Dorian gasped, his eyes widening in absolute horror as he instinctively took a massive step back.
"You... you are a Princess? Why didn't you tell me that before?! I mean—forgive me, Your Highness! Please forgive me if I spoke out of turn or said anything offensive to you!"
"Oh, for heaven's sake, calm down, Dorian," Isla laughed gently, waving off his frantic, terrified apologies. "I might be a princess, but inside the walls of this school, we are all completely equal. We are all just here to study and learn."
Dorian's expression darkened, a bitter, painful sadness pooling in his eyes. "But... I am not here to study, Your Highness. I work here."
'What?' Isla thought, her stomach dropping uncomfortably. "What do you mean?"
"Commoners like me aren't granted the permission to study in a prestigious academy like this," Dorian explained, wiping a stray, humiliating tear from his bruised cheek.
"Those boys who attacked me... they were Princes. Because I am just a servant, whenever they get the chance, they beat me up just for their own twisted amusement."
A fierce, fiercely protective anger ignited in Isla's heart. She absolutely despised this rigid, cruel classism.
But realizing the heavy, depressing atmosphere that had suddenly settled over them, she quickly decided to change the subject to lighten the mood.
"Well, Dorian, today is my very first day here," she said brightly, stepping closer to him. "And since you have been working here for a while, you must know this place inside and out. Would you do me the honor of helping me find my classroom and giving me a grand tour of the school?"
Dorian hastily wiped the last of his tears away, a faint glimmer of hope returning to his bruised face. "Why not, Your Highness? I would be honored to do that for you."
"Good," Isla smirked playfully, her eyes glinting with mischief. "Now, since I am a Princess and you are a commoner, you are strictly obligated to follow my orders, correct?"
"Y-yes, of course," Dorian stammered, looking slightly nervous again. "That is my duty, Princess."
"Excellent. Then my very first, official royal decree is this: You will stop calling me 'Princess' and 'Your Highness.' From now on, you will only call me by my name. Just Isla."
Dorian practically choked on his own breath, his face draining of all color. "No, no, no! How could I possibly do that? I am just a lowly commoner! I could never speak a royal's name so casually!"
"So... you are refusing a direct order from your Princess?" Isla challenged, tilting her head with a mock-serious, intimidating glare.
"No, it's not that! It's just... how can I—"
"Just like I can say your name, you can say mine," Isla interrupted, stepping closer with a mischievous, purely threatening glint in her eyes.
"And if you dare to call me 'Princess' one more time, I will personally march right up to my father, the giant King, and complain about your terrible insubordination!"
Utterly terrified by the prospect of facing the legendary, terrifying King's wrath, Dorian frantically waved his hands in surrender, panic written all over his face.
"Please! Please, please don't do that!" he begged, his voice cracking. "I will obey your order! I will do whatever you say... let's go... Isla."
"This right here is the academy's grand botanical garden," Dorian explained, pointing down the sunlit, polished corridor.
"Next to it is your classroom for magical theory, and right beside that... is the lavatory where I work."
Isla paused, her young face breaking into a sudden, uncontrollable grin. "Where you work?" she repeated, a bright, genuinely amused laugh erupting from her lips. "What kind of work is there to possibly do in a toilet? People just go in there to lighten their load!"
Her laughter echoed slightly down the stone hallway, but as it faded, she noticed that Dorian wasn't smiling at all. He had frozen completely still in the middle of the corridor, his head bowed so low that his chin nearly touched his chest. When he finally looked up, his eyes were brimming with heavy, unshed tears.
Isla's smile vanished instantly. "What happened, Dorian? Why do you look so incredibly sad?"
"I am sad," Dorian replied, his voice trembling slightly, "because I really do work there. I clean the academy's toilets. That is my actual job."
A profound, sickening wave of guilt washed over Isla, making her cheeks burn with intense shame. She had completely misread the situation.
"Dorian, I am so, so sorry," she quickly apologized, stepping closer to him.
"I honestly didn't know. I never meant to hurt your feelings, truly. And besides, work is just work! Whether you are sitting on a throne managing an entire kingdom or scrubbing a floor, it is all just a way to survive. But..."
"But what?" Dorian asked, hastily wiping a tear from his cheek. "Why did you stop?"
Isla hesitated, searching for the right words to express the heavy frustration building in her chest. "Well, Dorian, I was just thinking... working hard is never a bad thing.
But you are a commoner, and is that the only reason you aren't allowed to study here? Are you just going to accept this and do this for the rest of your life? Won't you even try to break this ridiculous, unfair ritual? Don't you want to build something out of your life, rather than spending your entire existence doing this while people step all over you? What about your future generations? Will they be forced to do this too? It is just so fundamentally wrong."
Dorian let out a hollow, defeated sigh—the sound of a boy carrying a burden far too large for his small shoulders. "What else can we possibly do, Isla? I have neither the social status to enroll here nor the gold to pay the fees. My parents break their backs working odd jobs from sunrise to sunset just to put enough food on our plates so we don't starve. How could I ever look them in the eye and tell them that I want to study instead of working to help them?"
Before Isla could formulate a response to his heartbreaking reality, a harsh, grating voice violently shattered the quiet of the hallway.
"Dorian!" an older man with a thick, bristling mustache bellowed, stomping toward them with a face flushed with furious indignation. "You bloody commoner! You are paid to scrub those floors, not to stand around gossiping! Get back to work, you lazy bastard!"
A white-hot, furious inferno ignited in Isla's chest. 'How dare he speak to a child like that?' she seethed internally, her hands instinctively clenching into tight, trembling fists.
She took a fierce step forward, fully intending to unleash a verbal—and possibly magical—assault on the man, but a rough, calloused hand suddenly grabbed her wrist.
She looked back. Dorian was holding her back, his eyes wide and pleading.
"I am coming, Sir!" Dorian called out respectfully, bowing his head deep. "Please, go ahead. I will be right there."
As the man huffed and turned his back, Isla spun on Dorian, absolutely livid. "Why did you stop me, Dorian?! I was about to rip that bloody mustache right off his ugly face! How dare he speak to you like that? It is completely unacceptable to speak to anyone with that kind of disrespect! Why did you hold me back?!"
"Because this is the absolute only way I can earn any money," Dorian whispered desperately, his grip on her wrist tightening for a brief second before letting go. "And... and sometimes, when I am cleaning the floors near the lecture halls, I can sneakily listen to the professors. Even though I get beaten horribly if I am caught, it fulfills that desperate, burning desire I have to learn. If you said something to him... if you caused a scene, they would fire me on the spot.
There are a hundred other starving commoners waiting to take this exact job.
They wouldn't hesitate for a single second to throw me out. So please, Isla... let them say whatever they want. It doesn't matter."
He took a step backward, his posture rigid and resigned. "I really need to go back to work now, Isla. Or Sir will be furious. I will see you later. Goodbye."
"But, Dorian—!"