Accidentally

Prologue

A girl with hair as blue as the ocean, cut short and boyishly. But still a girl, despite that. Still a girl because no male could take such good care of those azure locks that they shined in the faint morning light. Her eyes matched her hair for brilliance, that same blue with barely noticeable flecks of grey.

She walked with a suggested care that seemed unreasonable, as if choosing every step as she went on. Her slender legs, visible from where her knee-length grey pleated skirt stopped, were ivory and smooth, the sort of legs that always drew eyes to them, like moths to the flame. She was slender, too, and seen from the side she appeared as a young boy, thin in every aspect and without a noticeable chest, which was veiled by the rather large scarf of her grey sailor collar, tied in the front.

It was the same uniform every girl at Tamaki Academy wore, but this girl made it seem abnormally beautiful, the puffy sleeves, the way her white shirt billowed around her at its hem, responding to the light breeze. And she was wearing a matching grey headband, which remedied the boyishness that the short cut lent to her hair.

In every sense she was royalty, trapped in a world of contrast within her new high school.

Marth drifted through the crowds apprehensively, taking care to ensure that his skirt never took too much of a liking to the wind, however weak a breeze there was today. He was a first-year student this year, attending Tamaki Academy because it was the most overlooked and normal school in the area. His entire, overly-complicated situation arose from the fact that he was in hiding, the prince of a certain country he would rather not mention at the moment, mainly because he was trying to focus on walking like a girl.

This, of course, was the reason he picked his steps patiently. He had always been somewhat delicate in bearing, and so the task was not as problematic as it could have been, but it was still a matter that took his attention, and vital to his survival. After all, he didn’t want to advertise his presence, since the entire objective of his masquerade was to blend in with the populace and appear as a normal girl, attending a normal school, maintaining normal grades, making a few normal friends, and so on.

He did not bother to sigh as he continued in the general direction (he hoped) of his classroom. The paper had said it was 4-A, and he knew from the brief look at the map earlier that it was towards the south end of the school at least, and on the fourth floor. It would not be difficult to find once he reached the inside of the building.

The crowds of other students attracted his gaze despite his hesitancy, and as he put on an air of shyness to disguise his interest, he couldn’t help but notice certain patterns. The older boys walked with other older boys, the girls with the hiked-up skirts walked with others like them, the cute but more conservative girls were grouped with their own kind, and so on. There was a tangible grouping of how it was set up, the social hierarchy of this place, in which, had he been revealed for his true potential, he would have certainly been on top of.

As it was, he was beginning to wonder if he was at the bottom of the ladder. True, he was at least above the level of the girls with glasses, a few extra pounds on their bodies, or bright colored gaudy ribbons in their hair, but then, they seemed to be the lowest rung in this place. He actually didn’t himself mind the ribbons, but then he wasn’t the one making decisions of social ranking, was he?

With distaste, he noted that he was certainly above these girls, though he hated to think of it like that. What disappointed him more, however, was the margin by which he seemed to barely miss the middle of the ladder, those girls with their cute pigtails and huge, shining eyes of chocolate brown, whipping out cell-phones every few seconds and in doing so showing off the cute attachments in shapes of kittens or strawberries. They were adorable girls, that was certain. And he was not fit to join their ranks, not with his tomboyish hair and his body that lacked the necessary curves.

That put him somewhere between the lowest rung and the middle one. A difficult situation. There didn’t seem to be a discernable group between those parts of the ladder, so he would have to choose one or the other. If he went with the unfortunate girls of the lowest rung, he would be forever doomed to their fate as the least desirable fish in the great ocean of Tamaki Academy. The only other option, though, was to pretty himself up enough to make an effort and approach the middle rung clique, which would be a risky situation in itself, especially with the amount of talking he would have to do.

Marth had been told, specifically by the bodyguards he was living with at present, that he had a somewhat androgynous voice, but was it feminine enough? He thought it so, but he had no desire to test his luck, so he was for now subjected to being characterized as a shy, somewhat easy-on-the-eyes first-year girl. With a headband.

… But he did like his headband.