🔊 TTS Settings
Chapter 3
After finishing lunch and briefly reviewing the materials for the next day’s lesson, Yulian locked the classroom door and stepped outside. Two in the afternoon marked the end of her workday. As she was about to leave the school, a burly old man with a warm, kindly face approached her from the far end of the corridor.
“Teacher Yuri, heading home already?”
“Oh—Principal.”
As she was about to bow, the principal waved his hand, telling her there was no need. He was the type of crotchety old man who would roar like a tiger if students so much as ran in the hallway, yet in front of Yulian he always carried himself like a magnanimous gentleman.
“Ho ho, you’re getting off early again today, Teacher Yuri. Watching you handle such difficult lessons so smoothly without any preparation really shows you’re a prodigy wasted on a regular teaching position. For the next contract, perhaps I should offer you the vice principal’s seat.”
“Haha, you’re not subtly calling me lazy, are you?”
“Ho ho ho.”
The principal only laughed—much like how Yulian had responded with a polite, meaningless smile when he suggested renewing her contract for five more years with a mere four percent salary increase.
Her employment contract was set to expire at the end of the month. She was still weighing whether to renew it or move elsewhere. It wasn’t that she disliked this village, but she had unintentionally become famous as a star teacher. These days, even neighboring villages wanted to entrust their children to her, and spots in the advanced class were becoming scarce.
She had saved quite a bit of money thanks to having nowhere to spend it, and staying in one place too long carried the risk of running into someone from Latem crawling out of the woodwork. Moving on soon wouldn’t be such a bad option.
But it’s not easy to find a job this cushy.
Yulian hesitated. Of course, the boss’s unavoidable social quest—triggered by blocking her way home—was a definite downside that made her want to leave. As the old man—no, the principal—kept chatting, Yulian mentally increased her negotiation salary by one percent per minute.
Ten, ten, ten… eleven, eleven, eleven—
“Well now, I seem to have kept someone on their way home far too long. Since we’re here, how about a dinner gathering later with the other teachers…?”
“Oh dear, what should I do? I was planning to go home today and think carefully about my contract renewal.”
“Oh! If it’s something that important, we could head to my office right now and discuss it at length while you think—”
“I’m rather introverted, you see. I find it hard to think positively when there are people around. Would that be all right?”
〈Ba-bam!〉
! : Yulian has defeated the wild principal!
It was a little past three in the afternoon when Yulian bought the day’s gossip paper and entered a café in town. After ordering black tea and a strawberry mille-feuille, she settled into an outdoor seat beneath a parasol, devoting this precious time—when others were still hard at work—to photosynthesis.
In this era, where magic was well developed, gossip papers circulated easily. Even in a backwater village like this, one could read the latest news from around the world. Of course, political matters were confidential and off-limits to commoners, so the headlines were limited to celebrity scandals, new releases of popular novels, and the latest trends.
“Hm? A divine oracle descending in the Holy Nation after a hundred years? That’s unusual.”
The world she lived in consisted of a single massive continent surrounded by small islands. Many large and small nations existed on the continent, but they all shared the same religion.
Abraksas—the first god, the god of duality. A deity who gave birth to both good and evil, and who loved all of creation equally without discrimination. The Orthodox Church, which worshiped this god, was the one and only religion.
At the center of this faith lay the inviolable territory in the heart of the continent: the Holy Nation.
The Holy Nation was ruled by the High Priest, the representative of the clergy, and was famous for being governed with integrity and without corruption. The position of High Priest was not hereditary; instead, it was held by the priest with the greatest divine power of the era, making nepotism or favoritism nearly impossible.
Because of that, the temple was extremely strict about its rules. Claiming that divine oracles could be used as weapons to manipulate people, they prohibited revealing them to the outside world. As a result, for several hundred years, they hadn’t officially announced even the existence of an oracle, let alone its contents.
And yet, now the Holy Nation was suddenly announcing that an oracle would be revealed?
What on earth could be going on?
“In every story I’ve read, the church always ends up being the mastermind behind everything.”
Yulian rolled her eyes left and right for a moment, then shook her head. Whatever was happening in the Holy Nation had absolutely nothing to do with her anymore. She was no longer a grand duchess, nor the crown prince’s fiancée.
Compared to that, deciding whether or not to order another mille-feuille was a much more pressing concern.
If she stopped now, she’d have too much tea left. But if she ordered another mille-feuille, then she’d run out of tea. So she’d need another cup of tea—then she’d be short on cake again. And if she ordered cake again, she’d be short on tea…
“Sounds perfect.”
Eating a meal entirely out of desserts was a luxury only adults could indulge in. People who worked hard and earned their own money were allowed to spend it however they pleased. Compared to her days as a grand duchess—when even buying a single dress or piece of jewelry required reporting to her father—she felt far richer now, at least in spirit.
Just as she stood up to place her order, she suddenly felt a sharp, persistent gaze drilling into the back of her head.
This feels just like the obsessive stare of those middle-class parents who tried to slip me bribes to squeeze one more seat into the advanced class!
Post-work parent consultations were absolutely out of the question. Yulian immediately fussed with her frizzy hair, letting it fall to cover her face. Her thick, wavy blonde hair—so full it looked professionally styled—was the result of a natural collaboration between fine strands and natural curls.
Hiding behind her hair, she searched for the source of the gaze with hawk-like eyes, and soon spotted a large man standing in a nearby alley. Instantly, the tension drained from her shoulders.
“—Sol?”
“My lady.”
Short ash-gray hair. Violet eyes. Dark, sun-tanned skin that contrasted oddly with his handsome face. Even from a distance, she was certain.
It was Sol—Yulian’s childhood friend who had gone abroad to study in the knightly nation of Injak.
When she called his name, Sol rushed over as if given permission, dropped to his knees before her, and with eyes brimming with tears—
No, not just tears. He began to wail.
“My lady! Ah—my lady!”
Clutching the hem of her skirt and sobbing as if he’d just met someone he believed long dead, his grief was raw and pitiful. She understood completely. When Yulian was banished from Latem, Sol had been in a distant land. He hadn’t even seen her leave and must have learned of it only afterward. Of course he’d been shocked.
Fine. Being relieved, being moved—after meeting again like this after three years—was all fine.
But—!
“Isn’t that Teacher Yuri?”
“Oh my, I didn’t know Teacher Yuri had a boyfriend.”
“Didn’t he just call her ‘my lady’?”
Whisper, whisper. Murmur, murmur. Sugary gossip noises.
They say mugwort is in season these days—oh ho ho!
Yulian was far too well-known to stage a melodrama at a street café. And unlike the empire, where ancient noble families were common, in this rural country of Melburn, titles like “master” and “owner” existed only as mutually agreed-upon adult roleplay.
Before the buzzing gossip around her escalated from murmurs to pounding drums, Yulian grabbed Sol by the shoulders and tried to pull him up.
“S-Sol! If you call me that, people will misunderstand. And please, get up. There are plenty of chairs—why are you sitting there?”
“A-ah, my lady! Your once delicate hands have grown so rough…”
At the sight of her outstretched hand, Sol burst into tears once more. At that point, Yulian decided it was better to stop him from saying anything more unnecessary. She yanked him into her arms and covered his mouth.
Forcefully enough that, to onlookers, it would look like nothing more than an emotional reunion embrace.
