The Shipping-Obsessed Chairwoman Can't Tie Her Hair by Herself
After the new student Rine, who had nearly gotten lost and stranded, was safely escorted back to the main building by Karl, Elina was left alone in the chairwoman’s office. She had her face buried in the sofa and was sulking with all her might.
“That cheapskate, meanie Karl. How dare he ruin my magnificent plan?”
One of Elina’s virtues was that she never got angry over something as trivial as losing face in front of a new student.
Still grumbling, Elina pushed herself upright on the sofa and glanced at her reflection in the window. Her purple hair was a complete disaster—tangled and wild from rolling around in the forest and tussling with Karl.
She perked up her pointed ears. Fiddled with the stray strands. As she repeated the motion, a faint shadow of bitterness flickered across her eyes.
Elina’s original name had been Elisha. Born a boy to an elf father and a human mother, she had been hunted without mercy by Pandemonium—the Demon King’s Realm—from the moment of her birth simply for carrying elf blood.
During that desperate flight she had stumbled upon a miraculous encounter and consumed the elves’ sacred relic, the World Tree Sap. The result was that she became a half-elf who was perhaps more elven than the elves themselves, and she had gained magical power that defied common sense.
That was the foundation of how she had become the Great Sage.
The reason she said “perhaps” was simply that every other person with elf blood had died, leaving her with no one to compare herself against.
Yet the World Tree Sap was not without its flaws. The first was that it drastically slowed physical aging; even after living more than a century, she remained trapped in the body of a young girl. The second was that it had given her extremely long, slender purple hair.
There was a great deal she could complain about regarding that hair, but the single most infuriating fact was that she could not tie it by herself.
Click—
The moment Karl returned after handing Rine over and opened the door to the chairwoman’s office, Elina lifted her chin and sat perfectly still on the sofa, staring at him with wide, expectant eyes.
It was a silent demand that he fix her messy hair immediately.
The sofa was custom-made for Elina—much smaller and daintier than a normal one, upholstered in soft velvet. Sitting on it with her chin raised and legs crossed, she believed she was striking a dignified pose worthy of the Great Sage who had once commanded the continent.
…Or so she thought.
To Secretary Karl, she simply looked like an adorable half-elf child stubbornly trying to look important on a piece of children’s furniture.
Tying a ribbon in that girl’s hair was how Karl’s daily routine began.
Today the routine had been thrown off course thanks to the mixed-bath hot spring incident, but the process remained the same.
“Chairwoman. Please hold still. The ribbon will go crooked.”
“Tch… Tie it gently, Karl. You’re gonna rip my scalp off.”
“It won’t hurt if you stop moving. Really, it’s abnormal that the academy’s highest authority calls her secretary every single morning because she cannot tie a single hair ribbon by herself.”
Even as he grumbled, Karl’s hands moved with practiced ease, gathering Elina’s hair.
His firm, calloused fingers wrapped the silk ribbon around the gathered strands and tied a neat, round knot.
Elina let his scolding go in one ear and out the other, happily swinging her short legs that dangled beneath the sofa.
“Can’t be helped. Someone’s always tied my hair for me, ever since I was little.”
“…And yet you can draw a 7-Circle magic circle down to decimal-point precision with those same hands?”
“Magic and hair-tying are completely different domains, okay?”
Elina puffed out her cheeks in reply.
Every time she kicked her legs, long-ago memories flickered past her eyes like a panorama.
The childhood years when the Demon King’s extermination order against elves had drenched the continent in blood. In the middle of a pursuit where anyone with even a drop of elf blood was dragged away to “somewhere,” an unknown elf sister had hidden the sobbing Elina in the bushes. She had torn a strip from her own tattered robe, roughly tied the little girl’s hair, and whispered, “Don’t cry. It’ll be over soon.”
During her academy days, her best friend and class president, Eli, had sighed every morning at the sight of Elina’s bird’s-nest hair—“Kid, you didn’t tie it again?”—then picked up a comb and carefully tied a ribbon for her.
And on the brutal battlefield, countless comrades—whose faces had now blurred with time—had used bloodstained bandage scraps to tie her hair tightly so that flying strands wouldn’t obstruct her magic.
And now.
In this peaceful chairwoman’s office bathed in warm morning sunlight, there was Karl, who nagged her every day while tying her ribbon with his glasses sitting crooked on his nose.
In truth, Elina had tried many times to tie her own hair.
But every time she stood in front of the mirror holding the ribbon, her fingertips would tremble faintly and the knot would come undone in a hopeless tangle.
Even the Great Sage herself did not fully understand why.
It simply felt as if tying her hair alone would mean completely accepting the reality that none of those precious people who had once tied it for her existed in the world anymore.
So perhaps she unconsciously threw tantrums and refused to learn, clinging to the habit instead.
Tap—
“All finished.”
Karl gave Elina’s shoulder a light, satisfied pat.
When she looked in the mirror, a perfectly symmetrical butterfly ribbon sat there without a single stray millimeter—pure Karl in its meticulous precision.
“Do you really need to match the angles that perfectly just to tie hair? Is it because it’s you, Karl?”
Elina’s sense of humor was still stuck a hundred years in the past.
When Karl’s eyes turned rotten, she cleared her throat and quickly changed the subject.
“Hehe, your skills have gotten pretty good, Karl. Why don’t you quit being a secretary and open a beauty salon in the imperial capital?”
“A former knight commander as a hairstylist? I fear for the customers’ necks. Enough jokes. Let’s get to the main issue.”
Karl slammed a thick stack of book-purchase documents onto the table with a loud bang. His gray eyes behind the glasses were far colder than usual. This was a bad sign.
Library Purchase List
『Everything About Pure Love — Those Who Desire Love, Seize It!』 — 100 copies
『The Psychology of First Love — The Secret of 0.1 Seconds of Eye Contact』 — 150 copies
『For Eternal Love — The Alchemy of Obsession and Restraint』 — 50 copies
『The Philosophy of Pure Love — Why We Must Ship Pure Love』 — 50 copies
“Chairwoman. Do not place bulk orders for these bizarre books in the library.”
“Huh? What books? I personally selected these educational volumes to foster a proper scholarly atmosphere at the academy.”
“Allow me to read them aloud.”
Aaack! Damn it! I’ve been found out!
“Love is the most noble emotion in all of human history! Pure love is supreme! Say it with me—pure love is supreme! And kids these days don’t understand love at all! We need guidebooks like these in the library so they can grow into cultured—”
“All of them were ruthlessly cut during the budget approval stage.”
“Uwaaaaaagh! Give me back my pure-love bibles! Fine! Then I’ll buy them with my own money! That works, right?!”
“For your information, I have already instructed every bookstore in the empire that if they wish to continue doing business with the academy, they must reject all purchase orders placed under the false name ‘Elina von Rosen.’”
Elina sprang off the sofa like a released spring and began flailing wildly, but Karl didn’t even blink. He simply reached out with his left hand and pressed down firmly on the top of her head, pinning her in place.
“Uuuuugh…! Let go, Karl! You can’t just squish the Great Sage’s head like that!”
“And most importantly.”
Karl added more pressure, grinding his finger against her forehead in slow circles.
“Stop smuggling the novels purchased with academy funds out of the library into the chairwoman’s office, flipping through them alone, squealing ‘kyaa kyaa,’ and drooling all over the pages.”
“When did I ever drool?! This is defamation! You have gravely damaged the honor of the Great Sage! Waaah!”
“Thanks to you, the rumor that ‘a ghost appears in the corner of the library every night making strange kyaa-kyaa noises while reading romance novels’ has become accepted fact among the students doing night study. For the sake of the academy’s public reputation and healthy academic environment, I am temporarily suspending your library access privileges effective today.”
“…It’s my academy? I built it with my own money!”
“Let us simply call that one of the charming quirks of imperial law, which granted private educational foundations legal independence and autonomous budget rights.”
“Uuuuuurgh! I really should go meet the regent after all.”
It’s mine! My academy! I just want to borrow a few romance novels—why does this petty little secretary keep standing in my way?!
But Elina’s tantrum did not last long.
Karl slid both hands into her armpits with practiced ease and lifted her small body straight into the air, the way one might pick up a grumpy kitten.
“Now then, Chairwoman. The new students have safely completed their enrollment procedures. Therefore, what should you be doing at this moment?”
“Hmm… Thoroughly comb through the enrollment documents and compile a list of new male and female students whose faces and inner compatibility match perfectly?”
“A speech. You must deliver the new-student welcome speech.”
Elina’s face turned ashen in an instant.
“Wait, Karl! I just remembered I have an extremely urgent appointment in the Hakuyo Kingdom! I need to meet old man Baltazar and receive his advice on international peace! I must leave immediately! Prepare the teleport—”
“Denied.”
Before she could even begin casting the teleport spell, Karl’s rough fingers seized her by the scruff of the neck. Stripped of any trace of the Great Sage’s dignity, she was carried dangling in midair straight to the waiting room behind the podium.
“I have witnessed this scene dozens of times already. You always deliver a flawless, magnificent speech without a single mistake. So why do you turn into this every single time you have to step onto the stage?”
Shoved into the corner of the waiting room, Elina pouted, fidgeting with her small fingertips while avoiding his gaze.
“Well… it’s just…”
The confession she could not bring herself to voice hovered at the back of her throat.
Every time I stand there and look out at the pure, radiant faces of those children filling the auditorium…
The faces of her classmates from eighty years ago—abandoned in the trenches and returned as corpses—overlapped with them.
Those beautiful children were so beautiful that her heart felt ready to burst. She was terrified she would embarrass herself by suddenly bursting into tears in the middle of her speech.
But such inner feelings were far too embarrassing to ever tell Karl.
Although every shameful incident and dark chapter of her past had long since been exposed to him, leaving her with no dignity left to lose, she still had to protect the final line of pride belonging to the Great Sage and academy chairwoman.
Karl let out a small sigh, then carefully drew a tiny glass bottle from his pocket.
Pop.
When he removed the stopper, round candies glowing with a brilliant golden light appeared inside the transparent vial.
“These are candies that calm the mind. Take one when you feel nervous.”
“Ooh! Candy!”
Elina, who had a hopeless sweet tooth, snatched one and popped it into her mouth as though she had never been sulking at all.
Hmm. What could a golden candy taste like?
She had heard that random-flavor candies were popular in the Holy Kingdom these days.
Expecting something sweet and fruity, she rolled the candy around her mouth—only for her eyes to suddenly bulge to the size of fists.
The flavor spreading through her mouth was not fruit at all. It was the thick taste of tree roots, damp earth, and a sharp, spicy herbal bitterness that pounded her tongue as if trying to numb it.
“Cough?! Ack! Ptoo! Ptui! Hey, Karl! This is that miracle medicine you imported from beyond the empire’s eastern border, isn’t it?! It’s not candy, it’s just ridiculously bitter medicine!!”
“However, nothing is more effective at relieving tension and clearing the mind. While you melt and swallow that…”
Karl ignored Elina, who was frantically gulping water to wash away the taste, and adjusted his crooked glasses.
“Calm yourself by listening to the new-student representative’s greeting. Among this year’s freshmen there are many outstanding talents, and one of them is said to be a ‘genius’ whose ability is on an entirely different level.”
“Ooh? What kind of kid?”
Having already neutralized the bitterness, Elina perked her ears and bounced with sparkling eyes full of interest. The dopamine-addicted chairwoman’s radar had reactivated.
“She appears to be a commoner girl from a rural backwater with neither formal mentor nor family. However, the Cultural Guardian People’s Commissioner Nikolai Gorky happened to be passing through the region. He was completely captivated by the sound of her lyre and singing, and on the spot gave her only the most basic level of instruction.”
“And?”
“With merely those few days of teaching, she passed Rosen Academy’s notoriously difficult Art Faculty entrance exam in overwhelming first place and entered as valedictorian. I have only seen her through documents and records, but she clearly appears to be an outstanding genius operating on a different plane.”
“Heee… That’s amazing. Then should I ship her with the knight faculty’s physically gifted, handsome tsundere valedictorian? Or maybe with the clever, glasses-wearing, chic heir from the magic faculty…”
Just as Elina’s mind began spinning a basket full of pink fantasies and her lips started to twitch with excitement—
“New student representative, please step onto the stage.”
At the guidance assistant’s voice, a girl cautiously walked out onto the grand marble podium of the auditorium.
Small and petite in stature, with rich chocolate-brown hair flowing softly past her shoulders and warm hazel eyes trembling with nervousness.
And wearing the neat blue formal uniform of a Rosen Academy freshman, which she had changed into after discarding her mud-covered clothes only a few dozen minutes earlier.
Elina, who had been resting her chin on her hand in the highest VIP seat, widened her eyes in shock.
Beside her, Secretary Karl—who had been standing solemnly with a document pad—also froze, his gaze locked through his glasses.
And the instant the new-student representative, Rine, stood before the magic microphone tool and bowed her head solemnly, her eyes met those of the two people in the VIP seats.
“…Eh?”
A heavy silence fell over the space surrounding the three of them, as though time itself had stopped.
Waaaaaaaah!
The students erupted in cheers at the guidance assistant’s announcement.
Rine, the country girl, felt like crying.