Bastille Chapter 5 (Patreon)

“Lady Katarina, Lady Katarina!”

Oh god.

“What a nifty little idea, this news paper thing, Miss Claes. Say, you wouldn’t happen to know…”

It was happening again.

“I didn’t know that your favorite color was blue! Oh and that style of dress…”

This wasn’t what I wanted at all.

“Say for next month’s paper news…”

“… don’t you think I would be a good interview.”

They were focusing on the completely wrong thing.

“You know…”

“I’m not sure if you heard but…”

“Lady Katarina!”

“Lady Katarina!”

“Oh! Lady Katarina!”

I barely managed to hold back from slamming the door to my room. I let out a deep breath as I drew myself upright.

Seriously, what the hell was this? You start a newspaper to raise awareness of the attack on our borders and the only thing people cared about was the equivalent of the fashion section.

You’d think I was joking, really. The idea that the entire school would care more about me than the fact that a village had been raided and its inhabitants turned into refugees. At the very least, scions with holdings in the north seemed to care. But the rest of the school?

“Wow… I didn’t think Kat would be so popular.”

I shot a dry look towards Sophia, who was lounging in my chair. “Not that I understand why for the life of me.”

She shrugged, kicking her feet in the air like a child. “You are essentially the crown princess.”

“We haven’t even set a date.”

She curled her fingers in front of her mouth, so I could still see the smile peeking through. “Well, that’s only the surface reason after all.”

I frowned. “They just want to be in the paper.”

Sophia giggled. “I mean, just look what it did for you!”

I sighed. There had been a few girls I’d seen wearing dresses with a cut similar to mine or something. I suppose people considered that as influence or something like that. Which, to be fair, I was using the paper to build up clout, but clout that would hopefully come from controlling a reliable source of information! Not from winning popularity contests.

“Where’s Mary, anyway?” I asked.

“Student council meeting.” Sophia’s eyes glimmered. “Oh let’s do an article on them! That’ll make everyone super mad.”

“Just… why did it become a contest?” I shook my head.

“There, there.” Sophia stood, coming over to pat me on the shoulder. “It’s because someone wanted to be in the newspaper, and someone else decided that they wanted to be in it instead.”

“And it all spiraled from there.”

I nodded to myself. That made more sense. “So it’s just a gaggle of ducks chasing at the shiny new thing.” Even odds that they got bored and moved onto the next big thing in a month.

“Shouldn’t we use this to boost the popularity of the newspaper club?” Sophia tilted her head. “I feel like there should be things we can to do keep people interested.”

I sighed. A large part of me wanted to say ‘I don’t care about that sort of stuff,’ but Glen and Lisa would literally come to this world and kill me if I let such a chance like this slip through my fingers, wouldn’t they. And while I was no public relations expert or super Sherlock Holmes… I’d like to think I had learned a thing or two from them.

“We could start offering subscriptions…” I mused. That’s how newspapers started. It was hard to know what sort of marketing techniques from my last life, if any, would hold sway. But if I knew one thing, it was get people invested, and they’d do the rest.

Well, that and advertise, but we weren’t quite at that point yet.

“Subscriptions?”

“Yes, call it ‘contributing supporters of Elementary Post.’” Which was, of course, the name of our newspaper. I was pretty proud of it actually. Way better than Skitter. “If they make a monthly donation to support the club, we’ll take their opinions on the back-page articles.”

A part of me just wanted to hold a poll for the entire school. But that wasn’t really how things worked here, no matter how egalitarian things might seem on the surface.

Taking a schoolwide poll would still just turn into a massive popularity contest, at least this way, we’d get paid for it. And also, “the club itself gets to reserve the final say, of course.”

“Ooh, tricky! I like it.” Sophia nodded. “Any other good ideas?”

Take out an ad in the paper? Oh wait! I snorted, shaking my head. “I’m sure something will come, but for now let’s start with that. Maybe we could look into using the money to start selling papers to the town?”

“Will they be interested?”

I shrugged. “Maybe, even for a copper, it’s more than giving them away at the school isn’t it?” Of course, as expected, most of the nobles wouldn’t stoop so low as to pay for news. But having a cute girl offering it with a smile had turned out to be a surprisingly viable marketing tactic. I always knew Emma got away with shit because she was pretty.  “Use some of the leftover funds to get information about trade? Something that merchants or guildsmen might be interested in.”

“That’s a lot to do…” Sophia looked away coquettishly. “So much work just for little old me.”

“Are you saying you’re not up to the task, Sophie?” I turned, smirking down at her.

“Well, it would be a lot easier if you helped… instead of swinging a piece of metal around half the days of the week.”

I raised a finger. “Don’t take this from me.”

She gulped, and I couldn’t hold my scary face any longer. With a small laugh, I ruffled her hair. “Too bad Keith’s also on the student council, hmm? I’ll see about getting you some more help.” I leaned forward. “Though you better not let them push you around when I’m not here!”

“I would never.” Sophia pouted up at me. I noticed that she made no move to push my hand away, however. “I don’t need you to look after me all the time, Lady Katarina! I just…” she glanced away again, “I’d like to spend more time with you.”

I sighed, ruffling her hair again. “I’ll try to spend more time helping you get things set up. We have a whole month before the next paper though.”

“Um… about that.”

I felt my eyebrow twitch. “Sophia.”

She poked her fingers together. “It’s not that I want to questions your decisions or anything…”

“Funny.” I crossed my arms. “That’s usually what someone says right before they question my decisions.”

“It’s just I think we should publish another paper this month!” She gave a nervous half  twirl. “It’ll be good for our popularity, don’t you think? And we still have plenty of funds left over from our initial allocation from the student council, even without dipping into family funds.”

“Those funds are supposed to last us all year, Soph.” Growing up in the bay hadn’t taught me much, but I had learned how to balance a budget. And doubling our expenses in paper and ink—which was not cheap—wasn’t how you balanced anything.

“But with your subscription idea…?”

I clicked my tongue, before leaning back. Was it really so bad? Worse comes to worst it was just some more money on the line. And Sophia did have a good head on her shoulders. “If you can figure out what to put in it, I’ll leave you in charge then.”

She blinked once, startled, before nodding. “R-right!”

I smiled. “No need to be so serious. Now… not to make it seem like I’m leaving you holding the bag…”

“The… bag?”

I held back a frown. I swore I was getting better at those anachronisms, but sometimes one would just slip through. “That I’m putting all these responsibilities on you just to run away, but… I do have a fencing club meeting…”

Sophia pouted at me playfully, before giving me a gentle shove towards my wardrobe. “Go get changed into your scandalous trousers and hit people with a metal rod.”

“You know, I think I will.” I gave Sophia a quick hug, before darting over to get changed. If nothing else, getting out of this dress would be worth it.

You know, that’s what I should have been doing, revolutionizing women’s fashion. Forget this stupid technology garbage, I should have been pioneering pants—preferably those with pockets. Annette would be ashamed of me.

Though, Mother would probably be put out with me if she ever caught me wearing pants.

Decisions, decisions.

Stepping out of the room in my tailored blouse and ‘scandalous’ pants, meandered over to where I kept a few spare blocks of clay for prints. I picked one up, practice saber in one hand and clay brick in the other as I stood in front of the mirror.

“Kat?”

“Just… thinking.”

I shifted slightly, the idea of modeling was dumb, in my opinion, but I needed an idea of what to go for. Hm, crossed legs maybe, sword held elegantly off to the side, chin up, quasi-villainous, smirk. I imprinted a line image in the clay brick, setting it back on the table. “If they’re going to be so obsessed about fashion, the least we can do is give them what they want.”

Sophia blinked, picking of the clay. “I don’t think that will go over… amazingly.”

“What?” I gave a spin, careful to hold the sword close to my body. “Don’t I look good.”

Sophia swallowed once, and I giggled, ruffling her hair again. “Just think about it. Call it… fencer royal.”

She tilted her head. “I thought you wanted to downplay your engagement.”

“Because it’s working so well,” I grumbled. Sophia just tittered at my annoyance as I left the room. Normally, my other club met every other day, which gave me time to help with the newspaper. If nothing else, I owed it to Sophia to see the paper through. The girl had loved books for as long as I’d known her, so making an impact on the world through writing was something she was really looking forward to.

Just look at how much she wanted my help with the project.

I just shook my head, moving down the corridor.

Dressed like this, well, it wasn’t really that I drew less attention. It’s just that people seemed less willing to be associated with me. It was ‘damaging to their reputation.’ You’d think it would be damaging to mine as well, but I’d already spend a lifetime as a black sheep. I was used to it.

“Oh my, how flamboyant!”

I sighed.

Of course, there were these as well.

“Elia Trentenmoore.” I gave her an empty smile. “Do close your mouth, dear, you’ll catch flies.”

She raised her nose, affronted. “Why I never… The only thing here that will draw flies is your disgusting little outfit.”

You know, putting my time and attention into this really would have been much better than inventing the printing press.

“I know you’ve never had an original thought in your life.” I tilted my head. “Why share it so openly?”

This stupid little game was also something I’d had experience with, in this life and the last.

“Fine, since sense  cannot seem to penetrate that massive forehead of yours, I’ll speak plainly.”

Luckily this time, I had a bit of a cheat.

“Everything about you is plain, Elia.”

She flushed, and a titter went through the slowly gathering crowd of nobles. This was, of course, their favorite game and most necessary pastime all rolled into one.

“You… look like a strumpet!”

I laughed, letting my lips stretch into a wide smile. “And you look like a man.” I stepped forward. “An Ugly man at that.” She took a step back at my advanced, as I leaned over her. “And at the end of the day, I shall change back into the same dress that your little hangers on have been dying to get a copy of, but you… will still look like an ugly.” I stepped forward. “Apish.” I tilted my head down all but literally bending her backwards. “Man.”

She sputtered for a moment, and I just smirked down at her. Elia’s eyes flicked left and right, two her two friends, one of whom was wearing a copy of my dress from the newspaper article.

Neither of them said anything.

“Oh my, Katarina.” I took a step back as Mary came out of the crowd to my side. “Are these riff raffs bothering you?”

“I… that’s!”

The crowd shifted again, and Elia’s words died stillborn as Prince Jared came out of the crowd. “I thought I heard your voice, love.”

I smiled at him, holding out my hand. He kissed my palm, holding it to his cheek. It took everything I had to keep from rolling my eyes.

He really was just as melodramatic as the day we’d first met.

“You look as ravishing as always.”

Now, I had a decent amount of experience with talking to people, but if there was one thing Jared knew how to do better than me, it was this.

His eyes seemed to slide towards the other girls, entire posture shifting towards a sort of amused surprise. “Ladies,” he drawled. “A thousand pardons, I did not see you there.”

He then took my arm and made to walk through them, as if they weren’t even there.

The two other girls quickly scrambled out of the way. For her part, Elia spun with tears in her eyes and dashed down another corridor.

And like that the show was over, and the crowd split again, forming back into the groups they’d been in before. I was just happy that it was over.

“People like that should know better than to get in your way,” Jared murmured in my ear. I waved it off. It was enough that I put them back in their place—

I stopped, would have staggered if Jared hadn’t caught my arm.

“Katarina?”

Remember your place, Hebert.

“Oh fuck me.” I whispered.

Only Jared heard, going by his widening eyes. “Kat, what’s wrong?”

Was it really true, what they said?

You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the bully?!

***

***

A/N: Isekai title get.