Let’s Go to the Academy (4)
In the traditional sense, etiquette was born from distinction.
To separate the high from the low, people sat in different places, wore different clothes, and spoke different words. Over time, those distinctions hardened into custom, and custom became law.
As society grew larger, even the high were divided into many levels of high, and the low into many levels of low; with each new distinction, etiquette itself grew more finely graded.
The proper way to greet the Emperor was to place one’s hands on the floor and bow the face down above them.
However, the correct form of greeting the Emperor was to turn the palms upward; pressing the palms flat against the ground was reserved for the king or the crown prince.
That too was etiquette born from distinction.
Originally, resting one’s hands on the floor and lowering the head had been the highest form of salute. That was back when the king had still been the highest authority in the land.
But then an Emperor greater than the king was born, and one who held the king as a vassal at that, and a new etiquette came into being.
To place one’s fragile palms at the mercy of one’s lord, and thereby show even greater reverence.
And now, Melitt, who had bowed her head, also turned her palms upward.
To a girl abandoned as an orphan, even though the current Emperor still lived and breathed, and though that girl might indeed have inherited his blood.
“Why so serious, Melitt?”
The girl smiled.
“You’re making it sound as if I’m the Emperor. I’m nothing more than an ordinary girl, with not even a trace of that color left in me.”
“Uh, yes, um…?”
Melitt blinked in confusion.
When she looked up, Ellie’s hair and eye color had truly returned to ordinary black.
“Come on. Get up.”
“Ah….”
For a moment, Melitt wondered if she had only dreamed it in the space of a heartbeat.
Ellie extended a hand.
Melitt took it and stood. Even in that small hand, the lingering echo of tremendous mana still remained.
This isn’t a dream.
She was truly imperial blood.
And yet she had been left in an orphanage.
Was she abandoned—was she cast away? If so, was it intentional? Or a mistake?
Even if it had been the latter, the situation was already complicated.
Because the Imperial Majesty already had an heir—no, an imperial daughter—and had formally named her crown princess.
More than that, if Melitt’s memory was correct, the crown princess was currently thirteen years old.
Two years younger than Ellie.
And the laws of the empire recognized primogeniture regardless of sex, but made no distinction based on marriage or legitimacy.
In other words, even if Ellie were illegitimate, she still had first claim to every line of succession.
Even if she were merely a child lost by mistake, her existence could shake the empire to its core—or worse, plunge it into civil war.
And if it had not been a mistake?
If she had been deliberately abandoned?
A mage’s family could be exposed by the color of their hair and eyes, which made it effectively impossible to discard a child on purpose.
There was only one possible method.
Sealing the child’s mana sensitivity and natural colors before birth.
It was something people generally never even tried. A mage’s talent was the kind of thing that usually broke through almost any seal and bloomed anyway.
But what if the one in question carried the greatest blood among all mages, namely the Imperial Majesty?
And what was more, the current Imperial Majesty had not rested on that blood alone; through effort and relentless advancement, he had become the strongest and most exceptional mage in the empire.
So perhaps he had simply grown arrogant.
Perhaps he had believed that even if the child carried his blood, this one would never break through the seal he himself had laid and awaken.
So rather than openly keep an illegitimate child, and too pitying to kill one, perhaps he had sealed her while she was still in the womb and cast her away.
If that were true—
Then the mere fact of Ellie’s existence would throw the empire into an even greater whirlpool, enough that even a true mistake would seem insignificant by comparison.
Melitt was no fool.
Having grasped each possibility in an instant, fear came to her only after the fact.
What am I supposed to do?
“Melitt. Are you all right?”
But when the girl’s hand touched her cheek, both anxiety and fear melted away.
“…Yes.”
Melitt worked to steady her ragged breathing and forced the answer out.
“I’m f-fine. I’m fine now.”
No matter what happened, she already knew, deep in the very center of her heart, exactly whom she was meant to follow.
“Then,” Ellie said with a grin, “will you help me?”
What Ellie asked for was a way to hide her hair and eye color even while using magic.
“Remember what I asked earlier? To keep my secret?”
“I remember.”
“Melitt. Please. Treat me like you did before you saw this color.”
It was not an order, but a request.
“…I-I’ll try. I’ll try, I will… try.”
“Excellent.”
At Ellie’s praise, Melitt flushed as if she had been praised by a professor at the front of the classroom.
“Melitt.”
“Yes, um, y-yes.”
“For now, I don’t intend to reveal this color.”
“…For now.”
“Yes.”
One day, the time would come to tell the truth.
But that was a moment to be chosen carefully and sought deliberately.
“Can you help me use magic while keeping my current color?”
“First, let me take a look.”
“Speak, speak casually.”
“I’ll take a look.”
Melitt buried her hands in Ellie’s hair.
Black hair so lush it was hard to believe it had survived that vile orphanage life.
Cool and silky to the touch, and pleasingly soft.
The flow of mana was…
Found it.
“It’s bound up pretty tightly.”
“Bound?”
“Yes. Um, before….”
“Two or three years ago?”
“No? Way before that… as far back as your age, Ellie….”
“Hmm… I see.”
Ellie gave a wry smile.
“So it sounds like His Majesty really did mean to make sure I could never use magic? Like a cripple.”
“!!”
Melitt was stunned.
By Ellie’s ability to see through the situation even after spending her whole life in an orphanage, and by her calm demeanor despite the fact that her father had not merely abandoned her but tried to leave her maimed.
“……Ellie.”
“You don’t need to comfort me. I was prepared for that much. Better than having torn me out of the womb, isn’t it?”
“Urk….”
She had nothing to say. In truth, abortion would have been the simpler, surer solution.
Without the Imperial Majesty’s pity—or his arrogance—Ellie would have vanished before she ever received a name.
“Anyway, that means my talent as a mage was so exceptional that I managed to break the seal His Majesty placed on me and use magic?”
“...Yes. Exactly.”
That was, in fact, what had happened.
Calling it arrogance was one thing, but the Imperial Majesty had earned the right to feel that confident.
If not for the absurd fact that the daughter he had tried to seal possessed greater talent than he did, the seal would have remained intact forever.
“Maybe I was a little too full of myself. How embarrassing.”
Ellie turned her face away, laughing softly.
“Still, that clears up a lot. Thanks, Melitt. I think I can handle the rest myself.”
“Huh? W-what do you mean—”
“‘Based on the seal of the past, establish the following new restriction.’”
There it was again—that magic language.
That strange, unidentified magical tongue she had used when dealing with the marquess and his subordinates.
What on earth is its structure?
Melitt had never heard anything like it anywhere on the continent. That was only natural, of course, because it could hardly be a natural language in the first place.
Then it must be artificial. A constructed language—one Ellie had created herself.
She made that kind of artificial language when she was barely in her early teens?
Trying to invent a private magical language was something every mage attempted at least once. But actually producing anything meaningful was rare.
If one intended to make a magical language containing one hundred words, one had to create one hundred new combinations of phonemes and memorize them all perfectly. If a single mistake was made, the spell could activate imperfectly and harm the caster.
And even then, that was not the end of it. One also had to create basic grammatical rules, and after all that trouble, the result was often only enough to handle simple magic.
The reason the Academy grounds always had students who had invented magical languages and students who had dismantled them was no idle joke.
And yet—
At that age…?
To have been born with immense mana was talent.
But to create a language at the tender age when one had only just entered puberty, and to cast magic through it without a single mistake—
She’s a genius.
Not merely someone with abundant mana or unusually refined control, but a truly brilliant mind as well.
The seed of a great mage who might appear only once in a thousand years.
Melitt understood it clearly.
No admission officer would ever find another seed like this again. Because no matter what prodigy or talent they searched for in the future, compared to Ellie they would all amount to nothing.
“—do it. That should be enough.”
Ellie finished the spell that had continued in her own unique mana language, and mana surged violently.
It meant the magic had been activated.
To the girl who, at least outwardly, seemed unchanged, Melitt asked cautiously, “Exactly what did you do? What did you… do?”
“Hmm… I’ll show you. Could you hold out your hand?”
Her hand?
Melitt obediently extended it.
Ellie placed a finger on top of it.
A light touch. It was so delicate Melitt could almost feel the shape of the fingerprint itself.
“Waters in the air, gather and become a droplet.”
A bead of water formed in the palm of Melitt’s hand.
Ordinary magic.
“…Ah.”
Only then did Melitt realize what Ellie had been trying to show her.
Her hair and eyes had not changed color. Even after using magic.
“That’s right. I made it so my black color would remain intact up to a certain level of magic.”
A wry smile.
“I would have liked to do it for everything, but it wouldn’t quite work the way I wanted.”
“T-then that means…”
“Groundwater, burst forth and rise through the earth.”
The ground beneath her feet trembled.
“Huh? Wait—what magic are you even—kyah!?”
Water surged upward.
Transparent beads scattered through the air and drifted down, cool against the skin.
“If I use something like this,”
the girl with the white star’s color restored turned in place once,
“it gives me away.”
The magic ended.
The water that had surged up fell back to the ground, and the white star vanished once again behind a black curtain.
“Still, if I’m careful, I don’t think anyone in the Academy will discover me, do you? What do you think, Melitt?”
“I-I think….”
Melitt murmured blankly.
“I think that’s… right….”
“I’m glad.”
Ellie smiled and brushed the droplets from Melitt’s shoulder.
“Both that it worked, and that the timing was just right.”
“Huh? Ti-timing?”
“Can’t you feel it? Listen a little harder toward the northwest.”
“Northwest would be….”
“Over there. That way.”
Flustered, Melitt did as Ellie said and strained her ears.
Then she heard it.
The sound of the Academy’s strongest mage flying this way.
“Huh? W-why is the headmaster coming this way?”
“You forgot? You sent a letter to the Academy, Melitt.”
“Ah! That’s right, I did….”
Who could blame her for forgetting? A member of the imperial family—an illegitimate child with first claim to the throne—had suddenly appeared before her.
“Ahahaha!”
Ellie’s laughter rang out brightly.
Even though the star had clearly already hidden itself from those eyes, Melitt felt as if she could still see starlight flickering there, and her heart skipped wildly in her chest.