From the Warlord's Empire Read Online Free Page A

that “Yes, some soul-searching would be good” with a demure,admonishing look on her face, Kojou’s lips twisted a bit as he exhaled and patted his chest in relief. However…
    “That’s no good, Yukina. If you forgive this pervert so easily…!”
    It was Nagisa who broke the reconciliatory mood, inserting herself as if to shield Yukina.
    Wearing the same uniform as Yukina, she looked up at Kojou with anger apparent in her eyes.
    Spread out beyond the monorail’s windows was a cloudless blue sky with an ultramarine sea. As the rays of the morning sun mercilessly illuminated the inside of the car, Nagisa’s shrill voice reverberated in spite of the restrained volume.
    “I can’t believe it. There’s just no way. And how do you call barging into a girl’s room without knocking an
accident
? Kojou, you’re the worst. I told you yesterday before bed that Yukina was coming over to visit the next morning, didn’t I?”
    “Ah…now that you mention it, I do sorta feel like you might’ve told me that…” Kojou’s face grimaced as he arrived at a rather vague memory. “But I didn’t hear anything about Himeragi changing clothes at our place. What were you two doing at that hour?”
    “Just stop with the weird imagination already, geez! We were taking measurements for adjusting outfits for the sports festival.” Nagisa added with a crude snort, “I told you about that yesterday.” But even being told this, Kojou didn’t have any grasp of the circumstances whatsoever.
    “…What do you mean, outfits for the sports festival? It’s all just gym jerseys, isn’t it?”
    “No. These aren’t for matches, they’re cheerleading outfits. We can’t use the cheerleading club uniforms to cheer on our own class, now can we? So we have to make new ones. The home economics club girls are doing the detail work, and the boys are putting up the money for it.”
    Nagisa babbled on, explaining details he’d never asked about. The sheer quantity of words that came out of Nagisa’s mouth was one of her few flaws, but at times like these he was grateful that she was a quick talker.
    “Cheerleading uniforms…wait, Himeragi’s wearing one, too?”
    Kojou raised his eyebrows doubtfully as he asked Yukina, who had a sullen look for some reason.
    Though the sports festival was an official school event, there was no rule that said girls had to dress up to cheer people on. He could understand Nagisa, an active member of the cheerleading club, running off to any cheer event, but he felt it was a bit unexpected for Yukina to volunteer to participate in an event like this.
    A gloomy expression came over Yukina’s graceful features as she spoke.
    “I had intended to do no such thing, but I wasn’t able to refuse…”
    She heaved a sigh, exhaling her anguish. “No, you couldn’t,” Nagisa said, her cheerful voice the complete opposite.
    “All of the boys in our class put their heads to the floor and begged Yukina. If the Princess cheered them on in a cheerleading outfit, they’d do anything for her as her loyal servants and work their rear ends off to win for her.”
    “All the boys bowed down?”
    Kojou was taken aback by Nagisa’s explanation. Yukina covered her eyes with an even more awkward expression. So “Princess” was Yukina’s nickname, was it?
Not bad, brats,
Kojou thought with a smidgen of admiration. Apparently, without Kojou knowing it, Yukina had risen to the rank of class princess. He could imagine how awkward Yukina must have looked with a mob of classmates bowing down before her.
    “Ordinarily I would’ve just blown them all off, but I can understand why the boys would say that. I mean, this is Yukina here, so I said, ‘Hey, girls, let’s work together on this.’”
    For some reason Nagisa was awfully proud of it. Kojou finally had a decent grasp on the circumstances. “So you’re both gonna cheerlead together, then.”
    “Tee-hee, nothing wrong with that. Ah, Kojou, maybe you wanted us to cheer