How to Become the One in Charge (10)
The commoner dormitory at the academy looked exactly the way I remembered it.
Compared to the halls where the nobility stayed, it was utterly shabby — and yet most commoners would have called even this luxurious.
Hanging around and taking it all in, memories of my school retreat days came drifting back one after another.
The moment I stopped in front of the dormitory, the students nearby hurriedly bowed their heads.
"Good day, Lady Aln!"
"Good day!"
They were clearly trying to stay composed, but the confusion they couldn't quite hide came through their voices first — bewilderment, more than fear.
Because these people didn't know the Lucy of the past.
It was true that the girl once known as Lucy Aln had built her infamous reputation by running wild through high society like a spoiled brat on a rampage.
Her name, passed from the mouths of countless gossips, had spread far and wide enough that even commoners had heard it at least once.
So normally, they should have been walking on eggshells around me, if only out of fear of my wrath.
Who knew the things Lucy did were so over-the-top that they'd actually tanked her credibility instead?
The problem was that everything Lucy had done flew wildly in the face of common sense.
She'd insulted the King by calling him livestock.
She'd told the First Prince he gave off creepy vibes and made her skin crawl.
She'd smashed the Church's holy statues while terrorizing the clergy.
And Lucy's misdeeds went on and on without end.
Any one of them alone would have been enough to leave people aghast that such a lunatic existed — and there were piles upon piles of them.
The nobles who'd suffered at Lucy Aln's hands in high society would shrug it off — well, from her, sure, that tracks. But from the perspective of commoners who knew the name only through rumor, things looked very different.
Some believed every word of it, while others doubted. Was it even possible for a single person to cause that much chaos, they asked?
The doubters interpreted the stories this way:
A fabricated scapegoat, invented to pin all of high society's scandals on someone anonymous.
Or else a pitiful creature so weak that she couldn't stop even the most absurd rumors from spreading — in other words, a victim being bullied by the aristocracy.
The first-years who shared my classes had watched my antics with their own eyes, so they knew the rumors held some truth. But the upperclassmen were different.
Having barely crossed paths with me during the first semester, hearing about me only in passing, they'd concluded: Ah, she must have been hated for possessing talent far beyond her years.
That belief was the entire foundation for the second-years getting first-years to mess with me.
They fancied themselves brilliant intellectuals.
No, wait, that's too charitable. Words like that don't begin to describe those idiots.
Rather...
Yeah. A few academy second-years with terminal cases of chuunibyou had judged me to be a lonely outcast being bullied by the nobility.
So they figured that even if something happened to me, I'd be too afraid to make a peep — and that's why they pulled their little stunt.
When I first heard about it, I was so dumbfounded I genuinely wondered what nonsense they were spouting.
<Isn't that a good thing? There are people out there dismissing your track record as baseless rumor. If they start speaking up louder, your reputation might actually improve.>
'Are you saying that sincerely?'
<Ha. Of course not.>
...This man, I swear.
'Is tormenting your great-great-granddaughter really that fun for you?'
<It's a blast. Always something new. I do hope you'll keep me entertained for years to come.>
There he goes again. Unbelievable.
Fine. I have no choice, then.
I'll just have to teach him the meaning of mutually assured destruction.
Having hatched a plan to deliberately leave sweat on the doorknob tonight and make the face-obsessed fox lick her lips, I stepped into the commoner dormitory.
"My lady?! This is a place for commoners only—"
The dorm supervisor near the entrance came rushing over in a panic, but there was nothing he could do to stop me.
Because the instant he reached out his hand to block my way, contempt filled my eyes.
"Aren't you being a little bold?♡ Sexual harassment in front of everyone?♡"
"...N-no! It's nothing of the sort! I would never—!"
"Shall I scream?♡ Kyaaaa~♡ This bald pervert is trying to assault meee♡ Just like that. How about it?♡"
"I beg your pardon! I failed to recognize my place!"
As the supervisor scrambled backward in terror, the path into the dormitory opened up before me.
Perhaps because of how loudly he'd shouted just moments ago, the eyes of every commoner inside the building were fixed on me.
Confusion. Fear. Despair. Doubt. Curiosity. Shock.
Taking in that cascade of emotions with a single glance and dismissing them just as quickly, I spotted someone gripping the doorknob of the second-floor meeting room.
Mane. Current leader of the Commoner Faction.
That one was neither a good man nor a bad one.
Mane was a merchant. Someone who chased his own profit without sparing a thought for right or wrong.
Whether or not he'd been involved in this affair, I couldn't say. What I did know for certain was that he was someone I could talk to.
No matter what variables arose, his merchant's instincts wouldn't simply vanish.
The moment Mane saw my face, he spun on his heel and tried to bolt, but I wasn't about to allow it.
Leaping from the first floor, I landed on the second-floor railing with almost insulting ease and cut off his escape.
'Going somewhere?'
"And where might you be headed? Don't tell me you're actually running from one tiny little girl? Wow. Total coward move. Don't tell me you still wet the bed, too?"
"...I would hardly be frightened of a mere lady. My eyesight is simply poor, that's all — I failed to take in your noble visage. My sincerest apologies."
The Great Sage's old phrase — what an absolute crock of shit — rose unbidden to my mind, but I let Mane off without pressing further.
We were about to spend a lovely time together in that meeting room, after all. No sense in starting things off ugly, was there?
I said nothing and simply smiled at him — and Mane dropped to his knees. He smashed his forehead into the floor. Hard enough to draw blood.
"I am truly, deeply sorry! I have no excuse, not even with ten mouths to speak with!"
Listening to lines that flowed out as smoothly as if he'd rehearsed them from a script, my head started to ache.
The angle of the forehead slam. The desperate crack in his voice. The lines delivered with such natural sincerity. Not a single detail was half-hearted.
First Luka, now this guy — how on earth did they get so good at groveling? Is there some academy somewhere that teaches this stuff?
"It is a true sin that I wasted your precious time, my lady! But if you would only grant me mercy — a moment to explain the circumstances—"
Woven between Mane's frantic pleas was a resentment aimed at someone other than himself.
If I'm going down, I'm dragging the rest of these bastards down with me. Sensing that resolve, I knew one thing for certain, whatever else might be unclear.
Mane had nothing to do with this.
Mane had been riding along on his parents' trading ventures since he was a small child.
And in doing so, he saw and learned a great deal. His father led a massive merchant company, commanding hundreds of people — and yet he never adopted a haughty attitude.
He was a man who could cast his own pride aside like a worn-out rag.
He bowed his head whenever it was necessary, and when a high-ranking noble was involved, he groveled so abjectly that even Mane felt a flicker of contempt watching him.
Once, when Mane asked his father why he had to go that far, his father answered:
'No matter how much wealth you hold, no matter how vast your influence — if you forget your place, it can all vanish in a single instant. Remember this well, Mane. You must always know exactly where you stand.'
After witnessing one merchant company swagger around flaunting its power and then disappear overnight, Mane etched his father's words into his heart and lived by them.
It was no different after he entered the academy with excellent marks.
He was certain that the moment he forgot his place in a place crawling with powerful people, he'd be buried without a trace.
But there were those who failed to understand this basic common sense.
They were arrogant.
My family has enough money to make lesser nobles grovel.
My father is a famous adventurer who leads a huge mercenary band.
I have talent worthy of recruitment by the Mage Tower itself.
The Second Prince promised to make me a knight.
Each of them, armed with their own excuse, had reigned like a king over the commoner crowd — and they couldn't shake the habit.
Back where they came from, they'd been treated better than anyone around them.
They took pride in having legitimately passed the gates of Soul Academy, a place even nobles struggled to enter.
They'd shown a measure of promise even while competing against their betters.
Those achievements had let them lord it over the commoner dormitory.
So they never bothered to remember their place.
This was also why Mane, who'd originally only participated in the Commoner Faction half-heartedly, decided to become its leader.
The moment he saw them giggling over their little "traditions" — pranking lesser nobles and chortling about how anything goes at Soul Academy — he knew that if he didn't get a leash on them, disaster was inevitable.
It wasn't out of any real fondness for his dormmates. He simply couldn't shake the feeling that if those idiots caused an unrecoverable disaster, the fallout wouldn't stop with them.
Everything commoners gained at Soul Academy, they gained purely at the sufferance of their betters.
If the powerful figures here ever flew into a rage and drew their swords, crushing the commoners would be trivial.
If those idiots screw up, I die too. Thinking this, Mane had desperately tried to keep them in line.
Unfortunately, the fools he'd tried to leash turned out to be idiots beyond anyone's imagination.
"...And that concludes my report."
Having finished his explanation based on the report delivered moments ago, Mane strained to read the expression of the girl standing before him with her arms crossed.
At first he'd been certain he was done for. Not anymore.
This Lucy Aln was far more reasonable than the stories had led him to believe.
Her coarse language and rude attitude? What else would you expect from a noble dealing with commoners!
Look! She could have reported this to the academy and turned the whole place upside down — yet she came here in person to hear him out!
She had every reason to fly into a rage, and yet she was quietly waiting for his explanation to end!
This alone proved she was a person of genuine character!
So it was possible.
If this played out right, he could save the commoners as a whole — and save his own neck along with them.
"So, Gnat Captain. According to you, those three pieces of trash — ugly inside and out — are the ones who led this little operation?"
"I certainly would not claim the others bear no fault, however..."
"Just answer the question I asked. Do I look as patient as you?"
"You are correct, my lady. Those three were the ringleaders."
From the moment he'd made that judgment call, Mane had been racking his brain desperately, and he'd resolved to cut loose the men he'd privately called the Idiot Trio.
It was true the other idiots had given their tacit consent — but the ones who'd actually spearheaded the whole scheme were those three.
As Mane nodded, Lucy Aln's gaze slid toward the Idiot Trio.
Watching their frozen faces, Mane prayed silently.
Please, please let those pieces of trash shut their mouths. Let them grasp the weight of what they've done and keep their traps closed.
He prayed more earnestly than he had at any other moment in his life — but perhaps because his faith had never run deep, his wish went unanswered.
"Hey, morons. Got something to say?"
"We formally request a duel."