#let's be real of course he got detention straightaway. the real question is why was mireille there

[secretagentspydetectiveninja]

The Misadventures of Prince Kim - chapter 6

(aka the royalty AU story)

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5] [AO3]

Duelling club turned out to be really fun, though Kim was annoyed to realize that Adrien was already much better at it than he was. He resolved to practise as much as he could and beat that kid someday. At least Adrien was always so overwhelmingly nice about everything. Getting to hang out with him so much was going to be fun.

Kim returned to his room after the first session to see that a letter had arrived from his family. He quickly opened it and skimmed the contents, not really wanting to bother reading through all of whatever boring stuff they were probably telling him to do. Wait a second – they had mentioned Adrien? What was that about? Slowing down, he read that section properly.

…hostilities between Lê Chiến and Agreste, since they have taken over parts of our land unlawfully, so do not associate with Imperial Prince Adrien as it would give the impression that we approve of his empire’s illegal occupation of provinces that rightfully belong to us.

What? Don’t talk to Adrien? But Adrien was his friend! He couldn’t just stop talking to him over something neither of them even had control over anyway! That was the stupidest thing he had ever heard.

Kim scrunched the letter up into a ball and then aimed a shot at the bin, but it missed. No! He was supposed to be good at basketball! First losing the race, then not being good at duelling, and now this. It just wouldn’t do. He needed to keep up his country’s athletic reputation – and his own, of course. And he had to start right now!

After a quick stretch and warm-up, he left his room and went for a run. These corridors were so nice for running down, since they were all so long and winding that he felt like he could go for hours without going past the same place twice. Not many people seemed to be around either at this time of evening so all he could hear were his footsteps echoing against the walls and the distant ceiling.

Ah yes, this was the life. How could people choose to be lazy when they could be getting fitter instead? It felt so fulfilling!

“Excuse me young man, running in the corridors is strictly forbidden!”

He stopped and turned around to see that the harsh voice belonged to one of his teachers, Lady Mendeleiev. She was walking towards him with a very stern look on her face.

“But… I’m a prince,” said Kim, trying to catch his breath.

“Prince or no prince, you still have to obey the rules,” Lady Mendeleiev said, somehow being tall enough to tower over him. “The contract your parents signed when they enrolled you here clearly states that running is only allowed outside or within the designated sports areas. I’m afraid I’ll have to give you a detention and send a letter to inform your parents about this.”

“What? No! My parents will be so mad, I didn’t know about the no running thing, I swear I won’t do it again…”

“That’s no excuse. Being a prince does not mean you can get away with misbehaviour, Your Highness. Now, I’m already on my way to supervise today’s detention, so would you like to accompany me and serve your detention now or do it next week instead?”

“I’ll just do it now I guess…”

“Good, better to get it over with sooner rather than later. Follow me.”

Lady Mendeleiev led Kim down some rather more rusty-looking corridors and he realized that this must be the nobility area of the school. He hadn’t been here before. Though it still looked very nice, it was much more sparsely decorated and there were far more students around – all nobles, of course. They all got out of the way rather quickly when they saw him coming. It must have been because of his status as royalty, but how did they know that? He wasn’t even wearing his normal royal outfit, just loose clothes that were comfortable and practical for being active.

By the time they reached the classroom in which detention was being held, Kim was feeling quite apprehensive. He had never bothered to read the rule book so he had no idea what was in store for him here. How long would it even take? Maybe he should have asked about it properly first.

Most of the other kids in the room must have been nobility since he didn’t recognize them. However there was one person sitting atop a desk in the corner that he recognized far too well – Pharaoh Alix. At least this time she didn’t have that annoying snake with her. As soon as she saw him she came over to speak to him, while Lady Mendeleiev set something up in the centre of the room.

“Oh good, at least there’s one person here I know,” said Alix.

“Why are you here?” Kim said. “Did your snake kill someone or something?”

“No, of course not! I got detention for skating in the corridors, which is stupid because the rules don’t specifically say anything about not being allowed to rollerskate… And why are you here?”

“Running in the corridors.”

“Oh yeah, of course it would be something like that…”

“So where’s your snake?”

“He just ate so he’s resting.”

“Wait, do snakes need to rest after eating?”

“Yep. They swallow stuff whole and then digest it slowly. At least, my snake does. Back at home we just used to order dead mice and stuff for him but here in the school grounds there’s plenty of live ones for him to go chase down. He loves it.”

She had a kind of glow in her eyes when talking about the snake, even more than when she was talking about rollerskating. Surely she couldn’t care about that scaly little monster that much? But she carried on gushing about it, and Kim decided it wasn’t worth telling her that he wasn’t listening. In any case she seemed to be mentioning words like “death” and “killing” and “venom” a lot, and he had only just started combatting his fear of the darn thing, he didn’t want to bring it back by paying attention.

Lady Mendeleiev finished setting up a weird apparatus in the middle of the room and called everyone round. It seemed to be a long, thin wooden plank raised slightly off the ground and held at either end by trestles.

“Since most of you are here due to refusing to keep to a sensible pace while in the corridors, today’s detention will enforce the kind of behaviour you should be adhering to,” Lady Mendeleiev said. She walked over to the teacher’s desk, where there was a large stack of books, and picked one up. “I’m sure you all know of this particular exercise, it’s quite common. One places a book on one’s head and then walks slowly down the balancing beam without letting the book fall. That should teach you all how to walk sensibly without endangering other students. And of course, royalty and nobility must carry themselves gracefully at all times, so this will be good training for your future in general. Now, who wants to go first?”

One of the nobles went first, and dropped the book at least eight times before finally managing to get all the way down the beam without letting it fall. The next noble took even longer, somehow being so off-balance that he fell off the beam himself a few times too. Lady Mendeleiev’s impatient comments were not helping matters either.

“This is stupid,” Kim muttered under his breath.

“I know right?” Alix replied quietly. “As someone who’s already a monarch I can assure you that in real life no one gives a crap whether you’re walking in a perfectly straight line or not so like, there’s not even a point to this.”

“But you’re not really a normal monarch, are you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?!”

“Well you just said the word ‘crap’…”

“Yeah, fair enough.” She smiled at him – not the usual competitive smirk, but an actual genuine smile for once, and it somehow caught him off-guard how different she looked. Very off-guard.

“And you’re gonna look like a loser with a book on your head,” he said quickly.

“Excuse me?” She dropped the smile immediately.

“No wait, I meant…”

“Forget it.” She glared at him for a few seconds before going and standing several metres away instead.

Kim silently cursed himself – why didn’t he ever think before saying stuff? He was supposed to be trying not to make an enemy out of the kid in his class most likely to kill him. And anyway, why had he even said that? Just when they were actually starting to get along? It was like he acted even more stupid than usual when talking to her, for some reason.

After what seemed like forever it was finally Kim’s turn. Lady Mendeleiev handed him a book and, feeling rather ridiculous, he put it on his head. Before he had even stepped onto the balancing beam it started slipping off, so he pushed it back into place and went a bit slower this time. He managed to get perhaps a fifth of the way down the beam when the book fell off before he could stop it.

“Try again,” Lady Mendeleiev said, sighing and glancing at the clock.

Kim picked the book up and went back to the start. This was way harder than it had looked. The next time the book fell off in the same place, and the time after that he didn’t even take two steps before it fell yet again. Lady Mendeleiev looked incredibly unimpressed.

“You’re losing patience and it’s throwing off your balance. Take a deep breath and calm your nerves before you try again.”

Take a deep breath! Calm your nerves! Honestly, this was the most stupid, pointless, humiliating, ridiculous thing in the universe. Kim stomped back to the start, very seriously considering snapping the stupid book’s spine and then snapping the balancing beam while he was at it. He could have been doing so many other things with his time right now. Going for a run (outside), practising tennis, practising duelling, hanging out with Max… Instead he was stuck here in detention losing a battle against a book!

After failing many more times, Lady Mendeleiev asked the noble whose turn it had been previously to help him out. Though Kim hadn’t really been paying attention before he had vaguely noticed that this had happened with a few of the others too, though not all of them. How embarrassing.

Mireille, Countess of Caquet, nervously came forward and curtseyed before holding out her hand for Kim to take if he needed help with balancing. Feeling like an idiot, Kim stepped back onto that dratted balancing beam and took Mireille’s hand. It was a little easier to balance with the extra support and this time he actually managed to reach more than halfway before the book fell off. Well, at least that was an improvement. Sure enough the next few times he got closer and closer to the end, and eventually he made it.

“Well done, good work,” Lady Mendeleiev said, though somehow sounding like she didn’t mean it at all. She took the book off him. “Looks like there’s only one person left now, so it shouldn’t take too long… hopefully…”

It was indeed Alix’s turn. Kim had expected her to just put the book on top of her headdress, but instead she lifted the headdress off and set it down on the table and…

Wait, she had short hair? Somehow he had thought that headdress must be hiding long, regal pink tresses, but no – it was short and messy, sticking out in every direction. He had never seen a member of royalty with hair like that before. It was so weird and unusual… yes, that was why he couldn’t take his eyes off it. Because it was weird. Definitely.

Despite having enough balance to rollerskate with ease, Alix was absolutely terrible at the book balancing exercise. Not only that, but it was clear she was getting more and more impatient every time she dropped the book, and her fiery expression was enough to get all the nobles slowly creeping backwards until they were right at the edges of the room. Even Lady Mendeleiev didn’t offer any unhelpful commentary. Finally Alix snapped, “If someone doesn’t get over here to help me finish this stupid thing right now, I will throw this book at someone’s face hard enough to send their teeth into the back of their brain.”

Lady Mendeleiev didn’t even say anything, she just turned and looked at Kim with an expression on her face that could possibly have been pity. Kim gulped – why did he have to be the one to help out a temperamental pharaoh who would probably wring his neck if her mood got any worse? He walked over and held out his hand, fully expecting her to crush it tight enough to cut off his circulation or something. To his surprise she just held it normally. Her hand was so tiny, just like the rest of her…

Kim quickly looked away. For some reason she was making him nervous. Not because he was scared! He definitely wasn’t scared of her, that was ridiculous. Maybe he was scared of the snake, but not her. That was for sure. She was human, just like everyone else. No reason to be afraid. And anyway, she didn’t even have the snake with her right now, so what was making him nervous? It definitely wasn’t fear, no, it was… well it was something familiar, but he couldn’t quite pinpoint it…

Oh yes. This was the nervousness he had felt when he was about to give that brooch to Chloé. Okay, that was alright then. It meant he wasn’t scared of Alix after all, thank goodness. It just meant that he…

Wait a second… no! That was worse! That was way, way, way worse! Surely it couldn’t be true! But when he chanced another quick look at her out of the corner of his eye, seeing her look of concentration mixed with fury as she tried to cross the beam for the hundredth time, he felt like his heart skipped at least eight beats. Oh man, it was true after all… this was not fear. This was a crush!

How the heck had that happened? She wasn’t even nice! (But then again, Chloé wasn’t either and Kim had stilled fallen for her somehow…) In fact, if she ever found out Kim liked her, well, she’d probably treat him much worse than Chloé had. They were rivals after all. Knowing her, she’d probably get her pet snake to swallow him whole and slowly digest him or whatever she had been talking about earlier. It was so unfair! There were plenty of other pretty girls in his class, why couldn’t he like one of them instead? As opposed to the one who was really annoying?

“Ah yes, finally!” Having reached the end at last, Alix hopped off the beam and let go of Kim’s hand to chuck the book aside. “So if everyone’s done then can we leave now?”

“Yes, and hopefully I won’t see any of you in detention again,” Lady Mendeleiev replied. She started to disassemble the balancing beam while the nobles started to leave.

Alix put the headdress back over her hair and then turned back to Kim. “I’m glad that’s over, I’m definitely gonna try and avoid detention from now on, that’s for sure. Anyway, are you going back to the dorms now?”

Oh boy, she was talking to him… If she spoke to him for much longer she would definitely figure it out, and he did not want that to happen. Another Chloé-type rejection was the last thing he wanted. Well, if he wanted this stupid crush thing to go away without anyone ever knowing about it then it was probably best for him to firmly remind his own brain that she was his rival, and for that he had to actually act like it.

“No, I’m just gonna go explore this part of the school because I don’t want to have to run into you again!” he said, then walked off quickly without looking at her.