The beginning of a new term at the academy was a fairly lively period. It was, after all, the end of a long break for returning students. Everyone was just getting back from their domains, or wherever their parents lived. There were plenty of tales, whether they be interesting or boastful, to go around. Then there were the new students. Excited and nervous to begin their new lives, they could grow rather loud with their chatter. Their innocence was adorable, in a way.
“Goodness, Lera, that’s quite a grin you’ve got.”
As I watched the herd of new students outside the dorm entrance, the daughter of Marquess Aspozat, Colnesia—or rather, Colny—had only that to say to me. Given she was a year above me, I was supposed to respect her as an upperclassman, but I could relax around her. She was an old friend I’d spent a great deal of time with in the land of meatheads.
“What a rude way to put it,” I replied. “I was just watching the adorable new students.”
“Adorable, you say? One year ago, you were like that too... I think.”
That last bit was unnecessary. Last year, I had been innocent just like them. Colny, of course, paid my simmering irritation no mind.
“Innocent or not, you’re in the way standing around here doing nothing. Let’s get inside.”
“Okaaay.”
Definitely didn’t want to be in the way.
With the beginning of the new year, I was now a second-year. Yes, I successfully passed my first year! In fact, my scores were among the top ten in my grade. If they told me that wasn’t enough, I’d assume they were pulling my leg.
At our academy, the colors we wore would change with every year. Last year, the ribbons adorning my uniform were the dark red meant for first-years, and now I had the second-years’ lovely purple. Second-year. It had a nice ring to it.
My half sister, Ribbons—I mean, Darnir—had also advanced to the next year. Her grades, meanwhile, I’m pretty sure were near the bottom. Speaking of which, there was that one time after the end of term exams when she’d tried to accuse me of stealing her grades. How did she have the gall to say out loud that her grades had been stolen?
The point is, so far, nobody in my grade had failed or dropped out, and we had all made it to the next year. The noble academy was a pretty strict place—they weren’t afraid to make someone repeat a year if their grades weren’t up to par. However, since repeating a year was a really bad look, most parents just withdrew their child entirely if their grades were unsalvageable.
Were students ever expelled? Yes. I had learned this firsthand. Two people I had come across very briefly, Lineka Hogultar and one Miss Cucumis Melos, had both been expelled. Lineka Hogultar was the illegitimate daughter of Baron Hogultar. She’d spent most of her childhood in a common residential area, so didn’t act much like a noble.
There was, however, something about her that I found a lot more interesting—Lineka Hogultar was reincarnated from another world. Not only that, she’d probably come from Japan like me. Unfortunately, she seemed to be under the impression she lived in a dating sim world, leading her to pour her heart and soul into seducing guys left and right.
Still, I didn’t think she’d seduced any boys worth writing home about. By following her impulses and wooing who she did, Lineka ended up ruining at least three political marriages. As a result, she was expelled from the academy and kicked out of high society.
Miss Cucumis had reportedly been a recurring source of trouble within the academy, and the nail in the coffin fell when she had summoned me just to try attacking me. So she was expelled. The reason she ever called me out in the first place was because she didn’t want me getting close to the black knight—I mean, Sir Yuin of House Fezgahn. She apparently had her eye on him, which is fine and all, but I was never getting close to him to begin with. I’m still not sure what she expected me to do.
What’s more, she was trite enough to have this discussion behind one of the school buildings, where she had her friends surround me. Oh, the terror of it all. But I wasn’t going to lose against a bunch of frail young ladies. When Miss Cucumis tried to swing her fan at me, stopping it was a simple matter. That’s dangerous business, swinging fans at people. Gripping her wrist with just a bit of force was enough to make her collapse in tears. She could’ve at least shown a bit of grit.
What a shame, Miss Cucumis, I’ll never get to see your melons again. Well, she did sneak into the Peylon hunting festival later. Though that was thanks to the captain of the uh, well, it was the white knight captain. The white knight captain was my mother’s older brother, making him my uncle.
After all these years, said uncle decided he wanted to take me in, and asked Lord Peylon, the man who raised me, if he could do that. If he wanted to take me under his wing, shouldn’t he have done it when I’d gotten kicked out of my birth family at age three? Seeing as he was asking now that I was old enough to attend the academy, he probably had some ulterior motive. Not knowing what those motives were really bothered me.
However, the white knight captain wasn’t at all popular in Peylon. Given his attitude, I thought that was only natural, but there was more to it than that. Peylon had an institute for researching magic that could be used in the Mystic Forest. Three times, the white knight captain told them to hand over their results, or to be more specific, the rights to the spell formulas they had developed.
What a blindside, right? Some of those spells were even ones I had helped develop. Most notably, the portal. Those could transport you instantly between two preestablished magic circles. The idea was mine, but it was the institute that made it happen. Actually, it was mostly one specific researcher named Nielle.
Nielle was your typical research maniac—a prodigy with magic, but absolutely incompetent at anything else. She was so bad that she would forget to eat or sleep, meaning that putting her to bed was one of my jobs when I was in Peylon.
Nielle aside, the portal was an incredibly convenient piece of work. Since it was the institute’s speciality, using it ran a high fee. Setting up the magic circles was also an expensive and time-consuming process. So when the white knight captain came along and said to hand over everything regarding it, of course he made some enemies.
Speaking of which, Ribbons had been running around with Miss Cucumis at the hunting festival, and what an embarrassment that was. House Duval—or to be more precise, our father—had stopped showing up to the festival a long time ago. He was a noble, so I wished he would at least keep up with his social obligations.
Well, putting all that aside, I just hope the new school year doesn’t have any of that nonsense.
How come sometimes when you wish for something, you get the exact opposite?
“So you’re the girl from House Duval? Hmph, you don’t look like anything special.”
It happened shortly after the new term began. I was in the cafeteria, hoping to spend some overdue time with Lanmia and Luchirs—my friends from the same year. That was when a boy I didn’t recognize came up to our table and hurled that choice line at me.