Why Already?
The first real incident on the horizon would, of course, be the Chapter One story that followed straight on from the prologue.
"So I've still got a little time, then."
Once you cleared the prologue—the protagonist's enrollment—the story split according to class selection and faction choice. Class was simple enough; you picked whatever suited your preferred playstyle. Faction was another matter. Most people, as I recalled, went with the Royalist or Aristocrat factions, chasing the royal or noble routes that served as the story's marquee faces.
The real plot only kicked in after that. In other words, I had a window until the protagonist's trail became impossible to miss. Not that having time meant there was anything useful I could prepare. From the very beginning, there had been only one main event in Chapter One that I absolutely had to steer clear of.
"Benjamin…?"
Whether to call it perfect timing or a cheap narrative coincidence, I couldn't decide. I turned toward the voice, and there she was—the very person I'd just been thinking of—staring at me with bewildered eyes.
"Camilla."
The blonde beauty flinched at the sound of her name, spoken in a voice as cold as ice. Her name was Camilla Fletcher. She had been Benjamin Jenkinson's fiancée—and as the past tense would suggest, that was a story that had ended a long time ago.
"…How are you here… why… don't tell me that rumor was actually…?!"
The moment she saw the face she had always longed for, Camilla had called out to him without thinking. Now, startled by her own impulse, she muttered to herself. What rose in her mind was a rumor she had heard not long ago—one so unbelievable it had felt like a dream.
Could it really be true?
"If you have no business with me, I'll be going."
"W-wait!"
Having called him over only to fall silent, she caught Benjamin again as he naturally made to leave, and asked her question with extreme hesitation.
"W-why did you come to the school, Benjamin…? D-don't tell me…"
"Due to some error or omission, there was a problem with my middle-division graduation. I just finished arranging to stay on for one more year to make up for it."
The delivery was as blunt and businesslike as it could possibly be, and yet Camilla felt happiness spreading through her chest.
The rumor was true. I get to attend school with Benjamin again…!
For a woman who still dreamed of reuniting with him, it was a chance that bordered on the miraculous. That, however, was her thinking alone.
"Was that all you wanted to know? Then I'll be going."
"Ah…"
Benjamin turned on his heel. Camilla stood where she was and watched him recede until he was gone from sight.
I know. I know I have no right to want him.
It had never been her own will—but the result was the same. When he had needed someone most, she had not been there. She hadn't merely failed to stand beside him. She had been the one to let go of the hand she should have held onto.
The thought of herself, still wanting Benjamin after all of that, and of her parents, blinded by greed, quietly hoping for a reunion, made her stomach turn.
Even so… I don't want to do nothing and drown in regret anymore.
She would start with a single step. Slow. Careful. She didn't care if he rejected her. She didn't care if he ignored her, or if she became a laughingstock. Camilla Fletcher still loved Benjamin Jenkinson.
One step. Just one step.
It would be unbearably hard to take. But she had no choice except to begin again from there. Camilla steeled her heart.
Whoa. That caught me off guard.
My former fiancée, whom I hadn't seen in ages, had grown so terrifyingly beautiful I nearly jumped out of my skin. No—she'd always been pretty. But seeing her after so long, it felt like she'd become excessively, almost unfairly more beautiful than before.
Still, it was a relief we could talk normally, the way we used to. We'd known each other for a long time; it would have stung if she'd just ignored me.
After parting ways with Camilla, I reached the middle-division building, sat down on the bench by the entrance, and pulled a notebook from my pocket. It wasn't for writing or drawing anything in particular. I just doodled in it when I had time to kill and nothing better to do.
I passed the time that way until I heard students spilling outside after class. A little while after that—
"…Brother?"
The little sister I'd been waiting for spotted me and came over.
"Good work today. I figured if you didn't have anything else, we could head back together. I was waiting. How about it?"
"Of course! But what brought you to the school?"
As we walked toward the carriage, I gave Miya a brief account of why I'd been summoned so suddenly and why I'd be attending for another year. As expected, she was furious.
"That's ridiculous! It's strange enough that they're making an issue of something from two years ago, and it was the school's negligence in the first place!"
If we were going strictly by the rules, she wasn't wrong. I knew there were other factors at play, though—including the school's ability to force the issue—so I just shrugged.
"If they'd told me to redo both the middle and upper divisions, that would've been a problem. One year is fine."
"It is not fine! You're busy enough as it is, and now you have to juggle your studies on top of everything else…!"
Watching her stamp her feet in anger, I couldn't help smiling. She really was too good a sister for someone like me.
I'd more or less achieved the dream I'd had of succeeding as a writer. The most important thing left to me now was marrying Miya into a good house. Holding onto the noble title was part of that. If it were just me, the title wouldn't have mattered either way—but for her future, I would stake my life on keeping it. Wasting a year for that was nothing at all.
"Honestly. You're too soft sometimes, Brother… Did you run into anyone else?"
"Who?"
"Friends from your middle-division days, maybe?"
"You know I don't have friends."
It wasn't because I was a villain. Villains have friends too. I was just a loner.
"Ah. Right."
…Don't just accept that, though.
"I did run into Camilla, though."
"That woman?"
"Don't talk about her like that."
I knew why Miya looked at Camilla the way she did. After our parents died and House Jenkinson collapsed completely, House Fletcher had immediately broken off the engagement between Camilla and me.
"That's only natural. If you said you were marrying into a ruined house, I'd have stopped you too."
"Your premise is wrong, Brother. I'm not getting married."
That wasn't the conversation we were having, but she wasn't going to listen anyway, so I let it go. She and Camilla used to get along, once.
"…So what did you talk about with her?"
"Nothing much. Just a greeting, and that I'd be attending school again from now on."
"Hmph…"
I wished she'd stop frowning—wrinkles on that cute face would be a problem—but she didn't ease her expression the entire way home.
After a brief spring break, the new term arrived. Miya started as a first-year in the upper division, and I as a third-year, and we began commuting to school together. The original story would begin in earnest now, but I felt no anxiety. I remembered the rough timing of every event. As long as I was careful when those moments came, there wouldn't be a problem.
The main event of Chapter One, which followed directly from the prologue, would be even easier to spot. After all, it was a confrontation between the protagonist and "the villainess Camilla." A proper clash wouldn't happen until much later, so unless I was living completely cut off from the world, there was no way I'd miss it coming.
That was what I believed, right up until I passed through the academy gates.
Boring.
Having come up from the countryside to the Royal Capital, Crystal Baker—as of today, a first-year in the upper division of Animus Royal Academy—looked around with a listless face. It was the largest school in the kingdom, and yet to Crystal's eyes everything was dull, tedious, and thoroughly unimpressive.
If this is all it is, I should've just gone to Anima.
Crystal, whose talent had been remarkable enough to reach the Royal Capital all the way from a remote rural territory, had received offers not only from Animus Royal Academy but from Anima Private School as well. She had considered going to Anima, where only geniuses among geniuses were said to gather—but in the end, she had chosen the Royal Academy.
The trial enrollment was more underwhelming than I expected, and there are more people here.
More people meant a better chance that the kind of person she was looking for might be among them. Judging by the faces she saw on the way to school, though, that hope felt painfully remote.
"Haaah."
"What's wrong, Crystal?"
"I'm sad because I'm too much of a genius."
"…That's a worry this ordinary person still can't wrap his head around."
Walking beside her and answering like that was her childhood friend, Peter Fisher. Childhood friends, however, did not mean they were equals, or that the relationship was anything special. Both Crystal and Peter understood each other less as friends than as master and servant—and the one closer to master was, of course, Crystal. Without her consideration, dirt-poor Peter would never have made it to the Royal Capital, let alone enrolled at the Academy.
Even so, they had known each other long enough that Peter understood a little of the loneliness she carried, and he went on as if to comfort her.
"It's only the first day. Give it a little more time. Unlike our backwater territory, there are a lot of people here. There might be a genius like you among them."
"…Maybe."
To anyone listening in, the conversation would have sounded absurd. Both of them were completely serious. Crystal was no frog in a well who had never seen the ocean. She was a genuine genius. And that was precisely why she was lonely.
"Oh, that reminds me—I heard some noble who used to be incredibly famous is coming back to school."
"Yaawn… I heard. Some noble named Jenkinson or whatever, right?"
Crystal answered Peter's remark with a yawn and a halfhearted reply. Ever since she'd arrived in the Royal Capital, there hadn't been a day she didn't hear that name. She couldn't have forgotten it if she tried.
"He's a third-year upperclassman, apparently. Not interested?"
"Not even a little. They called him a genius at the middle-division level. And a guy who couldn't even graduate properly and crawled back to school can't possibly be the real thing."
From the perspective of someone who didn't know the details, it was a fair enough conclusion—and even if there had been more to the story, Crystal wouldn't have gotten her hopes up. She had seen the true colors of far too many people called geniuses, whether self-proclaimed or otherwise.
Countryside or capital, people make a fuss over nothing just the same.
Crystal made a point of not getting interested based on rumors alone, without seeing for herself, so she would have let it go at that. Not everyone felt the same way.
"Hold it. I don't think I can pretend I didn't just hear that."
A stinging, prickling bloodlust jabbed at the nape of her neck. Crystal turned around.
A blonde beauty, appearing from who knew where, was glaring straight at her.