A Coincidental Entrance Ceremony (1)
I cleared it with my manager early that morning.
Since I was bailing on the same day, I fully expected to get an earful, but instead she just asked, "Weren't you planning on going anyway?"
Well, as long as it's approved.
I filled out paperwork in the visitor's room next to the Academy entrance.
Invited student: Charlotte Lowell. What else was on this form... Oh, they'll figure it out if I just write Lowell.
I was plugging in the fields at a leisurely pace when my hand stopped at the visitor name line, halfway through writing "Ar P—".
I'd rather not put my real name down.
Eretz Academy was called the most prestigious among the Magic City's already elite academies. Naturally, it was stuffed with the children of high society, and this round of visitors included plenty of senior officials as well.
Though they all look like random uncles off the street.
As family head, my father had built up quite the web of connections during his tenure as Security Minister. Thanks to that, I'd once been invited here and there to events as the eldest daughter of House Arbanka.
Such a pain, honestly.
Of course, I never went. Dinners with generals from neighboring units and my father's old friends? The atmosphere would inevitably be awkward and suffocating. Why would I bother?
Unless attendance was strictly mandatory, I dumped everything on Cedric. So few people would recognize my face, in theory.
But it's not like I have zero connection to the place.
That girl was starting at Eretz Academy this year as a freshman. Top of the entire incoming class, no less.
So much as writing my name or my family name here could let it slip that I had attended the entrance ceremony.
It wouldn't be a catastrophe. If people recognized me, they recognized me; I could simply deal with them.
But what a hassle.
The invitations had only just dried up thanks to rumors that "her body still hasn't recovered" and "she's taken ill again." If I showed up looking perfectly healthy, I'd be buried under another flood of invitations. I wanted to avoid that at all costs.
What to do.
I needed a suitable pseudonym, and while I was racking my brain for something that fit, I suddenly remembered what I was currently wearing.
"A guest of student Charlotte Lowell... Ar...panya? Is that correct?"
"Yes."
"Then I'll pass that along to the student."
I hung the visitor badge around my neck and took a seat in the waiting room to wait for Charlotte.
"Who on earth is 'Arpanya' supposed to be... Alpi—mmph?!"
I shot out and clamped a hand over Charlotte's mouth the instant she burst into the waiting room.
"It's Arpanya."
I whispered it right by her ear, then slowly let go.
"Al P—"
"Arpanya."
"Uh... uh..."
She stood there blankly for a moment, working it over, then understanding dawned and acceptance settled in as the corners of her eyes curved.
"And you actually got through with a name like that?"
"It's a stage name."
"Moving on, then."
I'd had help with the name from Zackina. The receptionist on duty happened to be a graduate researcher from the Department of Magical Biology, so the moment I dropped Zackina's name, they said they'd go check on something — and waved me straight through.
"Shall I introduce you as a maid of House Lowell?"
"A dispatched maid from Afternoon Lasagna, actually."
"Eck."
What's with the "eck."
Cover work or not, the fact remained that I had spent the past two weeks working at Lasagna, and I was working there still. A maid was a maid.
There was no need to invent a fake identity when a real one was on hand.
"Then I'm going to be getting some very strange looks from the others, you realize."
"How unfortunate."
Granted, it might put a few scratches on Charlotte's image, what with inviting a maid cafe employee to an entrance ceremony. But that was none of my concern.
So it's finally starting.
Standing on the stage in a line with the faculty, Siwoo swallowed dryly.
The Eretz Academy entrance ceremony. In Grand Mage Saga, it was a scene brushed over in a single line of flavor text. There wasn't even a prequel event, so the only clues to what had happened there were character dialogue and item descriptions.
While Sicario launches their terror attack, Morg disperses the drug.
Siwoo was a veteran with over ten thousand hours in GMS. By his deduction, every catastrophe in the story traced its beginning back to this very ceremony.
Terror and drugs. In the wake of that incident, several main characters became addicts or lost parts of their bodies. The original game's opening story had the protagonist recruiting these talents — promising stars who turned into dead weight overnight — to rebuild the Mage Tower.
I'm going to change the original story.
Possessing the "protagonist" of Grand Mage Saga, Siwoo rolled his eyes furiously, hunting for "her" — the presumed starting point of the terror attack.
"The top-scoring freshman of the entire incoming class."
Has to be the Princess.
"Saruvia Arbanka."
"What?"
Sky-blue hair. Sharp, cat-like eyes. The expressionless girl's frosty gaze pinned him in place.
"AHAHAHAHA!"
In the original story, the overall top freshman of Eretz Academy belonged to the Princess of the Department of Magical Analysis. No — even setting that part aside—
Saruvia is supposed to be Practical Magic.
Siwoo's eyes darted in a panic toward where the Practical Magic students were seated. Not at the front of the hall on the stage — the very first row of seats. Second place overall.
Charlotte took second? She got out-pulled by that insane firepower?
The confusion didn't stop there.
Why is the Chapter 4 boss standing up there?
A figure with no conceivable connection to Eretz Academy, materializing as a professor out of nowhere. And then—
Taking a step forward and laying eyes on the visitors' seating, Siwoo sucked in a strangled breath.
Alpinia Arbanka.
The very architect of the Eretz Academy terror attack was strutting brazenly through the visitors' seats.
What is this supposed to signify?
And in an event costume, no less. Wearing a cat-ear maid uniform.
The original storyline as Siwoo knew it had been blown to pieces a long, long while ago.
His mind went white.
There was a brief commotion when an instructor had to be carried off midway through the faculty introductions, but after that the ceremony proceeded without a hitch.
I swept my gaze around the visitors' seating.
I remember the faces, at least.
House Denis had a passing history with House Arbanka. The Ministry of Justice — one of the judges who presided over the criminals my department at Security hauled in was Margrave Denis himself.
Unlike our family, which had greased its way through generations until the gray had worn off on us, theirs was pure, unblemished white.
Impeccably fair. Incorruptibly clean. As I recall, that mile-high integrity of his was exactly why he and Cedric got along so poorly.
Me? Everything the Inspection Unit did either went on the books under the Investigation Division's name or was quietly buried inside the Security Ministry itself.
Barring the occasional social exchange between House Arbanka and House Denis, we had zero official entanglement. To me, Margrave Denis was simply one of my father's acquaintances.
Can't find him.
Picking one person out of a packed crowd was never easy. And I had no guarantee he was even here. He could be waiting outside the hall, or he might simply not have attended the ceremony at all.
The son was a degenerate, if I remember right.
Father and son surely weren't on good terms, so odds were decent the boy had skipped it. Or maybe the whole thing was something the son had brought on himself.
Well, either way — grab the Denis family's degenerate and shake him down, and something was bound to fall out.
What department was he in again? Magic... Magic... what was it?
The ceremony had already wound its way to the tail end. What remained was just the freshman campus meal tasting and a tour of the academy grounds — events nobody actually needed to attend.
I was quietly slipping away before the crowd stampeded for the exits when—
"Aaah—!"
Some student who was clearly not operating with a full deck decided to shriek in the middle of the closing remarks.
"Al—"
I stopped mid-step and turned around, and the boy grinned wide the moment he saw me.
"Pin—"
Whatever the loudspeaker was barking, the boy's ironclad determination never to let it slide was truly admirable.
Fine. You win, you wretch.
"So then. Care to explain yourself?"
"Hhhhehe hwhere ish he!"
Charlotte had her thumb thrust proudly skyward, so I gave her pinched cheek a little twist.
"Ahhoow, ahhoow!"
It didn't take long for her grin to melt into a tear-streaked grimace.
Wait, isn't that the girl from before? And who's next to her?
Whoa — those cat ears, isn't that the Lasagna uniform?
Her badge says Arpa... nya? What even is that?
The louder Charlotte wailed, the more attention we drew, so I sighed quietly and released her cheek.
"What were you actually trying to do?"
"Reconciliation!"
"That's meddling."
"I know."
She stared at me dead-on, clear-eyed and unashamed. Well, fair enough — she had been willing to turn her own school life into hell difficulty over it, after all.
"...Assuming your sister says no, that is."
"Yes."
Charlotte beamed and grabbed my hand.
"So where exactly is this girl?"
"No idea."
"I'm sorry — what?"
"We find her now, obviously."
Excuse me. Didn't you set up a lunch appointment with her yesterday?
"She just ate next to you without saying a word, though?"
So in the end, it seemed she'd simply kept glued to the girl's side and talked at her, ignored or not. The "appointment" had come about because Charlotte took silence as consent — a catastrophic, ultra-positivity circuit of a logic chain.
"And how do you plan to find her?"
"Um... vibe?"
"I see."
Charlotte seized my hand and hauled me off toward somewhere or other.
"You don't need to worry."
I let myself be dragged along, and before long we came upon the great fountain at the edge of the plaza.
"I'm actually quite good at finding people, you know."
"...Is that so."
I could only see her back, so her expression was hidden — but there, beside the fountain, stood that sky-haired girl.
"Oh, there she is! That's her!"
And then, in the direction Charlotte was pointing —
On the girl's opposite side stood some thuggish-looking delinquent.
"You! I hereby permit you to become my woman!"
"The Denis family's degenerate. Eric Denis."
Well, well.
What a coincidental meeting this turned out to be.