start and saw that he had a surprisingly kind smile.
“I want to help out a good friend who worked hard all by herself. And I want to do what I can. Not as Maria, but as myself.”
His calm voice was a source of warmth for Cesia’s bitterness, and she felt her eyes tear up.
“So, what’ll it be?”
Cesia’s answer to that roguish smile was, of course…