The Teacher of Budding Villains Suffers Today, Too - Chapter 4

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 4
Rachel tied her hair back tightly and swung herself onto the horse. Something told her Chase had wandered off to the Western Mountain again today.
“Chase! Where are you!”
The moment she called out, raising her voice, she sensed movement behind her.
She whipped her head around and caught Chase’s eye as his head poked out from behind the brush. He flinched, then bolted.
“Get over here right now!”
“How dare the tutor speak such nonsense to the bandit chief!”
When would this bandit chief obsession of his end? Rachel dismounted in one fluid motion and gave chase.
“If you surrender, I’ll spare your life, kehehehe. Do you know the Mountain Flame Dragon rages in my hands?!”
The combination of bandit-chief complex and middle-school syndrome made him absolutely unbearable.
“Pick one—either the Mountain Flame Dragon sorcerer or the bandit chief. Your tutor’s head is pounding.”
“Kehehehe, so my sorcery has taken hold!”
“If your sorcery causes stress-induced migraines, then yes, it’s working perfectly.”
Rachel caught Chase by the shoulders as he finally ran out of steam and stopped.
“Now then, sorcerer. It’s time for your Mountain Flame Dragon’s etiquette lesson. Let’s head back to the classroom.”
Chase clicked his tongue and abandoned his protests, making an exaggerated gesture of surrender.
She dragged him back to school with difficulty.
In the corridor, she ran into Henry carrying a dangling Kana in his grip.
Kana was thrashing her legs and struggling, but against Henry’s knight-honed, muscular frame, it was futile.
“Kana, what were you doing out there?”
“I was building a Time Travel Device.”
The burnt smell coming from her made it clear she’d set something on fire again during one of her peculiar projects.
“How exactly do you build a Time Travel Device?”
“With two drops of Dragon Tear and—”
“Which con artist did you buy that from this time?”
Kana had no grasp of reality and was always purchasing dubious trinkets from swindlers. Every month when she came home, she’d bring back stranger and stranger things.
“The two drops of Dragon Tear are confiscated.”
“Why!”
Kana’s protests continued, but Rachel held her ground.
“Keep it up, and I’ll assign you Correction Writing.”
Students who misbehaved had to copy entire books filled with righteous wisdom—a minimum of ten pages, sometimes as many as fifty.
The dreaded Correction Writing.
It was the punishment students hated most and the most effective weapon any tutor possessed. Its results were always immediate.
“Now, are you ready to attend your etiquette lesson?”
“No way! You can’t do this to me!”
“Of course not—I’ll do that after your etiquette lesson.”
Rachel tucked a book under her arm and opened the classroom door. The moment it swung open, an inkbottle flew out.
“Watch out—”
Henry, standing behind her, extended his hand with perfect timing and caught the inkbottle cleanly.
“Henry, thank you.”
Rachel glanced up at him with a slight smile, and Henry’s ears flushed red.
Even in that brief moment, the way he pressed his lips together to conceal his feelings was so very Henry.
No matter how hard he tried to keep his face blank, his heart betrayed him whenever she was near.
“Everyone, please take your seats.”
The butler Colo stood ramrod straight on the dais, issuing orders to the students. Not a single one paid him any attention.
“How much to let us leave?”
“Mare, we do not discuss money at school.”
“Gweegwikwhisk.”
“Eckard, cease such crude mockery.”
“Isn’t that slander?”
“Roca, sit down.”
Colo’s expression remained unchanged, but his voice had dropped significantly lower and taken on a decidedly colder edge.
Rachel caught the shift and quickly pushed Kana and Chase into the classroom.
‘This is bad. He’s really angry now.’
Unlike Rachel, whose face turned bright red when upset, Colo was the type whose voice grew quieter the angrier he became.
“If you don’t sit down, tomorrow’s breakfast menu might end up being gruel.”
The flash in his eyes behind his glasses seemed to say, ‘Try speaking out of line one more time.’
In that instant, the classroom filled with nothing but the screech of chairs being hurriedly pushed.
Once she confirmed that, Rachel quietly closed the classroom door and stepped out.
‘Sigh. Nothing about this job is easy.’
The Etiquette Lesson was Colo’s domain entirely, so there would be a chance to catch his breath in the interim.
Of course, only a brief reprieve.
* * *
The Imperial Palace, of all places where solemnity ought to reign, was once again bereft of the slightest composure.
The reason was straightforward enough.
The third prince had skipped his Etiquette Lesson yet again and now hung from the window frame, goading everyone around him.
“Noah! Please, it’s dangerous—come down! I fear I shan’t survive this!”
The nursemaid beat her breast in despair. Yet Noah clung to the window frame with a single arm, unmoved.
“Aren’t you curious? How much it would hurt if someone fell from here?”
“Not one bit!”
Even the Home Tutor lessons, already whittled down to once a week, seemed to displease Prince Noah entirely.
“If you want me not to jump, tell them to fire Shuque or whatever his name is—that tutor.”
“He is among the empire’s foremost scholars of etiquette! The Crown Prince himself brought him in at great difficulty for your education and your brother’s!”
“Enough. I don’t need such stuffy lessons. Now—get any closer and I swear I’ll really let go.”
When Noah noticed the nursemaid creeping toward the window and leaned further out into the air—
A chambermaid burst through the door into the room.
“A dreadful accident has occurred!”
She turned pale at the sight of Noah dangling half out the window, but quickly composed herself and rushed on.
“There’s a fire in Theo’s chamber!”
“What?! How did that happen?!”
“Well—Prince Theo refused his lesson and set fire to one of Shuque’s books, and it spread to the others beside it—!”
The nursemaid pressed her forehead, unable to even turn her gaze from Noah.
One prince hurling himself from windows, the other burning the schoolroom to ash.
It was enough to drive anyone to madness.
She had been hired hastily only a month prior, when the princes’ dedicated nursemaid position had opened.
The grievances of all who had left before her suddenly became viscerally real.
Since her very first day, she’d carried a crumpled resignation letter in her pocket, and now the urge to tear it out and fling it at them welled up irresistibly.
That was when Noah began to laugh.
“Ha! Now that’s impressive, Theo. Nursemaid! Shouldn’t you be hurrying to my brother instead? At this rate he’ll burn down the whole Imperial Palace!”
There was only one recourse left.
“I shall report this to the Crown Prince at once!”
“Yes!”
She was not unaware that the Crown Prince was consumed with affairs of state.
Yet in recent months alone, the princes’ nursemaids and tutors had resigned dozens of times over.
In the Tiernus Empire as it stood, only one person could control the princes—their elder brother, the Crown Prince himself.
* * *
Lucas Maxim, Crown Prince of the Tiernus Empire, was a man whose very presence overwhelmed those around him.
Before his imperious gaze, even the unruly princes fell silent and docile.
The chief chamberlain stepped forward with an uncomfortable expression.
“Your Highness. The Home Tutor who took office two days ago has expressed his intention to resign.”
At that moment, Lucas’s quill snapped audibly in his grip.
“In merely two days?”
“Nevertheless, he endured longer than the previous tutor, who abandoned the post after half a day.”
In truth, lasting even half a day had been little short of miraculous.
The princes were such wild colts that keeping one’s own limbs intact was the best one could hope for, let alone actually teaching them anything.
At the chamberlain’s words, Lucas fell into thought.
He could no longer ignore how disrespectfully and badly-mannered these bearers of imperial blood had become. Some solution had to be found.
“If I may say so, Your Highness.”
The chamberlain lowered his voice slightly.
“I have recently heard an intriguing rumor.”
“An intriguing rumor?”
“There is apparently a most unusual boarding school that has opened in Rios. Indeed, several noble wards sent there have shown remarkable changes in their conduct. Even the ward of Duke Kelliu, notorious for his depravity, is said to have transformed.”
“Even the Duke’s ward?”
Lucas’s expression shifted slightly.
If such a place could change his brothers’ conduct, what was impossible?
The two princes had lost their mother in childhood and been raised by their maternal grandparents in their Regional Territory.
Those grandparents had indulged their beloved grandsons without restraint, and as a result, the princes had grown up fearing nothing in the world.
Even their father, the Emperor himself, had said as much.
‘The greatest mistake of my life was entrusting my two sons to their maternal grandparents.’
Among noble families, it was customary to entrust a child’s education to a Home Tutor.
A family’s choice of tutor was a display of their scholarly standing and wealth.
Even within such conventions, the fact that Duke Kelliu had sent his child to a school no one had heard of before suggested there was compelling reason.
“It is said to be run by a young lady named Rachel Swan. I wondered if it might interest you.”
“Rachel Swan.”
Lucas spoke the name quietly, as if testing it.
A school where vain nobles abandon all pretense to entrust their children.
How intriguing.
A faint smile played across the Crown Prince’s lips.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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