Nigel’s group, which somehow became three, walked together to the auditorium where the entrance ceremony was being held.
“……?!”
On the way, Nigel glared at the golden dragon statue they encountered as if she had met her enemy. Allen, noticing this, barely suppressed a laugh, while Noah alternately looked at the two behaving inexplicably.
“Ah, Miss Nigel and Mr. Noah, please take seats in the front row. The far left is Mr. Noah’s seat, and the middle is Miss Nigel’s.”
The guide standing in front of the auditorium spoke to the group as they were about to enter.
“What about me?”
Allen said, his eyes sparkling brightly.
“Allen, you can sit anywhere in the magic department seats.”
“I see… You two are lucky to sit together. See you later, Nigel, Noah.”
Allen waved his hand halfheartedly with slumped shoulders and trudged off to the magic department seats.
However, as soon as he met the other students from his department, he greeted them cheerfully as if he had never been dejected.
“Huh……”
Nigel and Noah watched this scene with disbelief before taking their seats in the front row.
Someone at yesterday’s party had said that out of the three seats, the top student of the year sits in the middle, with the others on either side.
It was amusing that the result of her grueling efforts, squeezing every possible moment, was just this middle chair, but once seated, it felt quite nice.
Although next to her sat a life-threatening bundle of homework.
After much deliberation yesterday, Nigel had come to a conclusion.
She decided that until the monster invasion, about a year and a half from now, she would do whatever it takes to raise Noah at Sienia to a state comparable to the original story.
And then she would have to abandon the well-raised Noah Beselion to the female protagonist.
While her intention not to interfere with the original story remained unchanged, this was an exception as her life was at stake.
Knowing the original content was a great help in achieving her goal.
Yesterday’s events revealed a way for Noah to grow in a short period. She even had a specific experimental method that could be applied immediately.
The difficult part was that if this experiment were proposed without a deep trust and a certain level of intimacy, she might be treated as a crazy person.
‘First, step 1 of the plan is decided: Building trust with Noah Beselion in a short time.’
This morning, she was about to throw out some words she had thought of while half-asleep to build trust.
“Are you feeling alright?”
However, Noah beat her to it.
Due to the unseemly display yesterday, Noah was now viewing her as a fragile lady.
Nigel wanted to refute those words immediately and prove her physical health, no, she needed to.
“Ah……”
……No.
Trust, she needed to build trust with him.
“……Thanks to you.”
Noah smiled gently at those words.
‘It was worth holding back!’
It was a refreshing green light.
“I’m glad. Ah, at Sienia, royal magicians regularly install and check protective barriers, so you don’t need to worry about yesterday’s incident happening again.”
I know that too…
Just as the words were about to reflexively spill out, Nigel successfully covered her mouth with her hand.
Trust, trust is important.
“……I see.”
While Nigel and Noah were having this slow-paced conversation.
Thump.
Someone sat down in the empty seat.
It was a boy with dark blonde hair, his face clearly screaming ‘I’m a noble’.
As soon as he sat down, he crossed his legs haughtily and folded his arms.
‘Really…… His behavior matches his face with pinpoint accuracy.’
Nigel thought as she looked at the boy.
He turned his head sharply and met Nigel’s eyes directly. Nigel, not backing down, stared back at the boy without blinking.
“Which family are you from, my lady? I’ve never heard of the surname ‘Ars’.”
How perfect, even his dialogue didn’t deviate from the stereotypical image of a noble, following his face.
The sudden appearance of the male protagonist, Allen’s endless chatter, the unexpected imperial-level responsibility……
Nigel’s patience, which had overcome all of this, was about to crumble at a single word from this arrogant boy.
If there was one thing that Nigel, who usually brushed off others’ words indifferently, was sensitive about, it was family.
To think that someone with such poor manners exists, asking about someone else’s family without even introducing himself at their first meeting!
Even the youngest children at the orphanage knew this basic courtesy without being told.
‘……Calm down, Noah Beselion is beside you. Trust, you need to build trust.’
Nigel clenched her fist and opened her lips.
“It’s a surname I made up.”
Nigel, able to control her mouth but not her body, answered in the same posture as the boy, legs crossed and arms folded.
The boy’s face turned serious at Nigel’s answer. He slowly rubbed his chin.
“……I’ve heard that some families rarely give separate surnames due to succession issues…… but this is the first time I’ve seen it.”
He relaxed his expression more than before. A strange sympathy could be seen on his face.
Regardless, Nigel was about to lose it at his temperament of judging others’ surnames without even introducing himself, and his prejudice that assumed all students at Sienia must be nobles.
“Well, it’s not a great start…… but anyway, nice to meet you, Ars. You too, Beselion.”
The boy extended his hand with a thud.
The complete image of addressing people by their family names instead of their perfectly good given names.
“……Yeah.”
Nigel, mentally repeating ‘trust’ to herself, grasped the hand of the nameless boy as tightly as she could.
“……Ah, right.”
Despite it likely being quite painful, he tried his best to act nonchalant as he shook hands, and then shook hands with Noah with his now reddened hand.
[This is the timeline separator]Only after the entrance ceremony began was the name of the ill-tempered boy in the next seat revealed through someone else’s mouth.
“Will the freshman representative of the Political Science Department, Sid Cromwell, please come to the podium.”
The boy, or rather Sid Cromwell, stood up from his seat and walked confidently with an upright posture.
‘Sid Cromwell……’
The Cromwell family was an earldom that had produced famous scholars and ministers for generations.
Nigel also owned two books authored by Cromwells.
One was a philosophy book interpreting humility as humanity’s greatest virtue, the other a history book compiling good records left by noblesse oblige.
‘……Indeed, books and reality are different.’
Nigel gave a half-hearted applause to Sid, who was greeting the dean on stage with an extremely humble attitude.
Perhaps bored by the lengthy entrance ceremony, Sid began whispering to Nigel.
“Ars, who taught you when preparing for the entrance exam? Teller? Ollend? Or both? No wonder they were so lukewarm whenever I tried to contact them.”
“Alone.”
Simultaneously, the boy’s head tilted as if he had heard wrong.
“I said I did it alone.”
“What?”
“They say true learning is like being trapped alone in a dark tunnel. Just as there’s always light waiting at the end of a dark tunnel, learning is a process of self-exploration.”
“Ars, are you…!”
“It’s a representative passage from Manel Cromwell’s ‘The True Beauty of Humanity: On Humility.’ I was deeply impressed when I read this book as a child, so I still read it frequently and try to live by it.”
Nigel smirked.
Sid’s chin, which he had habitually raised every time he spoke, dropped. Now his face was finally pleasant to look at.
[This is the timeline separator]Dong. Dong.
The boring entrance ceremony ended, and lunchtime arrived.
“Huh? Where did Noah go?”
Allen, who was approaching Nigel cheerfully, stopped short at the empty space behind her.
“Summoned by the dean. He said not to wait and eat first.”
Noah, who had naturally risen from his seat following Nigel after the entrance ceremony, was caught by the voice of a red-haired professor.
The voice was so loud that everyone around knew why the professor had called Noah.
“Ah, I see. Then Nigel, let’s use the teleport stone!”
Nigel, who was starting to feel hungry, nodded readily.
Nigel took out the teleport stone from her pocket. She held the teleport stone in one hand and Allen’s soft hand in the other.
“Teleport, cafeteria.”
The teleport stone glowed, and immediately the surroundings changed.
The person in direct contact with the teleport stone’s owner was also teleported.
This was also a fact she had learned after being tricked by Allen’s persuasion last night and casting teleport more than thirty times.
“Thanks, Nigel.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Nigel filled her plate generously, while Allen took only the minimum amount of food as they sat down.
“……Nigel? Are you sick? Why are you eating so slowly?”
“I’m having a staring contest with Sid Cromwell.”
Nigel answered, tearing into a sausage roughly.
“What?”
Allen tilted his head and looked back.
“……It’s true? Nigel, did you kill Sid Cromwell’s family without remembering or something? Sid looks like he’s about to kill you any second.”
“Of course not. I just…… told him I enjoyed reading Manel Cromwell’s book, and he suddenly overreacted.”
Remembering how Sid’s face had immediately flushed red and blue when she brought this up earlier, her appetite suddenly returned.
Nigel lowered her gaze from Sid and started to playfully handle her utensils.
“Hmm…… I can understand a bit if it’s Sid.”
Allen, who had long since put down his fork, said.
“Why?”
Nigel asked, swallowing a sausage.
__________
“Tell me, what makes you like me? I’ll change!”
Liu Changning transmigrated into a female cannon fodder character in a female-dominant novel.
After reading the first half of the novel’s plot, the first thing she did upon transmigration was to divorce the Pan Jinlian-style male protagonist she had just married.
She indulged herself, pretending to be ugly and poor.
But as time passed, the way that man looked at her became more and more unusual…
Liu Changning was dumbfounded: Tell me, what makes you like me? I’ll change!
――
This lifetime, Pei Yuanshao was rejected by the same woman twice!
The first time, she drove him away. Forced by the situation, he endured the waves of anger in his heart, yielding and humbling himself.
That person lay slanted on a rocking chair, her sallow face emotionless: “If you don’t want a divorce, go cook!”
Pei Yuanshao’s face was dark and gloomy: “You!”
The second time, after the crisis in Jinling City was resolved, the new emperor sent someone to pick him up. He turned around, stammering: “I… I have to go. If you keep me…”
That person lay on the kang bed, her back to him, as if she had long anticipated this day, crisp and clear: “Goodbye!”
Pei Yuanshao was so angry his fingers trembled: “You… you!”
The mission of family and country made him restrain himself, averting his eyes and turning to leave this broken household.
Two years later, they met again. Seeing her ethereal face, his body shook like a sieve.
“She was originally a ‘she’!”
At the Qionglin Banquet, the top scholar of the imperial examination, a talented person with exceptional speech and conduct, all the unmarried young gentlemen from aristocratic families looked at her with shy and timid eyes.
The peerless imperial official Pei Yuanshao felt the anger in his heart erupt. He pointed at the woman surrounded by the crowd at the Qionglin Banquet, his thin lips slightly curled: “Little sister, I wants that person to be the wife-master of my Mingde Prince Manor.”
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