Chapter 6: Crackdown

“What? Hold on!”

“I can do the rest myself! I’ll get Dr. Mordred to heal me when he wakes up, so don’t worry!” he bit out before flying from the office.

As she watched him go, Cecilia felt utterly out of her depth. “What do I do now…?”

Oscar likes Cecil?

As everything that had just happened flashed back through her mind, her emotions morphed into embarrassment.

“He likes boys?”

No one was around to refute her.

Three days after Cecilia had developed that misunderstanding of epic proportions, she found herself in Emily’s hospital room with Dante. Mordred was there with them, fidgeting. He kept looking over at Dante with a worried furrow between his brows.

Casting a sidelong glance at Mordred, Dante held a hand over Emily’s eyes. A gust of wind strong enough to flutter the curtains burst up.

“Whoa!”

A faint light enveloped Emily and converged around her heart. The gale died down simultaneously.

“There. It’s done.”

“Will this really work?” Mordred asked, glancing from Emily to Dante and back.

Cool as always, Dante merely shrugged. “Maybe?”

“Maybe?”

“I’ve never used my powers this way before. Why don’t you just ask her whether it worked or not?” he suggested, looking back over at Emily. So did Mordred and Cecilia. “Time for you to wake up, little sleeping beauty.”

As soon as Dante said that, Emily’s eyelids stirred. Slowly, they opened to reveal irises the same color as her brother’s.

“Emily?”

“Mordred…?” she asked hoarsely. Mordred clapped a hand over his mouth and began to cry.

Dante and Cecilia walked back from the hospital together.

According to Emily’s physician, she would need some physical therapy to regain the use of her atrophied muscles, but as long as she completed that without issue, she could be discharged at any time. They would examine her tomorrow to make sure nothing was wrong with her brain or body.

“I never thought that would be a way to wake her up,” Cecilia murmured, recalling the miracle she’d just witnessed.

Flashing her the same carefree smile as ever, Dante flicked the bracelet around on his wrist. “My Artifact isn’t just for putting creatures to sleep. It allows me to control sleep itself. I mean, I can only use it to wake people up in this specific situation, but when I heard what happened to her, I had a feeling it would work.”

Apparently, this was what he’d been referring to three days ago when he’d said Emily’s situation reminded him of something.

Come to think of it, Dante was the only one who wasn’t there when we first visited her…

If he’d been there with them that day, they might have been able to rouse her sooner.

But I guess it turned out fine in the end, since it was better that we got Bernard behind bars anyway.

The gendarmerie had taken Bernard into custody and transferred him to a prison cell. No one could say what his sentence would be like, but it would be almost impossible for him to inherit his family title after this.

He wasn’t an only child, so he could very well be kicked out of House Broussais. If it did happen, however, he would at least be freed from the fetters locking him to House Coulson. That would probably be a good thing for him in the long run.

Of course, that was easy for Cecilia to say.

There we go—that’s one case closed!

She felt truly happy for the first time in a while. She’d been working herself into knots worrying about everything lately, only for all of it to resolve just like that. That naturally did wonders for her mood.

Cecilia also hadn’t told Mordred about the Killer.

Even though he’d hurt Lean the most, Lean had said, “Why bother? I’m not going to end up in that situation again, so I don’t care!”

Ultimately, they decided that all those who knew the secret of the Killer’s identity would keep it to themselves.

That aside, though, I feel like I’m forgetting something…

Cecilia gazed up at the sky as she walked alongside Dante.

The Killer stuff’s pretty much settled, and we woke up Emily. Wait, why was I trying to get her out of that coma in the first place again?

“Oh!”

She stopped in her tracks, a look of realization on her face. Dante turned back and noticed. “Cecil?”

“Sorry, Dante! Go ahead without me!” she cried.

“Huh?”

She whirled back around and took off, leaving him in the dust as she made a beeline for Grace’s research lab.

“So…that’s why I need you to become the Holy Maiden! Please!” Cecilia begged, head bowed low.

“Absolutely not,” Grace responded flatly. Her rejection came so fast that Cecilia stumbled forward.

“But why?”

“I’m busy recording Mordred’s voice. Plus, it sounds like House Sylvie is going to grant me some funding, so I need to work on enhancing the phonograph, too.”

“Awww, come on! Think about it! You’ll get to be with Dr. Mordred as much as you want if you’re Holy Maiden!”

Although you’d have to be in a relationship with him, was what she narrowly managed not to let slip. No benefit would come of bringing up that barrier now. And besides, she had a feeling that things were developing nicely between the two of them all on their own, unexpectedly enough. When Mordred looked at Grace, his eyes softened even more than they did when he looked at his sister. The same was true for her.

But she shook her head. “I’m only interested in who voices him. I have no interest in the man himself.”

“What?!”

“Well, I won’t lie and say I’m not attracted to him. But in the end, he’s only a vessel for his vocal cords.”

“That’s a terrible way of describing him!” Cecilia cried in disbelief. Grace and Mordred cared for each other so much, yet this was how she saw him?

Maybe she’s too dense to realize her own feelings?! Could that be it?

She shuddered, utterly blind to how this was the pot calling the kettle black.

“So anyway, you’ll have to abandon that idea, Cecilia,” piped up a familiar voice from the back of the room. Cecilia looked over Grace’s shoulder to find Lean waving at her. When she entered the lab, she’d immediately bowed low in front of Grace, so she hadn’t noticed Lean was there at all.

“What? Why are you here, Lean?”

“Oh, I just had something to discuss with Grace,” she replied.

Cecilia had told Lean that Grace had also transmigrated into the world. She’d planned to get the three of them together at some point, but evidently there had been no need to insert herself into things after all.

A smile on her lips, Lean pointed at Cecilia. “You should just be the Holy Maiden already!”

“Exactly. That’s the simplest way,” Grace agreed.

“Please don’t be ridiculous! If I do, I’ll die! You know that, don’t you?” Cecilia wailed.

Both women exchanged glances. Lean said, “Well, yeah, we do. Right?”

“But you’ll probably manage to work something out, won’t you? I don’t know what, though,” added Grace.

Though they seemed like total opposites on the outside, they were quite similar at their cores. Cecilia was at her wit’s end. “Both of you are acting like it has nothing to do with you!”

“Well, that’s because it doesn’t,” Grace responded reasonably.

“So true.”

“You’re both very, very involved in this, though!” Cecilia cried. Her lamentation rang out loudly enough to be audible even outside the research laboratory.