The Crown Prince Thinks I'm a Guy

Combat

"First things first," the professor announced. "You all know my class deals with grouped combat. I usually hold these special matches during the the break so I can have time to decide the groupings. So, do your best if you don't want to be grouped with the weaker ones!"

He had made us line up in three rows, and because I didn't really have time to move around, I got stuck at the third and last row, left to peek over taller shoulders.

"We'll be-" the professor drawled on, but it was mostly just warnings about how tough and serious the matches will be. He kept mentioning words like, "to the death" and "hit like your family name is at stake".

Around me, though, students were finally taking a notice of me. Whispers and glances were directed at my direction, their eyes either featuring confusion or hostility. When the murmurs were getting loud enough that it bothered the professor, he shouted out, "What is it?! I'm usually lenient as long as you can handle a sword, but talking around during class has its limit even for me!"

"Professor Rile, there seems to be a lost student here," one of the older students explained, gesturing none too politely at me.

The short professor had to waddle around to see where the commotion had sprouted from, and when he saw me with my rueful smile, he only stared for a short second.

He huffed once, but didn't address me nor the complaining student. He only continued on with the lecture as though he hadn't heard a thing. That stopped the murmurings around me, but their glances began to grow in hostility instead.

I sighed, knowing my time in this class probably won't be easy.

I heard a short whistle coming from the front, and like a dog being called by its owner, my attention immediately went towards the source of the sound. Grinning from the first row, with green accented robes... was the crown prince of the Empire.

My eyes went wide. 'Of course! He's not a Sinus Fidei anymore!'

I felt ecstatic. At least I won't be alone in this class! However, my brief joy soon turned into mild anxiety. Ever since the end of the Test of Waning, I haven't been acting myself around the boy with brown eyes. Don't get me wrong! I've already thought about all the possibilities. I might simply have a slight... infatuation for him. I also felt this way once with Prince Albert in my past life, but it hardly matters now. I was a child! And this was all just the childish fawning of a young girl's body...

Besides, I knew I shouldn't fall in love with this boy. It will all just complicate things in the future.

So, firmly persuading myself that I would be alright, I nodded once at the prince and turned my attention back to the professor.

He was already calling out a few names, and some of the oldest looking students fell out of the lines and came forward. The professor then fidgeted a bit with a largish ring (made even larger-looking due to his stubby fingers), and soon, several metal and wooden objects appeared in thin air.

'A spatial ring,' I thought as I recognized it. I haven't seen much of these artifacts since I last saw the plain silver ring Joren's parents had with them during our trip from the Kingdom.

The short man then ordered the students he had selected (and seemed to already know) to place the mechanisms around the courtyard, almost seemingly in random order and placement.

Observing the mechanism closest to me, I realized it was one of those training dummies that threw out bullets and such in consecutive fashion. I had gone through a line of these in the past when I did the obstacle course back in the fields of the Saulian palace. However, I would think that these were built to become far more of a challenge than the ones I had encountered when I was just six.