[Episode 8]
With a surprised expression, Irene asked again.
“I heard you were the scion of Baron Degoff’s family. Haven’t you learned anything following the Baron all this time?”
Struck by Irene’s impertinence in referring to another’s father as simply “the Baron,” and by her way of speaking that reminded me of the Second Prince in strange ways, I spat out another excuse.
“It is true that I am a child of the baronial house. However… due to poor health, I did not have the opportunity to learn management or accounting.”
“Your health?”
Irene looked at me with an expression that said, *But you look perfectly fine?* Damn. It seemed the vitality of chopping firewood had breathed life into Dietrich’s frail body.
“…I injured my leg in an accident and was bedridden for quite a long time.”
I dropped my gaze to the floor. Then I furtively shifted my eyes to the crutches placed beside my seat. Honestly, since it was my leg and not my head that had been injured, it wasn’t a very good excuse, but I intended to gloss it over with a vague tale of an unfortunate past.
Fortunately, Irene seemed to follow my gaze and grasp my intention. At least, judging by the brief pause she took.
“…Not having learned something doesn’t mean you can’t do it. If you don’t know, you just learn. Besides, as the second-ranked student, I believe you have more than enough aptitude.”
Irene carried an air that suggested she would turn on her heel coldly if I refused, yet she was unexpectedly persistent. But my will to avoid getting entangled in troublesome matters by even a single thread was no less formidable.
“It is true that I am second in the class, but I do not know if I have the aptitude for the student council. I do not believe the student council deals only with matters that can be resolved by simply being a good student. If it were you, Senior Irene, the daughter of a Count, of course it would not be difficult, but I….”
I trailed off and put on the most pitiful expression I could. I wanted to convey, as humbly as possible, that by any reasonable standard, it was burdensome to enter a student council that was like a little empire—consisting of the Crown Prince, two children of a ducal house, and nobility starting from the rank of Count at the lowest.
Whether Irene had accepted my implication that it was burdensome, she finally backed down, ending with the words that she had not intended to force me.
Even without the issues of clumping with the main cast or the problem of status, I would have refused Irene’s offer somehow.
Ever since Roxanne enrolled, an unprecedented embezzlement scandal involving student council funds erupted at the academy. While the investigation into this incident brought Roxanne and Elius even closer, as long as I remembered the description of Irene—her face drained so pale it was closer to green as she pulled all-nighters for days investigating and correcting the embezzlement records in the accounting books—there was no way I would set foot in the accounting department.
I watched the back of Irene’s head as she walked away.
Hang in there….
***
I had made flimsy excuses to avoid Irene’s offer, but even at the academy, the wall of status clearly existed.
*“The Academy is founded upon the principle of equal educational opportunity. Therefore, status and logic from outside the Academy cannot be discussed within it.”*
This was, of course, the First Principle of the Imperial Academy, but considering the empire where the class system remained perfectly intact, it was a phrase virtually devoid of meaning.
It was no exception for Dietrich, who was of noble birth. A humble baronial family from the countryside. On top of that, the gazes of those noble bastards—no, the noble-born students—toward a girl whose body was not even whole were far from kind. Though an inconvenient body could not be a reason for harassment, in truth, most capital noble families, when their members fell seriously ill or were injured, would receive the temple’s help without delay and cure them with holy power.
Therefore, Dietrich’s inconvenient leg openly displayed the economic level of the baronial House Degoff. Of course, aside from a few lunatics—no, students—there was no one who picked fights openly, but that didn’t mean they readily included me in their circle.
Moreover, the noble families gathered among themselves as nobles did, while the few commoner-born people formed groups of threes and fives and mingled as commoners did. For Dietrich, who was in an ambiguous position—too shabby to be called a noble, yet not a commoner—it was not easy to fit into any group.
Even though only a few days had passed since the new semester began, it seemed everyone had already decided who they would go to class or eat meals with. This soon became a strange extension of rejection toward those who did not belong to a group, and the students cast subtle glances of ostracism toward me, who was alone everywhere.
In this atmosphere, it wasn’t difficult to guess why the original Dietrich had been unable to adapt easily to the academy and was left on the outskirts.
But unlike Dietrich, my soul was too old and weary to be hurt by those brats’ schemes one by one. To a modern person from the cutthroat society of Korea, such feelings of alienation were no problem at all.
Besides, regardless of whether I had friends to go around with, the probability of me taking a class with someone for any reason was low. Because, for a certain reason, I had chosen only lectures that anyone would avoid just by looking at the course titles.
Before enrollment, an empty reply form asking to write down the courses I would take henceforth arrived at House Degoff, along with the academy’s admission documents. For me, who wished to avoid creating troublesome situations, avoiding the courses Roxanne would take took priority over taking courses I wanted.
It wasn’t difficult. Since Roxanne always ran into her fiancé Elius in class, all I had to do was exclude from the list the courses that the Crown Prince would likely take. Even after excluding subjects that might draw the Crown Prince’s interest, such as Imperial Administration, or courses that Roxanne would likely take, quite a large number of courses remained.
[Understanding the Classics and Discussion]
*Hmm. Discussion… Pass.*
[Cooperative Thinking and Its Practical Interpretation]
*Cooperation and… practical application? It reeks of group projects. Pass.*
[Basic Theological Language]
*Oh, language courses usually involve conversation practice with a partner, meaning I’d be chatting with a friend every hour. Pass.*
To think there were no courses worth taking at an academy boasting such a long history and tradition was truly disappointing. In the end, I had no choice but to write down on the reply form courses that no one seemed likely to take—courses so unappealing that taking them felt like eating mustard while crying, with titles so hard to remember—hoping, *Please, just don’t let them be canceled.*
Fortunately, thanks to the academy’s scholastic spirit that maximally guaranteed students’ right to attend classes, *Translation of Tromeple Regional Studies through the Historical Conflicts of the Modern Cavaluna Continent* was not canceled. However, perhaps this tiresome name had tired even the administrator assigning classrooms, as they had placed the class—*Modern Cavaluna Continent*… ugh, anyway, that class—in a remote corner classroom of the old building. Well, for me, who often went to the library in the old building, this was a good thing.
Perhaps I and the assignment administrator weren’t the only ones tired of the lecture name; the area around the classroom was deserted even though class was about to start. And soon, in the center of the classroom, I spotted brilliant blond hair that seemed to hold the only light in the dark old building.
The moment I saw the back of that blond head, I felt the hand gripping the door handle grow damp with tension. There wasn’t only one blond male student at the academy, but in a world where football didn’t even exist, there was no student whose shoulders boasted a build reminiscent of a quarterback.
That was… unmistakably the Second Prince—even if I’d spotted him from a speeding KTX.
Truthfully, if pressed, unlike Roxanne, Elius, and Cedric, the Second Prince was not someone I needed to avoid.
*He’s a minor character even in the novel, and it’s not like taking one class with him would affect the original plot in any way.*
Since there were descriptions of him frequently going on expeditions even during the semester, I might not run into him more than a few times even in the same class. Moreover, since the Second Prince now knew I was not the princess of Ereksion, unlike at the entrance ball, he might not show much interest even if we ran into each other.
But still….
*The thing is, he has the eye to know that Dietrich was a princess.*
A nagging unease brushed over me. Usually, when I felt like this, keeping my head down was the best policy. At any rate, there was no need to stand out in the Second Prince’s eyes. Thinking of the troubles I had experienced in those brief moments entangled with the Second Prince, I didn’t want to linger around him.
Having thought that far, I held my breath and released the door handle I had been gripping as quietly as possible. I also made sure to walk as stealthily as possible, trying not to make any sound with my footsteps.
*If I sit diagonally, I might be caught in his field of vision.*
Like a cicada clinging to a tree, I tried to seat myself in the Second Prince’s blind spot. I had taken a seat far enough that even if he turned around it wouldn’t reach his field of vision, and was quietly pulling out a chair—when it happened.
But in that instant, swish! The Second Prince turned around and looked at me.
*Crazy. What does he think he is, a beast or something….*
Even though I was sure I hadn’t made a sound, the Second Prince seemed to have instinctively noticed someone approaching behind him. My body stiffened with bewilderment. Looking at me frozen and stammering, unable to do anything, the Second Prince raised the corner of his lips as if he had found something interesting. His red, gleaming eyes were not smiling in the slightest.
“I was wondering who was creeping about so stealthily. So it was you, Princess.”
Looking at the Second Prince, who seemed to lack not only manners and common sense but even memory, I once again breathed a sigh of relief that this country’s next emperor was not the Second Prince.
Even after going through that mess at the ball, the Second Prince still called me princess.
Perhaps it wasn’t a matter of memory, but a matter of personality.
If someone found out I was being called a princess, Dietrich, a lower noble, might be accused of impersonating nobility and land in trouble. The Second Prince’s provocative behavior and tone, which only selected words to piss people off, were those of a thug, yet now that I looked, his uniform was worn neatly.
For some reason, that pissed me off even more.