2
It was the day of the competition.
As Alice and Sisbell entered the meeting hall, they were met with an ardent crowd that couldn’t fit into the provided seating.
“We have all our competitors!”
The defense minister was acting as the host. Though he normally scowled during meetings, today he seemed excited for what was to come.
“We have gathered here today three of the most charming sisters around, each claiming that she is the true princess. And now they’ll compete against each other, with their pride on the line!”
“Woooo!”
The audience gave them a thunderous round of applause and cheered, shaking the hall.
“They’re really watching us…”
“Hah! Why, of course.” As the audience called her name, Sisbell responded with a charming smile. She didn’t seem too displeased by the attention. “I rarely am in front of people, but if they have such high expectations of me, that changes things. I’ll show them my princess powers.”
“Princess powers?”
“Yes. That’s a quantitative measure of a princess’s grace. Say we measured earlier, and you were a nine—then I would have been a two hundred,” Sisbell said.
“That hardly seems fair!”
“No, it’s not. Besides, it’s Elletear’s princess power we really need to worry about here. And that’s…huh?”
Sisbell was taken aback. She blinked. Actually, where was their older sister? She should have been there by now.
“That’s odd. I wonder where Elletear is.”
“She’s over there, Alice!”
Sisbell pointed at a section of the audience where a particularly large group of people had gathered. In the middle of the crowd, Elletear was giving out cookies from a heaping pile in a basket she held.
“Good morning, everyone. These are my homemade cookies. Please try one.”
“Wh-what?!”
Alice got a sinking feeling. Oh no.
Their sister must have gotten here earlier to hand out treats. Her cookies even had her name written out on them in chocolate. That would make her a crowd favorite for sure.
“This is bad, Sisbell. At this rate, the entire audience will be on Elletear’s side!”
“Urgh! So that’s what it’s come to!”
Sisbell gritted her teeth in frustration. The battle had already begun.
“Elletear, that’s as far as you’ll go pulling your tricks!”
“Oh, Alice, Sisbell, good morning.”
Their sister was calm and composed as she turned around. She had pleasant smile on her face, but that was undoubtedly for the sake of the audience.
“This is the decisive battle.” Sisbell looked up at her older sister. “Prepare yourself for what’s to come! I’ll make you fold today, Elletear!”
“Oh, Sisbell, you’re coming on quite strong. But I’m confident about my chances. Don’t you think I should be, Defense Minister?”
“Indeed!” The minister grabbed his mic again. “The first annual True Princess Competition is a three-game match. In other words, you’ll compete in three subject areas to receive a score quantifying your princessliness! And it seems that Princess Elletear has a decisive lead in winning over the audience!”
“And there you have it,” Elletear added.
She laughed and gave Sisbell a mature smile.
“I think you could even try to team up against me, if you’d like.”
Neither Alice nor Sisbell replied.
“I am the eldest, after all. You can have that as a freebie.”
“Hah… Don’t push your luck!” Sisbell pointed at her.
“I was waiting for you to say that. Then Alice and I will tag team, just as you suggested!”
“What?!”
The audience started to shout in excitement.
“What unexpected circumstances. It seems the two princesses have decided to join forces!”
“Making light of someone will simply lead to your own downfall. You would never take back your words, though—especially as a princess—right?”
“Why, I would never,” Elletear answered with a smile.
Even though it was now two against one, she seemed to be enjoying herself.
“You won’t be relaxed for long. We will beat you.” Sisbell pointed at Elletear. “This is no longer three princesses against each other. In other words, it’s our ultimate perfect big sister against the incompetent second sister and the lovely little sister!”
“Who are you calling incompetent?!” Alice said.
Maybe she’d have been better off aligning herself with Elletear. As the thought crossed Alice’s mind, a bugle rang out.
“We are beginning the match!” the host shouted. “There are three competitions to prove who’s got what it takes to be a princess. We’ll kick things off with battle number one! The princesses will engage in a duel of culture, as befitting their positions!”
“Culture! That works for me. I was expecting it.” Alice nodded as she saw what was displayed on the monitors.
Now, what made one a graceful princess? First and foremost was intelligence, as she would need to participate in politics. She would require a knowledge of culture as well.
……That’s why I’ve been reading.
……I’ve already trained for this with Rin!
Alice and Rin had been reading history and philosophy books before going to bed every night. She was confident in the breadth of her knowledge.
“This will be in a quiz format. We will use questions relevant to the Sovereignty’s culture. If you know the answer, press the button.”
“Sisbell, how confident are you about this?”
“Hee-hee. Who do you think you’re talking to, Alice?” Sisbell clenched her hands into fists. Yes. She was more confident than anyone here. “I’m always in my room, and I’ve spent half my life reading books. I’ll show you how much I know!”
“So it’s a quiz format? That’s not good…” On the other hand, the moment she saw the topic, Elletear sighed. “I was hoping for something written, like a test. I’m so clumsy that I wonder if I’ll manage to press the button.”
She wasn’t acting. She really looked like she had been put on the spot.
“Sisbell, we might be able to manage this!”
“Yes, don’t hold back then, Alice!”
It was oldest sister versus second and third sisters.
As the audience watched, the defense minister read off the quiz question.
“First is a question about the industry in our country. The jewel of the Sovereignty that you can’t go without for events and decorations…”
Ding!
Sisbell had leaned forward and pressed the button.
“Yes! The jewel that represents the Sovereignty is a blue sapphire.”
“Incorrect!”
“What?!”
“The full question is, the blue sapphire is representative of the Sovereignty, but which state has gathered the most of it?”
“Oh no!” Sisbell turned pale. “I was so excited that I didn’t listen to the question and sabotaged myself…”
“What are you doing, Sisbell?!”
Alice could understand how she felt.
Part of the psychology of doing quizzes like these was that everyone wanted to press the button as quickly as possible.
“Because of the incorrect answer, Princess Sisbell must wait ten seconds before answering another question.”
“Alice!” Sisbell howled from next to her. “Hurry! You need to press the button before Elletear!”
“G-got it!”
Ding!
Ding!
“Oh, now that seemed simultaneous. Maybe Princess Alice was just slightly faster?”
“Oh, that’s too bad.” Elletear only seemed disappointed, but Alice felt like she had just barely escaped the maws of death.
“Princess Alice, what is your answer?!”
“Th-the answer is Hessen.”
“ ”
“Huh?”
The entire place went quiet.
Had she gotten it wrong? She felt like maybe the sixth state might have been right. Alice felt herself breaking into a cold sweat.
“Correct!”
“Woooo!”
The audience gave her explosive applause.
“I—I did it! I was right!”
“That’s extraordinary!” Sisbell also stood up triumphantly. “Even an incompetent princess like you has your uses, I suppose!”
“Did you say something?”
“This is it, Alice! Keep it going!”
The quiz was three questions long.
They had gotten the first question right. If they could earn one more, the culture portion was theirs.
“All right, second question. But the last one was just a warmup. The next one will be much harder. Are you ready?!”
“Yes.”
“I’m confident I can do this!”
“Right… I wonder if I’ll be able to press the button fast enough.”
The host picked up his mic again and faced the three sisters.
“Quiz question two! The question will be about a Sovereignty event. What was the name of the kitten who won in the Kitty Derby this year in Lisbahten?”
“That’s impossible!”
“What kind of person would come up with a question like that?!”
Ding!
As two of the sisters protested, the third pressed the button.
“Oh, good. I finally made it. I didn’t know what to do if you kept on going like last time.”
Elletear sighed and dramatically wiped her forehead.
“This year’s winner was a savannah Siamese named Yamada.”
“Correct! Great job, First Princess. You truly are well-versed in current events!”
Wooo!
The crowd applauded just like it had for Alice—actually, even louder.
“Sisbell! Didn’t you say you’d be great at this?!”
“I—I thought you said that, too, Alice!”
They both started to panic. They couldn’t compete.
“Okay, Sisbell, we need to get the next one!”
“I’ll give it my all, of course.”
The two girls had seen just how frightening Elletear was. Their sister had outdone them in the culture section, a topic they had both thought they were well versed in.
“So in order to win…”
“We have to press the button before her!”
If they couldn’t beat her in knowledge, they’d need to do it in speed.
They had two people. At least one of them would be able to outpace Elletear.
“And this is the last question. In the Sovereignty, the minister with the longest name—”
Ding!
Neither Alice nor Sisbell had pressed the button this time.
“What?”
“I-it can’t be?!”
Alice, Sisbell, and everyone in the audience stared at Elletear. She had pressed the button before they had even finished.
“Oh my. Elletear has buzzed in. But we haven’t finished the question. Are you sure about this? Are you really that confident, First Princess?!”
“Of course…”
Elletear placed a hand against her cheek and looked into the air as though she was thinking about something.
“I believe the prime minister with the longest name is Diego Jose Francisco de Paula von Nepomuceno Maria de Ros Remedios Crispin.”
Hee-hee. Elletear smiled mischievously like an imp as she continued, “I think the question might be, ‘What is the minister with the longest name’s favorite book?’ Is that right? In that case, the answer is Love Maiden of the Light Love.”
“Correct! Amazing!”
She received thunderous applause.
Everyone in the audience rose to their feet and gave her a standing ovation.
On the other hand…
“Impossible?!”
“That’s cheating! Even someone as smart as Elletear would have no way of knowing the question before it was read out fully!”
Alice and Sisbell disputed the result.
“I think we should redo this match so it’s fair!”
“No, you two.” Elletear turned to them. “I knew what the answer was when the quiz question was read out.”
She gracefully pointed at the wall of the hall.
“Minister Diego (etc., etc., etc.)’s favorite book is over there.”
“……Huh?”
“Where?”
When Alice and Sisbell looked up at the wall, they swallowed.
Portraits lined the hall, and among them were paintings of the ministers who had made significant contributions to the royal family. One of these officials was holding a book in his portrait.
“What?!”
“N-no way!”
The answer had been in the hallway this entire time.
They’d completely missed it.
“Listen, you two. The quiz may have seemed impossible, but…” Elletear raised her arms and looked at the audience. “Anyone who cares for this palace and walks around it on a day-to-day basis would notice that portrait. That’s how I was able to tell what the question would be.”
“Urgh?!”
“…B-but…”
“Now, as for the second question…”
As her sisters winced, Elletear continued, “You two might not remember Yamada’s name, but she was actually invited to the palace to commemorate her win.”
“What?”
“R-really?”
“Yes. She had her picture taken with the queen, which was published in the newspaper.”
The two younger sisters had been clueless about the Kitty Derby, but evidently, Elletear had been keeping an eye on the news.
“A princess cannot learn culture simply from books. You must keep an eye on current events in the Sovereignty. Has that helped?”
She gave them a cute wink. She hadn’t just explained that to them in her beautiful voice but had also remembered to perform for the audience, proving how calm she really was.
Elletear embodied the qualities of a true princess. She had practically no weak spots. She was perfect.
“Sh-she’s stiff competition.” Sisbell shuddered. “I might not be able to win this paired with someone like you, Alice!”
“And who was the one who flubbed the first question right away?!”
It was still too early to give up, though. Even though they’d already been shown up, they couldn’t wave the white flag here without admitting they were failures as princesses.
“Defense Prime Minister!”
“Right now, I’m just a host.”
“Th-then, Mr. Host! Please tell us what the next topic is!”
“Oh, looks like Princess Aliceliese is already hoping to challenge her sister back! That’s great. What a wonderful contest between lovely princesses!”
“That’s enough!”
“The next part of the competition is a battle of the arts.”
There it is. I knew it would come!
“I’ve been waiting for this!” Alice balled her fists.
She had imagined this would happen.
This whole thing had started because of a fight between her and Sisbell about art, so she had been certain this would show up.
“It’s too bad I won’t be able to face off against you this time, Sisbell.”
“Oh? Based on your confidence, Alice, I take it that you’ve trained a lot.”
“Of course.”
Since the initial argument over their paintings, Alice had sketched at least once daily. She knew she had improved for sure. Her one misgiving was that Elletear was also good at visual art…
“I’m confident. I put my blood, sweat, and tears into training—”
“All right, everyone put your aprons on.”
“Aprons?”
“The theme of this part of the competition is the arts. In this case, the culinary arts!”
“We’re cooking?!”
“Yes, gastronomy is considered an art these days.”
This was bad.
Alice looked at Sisbell and found that her sister was also blanching.
“By the way, how are your cooking skills, Alice?”
“I have none…”
Princesses never cooked. The palace already had a chef. The most Alice could do was peel an apple.
Then what about Elletear?
……She just gave out cookies.
……And they were homemade, too.
That was proof she knew how to cook. This would be a difficult bout.
“Now, we’ve brought all kinds of ingredients from the palace kitchen!”
The bounties of the sea and mountains were brought in on trays.
“The theme is a dish fit for a princess. You have an hour. Start!”
“That’s too soon!”
“We don’t even have time to think of a recipe!”
Sisbell and Alice quickly donned aprons, but they had no idea what to make.
As they were doing this…
“Right. I’ll whip up that.”
…Elletear insinuated she had something up her sleeve, then headed over to find her ingredients.
She picked up some eggs.
“Alice! We should do the duel with eggs, too.”
“Great idea, Sisbell! You must know a ton about egg recipes. “
Her little sister was suspiciously quiet.
“Then you were just getting ahead of yourself?!”
Alice had picked up two eggs. She didn’t even have enough ideas to debate over which recipe to choose from. She could boil an egg or make an omelet.
That was all Alice had learned from the chef.
“Oh. But I made pudding with Rin before. Hey, Sisbell, are you—”
“Yeeek!”
As she carried an egg in each hand, Sisbell screamed and tripped.
“Ahh! I broke the eggs, and my head feels sticky?!”
Alice was too bewildered to say anything.
“Don’t just stare, Alice, help me! We’ve joined forces, so we need to work together. One plus one is two. That’s the power of teamwork!”
“You’re just bringing me down, so it’s one minus one equals zero!”
They cleaned up the floor. While they were working on that, time rapidly ticked down.
They had forty minutes left.
Elletear hummed as she continued to work.
“Urgh…the eggs are so slippery and hard. I can’t seem to cut one.”
Sisbell was attempting to cut into the eggshells.
“What are you doing?” Alice asked.
“I’m trying to get the shells off these eggs, of course. That’s what the knife is for.”
“You don’t need one of those. See, you crack it against something flat, like a table… Hi-yah!”
Sisbell’s eyes went wide.
“What an unprecedented method of shelling an egg!”
“Sisbell, you’ve never cooked before, have you?”
“Hah! Of all the things you could have said.”
She brushed aside her shiny strawberry blond hair.
“Despite how I may look, I’m actually very discerning when it comes to flavors.”
“That just means you know how to eat! Wait, we’re running out of time!”
They had only raw eggs in front of them.
In other words, they hadn’t made any progress.
“Sisbell, I’m going to crack the eggs and mix them, so you heat them up in the microwave!”
“I’m not sure how to use it!”
“You really are a useless princess, you know that?!”
Alice couldn’t cook, either, but she’d never met anyone who was so inept that they couldn’t use a microwave.
Sisbell must have been the most sheltered girl in the world.
“Okay, ten minutes left.”
“Oh no… Oh nooo!”
Time passed relentlessly.
Alice worked the hardest she could.
“And that’s time!” the minister’s voice boomed. “Let’s see the results. Princess Elletear made a golden egg mille-feuille cake. This’ll be a hit with all the women in the audience! As for Princesses Alice and Sisbell…”
The entire place went silent.
On Alice and Sisbell’s table was an egg that hadn’t even been shelled…
“It’s a boiled egg.”
They’d worked very hard to get to that point.
Because of Sisbell, they’d had to quickly change recipes. This was the only thing Alice had known how to make in the time they’d had left.
“……Whew.” Sisbell let out a light sigh.
“I thought you would be a bit more useful, Alice.”
“I should be saying that to you!”
They’d fought bravely, but the results of the battle were out.
So far, their princess battle had tested their proficiency in culture (through a quiz) and the arts (gastronomy). Elletear had anticipated both and won.
“Now, this is our last large fight.”
“What?”
The audience was getting excited.
When the host said that, Alice and Sisbell exchanged glances.
Hadn’t they lost?
“The further we go into the competition, the more points each part is worth. The culture section was worth one point, and the art section was two. The final one will be…”
“Three, right?”
“…ten points!”
“Then why did we do any of that stuff earlier?!”
But this meant they were still in the running. Or rather, it would be possible for them to reverse the course of events spectacularly.
“Alice, do you think this is a chance to turn things around?”
“I do, Sisbell. The topic of the last battle will decide our fate. Well, host, what is the final one?!”
“That would be grace!”
A clothes locker was brought in. In it were opulent dresses from famous Sovereignty brands.
“This competition is about who can dress themselves the most beautifully. You need fashion and a sense of taste. In other words, a graceful outer appearance! Whoever does best overall will win!”
“Appearance?”
“Fashion?”
“Huh? What’s wrong, Princesses Alice and Sisbell?”
They both seemed discouraged.
“Haaah…” Alice let out a heavy sigh and nodded at her sister.
“Let’s go home, Sisbell.”
“Yes, you’re right…”
“It’s tough when you’ve lost your will to fight. Are you okay—?”
Just then, they heard an easygoing voice call out from the changing room.
“Okay, I’ve changed. What do you all think?”
As her thick emerald hair fluttered behind her, Elletear came out in her adornments.
It only took one look at her to see what had happened.
“Oh, I see…”
Everyone understood now.
This was impossible.
“Hee-hee. I’ve never worn this dress before, so it’s a little tight around the chest but cute nonetheless.”
She grinned softly. Elletear had come out wearing a crimson dress with a daring slit that showed off her thighs. Her eyes were filled with affection and dignity, and her wavy emerald hair was so very attractive.
She was as beautiful as a siren, and she emanated a stately, mature air.
The audience went quiet.
They had all been so charmed by her appearance that they’d been left speechless.
“See, I knew it…”
“I thought this would happen…”
Alice and Sisbell had never stood a chance.
Not against their sister’s “allure.” Of course, the two sisters were also among the most beautiful girls in the Sovereignty, but Elletear’s beauty was almost otherworldly.
“When Elletear really tries to dress up, she could steal the hearts of the entire audience here.”
“We never had a chance in this category.”
They snuck out of the hall. No one noticed that they had left.
“Thank you so much, everyone. As an encore, shall I change into the next outfit?”
Elletear started a solo fashion show.
“Ahh. If only you were just a little more dependable, Alice…”
“I should be saying that to you!”
The sisters’ fight quietly echoed throughout the hallway.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login