The Loophole in the Academy Regulations!
The dance with Zophy didn’t draw nearly as much attention as the one with Erika. Rather than clinging to other young ladies for dances, Erika focused on networking with the witches who approached her. The girls, drawn in by her power and charisma, quickly swarmed around the imperial princess.
After finishing a piece with Zophy, I watched Erika from a distance and muttered, “So this is the ‘school prince’ cliché in the flesh…”
“Cliché, my lady?”
“Never mind, Zophy. The longer I stay dazed, the more nonsense seems to spill out of me.”
“They really are treating her like the crown prince.”
“Still, she’s a girl.”
I took a small sip of sparkling water and turned my gaze away from Erika. Of course, I had thought that Erika’s… method of hitting on me felt closer to an ex-boyfriend’s approach than an ex-girlfriend’s. That attitude of building good impressions again as if the past conflicts had never happened, or the stubborn persistence in approaching despite my subtle displays of discomfort and still managing to secure a dance.
But precisely because of that trait, we had broken up without ever truly reaching the lover stage, and the Maria von Letiaponk in me could not admit it. Erika Waldmark is a girl.
“If we’re being precise, I’m the prince.”
It was a mutter loaded with multiple meanings, but Zophy seemed to misunderstand… or only accept part of it. Without any proper justification, she poked my side and laughed.
“Oh my, my lady, so you had ambitions in that direction. Of course Zophy welcomes either role! And please don’t forget that if one day the mood strikes you to demand the completely opposite part, Zophy is always prepared!”
“If it’s the complete opposite, does that mean I have to brush your hair, make your bed, and fold your clothes? I’ll pass. I’m far too precious a person to be waiting on Zophy.”
“You know that’s not what I meant. As if the noble Duke’s daughter would ever brush the hair of this lowly maid.”
I let out a small chuckle at Zophy’s words and shook my head. Worried she might have taken even the slightest bit of it to heart, I quickly smoothed things over.
“You know that was a test, right? I was trying to figure out which of hair-brushing, bed-making, or clothes-folding you wanted most. Since hair-brushing came first, it must be your usual wish. I understand. Many things are equal at the academy. If the chance comes, let’s switch roles once or twice.”
“Really, my lady?”
“Have you ever seen me make empty promises about something like this?”
“Then I shall grow my hair out tremendously. Do you have any idea how difficult it is? Your hair is curly, voluminous, long, and you have rather strict standards for style on top of it smelling nice. My own hair is cut short enough to roll up the back so I can prepare quickly by myself, yet to replace the service I usually offer you with this… It feels so unfair I don’t think I could stand it.”
“Isn’t a nice scent something that wouldn’t be a hindrance?”
“It makes me not want to let go and get up, so it’s hindrance enough, no?”
It was absurd logic, but it made me laugh, so it was fine.
“But, um… Perhaps what I expect from my lady isn’t you tying my hair up, but rather letting it down…”
At that moment, my eyes landed on the original protagonist, Elena Kerru, who had been tossed alone among the noble ladies and was floundering awkwardly.
Elena seemed completely unable to adapt to either noble social etiquette or the academy’s atmosphere. She couldn’t even continue a proper conversation with ordinary witches, her eyes darting left and right as she struggled.
“A commoner special student, huh…”
“Hmm, it is strange, isn’t it, my lady?” Zophy said, turning to look in the same direction.
I shrugged. “The imperial family must have had some thoughts. They would have finished all their calculations before admitting her.”
“I think so too, and everyone else does, but the real question seems to be how she became a mage at all. You know as well, my lady? For two hundred years since the birth of dungeons and monster attacks, no one except the daughters of the noble families who contributed to the empire’s founding has ever manifested magic. She is the first commoner mage in two hundred years.”
“Two hundred years is short, Zophy. Compared to the time that has passed since humans first stood on this land, it is an extremely brief period. Just because it hasn’t been observed for two hundred years doesn’t mean the phenomenon cannot occur. Especially when it concerns the mysterious phenomenon known as magic.”
“That may be true, but the Imperial Witch Academy has a regulation prohibiting commoner admission, doesn’t it?”
I knew that clause. Because in the original novel, it was the exact trigger point where Maria began her full-scale attacks on Elena.
In the original work, Elena enrolls as a special student with the imperial family’s tacit approval. Yet the imperial family strangely neither revises the academy admission rules nor issues an imperial decree to nullify the clause. They make the incomprehensible decision to simply push Elena into the school anyway. That is why Maria, upon realizing there was a legal flaw in Elena’s admission process, attacks her…
If the academy’s laws had been established by the imperial family, they could have fixed it themselves and nullified the lawsuit entirely. However, the repeated, meaningful depiction throughout the novel that the imperial family merely observed the lawsuit’s progress while only the imperial princess Erika struggled against it suggested there was more to uncover.
Was there something else I needed to find out?
“Even with a prohibition clause… since Erika Waldmark has acknowledged the special student’s existence, there probably isn’t anyone who would challenge it.”
“Hold it right there! There is a fatal contradiction in the Duchess’s statement sawa-yo!”
The moment I tried to brush the topic aside, a pink-haired petite noble lady suddenly burst into our conversation accompanied by her signature “Wahahaha!” laugh. It was Lillia Cosette, the baron’s daughter who now tried to act as my equal ever since I had smashed her carriage during our first meeting.
“You are the demon-like public lady who identified my name instantly at our first meeting with your powers of observation and memory, but when it comes to logical thinking, you are still beneath this Lillia Cosette sawa-yo!”
“Is this the same insolent shorty who was prostrating herself and crying in front of me this morning?”
“I think this is much more pleasant to look at than sulking all day long.”
“That’s true, Zophy.”
Since Zophy, who hadn’t had the best first impression of Lillia, said so, I agreed as well. Lillia paid no attention to our exchange. She clicked her tongue and wiggled her fingers. Perhaps seeing Elena—who was even more nervous than she was—had completely loosened her tension?
“What are you doing here? Miss Elena is struggling, isn’t she? Weren’t you supposed to be helping the special student adapt?” Zophy snapped at her.
Lillia slightly averted her eyes from Zophy. “A noble social gathering is a jungle that cannot be fully expressed in words… She cannot remain under my protection forever… Miss Elena can learn how to survive in the jungle on her own, and I can escape the jungle to chat freely with familiar people. It is mutually beneficial sawa-yo.”
“By that logic, if you stayed beside Miss Elena you could both learn how to survive in the jungle together, which would benefit both of you.”
“Ugh!”
Lillia had been refuted by me again, but this time she did not collapse into tears. Instead, she arbitrarily steered the conversation in the direction she wanted.
“Wahahaha, rather than that, let us continue the discussion about the massive contradiction you ladies have overlooked sawa-yo. There are three clues in total! First clue. A witch’s magic only awakens in the children of noble families. Second clue. Only witches may enroll in the academy. Third clue. The academy has a regulation prohibiting commoner admissions! Do you see it? The fact that these three statements are completely contradictory sawa-yo!”
“Uh, please continue.”
There was no point in stopping her. I let her speak.
“It is simple logic sawa-yo. Now, suppose that one day the imperial family prohibited women from bearing children with each other sawa-yo.”
“Why would they do something so horrible!” Zophy reacted.
I shrugged. “Zophy and Erika would hate that.”
“Doesn’t my lady hate it?”
“The core point is that if witches didn’t exist in this world, our reaction would have been entirely different from now sawa-yo. The union of sexes is originally something that occurs between men and women! Without the witches’ great magic, such a thing wouldn’t even exist in the first place. The fact that it can be prohibited means that such a phenomenon has already been observed to exist!”
“Oh, I see.” I nodded.
Zophy poked my side once more.
“You don’t hate it?”
“Be quiet, Zophy. It seems she’s about to say something rather important.”
“In other words, the claim that no commoner witch has appeared even once in two hundred years is a massive lie! The very existence of the regulation proves that such a thing is possible—at the very least, that the imperial family recognizes it as possible sawa-yo. If that weren’t the case, they wouldn’t have created such a regulation in the first place. What do you think of that, Wahahaha!”
Hmm. It was a sharper point than I had expected. And it was logically sound.
Realizing I was convinced by her argument, Lillia winked with one eye and hopped up from her seat.
“Then I shall now retire to my room to research documents and find clues regarding this matter sawa-yo. Well then, everyone, please enjoy the rest of your time sawa-yo!”
Lillia Cosette left the ballroom without a backward glance and walked down the corridor leading to the dormitories. Since entry and exit from the entrance ceremony ball was free for all new students, no one stopped her.
Watching the pink-haired young lady dash off, Zophy said, “The atmosphere at the entrance ceremony must have been quite overwhelming for her.”
“No, it seems her scholarly curiosity is the real deal.”