Volume 4 - CH 3.3

Back at St. Marguerite Academy’s clock tower…

“C-Cecile?”

Victorique watched as her teacher, screaming out of the blue, dashed out of the room and tumbled down the stairs.

“What’s the matter with you?”

There was no answer.

She heard a man’s surprised grunt from around the stairs.

As the teacher ran past, the man asked if there was something wrong, but she rolled down the stairs, and her scream faded into the distance.

Victorique was left alone in the clockwork room. Blinking repeatedly, she picked up Ms. Cecile’s glasses.

“You forgot your glasses,” she murmured.

As Victorique smoked her pipe, deep in thought, a figure entered through the open door.

Victorique turned around and saw a tall, beautiful man. He was wearing his hat low, and sported fiery-red hair. It was hard to determine his age and nationality. He exuded a somewhat exotic, wild aura.

The moment his green, upturned eyes fell on Victorique, she felt a chill. She slowly retreated a few steps.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“A traveler searching for something,” the man replied in a deep voice, and grinned. His smile, animalistic and ferocious, seemed to split his mouth open all the way to his ears.

“Searching for what?” Victorique backed away some more.

“Something in this academy.”

“There are no lost items here.”

“Oh, but there is.” The man smiled thinly. “A monstre charmant.”

His rumbling voice reverberated throughout the room. Beads of sweat formed on Victorique’s forehead, and her fingertips turned cold as a dead man’s. But her expression remained still.

“That red hair,” she mumbled. “I see. You were the one with Grevil earlier.”

“Yeah.” The man gave a small nod. “The oriental man who died here this morning was with me. His name was Wong Kai. Have you heard of him?”

“No.”

Suddenly the man, as if to get rid of the dreadful atmosphere, presented something to Victorique. It was a rolled-up poster. Victorique slowly reached out her hand, took it, and unfolded it.

It was a poster of an oriental man dressed in Western clothing, sporting a long mustache and donning a silk hat. Creepy images adorned it, including a skeleton floating in midair and a gentleman placing his own head on his lap.

The words said: The Illusion of the Century! Wong Kai’s Great Magic!

“Wong was a friend of mine,” the man continued. “He was an up-and-coming magician in Saubreme. He really liked the movie The Illusion of the Black Tower. He wanted to see if he could use the setting for his magic trick, so he snuck into the school’s clock tower. Unfortunately, something went wrong.”

The man chuckled. “His death is a huge loss. No point in suspecting me, by the way. Like I told the inspector, I was at the inn at the time he was killed. The innkeeper vouched for me. Unless I was at the inn and at the tower at the same time, I couldn’t have killed him.”

Victorique gave a low groan instead of an answer. She tried to return the poster, but the man shook his head.

“You can keep it.”

“Are you also a magician?” Victorique suddenly asked.

The man’s composed façade crumbled, and he looked at Victorique in surprise. “How did you know? Do you know me?”

“I don’t.”

“Then how?”

Victorique smiled in response, the smile of a cruel old man who had lived for decades. “Because I’m the monstre.”

The man swallowed.

“A red-haired magician,” Victorique said. “If you could be at two places at the same time, then you could have done it. It’s one of a magician’s tricks, after all. But I won’t go into that for now. I know that I’m the one you’re looking for. What are you so surprised about? Did you really think that I wouldn’t notice? It’s true that I can’t step out of this academy. But even without going outside, I can guess who you are simply by gathering the dark fragments of chaos floating in the air and reconstructing them.”

“There’s no way,” the man mumbled fearfully.

Victorique sneered. “I know your name, the name of the mysterious partner you’ve been with for the last ten years, and your purpose.”

“You monster!” the red-haired magician spat.

Slowly, Victorique moved, drawing closer to the man. Her face was as ruthless and expressionless as a doll. Her mechanical movement made her seem non-human.

One, two steps…

The clockwork turned and turned. A giant pendulum was swinging idly far above, generating a wind that blew on Victorique’s body-length, golden hair. Victorique approached the man. His face contorted as he retreated a little, but fear had paralyzed his body.

The lace at the hem of Victorique’s dress would soon reach the man’s shoes.

The door slammed open. Victorique and the red-haired man jumped and looked at the door.

There was a huge old man. Standing nearly two meters tall, his features marked him as old, but his body was as solid and muscular as that of a young man.

It was the carpenter. He looked at the two with surprise.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“And who are you?” the red-haired man asked back.

The old man’s face turned grim. “I’m the carpenter. Every building in this school is old. Something somewhere always gets damaged because of the elements. So I’m always doing repairs all-year round. We’re currently discussing with the school administration whether to renovate this clock tower or tear it down. You’re not allowed here without permission. This place is old and crumbling. You don’t want it suddenly collapsing on you.”

“I see,” the red-haired man mumbled with a frown. He then strode out of the workshop.

Victorique was about to leave as well, but suddenly stopped. The large old man eyed her suspiciously, then smiled. He looked like a different person now.

“You look just like my granddaughter,” he said. “She’s turning seven this year.”

“I’m fourteen years old,” Victorique huffed.

“Really? You’re awfully small for a fourteen-year-old,” the old man replied bluntly.

Victorique’s face turned crimson. She turned away and was about to leave the room, but then changed her mind and scuttled back to the old man.

“Can you look into something for me?” she asked.

The man chuckled. “A little girl talking like an adult. Oh, don’t give me that look. Anyway, it depends. What do you want me to do?”

“I need you to measure the clock tower.”

“…Measure the clock tower?” The man looked puzzled. “You mean this clockwork room?”

“No. The whole tower itself. Can you do that?”

“I suppose. It’s good to have a blueprint when doing repairs anyway.”

“On one condition.” Victorique said in a low voice. “You can measure the clock tower itself as much as you want, but do not touch anything in this room. What I want you to measure is outside this room.”

“Okay. But why?”

“Because it will anger the alchemist.”

“Really? I thought he was no longer around.”

“That is correct. But in a way, he still is.”

“I see. I don’t really get it, but all I have to do is stay away from this room. Got it, little girl.”

Regarding Victorique curiously, the old man nodded.

Victorique left the clock tower with Ms. Cecile’s glasses in her hand, but instead of returning to the lawn, she circled around the clock tower.

She walked behind the structure, where dead branches twisted like bones, staring at the ground.

There were large footprints under the window—shoe prints much larger than a normal human being’s. They must have belonged to someone huge, like the old carpenter.

Victorique studied the footprints for a while. “I see,” she mumbled, nodding to herself.

She lifted her head. Dead branches intertwined in sinister patterns. She glimpsed the bright, summer sky beyond.

In the distance, past the flowerbeds, she spotted the old gardener standing. He was a large, muscular man who had been working in the academy for more than twenty years. Victorique looked away.

A small white bird fluttered past.

Victorique breathed a faint sigh.

Meanwhile, in the village cemetery, located in a hollow on the outskirts of the village, an old man’s low and grim voice echoed.

Some ravens flew past, while some were perched on the crosses stuck in the dirt at an angle, cawing eerily.

It grew dim, and a chilly breeze whistled past.

“The poor Protestants, buried alive, died one by one under the earth. In the following century, there were countless sightings of the ghost of a young woman covered in mud. Oh, the horror!”

“That’s terrifying!” Avril breathed. She had climbed over the Protestants’ grave, her long legs dangling in the air.

Even the dorm mother had joined them, sitting down as she listened to the old man’s story.

Kazuya had reluctantly stayed, but he was growing impatient.

“I get it,” he said. “In short, Avril, you’re not a scaredy-cat. That’s why you like ghost stories. As proof, Ms. Cecile, the wimpiest person I know, takes off her glasses and runs away screaming once she hears someone telling a ghost story. But you…”

Avril gave Kazuya a perplexed look. Pointing to the square headstone on which her slender waist rested, Kazuya continued.

“You’re sitting boldly on that tombstone while listening to this story. What’s with the look? The Protestants who were buried alive, the very ones that this old man is talking about, are lying right under you. See, you’re not scared.”

Avril still had the same look on her face.

“Ms. Cecile would have fainted,” Kazuya added. He turned to the gravekeeper with a serious look and fixed his posture. “By the way, when were the Protestants massacred?”

“The fifteenth century. So five hundred years ago.” The old man smiled thinly.

A raven flew by. Clouds hung over the sun, turning the cemetery even darker.

“Back in those days, Christians were divided into Catholics and Protestants. Many Protestants were chased all the way to the countryside. Some of our ancestors sheltered them, but pursuers caught up with a family hiding in a house somewhere. They were buried alive here as an example. A horrible thing to do. So horrible,” he repeated.

“That’s why some of the larger houses around here still have hidden rooms that were built in those days,” he continued. “Sometimes children wander into them, causing a commotion. They’re mostly used for storage, but I suppose youngsters also use them as rendezvous spots.”

Avril blushed a little. The matron nodded in understanding.

“Such things happened all over Europe back then. Terrible, to be sure, but it’s all in the past. There were frequent sightings of the muddy young woman in the next century after that, but nowadays no one sees her anymore.”

Noticing Avril’s disappointed look, the old man laughed. “Nothing we can do. It was a long, long time ago. During the time of my great, great, great grandfather. Even ghosts can’t linger around that long.”

The wind blew. The clouds drifted away, revealing the sun. Its blinding light shone on the damp cemetery.

“I’m sure ghosts grow tired too,” the gravekeeper said. “They can’t keep holding grudges forever.”