To Me, Clubs Are War
“W-what is this…?”
“A maid uniform.”
“Excuse me…?”
The next morning.
Deed had sought Blanc out at the crack of dawn, and now stared at the maid uniform she held out to him.
Every stitch was cut from expensive fabric, the craftsmanship as refined as the uniform Blanc herself wore.
“I’m supposed to put this on…?”
“Is that not obvious?”
“I-is it…?”
“First you will change into the maid uniform. Then we shall start with cleaning, step by step…”
“Cleaning…”
Deed could only stand there in bewilderment. He had come for assassin lessons—so why was he suddenly taking maid lessons?
“Um… Master…? Something about this feels a little strange…”
He stole a glance at Blanc, meaning to ask what on earth was going on, but the sight of her—still radiating a noble air even in a maid’s dress—sealed his mouth shut.
What does being a maid have to do with being an assassin… Wait. Could it be…?!
Deed studied Blanc’s uniform from head to toe with sudden intensity. The ankle-length skirt and long sleeves were perfect for concealing hidden weapons. And if one considered how easily a maid could slip unnoticed into a high noble’s estate… was the profession not the ideal cover for an assassin?
Cleaning would teach you the layout of every room. Cooking would let you slip in poison. And once you earned recognition as a maid, you could wander the manor freely under the excuse of performing your duties!
As expected of Master!
So that was her plan all along!
Deed closed his eyes and pictured it: an assassin in a maid’s dress. Beneath a soft wash of moonlight over a rose garden, a maid soared through the air, drawing hidden blades and cutting down her enemies. Her true identity—an agent of the assassin house Sabakh… After finishing the target, she would shed the maid uniform, hide her face beneath a hooded cloak, and slip away from the blood-soaked manor…
“Keheheh… Kwahahaha! Yes! That’s it! That’s cool as hell!”
“Deed-ssi?”
“Yes! I’ll change at once, just as Master wishes!”
Blanc watched him snatch up the uniform and bolt for his room, and thought to herself that before she turned Deed into a proper maid, she would first have to cure that vulgar, theatrical laugh of his.
Club activities.
In other words, after-school clubs.
Another flower of campus life—one of its greatest attractions.
At Aegis, clubs fell into two categories.
The first were the official clubs, formally recognized by Aegis itself. Naturally, since the academy sponsored them directly, most of the mainstream clubs belonged here. But official status came with a price: they had to deliver the results Aegis demanded, or that status would not last.
The second were the unofficial clubs, unrecognized by the academy. Lack of recognition did not make their activities illegal. Without direct funding, however, they were inevitably smaller and less active than their official counterparts.
Aegis interfered not at all with unofficial clubs, which meant they enjoyed far greater freedom. A few outfits—like Deed’s Darkthorn Club—deliberately remained unofficial for that very reason, but they were a tiny minority.
Unofficial clubs clawed for promotion to official status. Official clubs, in turn, had to keep producing results if they wanted Aegis’s continued patronage.
In short, club life was nothing less than war between clubs.
“Tea ceremony club! How about the tea ceremony club?!”
“Reading! Come read with us!”
“YO, YO, bro—join us and cultivate a whole new culture of music.”
And now—
As the first-years finally settled into school life, club recruitment campaigns erupted across campus in a scramble for fresh blood.
Students who looked like first-years were bombarded from every direction with flyers; some clubs tried to drag recruits in by force and promptly earned student-council sanctions. Amid the utter chaos, even the faculty found fire at their feet.
“So! Which clubs has Princess Lucia taken an interest in?!”
“The Lightning Magic Club, the Fencing Club, and the Equestrian Club!”
“And the royal princess?”
“She recently accepted flyers from the Earth Magic Club and the Archery Club!”
Lightning magic and earth magic.
Attributes so opposed that lightning mages and earth mages had been famous enemies for generations.
And each princess was about to join a club of the opposing side?
Unacceptable!
This had to be stopped!
“Kgh! No! Tell both clubs that if they take in the imperial and royal princesses, their funding will be slashed!”
“We already told them—and they still mean to accept them!”
“What?! They don’t need the activity funds Aegis provides?! Why?!”
“They seem to have decided that the future value of ties to the imperial or royal household outweighs any sponsorship money!”
“Son of a—!”
While Aegis’s teachers were preoccupied with the upcoming field exercises, an ambush called “clubs” had risen from below!
Teachers hoping no war would break out in Lyceum?
As if the students cared.
Aegis’s clubs were packed with madmen desperate to keep their groups alive and climb into the mainstream, and the warriors who hungered for victory in the war of club competition were in no position to be picky about means.
“Kyahahaha! Magic Engineering Club! Come to the Magic Engineering Club!”
Suddenly a girl’s voice boomed from the sky outside the windows.
The teachers mid-briefing in the conference room rushed to look, and beheld the culprit:
“Now! Everyone, into the world of magic engineering!”
A short-haired black-haired girl soared past on a hang glider, megaphone in hand, advertising at full volume!
At the sudden propaganda blitz from the Magic Engineering Club, students who had been recruiting one another froze and stared up at the sky.
“Nikol Berua…!”
Nikol Berua.
Disciple of Caby, the empire’s genius magic engineer who had helped invent the railway…!
Inside Aegis she was already known as a walking disaster; the theory that something catastrophic followed wherever she went was practically scientific fact. Just look at her recent record: on Aegis’s entrance-ceremony day she had been testing an “automatic carriage” invention in a nearby street and caused an accident! Thank goodness no one had been hit—had someone been run over, the already high-stakes ceremony for this year’s new students could have been a complete mess!
By any reasonable standard she deserved expulsion as a hopeless case, yet her absurd talent and results made her Aegis’s most painful thorn.
“Behold these magnificent wings! Join the Magic Engineering Club and you can freely soar through the beautiful skyyyyy—?!”
Boom—!
Nikol, still gliding and basking in the students’ attention, was suddenly struck by an explosive arrow and shot out of the sky!
Teachers’ eyes whipped toward the arrow’s origin—and there stood a delicate-looking Eastern beauty, bow in hand, regal and composed.
“For hunting flying pests, nothing surpasses archery. Why not lose yourselves with us in the world of the bow?”
“Hwahahaha! Forget that trivial archery nonsense—come to the club for real men! The Muscle Club!”
“What did you just say?”
Sparks flew between the tank-topped, muscle-bound male student and the Eastern girl. Both moved at once and launched attacks at each other; the collision lit a fuse, and other clubs already simmering began to escalate in turn.
To reiterate: club competition is war.
Aegis’s professors had witnessed club clashes many times before, but this time the scale was on another level entirely…!
And of course it was. This year’s first-years averaged so far above every previous class that they were practically in a league of their own!
The teachers should have expected a war to recruit even one more of them!
And here lay one further problem!
“Ahem… Nothing calms the heart quite like playing an instrument. If Her Highness the Princess were to join a club that performs music, who knows? She might enjoy a far more stable life at Aegis… So I suggest recommending the piano club, as the representative of all instruments…”
“Hoho, but a piano is so large one can never play it whenever one wishes, can one? Better the violin club…”
Even among the teachers—who normally worked as one to keep the peace at Aegis—small internal rifts began to open!
Several Aegis instructors also served as advisors to official clubs. Naturally they wanted their own clubs and disciples to thrive. In the eyes of those advisor teachers burned the same fierce will to land a big catch.
“Get them out! Get those two out of here this instant!”
Sensing the seeds of faculty civil war, the vice principal raised his voice and threw the two teachers out; the pair, now companionably expelled, escalated their argument all the way to Aegis’s training grounds.
“Haha…”
In the midst of the pure gale of madness, Agram had lost all words. He simply set everything down and stared blankly at the spectacle.
What else could he do? He might be a senior teacher at Aegis, but he lacked the authority to mediate among the other academy instructors…
Agram glanced sideways at Willy, homeroom teacher of Owl Class.
The only human here who could silence the faculty in a single breath—
“Oh, great fortune.”
—was currently devouring a bundle of fortune cookies from the school store and checking his luck.
Beneath Willy, who was celebrating a “great fortune” draw, lay a sea of papers stamped “great misfortune,” but Agram saw no reason to point it out.
He had already reached enlightenment.
“Blanc, which club are you thinking of joining?”
Following Blanc’s advice, Noir had come to school early that morning and watched the road from Haas to Aegis slowly drown in madness.
To Noir, who knew nothing of Aegis’s internal affairs, this frenzied club-recruitment war simply looked like a page of youthful passion.
“I have no particular club I wish to join, but I have been considering founding a Maid Club.”
“A Maid Club?”
“Yes. A club whose purpose is to clean Aegis and assist anyone in need—so that we may become everyone’s maid.”
“That does sound rather nic—”
Wait. Everyone’s maid?
Blanc is my exclusive maid…
I know it’s just a figure of speech, but I have no confidence I could bear seeing Blanc as anyone else’s maid…!
And if things go wrong, won’t the time I get to spend with her shrink, too?!
“B-Blanc…? Um… could you maybe not do that club? Let’s look for a club the two of us can do together…?”
“Yes. If that is my lady’s wish…”
And so Noir and Blanc decided to search for a club they could join together.