Ellie did not hide the fact that she was an orphan, so many of her friends, new students, and even some upperclassmen knew about it.
However, there was a big gap between stating the fact and being called a “dirty orphan.”
It was no surprise that Ellie’s four friends froze.
But Ellie remained calm.
The sound of her flipping through the pages of her textbook filled the air.
“Don’t worry about it.”
Ellie, rather than being upset by the insult, reassured her friends.
“If you try to respond to every little thing like that, it’ll never end. You can’t completely erase it either.”
“It’s impossible to be loved by everyone.”
“If you’re good, people criticize you for being good; if you’re bad, for being bad; if you’re average, for being average. In the end, there’s no one who doesn’t have something to be criticized about.”
“If someone approaches you and insults you to your face, of course, you should knock them out. But if you run at every little muttering, it’ll never end. Even if you do that, you can’t root it out.”
“But…”
Isabelle, the most sensitive of the five, hesitated, and Ellie smiled softly, patting her friend’s head.
Whether she was gently patting, scratching, or messing up her hair, Ellie wasn’t sure.
“Don’t worry. I’ve already noticed who it is.”
They were all clearly noble children, with distinct hair colors and eye colors.
If you just remembered their hair colors and genders, you wouldn’t easily be wrong.
In fact, the upperclassman who called Ellie an orphan had already been stored in her memory.
That was a bad thing for him.
Ellie was about to go back to her textbook when the boys’ conversation took an unexpected turn.
“Watch your mouth.”
Another upperclassman spoke to the boy who had insulted Ellie.
“My grandfather told me that kid is going to shake up the world.”
‘Oh?’
Ellie blinked.
She recognized the boy by his description, realizing he was the grandson of the renowned craftsman who had made Ellie’s wand the day before.
‘His name was Garzan, right?’
The boy who had insulted Ellie, possibly feeling resentment towards Garzan’s words, asked back.
“What are you talking about? How would your grandfather know that orphan?”
“He came to have his wand made yesterday.”
At that, the other boy who had been rolling on the grass suddenly sat up.
“What? He went to the Clasman workshop to have his wand made!?”
It seemed that Garzan’s grandfather, being an extraordinary craftsman, was well-known.
The boy who first insulted Ellie snorted.
“Does that even make sense? I heard the price when our prince called for a wand for his grandson, and it was ridiculous.”
“I don’t know, but he came, and that’s all I know…”
Garzan scratched his pink hair.
“I don’t know. That kid… something’s off. He suddenly called me down to the lower floor, and I thought something was wrong, but he just made me greet him and told me to go back up.”
“Was he making you greet him?”
“No, that was the first time my grandfather showed me to a guest.”
The boy who insulted Ellie sneered.
“To that craftsman, you’re probably just a bug.”
“…”
“Hey, you’ve crossed the line, you crazy bastard. If you don’t want to cut ties with Garzan, apologize, idiot.”
“It’s fine. This jerk has been running his mouth for a while. He’ll pay for his own karma.”
While Ellie continued to listen to the boys’ conversation, she quietly smiled at Garzan’s last words.
‘It was truly a valid point.’
‘People should be careful with their words. Because one day, in the middle of the night, they might find the person they gossiped about waiting for them.’
It seemed there was no more interesting conversation, so Ellie was about to go back to her textbook.
“…What’s going on?”
She noticed that her three friends were staring at her intensely.
“What… What was that just now?”
“Clasman workshop? Wand? Is that true?”
“Did you go to the system yesterday for that?”
The three of them spoke in sequence: Stella urgently, Isabelle flustered, and Philia glaring at her.
Of course, Clea, who knew the situation, remained quietly focused on her knitting.
She didn’t want their eyes on her.
“Ah…”
Ellie hesitated.
There wasn’t anything she couldn’t explain, but to do so, she would have to talk about meeting the Emperor.
That was something she didn’t want to talk about…
Her father, who had abandoned her, was not someone she wanted to mention.
She even had to keep that a secret.
“Ask Clea.”
“!?”
The sound of the knitting needles clashing echoed.
Orange, purple, and red eyes turned to Clea.
Sigh
For Clea, it wasn’t an easy topic to discuss, but now that it had come to this, there was no choice.
“So, what happened was…”
She explained everything that happened, from accidentally encountering the Emperor’s carriage to the events that transpired when she left the craftsman’s place.
The three who hadn’t been there yesterday stared at Ellie with wide eyes.
No, they glared at her.
But since they were her friends, it was okay for them to glare.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Are you asking us that?”
“How is Ellie so calm? If it were me, I would have fainted from just meeting His Majesty…”
“…I think the most ridiculous thing right now is that I believe I would probably react the same way as Ellie.”
After their varied reactions, Isabel spoke.
“Then why didn’t you tell us before you asked? That something like that happened?”
Ellie scratched her cheek for a moment.
“I just didn’t want to talk about it.”
“If that’s the case, it’s fine. I thought you were treating only Clea specially, not us.”
Ellie smiled faintly.
“What are you talking about? I asked everyone in the first place if they wanted to join the academy.”
“Was that really the case…? Anyway, it doesn’t matter.”
Ellie thought for a moment.
She realized that she might have become the center of attention more than she expected.
‘It can’t be helped.’
At first, there is usually one person at the center of a friend group.
It takes time for the relationships between the members to grow and strengthen.
“I want some snacks too.”
As Ellie closed her book, Stella handed her some cookies.
“Are you done studying?”
“Yeah. I’ve memorized everything for now.”
“…Hmm?”
‘She said she had memorized everything?’
Stella checked the book Ellie had been looking at again.
It was the Basic Level Common Magic Language.
At the academy, students start with the intermediate level from the first semester of their first year.
Even then, many students had already learned the material in their families, so they were discussing splitting into different levels.
However, Ellie had never learned the Common Magic Language before, so she had been studying the beginner’s textbook on her own.
“Isn’t there quite a bit of vocabulary and grammar?”
In the beginner level, they learn 570 words, basic sentence order, present tense, imperative sentences, double object clauses, and past tense.
It’s basic, but not insignificant.
‘Could someone really memorize all of that after just browsing through the book for a few days?’
However, Ellie yawned.
“This much is easy to memorize.”
“Should I test you?”
Isabel’s eyes sparkled as she picked up the book.
She admired Ellie, but part of being a friend was bringing out the humanity in the people they admired, wasn’t it?
“What’s ‘boat’?”
“Cart.”
Ellie answered immediately, and Isabel seemed taken aback.
“U-uh… What about ‘earth’?”
“Terra.”
“Uh… ‘pants’?”
“Pantaran.”
“Then, how about ‘island’?”
“Island.”
“Huh? Wait, really? You’ve memorized it all?”
“I told you I did.”
Clea spoke up.
“Ellie hasn’t registered for the Common Magic Language yet, right?”
“Yeah, except for a few words.”
“Then translate this sentence: ‘I threw the chair.'”
“Maranseshi ro ses.”
“Then, how about ‘I ate eight pieces of bread’?”
“Why are the example sentences like that? Ma mahejaeji hwi pan.”
“…You really know all of it?”
“I told you, I memorized it. I studied whenever I had time.”
Stella, who was Ellie’s roommate, also chimed in.
“I can testify. I saw her studying until the lights went out at night.”
Philia frowned.
“How did you even turn on the lights? After the lights out time, we’re supposed to… Oh.”
Philia’s cheeks turned red.
What a silly question, of course, Ellie must have used magic to light up the room.
It’s not like anyone else would do it but her.
Stella spoke.
“Maybe it’s just my feeling, but since the semester started, it seems like you’ve been studying even harder. Is there any reason for that?”
“To be exact, it was after the timetable came out?”
“What’s the timetable got to do with it?”
“Well… you know, our Common Magic Language professor. He’s someone I have a bad history with. So I thought I should quickly improve my skills to match the others’ level, just in case.”
“A bad history? What happened between you two?”
Stella already knew.
She knew Ellie was an orphan and that her magic talent had only recently started to show.
Ellie smiled.
“That guy, the teacher, basically got kicked out of the academy because of me.”
The teacher’s name was Rensanti.
Thinking about it, no one but Clea had actually witnessed that incident firsthand.
Philia was at the academy but didn’t come to see it, and Stella and Isabel had arrived after the situation.
So Ellie decided to explain.
“You all remember a guy named Dein Edwick, right? You’ve seen him around.”
“The one who gets really down whenever Ellie is around?”
“That guy who always looks down when he sees Ellie?”
“Before you and Stella got here, something happened. First, Dein picked a fight with me.”
The refreshing autumn breeze surrounded the girls.