prelude — the grim reaper discovers a golden flower
[1]
Winter 1922—
The setting sun cast a dark shadow on the the plate-glass windows of a timeworn castle, veiled by curtains of Gobelins tapestry.
The pale moon rising in the western sky highlighted the features of this fortress shaped like a huge lump of stone—Castle de Blois. The sharply-outlined silhouette of the tall spire, with its overhanging window and elegant entrance, resembled an enormous woodblock print composed only in black and white.
The winters of Western Europe are cold. And how much more so if spent in an ancient stone castle, towering deep in the forest for centuries on end…
The gardens that ringed the perimeter of the castle had been skillfully maintained by master gardeners summoned from the capital of Sauvrème. But now, in the dead of winter, they were merely a wan shadow of their former glory, fringed by the coppery brown branches of beech trees and bare rose bushes quaking unsteadily in the snow, swallowed up by the bleak twilight.
The chill of winter spread throughout the approaching darkness.
*****
Groups of young maids, dressed in uniforms of white and dark blue, elderly butlers standing at attention, young male servants in dapper uniforms, and heavyset cooks came scrambling out of the castle and stood in a line, all looking up at the same spot. They clasped their hands to their chests and huddled together shoulder to shoulder, in fear of what they saw.
Various legends had circulated in speculation of what exactly was contained in the dark recesses of the tapered, eerie-looking tower at Castle de Blois. Over the course of the castle’s long history, that tower had been implicated in many tragedies, atrocities, and conspiracies that had taken place during periods of conflict in medieval times.
Everyone was now staring up at the spire, their breath stifled, their faces taut.
Their eyes were fixed upon something being carefully lowered onto a large carriage waiting below.
A box, looking much like a cage.
No—it was indeed a cage.
That bulky object, draped with a Persian rug the color of cream dappled with green, was slowly descending from the top of the tower. It seemed to be carrying a wild animal, for it periodically emitted a low moaning cry—ow-ooo!
A wintry gust of wind blew flakes of snow.
The box swung wildly from side to side, causing the masses of servants who had been gazing up at it to simultaneously take a cringing step backward.
Ow-ooo…
Ow-ooooo…
The beast let out a mournful wail from inside the cage, shrouded by the Persian rug. Each time it was rattled by the piercingly cold wind, the animal inside howled sorrowfully, wretchedly at the night sky.
“Oh!”
A young lady-in-waiting, her cheeks still round and rosy, could contain herself no more, and darted toward the wildly-swaying cage.
But a plump middle-aged chambermaid threw her arms around her and held her in place. “You mustn’t. That thing is out of your hands now.”
“But…”
“It’s over now.” The chambermaid’s large, fleshy body trembled as she spoke.
An elderly butler approached them, a frown deepening the wrinkles on his brow. “That thing will soon be on its way. Don’t do anything rash.”
“But…!”
“That beast will be gone from here. Soon we shall live in peace and quiet again.”
The other servants nodded in agreement with the butler’s words. The lady-in-waiting turned to look at the cage, her face crumpling, holding back tears.
The cage landed on a platform attached to the large, black carriage. This time, the creature inside the cage did not cry out, perhaps frightened by the sudden jolt.
The coachman gave a nod, his face twitching in fear.
He cracked his black whip, and the imposing, dark-colored horses responded with a shrill whinny. With a startled kick of their forelegs, they burst into a run down the gravel road.
The large black carriage, carrying the ominous-looking cage, withdrew from Castle de Blois and disappeared into the forest….
The assembled servants breathed a sigh of relief, then departed the garden one by one to go back to their various posts. The chambermaid affectionately thumped the lady-in-waiting’s shoulder, and walked off.
The girl lingered alone in the garden. “Why…?” she whispered softly.
And then she too walked slowly away, returning to her assigned place. From tonight, she would be starting in a new position, and could not neglect her duties. There was no time to wallow in her grief. She was responsible for supporting her young brothers and sisters, and had no choice but to work.
“But…”
She slowed to a halt, and looked up at the tapered, menacing spire, now devoid of any living soul.
And she thought of those days when she was tasked with delivering three certain things to the room at the top of that tower….
The girl started to walk again. “That grey wolf was human….” she murmured to herself.
A wintry gale blew past.
Snowflakes swirled into the air, swallowing up her whispering voice….
“A terrifying human…!”
[2]
At St. Marguerite’s School, on a morning in the dead of winter…
It was the morning after that night in the desolate garden at Castle de Blois, a stone fortress that had stood surrounded by the dark forest for centuries, when an eerie-looking box had been hitched to a carriage and then vanished into the woods.
The carriage headed toward St. Marguerite’s School, a distinguished institution that boasted a long history of educating the children of the aristocracy. It was located on a sprawling campus, preserved since medieval times, near a village on the gently sloping foothills of the Alps. In that school, a young teacher was sitting nervously, waiting to welcome an unusual guest.
On the first floor of the school building, built in the shape of the letter U, was a parlor lavishly furnished for the purpose of greeting noble visitors. A middle-aged man entered the room and sat upon an elegantly crafted chair, engraved with a motif of intertwining leaves, in the corner furthest away from the windows. A young woman sat down on a plain school-issued chair in front of him. The two of them faced each other silently.
The woman bore such a youthful-looking face that she could have been mistaken for one of her students. She had wide drooping brown eyes behind large round glasses, and wavy brunette hair that curled down to her shoulders.
This teacher’s name was Cécile, and she had been a student at this school only a few years before. She was still young and inexperienced, but also quite popular with her students.
Her large eyes were opened wide in fear as she gazed at the man before her. He was a frightening, and yet beautiful man, the likes of whom she had never encountered before. Sitting there in a dim corner of the room, he seemed to be shrouded in a heavy darkness despite the broad daylight outside.
The man who sat on the delicately ornamented chair wore his glossy blond hair tied into a cascade that flowed down his back like a horse’s tail, tight jodhpurs, and a blouse. With a thin riding crop gripped in his hand, the Marquis de Blois appeared every inch a nobleman, living up to the rumors that surrounded him. He was a mysterious and fearsome man, powerful even by the standards of the aristocracy, influential in the government, and someone who had played an important role in the Great War.
The Marquis wore a monocle of high magnification on his right eye, disfiguring his uncommonly handsome face. The view of his green eye through the monocle, ornamented with silver, appeared strangely distorted. The lens was far too thick, making his menacing right eye appear oddly magnified next to the left one. The pupil seemed to pop out, like a ghost jumping at Cécile. As she gazed at him timorously, she could do nothing but merely sit in her chair, not daring to say a word.
“…Mademoiselle.”
The intimidating nobleman at last spoke. His eye, magnified under the monocle, narrowed slightly.
“Y-yes, sir,” answered Cécile in a strained voice.
“Have you ever owned any animals?”
“…Animals?” Cécile repeated, bewildered. Memories of her childhood flashed through her mind. “Let’s see, I had a dog, a bird, and then a snake that I had to get rid of. It made my mama faint and she told my papa to throw it out. Also, a cat. And then, uh…”
As she counted on her fingers, she was impatiently interrupted by the marquis. “That’s enough.”
“Huh?”
“I want you to look after a wolf.”
Cécile stared at him, dumbfounded. “A … wolf?”
The marquis chuckled. “That’s right.” Behind his monocle, his green eye suddenly opened wide. “A tiny, little wolf.” He handed a stack of papers to Cécile. “I’m talking about this girl.”
“Oh…?” Cécile answered, still confused.
And then she took a look at the papers in her hands.
She was holding a dossier of the daughter of the Marquis de Blois, a twelve year old girl. An application for enrollment of a new student had arrived last night, and Cécile had naturally reviewed it that same night—the application of the youngest child of the House de Blois, Victorique de Blois. She had apparently never attended school in her life. But this in itself was not unusual among the children of the aristocracy. It was common for such families to retain a private tutor.
The problem was…
She had only been brought to the school last night, or rather at daybreak, and no one had yet caught a glimpse of her. Moreover, there was not even a single photograph attached to this file. Cécile wondered if there was something possibly wrong with this girl. Even so, there was one thing she wanted to set straight.
“Your jokes have gone too far, my lord.”
The marquis’ eye behind the lens narrowed to a thin line, perhaps out of surprise at Cécile’s solemn reproach.
“…What did you say?”
“How can you refer to your daughter as if she’s an animal? As an educator, I don’t feel this is proper.”
“Is that so?” The marquis sneered at her righteous indignation, then stood up. “I don’t give a damn what your feelings are,” he said cuttingly, towering over her with a malevolent, disquieting energy. Cécile instinctively rose from her chair and took a step back.
He grinned, and brought his face close to hers as she trembled in fright. “You may be a working woman now, but from what I’ve heard, you used to be the daughter of a nobleman. And so I will leave you, my lady, with a word of advice. My daughter is a beast. A legendary beast. Don’t try your luck, if you value your life.”
“A-are you threatening me?”
“Make no mistake. It’s not my anger that will shorten your life. My daughter is a beast. I suggest you avoid any foolish missteps, unless you want your throat torn out by a wolf. You should give it no more than the barest of necessities, and keep a safe distance at all other times.”
“A safe distance…?”
“Don’t go near that thing. Don’t let anyone go near that thing. It’s dangerous. Now, hear that? Somewhere out there…”
The marquis narrowed his eye behind the lens in an expression of apprehension. But his pale, thin lips were holding back laughter, as if he found something unbearably funny.
“The animals are howling!”
Although it had been a pleasant winter’s morning, the sky was steadily growing darker. Somewhere a dog was barking in a thin, fretful voice. A flock of birds flew away all at once, seemingly startled by something. Their wings rustled unnervingly as they faded into the distance.
“They sensed it arriving!”
“S-sensed what?”
“That thing. That beast. Yes, and like those animals, the world will soon awaken to that thing’s existence. Oh, yes, and when they do, they will wish they could fly at once from the face of Europe, just like those fearful birds just did. As will that worthless new breed of human in the New World, too!”
“M-my lord?”
The parlor fell back into silence. The marquis returned to his senses, and covered his face.
And then he turned to Cécile, who looked up at him in terror from behind her round glasses, and moved that pale, beautiful face of his close to hers.
“There are only three things that you must absolutely provide. A lady-in-waiting delivered these things while it was still in the tower, but from now on, this daily task shall fall upon you, my lady.”
“Wh-what are those things?”
“The first one is…”
The marquis narrowed his eyes.
The sound of birds flying away echoed again from the outside. On that peculiar morning, it felt as if all the animals of the school were attempting to flee, as if the natural world had been thrown into an uproar….
The Marquis de Blois murmured in a low voice. “The first one … is books!”
[3]
As soon as the Marquis de Blois had left, the winter morning sky over the campus returned to its previously sunny and crisp state. Sunlight shone from the French windows into the parlor that had been buried in darkness, and the cries of songbirds echoed in the distance.
Cécile heaved a great sigh. Her tensed muscles loosened, and the smile returned unbidden to her youthful face.
“Oh, that was a shock. I had wondered what it would be like to meet a famous marquis like him, but to think he was such a terrifying person!” she whispered to herself while assembling her documents and walking out of the room.
Students were running up and down the hallway. As they passed by Cécile, the young aristocrats greeted her with a polite, but cheerful, “Miss Cécile, good morning!” She answered them with a smile, but from time to time would look down at her feet uneasily.
I wonder what kind of girl she is. Her own father called her a wolf. What on earth…
A few minutes later, Cécile would find the answer to her question.
*****
Freshly-cut grass, delicately-ornamented fountains, and enormous, clearly artificial-looking flower gardens dotted the exquisite French-style garden that took up most of the campus. During springtime, squirrels would climb and dart between the benches and gazebos placed at strategic intervals, but now they were hidden, luxuriating in their hibernation in the distant forests.
A small building, only a few months old, stood deep in the gardens.
It was a colorful, and yet somehow odd-looking building, that resembled a gingerbread house out of a fairytale. That tiny house, with its first and second floors connected by a winding iron staircase, appeared slightly too small for any human to be living there. It was truly peculiar-looking, and seemed to have been constructed according to measurements that were miniaturized from their proper size….
Cécile walked up to the small entrance, and carefully put her hand on the doorknob, whose aspect brought to mind the aroma of a freshly-baked muffin. It felt cool to the touch, chilled by the winter air. She squeaked in surprise at the sudden sensation, then collected herself, and turned the cold doorknob.
The interior of the gingerbread house—a villa hastily built for the daughter of the de Blois family, in accordance with their instructions—was permeated with a funereal darkness that put to shame the negative atmosphere in the parlor earlier. The air felt suffocating, as if draped by a dark, heavy shroud that was closing in on Cécile little by little. She gulped, and then slowly stepped into the darkness.
The inside of the house was crammed full of dainty furniture that appeared slightly shrunken down from normal proportions. There was a small chest bedecked with gleaming enamel embellishments, a green claw foot table covered by a charmingly-embroidered tablecloth and cluttered with small silverware, and a rocking chair sitting beside the window. But the tiny resident of the villa, the youngest daughter of the House de Blois—Victorique de Blois—was nowhere in sight.
Darkness crept through the house.
Sensing an intruder, the darkness languidly turned to regard Cécile, looming over her as if about to swallow her. Cécile’s feet became rooted to the spot, unable to move. She narrowed her hazel eyes—and then caught sight of something amassed in another room beyond the darkness.
That something did not seem to fit with the rest of the cutely-decorated house.
It evoked a feeling of violent dissonance.
…She laid her eyes upon mountains of books stacked high in immense numbers.
The heavy, leather-bound books were heaped into many piles, crowding out the air with smothering knowledge. There were books of medieval religion written in Latin, mathematics, chemistry, history … all books that looked so difficult that even Cécile as a teacher would have felt reluctant to read them.
That sinister voice of the Marquis de Blois echoed in Cécile’s ears.
The first one is … books!
That meant the daughter of the marquis was somewhere in this darkness. Cécile swallowed nervously, then took a determined step into the gloom.
As she did so, she felt herself step on something. It made a dry crunching sound.
Cécile cautiously lifted her foot, then bent down to take a look at what she had stepped on. Her eyes crossed inadvertently.
Dusted liberally with powdered cinnamon, it was in fact … a delectable macaron.
With a look of doubt upon her face, she squinted at the area beyond the darkness.
There were macarons, chocolate bonbons, and candies in the shape of animals scattered all over the floor, radiating in a circle around a shadowed figure. Cécile stood up, and remembered the voice of the marquis.
The second one is sweets!
And the third one is…
Stepping into the darkness, Cécile absentmindedly spoke aloud the word running through her head.
“Frills!”
Beyond the darkness was yet more darkness. She felt a negative force as strong as what she had earlier encountered with the marquis—no, much stronger. Seized by terror, she could not make a sound. She stood gazing into an abyss of true darkness, heavy and black, as if the gates of hell had been opened in that very spot.
Cécile halted, her legs trembling uncontrollably.
The figure in the darkness was staring steadily at her.
Cécile closed her eyes, and pricked her ears. She could hear a faint rustling sound. Whatever was there had noticed her presence, and had slowly begun to move. In her mind, she contemplated the image that remained from that split-second glimpse. Just as the Marquis de Blois had said, this was … this fearsome creature was…
…enveloped in endless layers of white, luxurious frills.
Cécile slowly opened her eyes.
The figure was right in front of her. Cécile cried out in surprise.
Every thought in her mind vanished in an instant—that this was the daughter of the Marquis de Blois, that she was one of the grey wolves spoken of in legends passed down in this country for centuries, this unsettling darkness. Sitting before her, looking up at her with narrowed green eyes…
…was a magnificent porcelain doll.
Silken blond hair, flowing down to the floor in a shining cascade, like a velvet turban come undone. Small rosy cheeks. Emerald green eyes that glittered like precious stones. Her sumptuous dress, bedecked in French lace the color of ebony and countless layers of three-tiered white frills. A miniature top hat ornamented with coral sat upon her small head like a crown.
That porcelain doll—no, that tiny girl who looked like a doll, was lying upon the floor, her arms and legs sprawled out, her face remarkably expressionless and dispassionate, looking much like a discarded toy. The only movement came from one of her small feet, clad in lace-up shoes. It twitched once, then stilled.
The girl—Victorique de Blois—suddenly opened her green eyes, and gave Cécile an intense stare.
Cécile nervously opened her mouth, feeling as if she ought to say something. But her throat was dry, and she could not find the words.
Several moments passed.
Finally, the girl parted her small, cherry-red lips in an unnaturally abrupt movement, like a marionette with its strings being pulled.
“Who the devil are you?”
Cécile gasped. That voice was at startling variance with the girl’s appearance, which reminded her of an ethereally lovely porcelain doll. It was a low, hoarse, melancholy voice, and made her sound like an old woman….
However, that strange voice was perhaps curiously befitting to the ineffable quality of light reflected in her green eyes—somehow sorrowful, and quiet, like that of an aged person who had already lived for a hundred years. Cécile was speechless with awe. And then she found herself once again overcome with fear as Victorique stirred slightly. In that moment, Cécile felt unease grip her heart, intuitively understanding what it must feel like to be a small animal in the sights of a predator.
“Are you my enemy?”
The husky voice asked her again. Handfuls of white frills made a crinkling sound, as if annoyed at Cécile’s terrified inability to answer.
Cécile shook her head violently, still unable to manage even a single word.
At last she regained her faculty of speech, and whispered in a trembling voice, “A-are you a doll…?”
Hearing this, Victorique’s eyes began to gleam dangerously. The greenness of her eyes seemed to intensify with her anger. “How rude!”
“Uh, um…”
“My name is Victorique de Blois. I am a fully-fledged human being!”
“Okay, uh…”
When Cécile attempted to speak again, what came from her lips was instead a shriek. Victorique had lifted up a heavy book with her small hands and thrown it at her. Cécile cowered as the book hit the wall with a heavy thud and slid down to the floor.
The room fell back into silence.
Victorique howled like a wild animal, her small body shaking all over. Cécile uttered a shrill scream, but it was drowned out by Victorique’s howls. At last Cécile deciphered the words hidden in her wails.
The little beast was crying out, “I’m bored!”
“Wh-why…?”
“I’ve already read all of the books here. I need more. Lots more. Bring them to me. Bring me books. I’m bored. I’m so bored!”
Cécile turned her back on the terrifying girl, and ran away. She fled from the darkness, tripping over her own feet, escaping that house that looked like a toy dollhouse.
She timidly looked back. The howling had stopped, and now all she saw was merely a small, quaint gingerbread house, sitting by itself, looking lonesome.
Cécile fell to the ground in a stupor. Warm rays of sunlight radiated down upon her from the clear winter sky.
“Ouch, my back…!”
One month later, the long European winter was finally approaching its end, and people were starting to shed layers of clothing one by one. A giddiness in anticipation of Easter holidays had begun to infect students and teachers alike, lending a joyful air to the season.
Cécile thumped the small of her back with a rounded fist and staggered to a faculty room in the center of the U-shaped main building.
An elderly teacher, who had been teaching at the school ever since Cécile was a student, was already sitting inside. He smiled at Cécile. “You look about ready to collapse. What’s the matter? Getting a little old for this, are we?”
“Not right now, please…” Cécile stumbled to her own seat and slumped onto the desk.
“What’s wrong?” the old teacher asked, a touch of concern in his voice.
“No, nothing. It’s just…”
“It’s just?”
“Those books were so very heavy.”
The old teacher suddenly rose from his chair, preparing to flee the room. “Oh, so you mean… Well, it’s probably best if you ask one of the female teachers, especially one of the younger ones with more energy. Ha-ha!”
Cécile glared at him balefully. “I said, they were really very heavy!”
“Well, good luck!”
“Argh…”
Every day for the past month, from sunup to sundown, Cécile had walked to St. Marguerite’s Library to collect enormous quantities of books, then delivered them to that dollhouse, repeating the process over and over again. The student who lived there, the mysterious Grey Wolf Victorique, had not bothered to attend class even once, and had said nothing to Cécile other than ordering her to bring her books—books, sweets, and frilly dresses. Victorique’s basic living needs were clearly different from that of the average person.
Cécile, for her part, had grown slightly more used to the sound of that intimidating, husky voice in the inky darkness. But as for that girl herself, it was a different story. Even when Cécile tried talking to her, she hardly ever responded. Cécile realized it wasn’t that the girl was ignoring her deliberately, but rather that Victorique possessed not the slightest bit of interest in other people. It was as if she had caged a wild little wolf that was not at all used to being kept by a human being.
Cécile could only keep praying that the wolf would at least not weaken and die… And that was all she could do.
*****
And so several months passed.
The season shifted into the warm days of spring. Colorful flowers blossomed all over campus, and the trees grew thick with rich green leaves, transforming the gardens into a landscape completely different from the bleakness of the previous winter.
Before she knew it, Cécile had grown accustomed to caring for the strange little girl, who spoke not a single word and treated her as if she didn’t exist. Nevertheless, she continued to spend her days quietly delivering those three sets of things to the gingerbread house during her breaks from work. And all the while, she thought about that solitary, fearsome wolf cub, as if she were a little rose thorn that had pricked the palm of Cécile’s hand.
Feelings of worry for Victorique never ceased to occupy a corner of her heart.
[5]
At sundown, it was part of Cécile’s daily routine to return to the spartan teachers’ dormitory, located behind the chapel in an inconspicuous corner of the expansive campus. In contrast to the luxurious buildings elsewhere on campus, which were elegantly furnished in oak for the use of the aristocratic students, the teachers lived in plain box-like structures built in extremely spartan style without any excess ornamentation.
The faculty quarters were separated into male and female dormitories. Spacious rooms large enough for a family were located on the second floor of the male dormitory. A small pond lay in between the two square buildings, and every springtime, small birds would go there to visit, resting their tired wings on the way back north from their yearly migrations.
Cécile and her fellow teachers enjoyed leaving breadcrumbs in the pond to feed the birds. This served as a placid, calming ritual to signify the advent of spring….
*****
On one particular night, Cécile finished her day’s work and came back to the dormitory. As she rubbed her constantly aching back, she tossed breadcrumbs into the pond as usual, and flipped through the pages of the ladies’ magazines she subscribed to, all while massaging small circles into her skin. She began chatting with a friend from her school days who lived in the room next to hers.
“I hear that the music teacher, Mr. Jenkins, has taken rather poorly lately,” her friend said.
Cécile made a sympathetic murmur in reply to her friend’s gossip.
Mr. Jenkins had been the music teacher ever since Cécile had been a student, and he was getting up in years. His health had declined, and he had recently been admitted to a hospital in Sauvrème, the capital of Sauvure.
“Once Mr. Jenkins dies, there won’t be anyone left to play that harp.”
“You’re right…” Cécile couldn’t help nodding at the sound of her friend’s somber tone. Mr. Jenkins was a talented harpist, and on weekend evenings would often invite other teachers to his and his wife’s room on the second floor and treat them to a fine tea party.
Oh, Mrs. Jenkins made some delicious milk tea, and those baked scones…. Cécile sighed wistfully. And then those sandwiches with salmon and fluffy cream cheese. And her cherry cake…
Realizing the direction her thoughts were taking, she blushed to herself. No, no, his harp performance. Right, I should think about that instead. …And those scones piled high with blackcurrant jam and clotted cream—no, not about that!
Cécile struggled to banish the thought of a between-meal snack from her mind as she relieved her nostalgic memories.
“But either way, Mr. Jenkins will probably never perform again,” continued her friend.
“Are you sure?!”
“That’s because I heard that a new music teacher will be coming here next week. I hope it’s another good one.”
Now feeling truly contrite, Cécile thought of the kind Mr. Jenkins, who had always always been gracious to her in those days when she was a carefree student, even though her grades were not exactly the best. He was patient, taught the students to appreciate the beauty of the piano and of music, and was like a grandpa who always had a smile on his face….
*****
Cécile slept fitfully that night. She woke up the next day at her usual time, ate breakfast, and then headed to St. Marguerite’s Library, her face clouded by worries and unhappy feelings.
Unsure of which books to take with her, she picked out five appropriately heavy-looking tomes, and hefted them up in her arms with a grunt of exertion.
Outside, a tiny bird tweeted a song in the sunshine.
Under considerable physical strain, Cécile walked to the gingerbread house as she already done many times before. Just as she was about to turn the doorknob, which was shaped like a small shortbread cookie, the door suddenly flew open from the inside. She cried out in surprise when a group of students—blond-haired, blue-eyed children from aristocratic families—burst out of the house at the same time, shouting, “Whoa!”
None of them bothered to pick up the books that Cécile had dropped to the floor in her shock.
“Oh, it’s you. Say, what’s this building for? Why would someone build a dollhouse on campus?” asked one student.
Several children crowded around Cécile, who was gathering up her books from the ground . “W-well…” she stuttered.
“It’s full of books, and there’s nobody around. It’s creepy to have a dollhouse with no dolls in it.”
“There’s nobody around?” Cécile repeated. The students exchanged a look among themselves, then nodded.
Cécile felt her heart pounding in her chest. “Come on, it’s getting late. It’s time to get back to the classroom,” she scolded, trying to project anger through her voice as she shooed them away. Then she rushed inside the house and closed the door behind her.
There was nothing left but the sound of silence.
The darkness writhed silently, closing in on Cécile like a dark velvet blanket, just like it had every time she entered the house.
She should have been used to this atmosphere by now, this thick, suffocating darkness.
And beyond it…
Cécile breathed a sigh of relief.
Beyond it, she saw that girl, like a porcelain doll, sitting in her usual position.
She wore a lavish black and white dress, and a bonnet replete with floral-patterned lace upon her head. Her tiny feet were encased in leather boots fastened with fabric-covered buttons. Her long hair flowed down to the floor like melted gold, curling around her small body.
“So you were here after all.”
Victorique betrayed not the slightest reaction to the sound of Cécile’s voice.
“Weren’t there some students in here just now? They said there was no one inside.”
“….”
“I’ll leave your books here for you. Later on I’ll bring some black tea, a soft-boiled egg, and cherry salad for your breakfast. …Miss Victorique?”
She heard no response.
Victorique’s face moved with the tiniest suggestion of a twitch, forming an annoyed frown. Cécile sighed and quietly left the gingerbread house, but not before turning back to look at her one more time.
A warm spring breeze blew. A sweet scent from the flowers outside tickled Cécile’s nostrils. As she walked briskly back to the school, she thought of that small girl who was confined inside her house, ignorant of the warmth of the spring breeze, or the sweetness of the flowers. The little rose thorn embedded in Cécile’s heart twisted inside of her again. She shook her head glumly, and hurried along the winding path through the gardens.
*****
And then one morning, several days later…
It was that dazzling time of year when the sunlight grew warmer by the day, heralding the transition between the end of spring and the first days of summer.
In the gardens, white butterflies danced upon flower buds as they bloomed open one by one…
That morning, with one hand supporting her back, Cécile walked into the faculty room. She sensed that she was a few minutes late when she happened to walk in on a middle-aged man being introduced to the other teachers. The new music teacher had arrived. He had graduated from a famous music college in Sauvrème, and by all appearances brimmed with confidence.
Once they finished exchanging introductions, the new music teacher called out to Cécile, who was preparing to run out of the room. He accompanied her as she rushed to her classroom, and questioned her about Mr. Jenkins. She replied by sharing her reminiscences about harp recitals and tea parties.
“Hmm, recitals. That sounds lovely,” the new teacher responded, making appropriate sounds of admiration.
“Yes, it really was. So everyone is really heartbroken to lose such a dear friend.”
He nodded. “I see. He must have been a fine person.”
The moment he spoke, a strong gust of wind blew past them. It was the dry wind of early summer.
Cécile knitted her brows, and raised both hands to rearrange her large round glasses, which had been blown out of place.
*****
That evening, Cécile once again left St. Marguerite’s Library with a stack of books in her arms, grunting to herself as she made her way to the gingerbread house.
When she opened the door, she ended up bumping into a student who was in the process of leaving.
“You’re back here again, Miss Cécile?” The student curiously eyed the stack of books Cécile carried. Then she looked back inside, and glanced uneasily at the piles of heavy books which crammed the house in such tall stacks that they seemed to transform into extra walls.
“Oh, it’s you.” Cécile recognized the student, with her bright blond pigtails the color of wheat, as one of the girls in her homeroom class.
The girl narrowed her eyes into thin slits. “Why are you here again, Miss Cécile?”
This student had apparently come to the gingerbread house by herself today. Cécile fell nervously silent, uncertain of how she should respond.
The girl continued in an awed tone. “It’s a dollhouse with no dolls and no people—exactly what I expected to find at a haunted school like St. Marguerite’s!”
“Well, no, that’s not exactly it—” Cécile stopped herself. “…Wait. Did you say there’s nobody here?”
“No, no one at all.” The girl yawned widely, apparently tired of investigating, and strutted out the door, sassily shaking her small behind from side to side.
Cécile lowered her books into the claw foot table, then went searching through the house. “Miss Victorique!”
She looked in the bedroom. But Victorique was not in the charmingly-decorated canopy bed, nor was she under it. Cécile then raced up the spiral staircase and ran into the dressing room on the second floor. She parted the suffocatingly thick sea of white lace, pink frills, and black ribbons, in hopes of finding a tiny little girl hidden among them.
“Miss Victorique?! Where are you?”
Cécile systematically looked under tables, inside closets, and even under the cushions of the rocking chair, as if looking for a lost kitten.
But Victorique was nowhere to be found.
“I guess you really aren’t here, then…. Where could you be?”
Cécile sank down upon a rectangular chest nearby, exhausted from her search.
The chest began to make a creaking noise.
In between creaks, she heard a brief, low moan that was filled with deep displeasure.
It came from under Cécile’s bottom.
For a moment, an expression akin to that of a dove who had just been hit by buckshot appeared on Cécile’s face, her large drooping hazel eyes nearly crossing together.
“…Miss Victorique?”
Cécile slowly rose from the chest, then took a close look at it.
Through a crack in the rectangular box, which looked too small for any person to fit inside, she caught a glimpse of something.
Something white and fluffy…
Frills, which were apparently in a very foul mood.
Cécile eyed the chest suspiciously, not wanting to believe what she saw. She slowly lifted the lid.
Then…
An exquisite porcelain doll—no, a tiny, beautiful girl, enveloped in frills, lace, and calico ribbons—sat inside, a highly aggrieved frown creasing her face. She held a book in her arms. A lollipop peeked out from her smooth, cherry-red lips.
“M-Miss Victorique…!” Cécile cried out in horror. “Wh-wh-why are you in a place like this again? This box is meant for storing clothes. It isn’t somewhere for you to sit. Wait… Um, Miss Victorique, might I ask…” Cécile hesitated rather than continue with her next words.
Victorique, looking very peeved, huddled motionlessly in a ball, like a wild animal whose pride had been hurt.
Could it be that you were hiding…? Cécile thought silently. Are you afraid of people? You are, aren’t you…?
Victorique sullenly pouted, and showed no signs of wanting to come out of the chest for the rest of the day.
*****
“Hey, mister, have you been busy lately?”
The sun was setting on a day close to the start of summer.
While watching white-winged birds float on the surface of a pond in the gardens, Cécile called out to a heavy-set old gardener who was hard at work.
The grizzled old man, his large frame draped with a pair of overalls, answered gruffly. “Yeah? What kind of question is that? Of course I’ve been busy. Imagine if you were the one who had to look after this huge garden day after day. Huh?”
Although he came from a humble background, Cécile had known him ever since she was a schoolgirl, and considered him a friend. As the gardener continued to mumble under his breath about how busy he was, Cécile pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and said, “There’s something I’d like you to make for me.”
“Another toy boat or something, I’ll bet. All you want is stuff that’s a pain in the ass to make.”
“No, I don’t mean that. Actually, what I want is a flower garden.”
“A flower garden?!” the gardener repeated in bafflement. He paused in the middle of trimming a hedge, his enormous gardening shears halting in mid-movement. “Where do you want it?”
“Well, you know that little gingerbread house that went up recently?”
“Yeah?”
“I want you to build a garden around it. You know, like a lot of estates had in the Middle Ages. A garden maze. Something that winds around and around, where only people who know the way can get in. That sort of thing.”
“A garden maze!” The old gardener rose to his feet. His body, like a small mountain, shook merrily. “Hmm. Could be interesting. You’re saying I could make it any way I want to?”
“Yes!”
“All right, I’ll do it.”
Cécile sighed in relief.
And then she silently looked over her shoulder in the direction of the little house. A breeze was blowing, rustling the white flowers. The sun was setting, and the garden would soon be plunged into blackness. To Cécile, it felt as if the darkness that had suffused the inside of that house had come to invade the outside world.
The sky faded from twilight to nighttime.
The pale moon rose in the eastern sky.
*****
With skillful hands, the old gardener began to plant a garden maze around the perimeter of the dollhouse.
Geometrical patterns wove around and around the small house, and grew steadily taller, warding off any intrusions from curious students.
And then, around that time…
A certain incident occurred.
In the men’s faculty dormitory, opposite the women’s dormitory where Cécile stayed, Mr. Jenkins and his wife had left behind their things in their room on the second floor. In that lonely room, now sealed up and darkened, their belongings evoked the strong, lingering presence of those who had once lived there.
And then, every night from that night onward, the harp in that room began to play a peculiar melody….
*****
Cécile was relaxing alone in her own room that night, filing her nails and shining her shoes. She found herself unable to quit after finishing with her own shoes, and decided to take it upon herself to polish the shoes of her friend living in the room next door. As she hummed while shining her shoes, suddenly she heard the faint sound of music being played invitingly from outside the window.
“Hmm?” Cécile looked up, and strained to listen.
But she heard only silence. She resumed her humming and shoe-shining.
Then the music began to play again.
“Huh?” Cécile jumped to her feet and opened the window.
She took a look at the second-story window of the dormitory across the way. The lights were off in the room that had belonged to Mr. Jenkins, and it seemed to be empty. But she definitely heard the sound of…
“A harp!” A chill ran down her spine.
Cécile went to rouse her sleeping friend from her bed in the next room. Her friend woke up mumbling crankily, then threw on her coat over her nightgown and ran outside with her.
“So Mr. Jenkins came back!”
“No, I doubt it.”
“But I hear his harp being played!”
“In a dark room?”
Her friend laughed. “That sounds like something a ghost would do,” she replied absently. Then she caught herself and cried out, “Eek!” and exchanged a look with Cécile. “A ghost…”
“C-can’t be…” the two of them murmured, and shook their heads.
“That’s impossible.”
“I know.”
They entered the men’s dormitory and climbed up the stairs. They warily knocked on the door of Mr. Jenkins’ room, but no one answered.
The lights inside were turned off.
All they could hear was the faltering melody of the harp.
“Mr. Jenkins? Sir?” they called out in unison.
Before long, more people came investigate, and soon a crowd of teachers gathered around, loudly talking amongst themselves. As the harp continued to play, someone walked down to the office and retrieved the key to the room, then handed it to Cécile.
With quivering hands, she inserted the key into the lock, and hesitantly opened the door.
“Mr. Jenkins…?” she called out.
There was no answer.
The sound of the harp faded away.
“It wasn’t in this room, I’m sure of it. Someone must’ve been playing in another room,” one teacher muttered.
Cécile’s friend stepped over the plush carpet and turned on a lamp in the middle of the room.
The light bathed the room in a dim orange glow.
There was no one inside.
The crowd of onlookers simultaneously gasped. Her friend shrieked like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.
“What happened?!” yelled Cécile in surprise.
Her friend stretched out a trembling hand and pointed at the harp.
Cécile’s eyes crossed. “Oh!”
The strings of the harp were faintly vibrating.
As if someone had been sitting next to it and playing only moments ago.
“A—a ghost!” screeched her friend. “The ghost of Mr. Jenkins! His ghost was sitting right here, playing the harp. That must’ve been him….”
“That’s impossible!”
“Everyone loved his performances, so he wanted us to hear him play one last time. Mr. Jenkins! Oh, how tragic! Our kind Mr. Jenkins must no longer be with us!”
“Don’t say that!”
An uproar surged through the crowd of teachers.
Cécile elbowed her way through the throng and raced down the stairs. She picked up the telephone and dialed the operator to connect her with the hospital in Sauvrème.
Mrs. Jenkins was summoned to answer the hospital’s phone. “All right. Oh, it’s you, Cécile, the one who’s terrible at the piano.”
Her uncomplimentary opening line slipped past Cécile’s notice. Cécile asked her through sobs, “Uh, Mrs. Jenkins. All of us offer you our c-condolences…”
“What?” the old woman answered bemusedly. “Your condolences? For what?”
Cécile wiped her tears. “Huh…? Didn’t Mr. Jenkins pass away…?”
“What are you talking about, Cécile! He’s alive and kicking! Right now he’s recovering in his hospital room and enjoying his dinner. What a rude thing to say!”
“What?!” Cécile hurriedly apologized, then hung up the receiver.
The new music teacher had walked over to her. “What happened?”
“Well, I called the hospital just now, about Mr. Jenkins.”
“The hospital?” A strange expression passed over the music teacher’s face as he repeated her words.
*****
The next day, Cécile walked to the gingerbread house carrying a stack of books, her eyes bleary from the commotion over the ghost on the previous night. She wound her way through the unfinished garden maze, whose construction was making steady progress under the care of the old gardener.
“Oh, no!” Just as she was about to start crying from fear that she would become stranded inside the maze, Cécile finally found the outlet and arrived at the house in the center. She set the stack of books upon a claw foot table, now so tired that she could barely speak.
“Ahh…” She fell into a chair with an sigh of relief. “They’re so heavy!”
*****
Later that night…
The same incident happened again in the faculty dormitory.
The harp played on in the empty room. When the teachers ran to open the door, they found no one inside. The window was also locked from the inside. Cécile’s friend approached the harp, and pointed at it. “Look, the strings are still quivering,” she murmured.
But when they called the hospital, they were told that Mr. Jenkins was getting better by the day.
And the next night, it occurred again….
With each time she heard the harp playing, the naturally timid Cécile found herself increasingly unable to sleep at night….
Cécile could not believe her ears.
One evening, several days after the harp began playing at night, she gathered books for Victorique and deposited them on top of the clawfoot table in the gingerbread house, as was her daily routine. Just as she was preparing to leave, she had heard a voice call out to her.
“What on earth’s the matter?”
It was the Grey Wolf, who had uttered not a single word for the past several months.
Cécile halted, and then looked over her shoulder in wonderment.
Deep in the shadows, a beautiful doll, tangled in frills and lace, lay sprawled out on the ground in a position that Cécile had grown used to seeing. While Cécile was distracted with other tasks, a white ceramic pipe had suddenly appeared in the doll’s delicate hand. A thin strand of tobacco smoke swayed lazily to the ceiling as she smoked it.
“D-did you say something?” asked Cécile in a quavering voice.
“You seemed to be preoccupied with something these past few days.”
“H-how did you know?”
The girl snorted derisively through her small, finely-shaped nose. And then, in a voice as husky as that of an old woman, she said, “It’s really quite simple. An overflowing wellspring of wisdom told it to me.”
“Oh…?”
Victorique’s cold green eyes blazed brightly. Cécile gulped. Up until this point, this girl had done nothing else but skim through books with lifeless eyes, her small body slumped onto the floor. But now her spirit was seized by a terrifying, unfathomable energy that had suddenly been released out of nowhere. Her presence had been nearly invisible in that dark room, but in that moment, the one staring at Cécile was a being who possessed real power. Cécile stood motionless, dual emotions of fear and awe warring within her.
“W-wellspring of wisdom…?”
“Correct. On occasion, I will collect fragments of chaos from this world and amuse myself with them, just to stave off boredom. Then I reconstruct them, and arrive at a single truth. …Now, speak.”
“S-speak?” Cécile repeated tremblingly.
Victorique answered in a voice shaking with irritation. “Tell me of the events occurring around you. At the very least, you can be of some use to me so that I may forget this tedium for even a moment. Now speak, speak!”
Cécile gasped at the little girl’s words spoken in that husky voice, brimming with arrogance and obstinacy. But when Cécile opened her mouth to protest, her fear got the better of her, and she closed her mouth, unable to say anything.
Victorique snorted contemptuously, exasperated at Cécile’s continuing silence. “Or am I to assume the reason is a much more inane one?”
“Huh?”
“If, for example, you happened to be brooding over your wanton cravings for the opposite sex, then that would be a truly inane reason. In that case, I would rather you not tell me, Cécile.”
“N-n-n-no, not that!”
Cécile ran agitatedly over to Victorique’s side. Once she came closer to this strange girl, she began her tale of the peculiar harp, complete with wild gesticulations.
“…So that’s why all of us teachers have been living in fear. My friend said it’s the ghost of Mr. Jenkins, but he’s still alive. But what else could it be?”
Victorique uttered a short phrase in a low voice. “Move the harp somewhere else.”
Cécile regained some of her composure. “Huh? Why?”
“….”
And then Victorique said no more. Once again, she sank into her golden darkness, one formed of books, thoughts, and boredom. No matter how many times Cécile attempted to recapture her attention, she said not another word. At last, Cécile gave up, and silently departed the gingerbread house.
*****
When Cécile returned to the dormitory that night, she borrowed the key to Mr. Jenkins’ room and relocated the harp with the help of her friend. It was a large and heavy instrument, with countless strings strung from top to bottom. For two women lacking physical strength, it was far too much to lift. All they could manage was to drag it across the plush carpet a mere twenty centimeters or so. Then they threw up their hands and returned to their rooms.
“So it’s not supposed to play anymore? Why?”
“Well, I don’t know exactly why…. But someone told me to do that, so I thought I’d give it a try.”
The two women exchanged incredulous looks.
It was getting late at night.
And from that night onward…
The harp never played again.
*****
The next morning was sunny, a fine day that foretold of the coming of summer.
With summer holidays soon to begin, a restless excitement was starting to spread through the student body.
Cécile walked briskly to the gingerbread house, as she had done so many times before. She put down her stack of books, then called out to the frilly doll lolling in the darkness. “Can you explain what happened?”
That cold and beautiful girl, petite enough to be mistaken for a doll, was carefully watching Cécile with her jewel-like green eyes. Every so often, she would bring her ceramic pipe to her small mouth, and take a drag from it.
A thin filament of smoke drifted idly to the ceiling.
“…About what?”
“The haunted harp. We moved it a little bit to the side, just like you said to do, and last night it didn’t play. But why would that happen?”
Victorique replied with a loud, weary-sounding yawn. Then, with penetrating eyes that brought to mind those of a wolf, she suddenly gave Cécile a steely stare.
Cécile shivered, frozen to the ground in fear. “Uh…”
“The man on the first floor was playing the harp on the second floor.”
“Come again?”
“I’m saying the harp on the second floor was being played by the harp on the first floor.”
“…I’m sorry?”
“Surely you understand this.”
“I don’t understand,” answered Cécile promptly.
Victorique’s eyes widened in surprise, and she sighed heavily. “It’s bothersome, but I’ll articulate it for you.”
“Articulate it?”
“I will explain what I have reconstructed so that you may understand it.” Victorique removed the pipe from her mouth, and continued irritatedly. “Listen carefully. A harp was playing in a locked room with no one inside, without even the lights turned on. And once you moved it, the music stopped.”
“Right.”
“Investigate the room directly below it on the first floor. You should find another harp there. When the culprit plays the harp on the first floor, that vibrates the instrument on the second floor.”
“H-how is that possible?”
“A harp is an instrument with many strings pulled taut from top to bottom. A sound is produced by plucking the strings. And the floor of the room where the harp is should be overlaid with plush carpet. The culprit made many small holes through the ceiling of his room on the first story, which is also the floor of the room on the second story, and one by one, tied strings to connect the harp on the top floor to that on the bottom floor. And so, when the instrument on the first floor was played, the strings of the harp on the second floor were also plucked. When he finished his performance, he pulled out the strings that he had secretly strung through the ceiling. The holes in the floor of the second-story room should be thoroughly hidden by the plush carpet. Hmph, this is just one of the many worthless tricks that stage magicians have been using for generations. Just a bit of hysteria to fool children into believing in ghosts.”
Victorique muttered this disinterestedly, and once again, took a puff from her pipe. Her radiant blond hair undulated with every movement of her small head.
“But who did it, then…?”
“Most likely, the new music teacher.”
“Him?!”
“Mmm. It is necessary that the culprit be skilled in playing the harp. That limits the number of people capable of pulling it off. And I believe you said that the first floor of that dormitory is where the single men live.”
“But…”
“I suppose he was envious of Mr. Jenkins’ popularity, and stirred up this fuss over ghosts so that everyone would feel frightened at the thought of him. Think about it, Cécile. Who else would have reason to do it except for that man?”
“….”
“In other words, he was the only one who didn’t know that Mr. Jenkins was still alive.”
Cécile stared at at her dumbly.
Victorique added in an annoyed tone, “Everyone else knew that Mr. Jenkins was recuperating in the hospital in Sauvrème. But the new teacher didn’t know that. He was probably under the mistaken impression that the previous music teacher had died. Cécile, didn’t he ask you about Mr. Jenkins before all of this happened? And you told him that you had lost a ‘dear friend’.”
Cécile gasped in astonishment. “N-now that you mention it…”
“And when you called the hospital in Sauvrème in the aftermath of the mess, he seemed to be surprised when he heard you mention the hospital. Since he didn’t know that Mr. Jenkins was in the hospital, he didn’t understand why you rushed to phone them when the incident with the ghost happened.”
“….”
“Do you understand now?”
But rather than give Cécile a chance to reply, Victorique instead slowly turned away from her, like a wild animal returning to the deep forest, and turned her attention back to her books once more.
Cécile stared mutely at her small form, so very slight, and so finely featured that she could have been hand-made.
Victorique said nothing more, perhaps no longer even aware of Cécile’s presence.
Despite the awe-inspiring, noble, and yet dark and unknown power that lay dormant inside of Victorique, the figure reflected in Cécile’s eyes was merely that of a girl in frilly clothes who looked like a porcelain doll. When she realized that this was the first time she had actually exchanged something akin to a conversation with Victorique, she became speechless with amazement. And then she quietly left the dollhouse, bewildered at the ever-present pain she felt in her chest, like the pricking of a rose thorn.
As she wound her way through the garden maze, what suddenly welled up in Cécile’s heart was the thought that, perhaps, the meaning of boredom was in fact one and the same with loneliness. She had no inkling of what was running through the mind of the grey wolf, or what would become of her. But the thorn only continued to ache.
*****
And so spring headed into summer.
The long holiday had begun.
[8]
With the start of the long summer break, the sights and sounds of the students vanished as if they had never existed in the first place, leaving St. Marguerite’s School bathed in stillness and the radiant light of the summer sun. But there was a subtle change to this yearly routine, and it was not solely due to the presence of the Grey Wolf Victorique.
When morning came, Victorique groggily gathered up her frills and lace and walked out of the small gingerbread house, passing through the deserted gardens. Her destination was St. Marguerite’s Library, one of the greatest repositories of books in all of Europe, stored in a square, hollow building, submerged in the color of ash. Victorique was the only student granted special permission to use the library’s hydraulic elevator, which had been installed only a few years before. From morning until evening, she spent all of her time reading books in a curious alcove at the very top of the labyrinthine staircase, built for a king of Sauvure to indulge himself in his rendezvous with a secret lover.
The summer flew past uneventfully, and soon enough, it was autumn.
A traveler had arrived.
*****
That morning, Cécile sat at her desk in a staff room on the first floor of the U-shaped main building, staring flummoxed at the stack of papers in front of her. She held her head in her hands and groaned to herself.
“Hmm… So this time, it’s an Oriental boy….” She adjusted her crooked eyeglasses. “What’ll I do if it’s another strange one? What will I have to bring him this time, and where will I have to bring it? And just when I thought the pain in my back went away…. Hmm….”
As Cécile sighed to herself, she reflected on her mental images of what people from the Far East were like. Harakiri, inscrutable hairstyles, gorgeously-patterned clothing, dog stew….
“Right. I have to hide the dogs! He’s almost here!”
When she rose from her chair, her elbow accidentally knocked over the textbooks, exam papers, and assorted heavy books that were stacked up on her side of the desk. “Ack! …Huh?”
Hidden behind the din of papers crashing to the floor, she thought she heard someone say something in a quiet, muffled voice.
Startled, Cécile looked beyond the jumble of books and handouts, and saw that someone had entered the staff room unnoticed. Standing before her was a diminutive young boy, his skin a color she had never seen before. His hair was jet-black and glossy, and his smooth skin was tinged with yellow. He had hastily reached out to catch some of the falling books, then put them back on the desk and began silently picking up the papers scattered on the ground.
Cécile stared at the boy in amazement.
…To the young aristocrats that populated the student body, the teachers were merely another category of servant. If Cécile ever dropped something, there would be not a single student willing to pick it up for her. As she looked down at him, bewilderment written all over her face, the boy swiftly picked up everything that had fallen and placed it back on the desk. Then he dusted off his knees and stood up.
He was small in stature and fine-boned, but held himself tall like an adult man. The boy stared intently at Cécile with a serious, inflexible expression, looking much like a young soldier.
His jet-black eyes drew her into their gaze. They were sparkling and moist, the same color as his hair.
Cécile scrambled back to her desk to review the documents she had laid out in advance. This boy had been sent abroad to study on the recommendation of his country, a certain nation in the Orient. His father was a soldier, and his two older brothers were already successfully employed in their respective careers. He was an honors student, the pride of his country, and had earned excellent grades at his military academy….
Cécile turned away from the dossier to the small boy standing before her. “…Kazuya Kujou, right?”
“Oui.” Perhaps still unused to the sounds of French, he stumbled for a moment, a frown forming between his brows. Then he steeled himself, and stood up even straighter. “I am Kazuya Kujou. Mademoiselle, I am pleased to make your acquaintance!”
“Do you eat dogs?”
Kazuya’s upbeat expression suddenly deflated sadly. “Non. We do not eat dogs.”
“Great. The classroom is this way, Kujou.”
Cécile picked up her textbooks and began to walk away, with Kazuya hurriedly following behind her. His black leather shoes made a firm clack each time they hit the floor of the hallway, startling her with their precisely-regulated pace, as if he were holding a one-man march.
While walking down the hallway with her textbooks and Kazuya’s dossier in hand, Cécile compared the attached photograph with the boy marching beside her. The picture featured a stern-looking father in military garb, two large-framed elder brothers, and a slight woman, who appeared to be his mother, standing directly in the middle of the frame. Kazuya himself was ducking shamefacedly in the corner. Next to him, a vaguely flirtatious-looking girl with lustrous black hair and moist cat-like eyes was hanging from Kazuya’s neck, pressing her cheek to his. This was presumably his older sister.
The more Cécile compared the solemn expression on the boy walking next to her to the face in the photograph, with his dismayed look as his sister clung to him, the funnier she found it, and she burst out laughing.
“What is it, mademoiselle?” Kazuya asked, sounding puzzled.
“Oh, nothing…. Good luck with your classes, Kujou.”
“Of course, mademoiselle,” he replied, nodding with a stiff expression on his face. “I came to study with the intention of upholding the dignity of my nation. I am compelled to excel in my schoolwork and return as a distinguished adult who can serve my country. My father and brothers have all made this very clear to me.”
“What about your maman and your big sister?”
As soon as he heard those words, Kazuya’s gaze dropped to the ground, and for an instant, his face looked like that of a child.
“Hmm?”
“My mother and sister … wept and pleaded with me not to go….” Kazuya looked as if he were about to cry. But he bit his lip and stood up ever straighter instead.
“I-is that right,” Cécile responded politely.
They reached the classroom.
Cécile opened the door, stood Kazuya in front of the classroom, and introduced the new foreign student to the rest of the pupils. The blond-haired and blue-eyed boys and girls seated in the classroom—the children of powerful families in Sauvure’s aristocracy—stared at their new classmate with uniformly chilly and aloof faces.
*****
Kazuya Kujou would end up encountering many difficulties in his day to day life.
Asians were a rare sight in Europe in the first place, and the sheltered students were extremely resistant to the idea of befriending one at school. Kazuya’s serious personality did him no favors, and he was unable to make close friends, only narrowly managing to be recognized by others for his excellent grades.
Kazuya’s French, halting at first, gradually improved until he had no problems dealing with either conversation or schoolwork. He stubbornly devoted every waking moment to his studies.
From time to time, Cécile would remind him, “Don’t push yourself so hard. It’s okay to relax and enjoy yourself sometimes, too.”
But Kazuya would merely respond with a “yes, ma’am.”
And so the seasons slowly turned.
*****
One morning, on her way to the main building after leaving the dormitory early, Cécile encountered Kazuya standing with ramrod straight posture in front of one of the flower gardens. “Good morning!” she greeted him.
Kazuya turned around, startled by the sound of her voice. He squinted his jet-black eyes against the bright morning sun and said, “Miss Cécile, good morning.”
“You’re up early. What have you been doing?”
Most of the other students were used to sleeping in until the very last minute before lessons started. When Cécile was a student, she was no exception. But she had a feeling that in Kujou’s case, waking up early in the morning and taking a walk was probably something very typical of him.
Kazuya abruptly pointed at something, his serious expression as rigid as ever.
“Hmm?” said Cécile.
He was pointing at a small golden flower blooming luminously in a corner of the garden.
“A flower?” Cécile asked.
Kazuya nodded in the affirmative.
“Do you like that flower?”
“Yes.”
“Ooh… You noticed it right away, even though it’s so small, and surrounded by a bunch of bigger flowers.”
“Yes.” Kazuya nodded. Then he suddenly looked embarrassed, and cast his eyes down. He softly murmured, “I’ll be off, then,” and turned away from Cécile, walking to the main building with brisk footsteps.
How strange… Is it so embarrassing to admire flowers…? Cécile thought bemusedly.
An autumn’s breeze, imbued with a cool dampness, lightly rustled through her hair as she stood in front of the garden.
*****
“Who was that?”
Around the end of the following week.
In the midst of delivering a shipment of new dresses and sweets to Victorique’s villa, Cécile paused. Victorique de Blois, who had said nothing for weeks on end, and resembled nothing more than a doll with an unchanging expression, had suddenly spoken.
“Huh?” Cécile blurted out, nonplussed.
Victorique snorted brusquely. “That yellowish fellow who came to the library today.”
“Yellowish fellow?!” Cécile thought to herself for a moment, a doubtful look on her face.
Victorique, on the other hand, apparently had no desire to explain herself further, and went back to silently smoking her pipe and flipping through her books at an impressive speed. She read through ten pages of a bulky tome of philosophy written in complex Latin in what seemed like an eye-blink.
Finally, with an air of impatience, Victorique raised her head slightly, and reluctantly added to her description. “His movements were rather stiff.”
“…Kujou?!” Cécile understood at last.
And then she remembered how that evening, she had asked Kazuya to find a book in St. Marguerite’s Library. Kazuya had gone through considerable pains to locate the book, wandering up and down the library’s maze of stairs over and over until finally finding it and bringing it back to Cécile. She thought he seemed to be a bit out of breath…
And at the same time, Victorique had been at the very top of that maze of stairs, in that lush conservatory, by herself as always, reading her books and smoking her pipe…
Cécile nodded. “That’s Kujou, one of the foreign students. He’s from a small country in the Far East, and he arrived last month to enroll as a student here.”
Victorique did not respond. She immersed herself once more in the quiet world of books, with the sound of turning pages and the smoke that drifted from her pipe its only other inhabitants.
i wonder what’s gotten into her. I never thought I’d ever see her express interest in anything other than books….
As she pondered this, Cécile left the villa.
*****
The autumn headed into another winter. The bleak sky was cold and dry, saturating the vast gardens of St. Marguerite’s School in a dreary grey. The plants had lost their green leaves, and now resembled nothing more than a forest of tangled branches, or perhaps the bones of a black skull. Bare rose bushes spread throughout the gardens like a baleful spider’s web.
Sometimes Cécile would find Kazuya lingering in front of the same flower garden where she saw him that day. While passing by on her way to the classrooms early in the morning, she would glance to the side and see Kazuya gazing at that desolate flower garden, with a soft, strangely tender look in his eyes. It was a look that he never showed to anyone, whether during lessons, or when she sent him on errands to the library.
A golden flower had quietly bloomed there until the end of autumn. But now it was hidden amongst thin, dry branches, intertwining like spider’s silk, left behind in a lonesome garden….
Kazuya would sometimes stand perfectly still, and simply gaze silently at the withered plants.
Kujou must be…
One morning, a thought arose in Cécile’s mind.
I have the feeling that he must be waiting for spring. He’s patiently waiting for that lovely shining flower to bloom again. Even though he always seems so stern, maybe he’s actually a romantic gentleman at heart….
The grey sky of a European winter shrouded the campus like a dark taffeta blanket….
*****
“How old is Kujou?”
Cécile rushed to the garden maze one morning to deliver breakfast to the villa, sneaking in a peek at Kazuya along the way. When Victorique’s husky voice reached her ears, she jumped and nearly spilled the silver tray carrying fruit, rye bread, and lingonberry jam.
“What was that?”
“…Never mind,” muttered Victorique grumpily, turning away from Cécile.
A white strand of smoke floated aimlessly from her pipe. The little girl, enveloped in black velvet and white silken frills, paged through her books and puffed on her pipe. From time to time, she would shake her thin neck as if waking from a dream, and stretch out a hand to pluck a morsel from her mountain of sweets. Then she would pop it in her glossy, cherry-red mouth and munch on it.
“…Eat too much candy and you won’t have room for breakfast.”
“….”
“And Kujou is the same age as you. Both of you are in the same class for now. Although, you won’t get to meet him if you don’t show up for lessons.”
“…Oh,” Victorique answered curtly, in the same quiet, husky voice that Cécile had grown accustomed to hearing. But she thought she heard a subtle twinge of something else in that voice, like a drop of rosewater that had spilled into a lake.
The smallest drop of sweet water had dripped into a huge, murky pool, and it awakened a disquiet in Cécile’s heart.
Cécile concentrated on Victorique’s aloof expression while she looked down at her books. She again had the distinct feeling that something she had never seen before had flickered across Victorique’s face for a split second. The sight of it made her feel uneasy. Cécile nervously adjusted her large glasses so that she could get a better look at her, but that aura of slight warmth that she was sure she had sensed had already passed from Victorique’s small face, as cold as porcelain, vanishing to some hidden place inside of her.
What was that just now…?
The afterimage nagged at Cécile, but Victorique merely ignored her and said no more. At last, Cécile picked up her tray of breakfast and left the villa.
A cold gust of wind blew past her, and she quickly fumbled to close the front of her brown overcoat. She made her way through the winding path of the garden maze until finally emerging from it after some time.
The sprawling campus on the outside of the garden maze felt even colder in the European winter, which was imbued with a foreboding sense of darkness. Cécile quickened her steps toward the dormitory. Somewhere out of sight, she heard the dry crackle of dead leaves.
*****
The weather gradually grew colder.
Kazuya Kujou, unused to the winters of Europe, caught the flu on one occasion. One day, he was so ill that he could not get out of bed, and so Cécile visited his room in the boys’ dormitory to deliver the assignments that he had missed.
The room was so precisely organized that it felt lonely just to look at it. Furnished with elegant oaken furniture for the use of the noble-born children, it contained a large writing desk, bookshelves, and elaborately-ornamented cabinets. Kazuya, his face flushed, was lying on the bed in the corner, his sleeping body held perfectly straight under the covers.
The redheaded housemother anxiously paced the hallway, fretting over the foreign child who had collapsed. When Cécile placed the palm of her hand on Kazuya’s hot forehead to check his temperature, Kazuya murmured something she didn’t understand, in what she assumed was his native language.
He must be calling out to someone, thought Cécile. She heard him say two syllables over and over again—ru, ri. While she contemplated this for a moment, Kazuya opened his unfocused eyes. They were deep black, the color of the night, and felt as if they consumed all that they gazed upon. At first, Kazuya stared at her in a daze. Then, when he realized that the person sitting beside him was his homeroom teacher, he bolted up in bed.
“Try to get some more sleep,” said Cécile, trying to soothe him.
Kazuya resisted for a moment, then obligingly laid back down. After this, he said bashfully, “I thought you were someone else. I apologize, Miss Cécile.”
“Who did you think it was?”
“I felt the presence of a female, so I thought it may have been my sister.” Kazuya burrowed under the covers, sounding profoundly embarrassed. He continued, his voice muffled by the blankets. “I thought you were Ruri. Because when I was in my country, we were always together. Miss Cécile, her name in my language carries the meaning of a precious stone. And even though she cried and begged so much for me not to go, I left her behind anyway. Now I worry about her.”
“I’m sure she must worry about you, too.”
“Yes, I’m sure,” murmured Kazuya. His head peeked out of the comforter.
Cécile called an old physician from the village to examine Kazuya. Even when the doctor gave him an injection with a large syringe, Kazuya’s face betrayed no fear, nor the slightest trace of pain. His expression stony, he gritted his teeth, keeping as silent and stoic as possible.
Right before Cécile escorted the doctor out, something occurred to her. “Kujou, you like shiny, pretty things, don’t you? Like the names of jewels, and…” A faraway look entered her eyes. “I remember how much you loved to look at that golden flower in the garden. It was so small, but lovely. When it’s springtime again, you’ll see it bloom. Right?”
Hearing no reply, she turned around to look at him. Then she saw that Kazuya’s face was fully flushed all the way to his ears, to an extent that could not be solely blamed on his fever. He squirmed silently, then finally said in a faint voice, “I really love the color gold.”
Why is that so embarrassing to him? wondered Cécile curiously.
Kazuya continued, “For a man to admit to such a frivolous thing, if my father and brothers found out, they would strip me naked, tie me up, and hang me out of the second-story window. And my brothers’ favorite magazine to read is something called ‘Monthly He-Men’. But as for me, I’m just…”
His voice trailed off forlornly.
“I’m just this plain, inconspicuous, dull man you see before you.”
“Th-that’s not true.”
“It’s okay. So whenever I see beautiful colors or flowers, it’s like I suddenly fall under a spell. I feel my heart being stolen away from me. Really, it only happens once in a while. But I keep it a secret from those around me.”
“….”
“Miss Cécile, I think the color gold is a truly lovely, marvelous color. There are no flowers of that color in my country. So when I saw that golden flower, I felt very touched by it. But it’s a secret… so please … don’t tell…”
In the middle of Kazuya’s feverish murmuring, the injection finally seemed to take effect. His black eyes closed, and his breathing fell into the soft rhythm of sleep. Cécile sighed in dismay at the sight of him lying down rigidly straight, even on his sickbed. Then she gently rearranged the disheveled comforter and lightly patted him on top of the covers, imagining to herself that this would be what his sister would do for him had she been there.
“A golden flower…!”
As Cécile left the dormitory and made her way through the darkened gardens outside, a single image rose in her mind. That girl, like a small golden rose. And those striking, silent eyes that stared straight at her, lost within the blossoming flower petals that took on the form of frills and lace….
Victorique de Blois…!
Cécile walked through the garden paths, thinking of the girl who could be called a living golden flower. The winter would not end for a while yet.
[9]
At last the dry, grey winter ran its course, and another spring came.
Victorique secluded herself in her villa as usual, only going out during the daytime to spend her days inside the conservatory of St. Marguerite’s Library. The rest of the students attended classes uneventfully.
Thanks to a ghost story told at St. Marguerite’s School of “the traveler who comes in spring who brings death to the school,” as well as his black-haired and black-eyed visage, Kazuya’s classmates had started calling him the Grim Reaper, which brought upon him no end of troubles.
And then, one day…
A murder suddenly occurred in the village. Cécile found out the same morning that Kazuya had been involved in it, and that he had been subsequently transported to the school infirmary, unconscious.
*****
“Inspector, wait! This is unjust!”
Cécile ran through the first story hallway of the U-shaped main building, shouting a bold rebuke at the peculiar-looking inspector. That morning, on the village road, a government employee had been murdered. Kazuya just happened to walk by at that moment, and became an eyewitness to the incident, or so Cécile thought. But this strange man, sporting a bizarre hairstyle, seemed to believe that Kazuya was the killer, and he had come to arrest him.
He was a young and handsome inspector, his gorgeous blond hair inexplicably swept forward and tapered into the shape of a drill. Two deputies in rabbit-skin hunting caps—and who were, strangely enough, holding hands—stood behind him at the ready. The three men made for a slightly incongruous sight.
The policemen disregarded Cécile’s fearless defense of Kazuya and dragged him into another room, whereupon they began to subject him to some form of questioning.
Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no! Cécile agitatedly paced back and forth down the hallway in a panic. She could think of no recourse for something as serious as a murder case, and was at a loss for how to rescue Kazuya.
But then she suddenly remembered the curious case of the ghost harp from several months ago.
No one could give an explanation for what seemed to be a supernatural phenomenon. Every night, the harp would play an ominous melody. But then a certain little girl, after merely hearing a description of the case, was able to solve the mystery in an instant, with pipe in mouth. Her existence sometimes seemed almost surreal, and yet, in that moment, she became someone tangible and true….
Cécile stood there for a minute, lost in thought.
Finally, she collected her wits, rushed to the staff room, and collected two batches of notes from today’s lessons. She scribbled a name on each of them, then ran back down the hallway.
She entered the room where Kazuya was being questioned, and handed the notes to him. “Here you go!” she said, forcing a smile to appear on her face, even though her legs were shaking in fear.
The inspector predictably flew into a rage. “Out of the way, woman! You’re obstructing the investigation!”
“If I could have a word with you, inspector.” Cécile hid her quivering hands behind her back, and compelled herself to take a stand against him. “If you intend to treat him as a criminal, then please obtain an arrest warrant first. Otherwise, this is simply an abuse of your police powers. As a representative of this school, I must strongly protest!”
*****
Kazuya followed her into the hallway, and politely thanked her. Once she saw him looking more like his usual self, Cécile thrust the stack of notes into his hands. “Don’t mention it. Make sure to take this. You’re going to the library.”
“Th-the … library?”
Cécile nodded. “Right.”
When she told him to take the notes to his classmate in the library, Kazuya’s face took on a slightly sulky expression. For someone as serious and studious as he was, the idea of a classmate holing up in the library and never attending lessons must have been appalling. Cécile pressed on, “Go to the very top of the library. That child loves high places.”
“Is that right….” Kazuya sounded a little disheartened in his reply. Then he said, in an unusually mean-spirited tone by his standards, “There’s a saying in my homeland, that smoke and a certain you-know-what like high places.”
The sight of his childish pout amused Cécile, and she couldn’t help but giggle. “Oh, Kujou, don’t say that.”
She gave Kazuya’s back a firm push, and added, “Actually, that child is a genius, you know….”
With notes in hand, and posture as straight as ever, Kazuya departed down the hallway, his leather shoes tapping out a loud, even rhythm upon the floor.
She smiled after him as he left.
After exiting the building, Kazuya walked in the direction of the solid, stone-grey tower hidden deep inside the sprawling campus. It was springtime, and in one of the gardens, the little flower that Kazuya had so loved was once again beginning to sprout a delicate golden bud. From time to time a warm gust of wind would blow past him, marking the return of a blithe and comfortable season.
Cécile watched Kazuya grow steadily more distant as he walked through the gardens, his head held up high. With the coming of spring, the bleak winter felt more and more like a distant memory.
He headed toward the secret conservatory at the very top of St. Marguerite’s Library.
*****
And then, a short time later…
“So, it wasn’t enough that you were late to class, but on top of that, decided to come play truant in the library? Of course, you may do as you wish, but at least go somewhere else so that you aren’t in my way.”
“Huh? … Might you be Victorique, by any chance?”
As if waiting for someone whom she had never met, the girl Victorique, who resembled a small porcelain doll, with her golden hair dangling from the top of the library like silken thread, met the boy who had at long last arrived from his faraway island country after crossing the seven seas. He would become her one and only vassal and friend.
His name was Kazuya Kujou.
The year was 1924.
In a corner of Europe, adjacent to the French, Swiss, and Italian borders, was the kingdom of Sauvure, a small country that nonetheless prided itself on its long history. Deep in the most secluded part of the country, nestled at the foot of the Alps, stood St. Marguerite’s School, a prestigious institution that may not have been quite as old as the kingdom itself, but still boasted of a long history of educating the children of the aristocracy.
And buried deep within the campus, at the top of the labyrinthine staircase in the huge grey library, was a marvelous place…
“If you are, then…”
Kazuya slowly took a step into the tranquil, almost dreamlike conservatory on the highest floor.
“I’m supposed to give these these notes to you….”
Victorique, puffing lazily on her pipe, snorted through her small, finely-shaped nose. “By the way, who the devil are you?”
Kazuya recoiled at the sound of her unexpectedly husky voice. And then, stiffening from the sight of her intensely beautiful, and yet queer appearance, he answered in a faltering voice. “I’m … Kujou.”
Victorique smiled slightly when she heard this. For just a moment, her expressionless face seemed to soften into something approaching mirth. But Kazuya did not notice this almost imperceptible change….
The warm spring breeze blew in through the opened skylights. A thin wisp of white smoke floated up to the ceiling from the ceramic pipe. The girl and boy gazed at each other, a short space between them, one sitting and one standing.
In that spring of 1924…
*****
And so the golden flower and the Grim Reaper at last found each other.
A chain of cases would then unfold, from the motorbike decapitation case, to the mystery of the newly-arrived transfer student Avril Bradley and the book on the thirteen step, as well as the cases of the mummified knight, the great thief Cuiaran, and the explorer’s secret heirloom, the Penny Black. Victorique de Blois and Kazuya Kujou would proceed to pursue the truth behind these, hand in hand.
But that is, once again, an entirely different story….
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