The Eve Festival (1)
The Eve Festival.
A hallowed tradition at Polaris Academy of cultivating the instruments of its newly admitted freshmen.
One stands before one's seniors and is made to swallow bowl after bowl of sweet, dry food—cookies, cake, and the like—without so much as a cup of tea to wash it down. Or rather, one does not.
"I'm looking forward to the Eve Festival."
"I know."
It was just an ordinary gathering.
In name, a modest affair the night before the entrance ceremony that opened the new term, where freshmen and returning students came together ahead of time to get a little familiar with one another. Seniors and new students in the same room, putting faces to names, venturing a question or two about life at the Academy—an ordinary reception. And after the sun went down, fireworks to watch.
Only the part about putting faces to names grew complicated.
Most of Polaris Academy's students were the second and third generation of statesmen, power brokers, nobles, or capitalists from the four nations. There was an unspoken rule that on the day the Eve Festival began—during the daytime or the afternoon, at least—freshmen and current students from the same country were to hold a separate gathering and learn one another's faces first. Making acquaintances of people from other countries came after that. Unofficial. Fair enough to call it a kind of initiation.
"The pre-gathering for those from the Failon Kingdom was at one in the afternoon, wasn't it?"
"Yes. If we leave around ten past, we should be fine."
The appointed hour was one, and yet we wouldn't even set out until ten past. Odd on its face—but my station required its own considerations. I was a princess of the Failon Kingdom, and every Academy student attending the Failon pre-gathering ranked beneath me. Suppose, in that situation, someone arrived later than I did. Whatever I myself thought of them would be entirely beside the point; they would be branded, on the spot, an ill-mannered little shit. I wouldn't particularly care. Other people would simply decide it for me. Better, then, that I be the one who was blatantly late.
"Princess, would you look here a moment?"
"?"
"The blue dress, or the white one with the purple gradient—which do you think looks better?"
Delphina asked it with a dress in each hand.
She had been agonizing over them for thirty minutes already. I answered with a worn-out face.
"Just wear whichever..."
"You can't just do that!"
Delphina flung aside the dresses in her hands and rushed over to me.
"And what is that dress of yours even supposed to be, Princess! It isn't mourning wear—what is this gloomy color..."
She seized the hem of my pitch-black dress and yanked at it, shaking her head all the while.
"I still like this one, though."
With a face this hollowed out by exhaustion and hair this dull, a brilliant dress wouldn't have suited me even if I'd put one on.
"No. That's exactly when you ought to dress even more splendidly."
Delphina shook her head, firm. Then she flung the wardrobe open, scooped up an armful of dresses, and came at me.
"Take off that gloomy thing that hasn't a single ornament on it!"
"Eek."
"Here, try this one first! I'll help you change, too!"
"S-save me."
I begged for help in a voice that shrank in on itself.
A plea no louder than a mosquito never reached anyone.
And for a full hour after that, I was thoroughly ravaged at her hands.
"I hate dresses... I hate changing clothes..."
"This is bad. The Princess is broken."
Delphina murmured it behind her hand.
"Well, I did make you change an awful lot."
"You're terrible..."
Thirty minutes before the Eve Festival.
Back from the pre-gathering of students from the Failon Kingdom, Delphina had gone right back to badgering me, insisting that the Eve Festival two hours hence called for a far more extravagant dress than the pre-gathering had. Already drained dry by that earlier meeting, I wasn't allowed a single recovering breath in the dormitory I'd only just returned to before I was put to work as a plaything for Delphina's dress-up sessions.
The whole time she tormented me she kept trotting out ridiculous slogans—"This is all for you, Princess!"—and the like. I didn't believe a word of it. Worse, when I heard that for the pre-gathering she had deliberately chosen a dress meant only to look plain on the surface, I couldn't help but be appalled. The betrayal sank into my bones. And here I'd thought Delphina was a good person.
Evangeline has been deceived yet again.
"Princess, if you don't sit up straight, you'll ruin the shape of the dress we went to all that trouble to put on you."
As if I care about that.
The whole ride in the carriage, I ignored Delphina no matter what she said.
"Ah, Princess. We've arrived."
Said the wicked dress-up demon.
I made a point of not answering. I took Delphina's hand and stepped down from the carriage.
"Are you sulking?"
Delphina asked it lightly, testing.
Instead of answering, I stole a glance at her face. Sure enough, she was smiling. Isn't the decent thing, when you ask a question like that, to look at least a little worried?
"Don't worry! I picked the most dazzling one of all, so you're certain to catch the Imperial Prince's eye!"
"What?!"
I jumped and snatched my hand out of hers. Right—I had resolved to ignore her. That resolution vanished without a trace.
"What is that even supposed to mean!"
"Oh my."
Delphina's eyes went perfectly round, and she tilted her head.
"...Hehe."
Then, all at once, her eyes curved thin, and she laughed softly to herself.
"You don't have to be embarrassed."
"I—I'm asking you what on earth that's supposed to mean."
Surely she hadn't taken it into her head to play Cupid between me and that bastard. Some outrageous notion like that.
"Delphina. I'm only saying this so there's no misunderstanding, but I and that prince—"
"Now, now, save the excuses for later!"
With not the slightest intention of hearing me—not even with the back of her ear—Delphina caught my hand and started toward the first-floor hall where the new term's Eve Festival was being held.
I swallowed my anger. This is all that prince's fault. The moment I see him, I'm cracking his joints.
Whether I would or not, I was led on by Delphina's hand through a great door trimmed in red leather, and the interior of the vast hall came into view.
Thick, lavish carpet covered the floor without a gap, and pure-white standing tables were set out in neat rows. The tables meant for sitting, three or four chairs apiece, had been placed along the edges; the standing tables occupied the center.
"In we go, Princess."
Delphina said it with a warm smile.
You can make that face all you like. I'm not falling for it anymore.
I put on a sullen expression on purpose and followed her into the hall.
Delphina's whispering voice rang at my ear.
Startled, I had asked through Sound Transmission in turn, and Delphina's answer came back.
A pointless thing to ask.
Delphina whispered again. She had been doing nothing but whispering all this time; plainly she still couldn't send Sound Transmission as naturally as ordinary speech.
I scowled, but when I looked the way Delphina was secretly pointing, I saw the back of the Imperial Prince's head, ringed by students who looked to be nobles of the Empire.
He had been turning his head without pause as he talked, and then, all at once, that head turned this way.
...Ah. Caught.
"Princess Evangeline!"
The prince called out in a glad voice, waving as he came toward us at little short of a run.
Whether she hadn't heard the Sound Transmission I'd sent, or was pretending she hadn't—or whether she'd decided I was only acting that way out of embarrassment and was ignoring me on purpose—she delivered her line and slipped neatly off to the side.
Before I could catch her, she had tucked herself in among the nobles from our own kingdom. I was staring after her in blank dismay when the prince tapped my shoulder, light and quick.
"Eep—?!"
The problem, of course, was that the dress I had on was cut to leave the shoulders bare.
At the thin shriek that escaped me, the prince startled.
"Whoa—Princess?"
"You startled me!"
I snapped it at him in a biting voice, and he scratched his head, flustered, and made his excuse.
"I'm sorry. I... didn't realize your shoulders were sensitive."
"Th-they aren't sensitive. I'm simply... not used to clothes that leave the shoulders bare."
But I am generous of heart, so just this once I decided to let it go like a man.
"Well. I'll overlook it this time."
Absolutely not because I was embarrassed to have screamed.
As I nodded to myself, the prince's murmur reached my ear.
"That aside, both of you know how to use Sound Transmission. Impressive."
"...What?"
What did he just say?
"How did you know we were using Sound Transmission?"
Sound Transmission is, by nature, a technique for carrying one's voice to an ally at a distance without shouting, or for speaking on a battlefield so the enemy cannot hear. The principle is to form a closed corridor of mana in the air and send the sound directly through it, so the voice neither scatters nor degrades. Which meant it made no sense for the prince—talking with other people, and at that distance—to have noticed we were using it. The sound isn't audible in the first place. To an ordinary person looking on from beside you, there is no way to even tell that Sound Transmission is being used.
"Ah. You mean that?"
But. If there was a single exception...
"Come to think of it, I never mentioned it. I'm a mage."
"Pardon?"
He announced it the way someone else might mention having stepped out for a walk around the neighborhood and come back with ice cream. Dumbfounded, I asked again.
"What did you say?"
"A mage."
"...A mage. You're saying you are one."
"Dear me. I'd forgotten I never told you."
He was grinning as if proud of himself. I asked, low,
"Even for a mage, noticing Sound Transmission shouldn't be easy."
"My level is Level 6. Reading the flow of mana in the air is simple enough."
Mages are assigned levels according to magical attainment—or scholarly attainment, as the case may be. The lowest is Level 1, and the level rises as one's achievements do. The highest level in recorded history, reached by an archmage, is Level 11. Even short of that, an attainment around Level 8 or Level 9 meets the minimum line at which one is acknowledged, by oneself and by others alike, as an archmage. That was what a level meant among mages. And to have reached Level 6 at the mere age of seventeen...
"Well, if I'm honest, all I noticed was Lady Delphina's Sound Transmission. Yours, Princess—no matter how I strained, I couldn't see it."
The prince shrugged, shamelessly at ease.
Even so my expression refused to change at all, and he asked,
"Could it be that a capable man isn't to your taste either, Princess?"
"Regrettably, no."
Even if you were the most outstanding man in the world, I would never fall into your arms. You bastard.
"I see."
The prince accepted it readily and took a step back.
I asked without thinking, more puzzled than I had meant to be.
"You're leaving already?"
I had expected him to cling more stubbornly than that. He had given ground surprisingly fast—and he had been the one to open the distance.
"Princess, just now, what did you—"
But the prince seemed to have taken my question in a slightly different sense.
Oh. Damn.
"...Hmm."
Instead of finishing whatever he had been about to say, he wore a peculiar smile, then put on a look of deliberate regret and spoke as if making an excuse.
"Given my position as Imperial Prince of the Empire, I happen to be acquainted with rather a lot of people. If I'm away too long, others might feel slighted."
"I see."
And what do you want me to do with that.
"Then, fiancée—another time."
"I keep telling you, stop with the fiancée—"
I said it to the back he turned on me, but he was already surrounded by other nobles who had come running the moment he turned.
And it wasn't only nobles of the Empire beside him. People from the Republic and the Holy Kingdom were mixed in among them.
Oddly enough, I didn't see anyone from the Kingdom. That was because—
"Princess Evangeline!"
"Well now, if it isn't the Princess Knight!"
"We've been waiting! I've wanted so badly to meet you, even just once, ever since—"
—every last person from the Kingdom had swarmed toward me instead.
They had apparently been waiting for nothing but the end of my conversation with the prince. I couldn't move an inch, hemmed in by people who pressed in on me as if raising an uproar just to get a word in.
No, but—you already saw me earlier. What was the pre-gathering even for...