Chapter 1:
The Strange Commoner and Me
“TO THINK A COMMONER would even fathom sitting next to me. Know your place!”
The commoner appeared dazed by my rebuke. She looked around herself, seemingly unable to comprehend her situation, then turned back to me. How dare she show me of all people such disrespect! It took all I had to rein in my fury.
My name is Claire François, and I was born to one of the Bauer Kingdom’s most esteemed noble lineages. My father, Dole François, was entrusted with the kingdom’s treasury as the Minister of Finance, making House François the third most powerful force in the country, second only to the royal family and the chancellor. We were elite even among nobility. It followed, then, that one such as myself didn’t attend some ordinary school. No, I attended the Bauer Kingdom Royal Academy, a school that solely admitted the best of the best… At least, that was how it had been until the commoners wormed their way in.
“Ahh,” the commoner before me said. “Claire?”
“Why I never! Who do you think you are, calling me by my first name?!” The likes of a commoner had no place addressing any noble in such a manner, much less a noble of my standing. My dear friends Pepi and Loretta glowered at the commoner in sympathy for my plight.
The commoner still seemed unable to grasp the situation. She met my eyes and said, “Miss Claire.” Finally! That was proper for her station.
Goodness… The commoners thought they could act so imprudently merely because they attended the same school as we did. This was why they never amounted to anything; they simply didn’t know their place.
“That’s better,” I said. “A commoner should show respect.”
“Do you remember my name?” the commoner asked.
I never bothered to remember each and every commoners’ name, but neither did I take kindly to having my memory challenged. Thus, I scoffed. If I remembered correctly, I had heard her name during roll call earlier: “Do you take me for a fool? You’re Rae Taylor.”
Right. She was Rae Taylor—the most accomplished of this year’s transfer students, and an outsider who had been allowed to attend our illustrious academy despite her rank.
As I mentioned earlier, the Royal Academy was a school for the elite, one that had educated the nobility for generations. However, noble birth wasn’t enough to earn a student the right to attend the academy. No, even the nobility had to pass rigorous tests and prove they were the cream of the crop to earn admittance. But for some reason, King l’Ausseil had allowed a small number of commoners to attend under the pretense of promoting “meritocracy.” As if that weren’t preposterous enough in itself, now one of those commoners was trying to sit next to me. As a high-standing noble lady, it was my duty to reestablish order in these halls.
I opened my mouth, ready to further admonish her, when instead—
“Yahoo!” she exclaimed with glee.
What a strange person this commoner was. Did she not understand that I was admonishing her?
“What’s come over you? And to use such a vulgar expression… Goodness, what is the matter with you commoners?” The difference between commoners and my ilk was readily evident in our vocabularies alone. As things stood, these plebeians would ruin the academy’s reputation. I muttered, “I respect His Majesty, but I cannot bring myself to agree with this policy at all.”
“Me too, Miss Claire.”
“Me three!”
My close friends Pepi and Loretta agreed with me, of course. The academy belonged to the nobility. It was no place for rabble.
If I could only do something about this particular commoner, the best of the transfer students, then the others would surely fall in line, no? With that goal in mind, I readied myself to speak—but before I could begin, the commoner called my name.
“Miss Claire?”
“What? It is most displeasing to see a commoner think she can simply call out to me,” I curtly replied. Never could I have predicted her next words.
“I like you.”
“Huh?”
What did she just say? My mind began to race. “Like”? One can like many things: Foods, things, people—people? As in…? No, surely not—
“Miss Claire, I love you.”
“Wh…wh-wh-what…?!” What nonsense was coming out of this girl’s mouth?! I’d come at her with all those harsh words and she was saying she loved me?! “What in the world are you saying?!”
“I’m saying I love you, that’s all.” The commoner looked at me with confusion, of all things.
I couldn’t detect an ounce of ill will in her, but I couldn’t take her words at face value either. What was she trying to pull? I thought for a moment, then stumbled upon a possibility.
“Hmph! The likes of a commoner trying to get on my good side? Don’t waste your time.” There was no end to the number of people who tried to curry my favor due to my family’s standing. This commoner was doubtless just another one of them. I turned away with a huff.
“You’re so cute.”
“Wh…wh-what?!” I was accustomed to hearing my looks praised, but generally people called me things like “pretty” or “beautiful.” I hadn’t been called cute since, well, since I was a child! Wait, no, that wasn’t the problem here. The problem was that we were the same gender, yet the commoner was unmistakably showing…interest in me. “You… Are you trying to say you bat for that team?”
Women who fancied other women occasionally appeared in novels and plays, and they were often depicted as lecherous and debauched. Was this girl the same?
“Ah, I’m… Well, that doesn’t matter. I mean, it’s irrelevant to your cuteness—and, well, Miss Claire, you are cute.”
“Eek?!” That settled it—she was the same as those foul perverts!
“Miss Claire, you hate me, right?”
“Of course!” There wasn’t a single thing about this girl that I didn’t hate!
“That’s fine. Please keep teasing me. I love it.”
“Wh-what in the world…?” I couldn’t make sense of this girl, not in the least. She said she loved me, yet she didn’t care if I hated her—and she furthermore wanted me to tease her. She was utterly incomprehensible. I stared at her as though she were some unknown life-form that had merely taken human shape.
“Now, let’s get this super fun school life started, Miss Claire! We’re going to have a great time!”
“What makes you think I’ll have anything to do with you?!”
I hadn’t the slightest inkling at the time, but this aggravating, cheeky commoner would go on to become the love of my life.