There's No Maid Class...?
"Huh? There's no maid class…?"
The Moonlight Chariot, bearing the moon upon its back, shone beautifully across a sky veiled in black curtains, while embroidery called stars stitched the dark canopy above.
While the Goddess of Night wrapped the world in a black veil for a curtain, the God of Sleep and Dreams wandered the earth, bestowing rest upon its people.
Until the Chariot of Glory that drove the sun raced across the heavens and the Goddess of Morning woke from her cradle to announce a new beginning, the people of the world melted away an entire day's fatigue in that fleeting interval and gained fresh strength to go on.
It was a gift the gods had granted humankind—grace itself.
Every living thing beneath this sky drew the power to face the world through that repeating rest the gods had made.
But while all the world enjoyed the gods' grace, there was one girl alone—only one—who, for having stepped into a forbidden domain never meant for mortals, could never receive the rest the God of Sleep and Dreams bestowed.
The fate of every existence under heaven took the form of iron chains forged by the Goddess of Destiny.
Each tiny link gathered into chains of middling size, and those chains in turn bound together into vast ones.
Thus the gods wove every fate in the world into one another until they completed a great sphere of destiny, and set that sphere of fate above the world.
The Goddess of Night and the Goddess of Morning, so that humans would never dare interfere with that fate, hid the sphere behind a veil of light and darkness called the sky.
At least the Goddess of Destiny painted constellations upon the veil the Night Goddess had drawn, permitting mortals a glimpse of fate's fragments—yet she granted no one the right to peer beyond the heavens themselves.
The domain the girl had trespassed upon was that beyond the sky: gazing upon the sphere of fate.
Her eyes were a sacred relic handed down through generations of the Federation, a relic the gods had never sanctioned.
Cyan Insomnia—the Temporal Eye.
A forbidden holy treasure that allowed one to look into the sphere of destiny. A sacred mirror that Teus, having betrayed the divine realm and descended to the earth, had passed to humanity together with magic.
That was the true nature of the power the girl had obtained.
As the price of eyes that dared show a mere human the truths of the world, the girl became a body abandoned by the gods—one forever denied rest.
A girl who had set foot in the domain of the gods by reading the future.
The people of the United Federation called that girl the Oracle and guarded her with the utmost care, yet no one could protect the Oracle from the divine punishment the gods themselves delivered.
Because she could not sleep, her body wasted day by day, and the scars called dark circles around her eyes only grew deeper.
How could a mortal wearing a human shape fully comprehend the fate of the world—fate even the absolute beings could not defy—simply by looking upon it?
Even for the Oracle, what she could see of the sphere of destiny beyond the sky was only the barest fragment.
But even that fragment was enough. The gods would never forgive a girl who so recklessly beheld the truths of the world.
"Philip."
Among the twelve nations that formed the Aios Federation stood the Kingdom of Deribant—or, as some called it, the Federal State of Deribant.
Nations of the continent outside Aios referred to the Federation's constituent countries not as kingdoms but as federal states. The people of those federal states, however, refused to accept the title. They wanted each of the states that made up their nation recognized as a country in its own right.
That was why the people of the Aios Federation never called Deribant a federal state. To them, Deribant was a proper nation, and the Oracle was a proper princess of Deribant.
"The night air is quite cold, Your Highness."
A boy whose talent had been recognized despite his still-young age—Philip Semira.
He served as the personal knight of Lura O. Bemus, princess of Deribant and the twenty-first Oracle of the Aios Federation.
Unable to sleep, Lura found the hours of night interminably dull, and so she often came out into the garden to walk beneath the night sky.
Even if she could not feel the rest the night brought others, being free to wander alone under the stars was its own kind of blessing, wasn't it?
Lura's nighttime walks had become a habit born of that thought.
"Philip, you still haven't gone to bed?"
"Because Your Highness is out wandering this cold night."
I could not sleep.
Even without him saying it, Lura knew at once what words Philip had left unspoken. After all, he was the one who had spent the longest hours of these lonely, frigid nights at her side.
"Still calling me 'Your Highness,' I see. Even Father already addresses me as the Oracle."
"That Your Highness is the Oracle means nothing to me. The one I swore to protect is not the Oracle of Aios, but the Princess of Deribant."
"Ah—really, you are such a…"
Lura found this boy named Philip thoroughly exasperating. On lonely nights he always drew near, slipping without a care into the deepest places of her heart—and yet he himself remained utterly unaware of the fact. How could that not be exasperating?
But to Lura, that very carelessness of Philip's was a brazier bringing warmth to a cold night. When she shivered alone in fear through the dark hours, the flame called Philip wrapped her heart in gentle heat.
So hot was that flame that merely standing beside him was enough to flush Lura's face a deep red.
"Your Highness. Are you still unsettled by that prophecy?"
Truly, this man was exasperating. Somehow he always saw straight through to the truths she tried hardest to hide.
"Yes. I'm anxious. I'm so anxious I can hardly stand it."
It had been four years ago.
For the briefest of instants—a span that could barely be called time—Lura's eyes, which ordinarily could see only fragments of the sphere of fate, had reflected its entire vista.
And looking upon that panorama of the heavens, Lura had, for the first time in her life, been forced to doubt the eyes she had always trusted so completely.
From a certain point in time onward, the chains of fate simply ceased to continue. Every chain had been forcibly shattered, scattering fragments as they broke.
What that meant was only one thing.
The end of the world.
She knew neither the precise future in which the chains would snap nor the catalyst that would cause it. The heavens had simply proclaimed a fixed apocalypse.
It had lasted less than a single second, yet Lura had never forgotten that sight.
And she had fallen into deep anguish over whether she ought to tell anyone what she had seen.
Even if she told them, could they stop the end of the world? Would she not simply be foisting her own anxiety onto others?
So Lura had spoken to no one of the sky she had seen that day. Only Philip knew that, from that day forward, she had carried a fear she herself could not name.
"So… would you hold my hand? Being alone is too frightening."
"Yes, Your Highness. Whatever Your Highness wishes."
This cold night was far too long to spend alone with that anxiety. And so Lura leaned on Philip.
Through the hands they clasped, a warmth softer and gentler than any blanket passed between them.
The Moonlight Chariot driven by the Goddess of the Moon granted Lura no rest. But the warm ember named Philip conveyed the comfort of her heart.
How could one even call a moonlight carriage that gave no rest the moon? To Lura, the knight who lit this dark night was the true moon itself.
"In the end, Teus, God of Fire, stole the magic that had been permitted only to the gods and scattered it across the earth. As the price, Teus became a being forever unable to return to the divine realm. But through Teus's grace, humanity obtained the mighty power called magic and established a true civilization of magic. And so people came to call Teus the Origin."
Thursday, April ninth.
Six days had already passed since the entrance ceremony.
"Hmm, and so people began counting the Teus calendar from the day humanity first encountered magic, but…"
Ding-dong-ding-dong.
Fifty minutes into the bald history teacher's tedious lecture, the bell finally rang to end the ordeal.
"…yet the debate over whether Teus can truly be called a god has remained a venerable point of contention from the very start of the Teus calendar to this day…"
But that bald head showed no intention of ending class. He ignored the bell and tried to press right on!
The lesson was dull enough as it was—now he meant to eat into break time as well? How utterly dreadful.
The students of Owl Class could only curse from a corner of their hearts that the last remaining tufts at the back of that teacher's head would fall out too. None of them dared voice a complaint.
"This is a signal from the bathroom!"
"Huh? Student Gross…?"
But there was one person who could not stand by and watch such an atrocity unfold.
Kelron Pong Gross.
Unable to endure another second of the lecture, he let out a war cry and bolted into the hallway. With the flow of the class so abruptly shattered, the teacher had no choice but to stop.
"When Student Gross returns, tell him he's on warning!"
The bald teacher stormed out of the classroom fuming—but Talon, who had been listening from a seat in the back, thought to himself that Kelron, who had sacrificed himself to bring peace to the class, might just be a true hero.
"Hey, I already told you on Monday, but don't forget you have to decide which classes you're taking by tomorrow."
Starting this year, Aegis Academy had begun running its courses in a different way than usual.
Core subjects like magic and mathematics had to be taken with one's own class, but the additional electives were chosen freely. Having to fill out a certain number of credits made the whole system feel more like a university than a high school.
Or did it?
I seemed to recall hearing, before I died, that high schools were going to switch to a credit system too. At the time I had already graduated, so it had nothing to do with me—yet here I was attending an academy that ran on credits. The feeling was strangely moving.
"Ugh, there are so many classes I don't know what to pick."
Once today's lessons were finished, the five of us gathered in the classroom to look over the course guide the teacher had handed out.
The group consisted of me, my lady, and Mr. Fel—the three of us who had known one another for some time—along with Miss Chern and Miss Rouge, whom we had grown close to more recently.
I still hadn't properly befriended the other five, much less held a real conversation with them, but only six days had passed. There would be plenty of chances yet to grow closer.
The friction between Mr. Dessant and Mr. Jerry was more serious than I had expected, which did concern me a little—but I still believed that one day we would all get along and become a friendly class.
In the original work I had played, the children of Owl Class slowly forged their friendship through all kinds of conflict. I did not believe the students of this Owl Class were any lesser than those characters. If they could grow close while crossing the walls of national borders, then we could surely manage the same.
"Blanc, what classes do you want to take?"
At my lady's call I stopped my thoughts and turned my gaze to the paper on the desk.
True to the academy's reputation as one of the continent's foremost institutions, the number of courses listed on the sheet slightly exceeded thirty. Considering that the first-year incoming class numbered a little under a hundred and fifty, it was quite an extensive offering.
This can't be…!
But as I stared at that course list, I could not help but be struck with shock.
There was no maid class…
And they call this a prestigious school…?
I rubbed my eyes in disbelief, but the words on the paper did not change.
An academy with no maid class…
How dreadful.