LDTOTSDML Chapter 2

It was a spring day so thick with blooming flowers that even a passing breeze carried the deep scent of them.

The Academy, proud of its long and storied history, was buzzing like it hadn't in a long while.

"Hey! Hey!"

A girl who'd come sprinting down the hallway shouted the moment she burst into the classroom.

"I saw him! He's really here!"

Her brown hair, carelessly brushed and pulled back, and her eyes were bloodshot with excitement.

The door of the classroom she'd entered bore a plaque reading "Technical Department, Third Year."

Today, the first day of term, the Technical Department students were holding a simple assembly to mark the opening of the year.

The room erupted at once.

"Who? The young lord?"

"He's really enrolled? Political Department, right?"

"Is he handsome? What was he like?"

What had the whole Academy buzzing from the very first day of the new term was the news that the famous "Duke's household" had enrolled its scions.

And the girl who'd snuck off to see for herself was fighting, desperately, to describe what she'd seen as factually, as calmly and objectively as she could.

"Insanely, ridiculously handsome!"

Even calmed down, this was as good as it got.

"His face could conquer the world five times over and still have some beauty left! I mean it, an actual ice prince! My whole life flashed in front of my eyes every time he blinked once!"

"He's really that much?"

Someone voiced their disbelief—no matter how handsome, surely not that much.

"You poor thing, so lacking in faith..."

The girl looked at her classmate with genuine pity.

"You should've seen the miracle at the entrance ceremony with your own eyes. Not a soul was listening to the headmaster's speech. Everyone turned around just to stare at the young lord's face."

"'Young lord' all of a sudden?"

"I'm gonna be his personal foot-rag maid starting now."

"Ha! You're totally bewitched, aren't you."

"How handsome does someone have to be to do that?"

"Handsome enough that if the life-flashing-before-your-eyes thing at the moment of death let me see that face, I'd die happily right now."

The girl, who'd been carrying on excitedly this whole time, paused suddenly.

"But there was only the one."

"One what?"

"There are two young lords in the Duke's household, right? But only one of them was there."

"Huh? Wasn't it just one?"

"The one who enrolled was the previous Duke's son, apparently. The current Duchess's younger brother."

"Then what about the Duchess's own son?"

No matter how loud the classroom got—

"..."

To Arphina, sitting at the window seat reading a book, it was all somebody else's business.

Still, her mind was, like everyone else's, busy turning over the news of the Duke's household scions.

'So only the young master enrolled, then.'

There were two ducal houses in the Vellius Empire, though when people usually said "the Duke's household," they meant the one that held the North.

And the children of that house were extremely popular among their peers. They were objects of admiration—even a single exchange of greetings with them was cause for family pride.

There were two young lords in that household: one was the previous Duke's youngest son—that is, the current Duchess's younger brother. There was such a big age gap between them that he was practically close enough in age to be her son.

The other was the Duchess's own son, and the heir apparent, the future Duke.

And yet that key figure—hadn't even enrolled at the Academy after all.

'...Is he sick or something?'

But people from that family weren't the sort to fall ill easily.

Just as she began to sink into a quiet wistfulness, thinking of someone she'd secretly hoped to catch even a distant glimpse of, wondering how they were doing—

"What are you reading so intently?"

A green-haired, bobbed classmate snapped her fingers. Only then did Arphina's shoulders give a small twitch as she came back to reality.

"Sonia."

The girl called Sonia glanced at the title printed on the cover of the book Arphina was reading and immediately wrinkled her nose in distaste.

"Gunpowder manufacturing methods? You were reading this over the break too—how do you find something like this so entertaining?"

"It's fun enough, I guess."

Arphina slid a bookmark into the page she'd been reading. The thin metal bookmark, shaped like a holly leaf, had a red bead ornament dangling from a string at the end.

"Why on earth did you even come to the Technical Department."

If she liked studying this much, she should've gone into Politics or Economics instead.

Sonia sighed with genuine, heartfelt regret, and Arphina answered only with a sheepish smile.

"So what's going on?"

"Oh, right—did you hear about that too?"

"...?"

"...You really didn't hear it?"

Marveling once more at Arphina's powers of concentration, Sonia pointed toward the noisy center of the classroom.

"You know, the Duke's son everyone's been talking about since last year—he finally enrolled."

"Ah..."

She'd already heard, but Arphina nodded slowly, pretending she hadn't.

'Sis, what's this?'

'Wow, that's amazing!'

'I think this is even cooler than magic!'

For a moment, Arphina recalled a cherished memory from childhood, and she drew a faint smile onto her face, then erased it—so faint no one could have caught it.

'He probably doesn't even remember me anyway.'

She'd been young herself back then—and the kid who'd been even younger than her, remember her? No way....

Arphina let the sprouting curiosity die where it stood. Giving up on and resigning herself to something was familiar enough that she felt no regret over it.

"Anyway, seems like something's off."

Sonia had kept picking up scraps of information through the grapevine even while chatting with Arphina.

"There should've been two young lords, but apparently only one enrolled."

"I see."

"But apparently there's a really handsome new student among the commoners too..."

That guy's no joke either, apparently," Sonia was saying, when—

"Excuse me!"

A spirited voice rang out, and the classroom door, which had been shut, swung wide open.

"Is Senior Arphina Tonide here, by any chance?"

"..."

"..."

The classroom fell silent in an instant.

They knew the moment they saw him.

That the blond, blue-eyed pretty boy who'd just arrived, an unfashionable Academy pin on his chest marking him as a new student, was the "extremely handsome commoner" Sonia had been about to mention.

And everyone's gaze naturally drifted toward the classroom window.

The new student's eyes followed, landing on the corner window seat. His long legs, striding forward in big, easy steps, stopped right in front of Arphina.

"Si—I mean, Senior."

His bright, guileless smile was brimming with excitement.

"Hello."

"..."

Arphina, without meaning to, went rigid with tension.

She was so thrown that she didn't even catch the whispers behind her—people murmuring whether this was the other one, the one said to be handsome alongside the young lord.

'What in the world is going on right now?'

Prone to wariness around strangers, Arphina raised her guard sharply.

But the new student's mouth suddenly curled up at the corners, looking pleased about something. Arphina went from thrown to outright bewildered.

"Your name is Arphina Tonide, correct?"

"...Yes, and?"

She answered, at least, but her tone had an edge to it.

"I'm Del, the new student who enrolled today."

A soft eye-smile bloomed gently across the face of the boy who'd introduced himself as Del.

"Whoa," people around them breathed, awed by his looks.

"Uh, yeah. But why am I—"

But Arphina, still tense, failed to notice just how remarkable his face actually was.

Del said,

"I fell in love with you at first sight!"

"...What?"

What?

Huh?

Everyone in the room had their jaws hanging open.

The classroom was so silent that everyone seemed to have forgotten how to breathe.

To the stunned, frozen Arphina, Del said it once more, louder.

"Please go out with me!"

The reason Del had hidden his own name and status just to enroll at the Academy was to see the "Elder Sis" he'd been carrying an unrequited torch for, for years.

He'd first met her when he was seven.

Little Del, at the time, had just gotten dumped by his first love—his grandmother—and because of that...

"Why did you marry Grandpa! Marry me instead!"

"But what about Grandpa? Wouldn't he be terribly lonely if Grandma married you instead?"

"...Grandpa's an adult, so he should just give it up for me. He's already lived plenty long enough with Grandma."

"...The nerve of this grandson, honestly."

The poor, blameless grandfather's heart took a wound too, from his own grandson's demand that he divorce.

Crushed by that sudden sense of loss, little Del sank into deep gloom. In any case, to cheer up their son wounded by heartbreak, the Duke and Duchess took him along on a trip east, to which they'd just then been invited.

And there.

Del found a new love.

Different from the feeling he'd had for his grandmother since he was small, something urgent and harsh, almost like he was committing some sin...

"What's wrong with him?"

That evening.

Boves, a new student who'd enrolled in the Political Department, tilted his head.

That bastard "Del," assigned to the same room, who'd owned the whole entrance ceremony with his face alone, was lying face-down on his bed, not moving an inch.

"Haven't you heard?"

Agnus, another new student silently unpacking his things, said.

"He apparently barged into the Technical Department today and confessed his feelings out of the blue."

"Confessed? Whoa, seriously confessed? To who?"

"A third-year senior."

"Whoa..."

"And apparently got rejected."

"Whoa, seriously?"

To think a face like that could still get rejected!

The new student, purely impressed, felt an overwhelming sense of kinship with Del. He'd looked so pretty and handsome that he'd seemed like a person from an entirely different world, but now, seeing this, he really wasn't all that different after all.

Looking closer, though...—

'Not that pretty,' yeah right—the guy's insanely handsome and pretty.

Even so, he was just like him, getting rejected.

On top of that, it wasn't just his looks—there was a strange, hard-to-approach air about him too. Even tossing off a casual greeting to him felt like it'd be more than he deserved.

'Something refined about him, somehow...'

Just as the thought that he might actually be a noble was forming—

BANG!

"Aack!"

"Gah!"

Someone flung the dormitory door open so hard the frame nearly shattered.

Boves and Agnus turned toward the door, startled, eyes going wide.

There stood the Duke's household scion who'd enrolled alongside them today, wearing the murderous expression of someone who'd just killed three people on his way here.

"There a bastard named Del here?"

Nod, nod.

The two of them, too frightened to even speak, only managed to nod before fleeing, sensing which way the wind blew.

"..."

Only once he'd confirmed they were completely gone—

"...You lunatic!"

The young lord who'd stepped inside let loose a stream of curses at Del.

"Have you lost your mind? Causing a scene like that on your very first day!"

"Mrrgh..."

"Don't talk with your face jammed in the pillow like that, it's gross."

"Do you think this makes any sense?"

Whatever he found so galling and unjust about it, Del abruptly sat up from where he'd been lying.

"You—crying?"

Only then did the young lord notice that Del's eyes were slightly red and swollen. He was genuinely startled. Though it was closer to genuine exasperation at his ridiculousness than concern.

"Listen."

Del said.

"Arphina, she told me..."

"I know. You got dumped."

The blunt, needle-sharp confrontation with reality made Del wilt entirely.

'Please go out with me!'

'...No.'

At first he thought he'd misheard.

'Don't you ever pull a sick joke like that on me again.'

'It's not a joke, I—'

'...'

But Arphina, wearing a hurt expression, hadn't even pretended to listen to Del's explanation.

She'd left Del standing there and walked straight out of the classroom.