Entrance Ceremony (4)
Just as real-world schools followed the entrance ceremony with students gathering in their assigned classes to learn the faces of their homeroom teacher and classmates, Private Acacia Academy was no different.
“See you later, then.”
“Yes.”
Unfortunately, Su-ryeon and I were not in the same class. She had been placed in Class 1-B, while I was in Class 1-D.
Ah, for reference, the classes here ran from A to E and were divided strictly by academic performance. Since I had barely scraped my way into the academy, being assigned to Class D was hardly surprising.
I ought to count myself lucky it wasn’t Class E. Nodding to myself, I opened the door and stepped inside.
Not everyone had arrived yet; quite a few seats still stood empty. I had hoped a window seat might remain, but unfortunately those had all been claimed.
Determined that the dead center of the room was absolutely out of the question, I moved with unhurried yet quick steps and settled into one of the remaining seats at the back. Good— the spot wasn’t perfect, but it was decent enough. Time to survey who was around me.
The classroom layout was roughly a three-by-five arrangement: three columns across, five rows deep. Fifteen desks in total. In other words, each class held a mere fifteen students.
The small numbers made sense. Private Acacia was packed with the daughters of the powerful, with only a scattering of commoners mixed in. And people powerful enough to be called that were not especially numerous, so their daughters were few as well.
Even with four full years of students, total enrollment barely reached three hundred for that very reason. Despite the tiny student body, the academy grounds were vastly larger than those of any other academy except First Academy.
Anyway, I turned my head toward the young lady sitting by the window—and marveled.
How on earth had someone who radiated pure gloom just by existing managed to get into Private Acacia Academy?
Someone might call the thought rude, but it was only a thought. No harm in thinking it.
More than anything, the young lady in the seat beside me was giving off such a gloomy aura that even someone as considerate as I was found myself reluctant to approach.
The young lady by the window had extremely dark hair—even lower in saturation than my own black locks. If she lowered her head in the dark, you would never find her silhouette.
Her bangs covered her eyes completely, as though she never bothered to style them, and she kept turning her head this way and that, apparently surveying the atmosphere of the class.
Yet her shoulders and body were hunched tightly inward, as if she desperately hoped no one would notice her.
But did she realize? In a place that demanded proper conduct, that timid posture only made her stand out more.
“Excuse me.”
“Y-yes?”
Whoever that was, she didn’t seem especially refined. Wait—no, she was already the child of high society, so refinement was a given, wasn’t it? I thought that to myself as I watched the young lady approach the gloomy one.
Startled by the sudden address, the gloomy young lady stammered, but the one who had approached her opened her mouth with elegant poise.
“My name is Yoon Seo-a. Would you be so kind as to tell me yours?”
“I-I’m Shin So-hye…”
“Miss Shin So-hye, is it.”
The voice of the young lady who introduced herself as Shin So-hye was extremely quiet, yet Yoon Seo-a somehow caught it and pronounced her name clearly. I myself had only managed to catch the surname Shin; the given name had been inaudible.
Anyway, Yoon Seo-a lifted her chin and looked down at Shin So-hye as she spoke.
“Miss Shin So-hye. Do you know where you are right now?”
“…What?”
“This is Private Acacia Academy. Not some ordinary academy, but a higher education institution dedicated to cultivating young ladies.”
Shin So-hye looked at Yoon Seo-a as if she couldn’t quite grasp what was being said. Of course, with her hair covering her eyes it was impossible to tell whether her gaze was actually directed that way, but her head was turned toward her, so it must have been.
Yoon Seo-a let out a sigh laced with a sneer at the utterly clueless atmosphere Shin So-hye was giving off.
“Miss Shin So-hye? What do your parents do for a living?”
“Ah… my father runs a small construction business…”
“I see. As it happens, my own father is the Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.”
Oh, this seems dangerous. Just as the thought crossed my mind, Shin So-hye seemed to sense the same crisis; she hunched her body even further and murmured,
“I-I see…”
“More than that—what is with that insecure voice of yours? Did you truly enroll here intending to become a young lady? If you plan to keep ruining the atmosphere like this, why not look for another academy entirely?”
At Yoon Seo-a’s quietly scathing words, Shin So-hye could say nothing and simply hung her head low. But Yoon Seo-a would not tolerate that. She produced a fan from somewhere, used it to lift Shin So-hye’s chin, and forced their gazes to meet.
“And those bangs covering your eyes. That is not a hairstyle a young lady should wear, is it? A young lady’s refinement is to cultivate her appearance proudly and nobly wherever she goes. If I were a member of the Conduct Management Department, I would most certainly have given you demerits. Or corporal punishment.”
The Conduct Management Department was essentially the equivalent of a disciplinary committee. As the name suggested, it was the group that monitored and punished young ladies whose conduct was improper. A step below the Student Council in rank, it still wielded considerable authority over the student body.
Seeing how strictly she was cracking down from the very first moment, was Yoon Seo-a aiming for the Conduct Management Department? Well, more likely she was simply picking on the easiest-looking target in order to seize control of the class atmosphere. By the way—when was the homeroom teacher supposed to arrive?
Even as I blankly wondered that, the squabble in the next seat continued. Mostly it was Yoon Seo-a spitting venom while Shin So-hye flinched and shrank into herself, but that alone was gradually shifting the mood of the entire class.
No matter how high-born the young ladies gathered here might be, at their core they were still ordinary people.
Isolating an inferior one for the sake of group cohesion was something that could be done with almost no effort at all. Already, soft laughter and mocking whispers at Shin So-hye’s expense could be heard.
The scene was uncomfortable, yet I could not step forward myself. At least Shin So-hye’s father held the title of company president; I did not even have that.
Yu Ha-eun’s father had died in an accident when she was very young, and her mother—once a housewife—had begun working in order to raise her.
Fortunately, before marrying she had been a capable career woman, so returning to office work had not been difficult. Thus, both before I possessed this body and after, I had never particularly felt hardship in daily life.
But she had only ever been capable as an ordinary office worker; she never rose to chairman, president, or even executive level. In other words, my actual status was lower than even Shin So-hye’s—the girl currently becoming the target of bullying.
Because no one knew that yet, and because the conspicuous one right now was Shin So-hye, the bullying was directed at her. But it could switch to me at any moment.
Of course I had not come here to suffer that kind of treatment, so I intended to stay as quiet as possible and remain cooperative with the class. As long as I did nothing to get on anyone’s bad side, even if my mother’s occupation were revealed later I would not be bullied like that.
Call me a coward if you like. I had only come here to enjoy yuri and avoid the protagonist—not to become the victim of this sort of harassment.
I was deliberately turning my head away from the bullying when a continuous metallic clashing reached my ears. A sharp noise mixed in with it, so I turned back—and my eyes went wide.
“Stay still…! I’ll open up that blocked field of vision for you!”
“N-no…!”
What on earth was she doing right now? I stared at the two of them with a dumbfounded expression.
Only moments earlier it had been nothing more than verbal venom, yet now the situation had become hair-trigger. In Yoon Seo-a’s hand was a pair of beauty scissors, making threatening snipping sounds—snip snip—while Shin So-hye blocked that hand with every ounce of her strength.
Apparently Yoon Seo-a had decided to remove the hair blocking her eyes and had grabbed scissors. Shin So-hye was resisting because she did not want that.
Of course I would have resisted too. Even if the hair covering her eyes was untidy, that was something for her to handle herself. Having someone force the issue with physical strength was naturally repulsive.
Fortunately the two of them seemed evenly matched in strength for the moment, but that would not last long. Simply put, Shin So-hye was blocking Yoon Seo-a from a half-sitting, awkward posture, while Yoon Seo-a stood over her and pressed downward.
If a little more time passed, Shin So-hye would lose the strength contest and everything would go Yoon Seo-a’s way.
But this wasn’t right. I bit my lip and my legs trembled.
Of course, if Yoon Seo-a had any sense she would not go that far. As she had said at the beginning, she would simply trim the bangs a little and stop.
But if time passed she would definitely do something worse. Bullying escalated step by step, like an escalator.
Moreover, even if she claimed it was for beauty purposes, carelessly bringing a blade that could injure someone like that meant she already regarded Shin So-hye as something like a toy.
“Ugh, h-hic…! Someone, please help me…!”
Shin So-hye sobbed and appealed to those around her, but the young ladies of the class only watched with fascinated faces; no one made any move to help.
Despair seeped into Shin So-hye’s breathing as she realized that. Yoon Seo-a smiled as she watched the hand that was beginning to give way.
“See? If you had simply complied from the start, it would never have been this difficult, would it?”
“Ugh, hnn…”
“Well then—”
Before Yoon Seo-a could finish speaking, I scraped my chair backward and stood up. Screeech—! At the unpleasant noise, not only Yoon Seo-a but every young lady who had been watching the entertainment frowned and turned toward me.
I forced a smile amid the countless gazes and thought,
I stood up… but now what do I do?