Shattered Illusions

It wasn’t some rebellious urge to defy tradition that made me obsess over becoming the top student. I simply wanted to avoid misfortune. To be more specific, I wanted to avoid ending up like my parents.

They say a child’s guardians are the ones who teach both the best and the worst life has to offer. My parents were the living proof.

My mother had never once surrendered the title of top student at Royal High School. After graduation, she became engaged to the prince as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Of course, in this day and age, no woman feels a thrill at the outdated trophy called a “prince,” and my mother was no exception. To her, however, the engagement was the ultimate package deal—a full scholarship and guaranteed internship rolled into one. There was no way she could turn it down.

After studying abroad on the royal family’s money, she returned home and parachuted straight into the administration. She rotated through departments while enjoying the promised lightning-fast promotions. Drawing on all that experience, she rose to the position of queen and has worked for the kingdom’s development to this day.

Some might sneer that in the modern world a queen is nothing more than a tourist attraction. That side of it certainly can’t be ignored. The royal marriage generated solid tourism revenue, and they sold all kinds of merchandise featuring the new queen’s crest and signature.

But no matter how much the world changes, the “honor” and “influence” the royal family has accumulated over centuries never truly disappears. The smaller the country, the more that holds true. On top of that, the royal family’s strategy of choosing a spouse from among the era’s greatest minds worked perfectly. Even today, the royal house of the small nation Alden still holds real power—backed by the absolute support of its citizens.

If I want to talk about the start of this utterly embarrassing misfortune, I have to go back to when I was six.

Not many memories from that time remain clear, but that particular moment is burned into my mind so vividly I can still recall the faint scent of the air and every sound.

That day, I walked into my mother’s office with the prim, princess-like steps I had practiced and gave her a perfectly polite greeting. The girl I was then suffered from a terrible obsession with becoming “the perfect princess,” so I believed even the smallest errand required flawless etiquette.

Lady Camilla was a beautiful woman I sometimes saw around the palace. I didn’t actually know who she was—no adult ever spoke of her in front of me. So I simply assumed she was a noble lady from some important family.

Only once had my nanny whispered, as if sharing a dangerous secret:

That was the one thing my six-year-old self could not understand. After all, a “perfect princess” had a duty to become friends with everyone in the land.

(Of course, the me of today would never entertain such a naïve idea.)

The moment I proudly showed her the ribbon, my mother’s voice turned to ice.

I flinched and looked up. The face before me was one I had never seen on my mother before. The woman known as the “Ice Flower” for her perpetual coldness was now burning with a heat I didn’t recognize. The little girl I was then didn’t yet understand that the emotion was rage far beyond simple anger.

“Hand it over.”

The pretty ribbon slid free under her fingers. That’s my ribbon! For once, I wanted to talk back. But her hand holding the ribbon was trembling violently. In the end, I stayed silent.

That night, unable to sleep, I crept into the hallway looking for my nanny and overheard my parents shouting at each other. I wanted to run somewhere I couldn’t hear them, but my legs wouldn’t move. I covered my small ears with my hands, yet their accusations and screams still leaked through.

Even then I vaguely understood that everything was because of my ribbon. It wasn’t until I reached my teens that I fully grasped the meaning of that fight.

I had stumbled upon my father’s old photo album. Every single page of his life featured Lady Camilla.

That was the day my long-cherished belief shattered—the belief that “I will marry the smartest person in this country and live happily ever after.”

Marrying the smartest person had absolutely nothing to do with happiness.

The pain left by those shattered fragments changed my entire life. First, I had to escape this cursed tradition. According to the outdated royal laws, there was only one way to avoid that nightmare of a marriage: graduate as the top student myself.

On the day I made that resolution, I packed away the handheld game console I had treated like a part of my soul and picked up a book instead.

And so, at sixteen, I applied to Royal High School under a false identity. I hid my status both for my own safety and because it was part of the royal family’s equally outdated, long-standing tradition.

Wouldn’t other students recognize a “princess”? I had worried about that too. My photos had appeared in the news, and the school was full of children from prestigious families who had enrolled to escape their parents. Some of them had even exchanged greetings with me before.

But when I thought about it, those who had met me face-to-face had barely dared to lift their heads in my presence. Besides, whether in photos or in real life, my appearance at the time had been the result of two full hours of royal maids laboring to create “the perfect princess everyone imagines.”

And now?

After the top-student announcement, I had fallen asleep while copying an ancient philosophical text to vent my rage. The girl staring back from the mirror was nothing like the princess they remembered.

Hollow eyes from an all-nighter, dark circles, messy blonde hair I had barely brushed. Add the huge glasses that covered half my face and the dull gray hoodie hanging loosely over my uniform, and what looked back at me was not a carefully adorned princess but simply Evey Underwood, ordinary only daughter of an ordinary working couple.

Of course the girl who had grown up loving pretty things didn’t enjoy looking like this. But right now, that didn’t matter.

Cyrus Quinton!

I had to remove that awful boy from my life before I, too, fell completely into misfortune.

“...Could you stop rustling around like that?”

I had just slung my heavy backpack over my shoulder and was about to leave the dormitory when my roommate Joy Carter’s pained groan drifted from under the covers.

She had the blanket pulled all the way over her head and was moaning. It looked like she had snuck out again last night to party somewhere on campus. Honestly, I couldn’t understand her. She never missed a chance to have fun, yet she was late to every single class.

Not that I had any right to criticize. It would be ridiculous for someone living under a fake name to meddle in other people’s lives. So I simply left the room.

The closer we became, the greater the chance my identity would be exposed. A moderate distance was better for both of us.

As I passed through the common hall of Dormitory 3, I glanced at the dorm supervisor’s warning notice posted on the wall.

It wasn’t my problem. The only reason I had taken the dorm-leader position was because a teacher said it would earn extra points on my student evaluation. I had no intention of actually meddling in anyone’s lifestyle. These free-spirited kids wouldn’t want that kind of leader anyway. In that sense, our relationship was oddly balanced—we didn’t need anything from each other.

Yet at the very bottom of that meaningless list, an odd name always appeared. Today was no exception.

“Doesn’t he even know how to dim his desk lamp? He could at least close the curtains properly. That simple trick would avoid the violation.”

“I know.”

The answer came from right beside me. My eyes flew wide as I whipped around.

It was Cyrus Quinton. He was staring at the notice as if it were an old friend.

How long had he been standing there?

“You know and still get caught?”

I crossed my arms and glared up at him sharply. He kept his gaze fixed on the paper and answered in that flat, logical tone of his.

“Because the violation is factual.”

“Wow. What a model student.”

Only when I sneered did his teal-green eyes finally slide toward me.

“Why do you care?”