Encounter with a Fiery Princess

by Yuu Miyazaki

  “I don’t need your excuses! Get your butt over here! In five minutes or else!” The window closed with a blip.

  Eishirou smiled sheepishly and scratched his nose. “Well, you heard that. I better get going.”

  “Okay. I should head to the dorm, anyway.”

  “Right. See you back there.”

  “Oh, wait… Yabuki!” Just as Eishirou was leaving the classroom, Ayato tossed him the object he’d been holding.

  “Huh?” Surprised, Eishirou caught it, then smirked as he saw what it was. “Oh. So you figured it out, huh?”

  “I guess I should thank you. Although I’m not totally sure about that, since Julis might have let me go if not for that thing.” It was a Lux activator—not the one Claudia had given him, but the one Ayato had borrowed earlier that morning.

  “How’d you know it was me?”

  “Hmm. Your voice, I guess,” Ayato replied breezily.

  Eishirou stared at him blankly for a moment.

  “You’re telling me that you remembered my voice, one guy out of a crowd, in a situation like that?”

  “My big sister always told me to return anything I borrow.”

  “Ha-ha! You are pretty interesting, after all.” Eishirou made his shoulders shake with laughter, trying to disguise the fact that his cheeks were burning. “Hey, Amagiri. You really think you couldn’t have won that duel?”

  “No. Not at where I am now.” That was the plain truth.

  “Hmm. Where you are now, huh?” Perhaps satisfied with that response, Eishirou strode lightly out of the classroom.

  Ayato stared at the door after him for a bit, then let out a deep sigh. “This school’s gonna be a lot tougher than I thought…”

  CHAPTER 3

  HER NOBLE EYES

  “Huh? Oh, come on. I can’t go this way?”

  Ayato had tried to cut through the courtyard, thinking it would be a shortcut to the dorms, but found himself stuck at a metal barrier.

  Apparently, the school closed some of the gates in the evening.

  The gate wasn’t all that high, and Ayato could have gone over it—but that was exactly what had landed him in so much trouble this morning. Better to just head back and find another way.

  “Oh, well… It’s not like I’m in a hurry.” Taking walks, after all, was one of the few things Ayato liked to do for fun.

  The courtyard was as spacious as an average-sized park, with impeccably maintained greenery. Looking around, Ayato saw several humanoid robots that resembled featureless dolls—Puppets—pruning the trees. While he had heard somewhere that Puppets for military use could be remote-controlled, the ones in common use were entirely automated, slow-moving and able to handle only simple tasks. By now, Puppets like these had largely taken over the realm of harsh physical labor.

  Still, this was not a sight commonly seen in provincial towns like the one Ayato had come from.

  He was walking between the sharp silhouettes of trees against the setting sun, curiously watching the Puppets at work, when an angry shout suddenly echoed through the courtyard: “Then why the hell did you duel that new kid!?”

  It was a young male voice, ferocious enough to freeze a fainthearted listener in his tracks, making the air crackle with tension.

  Some kind of argument…? thought Ayato.

  Keeping himself hidden in the shadows, he peered through the trees to find a small gazebo in a clearing. In front of it were three male students. The boy in the middle stood out, tall and sturdy with a muscular build, intimidating even from a distance. The other two—one thin and one fat—stood a step behind, giving the sense that they deferred to the tall boy.

  They seemed to be talking to someone inside the gazebo, but from his vantage point, Ayato couldn’t see who it was.

  If someone was in trouble, he could hardly just walk away—but at the same time, he would rather not poke his nose in where he wasn’t wanted. All the more so considering that this school had its own set of rules, to which Ayato was only just starting to acclimate.

  Still…

  “Tell me, Julis!”

  Hearing that name, Ayato automatically leaned closer.

  “I don’t have to tell you anything, Lester. We all have the right to duel whomever we please.”

  “You’re right. That goes for me, too.”

  Ayato moved sneakily from tree to tree, and there she was—a girl with shining rose-red hair sitting in the gazebo. She and the student named Lester glared at one another so fiercely one could practically see sparks flying. The situation hardly seemed amicable.

  “We also have the right to refuse,” said Julis. “You can challenge me all you want, but I have no intention of dueling you again.”

  “Then tell me why!”

  “You really need it spelled out for you?” Julis sighed heavily and stood up to face Lester. “It’s because this will never end. I’ve bested you three times. There’s no point in us fighting again.”

  “I’ll beat you this time! Don’t let that string of lucky breaks go to your head! You haven’t seen my real power!”

  “That’s right! You wouldn’t stand a chance if Lester went all out!” One of the pair standing behind Lester, the fat one tried to score points by jeering at Julis.

  “Then prove it to someone else.” Julis turned away, declaring an end to their conversation.

  “Hey! This isn’t over—!”

  Just as Lester reached out to grab her shoulder, Ayato stepped out from behind the trees and blurted, “Oh, it’s you, Julis! What a coincidence, running into you in a place like this.”

  “…What are you doing here?”

  “Who the hell’re you?”

  Ayato’s timing and words made for such a transparent act that both Julis and Lester looked daggers at him.

  He forced an awkward laugh and fumbled, “Well, um, I got a little lost…”

  “Oh, hey! Lester! That’s him—the new kid!”

  “What…!?” Lester impaled Ayato with an even sharper glare. If a gaze had physical force, Lester’s would have blasted through a sheet of metal.

  But Ayato calmly let it roll over him. “So, Julis, who’s this?” he asked.

  Julis answered him with her hand on her hip, looking at him as if he were something ridiculous. “Lester MacPhail. He’s ranked ninth.”

  “Huh, so you’re a Page One, too,” Ayato remarked, turning to Lester. “Wow!”

  Lester said nothing.

  “Oh yeah—I’m Ayato Amagiri. Nice to meet you.”

  Lester kept staring balefully down at him, without so much as a glance at Ayato’s extended right hand.

  Up close, Lester’s size was even more impressive. He had to be almost seven feet tall, with broad shoulders and bulging, honed muscles.

  Genestella musculature was far more powerful and limber than that of ordinary humans, but it was largely resistant to bodybuilding efforts. Which meant Lester must have worked unbelievably hard to achieve his current physique.

  He had short, bristling brown hair over a chiseled face that was currently full of fury.

  “You…you fought a little brat like this, but you won’t fight me…?” Lester growled, his clenched fists trembling. “The hell with that! I’m going to crush you! No matter what it takes!”

  Apparently Ayato didn’t even register to him. Lester stepped up toward Julis with a belligerent swagger.

  “H-hey, Lester, take it easy! This can’t be the best place…” The thin boy tried to calm him down, but Lester didn’t seem to hear.

  Julis was around average height for a girl her age, so that next to Lester she looked like a child beside an adult, but she stood there undaunted. “That’s unlikely. Unless you do something about that charging-boar personality of yours, I will beat you every time.”

  “Wha—? Damn it!” Lester was on the verge of exploding in rage, but realized that doing so would only lend more truth to her words.

  “Y-you better take Lester seriously, or you’re gonna regret it! He�
�ll get you next time, just wait and—”

  “Enough, Randy!” Lester barked at the pudgy boy and stepped down from the gazebo with a sour sneer. “I’m not giving up,” he spat. “Not until I make you see my true strength…!”

  He left Julis with that and the two sidekicks hurried after him.

  “What a bother,” she sighed once the boys were completely out of sight and took a seat again on the bench.

  Ayato laughed under his breath. “Maybe I shouldn’t have done anything?”

  “I’ll say. Thanks to you, he was even more annoying than usual.”

  “Sorry… Wait, that’s usual, though?”

  Julis shrugged in reply. “Apparently, he doesn’t care for me. He’s not alone in that, but he’s the first one to be so persistent about it.”

  “But he’s ranked ninth, so he must be pretty strong, right?” Ayato was about to ask if she would be okay but caught himself. Even one day’s acquaintance was enough for him to understand that taking that sort of tone with her would set off her temper.

  “If we’re talking about fighting ability, yes, he’s strong. But not as strong as me, and rankings aren’t all that reliable to begin with. There are plenty of skilled fighters who aren’t in the Named Chart. There’s also the matter of chemistry—how you match up against a particular opponent.”

  Julis lifted her gaze to him, the corners of her mouth curling up slightly, as if she expected something. Ayato averted his eyes.

  “Since we’re here, I have a question of my own,” she said.

  “Um…wh-what do you want to know?”

  “You used Meteor Arts in our duel this morning. How did you do it with an uncalibrated Lux?”

  “Oh, that wasn’t Meteor Arts.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “I can’t use Meteor Arts in the first place. I don’t think I get along with Luxes—well, it’s just not for me. I’d rather have a real physical weapon.”

  “Then, that technique from this morning…”

  “That was just a sword technique. My family has a traditional swordsmanship dojo going way back, so I know a few.”

  “Just a sword technique?” Julis’s eyes widened. “Granted, it’s not impossible to cut through my flames with a Lux blade. But I’ve never seen anyone slice them in half as cleanly as you did. Exactly how good are you?”

  “Oh, I was just lucky,” Ayato laughed.

  “…Hmph. Fine. We’ll see how long you can keep up that innocent act. This place isn’t as nice as you think.”

  “I don’t really think that at all…” Ayato scratched the back of his head. “What about you, Julis? Why are you fighting in such a dangerous place?”

  “What?”

  “I heard…you’re a princess.”

  “It’s true—I am the first crown princess of Lieseltania. And so what? Everyone here, to some extent, is fighting for something that they can’t obtain anywhere else. Titles and status have nothing to do with it.” She spoke quietly, but her words held a fierce, unwavering resolve.

  He hesitated, wondering if he would be going too far, but then he posed the question anyway. “…So what do you want?”

  Julis gave him an unexpectedly straight answer. “Money.”

  “Huh…?”

  “I need money. And fighting here is the fastest way to get it.”

  A princess, fighting for money? He would have thought that a princess would be plenty wealthy. Then why…?

  “I need it quickly,” she went on. “And the timing is convenient. I’ll go undefeated in all of this season’s Festas. That’s my objective.”

  “All three Festas…?”

  The so-called “grand slam.” Even Ayato knew how difficult that was.

  “Yes, and I’ll start with the Phoenix,” said Julis. “I have to win that, at the very least.”

  The amount of Festa prize money was determined based on the points earned, but winning even one event, Ayato had heard, would gain you enough to spend the rest of your life in leisure.

  He wanted to ask why but decided against it. He had that much discretion. But what little he’d heard answered a different question for him.

  “Oh, so that’s why you’re looking for a partner?” said Ayato, recalling the exchange that morning between Claudia and Julis.

  The Phoenix was a tag team tournament, so of course Julis could not participate on her own.

  She flinched a bit. “…W-well, yes.”

  Her reticence on the subject seemed to indicate that she really was having some difficulty finding a partner. Maybe that was inevitable, given her personality…

  “I—I may not have found a partner yet—but that’s not because I don’t have any friends! I mean, it’s true that I don’t have friends at this school, but that isn’t the issue. There simply isn’t anyone who meets my standards as a partner.”

  So she admits that she doesn’t have any friends? Ayato thought but stayed away from that. “Then what kind of partner are you looking for?”

  “Well… First of all, someone as good as me—but I know that’s asking for too much. So someone with at least the abilities of a Page One, a person of impeccable integrity, who thinks well on their feet, with a strong will and a noble spirit. Someone with the qualities of a knight.”

  “…You’re setting the bar pretty high,” Ayato remarked.

  “Hmm, really? I thought I was being fairly lenient…”

  Maybe that was the princess in her talking.

  “Although the entry deadline is getting close, I suppose I can’t be too picky at this point,” Julis said under her breath, as if talking to herself, then picked up her bag and stood. “It’s about time I was leaving… But what were you doing here, anyway?”

  “Oh, well, um… I thought it’d be quicker to go this way, but the gate over there was locked.”

  “It would be. The courtyard gates close automatically at night. At this hour, though, the only ones that are shut should be on the middle school side.”

  So I was completely lost, Ayato thought with chagrin.

  “Wait, so if the gates close automatically, does that mean that I’ll be trapped if I hang out in here too long?” he wondered. “Should I be worried about that?”

  “Huh?”

  “I mean, um, I like to walk around places like this, but I wouldn’t want to get stuck…”

  Julis stared at him blankly for a moment, then burst into laughter.

  “Well, obviously! Are you really that dumb? After the mess you got yourself into this morning, you didn’t even bother to look at a campus map!? Don’t worry—the high school gates stay open until the middle of the night,” she said teasingly, and her eyes narrowed with a smile. She looked right then like a normal girl…

  “Hmm? What?” she said, noticing his silence.

  “Oh… I was just thinking, so you do laugh.”

  “Wh…!?” The color rose to her face before his eyes. “Wh-what are you talking about!? I laugh sometimes, just like anybody else!”

  Then her expression regained its usual sullen cast, and she turned away in a huff.

  “Then why don’t you act more friendly to start with?” said Ayato. “You could if you wanted to…”

  “Shut up! That’s none of your business!” Julis snapped. “Wh-who are you to talk, anyway? Why don’t you get that spaced-out face of yours in order? A slack face reveals a careless mind! If you carried yourself better, maybe you wouldn’t be making such stupid blunders, like you have all day today!”

  That seems like a stretch, he thought, but conceded. “Well, okay—I was being careless, but also, I just don’t know enough about this place…”

  This campus was too big, to start with. And there were so many strange rules. Not at all easy for a newcomer. Maybe if there had been someone to show him around…

  “Oh!” With that thought, Ayato looked straight at her.

  “Wh-what now…?” For some reason, she blushed and took a step backward.

  “Julis, would you
show me around the school? Oh, and maybe the city, too, while we’re on the subject.”

  “…Huh?” Julis didn’t bother to hide her displeasure at the request. “Is that a joke? Why would I do that?”

  “Well, you owe me a ‘debt,’ right? You said so yourself—I can ask you one favor.”

  “I did say that, but… Are you serious?”

  “Serious…?”

  “I mean, is that enough to repay the debt I owe you? I don’t like it one bit, but you did save me this morning. That’s no small debt. You could have anything you want from me, within reason— Th-that is, nothing indecent, of course! But for instance, I could lend you my strength as a Page One.”

  “You mean, you’d help me out in a fight?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, that’s okay.” Ayato shook his head. “I think I’d better get used to this school first.”

  At this nonchalant reply, Julis gave him a searching stare, then smiled sarcastically and sighed. “You’re a man of mysterious depths. Or maybe you really are an idiot?”

  “If those are the two possibilities…I’m probably the latter,” Ayato admitted.

  “Hmph. Probably. But very well. I’ll show you around, if that’s what you want.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate it!”

  “W-well, I don’t have much choice, do I? A debt is a debt. I’ll show you around campus after school tomorrow. As for the city…well, I’ll have to set aside one of my days off for you.”

  “Great. I’m looking forward to it.” That should solve some of my most immediate problems, he thought. “Okay, I guess I better find my own dorm now… Ghk!”

  As Ayato started to walk away, Julis grabbed his collar from behind.

  “Let me give you one tip right now. The fastest way to the boys’ dorm from here is to go by the college building.”

  Choking, he managed to answer, “Th-thanks for that. But I’d appreciate it if maybe you could be a little more gentle with your lessons…”

  As Ayato wheezed against the pressure around his throat, Julis replied with a faint smile, “Too bad. You failed to specify that in the terms of our agreement.”

  It was completely dark by the time Ayato arrived at the boys’ dorm, which was situated on the opposite side of the school buildings from the girls’ dorm. The girls’ building sported a classical European facade, but this one looked like a conventional apartment high-rise.