Four Colors of Chaos
Lucia was furious.
Being sent to Aegis instead of the Kazin she had so desperately wanted was already enough to make her blood boil — and now, of all things, someone had the gall to show up late to the very first entrance ceremony of the academy everyone called elite.
If they had slipped in during the principal’s interminable speech, she might have let it slide. But why, of all moments, did they have to shatter the atmosphere while she was speaking?
Had this not been a public occasion, she would have thrown the latecomer out on the spot — or simply blasted them with a spell.
Forcing herself to stay composed, Lucia swept her gaze over the students filling the auditorium.
Most of them had grown restless at the sudden break in the mood, though a rare few still held their calm.
That one is the Noble Lion of Leonhart.
Among them was a black-haired girl watching the situation with quiet composure.
Noir von Leonhart.
People called her the Noble Lion of Leonhart. And true to the epithet, she looked thoroughly cold.
The young lady of Leonhart seemed to grasp the gravity of the situation as well; those icy eyes were fixed on the latecomer.
Disappointment was plain in the princess’s blue irises. No doubt she, too, was disillusioned by the standard of the so-called prestigious Aegis.
Relieved that at least one other imperial subject shared her disappointment, Lucia resumed her welcome address as freshman representative.
Noir was disappointed.
From the moment her acceptance to the academy she had so longed for was confirmed, she had been buzzing with anticipation — yet here they were, nearly at the end of the entrance ceremony, and not a single incident had occurred.
When the auditorium doors had burst open and a dust-covered girl had staggered in, Noir had been certain the event was finally starting.
But the red-haired girl turned out to be nothing more than an ordinary latecomer. No magical beasts. No mysterious assailants. Nothing.
Why?
Wasn’t that sort of thing simply common sense at an academy?
If the latecomer had at least been delayed by some tragic backstory, or been hiding some tremendous secret, Noir would have left the ceremony satisfied.
Instead, the girl stood there flushing red and fidgeting, looking for all the world like a perfectly ordinary student with neither secrets nor drama.
To think nothing would happen at all…
How was she supposed to explain this to Blanc now?
Noir cast a furtive glance at Bokja, whose mouth Blanc had sealed shut beneath her.
She had begged Blanc to stuff so many emergency supplies into Bokja — and now not a single one of them would be of any use.
Blanc had clearly been wondering why she was packing all that. How on earth was she supposed to explain it!?
As ever, Noir admired Blanc for always remaining so composed.
She loved the way Blanc could look so aloof and yet be so warm inside.
That was why Noir wanted to become like her.
She wanted to be the sort of person who maintained an elegant front while still looking after others.
She wanted to become a young lady worthy of Blanc’s loyalty — the young lady who suited Blanc better than anyone else.
Which made the present situation extremely awkward.
If Blanc asked why she had packed all those things, she would have absolutely nothing to say.
“Pardon? You thought magical beasts or ruffians would attack during the entrance ceremony…? Young miss, are you feeling unwell…?”
No! I could never bear that look from Blanc!
She could endure anything else, but she could not endure her image crumbling in Blanc’s eyes!
If Blanc ever looked at her with worried eyes and asked about the state of her head, she would hide under the covers that night and cry until dawn!
Fortunately — or unfortunately — Blanc already understood Noir’s true nature perfectly well.
She knew that Noir’s lofty act was pure scrub-level pretension, and she knew every secret of the double life Noir maintained behind everyone’s back.
Of course, even Blanc had never imagined that Noir would get so deep into her novels that she would pack anti-great-beast emergency supplies for an entrance ceremony. But even if she learned the truth, Blanc would never be disappointed in her.
Chelln felt wronged.
She had arrived in Lyceum the day before, taken lodging close to Aegis, and finished preparing for school earlier than anyone — and still she had been late.
Late on the very first day at Aegis, the academy renowned as one of the greatest on the continent.
Chelln dreaded what the other students must be thinking of her.
The imperial princess at the podium was already glaring as if she wanted her dead, and snickers of mockery rose from every direction.
All she felt was injustice.
If she had been late through her own carelessness, she might have accepted it. But a kindness she had offered on impulse had come back to her like this.
She should have just kept walking.
She should have left that white-haired girl alone and gone on her way!
Yet no matter how bitterly Chelln protested her innocence, no one would ever know the truth.
The root of the trouble had been the lightening magic she cast on herself to save the girl.
Her suddenly weightless body had been flung far from the scene, leaving her with no way to prove she had been a victim of the accident.
She had woken in an empty alley.
If she had simply fainted at the scene, Association staff would have informed Aegis of what happened. But with not even evidence that she had been struck by a carriage remaining, there was nowhere for her grievances to go.
As the Holy Swordswoman of the Holy Kingdom of Bargan and an exchange student, she had wanted to leave a good first impression. Instead she had ruined everything on day one.
“Chelln, when you go to the academy, don’t cause any trouble, and make lots of good friends.”
“Deputy Commander, please. Do you take me for a child?”
I’m so sorry, Deputy Commander…!
Chelln closed her eyes and pictured Deputy Commander Atinus’s face.
If he heard she had been late on the first day and already made a bad impression, what would he say?
He would pat her on the back and insist everything was fine, of course.
It was a day that made her miss even the tedious daily life of the Holy Kingdom.
The tedious entrance ceremony finally ended, and my young miss and I were heading to our assigned class.
A certain latecomer had briefly disrupted the flow, but otherwise the ceremony had concluded without incident.
“Young miss, your expression doesn’t look well. Is something the matter?”
“Hm? Ah, it’s nothing.”
Ever since the latecomer had entered, my young miss’s face had remained troubled, and I was growing concerned.
What could be wrong?
Had something at the ceremony disappointed her?
I needed to think carefully.
As a maid, I absolutely had to understand why my young miss was in a foul mood.
First: she had been looking forward to the entrance ceremony.
Then she had been disappointed by it.
That meant either the thing she expected never happened, or the result fell short of her hopes.
So what, exactly, had she been expecting?
I retraced her actions before the ceremony began.
She had increased her study load beyond the usual amount, stuffed strange objects into Bokja’s mouth, and secretly read more novels than usual.
Hm? Novels?
I Became an Academy Arsonist.
The title of the novel she had been reading in secret not long ago suddenly surfaced.
Those stories almost always opened with the characters being forced into a fight under the pretext of an entrance exam. Could my young miss have been hoping for exactly that sort of situation?
Ah. So that’s why.
At last I understood why she had been disappointed by the entrance ceremony.
And, while I was at it, why she had crammed so many items into Bokja’s mouth.
She must have absorbed some rather mistaken common sense while reading those novels.
It never made sense in the first place.
What kind of school would be insane enough to demand students fight magical beasts on the very first day?
True, academies sometimes sent students to suppress bandits or magical beasts under the name of practical training — but surely not from the entrance ceremony itself.
Beast combat techniques were part of the academy curriculum; forcing students to fight before those lessons even began would be no different from demanding a child who could not play a single instrument compose a symphony on the spot.
Hmm. Should I point this out to her?
I had known for a long time that my young miss read rather peculiar novels.
That the third through fifth shelves of the third bookcase on the right side of her room were packed with academy-titled novels, and that the first and second shelves of the fourth bookcase held everything else — that was a secret only I knew.
Since she wished to keep it private, I had been pretending not to notice. But watching her confuse fiction with reality was genuinely worrying.
That said, I could hardly announce now that I knew her secret and ask her to cut back on her reading.
If I did, she would almost certainly scream into her blankets and obliterate the poor bedding.
I needed to think carefully.
A way to keep my young miss away from harmful novels without wounding her feelings.
No — was separating her from novels even the right approach?
In the past, for the sake of homemaker masters who wanted a brief escape from childcare, I had once obtained a babysitter’s license.
What I learned then was that yanking a child away from games or comics the moment they grew fond of them only backfired.
Trying to pry my young miss — whose days were already filled with nothing but study and training — away from recreational novels did not seem wise.
What I needed to consider, then, was not how to separate her from novels, but how to help her enjoy them in a healthy way.
So what method could that be…?
“Hey, you crazy bastard! If you’re so unhappy about it, why don’t you just become a maid yourself!”
Oh.
Suddenly I remembered the face of the friend who had once delivered that shocking revelation to me.
That’s right. If I was dissatisfied with recreational novels, I could simply write recreational novels myself, couldn’t I?
I would write novels my young miss could safely read.
To think such a simple solution existed!
Thank you, my friend!
I’ll even pretend the time you suddenly confessed to me the moment you saw me in a maid uniform never happened!