Cecile (2)
"Do you even know who I am, talking to me like that?"
In my memories, she was always the girl with the sly little grin, forever looking like she was in on some private joke. Having her come at me this venomously was bound to give me a case of cognitive dissonance.
I figured as much.
Still, I had braced myself for it, so the shock didn't land too hard. The Cecile standing in front of me was a hedgehog with every last quill standing on end.
"The second daughter of the House of Minerva, and a swordsmanship prodigy even your family acknowledges. I'd say I know plenty."
"What...?"
Cecile's face twisted into a scowl at my answer.
"If you know that much, then stop hanging around and get lost."
She spat the words out cold and whipped around. I watched her retreating back in silence.
Cecile was the youngest daughter of one of the Empire's most renowned ducal houses — and an illegitimate child, despised by her own family.
A commoner would have an easier time getting in.
Under ordinary circumstances, a bastard — a stain on the family name — wouldn't have been allowed anywhere near the academy. The sole reason she had made it here was that monstrous, misshapen talent of hers, the kind that could devour every legitimate heir the house had to offer and still have room left over.
Not that they sent her here to enjoy her studies.
From the family's perspective, it was a talent too precious to let rot. The plan was to let her graduate, then spend the rest of her life running her into the ground as a hunting hound. Naturally, forming any private connections or unnecessary ties inside the academy was strictly forbidden by the house.
That was why she drove people off with such venom. Everything she had ever given her heart to as a child had been either stolen from her in the most wretched fashion or smashed to pieces by her own family. So she made a point of being cruel to anyone who approached — not for her own safety or reputation, but because she couldn't bear to watch someone get hurt and broken simply for the crime of having been associated with her.
That damn kind-hearted fool.
Even after a full regression, that stubbornly, foolishly good nature of hers hadn't changed one bit.
I shrugged at the cold back she had turned on me, as if to say she was done talking.
"We're in the same class. Can't we at least say hello?"
At that, Cecile's footsteps stopped dead.
"What, are you looking down on me because I'm a commoner?"
She turned her head slowly at the follow-up. Her expression was still icy, but a faint ripple stirred in those clear cyan eyes.
I knew the original setting. I knew why she treated people like dirt from the first meeting. To anyone else, though, she looked every bit the arrogant young noblewoman sneering down at a commoner.
Hearing it put that way, she'll start wondering if that's how it looks.
She had spent her entire life being scorned as a bastard, and now she had been accused of looking down on someone for their station. I had pressed her trigger dead-on.
"W-who said I was looking down on you for being a commoner?!"
She was clearly trying to keep the spines up, but what rang through the quiet lobby was a voice thick with indignation, sharp and wounded. A moment ago she had been playing the ice-blooded tyrant without a drop of blood or a tear to her name, and one remark about being a classist had her spilling her whole hand.
"Then why wouldn't you even take a greeting and just tell me to get lost on the spot?"
I dropped my voice, playing the wounded party. Cecile's lips worked soundlessly, as if the words had caught in her throat. She could hardly confess, at a first meeting, that she had pushed me away because her family would never leave me alone if I got involved with her.
Her mouth stayed shut. Those clear cyan eyes drifted, lost, swimming through empty air. I could see it all.
"I-it's just! You were being way too familiar for a first meeting, and it pissed me off! Status doesn't matter to me at all, okay?!"
A truly excellent piece of self-defensive excuse-making. But the more she talked, the more she failed to hide the faint tremor at the end of her voice. With her insides that easy to read, I had to wonder how she planned to survive at this academy.
"Ah, is that so? So you weren't looking down on me because of my status."
"Of course not! The thing I hate most in the world is people who discriminate based on bloodline or rank!"
"Got it. My mistake. Sorry."
When I apologized without a fight, Cecile blinked, more flustered by the unexpected response than I was. All that heat she had been pouring out crumpled in midair.
"Uh... r-right. As long as you know."
She cleared her throat a few times and made a show of dropping her voice back into something cold.
"Anyway, now that we've cleared that up, I'll accept your greeting this once. Don't go acting like you know me after this."
But the quills, once bent, no longer carried the same sharp threat they had at the start. With that, Cecile spun on her heel as if something were chasing her and fled. The haughty gait from a moment ago was gone without a trace. I quietly watched her scramble up the stairs toward the third floor.
Why that, of all things? The first words she had ever heard from her parents kept circling through her mind.
It had been infuriatingly unfair, but looking at it coldly, the family head had not been wrong. If this had been any other great noble house, they would have discarded the child to erase the stain of a bastard, or killed her outright to wipe her from existence. Even if she had been raised in thorough neglect, they had, in the end, sent her all the way to the academy.
So she had to live as if she were already dead — abandoning every desire, possessing nothing. That was the only mode of survival her family had permitted her, and the only duty she was allowed to keep.
She had been walking along, soothing herself that this was the right way to live, when the face of the boy she had met in the lobby surfaced unbidden.
A student capable of entering Royax Academy would naturally be a noble heir, or at least someone with a powerful backer. In that case, she had assumed he already knew everything about her being the House of Minerva's bastard.
It had been the same at the entrance exams today. Even a despised illegitimate child was still of grand ducal blood, and there had been no shortage of trash who approached with cheap ulterior motives, hoping some scrap might fall their way. Moths who came flying without the faintest idea of the horrific fate that awaited anyone who got involved with her.
Cecile had raised her spines as always and driven every last one of them away. She had bared the same edge at the boy who had greeted her on the first floor. And then—
What, are you looking down on me because I'm a commoner?
The moment that registered, even she couldn't help being thrown. If he were a commoner with no information at all, he would have had no reason to get tangled up with a bastard and become a target of her family, and no impure motive to force a connection.
He really, truly had just been saying hello.
The unhurried look on his face as he apologized so readily and stepped back kept flickering before her eyes. Thinking it over, that guy from earlier hadn't seemed like a particularly bad person.
It must have been hard for him.
For a commoner to enter Royax Academy, a Recommendation Letter from someone of name was mandatory. How much contempt and discrimination had he endured just to obtain one and set foot through those gates?
Perhaps because it overlapped with her own life — called a disgrace to the family, despised for as long as she could remember — a strange sense of kinship bloomed in a corner of her chest, whether she wanted it or not.
If he's a commoner... the family probably wouldn't even bother keeping him in check.
They wouldn't be idle enough to come charging in to crush a powerless commoner boy with no backing just because he had run into her a few times. In that case, maybe just a little — just a tiny bit — it would be all right to talk like a normal person.
N-no! That doesn't mean I want to get close to him!
Cecile startled and shook her head hard, all by herself. She had never, not even for a second, intended to form a deep relationship with anyone.
Right. I just misunderstood him unfairly, so... greetings. That's it. Just greetings.
When they passed each other coming and going, she would accept a very light hello. Really, truly, only that far.
Cecile struck that firm compromise with herself.
The next morning, I left the dormitory and started walking toward the entrance ceremony. The grand auditorium wasn't far from the dorms. Stepping inside, a vast space that could easily hold thousands opened up at a glance. I picked a reasonably out-of-the-way seat and sat down.
As time trickled by, students began filing in one and two at a time. Everyone was busy clustering in little groups or exchanging greetings with the names of their houses. In that noisy crowd, a head of cherry-blossom pink hair stood out like nothing else.
Is she going to walk right past me again?
We had more or less cleared up the misunderstanding yesterday, but I hadn't figured her for the type to come over and acknowledge me. Contrary to my expectations, Cecile changed direction and walked straight toward me. Then she plopped down in the seat right beside mine, as naturally as anything.
I turned my head, staring at her in puzzlement. Cecile kept her eyes locked on the podium ahead and tossed the words out, blunt as ever.
"What are you looking at. It's not like this seat has an owner."
"That's true enough."
"And we're in the same class anyway... there wasn't anywhere else to sit."
"Alright. Looking forward to working with you."
Cecile didn't answer. All I heard was the quiet sound of her letting out a breath she had been holding.