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Chapter 2
There was someone in the captain’s office, which I had expected to be empty.
It was Elias, whom I hadn’t seen in nearly three years.
At nineteen, the lines of his face had become a little more defined than they had been when he was transitioning from boyhood into young adulthood.
However, his platinum-blond hair, like sunlight reflected off ice, and his blue eyes, reminiscent of the deep sea, were exactly the same.
“Eli? No, Captain.”
I had been about to greet Elias warmly after seeing him again for the first time in so long, but I hurriedly corrected myself.
Elias was my superior for the next 358 days, after all.
Fortunately, it seemed he hadn’t properly heard my slip of the tongue.
His indifferent gaze merely swept over the direction the sound had come from before settling on me.
Our eyes met in midair.
I tensed up, worried that Elias might recognize me.
‘Nah, no way.’
I soon straightened my hunched shoulders after deciding that was impossible.
Putting aside the three-year difference between the fifteen-year-old me Elias remembered and the eighteen-year-old me standing before him now, I had dyed my pale pink hair an ordinary brown and was even wearing glasses that blurred my features.
“Who are you?”
As expected, Elias didn’t recognize me.
His eyes, cold as the deep sea, turned toward the uniform of a trainee knight.
“M-my name is Chloe Evergreen. I’m a trainee knight of the Tenth Knight Order.”
I stammered slightly as I answered, unused to Elias’s cold voice.
‘This is way more awkward than I expected.’
The Elias I remembered hadn’t been particularly talkative, but he had always been quite gentle toward me when I was young.
He had been a much more mature and kind ‘older brother’s friend’ than my actual older brother, who occasionally played mischievous pranks on me and teased me.
Elias’s brow furrowed at my answer.
Then he let out a small sigh and asked again.
“What business does a trainee knight have in the captain’s office?”
“I-I came to clean……”
“Clean?”
Our eyes met again.
For a moment, his expression, which had been completely stiff, changed to one of puzzlement.
And in that instant, I caught a glimpse of the Elias I remembered.
“Y-yes!”
I almost nodded and answered informally out of habit, but I changed my words at the last moment thanks to the greatest quick reflexes in the Empire.
I had to keep my head straight.
Otherwise, I felt like I would accidentally let my guard down and act familiar with Elias.
‘Absolutely not.’
The ‘will’ left behind by the dragon said to have been the contractor of the First Emperor was constantly watching to make sure I didn’t break the rules.
‘If I lose enough points and fail, Princess Violetta’s existence will be erased, right?’
No member of the Imperial family had ever failed their coming-of-age ceremony before, so the exact meaning of ‘having one’s existence erased’ had yet to be revealed……
I glanced down at the glass-bead bracelet locked around my wrist like a shackle.
Fortunately, it was still a vivid blue.
They said that if the entire thing turned red, I would be disqualified.
The pressure made my wrist feel heavy.
Elias gestured indifferently.
It meant I should simply leave.
For me, who had been on edge in case I made another mistake, that was actually a relief.
Honestly, pretending to be ‘Chloe Evergreen’ around the people of the Tenth Knight Order, who didn’t know me, wasn’t difficult.
But pretending to be ‘Chloe Evergreen’ around Elias, who had known me since childhood, was incredibly stressful.
I gave him an awkward salute and was about to turn around when I stopped.
If it were the meticulous Sir Hugo, wouldn’t he definitely check later?
‘He’ll scold me for not doing what I was told.’
I looked around as though I were searching for a broom.
“I’d feel uneasy leaving it like this, so I’ll clean it before I go.”
I deliberately rustled around as I searched for a broom, and Elias’s expression hardened slightly.
‘Right? It’s uncomfortable, isn’t it? Come on, tell me to leave again!’
What I wanted was for Elias to clearly tell me not to do it, preferably in words, so that I could use that as an excuse.
“Don’t make me say it twice.”
Elias frowned as he spoke.
I flinched at the icy response, which was completely different from what I had expected.
Elias withdrew his gaze from me and continued.
“I have never liked other people touching my personal space.”
‘Tch. You could’ve just said that from the beginning. Why did you become so prickly while I wasn’t looking?’
I pouted my lips and complained inwardly, only to realize that Elias had just handed me an excellent excuse.
“Oh, I see! Then I’ll be leaving now. Have a good rest!”
I left the captain’s office immediately, afraid that Elias might somehow stop me.
I could feel his bewildered gaze following me from behind.
But I didn’t care in the slightest.
If I didn’t have to clean the captain’s office, I could go back to my room in the knight order’s barracks and rest.
I was a little surprised that Elias’s personality had changed, but my immediate need for rest was more important.
Bed, wait for me!
Dragging my limbs, which felt heavy from the grueling training, I headed toward the knight order’s barracks by taking a shortcut.
“Ugh, I should hurry, wash up, work out, and go to sleep.”
Tomorrow, I had the exact same training starting at dawn.
If I didn’t loosen up my stiff muscles, I would be the one suffering.
Since yesterday, I had even started missing Anna, the maid who was in charge of giving me massages, more than I missed my parents.
Lost in various thoughts, I walked almost unconsciously, and before I knew it, I was near the quarters used by the trainee knights.
Everyone must have been exhausted from the grueling training and gone to sleep early, because the surroundings were quiet.
I dragged my heavy feet along with a weary shuffle.
All I could think about was getting back quickly, washing up, and going to bed.
By then, even the stretching I was supposed to do to loosen my stiff muscles had been completely erased from my mind.
That was how tired I was.
But there were a few guys with enough energy left to stay awake this late. They sauntered over and called out to me.
“Hey, commoner!”
At first, I was too tired, and I didn’t even think they were calling me, so I was going to keep walking.
But these lowlifes grabbed me by the shoulder and stopped me.
“Can’t you hear?”
Their mocking tone was unmistakable.
Oh, how unfamiliar.
You’re the first person to mock me to my face!
It was such a new experience that rather than feeling offended, I was actually fascinated.
“Whoa! Were you calling me?”
I answered with a little anticipation, excited to see what would happen, and the lowlifes let out exaggerated scoffs.
“Who else is there here besides you?”
The trainee knights sneered at me while swaggering around like back-alley thugs.
This was where I started to get a little annoyed.
I decided to remember that these guys were serious classists—serious enough to give up sleep just to bully a fellow commoner.
Until my coming-of-age ceremony was over.
Unfortunately, that was still 358 days away.
“Oh, I see. But why did you call me?”
For now, I calmly asked what they wanted.
But they looked utterly dumbfounded, as though they had never imagined I would react like this.
“Why did we call youuu?”
“Don’t you have any shame?”
“If you have even a shred of decency, quit the knight order right now.”
Apparently, their goal was to make me voluntarily quit the knight order.
There were some rather exceptional regulations applied to my knight entrance examination, so from their perspective, they had a legitimate reason to object.
‘But that doesn’t mean I can quit.’
I had my own perfectly valid and serious reason for needing to remain in the knight order.
Even though I was exhausted, I decided to try something resembling persuasion for the sake of maintaining a smooth life in the knight order.
“You guys seem to be unhappy that I was given eligibility to take the entrance examination through a special recommendation from the Captain of the Imperial Guard……”
All three of them nodded vigorously, as if that was precisely the problem.
“Then are you unhappy that the Captain of the Imperial Guard has the authority to make special recommendations?”
There was no way that was the case.
During his tenure, granting up to three people eligibility to take the knight entrance examination regardless of their background, along with several other privileges, was one of the rights of the Captain of the Imperial Guard that had been passed down for hundreds of years.
‘Of course, those rights were more of a symbol of the Imperial family’s trust than something that was actually used.’
It wasn’t that the right couldn’t be used.
It simply wasn’t used.
“Don’t change the subject!”
“You know perfectly well that’s not what we’re complaining about!”
“Why are you making it sound like this is the Captain of the Imperial Guard’s fault when you’re the one who doesn’t have the qualifications?”
The lowlifes shouted indignantly, as though there were no way that could possibly be true.
“Then why exactly am I unqualified?”
The Captain of the Imperial Guard’s recommendation only gave me the right to take the entrance examination.
The fact that I had passed the entrance examination was entirely due to my own ability.
‘Besides, I deliberately stayed near the bottom in every test except the final one because I was worried that someone might be disadvantaged because of me.’
I had only learned swordsmanship as a hobby, but I had been personally trained by the Captain of the Imperial Guard.
On top of that, I had received the strict education expected of a member of the Imperial family.
If I had taken the entrance examination seriously, I couldn’t guarantee first place, but I could have easily placed near the top.
‘Even if all of you who competed with me for the bottom ranks came at me together, I’d still win.’
I shrugged as though I genuinely couldn’t understand, and the lowlifes seemed to become so worked up that they immediately began rattling off their complaints one after another.
