It’s been one week since I became a student at Doran’s Royal School of Magic. My studies are, of course, different from what I’ve done so far. We aren’t studying how to levitate things or move them. At this school, they are having us learn a wide variety of magic, including combat and assault magic. Just because it’s my first year doesn’t mean we’re learning beginner stuff. Exactly what I’d expect from a top-level cooking class.
Oh, scratch that—I mean “magic school.”
Before coming to this magic school, everyone had to have acquired a certain level of magical ability, but since the school I had attended was royally certified, I am totally capable of doing all this beginner stuff with ease. If I weren’t, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t have been allowed to be a student here if I hadn’t gotten that stuff down.
There is something like an entrance exam at magic school. They test things like whether you can levitate objects, use illumination magic, and draw at least five perfect magic circles from memory. A great number of skills like that have to be performed during the test. But it’s not only magic that is tested—there are also common sense things, like the laws and geography of Doran. You must prove yourself to have memorized a basic level of knowledge about the world. My father had told me before the test that certain kinds of magic that hadn’t been taught at my school were also tested, and so I had my parents help me so I could pass this test, spending every day either studying at the schoolhouse or at home.
I would read so many books and other materials until my hands would start shaking with exhaustion, and my parents, upon seeing this, would on occasion force me to go to bed.
Those are pretty good memories.
“Did all of you happen to enjoy the ball held the other day?”
“I was unfortunately unable to attend. Were you able to make an appearance, Hayti?”
Now then.
If I was asked what my first impression was upon starting my time at magic school, I would have to say... there sure are quite a few “dazzling” students, I suppose.
“When I realized I would not be able to go to such a fine event for another half-year or more, I simply could not pass up the opportunity to attend.”
The aristocratic girls are partaking in small talk in the classroom.
As one might expect, there were more aristocrats than “normal folk” here, and because the school did not have uniforms, the difference in dress between the two groups was quite stark. I had brought quite a few clothes from home, but I had selected them mostly on the basis of how easy they were to move around in, and had paid little attention to how I would look. Today I have yet again come to school wearing a blue one-piece dress that hangs below my knees, with a light brown leather belt wrapped around my waist. I’ve taken care to add attachments to the belt so that small tools can be hooked on it, so it’s totally practical as well.
Yes, this is me—one of the commoner children who go to this school wearing normal clothes. All the kids in the village would dress like this too, wearing clothes that were easy to move around in and convenient, the functional form of wear unique to commoners. I, who had believed this was a place meant for those who wanted to study magic, never dreamed that all of the little lords and ladies who came to this school would be wearing frilly dresses or expensive shoes or anything else like that. There’s going to be a lot of practical training, I thought. Lessons where we need to move around, sweat, get dirty. Of course no one would be wearing their finery to class.
Yeah, to be honest—I underestimated the aristocracy.
The aristocratic girls wear long dresses, and while the types of dress and their various ornamentations are different, they all give off the same aura of high nobility. Of course, neither their legs nor their feet are visible, unlike my own. Unlike me.
On top of that, they have cute things like hooded puff-sleeves on the shoulders of their dresses, so their shoulders are actually more exposed than in a normal dress, and in quite a lascivious manner at that. I remember feeling a sudden dizziness upon walking into the classroom, feeling as though I’d stumbled into a party in progress.
The boys are dressed just as I’d always imagined noble boys dressed: with pants and boots, shirts and vests, and fine, long-sleeved suit coats on top. They were the outfits of gentlemen, certainly.
“Ohohoho!”
“Hahahaha!”
Um, have I barged into some sort of party...? *ahem* This is a classroom, just a classroom, Nanalie.
The school buildings and the campus in general were, in a good way, rustic, and did not look new. Well, the school has been around for a long time, so of course everything looks a bit old. The rooms had windows but were rather humid, and while it could be cool indoors on hot days, when it was cold, it felt like it was even colder inside than it was outside. Despite all that, the ceilings of both the classrooms and the hallways were rather high, so they felt like the inside of some rich person’s mansion.
It was as if someone had taken the King’s pure white castle and made the exterior and interior a little browner, a little more dilapidated... No, that’s probably going too far. It wasn’t that fancy. But it did feel that fancy. In a good way, of course.
So there I was, in the middle of all this fancy gorgeousness, but it wouldn’t do to forget the existence of the other students who had commoner backgrounds.
Every grade was split up into three different classes, and ours was made up of 150 boys and girls. The ratio between girls and boys was 1:1, so there were 75 of each. Among the 150 students, approximately 50 of them were commoners. Each class had 50 students. Commoners made up a third of the grade, so while we were in the minority, I took some comfort knowing that I wasn’t the only one who had a common background.
I had seen a boy wearing a rather rumpled coat, and I thought I would go over and talk to him so that we could get through these feelings of being left out together, as allies.
...That said, in this classroom, there were only two commoners, including myself.
“To think that we must study alongside peasants...”
“Oh my, were you not aware? Long ago, apparently there were quite a few more. The aristocracy makes up more than half of the student body now, however.”
“But in the next classroom over, half of the students are peasants. So there’s still quite a few of them, aren’t there?”
“In any case, it would have been quite nice to have everyone in this classroom be part of the aristocracy, wouldn’t it?”
The conversations between the aristocrat kids that I overheard were being held at a volume that could certainly not be called “discreet.” I could very easily tell who was saying what. It’s that group of boys and girls in front of me to my left.
“Whyever would we need those two extras, hmm? Bit unnecessary, no?”
I can feel the stares of the people around me stabbing into me.
Hmm, is that so? Well, I was thinking just the same thing. Like, why are the numbers so out of balance like this?
Commoners make up more than half of the students next door, but in this one there are only two, including me. What on earth is going on here? They should have just gone ahead and totally split up the commoners from the aristocrats.
What were the teachers thinking, dividing up the students like this...
Because of the way they had divided up the students, I was becoming the target of the derision of the aristocrats as they put on airs.
“Look at her clothes. They’re rather unfortunate, aren’t they?”
“They indeed look uncomfortable.”
I could hear some of them giggling. Dammit, they are definitely making it so I can hear them, those freaking dirtbags.
But that kind of stuff doesn’t work on me. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest. As if I could allow myself to break down here, in front of them.