How to Become the One on Top (8)
The setup itself was simple. The paperwork I had submitted had gone missing. Looked at plainly, you could chalk it up to getting lost somewhere in the shuffle during processing.
Course registration hadn't even closed yet, so all I had to do was fill out another form and turn it in. And yet, ever since Luka had mentioned that the commoners hated me, this tiny little incident kept nagging at the back of my mind.
That small thread of suspicion grew steadily as the day wore on, fed by a string of little misfortunes. The food I'd meant to eat for lunch came out burnt. I got summoned to a place I had no business being called to. The moment I sat down in my favorite chair, it collapsed under me.
One mishap piled atop another, until by evening I was half-remembering the commoner storyline from the game—a plotline that should have had nothing to do with the person I was now.
So I decided to go back to the beginning. To where the missing registration form had started it all.
Soul Academy offered jobs to its commoner students. Not because it was short-handed—it existed to help commoners enrolled at the Academy who were struggling financially.
The cost of living in the Academy, dominated as it was by the children of nobility, and in the surrounding streets, was simply beyond what an ordinary commoner could bear. Yes, there was a scholarship, but in reality it barely covered three square meals a day. Buy even a single piece of equipment and you'd have to resign yourself to starving for a week. Commoner students who couldn't land support and had to live on scholarship money alone carried poverty with them like a second shadow.
So the Academy had prepared jobs for these students—jobs with far better conditions than anything they'd find elsewhere. The work was easier, the pay better, and it came with all sorts of perks that made Academy life smoother, so commoner students worked on campus rather than braving the world outside.
Naturally, the Academy never assigned students anything specialized. What they did was mostly simple, tedious paperwork. Sorting through course registration forms, for instance.
<That's quite the leap of logic, lass. Might it not simply be that misfortune followed ye about for a single day?>
'I know. But I want to see it with my own eyes.'
I thought the same way Halbae did. If I were a normal person, I'd have shrugged and wondered what I'd done to deserve today. The only reason I was reacting this jumpy was that the game contained a quest with strikingly similar content.
Play a commoner character in Soul Academy, and sooner or later you'd run into hazing from the upperclassmen. Everything from petty harassment to outright serious abuse—resisting and fighting back against it was the whole first arc of the commoner route.
And what announced the start of that arc was, precisely, the disappearance of a course registration form. Doesn't that sound familiar? Misfortunes that began the very moment I learned my form had gone missing.
I hoped this was pointless worrying. But if my guess was right—if some lunatic who didn't know their place had decided to mess with me—then somebody ought to teach them exactly who it was they'd touched.
The professor overseeing administrative affairs recognized my business the moment she saw my face.
"Lady Alrne. Have you come about your course registration documents?"
While the professor fawned over me—clearly well aware of my reputation—I studied the students in the back. One man, head bowed behind a partition, absorbed in his paperwork. One girl, fidgeting restlessly because I was standing right there.
Both faces were familiar. Run enough quests around the Academy and you naturally end up visiting the administrative office a lot. The girl in particular was significant enough to have an actual name attached to her.
"She was tidying up and checking the submissions, you see, and got quite the shock. To think you never turned in your form, my lady."
'I distinctly remember submitting it.'
"What a scatterbrain of a professor. I did turn in my form. Care to stop treating me like an idiot?"
"...Did you, now? My apologies. It seems something was lost along the way."
The administrative professor hadn't been at her desk when I submitted my paperwork. Knowing that full well, I'd pointed her out first anyway—smooth the way for what came next.
'You handed it to her, didn't you?'
"I gave it to that dim little brat over there. Hey. Squirt. Remember?"
Called a squirt by someone smaller than herself, Velma floundered, unsure what answer was expected of her. Knowing her timid nature, I kept my mouth firmly shut and waited. But all she did was sweat, her face drained to a ghostly white.
"I remember it."
The answer came from behind the girl. The man who'd been working through his papers rose from his seat and spoke up.
"Lady Alrne visited on the very first day of course registration."
"Vitz. Is that really true?"
"Yes. Absolutely certain. Lady Alrne is the sort of person who captures the eye effortlessly. One does not forget."
As the man's testimony continued, Velma's face—which had gone from deathly pale to an ugly blotchy purple—now flooded completely black.
Watching her, I nearly burst out laughing despite the fact that this was the moment to be angry. No, seriously? I'd assumed the game CGs exaggerated, but her skin color actually changes like that in real life?! Her reactions are hilarious. She's got such a punchable face.
"Velma. You remember it too, don't you?"
"Uh... ah. Um. That is. Well, you see..."
Having barely recovered my composure, I listened to the two of them trade words, and a strange sense of déjà vu washed over me.
"Don't tell me you lost it?"
That's nearly identical to the in-game dialogue. So close I half-wondered if they were reading from a script. Which would mean my guess had been right, didn't it?
God. Who'd have thought I'd start as a noble and get roped into the commoner storyline anyway.
"Velma. Is what Vitz says true?"
Barely had Vitz finished pressing her before the administrative professor picked up where he left off.
What she meant was obvious. This incident was Velma's personal mistake. This naïve-looking girl had lost the paperwork, and was keeping her mouth shut out of fear of being scolded for it.
"...Uh. That's. I..."
"This is no small matter, Velma."
"I am so terribly sorry, Lady Alrne. It seems a mistake was made somewhere along the way."
Any ordinary noble would have swallowed their bait whole. They'd have decided a clumsy commoner had botched things, full stop. A kind one might have told them not to let it happen again; an angry one might have raised their voice—but either way, the brunt of it would fall on Velma alone. At worst, the professor and the boy beside her would have caught a lecture about managing their people properly.
After all, this was inside Soul Academy. This was the place that had, at least on paper, enshrined the principle that all students were equal. Using noble status to have their heads was off the table.
But I was far from an ordinary noble. I was a rotten-water veteran who had seen Soul Academy's story through every playable status. Which meant, naturally, I knew all about the circumstances behind these people too.
Even among those who belonged to the commoner faction, not all commoners were created equal.
How could a farmer who worried about his next meal possibly be the same kind of commoner as someone of a standing so grand even nobles handled them with care? Those differences showed themselves just as plainly inside the Academy's commoner circles.
Those born into reasonably good families. Those with refinement. Those with some standout talent. Such people were treated favorably within the faction, and everyone jockeyed to form good relations with them.
But those on the opposite end were different. They were discriminated against—more savagely than nobles ever despised commoners. Told that people like you were the reason commoners got looked down on. Exposed to endless hazing.
Velma's case was exactly that. Born a farmer's daughter and lucky enough to be admitted to Soul Academy, she had become a target for contempt and bullying.
In the game, the missing paperwork had not been Velma's fault. The commoner man she worked with had ordered it, and Velma had been left with no choice but to obey. And so she became the treacherous wretch who betrayed her own friend.
And what had the administrative professor been doing all this while?
Among the commoner students who worked at the Academy, there were cases of those who went on to be employed there permanently. The professor before me was one such person. He had worked here as a student, been hired on staff, and risen to administrative professor. He knew exactly what went on inside the Academy's commoner faction—and had often lent the faction a hand in its little schemes.
It had been that way in the game's missing paperwork incident, too. The man had gotten the professor's blessing in advance, and the professor had granted it—that was the only reason such a thing could happen at all.
Would it be the same this time?
I didn't know yet. In my heart I was half-convinced, but no concrete evidence had surfaced.
I had watched the story diverge from the game more times than I could count, so I swallowed the urge and refrained from slapping the smile off the administrative professor's face. If he happened to be innocent, my rating—which had climbed, however slightly—would come crashing right back down.
Other people's opinions aside, shouldn't I have a reason that could justify calling violence justified, at least to the people around me?
I do NOT want to see Joy looking at me with contempt!
"We are truly sorry, my lady."
"However can we apologize enough..."
"Do you two actually think your voices are pretty?♡ Listening to you feels like my ears are getting cursed?♡"
"...I beg your pardon?"
"Blah blah blah, shut up already♡ Can't even understand that? Is your intelligence lower than a goblin's?♡ Though looks-wise you don't even measure up to a goblin♡"
The two of them trembled at the brutal verbal beatdown, but they couldn't lash back. The gap in our standing made that impossible.
Having silenced the irritating noise, I took Velma's chin—her hands busy painting watercolors across her own thighs—and forced her head up.
"Even your face looks like a scatterbrain's, little squirt♡ Fufu♡"
The Mesugaki skill's provocation is absolute. This taunt works even on opponents far stronger than me—it pisses off even inanimate objects until they have no choice but to glare back.
"How did this thing get into the Academy?♡ I know it's a total joke of a school, but still♡"
So then—what happens if you provoke a meek little girl?
"Apologize to everyone else who got into the Academy♡ Say sorry for being trash like you sharing the same halls as all these wonderful people♡"
What kind of result do you get when you provoke a girl so frightened she can't say a word and bursts straight into tears?
"Sorry you have to attend the Academy with a dimwit who can't even hold onto a single piece of paper—go on, apologize with your withdrawal♡"
"I didn't make any mistake! I never—!"
The voice burst out of Velma, hoarse from holding back her sobs. Her eyes went round with shock at her own outburst—but that alone was enough.
Looks like this place wasn't so different from the game's story after all.