The Two Babies Changing the Original Story Chapter 29

“Since Your Highness is so interested in dresses and decorations, I expected you to excel, but surprisingly, you have quite an arbitrary sense of aesthetics. I suppose I could call it… clumsy? It seems you’ll need careful training starting from the basics.”

With a smiling face, the aesthetics teacher mercilessly shredded Ellie’s sense of style.

Ellie was so stunned by the brutal criticism that she couldn’t even cry.

The teacher wasn’t wrong…
But still… the way she said it…

“Please don’t be too hurt by my words. I only stated things as they are—I had no intention of hurting Your Highness.”

That hurt even more.

Ellie drooped her head miserably.

She finally understood why she had never been hurt by her brother’s “honest evaluations.”

She had been pretty good at most things she did with her brother. So she had never really received a blunt “you’re bad at this.”

Being told she was truly bad at something pierced straight through her chest.

She wanted to be good at everything… to be a genius at everything…

She had already lost to Duke Berndt in swordsmanship, and now she’d gotten the lowest score in aesthetics.

What would be next?

Ellie grew even more tense as she waited for the next teacher to enter.

“I am your mathematics teacher.”

This time, the math teacher came in.

He was already the fourth teacher.

All of them had one thing in common—they all smiled kindly. But their words were never kind.

After the second teacher, language, and the third, music, Ellie had learned this painfully well.

And after those three experiences, Ellie had sunk all the way to rock bottom.

‘I’m not a genius… I’m just an idiot…’

So she couldn’t even greet the math teacher cheerfully.

“It seems you weren’t pleased with your earlier test results?”

“…No…”

“You must be quite ambitious.”

“Mm… I want to be a genius, but I guess I’m just stupid.”

At Ellie’s words, the math teacher widened his eyes, then burst out laughing.

“Ahaha… That sounds just like someone saying they want to become a mage through sheer effort.”

Now that she thought about it, she wasn’t even sure if she was still a mage.

This world was far too different from the little cabin world she had shared with her brother.

Before the discouraged Ellie, the math teacher sat down with nothing but a single sheet of paper and a pencil.

The previous teachers had prepared many things, but the math teacher was different.

Ellie stared blankly at the desk with a single sheet of paper on it. It looked like her brother’s desk.

Whenever he taught her something, or tried to work through a problem by explaining it to her, he always sat just like this.

“All right, watch carefully, Your Highness.”

The math teacher began drawing shapes and symbols on the paper and explaining them.

As Ellie watched silently, she tilted her head.

‘?’

Why were they doing this?

Was he playing a trick to help her relax? Ellie glanced up at his face.
But the math teacher looked completely serious.

“So, if we do this… what do you think the answer is?”

“Three.”

“My, you can already do this calculation. Excellent!”

The teacher’s praise made Ellie feel even stranger.

This was excellent?
Was he making fun of her?

“Then what about this one? Do you think you can solve it?”

He presented a new problem.

This time, he had taken the earlier formulas, mixed them up, and made a long expression.

“Do you know how to write with a pencil to work through the steps?”

He tried to hand her the pencil. But Ellie glanced at the problem and immediately answered:

“22xz.”

“…What?”

The teacher’s eyes trembled.

He looked at the problem he had written, then looked again, then snapped his head up to stare at Ellie.

His eyes seemed to burst into flames.

Ellie flinched and shrank back.
This teacher was scary…

But he wouldn’t let her go.

“Your Highness, just one more problem! No—two more!”

Ellie nodded blankly.

She solved the following problems easily.

Of course—these were far easier than the puzzles she solved while playing around with her brother.

Sometimes, when playing with him, she had struggled for an entire week on a single problem.

These problems didn’t even require calculation—the answers simply appeared in her mind.

“How did you solve this?!”

“I—I don’t know…”

“You know the answers, so why don’t you know how you solved them?!”

The math teacher cried out, completely losing composure.

Ellie cried out with him, on the verge of tears.

“Th-the answers just show up! I can’t help it!”

At that, the teacher shot to his feet.

“…A—a genius! A genius has appeared!”

 

 

 

****

 

 

 

Princess Ellia was a genius.

The rumor spread through the entire palace in an instant.

Every noble walking through the palace had the same topic on their lips.

“Did you hear Princess Ellia was actually a genius?”

“But why didn’t she seem like it before?”

“No, if you think back, she had her clever moments. It’s just that her interests were dresses and desserts…”

“Sometimes, as kids grow older, they suddenly discover new interests and show genius!”

The story of the “genius princess” spilled out of the palace and even reached the Academy.

And so, the most distinguished scholars of the Academy flocked to the royal palace.

“I pay my respects to Your Highness the Princess. I am Lombaton, a Grand Scholar of the Academy.”

“…Mm.”

Day after day, new scholars visited the palace.

Each year, a hundred thousand people applied to the Academy.

Ten thousand were accepted.

Of those, only one thousand completed the ten-year curriculum.

Out of that thousand, only five were acknowledged as scholars of the Academy.

The Academy had around two hundred scholars in total, and those who had continued research for more than thirty years were called Grand Scholars.

There were fewer than thirty such Grand Scholars.

Even members of royal families rarely had the privilege of meeting one.

Yet now, they were coming to Nerendis on their own feet.

“All my students praise Your Highness in unison, so I felt I must personally come and pay my respects.”

They were coming to verify Ellie’s genius.

In fields like art and music, Ellie was… slightly below average, but in math, physics, and chemistry she far exceeded the level of any child.

“It is the Academy’s duty to help a genius grow properly. Geniuses are different from others—they may face unique challenges as they develop.”

“Mmh…”

Even in the face of the great honor of receiving a visit from a Grand Scholar, Ellie’s expression did not brighten. In fact, the more scholars came, the darker she grew.

‘What if I’m not actually a genius?’

This was Ellie’s real worry.

She wanted to become a great archmage.

But she didn’t think she was truly a genius yet.

The problems the teachers gave her were simply too easy.

She used to solve far more complicated ones while playing with her brother.

And her brother solved problems far, far, far, far more difficult than that in his research.

So her brother was a genius archmage—but she wasn’t.

“Your Highness will be a great blessing to Nerendis.”

“With your brilliance, Your Highness will surely become an excellent monarch.”

Each word from the scholars made her chest and shoulders feel heavier.

What if she stopped being a genius someday?

What if they said she couldn’t be king because she wasn’t a genius after all?

“Now then, could Your Highness try solving this problem?”

“…Okay…”

Ellie weakly answered and picked up her pencil.

It had already been several days of the same routine.

When she solved problems with her brother, it was so fun she didn’t even want to stop for meals.

But the problems the scholars gave her were not fun.

‘Still… I have to solve them if I want to become king.’

She tried her best to concentrate.

The teachers were still assessing her abilities. Whatever the case, she needed to do well.

Someday, she needed them to recognize that she could handle state affairs on her own.

Though she had no idea what that had to do with math problems.

In any case, it was homework placed in front of her, so she did it.

“Hm…”

Grand Scholar Lombaton stared at the answer sheet Ellie had scribbled down.

It wasn’t a difficult problem.

Any problem that could be solved while sitting right there was automatically an easy one.

Of course, grading it should have been instant.

But Lombaton was taking an oddly long time.

Ellie sensed something strange and gradually grew anxious.

“Did I… get it wrong?”

“Hm? No, it’s correct.”

“Then why…?”

“Ah? Ahh.”

Even as he answered, Lombaton couldn’t take his eyes off the page.

“Hmmm… this is fascinating.”

He kept groaning as he looked at Ellie’s answers over and over.

She couldn’t tell whether “fascinating” meant good, bad, or something else entirely.

After a long period of humming and groaning, Lombaton finally asked