The Academy's Chairwoman Faces an Unprecedented Disaster
Rine coughed so violently in the corner of the waiting room behind the podium that tears streamed down her face. She had wondered why the chairwoman’s complexion looked so ashen—now she understood. It wasn’t that the woman had followed the absurd instruction in the Twelve Laws of Magic about eating dirt for thirty days to purify the body. No, it was this.
The culprit was the shimmering golden candy that Secretary Karl had shoved into her mouth with the words, “This is a sweet that calms the mind.”
“But the effect is certain, isn’t it? Thanks to it, all those distracting thoughts should have vanished completely.”
“It’s just… really bitter…”
The tension had indeed flown away. Along with all sensation in her tongue.
“Chairwoman. It’s time.”
“Sigh… such is my fate.”
Elina, who had wiped away her frivolous demeanor as if it had never existed, perked up her ears and strode onto the podium. Her welcoming speech began. Though the content was dry and pedantic, the speaker was who she was, so it ended amid thunderous applause. She had gone first while Rine took her “medicine.”
Once her speech was over, Elina returned to the VIP seats and clenched her fist tightly toward Rine through the volume-amplifying magic tool. Her lips clearly mouthed, Rine, fighting!
Are you helping me or teasing me…? I can’t tell!
Rine forced her trembling legs forward and walked to the microphone. She could feel the eyes of thousands of freshmen and distinguished guests packed into the grand auditorium all locking onto her at once. Her heart was pounding so hard it felt like it would shatter her ribs and burst out!
“Um… uh… I-I am…”
Of course, a speech delivered in that state had no chance of going well. Her mind had gone completely blank; she couldn’t even recall the first line of her prepared manuscript. Sadly, the longer the silence stretched, the colder the air in the vast auditorium grew.
Karl, standing in the VIP seats behind her, let out a deep sigh and covered his face with his right hand. Just as he had feared, the worst had happened.
“Ahaha! It seems our freshman representative is extremely nervous after seeing the Great Sage’s esteemed face up close!”
The guide assistant, sensing the chilled atmosphere, smoothly seized the microphone and jumped in. “While the representative composes herself, allow me to briefly introduce the newly restructured ‘Secretary’s Office Direct Student Committee’ that begins this year!”
According to the assistant, first-years had no voting rights or authority for self-governing activities until their second year, when they became eligible for the official student council. Therefore, it had been the academy’s long-standing tradition for the top freshman to symbolically serve as the “student council president for first-years,” conveying student opinions under the Secretary’s Office and offering light guidance. This year, that role had been officially institutionalized as a formal body.
“Naturally, as an official duty, a modest activity allowance will be provided from the academy budget! In other words, a monthly cash stipend for maintaining dignity.”
At those words, Rine’s ears perked up sharply. Th-they’re giving me money?!
But she quickly regained her senses and whispered cautiously to the assistant behind her. “U-um… I’m already a full-ride scholarship student, so my tuition is waived…”
Then, without a sound, like a cat, Elina appeared behind Rine and whispered directly into her ear. “Ah… sorry, Rine, but our academy’s full scholarship only covers admission fees, tuition, and textbook costs. It doesn’t provide a single coin for living expenses like three meals a day, dormitory heating, or snacks from the school store.”
“Hieek?!”
“If you don’t do this, you might have to survive next month by pulling weeds from the training grounds and eating them…”
“I’ll do it! I’ll do it! I’ll definitely do it!!!”
Rine nodded her head vigorously in shock. As a naïve country girl, she had zero common sense about life at the academy. In truth, if she wrote a letter to Nikolai Gorky, the Cultural Protection People’s Commissioner who had pushed her here, and confessed her hardships, he would immediately send her a sack of gold coins… but three days before leaving for the academy, she had gotten into a huge fight with the stubborn old man over a minor musical disagreement and stormed out. Her pride wouldn’t allow her to contact him first.
Somehow she managed to kill time by signing the duty pledge, but the silence at the microphone remained. Once the guide assistant, having run out of things to say, fell quiet, the atmosphere in the grand auditorium began to turn strangely hostile.
Especially from the left side of the podium, where students in knight department uniforms were gathered, open sneers leaked out.
“Hey, this is boring as hell. If you’re going to stand there like that, why not just sing us a song?”
A male student lounging arrogantly deep in his chair thrust out his chin and snapped.
“You’re the top Bard major, right? Show us some amazing performance. What the hell is this level for an academy entrance ceremony?”
At the rude provocation, the knight department students began to snicker and chime in. In response, the faces of the Bard majors from the arts department on the right flushed red and then purple.
“Those ignorant knight department bastards are at it again! Do they think Bards are just clowns for their drinking parties?!”
“What? We can’t hear you~!”
“Both you knight department muscleheads and you Bard majors, just shut up! It’s always this stupid pride war with you kids. In reality, you’re all beneath the White Magic department.”
“I heard this year’s entrance results put them below the Alchemy department…”
“Shut up shut up shut up—”
The commotion, which had instantly escalated into a departmental pride war, surged toward an all-out brawl and dealt a serious blow to Rine’s mental state. She gripped the wooden lyre in her hands tightly, but playing some elegant classical Bard song in the middle of this chaos would never reach the ears of those savage brats.
The faculty members who were supposed to control the situation merely sipped their tea with expressions that said, “Sigh, it’s starting again this year,” or averted their eyes. At the very peak of it all, Chairwoman Elina had pulled out a bag of popcorn from her bosom and was munching away noisily.
It was an academy landscape utterly devoid of common sense.
As the noise grew louder and louder, Nikolai Gorky’s nagging echoed through Rine’s mind like a hallucination.
Hey, you stupid disciple! When the audience isn’t paying attention to your singing and starts making noise, what did I tell you to do?! Shouting louder is what third-rate hacks do! Pound your own rhythm into your heart—the one that can shake the entire damn stage! So please, for the love of everything, make popular music! The future of the Empire’s popular music rests on you! You must respect popular music! Popular music has been designated as the Regent’s next cultural project…
“Aaaagh! Seriously…!”
Finally breaking past her limit of panic, Rine squeezed her eyes shut and screamed.
“Just do it then! If I sing, it’ll be fine, won’t it?!”
The girl’s thunderous shout, amplified by the mana loudspeaker, rang throughout the entire grand auditorium. The thousands of freshmen who had been about to start a massive brawl froze solid and turned as one to stare at Rine on the podium.
In the silence, Karl took a step forward and reached out a hand. “Representative student, you really don’t have to force yourself…”
“No. I want to.”
Rine took a deep, shaky breath, her eyes blazing. Rather than being looked down on as some clueless country bumpkin, she would show them the popular music that old man Gorky loved so much. Wait, but I really wanted to do classical…
Rine secured the lyre firmly against her chest and glared fiercely at the students below the podium. Then she stomped hard on the podium floor with the heel of her shoe.
THUD—
A loud impact that made the entire podium floor vibrate faintly echoed through the microphone. As the students began to murmur in confusion, Rine stomped again.
THUD—
A steady tempo. Then she opened her right hand and clapped it against the loudspeaker.
CLAP—
THUD, THUD, CLAP. THUD, THUD, CLAP.
The thousands of freshmen murmured in bewilderment, but Rine kept her eyes tightly shut, focusing solely on the mana waves carried by her feet and palms. It was one of the basic Bard courtesies that old man Nikolai Gorky had drilled into her head by knocking on it. When the audience is causing chaos, don’t try to persuade them with words—win their heartbeats as allies first.
THUD, THUD, CLAP.
The lyre’s dual strings trembled faintly, carrying the sound of Rine’s stomps into every corner of the auditorium. The first to react were the Bard majors from the arts department on the right. Perhaps the blood of rhythm-sensitive minstrels was boiling. A few second-year seniors unconsciously began stomping their feet and clapping along.
THUD, THUD, CLAP!
The sound spread like a wave. Soon the prim mages from the magic department, and even the knight department students on the left who had been slouching and picking fights, began unconsciously tapping their knees to the beat.
“Huh? This is actually pretty fun?!”
From the VIP seats in the back, Chairwoman Elina began bouncing in her seat, then finally threw dignity to the wind, climbed onto the sofa, and started jumping up and down to the rhythm—THUD, THUD, CLAP!
Secretary Karl, standing beside her, pressed a hand to his throbbing forehead. But in the face of the massive sonic barrier now ruling the auditorium, even the dignity of a former knight order commander was useless. With a deep sigh, Karl brought his own shoe heel down on the marble floor.
THUD!
THUD! CLAP!
The moment the atmosphere had perfectly ripened, Rine grabbed the loudspeaker and lifted her head high.
“Friend, you’re just a child, so don’t make a scene!”
Rine’s voice, infused with Bard amplification magic, swept through the auditorium like a storm.
“Don’t wander the streets whispering that someday you’ll grow up to be someone big!”
With the lyre still fixed against her chest, Rine shot a sharp glare at the knight department students on the left.
“There’s mud on your face! You should be ashamed! You’re walking around the whole world kicking a tin can!”
Rine strode to the edge of the podium, raised the lyre high, and shouted at the top of her lungs.
“Sing along!!!”
That cry became the signal. Thousands of freshmen, faculty members, even Elina who had been chewing popcorn and the expressionless Karl all began singing along as if they had rehearsed it. The knight department students who had been picking fights, the Bard majors who had been seething with anger—now instead of grabbing each other by the collar, they were shrugging their shoulders and shouting in the same rhythm.
All the cumbersome things like inter-departmental conflicts were cast aside. Everyone together.
“One more time!!!”
After a long while in that trance-like state, Rine poured out the last of her strength, strummed every string of the lyre powerfully, and stepped back from the microphone, panting.
DING——
The faint afterglow of mana scattered into the air, and the storm-like performance finally came to an end.
“…”
A hush fell over the grand auditorium. The thousands of freshmen and guests who had just been madly stomping and shouting now stared up at the podium, frozen stiff like people waking from a spell.
“…Huh?”
Rine, still breathing hard, came to her senses belatedly. Thousands of frozen faces spread out before her eyes. What… what kind of insane thing did I just do at the freshman representative’s oath ceremony?!
The top Bard student, who was supposed to play elegant classical songs and display refined dignity, had made the entire student body, the chairwoman, and the distinguished guests stomp on the podium and sing some bizarre song about tin cans and being ashamed. This was grounds for expulsion at the very least, wasn’t it?
The wild Bard who had shaken the entire auditorium moments ago vanished without a trace. All that remained on the podium was a timid country girl clutching her lyre tightly with wide, anxious eyes, looking like she might burst into tears at any moment.
Rine’s legs were shaking violently as she cautiously glanced back at the faculty seats. That was when it happened.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
The strange silence was broken by loud applause coming from the very back row of the podium.
“That was the best! The best! That country kid is absolutely incredible?!”
Elina, who had been jumping on the sofa, cupped both hands around her mouth like a megaphone and let out a roaring cheer. Beside her, Secretary Karl silently nodded and began clapping as well.
The chairwoman and the secretary’s applause. Starting with that…
CLAPCLAPCLAPCLAP!!!
In an instant, the entire grand auditorium erupted with explosive applause and cheers loud enough to make ears ring.
“Top student! That was seriously badass!!”
“Long live the Bard department!!!”
“Long live the academy! Long live the freshmen!”
Bathed in the pouring applause, Rine could only blush with a dazed expression, clutching her lyre to her chest and awkwardly bowing her head.
“See that? Did you see?! As expected, my eye for talent is never wrong! I knew my Rine would pull it off!”
Behind the podium, Chairwoman Elina tossed aside her popcorn bucket and hopped around triumphantly, puffing out her chest. Her fussing was only the beginning.
The moment Rine’s destructive debut performance ended, the Bard major section of the arts department fell into a frenzy.
“Did you see that, you ignorant muscle-brained bastards?! That’s the dignity of our Bard department’s top freshman!”
“How dare you lowly knight department underlings pick a fight with us?! Kneel before the power of music!”
The popular music majors, who had been quietly enduring the pressure from the classical music faction that usually looked down on popular music, were practically sobbing. One second-year senior, overwhelmed with emotion, was punching the air like a madman. (That won’t reach the sky, you know.)
“The future of popular music is bright…! On this rough academy soil, the primal spirit of rock has finally descended! Junior! Come here quickly and become a legend for our popular music department!”
When hundreds of seniors surrounded her with burning eyes, Rine hugged her lyre tightly to her chest and trembled like a leaf.
“U-um… that’s not quite right…”
“Hmm? What do you mean it’s not, our proud junior?!”
“I… I’m going to major in classical…”
“…”
For a moment, the entire Bard department froze as if someone had dumped a bucket of cold water over them.