Entrance Ceremony (3)
The girl who had been picking a fight with Philia was named Isabel, the presumptive heir of the Sucre Ducal House, and she had golden hair and purple eyes.
And in truth, she didn’t actually bear Philia that much ill will.
The two of them had almost been close when they were little. More specifically, Isabel had wanted to be friends with Philia, since she was the only noble girl in the area.
But that damn Philia had never once accepted her.
Not once!
Not when Isabel sent gifts, not when she wrote asking to share tea, not even when she had stubbornly tagged along on her father’s official business and finally managed to meet her!
So, no, it wasn’t as if she’d grown some deep, festering grudge over it.
Still, seeing Philia standing there by herself at the Academy, it was impossible not to want to needle her a little.
“You’re still doing that?”
For the record, Isabel still hadn’t managed to make any friends at the Academy. She had only arrived the day before, and the two boys beside her were just boys she’d struck up a casual conversation with at the entrance ceremony.
“…Isabel.”
“Ha, you really haven’t changed at all. How can you still be standing all alone like that, even in a place like this?”
Isabel hated Philia.
Not so much that she wanted to kill her, but enough to find her irritating and infuriating.
Not so much that she wanted to keep being mean to her forever, but enough that if Philia apologized first and said they should hang out together from now on, Isabel would huff a few times and forgive her.
But if Philia had been the sort to apologize first and suggest they stay together from now on, none of this would have happened in the first place.
“Yeah.”
Philia’s cool—no, downright cold—attitude only made Isabel more annoyed.
And, honestly, a little hurt. Were they really so far from home, at some distant Academy, that they couldn’t at least get along a little with someone from the same place?
The Academy.
Just thinking about the days she’d be spending here studying made her shoulders tense and tremble.
Even if they were nobles, they weren’t here to gorge themselves and do nothing.
Everyone wanted to prove themselves, and had to prove themselves—that they were the best among the gifted.
This was a competitive society.
For the children who had always been called prince, princess, young lord, and young lady back in their own domains, it was especially brutal: a place where a hundred students would crash their heads together, compare their talents, and ruthlessly sort one another into ranks.
At the same time, it was also the best social stage imaginable, a place where you could meet people you’d never encounter if you stayed cooped up in your own territory.
And yet, with those days looming ahead, the girl from home was still standing there all alone, and it was so frustrating and irritating—and, yes, a little worrying—that Isabel had snapped at her.
“Philia! Who are those guys? Your friends?”
Then some girl she’d never seen before had suddenly walked up and thrown her arms around Philia, right there in front of Isabel.
…Huh?
But what really stunned her was that Philia didn’t push her away. It was as if this wasn’t even the first or second time something like this had happened.
Isabel’s purple eyes trembled.
What the girl had just said echoed in her mind.
—Who are those guys? Your friends?
No?
Not only the two boys she’d dragged into this by accident, but Isabel herself couldn’t exactly call herself Philia’s friend, either.
And yet.
Are you kidding me right now?
When it came to me, you were cold then and you’re cold now, but somehow you became friends with her? Why? What do I not have? What’s so special about this commoner that I can’t give you?
Isabel didn’t understand the feeling swelling in her chest. Whether she knew it or not, that feeling was called jealousy.
“So you’ve been dragging around girls like that these days?”
Even the ugly thing she said next was something her usual self would never have said.
“Isabel. This girl is also one of us—”
“What a terribly tacky scarf. Did you strip your house bare to buy that, just so you could dress yourself up a little?”
She didn’t know it, but because jealousy was such a strange feeling, she had no idea how cruel and vicious it could make a person.
But.
If ignorance pardoned every mistake, ninety percent of the world’s conflicts would disappear.
Ellie’s expression vanished.
The next instant, smack! The sound rang out, and Isabel’s head snapped to the side.
?
Before she could even understand what had happened, Isabel realized that one side of her face hurt. Her cheek and the inside of her mouth were numb, too.
Wait. Did I just—
But she couldn’t finish the thought.
Before she could, Ellie’s hand had lashed out and struck her other cheek with another smack. Now the pain was perfectly balanced.
“Keep your mouth shut. If you leave it open, your lips’ll split.”
From there, it only got harsher.
Smack, smack, smack, smack. With every blow, the face of Isabel Sucre, daughter of the duchy, snapped left and right like a toy.
It was such an unreal sight that, before anyone could even think of getting angry, all the nearby children from noble houses—including Philia—could only stare in frozen shock, speechless and stunned.
W-We should stop her.
Philia abruptly came to her senses. After all, she was the only one here who knew both of them.
And yet, the hand she had started to extend in front of her unconsciously pulled back again.
Ellie’s face looked terrifying. She wasn’t just hitting Isabel once in a moment of anger; she was repeating the same motion at steady intervals, like a machine, and Philia didn’t dare try to interfere.
For a fleeting moment, it almost looked as if starlight had flickered in Ellie’s eyes. It had to have been an illusion, but she was so frightening right now that even such an illusion felt plausible.
Was this really the same girl who normally clung to her and pestered her about being friends?
Isabel was no different. She, too, was crushed under the same pressure, a weight no one could casually defy. Even while being struck directly in the face—while her head rang and her cheeks and mouth rattled with every blow—she couldn’t move.
There was a taste of blood. Her lip had finally split, or maybe she’d bitten into the inside of her cheek.
Smack. And then, one last smack.
At last, the storm of violence came to a stop.
Isabel’s pretty face was not only blazing red from both cheeks but swollen, and streaked with bright, ugly traces of blood.
“This scarf,”
Ellie said, gripping the girl by the collar.
Though Isabel was taller, Ellie somehow looked far bigger.
“My precious friend made it for me with her own hands. If you insult it one more time, I’ll make you think today was nothing at all.”
Friend.
That word again.
“Sob...”
The daughter of the Sucre Ducal House should not show tears...
“H-huk, h-hwaaah... W-waaah!! S-sob, h-huk, waaaah!!”
Spare me the nonsense. How was anyone supposed to keep from crying when they were this miserable?
And so Isabel cried very, very hard. She bawled, all the hurt she had been bottling up since Philia had rejected her pouring out in a single rush.
“Waaah!! S-sob, h-hwaaah, sniff, I-I... hu-huk... I kept... I kept saying let’s be friends, sob, and I gave gifts and wrote letters, a-and I did it over and over, but Philia just... waaah!!”
“There, there... Philia did that, huh...”
“Waaah!! P-Philia, s-sob, Philiaaaa!!!”
Seeing it come to this, Ellie sensed that something was off. This wasn’t just the crying of someone who had been hit; there was a long, aching grievance lodged in her chest.
“Whyyyy!! Why am I the only one, sob, the only one nobody wants to be friends with...!!”
“...?”
Ellie looked at the two boys standing there, unable to flee, rooted to the spot. Weren’t you two her friends? The boys shook their heads frantically. Oh. They weren’t?
What. Then could it be...
Ellie turned to Philia instead. Her ruby-red eyes were trembling harder than Ellie had ever seen them tremble before.
Ah.
So she’d been an outcast with that girl. I see.
Ellie quickly pieced together the situation, pulled a handkerchief from her chest, and gently wiped Isabel’s tears away.
“That’s right, that’s right. What about Philia?”
In truth, once a grief has been carefully packed away deep inside, the moment someone asks about it, it comes spilling out uncontrollably. And when it has already exploded open, there’s nothing more to say.
“Waaah!! Phi, Phiilia, sob, Philiaaaa!!!”
“Mm-hm, Philia?”
“S-sob, waaah! I—I said... sob, I kept saying I wanted to be friends! I-I even gave gifts and wrote letters, sob, I did, I did! But Philia wouldn’t... waaahaaah!!”
“That’s right, that’s right... Philia did that to you...”
“Waaahaaah!! Phiiiliaaaa!! Waaahaaaaah!!!”
By then, not only the students attending the entrance ceremony but even the professors on the podium were flustered.
Even if the grassy plaza was spacious, it only held around a hundred people. If someone were crying at the top of their lungs like that, of course everyone could hear it.
“Uh... what do we do?”
“Isn’t that Lady Ellie...?”
“It is Lady Ellie...”
“That’s Ellie...”
Should they go up to the podium and say, ahem, students, we’ll begin shortly? Or should they wait for the situation to calm down a little?
While the professors were still debating, Ellie took care of it herself.
“Sigh... come along. I’ll let you cry it out and take the pain away, too.”
Like a kind older sister, Ellie took Isabel by the hand and led her toward the dormitory area.
Attendance at the entrance ceremony was not compulsory. More precisely, the school didn’t punish anyone for skipping it.
So when Ellie led Isabel away toward the dorms, no one tried to stop her.
And even if there had been a punishment, it was questionable whether anyone would have dared step in.
In the place they left behind, there were the other students.
And only Philia remained.
Wandering gazes turned toward the owner of the name the Sucre young lady had been wailing just moments before.
“...”
Philia Cryford’s face had turned as red as her hair and eyes, and she lowered her head, trembling as she averted everyone’s gaze.
It was the most humiliating moment of her life.
And because it wasn’t even her fault, it was doubly unfair; she felt like she could have cried just like Isabel.
One of the professors climbed stiffly onto the podium. It was Melitt. It was the kind of situation where she had been handed the task because she was the youngest, and, in fact, she had been handed it because she was the youngest.
“Uh... um, er...”
Her face, already marked by perpetual dark circles, drooped downward.
“A-aha... we, um... will be, ahem, starting the entrance ceremo—ceremony shortly!”
Melitt nearly bit her tongue, and her face went red as well, but thanks to her, the frozen atmosphere loosened up a little at last.