107 – Storm – 1
On the eve of the academy school year, young aristocrats from all over the country didn’t miss this pretext, so another ball was held. At least this time, it wasn’t as large as it was before school or at the end of the year. Those who came could come, and those who did not want to come could just relax in their own dormitories. It is a little more autonomous atmosphere than the eve, which was practically close to compulsory participation even because of the eyes of the people around.
Well, among the young aristocrats enrolled in the academy, there were only a handful of people who hated the ball, so most of the students were excited to participate. And I was one of those few people who didn’t like balls very much. I don’t particularly hate it, but if I can autonomously decide whether or not to participate, my heart goes toward the non-participation side.
And then Cordelia stopped me.
“Let’s go. Huh? No, why aren’t you going?”
“Noisy and frantic.”
“No, it’s not some kind of old man. You have to be noisy to see how noisy it is. Let’s go? Huh? Let’s go.”
Cordelia had been whining for ten minutes already. As soon as I say I’m just going to stay in the dorms and not go to the prom, this is what it looks like. She then grabbed my arm and sat down in her seat. It was the attitude of a child who would not drop a single step in this place unless he bought her a toy. If it’s normal here, ‘Cordelia lives here. Mikhail is going home’, he would have replied, but contrary to what it seems, this time I am the one who uses the group. He is insisting that he will not go without a particular reason.
“You can just go by yourself.”
“How is it? Because let’s go together On the eve, I couldn’t even enjoy it properly because of Wilhelm.”
Cordelia was shaken again when she heard the story of Wilhelm come out of her mouth. Cordelia is enjoying her life more than anyone else, having friends with Seol-ah, but even until the night before, she was surrounded by all sorts of rumors and sipping alcohol by herself.
To be honest, participating in the prom wasn’t all that distasteful. To me, who still has the sensibility of a modern person, wearing fancy but uncomfortable clothes and dancing to music that I can’t even dance to is not fun, but that doesn’t mean that I hate it enough to snort when my friends beg me like this. It wasn’t.
The reason I refused this much was because I hated facing Princess Yuria Reinhardt, whom Seol-ah had told me about beforehand.
The academy was already buzzing about the transfer of the princess at an unprecedented time. Sightings were also pouring in that she had seen the imperial carriage, so unless Wilhelm went crazy and went right back to school, it would be almost certain. Those who wanted to be a bit quick-witted about her would have noticed that the reason why the princess transferred to her at this time when Wilhelm declared her leave of absence and was away from his palace was not a vaguely purely academic intention. .
Although it is said that Princess Yuria will be of great help in getting rid of her Wilhelm, she is honestly an opponent that will surely be tiring to meet. Besides, when you transfer at such a strange timing, do you dare to become close to me? From then on, not only the quick-witted, but also ordinary people will notice that there is something behind them.
Of course, I didn’t intend to keep avoiding it. However, she thought that when school started anyway, she would have something to run into, so she wondered if it was necessary to meet her a day earlier. It’s the idea of an elementary school student who puts off homework he doesn’t want to do, but he can still put it off for a day. Even though I was in college, I lived procrastinating my assignments as long as I could.
“Yes, Mikhail. Let’s go together.”
It was Hestia who drove a wedge into my trembling heart. She invited me with a gentle tone, as if nothing had happened at all, but she couldn’t even hide her desire for a dance that swayed violently in those eyes. Yes. Hestia loved to dance. She liked it, of course, but she wasn’t good at it. She still felt her feet tingle when she remembered what she had been stepped on that day. I don’t know how to hide that longing normally. She was staring at me with a very intense gaze, pretending she wasn’t, as if she couldn’t miss this opportunity. Like a cartoon expression, it was as if beams were about to come out of his eyes.
In the end, I surrendered with a white flag.
“Whoa. Okay. I’ll go. It’s not like I don’t really want to go.”
“Wow, even though I insisted on going, he didn’t even pretend to listen, but he changed his mind right after Hestia spoke.”
Cordelia said that she was dumbfounded.
“I heard what Hestia said because you’ve been hanging by my side for several minutes.”
“Really? hehehe.”
As always, he is a very easy-going person. Seol-ah was watching this with a pitiful look from her side. She had been a little awkward since her last time with her, but she was barely able to get back to her original partnership. Taking advantage of Cordelia and Hestia’s excitement, she whispered to me.
“It’s not something that can be avoided by delaying it, isn’t it better to just do it quickly?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m not a kid, didn’t you say you wouldn’t go because you didn’t like meeting the princess?”
“… It’s not?”
She seems to have used her group for a very trivial reason, so she said no, but Seol-Ah’s eyes grew even colder. She let out a small sigh.
“I am not a child. He won’t be as strange as you worry…. Maybe. A little uh, just a bold person.”
–
What do you think of when you see the word school start? Occasionally, there are peculiar races who are eagerly waiting for school to return because they are tired of long vacations, but at least it wasn’t me. Seeing my schoolmates again, and having new learnings, these things didn’t mean much to me. Anyway, I can meet and play with my friends who I will see after school starts, even during vacation. New learning? Are there any academies that don’t do prior study these days?
In the case of the academy, it might be more appropriate to use the word “Start of semester” Rather than “Start of school,” But in any case, there was no difference between the start of school and the start of classes in that they were not very welcome. Friend? I watched Seol-ah, Hestia, and Cordelia throughout the vacation. New learning? I’m not the type to burn with a passion for learning, and to be honest, I’m not interested.
On top of that, I added one more reason why I hated the start of school from today. It was because I had to run into someone I wanted to avoid if possible.
Before the orchestra started to play music suitable for dancing in earnest, my party and I were sitting in a moderately secluded corner, eating dishes placed in the venue, and chatting with each other.
At that time, as if a wave was rolling in, the crowd’s murmur and gaze slowly began to turn towards us. When the huge wave finally broke over us, there was a little girl standing in front of me.
“Oh, you are the daughter of the Grand Duchess of Sirius… ?”
The girl greeted me for the first time in a very calm and calm manner, considering that she came towards me from a distance. Anyone who sees it will think that we met by chance.
Apart from that brazenness, the girl standing in front of me was a beautiful girl with her hair and eyes as black as the night sky. She had an appearance that more suited to being a girl than a young lady. She was a little, no, much shorter than most women her age. It was about the size of Hestia’s shoulder, or at a rough glance, it looked like she was in her early 150s. In this world where the majority of tall, handsome women have undergone fantasy corrections, her height was unusually short.
However, the charisma radiating from her small body was by no means small. As soon as I met her, I knew who she was. If that arrogant and confident girl wasn’t the princess, who else could be the princess? The color of her hair and the color of her eyes were different from Wilhelm’s, but as soon as I saw her, I could tell that she was a lady of the highest rank in her empire. If Wilhelm before the taste of her wears off and hides her presence well, this one, on the contrary, exudes her presence.
Actually, it was a meeting that I wanted to postpone somehow, but it seems that the princess was looking for me, as if telling me not to dream of such a thing. I bowed slightly to her with the feeling of an elementary school student starting her vacation homework she had been putting off throughout her vacation.
“Yes. I am Mikhail von Sirius, the heir to the Grand Duchess of Sirius.”
“This is the second princess of the empire, Yuria Reinhardt. Hmm….”
She scanned me up and down her once. It wasn’t a very good behavior in the first meeting, but it didn’t feel particularly bad. She said, because the difference in height between her and me was a head and a half more, and she was a scan, and her up and down glances seemed to me just struggling to look up at my face.
She looked up at me for a while and then opened her mouth.
“It is more ordinary than I thought.”
“Yes?”
“I heard that he won a fight with my older brother, so I thought he must be a bit more unique.”
Under the circumstances, that brother must mean Wilhelm. Seeing that he usually brings up this kind of story at the right time to say hello and say good things, it doesn’t seem like he’s a very good person. According to the story I had with Hestia before, he didn’t seem like a person with bad manners.
“Um…. How did that crazy person come across such a harmless-looking person….”
The princess muttered, placing her hand on her chin. That’s because she went completely mad and committed acts like kidnapping, believing only in her own power. You may be quite right in thinking Wilhelm is crazy.
It’s the first time I’ve ever seen someone who said they looked harmless to me. I’m not bragging, but my face looks pretty daunting. It’s rather Wilhelm’s side that looks harmless. Of course, only his face was harmlessly handsome on that side, but the inside was rotten and muddy.
I added an explanation about the story that she seemed harmless, as if she had roughly noticed my puzzlement.
“I’m not talking about looks, I’m talking about feelings. Well for you… , Okay. It doesn’t smell of ambition.”
The smell of ambition is not a rapper. I almost laughed involuntarily. But there is no word that can describe me better than this. I didn’t try to kill Wilhelm because I had any special ambitions or greed, but I ended up like this because I just did what my heart and conscience told me to do. In that sense, I am a harmless person.
“Yes, it is true that there is no such thing as ambition. It is enough for me to just marry my fiancé and live happily ever after.”
“Fiance? Ah… !”
Hestia, who had been waiting quietly by my side until then, nodded as if she had waited.
“Mikhail’s fiancé….”
“I know. Hestia von Gracia, right? She’s a well-matched pair. And this is Miss Cordelia von Deneb, and lastly, this is Miss Lily von Adamas.”
Before Hestia’s greetings were even over, the princess pointed not only to me and Hestia, but also to Cordelia and Seol-ah who were snooping around here behind us.
“We all know each other.”
“Yes? Yes.”
“Anyway, the two of you have suffered quite a bit from that human. Cordelia sister, no. How many times have you seen Miss Cordelia before? Miss Lily has never met Miss Lily in person because you were so cheap and turned around.”
The princess twirled her fingers beside her temples where she said she was that human. Everyone was bewildered by her overly unconventional remarks and gestures. Seol-ah, he said he wasn’t a strange person!
“Not everyone needs to be so rigid. You’re already on the same boat anyway, right? Talk a little more comfortably.”
“One ship means….”
“A raft aimed at overthrowing Wilhelm. No, it was originally a raft, but now it’s a sailboat thanks to you. The captain is Mikhail, you.”
“Me?”
From nob le mt l dot com
My expression rotted at the princess’s words. I didn’t make that expression on my own, but the muscles in my face moved on their own. Who wants to leave me in charge of group assignments? I am not the Flying Dutchman, and I have no intention of forcibly taking the captaincy. In the first place, the sailing ship she was talking about was not simply a group of five of us, but a faction that sided with her princess and tried to bring down her Wilhelm and establish her as her successor. But why the hell am I in charge of the captain there?
“No, how could I assume such an important position. Her Highness, the princess, does it. I will be satisfied as an assistant.”
“You are the only person who can actually deal a blow to Wilhelm and cover all the other characters. How are you going to get the stone stuck in the rolled stone?”
“For me, the opponent attacked first and I only responded. Shouldn’t Her Highness take the initiative? And, strictly speaking, it’s the stone we rolled.”
And after arguing for a long time, she and I agreed to jointly take the leadership position under the condition that I do not let everyone know that I am the leader. I don’t know what they were thinking about handing over the position of leader of their faction to me, but I couldn’t help it because each other’s opinions continued to run parallel.
“Please take good care of me in the future.”
“Please take good care of me.”
The princess and I shook hands. It was truly a stormy first meeting.
–