Chapter 33
Chapter 33
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 33
Chapter Title: Our Brothers Aren't Villains!
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“Brother Mayches, is your sister okay?”
Calipan muttered blankly.
Silence hung over the table for a moment, and his friends kept their heads down.
Yan couldn’t hold back and threw a piece of bread at Calipan.
“Cut it out.”
Bamper furrowed his brows and smiled.
“Calipan, you sound half like Mayches now.”
Daluh had long since ignored Calipan’s words and was asking Jayhan if he’d seen the bird that had just flown past the window.
Calipan bristled.
“Do you have any idea how I felt? It was like fighting alongside a comrade, the subjugation finally over, only for him to reveal a fatal wound he’d hidden because he didn’t want to be a burden, then collapse.”
Jayhan looked at Calipan.
“You’re still hung up on that?”
For a split second, last night’s dream flashed through Calipan’s mind. But since it was subconscious, Calipan himself had no idea.
Instead, his eyes widened in surprise at Jayhan’s words.
“…Am I that worked up, if even you’re saying it, Brother Jayhan?”
Yan threw another piece of bread. Just go home.
Calipan caught it blankly. Then he started tearing it into little pieces.
“Even so, she spat up blood with that tiny body of hers… Is she really okay?”
Seeing that, his brothers acknowledged Calipan wasn’t in his right mind. Let’s humor him. He said it felt like losing a comrade.
Yan lay on his bed, staring up at the ceiling.
Perhaps because he’d been listening to Calipan’s constant “Is she okay?” chant, his own mind was a mess.
The image of the pale-skinned siblings with ash-gray hair kept forming and fading along the patterns in the ceiling.
He hadn’t seen the scene in the Second Magic Lab where she’d supposedly fought like a veteran soldier (Calipan’s opinion), but just hearing about it sent chills down his spine.
Mayches’s eyes must have gone blank for a second there—how on earth had that situation been smoothed over?
By the time Yan had arrived at the Second Magic Lab, Aiel was already locked in a desperate struggle to keep her fading consciousness.
So he hadn’t witnessed Aiel overwhelming Mayches with her tears, or the barrage of nonsense that came spilling out of Mayches in knee-jerk response to those tears.
But he had seen this.
‘Kek!’
…Anyway, up until then, he’d thought the brother was crazy, but like siblings often are, the sister turned out to be just as recklessly bold.
Yan chuckled. Then he grew anxious again.
“It’s the last day today…”
Mayches’s sister was probably collapsed and out of it right now. …Would she even think about personally writing and submitting that letter of recommendation amid all that?
That was right. Despite the unexpected long journey, the reason Aiel had come to the academy in the first place was none other than that recommendation letter.
The perceptive Yan had never forgotten Aiel’s original goal.
“…With the person herself collapsed, indirect recommendation is completely off the table.”
Doria didn’t know, and thus neither did Aiel, but there were two ways to submit a recommendation letter.
The first was the “indirect recommendation” method Aiel had attempted.
The applicant sends the recommender’s documents to Repitelips, and Repitelips sends them back to the recommender for confirmation and signature. That was the process.
It was circuitous and cumbersome, but perfectly suited to the royal class lifestyle.
By not stepping forward rashly and simply signing with dignity, recommenders could maintain their air of upper-class nobility and mystique.
“But she snuck Mayches’s seal ahead of time and stamped it on the indirect recommendation.”
Yan snickered.
Aiel, who’d lived in a world of capital and efficiency, never dreamed such a pointless double procedure existed.
She figured since there was a signature line, she naturally had to get it herself and submit it, so she easily lured Mayches out of the study and slammed the seal down in the gap.
“So it’s no different from a direct recommendation.”
Yan couldn’t hold back and burst out laughing.
The second submission method was “direct recommendation,” also known among people as the “golden sealing wax.”
It was also the method Mayches had tried to use to salvage the mess he’d made.
It was just golden wax now, but when this method was first used, it was real gold. Quite the creative bribe.
Back then, they’d even melt a fist-sized lump of gold to apply it, so for the purpose of “sealing,” the wax covered an absurdly wide area.
Luxurious ugliness—it was often how the upper class showed off.
Born from this background, direct recommendation—unlike indirect, which simply meant “I have this connection”—was interpreted as “I vouch for this person’s talents and character.”
The seal was stamped by the recommender in advance and sent.
Naturally, it carried far more weight and pressure than indirect.
The upper class, who didn’t want to take on responsibility, rarely used it.
Moreover, if someone gave a direct recommendation and the applicant turned out unsuitable, it was a humiliation for those who preferred elegantly signing twice over—proof that even their fuss wasn’t enough.
“…Hmm.”
After agonizing, Yan finally got out of bed.
He trudged over to his desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a document envelope sealed with golden wax.
With five humans around, surely one would write a recommendation.
…But figuring that casual thought might lead to no one doing it, he decided to lead by example this once.
And with one hour left until the enrollment deadline.
Yan arrived at the entrance to Repitelips’s admissions office and came to an abrupt halt.
Someone had called out to him from the third floor of the admissions building.
Daluh was leaning on the windowsill, laughing as if he’d achieved enlightenment.
“Yan! What’s the most worrisome thing in the world?”
“…….”
“Right. My friends.”
The others nearby chimed in too.
“Brother! If you were coming anyway, why not earlier?”
“Come on, now that we’re all here, shall we head down?”
Yan scanned them all.
Even Jayhan was holding a document envelope stamped with golden sealing wax…
Yan froze in disbelief, but snapped out of it when his overly worrisome, lead-by-example best friends appeared on the first-floor stairs.
“Hey, all of you, calm down.”
He didn’t mind the gossip about fussing over directly recommending a friend’s little sister.
But all of them trooping in to submit direct recommendations was a bit much.
Yan blocked their path.
“No need for all five—just one is enough.”
But something was off. His friends just wore lukewarm smiles, with no agreement or disagreement to his words.
Instead, Calipan snorted with a smug look of pride.
“Who said five, Brother?”
“Not five? Did Mayches already submit?”
Daluh swept back his hair.
“You’ll see when we go in. It’s impressive.”
Yan entered the admissions building with his friends and beheld twenty-six direct recommendation letters spread out before the pale-faced staff.
Twenty-six young ladies and lords had each veiled their faces tightly and visited the admissions office.
They’d submitted their golden sealing wax documents to the staff with the shy demeanor of delivering love letters, then scurried away.
‘Kek!’
Unable to forget that dying gasp of an onomatopoeia…
The people cursed in the Second Magic Lab had only been paralyzed—their minds were fully alert.
When Calipan had scooped them up by the nape like kittens and tossed them onto the sofa, they met the tiny girl already waiting there.
“Eek!”
She’d been desperately struggling.
They all remembered it clearly.
Her pale face, gritting her teeth to save others despite looking more deranged herself.
Even her back as she’d plunged into the Second Magic Lab without hesitation to retrieve the curse device.
So the young ladies and lords who’d safely returned home couldn’t stop worrying.
When the holy water swept through and the paralysis wore off, those pretending to have fainted in the hallway had heard it all amid the atmosphere.
“What should we do? I don’t know what happened, but she doesn’t have an enrollment recommendation…”
“Lord Count is too out of sorts right now to handle that, right? With that sibling bond, he’s probably busy nursing his breaking heart.”
“The future greats probably wouldn’t want to put their own names on a direct recommendation.”
In reality, it was “no big deal,” but the young ladies and lords didn’t know.
In the end, during mealtimes, afternoon tea, evening strolls, or late nights under a waning moon,
they brought it up to their families.
“If Lady Rudelriz hadn’t done that for me, I might not even be here.”
So please help Lady Rudelriz…
Contrary to expectations of stern commands, their families were quiet.
After a brief silence, the families hugged their children tightly instead of issuing edicts.
And readily permitted it. Go ahead. Be sure to express our thanks.
The children belatedly noticed their families’ reddened eyes.
And so, twenty-six direct recommendations vouching for Lady Aiel Rudelriz’s talents and character gathered at the admissions office.
The staff, who had rushed over upon hearing the rumors, stared speechless.
“Was there history like this?”
“No way…”
“What on earth happened in there?”
Meanwhile, Repitelips’s headmaster rubbed his dry face.
He was pondering when to pull out the two document envelopes from his bag without startling the staff too much, making it seem natural.
“How… How can someone smile like that? How could she rush in there to save others?’
His own wastrel daughter, Rosiana Elnika.
[Special Note: Ideal type is a gentle person who’s good to those around them and smiles.]
And the direct recommendation from Etit Radawen of the Radawen family, who’d heard the story from Rosiana.
[Special Note: Ideal type is someone with hidden depths.]
‘I thought she was a flower in a greenhouse, but she was a flame ripping pests apart. Does that make sense?’
He too felt deep gratitude toward Lady Rudelriz and had written a direct recommendation at Rosiana’s request.
Rosiana’s grandfather—his own father-in-law—Marquis Elnika had readily provided the Elnika family seal.
But he hadn’t expected so many to prepare with the same resolve. It felt embarrassing somehow.
‘Honey, she would’ve passed without us anyway. That’s why I didn’t submit the Elnika or Radawen ones.’ Should he tell Rosiana that?
He could already see her screaming to her grandfather.
That wastrel daughter of his… The headmaster was reaching for his bag when—
“Pardon?”
Crown Prince Bamper Leydin Orelot entered with a bright smile.
‘Of course we are. The entire staff is gathered here!’
The headmaster shot to his feet. He planned to yield his seat to the crown prince.
But he couldn’t. It wasn’t just the crown prince who’d entered…
“Told you, brother and sister are amazing.”
“But why are you looking so proud?”
“She’s a comrade—leave him be. Oh, Jayhan, stop by the temple later.”
“Busy.”
“Sigh… Don’t pick up habits like that.”
The headmaster’s eyes shook mercilessly.
Why had these exalted personages come “in person” to this shabby place… No way?
A moment later.
Flutter—
Atop the unprecedented pile of twenty-eight golden sealing waxes, even more unheard-of shining recommendations were carefully placed.
Repitelips’s headmaster’s hands trembled.
[ Bamper Leydin Orelot ]
[ Yan Friedelric ]
[ Calipan Jedkaizer ]
[ Daluh Dea ]
[ Jayhan Rohawa ]
And…
[ Mayches Rudelriz ]
Amid all the commotion, the utterly thorough Mayches had sent his recommendation long ago.