Elliot Nightray

ONE WEEKEND.

It was after school, and soft sunlight streamed into the library.

Lutwidge Academy set great store by tradition and formality, and none of its students were the type who made noise in libraries. There were many students in the hall, with its rows of stacks, but the only sounds were hushed conversations and soft footfalls, and nothing disturbed the tranquil atmosphere.

Boys wore white swallowtail coats, navy blue vests, and white trousers, while girls wore white blazers and skirts.

The sun-warmed library was filled with the distinctive scent of books.

“You’re borrowing that one again. You really like it, don’t you?”

A boy with one tuft of hair that flipped straight up, right in front, pulled a book from one of the shelves, earning that remark from the shaggy-haired classmate who stood next to him.

The boy drew his eyebrows together slightly, directing a sharp glance at his neighbor.

“…What’s wrong with that? Good stuff is good no matter how many times you read it.”

“The title’s fairly hackneyed. Holy Knight.”

“Classic. Call it classic.”

As the boy argued back, he tucked the book he’d taken under his elbow.

He had no way to see his classmate’s face, hidden as it was by his long, untrimmed hair and glasses. However, after spending two years with him, the boy knew his expressions like the back of his own hand. …He knew he’d be feigning ignorance, straight-faced.

“Don’t be mad. I was just stating my opinion, Elliot. I’m not criticizing your tastes.”

At his classmate’s nonchalant answer, the boy—Elliot—clicked his tongue irritably.

Elliot Nightray, aged sixteen.

He was a son of the House of Nightray, one of the four great dukedoms that held tremendous power in this country, and, at present, he was a fourth-year student at Lutwidge Academy.

He was high-minded, severe, and outspoken.

He had strong-willed eyebrows, sharp eyes, and platinum blonde hair that took on a blue tint when the light hit it just right. All these things combined to make this boy, in his Lutwidge Academy uniform, seem somehow difficult to approach.

Some considered the teardrop mole at the outside corner of his left eye to be one of his charms, but it didn’t do much to soften his sharp appearance.

“Listen up, Leo. See, the Holy Knight series is…”

Elliot began to speak, his voice filled with enthusiasm.

However, his classmate—Leo—briskly put out a hand and cut him off, saying, “I don’t need to hear that again, thanks.”

Leo was also sixteen.

He was from the House of Fianna, a home for orphans operated by the Nightrays.

Two years before, Elliot, who’d been having trouble choosing a valet, had encountered him in the House of Fianna’s bookroom. Immediately thereafter, they’d quarreled at the top of their lungs… Following that worst of all possible first meetings, after several twists and turns and over the objections of those around him, Elliot had chosen Leo to be his valet.

Leo might have been a valet, but he treated Elliot like an equal and did just as he pleased. He never gave a thought to his master’s convenience. He looked calm and collected, but in Elliot’s words, he was actually “touchy and quarrelsome,” and it wasn’t at all uncommon for him to pepper his master with sharp words.

The phrase that best described Leo would have been “incurable bookworm.”

Actually, even “incurable” might have been an understatement.

Leo picked up the sentence he’d made Elliot drop:

“The Holy Knight series is an ode to heroism that sets up an ideal for nobles, knights, and other chosen ones by following the footsteps of the protagonist, Edwin, and is a textbook for ‘how men should live,’ et cetera. You’ve told me a million times, and anyway, I’ve read through it myself, so I know.”

On hearing this, said indifferently and all at once, Elliot looked a bit daunted.

He snorted crossly, then sent a mild glare at the five thick books Leo was hugging to his chest.

“So, what are you borrowing? Five of ’em at once…”

“Oh, these?”

As Leo explained, a cheerful buoyancy shone through his unaffected words.

“This one’s a mystery novel, Festival of the Double Helix. People say the author’s style is old-fashioned, but his descriptions have real depth, and I like that. This is a classic about logic, this is a biology text about the ecology of reptiles, and then there’s a dictionary of names, and—”

“Hold it. I already know you read crazy stuff that’s all over the map, but what’s the point of reading a dictionary of names? It’s just…names.”

Elliot cut in, looking dumbfounded. Leo smiled.

“It’s interesting. When I’m reading, I think about the names and imagine what sort of lives the people lived. This will keep me entertained for a week.”

“……Book nut.”

Leo seemed mystified by Elliot’s mutter. “What’s odd about that?”

Everything, Elliot thought, but he grimaced and said, “Knock yourself out.” The two moved away from the stacks. Leo already had a book open and was starting to read. “Control yourself until we get back to our room,” Elliot warned him.

The two of them went to the information corner and completed the check-out procedures. Elliot finished first, and while Leo was checking out his five books, he stood a little ways away, looking cross.

“………”

Abruptly, Elliot turned back and took a long look at the shelf that held the Holy Knight series.

The volume he’d taken had left a gap like a missing tooth.

“What’s the matter, Elliot?”

Leo spoke to him; he’d finished the procedures. Elliot shook his head, absently.

“Nothing. Let’s go.”

He and Leo left the library.

The corridor was filled with students spending their afterschool hours as they pleased. Unlike in the library, loud, cheerful, lively voices joined in animated conversations here and there. Several students sneaked surreptitious glances at Elliot. Evading them coldly, Elliot began to walk.

Just then, from beside him, Leo murmured, “Oh, that’s right.”

When Elliot glanced at him, Leo was awkwardly balancing his stack of five books, with one hand in the back pocket of his coat. Then:

“Here, this is for you.”

Carelessly, Leo held the object he’d extracted out to Elliot.

It was a deep blue leather bookmark, with a design stamped on it in gold foil.

“………What’s this?”

Elliot took the bookmark, looked at it, then realized the design was linked to Holy Knight. It showed the silhouettes of Edwin, the protagonist, and his valet, Edgar. For a moment, Elliot looked pleased, but he soon grew dubious.

“I bought it yesterday. …Since you’re the type who takes time to read a book.”

“Was today something special? It’s not my birthday.”

“No, it’s nothing like that. I just wanted you to have it.”

Leo smiled cheerfully. In contrast, Elliot’s expression clouded rapidly.

“…What are you plotting? Getting presents from you is creepy.”

“Elliooot! If you can’t accept kindness from others gracefully, you won’t grow into a decent adult.”

“Everything you do every day is making me like this!”

As he retorted, Elliot’s brow was furrowed. He glanced at the bookmark in his hand.

For a while, he gazed at it as if it was something suspect and dangerous, but finally he shoved it into the back pocket of his coat. Walking in front of Leo, Elliot started down the sunny corridor. He didn’t look back. With a little snort, he said:

“…Well, I guess there’s no help for it. I’ll take it for you.”

Lutwidge Academy, Elliot and Leo’s school, was considered to be the most prestigious of all prestigious schools.

The sons and daughters of the nobility, the nation’s elite, spent six years here, from ages thirteen to eighteen, being trained to become the future leaders of society and those destined to support those leaders.

Lutwidge Academy was a boarding school, and during their six years of attendance, male and female students lived in their own dormitories.

In the dorms, students were placed in rooms of six from the first year to the third year, in order to learn the manners and attitudes required for group living. Students in the higher forms lived in rooms of two. The only ones to receive private rooms, even among the upper forms, were a handful of students known as “prefects.”

“…Tch.”

They’d left the school building and were walking toward the boys’ dorm when Elliot clicked his tongue softly and stopped in his tracks.

Leo, who’d been walking beside him, stopped as well.

The brick path that led to the boys’ dorm wound through a sparse grove of maple trees. About halfway down that path, right where it entered the grove, was a group of male students: four or five boys surrounding one smaller boy.

They were standing in a ring, throwing a little bottle to each other as if playing catch, while the boy in the center of the circle chased after it.

This wasn’t a fun, friendly game. The smaller student looked as if he might cry at any moment, and the boys who surrounded him wore sadistic smirks.

Elliot knew all of them.

“A~ah, they’ve got him again, don’t they.”

Leo’s voice was calm. He’d followed Elliot’s gaze and seen the students.

“…Stupid…”

Elliot spit out the word in a low voice, then took Holy Knight from under his arm and held it out to Leo. Leo accepted it with a practiced motion and a “Yes, yes.”

Elliot stepped into the grove. He walked toward the students, crushing fallen leaves underfoot.

Even as the two of them approached, neither the smaller student nor the ring of students who were teasing him noticed.

The student who had the little bottle tried to throw it to his friend, but his aim was off, and it went toward Elliot instead. It flew in a high arc, and Elliot caught it. The texture of hard glass. The swaying, splashing black liquid inside it.

It was a bottle of ink.

Elliot had caught it one-handed, and as he rolled it around on his palm, a low murmur rose from the boys. Their voices were startled and bewildered, and every eye was focused on Elliot. Some said his name, while others said the name of the House of Nightray.

Although Nightray was one of the four great dukedoms, the nation’s heroes, the family was suspected of betrayal during the Tragedy of Sablier a century before, and even now, dark rumors clung to its name. This was the family to which Elliot belonged.

The students and teachers around him held awe and envy for the dukedoms…but at the same time, there was a feeling of distance with regard to the House of Nightray that was unlike anything directed at the other families. This was the sort of atmosphere that surrounded Elliot at school. Many people looked at him, but very few approached him.

Of course, Elliot would never have chosen to keep his head down and live quietly for fear of false rumors and backbiting. As a result, many of the school’s students saw Elliot as “aloof” and difficult to approach.

“You guys…are an eyesore.”

Elliot’s declaration was ruthless. Possibly they were overawed by his imposing attitude: As he strode into the ring of students, the circle broke.

Elliot walked right up to the smaller student, who’d slumped to the ground in the center of the circle.

He sent one piercing glare at the students who surrounded them. —Then, from near his feet, a faint voice said, “E-Elliot-kun…”

Elliot lowered his glowering eyes. A timid face was looking up at him.

Like Elliot, the boy was a fourth-year student, and they lived in the same dorm. His name was Marcel. His build was so delicate that he seemed better suited to the girls’ uniform than the boys’, and as a result, he was often teased.

“Here.

“It’s yours, right?” Elliot said, and he tossed the little bottle at him. Marcel caught it with both hands.

“Uh, uh-huh. —Oh, no, I, um…”

At that noncommittal response, Elliot instantly began to radiate prickly irritation. Marcel shuddered and gave a small “Eek!” Just then, Leo—who’d followed Elliot and was standing behind him—put in an astute word for Marcel.

“I think that’s probably Gerald’s.”

“Ahn?” Elliot turned to look back at Leo, prickly aura and all.

“Marcel is Gerald’s assistant, you know.”

“Hm? Oh. Right. —So, what, you’re on an errand?”

As he spoke, he turned back to Marcel. The boy was nodding vigorously.

Gerald was one of the handful of prefects for Elliot’s dorm. The many students who lived in the dorms were split into several groups, with one prefect placed in charge of each group and expected to give everyday guidance. Gerald was the prefect in charge of the group Elliot and Leo belonged to. However, possibly because he felt daunted by the four great dukedoms, he didn’t want much to do with Elliot, and they hardly ever saw each other. Elliot thought things were more comfortable that way, too.

Prefects were given the right to choose one student from a lower grade as an assistant to handle personal tasks for them.

Gerald had chosen Marcel.

“Um, Gerald-san told me to go buy some ink for him, because he was out…”

“He did, huh?”

Elliot waved one hand, uninterested, as if to say, That doesn’t really matter.

“…Never mind that.”

Sheathed in cold anger, once again, he glared at the students around him.

Every face belonged to a student who lived in Elliot’s dorm, from first-years to third-years. He’d interrupted the younger students’ hard-earned fun, and they couldn’t quite keep their displeasure out of their expressions, but no one said anything aloud.

They were edging back, sure from the glitter in Elliot’s eyes that they were about to be lectured.

However—

“You little—!! You’re an upperclassman! Don’t let junior students push you around!!”

Looking down at Marcel, Elliot roared at him furiously.

“Fweh?!”

“Don’t give me ‘fweh’! When your family sent you here, they entrusted you with their honor! That means you don’t let younger guys— No, it doesn’t matter who they are! Don’t disgrace yourself like that in front of anybody! You’re a nobleman! Have some pride! Walk tall! Work on your swordsmanship! Take your scrawny—”

“Elliot. Elliot.”

From behind Elliot, Leo tugged at his sleeve.

“What?!” Elliot answered, still roaring.

“Quiet down,” Leo said, covering his ears.

“You’re scolding the wrong guy. I’m not saying Marcel isn’t to blame for any of it, but…”

“Who cares?! I—This guy’s—”

“And besides, you’re attracting lots and lots of attention. You don’t mind?”

“……Huh?”

Elliot looked around. Several students stood on the path that linked the school buildings with the dorms. It was a rather sizable crowd.

Most of them were probably students who’d just happened to be passing by when they stopped. They kept their distance, and although the looks directed his way were nervous, they were all intensely interested. Elliot stood out even when he wasn’t doing anything, and now he was the solid center of attention.

“……Rrgh…”

Elliot’s temperature came back down all at once.

“It’s a shame to waste the audience. Why don’t you wave?”

“Like hell!”

Elliot turned away from the easygoing Leo, fixing his rumpled uniform. With a brusque “Let’s go” for Leo, he left the scene. The students who’d formed the circle, realizing they were being left behind and assuming they’d escaped without a rebuke, breathed sighs of relief.

Just then:

“You, too!”

Elliot stopped, turning around.

“If you call yourselves noblemen, don’t use dirty tricks like this. Settle things fair and square, man-to-man.

“Have you no shame?!” he said, his voice low and harsh.

Although he wasn’t yelling, his tone cut them down ruthlessly with the blade of his integrity.

When he finished speaking, Elliot flared his coattails wrothfully and stalked off with Leo.

Until they were out of sight, not one student managed to move.

Then.

Finally. Marcel, who’d collapsed with the ink bottle cradled in his hands, gave a sigh.

He was looking in the direction where Elliot had disappeared, and his expression held deep gratitude at having been rescued.

…That wasn’t all.

“Elliot-kun is sooooooooo cool…”

He sighed ardently as he spoke. Then, with a muttered “Oh!,” Marcel happily took a notebook from his breast pocket. He opened it and began to write something. The cover of the notebook held the words: Elliot-kun—Record of Exploits.

“—And Gerald, too. He could at least buy his own ink—”

They were walking down the path to the boys’ dorm.

Abruptly, as Elliot muttered to himself, Leo said, “It was him.” Elliot looked perplexed. “What was him?”

Leo spoke as if it was nothing important:

“The one who egged on those younger students.”

“……Huh?”

“He ordered Marcel to go buy the ink, and then he ordered the underclassmen to keep him from doing it.”

“How do you know that?”

In answer to Elliot’s question, Leo said, “Coincidence.”

Blue Rose Club

THAT SAME DAY, A MOMENT BEFORE EVENING.

In the center of the Lutwidge Academy campus was a quadrangle carpeted with lush green grass, and in the quadrangle were many girls and boys who’d been released from their strict classes.

Some students spent the time until dinner reading on the benches. Others chatted with their friends. Still others cut through the quadrangle on their way to club or volunteer activities.

In a corner of the quadrangle, on a terrace made of white brick, several female students were demurely enjoying their afternoon tea.

All the seats at the three-legged tables were occupied by girls.

“—All right. Let us begin for today.”

The statement came from a graceful young lady who had been sitting at a table, quietly sipping from her teacup.

The girls who sat around the table with her, and the girls who sat at other tables, all smiled and nodded: “Yes, let’s.” The scene was exquisitely elegant and delicate. The terrace overflowed with refinement.

“Now then. Who will make the first report?”

Prompted by the girl who’d opened the meeting, one of the students seated at the next table over raised her hand: “Josephine-sama. May I…?” At that, Josephine, the girl responsible for the gathering, nodded gently. “If you would.”

Having received permission, even as she exuded impatience to begin immediately, the girl took the time to calmly, slowly raise her teacup to her lips. Not a single student complained about this pretentious behavior. All that happened was that the atmosphere of expectation grew stronger.

The girl returned her teacup to the table, drew a breath, and spoke.

“Today, I chanced to witness ‘Master Blue Rose’ sneezing.”

Immediately…

A collective cry of “Oh, my!” rose from the tables. On hearing that report, all the girls around the tables began talking at once. Although perfectly proper and chaste, their voices held delight and enthusiasm.

“But how rare!”

“Yes, it is quite rare.”

“Is it rarer than when his stomach was heard to growl the other day, I wonder?”

“I think it’s a close thing. For myself, I really couldn’t say which is superior.”

“Wait, my dears. The important bit is what came after.”

“Of course, as you say.”

“Yes, the highlight of the stomach growl was when Master Blue Rose blushed.”

“That raised the score significantly.”

“Our spirited Master Blue Rose, and his cheeks were as red as apples…”

“Ah, how I would have loved to be there.”

“Truly.”

“Truly.”

“Truly.”

“—And?”

Josephine, who’d been watching the discussion that seemed set to go on forever, gravely questioned the girl who’d reported the sneeze.

“How was it? What did Master Blue Rose do following the sneeze?”

The girl nodded. The other girls turned their attention to the continuation of the report; no one interrupted.

For a brief moment, silence reigned on the terrace. Then:

“‘The other’ was beside him, and came very near to wiping his nose with a kerchief…”

“Yes?” The girls leaned in.

“…And he swung his fist and warded him off!”

Once again, cries of “Oh, my!” rang out. They were much louder than before.

The girls’ delighted discussion sprang to life again. True, the score for a blushing, embarrassed Master Blue Rose was quite high. However, everyone assembled here agreed that, aesthetically, his virtues were his spirit and his pride.

“Then it’s unanimous. No doubt this report will shine brilliantly in the annals of the Blue Rose Club.”

At Josephine’s words, statements of “No objection” and elegant applause rose from every table.

THE BLUE ROSE CLUB.

This was what the group of girls who met on the terrace in the afternoons to discuss the individual known as “Master Blue Rose” called themselves.

Very few people at Lutwidge Academy knew of the group’s existence. This was due in large part to the fact that its activities were secret, and not conducted publically. At present, most of the participants gathered here were from the upper forms, girls from the fifth and sixth years.

Their formal name was The Society of Young Ladies who Admire Master Blue Rose.

Who was this Master Blue Rose, and who was “the other” who had appeared in the report?

Well…

“Elliot? What’s the matter? You hunched up all of a sudden.”

A room in the boys’ dorm.

Leo spoke to Elliot, who was sprawled on the bed reading Holy Knight.

Leo was sitting on the floor, leaning against the edge of the bed. His hands held the biology text he’d just checked out. As they’d been reading, Elliot had suddenly flinched, quite violently, and hunched his shoulders.

Elliot sat up, leaving the book open, and shook his head, answering awkwardly. “…Dunno.”

Leo didn’t seem terribly interested.

“You do things like that sometimes, you know.”

“Nah, I just got this abrupt chill… Made me shiver.”

“Ah-ha-ha. Weirdo.”

“Shut up.”

“Make sure you don’t catch cold. I don’t want to have to take care of you.”

“Hey. Valets don’t say stuff like that.”

“Well, I’d wrap a leek around your neck, at least.”

When Leo mentioned this “time-honored folk remedy” which he’d read about in a book, Elliot grimaced. “……A leek?” “Mm-hmm,” Leo muttered briefly, and that ended their discussion of the chill.

Leo’s eyes returned to the book in his hand, and he immersed himself in reading again—

…Or he seemed to.

“Someone could be talking about you. You are pretty famous.”

He spoke without lifting his eyes from the book.

Elliot snorted. He glanced at the room’s window.

“…Stupid,” he muttered irritably.

“I saw Master Blue Rose act as arbitrator in a bullying incident.”

The report that followed the sneeze dealt with the recent incident in the maple grove.

However, the report drew several comments—“I saw that as well,” “So did I”—and the girl who had made it looked slightly disappointed.

Still:

“Risking himself to protect the weak is a fine example of Master Blue Rose behavior.”

At Josephine’s praise, the girl who’d made the report broke into a happy smile.

At the words “fine example,” the other girls nodded in agreement: That’s true. Then the cheerful, lively discussion started up again.

A short while later, as if she’d been waiting for the gathering’s enthusiasm to die down somewhat, Josephine spoke.

“Now then, my dears. I have another splendid piece of news for you today.”

Those words made her the focus of the girls’ attention. They were unable to hide their building expectations: “Splendid news”? …Could it be…? Josephine, her face composed, lifted her teacup to her lips and quietly drained its contents.

Returning the teacup to the table in a picture-perfect gesture, she slipped her index and middle fingers into the breast pocket of her white blazer.

Slowly, she drew them out. Pinched between her fingertips was a folded scrap of paper.

“We received a letter from Gardener ‘M’ today.”

At Josephine’s words, a dainty commotion filled the terrace. These letters were the most precious and important element of the Blue Rose Club’s activities.

The identity of the sender, Gardener “M,” was unknown. The letters always warned them not to pry.

However, the important thing wasn’t Gardener “M”’s identity. The letters that were sent regularly to the Blue Rose Club held detailed, pitch-perfect descriptions of a Master Blue Rose the girls could never know, including his life in the boys’ dorm, which they were forbidden to enter.

Finding herself the focus of all those expectant stares, Josephine opened the scrap of paper, taking her time and acting particularly self-important. It was a single sheet of stationery.

“I shall read it aloud. ‘This morning, in the cafeteria, some vegetables he didn’t like showed up at breakfast. When he tried to leave them, his valet admonished him. As he stuffed his face, annoyed, he looked like a lordly squirrel’—”

At every anecdote that was read to them, the Blue Rose Club members raised their voices in admiration and praise.

When she’d read the letter through, taking plenty of time, Josephine told them, “That is all.”

After they’d listened the whole way through, “Satisfaction!” was written on every girl’s face. The older girls’ skin even seemed a bit brighter and smoother.

Josephine wound up the affair by saying that the day’s meeting had been another good, fruitful one, and then:

“I think it’s time we dispersed for today.”

She adjourned the meeting. …However, almost immediately, she seemed to remember something. Her eyes turned in a certain direction.

“Matilda. You stay here, please.”

At the other end of Josephine’s gaze, the girl called Matilda nodded wordlessly.

Unusually for a member of the group, Matilda had remained silent throughout the reports on Master Blue Rose and the ensuing discussion. As a rule, she spoke only a few words, and she had so little presence that she seemed a bit ghostlike, but she was a legitimate member of the Blue Rose Club.

The other girls exchanged cheerful good-byes and went their separate ways. As evening approached, only the two of them remained on the terrace. Under a sky that had begun to turn vermilion, Josephine smiled and walked over to Matilda, calling her name in confidential tones. “Matilda.”

“……Yes, Josephine-sama.”

“How is Project Coronation progressing?”

“Smoothly. The day of Master Blue Rose’s coronation is drawing near.”

“—I see.”

Smiling in satisfaction at Matilda’s words, Josephine patted her head.

“That’s marvelous.”

Ada Vessalius

THE FIRST MORNING OF THE WEEK.

As she sat up in bed in her dim room, the girl yawned.

“Fua……”

The sky she glimpsed through the gap in the curtains was cloudy. It looked as if it might rain at any minute.

The girl’s name was Ada Vessalius. She was eighteen.

A daughter of the House of Vessalius, one of the four great dukedoms, she was currently in her sixth year at Lutwidge Academy, a student in the highest grade. At school, she belonged to the disciplinary committee.

This was one of the secondary Vessalius residences, and it was located quite close to the school. On the weekends, Ada returned to this mansion, then went to school from there.

She had the same blond hair as her brother and features that, although they’d grown to match her age, still held something childlike. Even though she’d been born into a family that was in a position of supreme authority as one of the four great dukedoms, she was pleasant and kind to others and had a generous personality, and sometimes her friends said she was too open and trusting.

Today, Ada had awakened thirty minutes earlier than usual. For that reason, perhaps, she was still a bit sleepy.

Still: Today was an important day. She mustn’t sleep in.

“Good morning, Snowdrop and Kitty.”

She greeted her two pet cats, who were on top of the comforter, watching her. The cats responded with simultaneous mews.

When Ada stirred restlessly, they leapt lightly down from the bed to the floor.

Ada pushed the comforter back and climbed out of bed, too. She stretched luxuriously. Then, with impeccable timing, there was a knock at the door. Yesterday, she’d told a servant at what time she’d be waking up this morning, and that servant called to her through the door: “My lady, your breakfast is ready.”

“Coming,” said Ada. She put on a dressing gown over her nightclothes and started for the door.

After a light breakfast in the dining room, Ada changed into her uniform and left the mansion. The two cats followed her. At the front door, Ada turned to the cats, crouching down as they tried to come out.

Holding up an index finger, she lectured them, speaking slowly and clearly.

“No, Snowdrop. No, Kitty. I can’t take you to school with me.”

The cats mewed, as if asking “Why?”

“Discipline Reinforcement Week starts today. I’m on the disciplinary committee. If I take you with me, I’ll be setting a bad example.

“Understand?” she asked them, making doubly sure.

It was Discipline Reinforcement Week, and this was the all-important first day. That was why she’d gotten up early.

It wasn’t clear whether or not the cats had understood what Ada told them. They just mewed.

“You two be good. Mind the house for me. All right, I’ll be back.”

On that note, Ada closed the front door and set off briskly.

She walked down the flagstone avenue in front of the mansion. When she’d gone a short ways, she turned, just once, peeking back at the mansion. The door was closed. Were the cats on the other side, mewing with loneliness? She resolved to play with them for a good long time when she came home again.

“Okay. I’ve got to hurry.”

Murmuring to herself, Ada returned her gaze to the end of the avenue.

It would be terrible if she were to be late during Discipline Reinforcement Week. As a member of the disciplinary committee, she had to model the rules of Lutwidge Academy for the other students. To that end, she thought, she had to discipline herself constantly.

Onii-chan, I’m doing my best!

Silently, she called to her big brother, Oz Vessalius, who’d been missing for a decade.

With a determined expression on her childlike face, Ada began to walk faster.

“Yeek?!”

…Then she tripped on the edge of a paving stone and fell.

Elliot Nightray

THE FIRST DAY OF DISCIPLINE
REINFORCEMENT WEEK. AFTER SCHOOL.

“…Oh. Forgot something.”

Leo muttered, shortly, and turned on his heel. They were in a cramped back garden behind the Lutwidge Academy school building. The silent garden held nothing but a small flower bed. In the afternoon, the building blocked most of the sunlight, and no students gathered there.

“Hey, Leo!”

Elliot called to Leo’s back as he strode off, but Leo didn’t respond; he just disappeared into the school building.

“Huhn… You’d think he was the only person on the planet. Jerk.”

Even Elliot and Leo had only been cutting through the garden on their way back to the dorm; they hadn’t planned to stop there.

Should he wait here, or go on back to the dorm? After giving it a little thought, Elliot decided to wait for three minutes, but no more. Taking Holy Knight from where he’d been holding it under his arm, he flipped to the page marked with the bookmark Leo had given him.

“…Heh.” He broke into a faint smile. Elliot picked up the bookmark with his fingertips:

“Y’know…”

It hadn’t been his birthday or any other special day, and yet, out of the blue, he’d gotten a present.

A bookmark from Holy Knight, Elliot’s favorite series.

Unlike Leo, who read most books cover-to-cover in one sitting, Elliot was the type who took time to read a book. Many books came with attached ribbons, so he’d never felt it was much of an inconvenience, but he had thought it would be nice to have a bookmark all his own.

He didn’t remember if he’d ever mentioned that to Leo.

Either way…

“No, it’s nothing like that. I just wanted you to have it.”

I didn’t think he was the sort of guy who could be that considerate…

He did think the way he’d given it to him—casually, brusquely, on the way back from the library—had been just like Leo.

“………Hmm.”

Elliot let his eyes fall to the book, thinking he’d read a little further.

However, it felt as if he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on what he read, so he replaced the bookmark and shut the book with a thump.

The sky was cloudy, and on top of that, the shadowed back garden was chilly. Elliot thought, Yeah, I’m done. No more waiting, and decided to leave the garden. As he was about to set off, he noticed that one of his shoes had come undone. Elliot crouched down and retied his shoelace.

Just then, something smacked him lightly on the back. Elliot turned.

“Man, Leo. That was fas—”

“Mew?”

A blank cat’s face. Boy and feline gazed at each other.

…………A cat?!

At the violent shock from this unexpected sight, Elliot lost his balance and almost fell over. Somehow managing to keep from falling, he stood up, staring at the cat.

It had a ribbon tied around its neck, so he knew it was probably somebody’s pet. It was a pure white cat with striking, limpid, silver eyes. Elliot complained, holding his galloping heart: “D-don’t scare me like that, cat.” The white cat only gave an entertained “Mew! ”

Elliot glanced right and left, but aside from himself and the white cat, the garden was empty.

“…Tch! What idiot brought you in here?”

“Mew, mew. Mew, mew.”

The white cat meowed, pestering him to play. Responding to its voice, Elliot met its gaze. He’d heard that cats ran when humans looked them in the eye, but the white cat must have been very used to humans; it didn’t even hint at trying to run.

Elliot’s face grew stern.

“No. That’s no good. Listen, if somebody finds you here, there’s going to be trouble.”

He was right: It was Discipline Reinforcement Week.

After school, students tended to let themselves go a bit, and the disciplinary committee went on patrol. Elliot had passed several committee members already. If they found the cat, they’d catch it, of course, and they’d begin hunting for its owner.

Elliot didn’t care what happened to the owner. However, even then, he thought it would be best to make them take the cat home right away.

If only for the cat’s sake.

“Where’s your owner, cat?”

In response to Elliot’s question, the white cat only tilted its head and mewed.

It looked up at Elliot with big, bright, round eyes.

It was staring straight at Elliot.

“…………………………………………………………………………………………………”

Elliot was silent.

His cheek twitched.

“……M-man, I guess I’d better…”

With a slightly hoarse mutter, Elliot crouched down again, as low as he could.

He was trying to put himself on the cat’s eye level.

“Listen, you. It’s not safe for you to be messing around on campus. Get out. G’wan, get.”

He put out a hand to catch it by the neck, but the cat slipped out of reach.

However, it made no move to leave Elliot’s side. Not only that, it licked the hand Elliot had stretched out with its tiny tongue. The sensation that traced his fingertips was damp and soft and rough, all at once.

Lick, lick. Lick.

…………………!

Elliot was frozen in place, unable to pull his hand back.

He knew.

Of course he knew. This was no time to be playing with a cat. He was at school, and although there was no one around right now, Leo could return at any moment. Besides, there was no telling when another student might show up. A patrolling disciplinary committee member, for example.

If anybody saw him like this…

Yeah, this isn’t—

Lick lick. Lick lick.

Lick lick. Lick lick.

With no idea what Elliot was feeling, the white cat licked his fingers all over. Elliot stared at it, as if he couldn’t look away.

“What’s your name, cat?”

His question was almost involuntary.

The white cat stopped licking for a moment, turned its face toward Elliot, stared at him intently, and gave a soft “Mew.” There was no telling whether it was meant as a reply or not. It only looked straight at him with those silver eyes.

“They’re like…the moon…”

Elliot murmured, as if talking to himself. As if in a dream.

The white cat began licking his fingers again. Its tongue finally reached the skin between his fingers, at the base, and it tickled so much that Elliot shivered. He scolded the cat, hastily: “Hey, no, quit…!” However, his voice was weak, as if he was delirious with fever.

And his face…

Lick lick lick, lick!

“Hey, you! That tickles! Ah-ha-ha!”

His face wore one of the best smiles ever.

When, unable to take it anymore, Elliot drew his hand back, the white cat jumped up onto his knees, as if it was chasing the hand.

Then it playfully tried to crawl inside his coat.

Elliot could feel the cat’s fur and its soft body through the cloth, and he really couldn’t take it. He knew. Of course he knew. If he let the cat mess with him like this, his clothes would get dirty, and if anyone happened to see him, he’d have no way to cover for himself.

He had to chase it out of his coat. He had to.

He knew this. —But.

“Mew mew, mew mew, mew mew, mew mew, mew mew, mew mew, mew mew, mew mew.”

The cat played innocently.

Th-this little… What incredible cat power…!!

Elliot was astonished.

“Cat power” was cats’ fearsome ability to make anyone they were playing with happy, no matter what the person wanted or how much of a nuisance it was, and to drain their will and strength to resist. The source of this power was thought to lie, not only in their charming forms and expressions, but in their paw pads as well.

…Of course, the only one who thought this was Elliot.

“Heh heh! Hey, cut that out… ‘Moon’!”

He’d gone and named someone else’s cat. Already. He was utterly enchanted by it.

In the House of Nightray, a family of dog people, Elliot was the one and only universally acknowledged cat lover. …And a terrible pushover, at that.

If the cat had continued playing for another few seconds, the thought that this was school and that it was Discipline Reinforcement Week would have vanished completely from Elliot’s brain, and he’d have been left utterly defenseless, body and soul. A smile that was just as adorable as the cat had already found its way onto his face.

—Then. Suddenly.

The cat jumped down from Elliot’s knees.

Just as Elliot, his face still one big smile, was about to ask it what was wrong…

His sixth sense picked up on danger.

His sense of hearing, which had sharpened instantaneously, caught the sound of footsteps. They were still far away but getting closer, coming up behind him.

Leo…?!

Elliot’s reaction was a sight to behold.

He stood and turned with a speed and sharpness that even someone assaulted by an assassin while they slept probably wouldn’t have been able to match. The motion was so fast that it kicked up a fierce gust of wind.

In that brief moment, the smile vanished from Elliot’s face, and his sharp expression returned. However, his heart was pounding away like an alarm bell. When he looked for the white cat out of the corner of his eye, it was already disappearing into the shadow of the flower bed.

Had he been spotted playing with the cat? No, there’d been a few moments between the point where the cat jumped off his knees and the point where he’d heard footsteps.

No one saw me— They can’t have seen!

“……Oh! Elliot…kun?”

At the sound of his name, he turned his piercing gaze straight in the direction of the voice.

When he saw the person who was walking toward him, Elliot felt himself going cold inside. The alarm bell in his chest calmed down, and his gaze, which had been rather threatening, became a glare filled with clear annoyance.

…Ada Vessalius…!

Silently, in his mind, Elliot said the girl’s name.

She was a daughter of the House of Vessalius, one of the four great dukedoms. Unlike the House of Nightray, Vessalius was a line of heroes that were showered with unadulterated glory and honor. Ada was in the sixth year at school, and Elliot’s senior.

The houses of Vessalius and Nightray were often compared to light and shadow.

“Hate the Vessaliuses. Despise them. Revile them.” His father’s words rose in Elliot’s heart.

Elliot had heard these words ever since he was small, and they were carved deeply into his heart.

…And so.

At school, where it wouldn’t do to cause trouble, Elliot had avoided interacting with her to the best of his abilities. Fortunately, since they were in different years, this hadn’t been hard. He’d only seen her a handful of times, at a distance, since he first entered the academy.

“Grrt…” Unconsciously, Elliot ground his teeth together.

Whether or not she’d noticed his attitude, Ada came right up to him, then stopped and fidgeted. She seemed tense. She also seemed rather shy.

Now there’s a face without a care in the world, Elliot thought, coldly.

“Um, uh…”

Ada pretended to straighten her perfectly tidy uniform, looking bashful.

“Elliot-kun, isn’t it? I, um, we haven’t spoken before, but I—”

“Don’t say my name like we’re friends, Ada Vessalius.”

He’d dropped the words on her like a ton of bricks, and the girl shrank back like a scolded child.

LATER, IN HIS ROOM IN THE BOYS’ DORM.

“Hey, why’s it gone?”

Elliot was flipping through the pages of Holy Knight again and again, then turning the book upside down and shaking it, when Leo returned.

On seeing Elliot, who was scowling in irritation, he looked perplexed.

“Why’s what gone?”

“The bookmark. The one you gave me.”

At Elliot’s answer, Leo’s expression changed to one of comprehension, and he came over. Peering down at the book in Elliot’s hands, he asked, “You did have it in the book, right?” Elliot nodded silently. The bookmark had been in the book, and he’d been carrying the book under his arm, so it was hard to imagine that the bookmark had fallen out.

…Which meant it shouldn’t be gone. And yet.

Leo seemed to have thought the same thing. He cocked his head as if to say, That’s odd.

“When was the last time you saw it?”

“Oh, it was…”

Elliot scanned his memory.

“I opened the book in the back garden while I was waiting for you… It was then.”

“I see. Then it must’ve happened after that, while you were on your way back here. Did anything unusual happen?”

“Unusual… Ada Vessalius talked to me.”

He spoke after a momentary silence, making no attempt to hide his bad mood. Leo gave a small, surprised, “Huh.” He followed it with, “That is strange,” but Elliot said nothing. He was remembering his exchange with Ada. Even though she’d been nervous, Ada had given him a gentle smile.

“Don’t say my name like we’re friends.”

She’d spoken to him, and he’d rejected her sharply.

He didn’t know whether Ada had understood why he’d been so harsh with her. However, even after having been rebuffed in that fashion, Ada hadn’t immediately tried to leave.

She might have had something she wanted to ask… Something she wanted to talk about. As far as Elliot was concerned, though, he had nothing to discuss with a Vessalius. And so, as Ada stood her ground, fidgeting and looking as if she were searching for the right words, he said it:

“I’m waiting for somebody here. You’re in the way. Get lost.”

At Elliot’s ruthless words, Ada had said, “Oh, um, well, I’ll see you later, then, Elliot-kun.” On that carefree note, wearing a smile that had probably taken everything she had to summon, she went back into the school building.

Did she take that attitude even though she knew about the discord between the House of Nightray and the House of Vessalius, and that they were on nothing resembling good terms? …Or did she act like that because she didn’t know?

Either way, Elliot thought.

“That girl’s about as sharp as a marble.”

His mutter drew a “Hey” from Leo.

“You’re talking about an upperclassman.”

“Like I care?”

“Didn’t you scold younger students for not respecting an upperclassman just last week?”

Leo spoke reprovingly. For a moment, Elliot saw red; he shot a glance at him.

“That was different.”

“Oh, so it doesn’t matter when it’s you. I didn’t know you were the sort who could compartmentalize your head like that. I hear it’s really convenient.”

At that, Leo stepped away from Elliot. His tone had been indifferent, but he’d as good as said, I know you really know better. Elliot was exasperated by Leo’s attitude, but he couldn’t find a comeback.

“—And? Could you have dropped it then?”

Leo smoothly set the conversation back on track.

Elliot, feeling rather off-balance, searched his memory.

He hadn’t been able to leave immediately, not after he’d run Ada off by telling her he was waiting for someone, so he’d dutifully stood there for a few minutes. When, as expected, Leo hadn’t come back, he’d left the back garden and returned to the boys’ dorm. If he’d dropped it then, there was no way he wouldn’t have noticed.

“……No,” he concluded briefly.

Leo folded his arms. “Hmmm…”

Elliot also looked as if he was thinking hard. However, at Leo’s next, casual words, his expression froze.

“Anything else? Did something happen before or after that?”

Mew, mew.

“……‘Moon’…”

He’d accidentally said the word aloud, and he shut his mouth hastily. Leo looked perplexed: “???”

“Moon? …Like the one in the sky, you mean??”

“Nuh, no, it’s nothing. I didn’t mean that…”

He didn’t know what he should say.

When the white cat had appeared, and he’d messed around with it for a while…

It was true that, right then, he’d forgotten about the book. He’d been holding it under his elbow, and he wasn’t entirely sure that he hadn’t come pretty close to dropping it a few times. No, he thought he probably had. …But if he said that to Leo…

The things Leo would say…

Elliot’s gaze swam. It would have been obvious to anyone that he was being evasive.

All he said was, “…I…might have dropped it.”

“While you were playing with the cat?”

Leo’s careless bombshell startled Elliot so much he thought his brain might boil over. His field of vision seemed to somersault.

He was confused, and upset, and his face was bright, bright red—

“Y-y-y-y-you jerk!! You were watching that, Leo?!”

He grabbed Leo’s shirtfront as violently as if he meant to hit him.

If he’d been seen, it would have been the blunder of a lifetime… No, much worse than that. If… If he’d been spotted enjoying himself that much, with his guard completely down…

He’d lose every last shred of his prestige as a master!

“Elliot, calm down.”

Moving nonchalantly, even though he was being shaken back and forth by the flustered Elliot, Leo dropped the corner of the book he was holding onto his master’s head. The motion was casual, but it had serious power behind it. Elliot yelped in pain, but it soon turned to anger; determined to give as good as he got, he glared fiercely at Leo and raised his fist.

Just as he did so—

“You’ve got animal hair on your uniform. It’s white, so it doesn’t stand out, but it’s there.”

At Leo’s words, Elliot froze.

“I didn’t see what happened, so the rest is inference. The hair is short, so it’s probably cat hair. If you think you might have dropped the bookmark then, you were probably playing so enthusiastically that you forgot about the book. …And it looks like I was right. You really are easy to read.”

“……Ngkl…”

“Ah, I made you say ‘uncle.’”

Leo sounded rather pleased.

Then he smacked his palm with a fist and said, “Oh, I see,” as if inspiration had just struck. With no idea what was going on, Elliot flinched. Leo—obviously entertained—spoke with the refreshed expression and tone of a detective who’d just solved a cold case:

“So ‘Moon’ is a name? Elliot. That cat. Did you—”

“Don’t say iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!!”

A devastating punch flew at Leo.

—Still.

Leo wasn’t the type to stand there and let himself be punched, and, as was only natural, Elliot’s fists were met with a counterattack.

The dramatic cloud of dust raised by the conflict was nothing anyone would expect from a master and valet.

Sometimes these things happen.

Ada Vessalius

AFTER SHE’D LEFT ELLIOT.

Ada was walking down one of the school corridors. Her shoulders drooped slightly.

“Elliot-kun……”

She murmured the name of the boy who’d chased her out of the back garden.

Elliot Nightray. He was a boy in a different school year, but Ada had known his name since he began attending the academy. After all, like Ada, he was a child of the four great dukedoms, and they were going to the same school. And, as had happened with her, his name had traveled throughout the school soon after he entered it.

Possibly because they were in different years, they’d never directly interacted before. As a result, she hadn’t known what his personality was like.

However, she’d heard the girls in her class happily talking about how he’d helped them when they were in trouble, and this had created a diagram in Ada’s mind: “Elliot-kun = Good person.”

Since that was the case, although it had taken a little courage for her to speak to him for the first time, she hadn’t been reluctant to do so.

“Haaah……”

Ada sighed. She hadn’t expected to be refused so roughly.

Why? she wondered. She didn’t understand.

But maybe—

Elliot had said he was waiting for someone. “So get lost,” he’d said.

Ordinarily, you wouldn’t shoo away anyone else who happened to be in the area just because you were waiting for someone.

…Which meant…?

Place: A deserted back garden.

Person: Someone he didn’t want to be seen meeting.

Meaning… He’d been embarrassed?

Could it be—?!

“A secret date…or something?”

As soon as she’d murmured it, Ada’s cheeks flushed, and she gave a quiet little scream.

In that case, she thought, she really had put her foot in it.

Of course she’d been scolded. What terrible timing!

Time spent with a beloved someone was precious. In that situation, Ada wouldn’t have wanted anyone to disturb her, either. As she walked down the corridor, Ada fancied she felt her chest growing warm. She hadn’t spoken to Elliot today simply because he was also a child of the four great dukedoms.

“He’s his……little brother—”

The face of a young man from the House of Nightray, a man whom Ada had recently begun to think of as someone special, rose in her mind’s eye.

That alone was enough to bring happiness bubbling up inside her.

“Hee-hee!” Ada had begun to scatter a girlish aura, a smile on her pretty lips. Then, spotting another disciplinary committee member walking up the corridor toward her, she gasped. It was a school patrol. The same task that had taken Ada to the back garden.

Oh no, she thought. It was entirely possible that some other committee member would go to the back garden, as she had.

She had to stop them.

She had to protect Elliot-kun’s secret date, his special time.

As someone else who was in love!

“!”

Ada ran up to the disciplinary committee member and barred their way, arms spread wide. It was a gesture so abrupt that the student’s eyes went wide. Ada ignored this, speaking emphatically:

“There’s nothing in the back garden. Absolutely nothing. You don’t have to go there, and in fact you really mustn’t. Do you understand? There is really and truly nothing whatsoever in the back garden, so don’t worry about it!”

Ada walked off smartly—she thought—to go tell the other committee members.

But then she turned around again, sharply.

“There is absolutely nothing back there, understand?!”

She drove her point home to the student—who was staring at her, dazed—with a sparkling, triumphant face.

Elliot Nightray

AFTER THE KNOCK-DOWN, DRAG-OUT
FIGHT IN THE BOYS’ DORM.

As Elliot, with a sticking plaster on his nose, and Leo, with a bruise on his cheek, made for the back garden, they passed several students. As a rule, almost no one used the back garden as a shortcut from the school building to the dorms. …Except for today, apparently.

When they reached the back garden, several students were already there. A few of them seemed to be from the disciplinary committee. Every student was looking curiously around the area, and they all seemed a bit dissatisfied. What happened? Elliot wondered.

“…Why is this place so popular all of a sudden?” he asked, keeping his voice down.

Leo only said, “Search me,” and looked perplexed.

At first he thought the white cat might have caused a disturbance, but a look at the students told him that wasn’t it.

“…It’s not here.”

Elliot casually looked around the garden, but, as expected, he didn’t see the cat. He peered into the shadows of the flower bed, too, but the cat hadn’t been heavy enough to leave decent footprints.

After a little while, the students who’d been in the back garden returned to the school building, looking puzzled. When they asked one of the students, they were told that somebody had been kicking up a fuss in the school about something-or-other in the back garden. It had sounded like something interesting was going on, so they’d come out to see, but there hadn’t been anything at all. What a letdown.

Elliot had no idea what it all meant. However, he was a bit irritated with whoever it was for having done something so uncalled for.

In the now-deserted back garden, Elliot knit his brow, wondering what to do.

“It may have gone off campus already,” Leo murmured. “…The cat.”

Feeling as if it was too late to hide anything at this point, Elliot had told him everything.

He’d been distracted by Ada’s approach, and all he’d managed to see of the white cat was its back.

It might have been holding the dropped bookmark in its mouth. He couldn’t think of anywhere else the bookmark could have gotten to. If the cat had left the school grounds, it was all over. His chances of getting that bookmark back were near zero.

Leo said absently, “Well, there’s no help for that. It wasn’t important, anyway. Let’s just forget about it.”

“………Like I could do that.”

Elliot’s answer was cross: It had been a present from Leo, and yet Leo didn’t seem bothered at all.

“Yeah, but it really, really wasn’t anything important, and—”

“Look! I’m responsible for losing it. Besides, you gave…!”

When he’d gone that far, he stopped.

There was no telling how Leo interpreted the words that hadn’t been said.

“In that case, I’ll help you look. Just until it gets dark. If we still haven’t found it by then, you give up, too.”

At those words, Elliot looked up at the sky.

It had been cloudy since morning, and even though it was still evening, it was already gloomy. Leo’s “until it gets dark” hadn’t been sarcastic. It had been a pragmatic decision: After it got dark, it would be very hard to search. Elliot had been planning to look for it by himself if he had to, but—

“…We’d better hurry,” he muttered, his voice low.

He bowed his head, looking at the ground, and thought. Even if they were only searching on campus, where would a cat go? Probably somewhere where people weren’t likely to see it, which meant… As he racked his brains, Leo tugged at his sleeve.

“I’m thinking.” He brushed Leo’s hand off.

“—Say, Elliot. That cat was white, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“With a ribbon around its neck.”

“Yeah.”

As he answered absently, Elliot thought, Did I tell him about the ribbon?

“Then I see it. That’s Moon.”

At Leo’s words, Elliot’s face came up sharply. Leo was pointing at a corner of the back garden, and there was the white cat. It looked at Elliot and Leo and gave a soft mew. It didn’t have the bookmark in its mouth. Elliot thought it might have hidden it somewhere.

In that case, they’d have to get it to lead them to it, no matter what.

“Elli—”

“Shh!”

Elliot cut Leo off, hushing him. He crouched down, putting himself on the cat’s eye level. Although it had been incredibly friendly before, it must have sensed their desperation to catch it: The white cat stayed motionless, watching the two of them to see what they’d do.

Elliot beckoned to it with his fingers: Here, kitty. C’mere. But the white cat still didn’t move.

“Do you think we could use this?”

Leo took a small candy drop from his pocket and held it out to Elliot. Elliot had no idea whether cats could eat candy, but the colorful wrapper might get its attention. He took it from Leo, held the end of the wrapper, and wiggled it back and forth so the cat would see it.

The effect was instantaneous.

Tup-tup-tup-tup! The cat came running up to him.

……Here it comes!

Elliot was nervous. He couldn’t mess up. He had to reel it in with the candy and catch it, or else—

The white cat leapt at the candy.

Just before it connected, Elliot whisked the candy up high and out of the way, dodging the cat. The cat looked up at Elliot and mewed. It seemed disappointed.

Elliot felt a twinge in his chest. The white cat jumped again. Elliot moved his hand, evading. Jump, evade. Jump, evade. As this repeated over and over, Elliot felt an indescribable ticklish sensation.

“Too bad! I’m not letting you get it that easily, ah-ha-ha-ha!”

After he’d played with the cat for a while, Elliot said, “There!” and tossed the candy onto the ground.

As if it had been given a toy, the cat batted the candy around with its front paws and stepped on it lightly, pinning it down.

The little guy really is cute…

Elliot’s eyes crinkled in a blissful smile.

Leo watched him, steadily.

“Huh?!” Registering Leo’s significant gaze, Elliot came back to himself with a jolt.

Remembering his original goal, he hastily turned to Leo.

“No! You’ve got it all wrong, Leo. I’m just, uh, lulling the cat into getting careless, and then I’ll—”

“…………Elliot.”

“I’m telling you, that isn’t it—”

“The cat’s getting away.”

“!?”

Leo’s cool voice made him glance at the white cat. He was just in time to see it running down the path that led from the back garden to the dorms, with the candy in its mouth. “Wait!!” Elliot ran after the cat. Sensing Elliot’s approach, the cat sped up as if it had been stung.

“Have a good trip.”

Leo was waving a hand, nonchalantly. “You come, too!” Elliot roared. Several students spotted Elliot sprinting for the boys’ dorm, and the fact that the Elliot Nightray had been seen running somewhere with murder in his eyes later became a topic of discussion, but that’s another story.

“Elliot sure has lots of energy.”

Leo, who’d been left behind in the back garden, murmured to himself. Then he started walking, a little faster than normal.

“Dammit, I lost it……!”

Elliot spat the words out. He’d just reached the front of the dorm. He supposed he shouldn’t have expected anything less from the speed of an animal’s legs.

Elliot scanned the area, his eyes sharp, but when he didn’t see even a shadow of the white cat, he turned back to the path he’d come up. He could see Leo walking toward him, still quite a ways away. Leo was looking from side to side as he walked, and when Elliot told him with gestures that it wasn’t there, he nodded.

Elliot got his ragged breathing under control. Finally, Leo caught up.

“At least we know it’s still on campus. That’s something, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but…”

Elliot’s reply was sullen. After thinking for a little, he turned to Leo with a question.

“Hey, Leo, could we try to catch it with bait agai—”

“Aaaaaaugh!”

Just then, they heard a muffled voice from inside the dorm.

The sound was faint, coming to them as it did through the wall of the building, but Elliot and Leo did hear it.

A scream? They looked at each other.

“Gerald?!”

When Elliot and Leo stepped into the dorm’s entry hall, they saw a student crumpled at the foot of the stairs.

It was Gerald, the prefect.

Elliot ran over to him. The boy was moaning, as if he was in pain. Calling his name, Elliot helped him sit up.

Leo glanced at the staircase that led to the second floor and murmured, “I wonder if he slipped.”

“No……” Gerald insisted; his voice was hoarse.

“No?” Leo cocked his head, perplexed.

“I was pushed… They pushed me down.”

“Somebody pushed you?” Elliot echoed.

If that was true, it was a bit too serious to qualify as a prank.

Apparently, Gerald had been pushed from the fifth step or so, fairly low on the stairs. Elliot and Leo had assumed he’d been pushed from the landing, and they felt this was a bit of an anticlimax. “But it really hurt!” Gerald stressed during his explanation.

True, he seemed to have gotten away with bruises this time, but if he’d hit the wrong place, his injuries could have been much worse. When Elliot asked if he’d seen the person who’d pushed him, Gerald shook his head in frustration. Apparently he’d been pushed suddenly from behind, so he hadn’t seen.

“What kind of jerk would pull a stunt like that?” Elliot spit out.

“Mm.” Leo nodded in agreement.

“…It was…probably this guy.”

Gerald took a folded scrap of paper from his breast pocket. It looked as if it had been torn from one of the notebooks used in class. When Elliot took it and opened it, he saw a message written in an intentionally clumsy hand:

Resign from being prefect

“What’s this…?” Elliot looked puzzled.

Gerald said that it had been slipped under the door to his room a few days ago.

Looking down at what Elliot held, Leo muttered, “Could be a threatening letter…” If the words were taken at face value, then the sender of the note was someone who couldn’t stand to see Gerald in the prefect’s seat and refused to allow it. Just as Elliot was wondering who that would be, Gerald spoke with obvious hatred:

“It’s Marcel.”

Elliot narrowed his eyes sharply. Leo looked thoughtful.

“It’s got to be him,” Gerald declared categorically.

Gerald thought it would make sense if Marcel was the culprit. He imagined Marcel had a motive… That he wanted to damage Gerald.

Malice, enmity, or…revenge?

In which case…

“…Gerald, you…”

As he questioned Gerald, all concern was gone from Elliot’s voice.

Even as he flinched a little bit at that voice, Gerald glared back aggressively, as if determined not to seem weak in front of a younger student. “What?!”

Elliot continued. “About Marcel. Did you—”

Just as he was about to check what he’d heard last week from Leo, it happened. He heard tiny footsteps: Tup-tup-tup.

They were coming from near the door to the entry hall. Elliot started, turning to look at the door, and there was the white cat.

In its mouth it held, not the candy, but the bookmark. A second later, Leo noticed it, too: “Oh.”

The white cat slipped out through the crack in the door.

“…Suh…”

Elliot stared at the door, his shoulders trembling.

“Sorry, gotta go!!”

Elliot had been supporting Gerald, but he practically shoved him away and ran out the door.

Gerald, who hadn’t noticed the cat and now found himself abruptly and roughly dumped on the floor, had no idea what was happening and looked severely put off. His expression said, Hunh?!

After a short while, he looked up at Leo as if hoping for an explanation.

“Aw…”

Leo scratched at his cheek in embarrassment and looked down at Gerald, as if asking for understanding.

“He’s got a little too much energy.”

“……………………”

The bewilderment in Gerald’s expression deepened. He was silent. Leo spoke to him, cheerfully: “Still, that was lucky, wasn’t it, Gerald-senpai? You escaped.” Still confused, Gerald nodded.

“Yeah, I got off with nothing worse than bruises; I’m really—”

“Ah-ha-ha. That’s not true.”

Leo contradicted Gerald’s words. He shook his head at him slowly; Gerald still looked perplexed.

“Well, either way, it’s only been postponed. Elliot isn’t likely to forgive you.

“For Marcel,” he said, and Gerald’s expression went tight.

“Not with his personality. And…if Elliot won’t forgive you, neither will I.”

His voice was matter-of-fact, but Gerald shuddered, and his face went ashen.

Under that shaggy hair of his, Leo smiled a smile that went no farther than his lips.

“Remember that, senpai.”

Blue Rose Club

THREE YEARS AGO, AFTER
SCHOOL ONE RAINY DAY.

Josephine had left her dormitory to buy some tea leaves. As she was walking down the avenue, she caught sight of Elliot Nightray standing in an alley, holding an umbrella.

She was in the third year at the time, and Elliot was two years below her, but she knew about him: As a child of one of the four great dukedoms, he’d been famous ever since he entered the academy. However, she’d never seen him be particularly friendly with anyone.

Figuratively speaking, at school, he was like a rose blooming among wildflowers. His splendor made him stand out, but his thorns made it impossible to get close to him… That type.

However, that morning had been a bit different. Josephine hadn’t been there herself, so she didn’t know the details. She’d heard from a friend that he’d started a fistfight in class. She’d thought it was unusual for him to get involved with anyone that way, but apparently a student who was studying in the same classroom had said something disparaging about his family.

Although they were children of the aristocracy, the first-years really were still children. No doubt some of them were ignorant of the ways of the world and didn’t know their place.

From what she’d been told, the fight had been nearly one-sided in Elliot’s favor: He’d knocked his opponent down, and that had been that. Josephine had only ever seen him being quiet, and it was difficult for her to imagine, but apparently he’d fought ferociously.

What in the world had the offending student said to set him off that way? She couldn’t imagine.

However— With this, she thought, his isolation at school was bound to grow even deeper.

“Elliot Nightray…”

As he stood there, in the alley, Josephine quietly spoke his name. She wondered what he was doing. Elliot was facing the alley wall, and his expression was blank and cold; she couldn’t read any emotion in it. At his feet sat a small wooden crate.

Hearing a “mew” from the box, Josephine murmured, “An abandoned cat…?”

A cat, abandoned in the rain.

Elliot seemed to be looking at it from under his umbrella.

Involuntarily, Josephine held her breath, gazing intently at the scene. She didn’t realize that her heart had begun to beat just a little faster.

Before long, Elliot reached into the crate and picked up the cat. He hugged it to his chest. Since he was holding the umbrella in one hand, he seemed to have a little trouble holding the cat, and she thought he was probably getting his clothes wet, but he didn’t seem to care.

Ba-dmp ba-dmp ba-dmp ba-dmp ba-dmp ba-dmp ba-dmp ba-dmp ba-dmp ba-dmp ba-dmp ba-dmp.

Josephine’s heart was beating fast.

Not realizing he was being watched, Elliot’s face abruptly softened. —Heh.

It was a gentle expression he’d never shown at school.

His lips moved, very slightly, as though he was talking to the cat.

You’re just like me, aren’t you?

There was no knowing whether Elliot had really said that.

In fact, he probably hadn’t.

Still, that was what Josephine had heard. Like glad tidings from heaven. A portrait of a juvenile delinquent (or, no, Elliot Nightray), with a sad little smile on his lips, confiding the loneliness he couldn’t discuss with anyone to an abandoned cat.

Josephine felt a poignant twinge, deep in her heart.

It wasn’t love. It was more like…admiration for something exalted.

Finally, Elliot returned the cat to the crate.

Setting his umbrella over it so that the cat wouldn’t get any wetter, he ran away down the alley, not caring that he was getting wet himself. He ran as if he was trying to shake off a lingering regret. The Lutwidge Academy dormitories didn’t allow pets. There was no way he’d be able to take care of it.

Looking into the depths of the alley where Elliot had disappeared, Josephine murmured.

She murmured to the figure that seemed burned into her eyelids. That shape like a flower blooming nobly in the shadows.

“Master……Blue Rose…”

That was it.

The historic incident that became the beginning of the Blue Rose Club.

“…phine-sama? Josephine-sama.”

Hearing her name called repeatedly, she returned from where she’d been wandering in memory. The common room on the third floor of the girls’ dorm. The members of the Blue Rose Club were already assembled there. Josephine, who was a prefect, had used her authority to borrow the room temporarily.

A low glass table sat in the center of the room, with sofas arranged around it in a hollow square.

The table held steaming teacups and a plateful of cookies for light refreshment.

Everything was ready.

“Everyone has arrived, I see. All right. Let’s begin.”

Smiling, Josephine opened the meeting.

“Yes, let’s,” responded ladylike voices, but one girl looked perplexed:

“Why are we meeting here today?”

At the question, Josephine glanced at Matilda, who was sitting quietly in a corner seat.

“Because today’s assembly is a rather special one.”

At the word “special,” a slight stir ruffled the elegant atmosphere. Every face held great expectations. However, Josephine was perfectly composed. The special report—the main dish—must be presented at the proper time.

When Josephine prefaced her remarks with the statement that the news would be revealed last, all the girls looked disappointed.

“Now then. Who will go first…?”

As Josephine looked around, a hand shot up energetically from a seat on the sofa.

“Yes! Um! I’d like to, if I may!”

“Heh-heh, yes, Mia-san. Go ahead.”

Encouraged, the girl called Mia bounced up from the sofa.

She was the only first-year member of the Blue Rose Club, and the newest member of the group. She was a little flighty and tended to chase after anything popular, and this sometimes made her stand out uncomfortably; however, the older students thought of her as a sort of pet and were quite fond of her.

“You have a report, Mia-san?”

“That hasn’t happened in ages.”

In the midst of these and similar comments, Mia puffed out her chest proudly.

“I’ve found something fantastic.”

Something fantastic? Josephine tilted her head, perplexed. Yes, Mia nodded enthusiastically; she reached into a paper bag she’d set on the floor, rummaged around in it, then pulled something out. For a moment, nobody knew what it was. The first to identify it was Josephine.

“Is it a blue…bookmark?”

“Yes! Everyone knows, right? About the bookmark in the book Master Blue Rose was reading today, I mean. This is just like that one!”

As Mia held up the leather bookmark triumphantly, cries of “My!” rose up.

“I guess it’s fairly rare; it was rather difficult to find. Still, I managed to buy it!”

“That’s…something Master Blue Rose received from ‘the other’ and uses with great care…”

The girls gazed at it with envious eyes. Words of praise were on all their lips.

“That’s quite marvelously rare.”

“The very best, I should say.”

“Ahhhh, would that I had one.”

“Truly.”

“Truly.”

“Truly.”

“But they’re quite difficult to find, aren’t they?”

In response to the group’s voices, Mia shook her head happily—“No, no”—and reached into the bag on the floor once more. Then she pulled her hand out again, quickly. The girls’ eyes were drawn to that hand. It held several bookmarks. “My, my, my!” Several cries of astonishment went up.

“‘Sharing happiness under the auspices of Master Blue Rose’… Is that not what the Blue Rose Club is?!”

Even though she was the youngest member, Mia stated the club’s founding principle eloquently, drawing admiring applause.

Mia began handing bookmarks to each member. The bookmarks didn’t look cheap, and several voices wondered if they hadn’t been quite expensive, but Mia answered cheerfully: “Please don’t worry about it.” As the bookmarks made their way around, one of the girls who held one suggested that if everyone had one, it might be nice to make the bookmark a symbol of membership.

No one objected. Josephine herself agreed that it was a good idea.

It was unanimous. Mia seemed deeply moved that the bookmarks she’d provided were being treated this way.

“—The Blue Rose Emblem.”

Matilda, sitting in the corner, murmured it quietly, and everyone approved of the name as well. Some gazed at their bookmarks in delight, while others hid theirs away in their breast pockets, and still others shut theirs in the volumes of poetry they’d brought with them. The atmosphere in the common room had never been so scintillating.

Watching the scene with a smile of satisfaction, Josephine urged them on: “All right, does anyone else have any news?”

A voice spoke from nowhere in particular.

“Now that you mention it…” said the slightly perplexed voice.

“I hear Master Blue Rose was sighted running around the school today—”

Elliot Nightray

It was a good thing he’d left Leo in the dorm’s entrance hall, Elliot thought.

He was running full tilt, chasing after the white cat, which still had the bookmark in its mouth. In contests of pure physical strength, Elliot outmatched Leo, thanks to his swordsmanship training. If he’d brought Leo along, he was sure they would have lost sight of the cat long ago.

The white cat was agile, and on top of that, it ran easily through places that weren’t well suited to human runners. Of course Elliot chased it, along the tops of walls and over storehouse roofs.

When the white cat ran into a space between two buildings that was too narrow for Elliot, he’d run around to the other side and wait for it. However, maddeningly, he wasn’t able to catch it. By this time, he had no idea where on campus he’d run. Finally, the white cat veered off the path and dove into the bushes.

“……You’re n—……”

He tried to say it aloud, and almost choked.

You’re not getting away!!

He screamed it inside his head.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Elliot dove in, too. His uniform coat and trousers were covered with leaves. He cut the back of his hand on some sharp weeds. Blood beaded up. He didn’t have the time or energy to feel the pain. He lost sight of the white cat in the grass several times, but he found it again through sheer grit and tenacity, and he kept chasing it.

“Wa–Wait, you…!”

He started coughing before he was able to get the “little” out.

In contrast to the desperate, frantic Elliot, the white cat ran as lightly as if it were dancing, and it seemed to be enjoying itself.

It might have felt as if it was in the middle of a fun game of tag.

With a terrific leap, the white cat burst from the bushes. Elliot barreled straight ahead as well, running out of the bushes, and there—

He was in that back garden. Small flower beds, a shadowed space. It seemed deserted.

“…………!?”

He hadn’t been far behind the white cat, but he didn’t see it. Gasping for breath, Elliot hunted doggedly for the white cat, radiating a frenzied aura.

“Oh, Elliot-kun—”

A voice spoke behind him. Ada Vessalius’s voice.

Elliot turned; his gaze was sharp enough to cut. “Ahn?” Ada looked as if she’d just reached the back garden herself. Seeing Elliot suddenly plunge out of the bushes had obviously startled her. The sight of Elliot—out of breath, shoulders heaving—seemed to bewilder her.

Wearing an expression that declared she had absolutely no idea what was going on, she pointed at the bushes from which Elliot had emerged:

“Elliot-kun, did you just…come from there—?”

As she spoke, Ada seemed to come to some realization. Her cheeks suddenly flushed red.

Very softly, her lips mouthed the words “Secret date…” Ada looked down, folding her hands in front of her, fidgeting with her fingers.

Elliot didn’t know what her reaction meant, and he had something far more urgent to worry about. Irritated, he glanced around the area.

Fidget fidget, fidget fidget. As Ada fidgeted, she spoke:

“……Ah. Um. Lutwidge Academy doesn’t prohibit students from seeing each other, but, um, you really shouldn’t, um… Not in the bushes… Um, that…that sort of…i-immoral buh…behavior isn’t something I can allow as a disciplinary committee member, so to speak—Aaaaaaaaauau!”

Ada was in full confusion mode; her eyes were spinning.

“……………………………………………………………………What are you talking about?”

Elliot’s face was cold.

“Huh?”

Ada looked blank. With a merciless sneer, Elliot spoke:

“Hah! So the Vessalius girl’s head is always full of flower fields. It must be real nice to have things that easy. I don’t care if you play disciplinary committee member, but at least do a decent job. Thanks to you, I’ve been……!”

If the disciplinary committee had found the white cat promptly and caught it before it met Elliot…

This wouldn’t even be happening!

His logic was pure misdirected anger, but Elliot had a sharp tongue. He couldn’t possibly have been more irritated. Even as she shrank back a bit under his harsh words, Ada echoed the end of Elliot’s sentence: “Thanks to me, you’ve been—?”

Elliot had no intention of telling her, and he couldn’t have done so in any case.

“…Elliot-kun?”

“I told you, don’t say my—”

Name like we’re friends, Elliot was about to say.

But.

—Moon?!

Behind Ada’s back, he saw the white cat slip smoothly into the school building.

Puzzled, Ada was still waiting for the words that came after “don’t say my,” and when Elliot suddenly made a mad dash at her, she gave a little shriek and almost fell over. However, Elliot didn’t even seem to see her anymore; he ran right past her and away.

“Elliot-kun…?!”

On reflex, Ada called for him to stop. However, without turning back, Elliot yelled at her over his shoulder and disappeared into the school building.

“Don’t let me see your face again, you addlepated disciplinary committee member!”

It was magnificently trenchant abuse. …And then Ada was left all alone.

Under the cloudy sky. Standing dumbfounded in a cold wind that was beginning to carry hints of the chill of night, she repeated:

“‘Addlepated’…”

Why had he said that to her? She worried a bit, but before long, she understood.

Oh, I see! Elliot-kun was—

Ada Vessalius

Back inside the school building, Ada strode enthusiastically down the corridor.

She was raring to go, and she exuded an imposing aura that said “Discipline must be maintained!” That said, she hadn’t discarded her usual soft, benevolent atmosphere, which meant something about her felt undeniably mismatched. Still, Ada herself was attempting to seem as strict as she possibly could.

Elliot-kun cheered me on. “Do a decent job,” he said. I’ve got to do my best!

She’d looked out into the back garden a little while ago because she’d been worried about Elliot and the someone he was waiting for. She’d tried to arrange it so that people wouldn’t go to the back garden, but she wasn’t sure it had worked. Were they having a wonderful time, undisturbed?

I wonder what sort of person Elliot-kun was waiting for…

That curiosity had also been there, in a corner of her mind.

He must have seen through it. That was why he’d scolded her so harshly.

“I don’t care if you play disciplinary committee member, but at least do a decent job.

“Don’t let me see your face again (until you finish your job)!”

She was sure that was what he’d meant.

In that case, she thought, after she’d fully performed her duties as a disciplinary committee member, she’d go to see him again, and she’d greet him properly this time. She was positive he’d return her greeting then. …After all, she was sure he was a good person. No doubt they could become friends.

Although she wasn’t aware of it, it was more that Ada wanted to believe this than that she actually did believe it.

And so, first of all, she’d perform her disciplinary committee duties properly—

As she was thinking this and similar things, she turned a corner in the corridor and came face-to-face with Elliot again. Elliot was running without looking where he was going, and they very nearly collided.

“Waugh!” Their voices overlapped.

I’m sorry, Elliot was about to apologize, when he realized it was Ada.

“You?!”

“Wa-wa-wa, I didn’t meet you, I haven’t seen you, I—”

“……Huh? Dammit, whatever, just move!”

She’d thought she’d be scolded again, but Elliot only pushed her out of the way and ran off, without taking the time to yell at her. He was looking this way and that, and he wasn’t watching where he was going. Ada tilted her head, puzzled. What had happened to the secret date? Was it over?

No, that wasn’t it. She remembered their exchange in the back garden.

“What are you talking about?” As he’d responded to Ada’s unfounded suspicions, Elliot’s face and voice had been cold.

From what she could tell from her memories, that had been an honest reaction.

In that case, her idea about a secret date might have been mistaken. In that case, what was he doing? He’d seemed to be looking for something. If he was, in fact, looking for something, she wanted to help him. …She did want to, but Ada shook her head, erasing the thought.

I have to perform my own duties properly.

He was kind enough to scold me, after all. He wouldn’t want me to set aside my work as a disciplinary committee member to help him. I’ll do my best at my own job.

Right! Ada thought, firing herself up again, and began to walk faster.

And then.

Everywhere she went, Ada ran into Elliot.

She ran into him in a deserted classroom, peering under the teacher’s desk. When he saw Ada, Elliot started, sent a sharp glance her way, and went off somewhere.

She ran into him outside the bathrooms. Unless she’d been imagining things, Elliot had just emerged from the girls’ lavatory. As before, when Elliot noticed Ada, he was startled, but this time he ignored her and ran off.

The next place she saw him was outside another restroom. She began to worry that his stomach might be troubling him—But, again, Elliot saw Ada, started, glared at her fiercely, and ran off.

She ran into him in the cafeteria, where preparations for the evening meal were being made. She ran into him in the chapel. And in the music room. And in the reference room. She ran into him everywhere. Every time they met, Elliot started, and every time, he seemed to have grown more tired.

Finally, as Ada was passing by the main gate, there was Elliot again—

The instant he met her eyes:

“…You…!”

This time, Elliot didn’t ignore her. He strode up to her, as if he couldn’t take it anymore.

“Uh, um…”

Overawed, Ada wondered whether she should encourage him with a You’re working very hard, aren’t you!

Elliot said, “What are you, a stalker?! Are you following me or something?!”

“N-n-n-no! No, that isn’t it!”

At the unexpected accusation, Ada explained in a panic.

She told him she was only patrolling the school in order to properly carry out her responsibilities as a member of the disciplinary committee. Elliot just happened to be wherever she went, and she hadn’t meant to startle him or get in his way. Of course, she said, it was perfectly all right for him to ignore her completely.

Ada spoke emphatically, seriously, earnestly, with an expression of utmost sincerity on her face.

“…Oh, yeah…?”

Even as he listened, Elliot’s brow was twitching. He seemed to be getting more and more irritated.

At last, when he’d heard her out, Elliot said:

“Ada Vessalius. You, you…”

Calling to Ada in a very low voice, glaring at her with dangerous eyes, he jabbed his index finger straight out at her in accusation:

“You—have rotten timing!!”

“………I-I’m sor…ry…?”

Bewildered by his intensity, all Ada could do was apologize.

“Aaah, dammit!”

Elliot spat the words out, kicked the ground lightly with his toe, and turned his face from Ada.

“I don’t have time for this. I’ve got to find it fast, or else—”

With that, he ran off. Left alone once again, Ada murmured, “So he is looking for something…” What could it be? If she knew that, she might be able to find it for him while she was out on patrol.

I wonder what Elliot-kun could be looking for so desperately…?

She was sure it must be something terribly important.

Gerald

Petty weeds can be withered at any time

When, after his fall on the stairs, Gerald dragged his aching body back to his own room, he found that another slip of paper had been pushed under his door. Gerald read its contents, then immediately crushed it in his hand and pressed the hand that gripped the paper to his forehead.

“Dammit, dammit, dammit…”

The message was written in an intentionally bad hand, just like the warning to resign from being prefect.

The “weeds” were probably him. And the “can be withered at any time”…

When he’d been pushed down the stairs, they’d gone easy on him, but if they felt like it…

At any time…they could…?

Did it mean they could kill him?

For an instant, he shuddered. Then anger welled up.

“That little creep Marcel…”

He said the name as if he were squeezing it out between his clenched teeth.

As a prefect, he was doing a good job. The only one he could think of who would harbor malice toward him was his assistant Marcel, who’d realized that he was secretly issuing orders to the younger students.

Prefects were expected to abide by even stricter rules than the other students, so that they could serve as models for them and give them guidance. Gerald’s treatment of Marcel had been a way to slightly relieve the pressure of his constricting life at school.

He hadn’t considered it as anything more. He’d even thought of himself as toughening up the effeminate Marcel. Educating him.

And even so.

“…That little rat!”

Gerald struck the door violently.

“I’ll find out for sure,” he muttered. Although he was convinced, he had no positive proof that Marcel was the culprit. In that case, he’d interrogate the boy himself and make him confess. Once he’d confessed, he’d hurt him so badly he’d never be able to bare his fangs at him again, and that would be that.

That was all it would take.

Gerald stepped away from the door to his room and began walking down the corridor.

Then. Suddenly.

“Elliot isn’t likely to forgive you.

“If Elliot won’t forgive you, neither will I.

“Remember that, senpai.”

The words Leo had said to him in the first-floor entry hall rose in his mind. Since Elliot was a son of the House of Nightray, Gerald couldn’t help but be aware of him, but up until now, he’d barely even noticed his valet Leo.

Not only that, if the spacey underclassman hadn’t been Elliot’s valet, Gerald might have used him as a target to burn off stress instead of Marcel. He hadn’t thought of him as anything more than that.

However.

“Remember that, senpai.”

The instant he’d heard those words, a strange chill had raced through his entire body. Leo’s tone had been peaceful, and the expression hidden behind his hair had been a sunny smile. …And yet Gerald had felt as if he’d had a knife…no, fangs, pressed to his throat.

What had that sensation been? No matter how hard he thought, he couldn’t understand it.

It had been all in his head; he’d been shaken by his fall down the stairs. Forcing himself to think that, Gerald chased Leo’s words from his mind.

He set off for the large room where Marcel lived.

Elliot Nightray

…There it is…!

As he was running all over the school grounds, Elliot spotted the white cat in the maple grove. As soon as the cat noticed Elliot, it turned tail and ran deeper into the trees.

“Wa…WAaaaaaaaaaaaaAIT UuuuuuuuuP YOOooooooooooooo!!”

With enough force to completely use up his remaining strength, Elliot launched into a furious sprint…

…Trailing the end of his yell behind him.

“oooooooooooooooooooooouuu—!!”

Ahead of him, the white cat leapt and ran, as lightly as if it were dancing. In contrast, the two words “Catch It” had risen in Elliot’s glittering eyes. The spell “Catch-it-catch-it-catch-it-catch-it” was monopolizing his entire brain.

The sky was getting darker and darker. If he lost sight of the cat again, that would be that. He was going to catch it, no matter what. He was absolutely, positively going to catch it.

Elliot had become a hunting dog completely controlled by the thought “catch it.”

…Maybe that was why.

Ahead of him, the grove ended, and as his field of vision opened up, he saw a building. When the white cat went through the back door and into the building, Elliot ran in after it without a moment’s hesitation.

Chasing the white cat, he dashed down the straight corridor that led from the back door. Before long, the corridor turned left, and he saw a stairway leading up to the second floor. When it came even with the beginning of the stairs, the white cat changed directions with a bound and began to run up them. Like a gale, Elliot rushed up the steps as well.

Taking the stairs three at a time, he followed the white cat into a corridor where the candles had been lit and kept on running. Ahead of him, a bend in the corridor was drawing closer. The distance between him and the white cat was shrinking.

It’s mine! Elliot thought.

Then, from around the bend, still out of sight:

“Ahh, that bath felt wonderful.”

“It’s nice to go in before dinner, isn’t it?”

“By the way, dear, your bust has grown again.”

…He heard voices in conversation.

Coming back to himself as if he’d been struck by lightning, Elliot involuntarily opened the nearest door and dived in sideways. He rolled over and over on the floor, then got right back up, ran to the door, and shut it.

He was in some room somewhere. The room was completely deserted and nearly empty, with only a few wooden crates stacked in a corner.

After a bath?

Busts growing?

It was the sort of girls’ conversation that was never heard in the school building. Confused as he was, Elliot held his breath.

Several voices and sets of footsteps were coming closer.

“…Hmm? Did you hear something just now?”

“Did you? I didn’t hear a thing…”

“It must have been your imagination.”

Ba-dmp ba-dmp. His heart was thudding away. He was afraid they might hear it through the door.

“Oh, the underthings I bought the other day are marvelous.”

“They are a bit too bold, though, don’t you think?”

The voices passed by the door and receded.

Involuntarily turning red at the candid conversation, Elliot held very still. Silence filled both the corridor and the room. As he worked to get his ragged breathing under control, he thought desperately. He’d been so focused on chasing the white cat that he hadn’t even considered what the building he’d run into might be.

But.

Just maybe.

It couldn’t be.

What if.

“I-is this place—” Elliot muttered. His voice was trembling.

And then:

“The girls’ dorm.”

Abruptly, a voice spoke right by his ear, startling Elliot so much that he jumped. When he whipped around toward the voice, his forehead struck another forehead that was right next to him. Sparks filled his vision. When he managed to look, his eyes misting, the person who stood there was…Leo.

“You! Le—… Mmph!”

Elliot had been about to yell, but Leo clamped a hand over his mouth. He put the index finger of his other hand to his lips and whispered, “Shh.

“I was walking around looking for you, and I saw you in the grove. When I followed you, you dashed straight in here. That was a shock. Right into the girls’ dorm. Do you know what’s going to happen if anybody sees you in a place like this? You do know, don’t you?”

“Ugkh.” Elliot could only groan.

The Lutwidge Academy girls’ dormitory.

It was sacred territory, completely forbidden to boys. It was said that a horrible punishment awaited any boy who broke that taboo. No, worse than the official punishment, worse than anything: If word that “The Elliot Nightray sneaked into the girls’ dorm!” were to spread, what would happen to Elliot’s life at school?

A murky image rose in his mind.

No matter where Elliot went, in the halls at school or in the courtyard, the students around him would whisper:

“Oh! That’s Elliot-kun!”

“You’re right, it’s Elliot Nightray!”

“Elliot Nightray, son of the House of Nightray, one of the four great dukedoms!”

“Elliot Nightray-kun, son of the House of Nightray, one of the four great dukedoms, who sneaked into the girls’ dormitory and tried to peep~!”

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh!

Elliot was shaken to the core. His face was the color of despair.

“Yes, yes, calm down.”

Moving deliberately, Leo pinched Elliot’s nose, hard.

“Fugah!” With a weird yelp, Elliot seemed to regain a bit of his sanity.

Breathing hard, he glanced at Leo.

“W-we’ve got to get out of here fast, or else—”

When he’d gotten that far, he realized that something was odd. He’d leapt into the room, closing the door himself.

When he’d entered the room, it had been empty.

Even as he thought this wasn’t the time to be talking about things like that, Elliot had to ask.

“Leo, how did you get in here?”

“Huh? I already told you. I saw you go into the girls’ dorm like a savage beast—”

“‘Like a savage beast’ is uncalled for…and that’s not what I meant!”

Elliot glanced at the room’s window.

From there? No, he was dimly aware that this was the third floor. That wasn’t plausible.

Seeming to pick up on Elliot’s question from his gesture, Leo answered:

“Oh, that.”

In a casual motion, he pointed at the wall. It was just a blank, undecorated wall.

“The wall?” Elliot looked dubious.

“It’s been a long time, but I read a book about the school’s history once. It said that the Lutwidge Academy school building and dorms weren’t originally built to be a school and dorms; they were used for…all sorts of other things. And so there are hidden rooms in them—and hidden passages.”

“You mean…”

“Right. Narrow spaces in the walls between rooms, so that you can get outside without anyone noticing. What was I reading…? I think it was a pretty rare banned book—”

He didn’t care about the circumstances surrounding the book. He was just grateful for Leo’s voracious reading habits. However, begrudging even the time it would take to whoop with delight, Elliot leaned close to Leo, urging him on in a whisper:

“Great! We’ll get out that way, then. Hurry, Leo!”

Finding himself caught by the shoulders and pestered, Leo said, “Okay, okay,” sounding rather disgusted. He crossed to the wall. Just to be on the safe side, Elliot flattened himself against the door, trying to monitor what was happening in the corridor outside. Far away, he could hear footsteps approaching the room. His heart gave a nervous leap.

Leo was patting down the wall. Elliot glanced at Leo and urged him on in a very small voice. “Step it up!” But Leo was touching the wall here and there, then tilting his head in perplexity. Finally, he turned back to Elliot, crossing his arms over his head in an X.

Then, in the same very small voice as Elliot, he said:

“It’s no good. It’s old, and it looks like it broke. The mechanism in the wall won’t move.”

Whaaaaaaaat?! Elliot screamed, silently.

Even as they spoke, the footsteps traveling down the corridor arrived in front of the room. On reflex, Elliot held the doorknob. His heart was pounding fit to explode. Cold sweat trickled down his forehead. And the footsteps…went straight past the room, without stopping. They receded again.

When he couldn’t hear the footsteps anymore and silence had returned, Elliot went limp, collapsing to his knees.

No matter how many lives he had, he thought, it wouldn’t be enough to get him through a crisis like this one.

He looked at Leo with eyes that were growing dim from accumulated fatigue. Leo was gazing vaguely up at the ceiling; there was no telling what he was thinking. He called to him—“Leo”—but there was no response. Leo was a bit like this when he was absorbed in a book. Deciding he couldn’t count on him, Elliot thought.

We’ll just have to risk it and go back the way I came in!

Just as Elliot resigned himself to that tragic idea, Leo murmured:

“I guess it really was that. That banned book.”

Leo brought his eyes down from the ceiling and looked at Elliot.

“I only read it once and it’s been years, so I don’t remember it all that well, but I may be able to find another secret passage.”

“…Seriously?”

“The only one I was sure about was the one I came in by, so… It’ll be a gamble. What do you want to do?” Leo asked, looking Elliot straight in the eye.

Elliot looked back, silently. Leo’s expression was hidden behind his shaggy hair and glasses, and on top of that, the room was dim, so he couldn’t read his face. However, even without looking directly, Elliot knew his valet’s expression as if it were his own. He knew, and it made him want to smile wryly.

You know it’s—

Even in this, a situation that was, in a way, the biggest crisis of their lives.

You know it’s just his usual smug look.

Leo was waiting quietly for Elliot to speak. “Okay,” Elliot said, firming his resolve.

“It’s all up to you. Do it, Leo.”

At that, Leo’s expression softened slightly, and he spoke with a simple, genuine smile:

“—Understood, Master.”

Blue Rose Club

Now this is a bit of a problem…

Josephine sighed, quietly. The Blue Rose Club members’ enthusiasm was dragging on longer than expected. The common room on the third floor of the girls’ dorm was filled with cheerful voices, and the conversation showed no signs of dying down. The dinner hour was drawing near.

She hadn’t thought the topic of Master Blue Rose running around the school would expand this far.

It had begun with Mia’s fantasy.

“I’ve been thinking! Might not Master Blue Rose be secretly fighting against suspicious persons who are attempting to infiltrate the academy?! Wouldn’t that suit him?! Master Blue Rose doesn’t make close friends because he is kind and does not want to involve them in his battle. If so, he might have been running around the school in pursuit of a villain he hadn’t quite managed to defeat… Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

It was a childish bit of make-believe, and quite like Mia.

She’d fully expected the other girls to simply giggle and let it pass without comment. However, after Mia, another girl spoke up.

She seemed a bit embarrassed, as if she were confessing an unrequited love.

“I-in that case, I’ve also imagined something. There was a report that Master Blue Rose had a coughing fit while practicing with his sword in the grove, alone… Last month, wasn’t it? It gave me an idea. Suppose Master Blue Rose is afflicted with an incurable disease and is suffering? And then, every night in the dormitory, ‘the other’ nurses him tenderly.”

At once, delighted cries of “Ooooooooh!” went up.

“That is first-rate.”

“I think the contrast with his strength of will is exquisite.”

“Yes, it’s too, too wonderful.”

“L-listen, my dear, about that incurable illness—”

“A secret known only to Master Blue Rose and ‘the other,’ of course.”

“Of course it is!”

“Of course it is!”

“Of course it is!”

The girls squealed and giggled noisily.

Their excitement was so great that requests for more tea came one after another.

Then another girl spoke, enthusiastically:

“Would you listen to my story, then, too?”

…And a third fantasy began.

This game was both sweet and dangerous: Unlike real reports, they would never run out of material. When the third tale ended, a fourth girl began to speak.

After her came a fifth, then a sixth, and a seventh… Once they had begun, some girls regaled them with several fantasies. Josephine listened. On the surface, she was smiling calmly.

“…And then, you see. I’ve thought of a different development for that yawn which we spoke of earlier. It’s possible that Master Blue Rose really doesn’t sleep at night. You see, although there is no way for us to know, a secret banquet is held in the boys’ dormitory every night, and Master Blue Rose presides over it as king of the night—”

How many stories had there been? She’d lost track of where in the series this girl, the one who’d stood up from the sofa and was telling her tale in clear accents, belonged.

Then, finally, the girl noticed that, although she was smiling gently, Josephine had been silent the whole time. Matilda, seated in the corner, was silent as well, but this was usual for her, and no one paid any attention to it.

“Y-yes, that’s right.”

The girl gracefully resumed her seat on the sofa and stretched out a hand toward Josephine.

“I’d love to hear your story next, Josephine-sama.”

At that, as if they’d just remembered, the girls’ eyes turned to Josephine, and voice after expectant voice spoke: “That’s right.” “Yes.” “Please do, Josephine-sama.” My! Josephine put a hand to her lips, smiling coolly.

“But we’ve spent so much time already… Would anyone mind if we moved on to the main topic at this point?”

At her words, all the girls’ expressions changed: We forgot!

………To be honest, I’d like to relate my Master Blue Rose fantasies, too! I’d like to… But!

Gracefully, without letting these fierce emotions show on the surface, Josephine looked around the circle of members.

Then—austerely, elegantly—she began to speak.

“The time has come to reveal the full content of Project Coronation to you.”

“…Project Coronation?” The girls echoed her words, puzzled.

“Yes,” Josephine said, smiling proudly.

“It is a project I myself and Matilda over there have been carrying out for Master Blue Rose’s sake. I trust you’re all aware of the vote that was held—secretly, yet on a grand scale—among the girls last month? ‘Sparkle! The First Ranking of Boys Most Suited to be Prefect.’ The boy who triumphed over the current prefects for the glorious first-place spot was our Master Blue Rose.”

It was true. Although it didn’t show publically, Master Blue Rose was quite popular, not only with the Blue Rose Club, but with the entire female student population of Lutwidge Academy.

A startling number of girls secretly carried photographs of Master Blue Rose in their student pocketbooks and notebooks.

His popularity with the older students, girls in the fifth and sixth years, was particularly great. Unlike the male students, to the female students, even the shadow he carried as a member of the House of Nightray was no more than a spice that enhanced his fascination.

“As you see, then, this dream belongs, not only to the Blue Rose Club, but to the entire female student body. Prefect is a glorious position granted only to students chosen by this academy. We will do away with Gerald, a prefect unfit for the position, and install our own Master Blue Rose—”

Just as Josephine said those words.

At the phrase “do away with,” the girls gave anxious cries of “My…,” and immediately afterward—

BAM! The door to the common room flew open as if someone had kicked their way through it.

Elliot Nightray

A SHORT WHILE EARLIER.

Having entrusted their escape from the girls’ dorm to Leo, Elliot left the room with him. With Leo in the lead, they made their way down the corridor, carefully and swiftly. When they heard girls’ voices or footsteps approaching, they took cover until they’d passed. They really were skating on thin ice.

They suffered alarm after alarm.

What the heck are we doing…?

They weren’t in any position to laugh at the situation, but Elliot was finding it funnier and funnier.

He and Leo might as well be playing undercover agents.

Just as they arrived in front of a certain door, Leo murmured, “Not good.”

Elliot laid a hand on Leo’s shoulder, making him turn around, and mouthed, What’s wrong?

Pointing at the door, Leo whispered, “This is a common room. There’s a secret passageway entrance in here, or there should be, but…” He sounded noncommittal. It didn’t take Elliot long to notice, too. There were voices beyond the door. Bright, lively voices, flying back and forth. It sounded as if they were having a wonderful time.

The common room was located at a distance from the private rooms where students slept. Students without business here weren’t likely to pass by.

But even so, they didn’t have time to simply wait for the room’s occupants to go elsewhere.

“There’s nothing for it. Leo, let’s think of some other way.”

In response to Elliot’s words, Leo said, “Uh-huh…,” but he didn’t move away from the door.

The longer they stayed in the corridor, the greater the possibility they’d be discovered.

Elliot decided that the best plan was to go back to that unused room one more time and see if they could get the mechanism for the secret passage to work. He tugged at Leo’s arm, trying to get him to retrace their steps. Just as he did so, from inside the common room, he heard a certain phrase.

Almost involuntarily, Elliot spoke the words himself.

“……‘Master Blue Rose’—?”

What was that supposed to be? he wondered. Who was it? The girl’s voice that came to them faintly from the common room sounded rapturous.

“Do you recall that, last month, there was a report that Master Blue Rose had yawned during class? Well, you see… Master Blue Rose is a silver-haired vampire who slips into the girls’ dormitory every night and drinks blood from one of us, and so during the day—”

The speaker’s voice was partially drowned out by high-pitched squeals and giggles.

“Hey, Leo. ………What’s all this?” Elliot asked in a small, thoroughly disgusted voice.

Leo looked back at him. “Umm……”

Even as he waited for Leo’s response, the girls’ conversation continued.

“Let me go next, if you would. I think Master Blue Rose is—”

Elliot kept his voice low.

“……So they’re setting up somebody from our school as ‘Master Blue Rose’ and getting all excited talking about him? It sounds as if they’re adding some crazy stuff, too, like he’s a vampire—Is that actually fun or something?”

“They do sound as if they’re having fun.”

At Leo’s response, Elliot muttered, “Girls make no sense.”

However, he thought, they could do whatever they wanted. It was nothing to do with him. —Not that he knew who their “Master Blue Rose” was.

Elliot thought for a minute.

“Somebody girls like… Would that be Gerald, maybe?”

“In Gerald’s case, it’s more that he pays too much attention to girls than that the girls like him.”

Now that he mentioned it, that sounded about right. Elliot looked convinced. Impressed, he glanced at Leo.

“You really watch other people, don’t you?”

“Not at all. I’m not even interested in them.”

Leo shook his head. “But,” he continued:

“Some things are easier to see when you aren’t trying to look. You see them, whether you want to or not.”

Beyond the screen of his hair and glasses, Leo was smiling faintly.

Elliot knew that Leo wore glasses and grew his hair long to hide his face, not because he didn’t want to be seen, but because he “didn’t want to see” the world. Maybe that was why: Although he was smiling, Leo’s smile didn’t look like a smile at all.

Elliot wondered whether he’d seen what he knew about Gerald and Marcel that way, too. …This wasn’t the time to discuss it, though.

“Well, never mind. Let’s go. For now, we’ll head back to that room—”

Just as Elliot whispered, a new voice began to speak inside the room.

‘Today, I saw a teacher summon Master Blue Rose to the guidance office.’

At those words, Elliot remembered his noon recess that day. He’d also gone to the guidance office, summoned by one of the female teachers. Since he was a member of the House of Nightray, his teachers also paid a lot of attention to him, and they sometimes asked him about this and that.

However, many students were summoned to the guidance office every day.

Students who’d earned warnings for being tardy to class, students being scolded for breaking school rules… Apparently “Master Blue Rose” had been one of them. Elliot had no sympathy for him. The fact that they were having their discussion at his expense this way, amusing themselves with him, meant that, in other words:

The guy gives them way too many openings!

‘I’m quite certain that teacher is after him. When he enters the guidance office, she tries to seduce him. ‘Now then, Elliot-kun. Come to me’—”

Elliot-kun? …………What, ME?!

He felt a violent sinking sensation, as if he were falling.

Then a storm of fierce emotions welled up.

……Wait! Wait wait wait wait. Why!? Why are they talking about me like this? Openings? I don’t have any openings! ……Well, I was prepared for people to talk about me, but as a Nightray, a member of the four great dukedoms, not as…… Or is that why? Did my brothers and sister, or—I can’t see it, but—even my father, go through this? Is this the duty of the elite?!

Elliot’s spine was quivering.

He couldn’t sense anything like malice in the voices he heard. Quite the opposite, in fact.

That didn’t mean he could feel happy about it.

The being he called “himself” was being put to selfish use and used to entertain the girls, as if it were a stuffed animal or something. On his pride as a man, Elliot didn’t think he could take it. The urge to barge in yelling and make them stop was nearly unbearable.

But what would happen if he did? Yes, this was the girls’ dorm, territory where boys were absolutely not allowed.

Calm down, calm down, calm—Rrgh—

He desperately suppressed the torrent of emotions with reason.

“…And then, you see, I’ve thought of a different development for that yawn which we spoke of earlier. It’s possible that Master Blue Rose really doesn’t sleep at night. You see, although there is no way for us to know, a secret banquet is held in the boys’ dormitory every night, and Master Blue Rose presides over it as king of the night—”

What “secret banquet”?! What “king of the night”~~~~~?!!

His emotions sent his reason flying.

Elliot flung his arm up, on the verge of striking the door open……but, at the very last minute, Leo held him back, curbing him with a tiny, sharp, “No, Elliot, don’t. You’ll cause a scene.”

However, as a man, he couldn’t keep silent any longer. Shaking Leo’s arms off, Elliot prepared to beat his way into the common room. Leo blocked him. The two pushed and pulled at each other, scuffling, just barely managing not to make any loud noises.

They’d gone on like that for a few moments when, suddenly, from inside the common room…

A girl spoke in tones that were clearly different from the rose-tinged voices they’d been hearing.

There was a tense silence.

“The time has come to reveal the full content of Project Coronation to you.”

The significant-sounding words woke Elliot from his rampage.

Coronation? He and Leo looked at each other. The word seemed to have caught Leo’s attention as well.

The voice continued:

“It is a project I myself and Matilda over there have been carrying out for Master Blue Rose’s sake. I trust you’re all aware of the vote which was held—secretly, yet on a grand scale—among the girls last month? ‘Sparkle! The First Ranking of Boys Most Suited to be Prefect.’ The boy who triumphed over the current prefects for the glorious first-place spot was our Master Blue Rose.”

What the heck? thought Elliot.

He hadn’t had the foggiest idea that something like that had been carried out in secret, in the shadow of school life.

The glorious first-place spot? Prefect was a tiresome role, and he’d never once wanted to be one.

The voice continued:

“As you see, then, this dream belongs, not only to the Blue Rose Club, but to the entire female student body. Prefect is a glorious position granted only to students chosen by this academy. We will do away with Gerald, a prefect unfit for the position, and install our own Master Blue Rose—”

…………!

Elliot remembered the threatening letter Gerald had received.

Resign from being prefect.

He remembered Gerald on the floor after falling down the stairs.

Gerald seemed to have thought that the culprit was Marcel, but—

It was these guys……?!

Elliot shook Leo off mainly by force and kicked open the door to the common room. The door opened with a terrific bang, and Elliot stalked in. Drawing himself up to his full height in the common room doorway, he denounced them with all the lung power he had:

“I just heard something I can’t ignore, you lot—!!”

It must have seemed like a bolt from the blue.

Every girl in the room froze, petrified. A nearly painful number of shocked glances were focused on Elliot.

Then one girl called Elliot’s name in a choked voice. She was the one who had been speaking about “Project Coronation” a moment before.

In a trembling, slightly hoarse voice, she said:

“…Master Blue Rose…?”

Elliot roared at her, as if to kill that nickname dead:

“Don’t call me stupid names! My name is Elliot… Elliot Nightray, a son of the four great dukedoms!”

He announced his name.

On the pride in his breast.

At that, from behind him, still out in the corridor, Leo said, “Aw…

“This is the girls’ dormitory, protected territory completely off-limits to boys, and you just yelled your name at the top of your lungs. …You’re going to be a school legend, you know.

“Congratulations,” he said. He even clapped.

Letting his seething fury take over, Elliot forced Leo’s words down with a “Who cares?!” When he thought of how Gerald had treated Marcel, Elliot couldn’t forgive him, either. Still, that didn’t mean it was okay to push Gerald down the stairs in what amounted to a surprise attack. And besides—

Grinding his teeth, Elliot pressed them further.

“What’s this about doing away with people, you wretches?! Even for villainy, you’ve gone too far! —Have you no shame?!”

“P-Project Coronation was…something Matilda and I advanced on our own. The other girls had no knowledge of it. Besides, ‘do away with’ was a…an overstatement, made for effect. We didn’t really intend to go that far—”

“Quit making excuses. It’s despicable!”

Elliot glared at the girls’ ringleader, condemnation in his eyes.

Uneasy voices called to her, here and there—“Josephine-sama…”—and Elliot’s gaze traveled across the girls seated on the sofas.

One lone girl was standing in the corner, and she flinched. As if trying to escape from Elliot, she backed up and sat down hard, half-falling onto the sofa. At once, Josephine the ringleader called her name: “Matilda.”

“They’re a group called the Blue Rose Club.”

Leo, who’d still been out in the corridor, spoke as he entered the common room. Coming up beside Elliot, he continued:

“Their formal name is The Society of Young Ladies who Admire Master Blue Rose. They’re your fan club, Elliot. Only…they do seem to have gotten a bit out of control.”

“Ahn? Why do you know that?”

Elliot sounded suspicious, and the girls’ eyes, colored with that same “why,” turned to focus on Leo. “Coincidence,” Leo said, brushing them off, and took a step forward. Through his glasses, he fixed his gaze on each girl in turn.

“Well, Elliot’s looks aren’t that bad, and you could probably call the fact that he’s idiotically straightforward one of his good points. Still, he’s fastidious about weird things, not to mention really proud, quick with his fists, foul-mouthed—”

“Why did you switch to talking smack about me?!”

Leo pretended not to hear Elliot’s complaint. He glanced at Josephine.

“I think you went too far this time. Threatening Gerald, hurting him and trying to get him to abandon his position as prefect… Gerald’s the only sixth-year student in our group, so if that happened, there was a decent possibility that Elliot would be chosen to replace him…”

After a pause, Leo went on.

“But becoming prefect because of something like that…… Did you really think that would make him happy?”

As he spoke, his gaze slid over to Matilda, who was shivering on the sofa.

Then:

“—Did you, Marcel?”

He called a name.

………………………Huh?

When Leo said that name, Elliot’s mind became an overwhelming blank.

He thought he’d misheard, or that Leo had misspoken.

Matilda. Marcel. The names did sound a bit alike, after all. Leo just watched Matilda, steadily.

Matilda looked down, avoiding his gaze; she was trembling. Elliot had no idea what was going on, and all he could do was stay silent. Like Elliot, the other girls also seemed speechless.

“What about it, Marcel?” Leo said the name again.

Elliot stretched a hand out to Leo’s shoulder, as if he’d awakened from sleep paralysis. When he spoke, his voice sounded mildly appalled.

“Leo, what are you talking about?”

“There are no girls named Matilda at Lutwidge Academy. I shouldn’t think anyone knows which class she’s in. …Well, maybe you know, Josephine. You probably arranged this.”

Even as Leo spoke, his voice filled with certainty, Elliot ran to Matilda.

Matilda covered her head with her arms, as if she was afraid she’d be hit.

Her hair was the same as Leo’s: long enough to hide her face. Elliot reached out and grabbed it. Then he yanked as hard as he could. It didn’t take much strength; it rustled and came off Matilda’s head with startling ease. —It was a wig.

The hair and face that peeked out from beneath it certainly did belong to…

“You’re……Marcel!”

It was Marcel—a student in Elliot’s year, who lived in Elliot’s dorm—and his face was the picture of fear. Marcel had always been teased for being more suited to the girls’ uniform than the boys’, and even without the wig, the girls’ uniform didn’t look odd on him.

Of course, Elliot was startled.

However, the shock was probably greater for the girls who had shared their club activities with “her.” At first, a stunned silence hung over the group, but finally a spectacular “Eeeeeeeeeeeh—!?” rang out.

“Come on, Elliot, think back.”

Leo began to speak, in a tone that seemed to say, Can’t you even understand this? But it’s so simple!

“That threatening letter was delivered to Gerald in the boys’ dorm, and that’s also where he was pushed down the stairs.”

“……What about it?” Elliot looked puzzled.

“Just as the girls’ dorm is off-limits to boys, the boys’ dorm is off-limits to girls. It would be much too risky for a girl to go to the trouble of sneaking in, as I’m sure you know. If a girl was going to do something like that, it would have been much safer for her to make the attempt inside the school building. In other words, the culprit had to have been someone for whom being in the boys’ dorm wasn’t a risk: a guy.”

“Well, when you put it that way…”

Leo’s explanation had convinced Elliot, but those were still the only words he could get out.

Leo went on:

“When I heard their discussion from the corridor, all I thought was that they probably had a male accomplice somewhere. However, when we came into the room and I saw him, it clicked. …Well, if I hadn’t heard Marcel’s name from Gerald, even I wouldn’t have caught on.”

Leo glanced at Marcel, smiled cheerfully, and spoke to him: “That looks really good on you.”

Then he added:

“When we left Gerald a bit ago, he seemed set to barge into your room right away. I bet he struck out there and has completely lost his temper right about now. He’d never dream you were in the girls’ dorm.”

As Leo spoke, Marcel was silent, his shoulders trembling.

As if to speak for him, Josephine opened her mouth. In a voice that seemed to say the game was up, she accepted it, and she regretted her actions, she said:

“When he…when Marcel learned of the Blue Rose Club’s existence, he came and said he wanted to join. That was about half a year ago. I was troubled. You see, we conducted our activities quietly, surreptitiously. A group that was all girls save for one lone boy would stand out…… And so I thought I’d turn him away. However, his enthusiasm got the better of me.”

To that end, she’d informed him that, if he wore a wig, donned the female students’ uniform, gave a false girl’s name, and pretended to be a girl, he would be allowed to attend. She also said he’d been required to be quiet, speaking as little as possible during meetings.

And so Marcel had joined the Blue Rose Club as the female student “Matilda.”

Taking up where Josephine had left off, Marcel began to speak, haltingly.

“…I was the one who heard about last month’s vote and proposed Project Coronation to Josephine-sama. I’d always thought that Elliot-kun would make a much better prefect than stupid Gerald-san. If I was going to take care of somebody, serve somebody, I wanted it to be Elliot-kun. That’s why—”

Marcel was unable to continue past that point.

…Because Elliot had grabbed his shirtfront and yanked him up, forcing him to his feet.

Then Elliot pulled Marcel right up to him.

Elliot and Marcel faced each other, so close that the tips of their noses almost touched. A few of the girls seated on the sofas gave tiny, appreciative squeals, but when Leo looked at them, glasses glinting, they hastily fell silent.

Elliot took one slow, deep breath.

“—Marcel. I’m not going to hit you.”

His furious, merciless gaze bored directly into Marcel’s eyes.

Then he continued, his words frankly scornful:

“I won’t, because you aren’t a guy who’s worth hitting yet. I have zero interest in being prefect. However, if I wanted to be one, I’d use my own strength to take the position. It’s just like Leo said. You thought I’d accept being made prefect through underhanded methods like that. That means you could never be my valet. Quit playing me for a fool…!”

At this scathing condemnation, despair spread across Marcel’s face.

Elliot let go, shoving him away. Dropping back onto the sofa, Marcel said, “I’m sorry…” in a trembling voice. Then words seemed to fail him.

A heavy silence filled the common room.

Overawed by Elliot’s anger, no one seemed able to make a sound. However, in the midst of that silence, Leo fixed quiet eyes on Elliot. His lips moved very slightly, forming the words, Such a kind soul, but he didn’t say them aloud, and no one noticed.

Before long:

“And anyway—”

Elliot spoke as though spitting the words out, but there was a fearless smile somewhere in his prickly attitude:

“Valets are a pain in the butt. Leo’s the only one I need.”

After that declaration, he shut his mouth.

Behind him, Leo said, in his usual tone, “I’m well aware of that.” Then, as if to brush away the heavy atmosphere that filled the room, he continued cheerfully:

“Elliot’s a pain-in-the-butt master, too, you see, and you’re delicate, Marcel. I really can’t recommend him.”

Turning to glare at Leo, Elliot grumbled, “Can it.” However, something about his expression made it look as though he was enjoying himself. Then, abruptly, his face went grim again. This time he turned to Josephine, pointing at her.

“You people, too! Your whatever-it-was club. As of today, consider yourselves disbanded! You’re done!”

At that proclamation, Josephine gasped. She leapt up from the sofa.

“Please wait, Master Blue… I mean, Elliot Nightray-sama!”

“No excuses! I’m the one you were having fun chewing to pieces, and I say you’re done!”

“B-but! Would it not be sufficient if Marcel and I alone left—”

Josephine did regret her actions, of course. However, she didn’t seem able to accept that the entire Blue Rose Club should be punished, including the girls who had had nothing to do with the scheme.

That said, Elliot wasn’t willing to give an inch, either.

All Elliot would say was “Disband,” while Josephine kept insisting that no one except herself and Marcel had had anything to do with it. The girls watched this battle for the fate of the Blue Rose Club with bated breath. A threatening atmosphere filled the common room, and the matter showed no signs of being settled anytime soon.

Then: “Hmm……” Leo, thinking hard, seemed to hit on an idea. Slowly, his lips parted.

“In that case, let me relay the final message from Gardener ‘M’ to you.”

At those words, all the female students—and Marcel—stared at him in astonishment.

“Gardener ‘M’? What’s that?”

Only Elliot didn’t understand. “Later,” Leo told him, and continued:

“I also think you should disband. This incident was—”

When he’d gotten that far, Josephine raised her voice: “Wait just a moment!”

Leo looked at her. She was so startled she’d gone pale. In a hoarse voice, Josephine said:

“You’re… You were Gardener ‘M’?”

When Leo nodded, Josephine whirled around to look at Marcel.

“Th-the letters said ‘Don’t pry,’ so I refrained from asking, but… I thought Marcel was the gardener… His name starts with M, after all……”

All the girls turned to Marcel, but Marcel shook his head.

“May I continue?” Leo asked, but there was no reply. Leo tilted his head slightly, perplexed.

“Mm, well, never mind. I’ll continue. —Even if this happened because a few members got out of control, it’s true that the existence of the Blue Rose Club caused it by inviting excessive fanaticism. For that reason, I can’t allow the club to remain, either.”

No one could argue. Everyone looked down, hanging their heads.

“However, each of you is free to consider Elliot something special, to think of him and about him. Even Elliot won’t intrude on your individual hearts and force you to change your thoughts. I really can’t imagine he would.”

“Well, I, uh……”

Emotionally, Elliot still objected, but he couldn’t say it.

As Elliot watched Leo speak in that matter-of-fact voice, he also seemed to see him as he’d been when he was still at the House of Fianna. Leo had called the younger children his brothers and sisters. When one of the older ones had been mean to another child, and Leo had reprimanded them, this was how he’d looked.

In contrast to Elliot, who’d faltered, Josephine hesitantly voiced her lingering regrets.

“But our precious assembly…”

“Yeah, I know. Listen.”

Speaking in a rather light tone, Leo approached Josephine and whispered something in her ear.

When, after a short while, Leo drew back, Josephine’s face wore a sunny smile.

“I understand. Today, as of this moment, the Blue Rose Club is disbanded.”

Her proclamation was delivered with good grace.

On hearing it, disappointment showed on all the girls’ faces. However, no one complained. “That’s that, then,” Leo smiled, turning to Elliot, and conversely, Elliot felt irritation start to build inside him.

It was true that the matter of the Blue Rose Club had been resolved. …But.

Leo had known about the Blue Rose Club.

Leo had introduced himself to the girls as Gardener “M.”

The girls had obeyed Leo’s words obediently.

They were master and servant, and friends on top of that, but it didn’t mean they had to reveal everything to each other.

However, having lots of secrets floating around didn’t feel good.

Irritably, Elliot struck the floor of the common room with the toe of his shoe, crossed his arms, and began the interrogation.

“…Hey. Hurry up and explain all this to me, starting at the beginning. I’ve got the right to hear it.”

“Yes, you do.”

Leo agreed easily.

“Are you planning to stay here, though? The common room may be built to make it hard to hear what goes on inside, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to camp. You were being very loud, you know.”

At Leo’s words, Elliot froze for a moment. Then, with an expression that said as plain as day that their circumstances had slipped his mind, that he’d forgotten they were intruders in the girls’ dorm, he muttered:

“……………………………………………………Oh.”

“Well, I technically did it for you, Elliot.”

They were in a narrow, pitch-black passageway, barely wide enough for one person, when Leo spoke. Elliot, who was walking very carefully ahead of Leo, asked, “For me?”

As Leo had guessed, the common room had held the entrance to a secret passageway. Josephine had operated the mechanism of the entrance to the corridor—which had been, she said, a secret handed down through the years, known only to girls’ dormitory prefects—and let the two of them escape.

As Elliot walked, feeling his way along the wall, he asked again, “What do you mean, ‘for me’?”

“I found out about the Blue Rose Club by chance, a while ago. It was a quiet group back then, but it also felt as if things could get out of hand at any time. I thought about telling you, but you’re terrible at dealing with things like that, so I didn’t.”

Disgusted, Elliot was silent. When he thought back to what had just happened in the common room, he had to admit that Leo had probably made the right call.

“I thought that, as long as they weren’t starved for information, the Blue Rose Club would stay quiet. To keep the pressure from building up, I sent them a certain amount of information from our end on a regular basis under the name Gardener ‘M,’ before they came looking for it. Information about you, I mean. Although, in the end, it looks like they got out of hand anyway.”

“W-w-wait just a minute. ‘Sent them information’………You did?”

“Right. I sent letters about how you tried to leave your vegetables at breakfast; things like that. Girls are really tough to understand, though. I didn’t manage to read them completely.”

“That’s not what I meant! What the hell were you doing, you jerk?!”

Elliot couldn’t help himself: He yelled. He turned around in the darkness, but although Leo couldn’t have been that far away, he couldn’t see him. That meant he couldn’t grab him by the shirtfront.

Leo spoke, calmly:

“If I hadn’t done that, they would have intruded further and further into your private life. Before long, they might have been peeping into our room. You didn’t want that either, did you?”

He spoke without hesitation, and the logic seemed sound. But, Elliot thought. Leo had, without a doubt, been at least a little entertained. “……Haaaaah.” Elliot gave a long sigh, then asked a question that had been on his mind:

“By the way, what’s with the ‘M’? You don’t have an M in your name.”

“Oh, it’s the first letter of ‘menace,’” Leo answered nonchalantly. “It means ‘threat,’ and similar things. —It meant that the gardener definitely wasn’t the Blue Rose Club’s ally.”

In the end, Elliot thought, it had been Leo’s words that had done away with the Blue Rose Club, so “threat” had been entirely accurate. His valet had a rather extreme side to him, and if words alone hadn’t done it, there was no telling what methods he might have used. He didn’t even want to imagine it.

Leo continued, smiling wryly, oblivious to what Elliot was feeling.

“Still, it ended up becoming a weird source of pocket money, and that was a problem.”

Pocket money. The word had come out of nowhere, and Elliot gave a foolish-sounding “Huh?

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“They said it was a gratuity for providing information as the gardener. They always left it where I left the letters.”

“…………I’m so appalled I can’t even— Whoa?”

Possibly because he’d been concentrating on his conversation with Leo, when the dark passageway turned into stairs leading down, Elliot lost his balance and almost fell. Somehow he managed to hang on. The stairs in the secret passage were steep, and if he fell, he wasn’t likely to walk away unscathed.

Now that he thought of it, Josephine had said to be careful of the stairs. Apparently a prefect had fallen down them and died once.

“Man, that’s not safe… Stairs, Leo.”

“Yeah. So you see, I did tell you it wasn’t anything important.”

“—???”

He didn’t know what Leo was saying. However, as he slowly descended the stairs, an unpleasant premonition began to well up in Elliot’s heart. Just maybe, he thought. He was a little afraid to ask, but he did anyway, praying that that wouldn’t be it.

“Do you mean, uh, that…”

“Right. That bookmark I gave you. I bought it with that pocket money. Since I’d earned it selling information about you, I thought that was probably the best thing to do with it. Come to think of it, I wonder where that white cat went. I’d forgotten about it. Well, it’s probably dark outside anyway. I guess we won’t be able to look for it anymore. Right, Elliot? …Elliot?”

“………………………………………………………………………………………………”

No matter how many times he called him, Elliot was silent.

Even he couldn’t put a name to the emotion that churned inside him. It felt a bit like anger, and a bit like embarrassment, and a bit like futility… A little like all of them, or maybe like none of them. He just felt muddled, and dissatisfied, and as if it wasn’t fair.

“Hey, Elliot.”

When Leo called him again, Elliot answered in a voice so low it seemed to echo from the depths of hell.

“A thing like that… Even if we find it, even if I get it back…”

“You’ll throw it away? That’s fine, too; I don’t mind.”

Leo sounded as if he truly didn’t care.

Elliot gave a short groan. Girls entertaining themselves by picking apart his private life over their tea. Money earned in exchange. The bookmark, bought with that money. …In other words, he felt, carrying that around as if it was something important would be the same as approving of what the girls had done. He really and truly couldn’t accept that, and yet…

He’d gotten that bookmark from Leo. He’d been rather—no, very—fond of it.

He’d liked it so much he’d thought he had to get it back, no matter what.

But.

But.

But—

In Elliot’s mind, a balance that held the choices “Throw it away” and “Keep it” on its two scales wavered and rocked, back and forth. It was beginning to give him a mild headache.

They went down, down, down the stairs, until they reached the first floor. Then they made their way by touch again. They’d been told that the secret passageway came out behind the girls’ dorm, in a place that was almost always deserted. As they went, Elliot managed to squeeze out the words that were lodged in his throat, spitting them out by force.

“…That…stupid bookmark! I…… I’ll……I’m……gonna—”

“Toss it? Keep it?”

Leo spoke from behind him. Elliot yelled, a bit desperately:

“I won’t toss it! But I’ll shut it away somewhere, and I’m not going to think about it ever again! I’ll forget it completely!”

At Elliot’s response, from behind him, Leo laughed merrily.

When they got outside, he might actually punch Leo, Elliot thought, as if he were cursing him— And just then, he walked straight into the wall in front of him with a thunk. He hadn’t been looking out for it, and he’d whacked his nose hard. The dull pain made his eyes water.

The dark was partially to blame, but he’d been distracted by Leo behind him, and he apparently hadn’t been paying enough attention to where he was going.

It was the first-floor end of the secret passageway.

“……Oww…… If there’s a wall there, then say so!”

Elliot kicked the silent wall, taking his anger out on it for no good reason. At the kick, the mechanism in the wall creaked into motion, and the door began to swing outward. The wind that rushed into the stagnant passage carried the scent of night air, and it was cold.

Outside, night had fallen, and moonlight streamed down through gaps in the clouds. They were behind the girls’ dorm. It was a simple plot of land, not really fit for the term “garden.”

A lone shape stood there.

Possibly it had been startled when the wall abruptly began to move and opened up: It was frozen, facing the passageway where Elliot and Leo stood. They’d been told that this place was nearly always deserted, but there was someone here… A female student. For a moment, both Elliot and Leo were speechless.

With difficulty, Leo spoke the girl’s name:

“Ada Vessalius…”

Meanwhile, hearing her name, Ada looked at the two who’d appeared and said, “Elliot-kun? Leo-kun? Huh? What?” She sounded confused. Of course she was: Part of it was due to the fact that they’d come out of the wall, but the building they’d emerged from was the girls’ dorm. Ada didn’t seem to understand any of it.

And—

Ada was holding a white cat to her chest. A white cat with a bookmark in its mouth. On noticing it, Elliot yelled involuntarily:

“That cat! Moon!”

“What? ‘Moon’? This little one is Snowdrop… Oh, um, I did make sure to leave him at home this morning, but, um……”

Confronted by Elliot’s menacing glare, Ada explained hastily. However, most of what she said didn’t reach Elliot. All he understood was that the cat’s name was Snowdrop, and that its owner was…

Elliot’s shoulders quivered. Slowly, in a terribly cold voice, he spat out the words, “You’re the owner?” Ada probably meant to answer, “Yes,” but she was so overawed that it came out as “Ye-yesh.”

That said, Elliot didn’t care about the response. The uproar that had taken up his entire day swept across his mind like a whirlwind.

Elliot drew a deep, deep breath, and then:

“It was you, Ada Vessaliuuu

uuus?!!!!”

Ada was petrified. Snowdrop was so startled he jumped and nearly dropped the bookmark.

Elliot’s roar was his last, and loudest, of the day.

Ada Vessalius

THAT WEEKEND. THE FINAL DAY OF
DISCIPLINE REINFORCEMENT WEEK.

“………Haaah.”

Morning classes had ended, and it was the noon recess. Ada leaned against the wall of the corridor and sighed. The corridor was filled with students heading to the cafeteria to have lunch, and students making for the courtyard with buns they’d purchased.

If I wait here, Elliot-kun and Leo-kun should pass by…

She murmured the words in her heart.

Ada was watching the students who crossed in front of her, dazedly, but her mind was elsewhere. She was remembering that night.

The first day of Discipline Reinforcement Week. When she’d met Elliot and Leo behind the girls’ dorm.

She’d patrolled the inside of the school briefly and had been on her way back to the dorm when her pet cat, Snowdrop, had leapt out from a thicket beside her. Ada had been terribly startled; she’d thought he was waiting for her at home. It would have been awful if anyone had seen him, so she’d picked him up and gone around to the back of the dorm.

Then the wall of the girls’ dorm had opened up and those two had emerged. Ada had been horribly startled.

When he saw Ada, Elliot had also looked startled. Then he’d seen Snowdrop.

He’d yelled, “You’re the owner?” at her.

And then—

He got awfully mad at me.

After he’d yelled, Eliot had stomped over to her and, still glaring at Ada, gently removed the bookmark from Snowdrop’s jaws.

Snowdrop had been holding a bookmark, and Ada had wondered whose it was.

“Oh, that bookmark…”

“It’s mine! If you’re his owner, watch him properly! Better yet, don’t bring him to school! In case you didn’t know, let me fill you in: The academy isn’t a second Vessalius residence! And anyway, you’ve shown up everywhere I go today, and all you do is get in the way. You’re an eyesore! Hey, are you listening to me?! Get that vacant look off your face!”

…And so on and so forth, for a very long time.

She thought it was probably the first time she’d ever been criticized so acidly and at such length. Ada had been engulfed by Elliot’s fury, and she’d just stood there, silently, and let him take her to task.

How long had Elliot angrily chewed her out, shaking his friend off when he tried to restrain him?

Finally, possibly because he’d run out of complaints, he’d left with an irritated snort.

After being showered with complaints and abuse for so long, Ada had come to understand something. She knew she might not be very perceptive, but even she’d understood. He might have yelled at her because of the trouble Snowdrop had caused him, but Elliot hadn’t liked her to begin with.

Ada knew about the discord between the House of Vessalius and the House of Nightray. However, she’d thought that, as long as she didn’t pay any attention to it, it wouldn’t matter at all, wouldn’t be anything to do with her.

She’d wanted to be friends with him simply because he was his little brother, and she’d thought that she could.

That hadn’t been the case.

“…Onii-chan…” Ada murmured, quietly.

“I wonder if you could be friends with Elliot-kun…”

She was proud of her big brother. He was intelligent and cheerful, a clever conversationalist, good-looking and reliable, and if he tried…he might have been able to step right over the discord between the two houses and talk freely with Elliot. At that thought, Ada shook her head.

She was acting spoiled. Even though she knew she needed to do her best with what she had—

…But what should she do?

“………Haaah.” Another sigh.

Ada dropped her gaze to the floor of the corridor and thought.

I’ve had them take care of Snowdrop and Kitty properly at home since then…

She’d asked the servants to watch them and make sure they didn’t leave the house. As a result, since that day, the cats hadn’t come to school once. Ada was still mulling over whether or not this was something she should keep up next week.

She thought some more.

Since then, I haven’t spoken to Elliot-kun.

Ada and Elliot were in different years, and as a rule, they almost never interacted. She’d only seen him at school a few times, and if their eyes met, he just glared at her. There really hadn’t been any way for her to speak to him.

I still haven’t…apologized.

She hadn’t apologized for the trouble Snowdrop had caused him. When he’d yelled at her, Ada had just stood there silently, and she’d been in such a daze that, as Elliot and Leo had left, she hadn’t been able to speak to them.

Even if he did hate her. Even if they couldn’t be friends. Even so.

I have to apologize properly—

As Ada hung her head, she heard the sound of footsteps traveling through the corridor.

Abruptly, two of the sets of footsteps stopped beside Ada.

Ada looked up.

Her eyes met Elliot’s, who’d stopped nearby and was glaring at her. Leo was beside him.

“Oh, Elli—”

Just as she spoke his name, she remembered she’d been told not to say it casually, and she faltered.

Her reaction alone had probably been enough to tell Elliot she’d been waiting for him. Elliot’s expression was cross; he only shot a sharp glance at Ada, then made as if to leave. Just as Leo asked him, “Are you sure?” Ada spoke:

“Um, I’m sorry!” She said it vigorously, bowing her head low.

Elliot stopped again and said, “…What do you want?” He sounded irritated.

“Snowdrop caused trouble for you, and I hadn’t apologized yet.”

“…Is that all?”

Elliot spoke coldly. Ada nodded, timidly.

“I don’t need an apology. Come on, Leo.”

From his tone, Ada couldn’t tell if he’d forgiven her or if her apology had been rejected entirely. Prompting Leo to move, Elliot began walking away from Ada. Her eyes fell on the book he had in his hand.

“Holy Knight—”

At Ada’s words, Elliot glanced back. Ada hadn’t expected him to turn, and she hastily said:

“Oh, um, when— When I was little, someone read a children’s edition to me… My big brother had the whole Holy Knight series in his room. He really liked it… I-I’m sure you’d have lots to talk about—”

Ada had involuntarily grown talkative, but under Elliot’s prickly gaze, she trailed off.

“Do you seriously think I’d sit down and chat with a Vessalius man? Anyway, the guy’s dead.”

“Elliot. A little tact?”

Leo reprimanded him. Elliot turned away in a huff, and Ada shook her head. “It’s all right, Leo-kun.” Elliot moved away from Ada, as if he had no more to discuss. As he walked off with Leo, without looking back, he spoke:

“Who was your brother’s favorite character?”

“Huh?” Ada was at a loss.

Elliot had sounded as though he’d asked about something he wasn’t very interested in, just for the sake of asking. He looked as if he’d leave right away if Ada didn’t answer.

Ada hadn’t read Holy Knight since her brother’s disappearance. She didn’t know much about the characters, and her memories were vague, but… She had heard her brother talk about his favorite character. She was fairly sure it had been one of the two characters at the center of the story. Their names were Edgar and Edwin.

One was the protagonist, and one was his valet. —Which had it been?

Flustered and feeling as if she had to say something quickly, before Elliot left, Ada ventured an answer, working from her hazy memories:

“I-I think it was Edwin-san.”

In that instant, Elliot smiled… Or Ada thought he had.

He wasn’t looking at her, so all she saw was a change in the air around him, so slight she thought she might have imagined it. …But.

“I see. Well, if you’d said Edgar, the valet, there really wouldn’t have been any help for him.”

“I-I think…that was it.” Ada really wasn’t confident.

“Never mind. Just because I talked to you a little, don’t think you can just walk up and talk to me next time.”

On that cold note, Elliot left with Leo. Left behind, as she watched them go, Ada ended up thinking it anyway: In a corner of her heart, she thought of her vanished brother. If it had been him. If he were here.

If onii-chan were here, he and Elliot-kun might—

Might overcome the discord between the two houses. Might turn the relationship between the Vessaliuses and the Nightrays…into something good.

Ada thought, as if she was praying to something far away.

Blue Rose Club

THAT SAME DAY, AFTER SCHOOL.

In a corner of the Lutwidge Academy quadrangle was a brick terrace. Girls wandered onto this terrace, with its rows of three-legged tables, one or two at a time. Greeting each other with “Good day to you,” they took their seats. Finally, Josephine arrived as well and settled herself at one of the tables.

“Good day to you,” the others said, and Josephine returned the greeting. The girls at the tables were the members of the disbanded Blue Rose Club.

However, even when all the seats were filled with girls, Josephine didn’t begin the meeting. Quietly, she opened her volume of poetry, listening happily to the conversations at the tables as she read. Of the voices, Mia’s stood out with particular clarity.

In animated tones, she was talking about how Elliot had looked when she’d seen him that day. Bright voices interjected from around her, and laughter rose here and there.

I really am glad, Josephine thought.

That day, in the common room. Elliot and Leo had told them that the Blue Rose Club must disband. Josephine had been having a difficult time accepting this, when Leo had whispered in her ear:

“If individual girls happen to follow Elliot with their eyes, then talk about it, they’re free to do so. And, if those people happen to meet each other, by accident, they might begin to have fun discussing the same topic. Several such people might even gather in the same place. …Every once in a while.”

Yes: The Blue Rose Club was no more.

The students gathered around the tables just happened to be girls who admired the same student. That was all. As a result, Josephine didn’t declare the beginning of any meeting, and she didn’t lead.

“And so, you see, just then, Master Blue Ro— I mean Elliot-senpai, was terribly gallant!”

As the name they’d decided not to use anymore almost slipped out, Mia stuck out her tongue slightly.

Josephine found the sight charming.

There was no order: Each individual simply spoke as she pleased, and listened, and the time passed peacefully. When the girls seemed to have finished talking, and the terrace was enveloped in an atmosphere of satisfaction, Josephine closed her book of poems.

“All right, ladies. Shall we?”

Her words were met with a delighted, collective “Yes.” Josephine made her announcement:

“Let the first meeting of The Society of Young Ladies who Admire Master Black Rose—the Black Rose Club—begin.”

“Nn? What’s the matter, Leo?”

Elliot, who’d been lying on his bed in their room in the boys’ dorm, spoke to Leo, who was sitting on the floor reading a mystery. Leo, who was immersed in the story, had suddenly shivered and hunched his shoulders up, as if he’d grown cold.

“Oh, no, it’s nothing.”

As he murmured, Leo looked around uneasily. His expression didn’t seem entirely convinced.

“…I just got this abrupt chill.”

Elliot had stormed into the common room.

Leo had followed him in.

Leo had covered for Elliot’s fierce, stubborn actions with intelligent words, calmly and easily, and as they watched him, the hearts of the girls of the Blue Rose Club had beaten faster. “Master Black Rose” was the courtesy title they’d bestowed on Leo.

“Now then. Although this is the monumental first meeting of the Black Rose Club, there is one thing we must do first.”

At Josephine’s words, the girls nodded, and their eyes turned toward a certain empty seat at one of the three-legged tables. It was the seat where Matilda, the consistently inconspicuous member of the Blue Rose Club, had often sat.

Matilda…or rather, the male student Marcel, wouldn’t be appearing here anymore. He’d said so himself.

“Elliot-kun is kind. Back then, he said, ‘You’re not yet worth hitting.’ ‘Not yet.’ I want to become the type of guy who’s worth hitting… A guy who can fight, who can meet him on equal terms. …And so I’m going to quit looking at him simply as someone to idolize.”

Even after learning that Matilda had really been a boy named Marcel, the girls had been sad to see him go, and they had wished him well.

“Now then, my dears. Shall we go?”

At Josephine’s words, the girls stood. Then, with Josephine in the lead, they began to make their way to a certain destination.

There had been more to what Leo had whispered to Josephine in the common room.

“I know I told you to disband, but there’s one thing I’d like your group to do for me. Gerald’s been harassing Marcel. Would you help stop it?”

She’d had no reason to refuse.

When she’d told the other girls, they’d immediately promised to help, for Marcel’s sake.

And so—

Gerald was still in the school building. When Josephine and the girls surrounded him and denounced him, he tried to play innocent.

“Why, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

However, when he realized that wasn’t going to work, he grudgingly admitted it. Gerald was constantly and painfully conscious of the female students. The result, apparently, was that he didn’t want to harass Marcel badly enough to risk making enemies of Josephine and the other girls.

After that…

It goes without saying that the girls were thrilled:

“The leadership Master Black Rose displayed in entrusting this matter to us was absolutely perfect, wasn’t it!”

Epilogue

It was a faint, distant sound, still out of reach. A sound from somewhere in the future.

One afternoon, about two months after Discipline Reinforcement Week.

………What was that?

Elliot had been lying on the sofa, dozing, with an open book over his face to shut out the light, when something pulled him back to wakefulness. He thought, perplexed.

He was on the fourth floor of the school building, in the anteroom next to the piano studio. The room wasn’t off-limits to students, but for some reason, there were no students who used it regularly, which made it a nice, private, nearly secret spot. It had good sofas for sprawling out on, and Elliot often came here with Leo during the noon recess and commandeered the room all for himself.

……At first, it really had been just a “nearly secret spot,” but the truth was that, at this point, students were careful to keep away from it because it was rumored to be “Elliot Nightray’s favorite place”—not that Elliot knew this.

Still not sure what had awakened him, Elliot drifted again.

As he fell back into sleep, in a corner of his mind, he thought:

Oh, right. I’ll have to get Holy Knight back to the library soon—

He’d checked the book out two months ago, but between this and that, he hadn’t yet returned it. He’d already had it far longer than the Lutwidge Academy library allowed books to be checked out. If he didn’t return it soon, he’d probably start getting complaints from the library assistants.

He had it in his bag, he thought, so all he’d have to do was head over to the library later.

He heard a knock at the door. The anteroom had two doors: one that led to the adjacent studio, and one that opened into the corridor. The knock had come from the second door.

He sensed it when Leo, who’d been sitting on another sofa reading a book, stood up and walked over to the door.

The door opened with a click.

Immediately, he heard several sets of loud, agitated footsteps in the corridor. Elliot thought it might have been the faint echoes of this noise, coming to him through the wall, that had disturbed his nap.

In a voice tinged with faint disgust, he said:

“What’s going on? It’s so noisy.”

Leo had been talking to the student who’d come to the room. He shut the door, answering as he did so.

“It would seem that intruders have somehow entered the academy, Elliot.”

“…Huuh?”

At the unexpected response, Elliot lifted the book from his face and sat up. “What do you mean, ‘intruders’?” he asked, but Leo only shook his head. “How should I know?”

“Well, whatever. The teachers or the disciplinary committee will deal with it.”

“You’re probably right.”

“Leo, we’re going to the library. I forgot to return a book.”

“Sure,” Leo answered. Elliot stood.

“Nn!” As he stretched lightly, his eyes fell on the musical score he’d tossed onto the end of the sofa. He cracked his neck, yawning a little. Elliot picked up the booklet of music, tapping his shoulder with it, and glanced at Leo.

“Before that, come hang out with me for a bit.”

“Mm.” He gestured to the door that led to the studio with his chin, inviting Leo to come play piano for four hands.

Leo nodded.

“Besides, if the intruders hear your music, it may purify their hearts and convince them to let themselves be caught.”

“Moron. It’s not that kind of music.”

“Are you sure? Well, maybe it will get their attention and draw them here.”

“What, we’re supposed to catch them and turn them over to the teachers? What a pain,” Elliot grumbled.

With the score tucked under his arm, he crossed to the door that led to the studio. Leo followed. Elliot didn’t play the piano every time they used this room during the noon recess. Most of the songs he played were pieces he’d composed himself.

Elliot didn’t know whether he had a knack for composing or not. He didn’t care.

In any case, he’d never written a song with the intent of letting lots of people hear it. He only tidied up melodies that popped into his head, to give to his family.

“What are we going to play?”

“Oh, you know—”

When they visited the library after finishing their duet, it was deserted.

Under ordinary circumstances, there should have been a library assistant in the information corner, at the very least. It might have had something to do with the fuss about the intruders, or maybe it was coincidence. He really should have completed the return procedures, but Elliot thought it would probably be okay if he just put the book back where it belonged.

It was the library assistant’s fault for not being here when he’d come to return it, he thought. Immediately after entering the library, Leo had wandered away from Elliot, heading off into the stacks. To Leo-the-bookworm, the fact that the library was deserted meant only that it was a nice, quiet place to read.

Deciding to leave Leo to his own devices, Elliot took the book he was returning and headed toward an inner stack.

In front of the shelf he wanted, he saw a lone figure.

It was a male student, blond and a little on the short side… About as tall as Leo. He seemed glued—eagerly, excitedly—to the row of Holy Knight books on the shelf.

He was exclaiming (“Whoa!” “Awesome!”) at every little thing, although it shouldn’t have been that unusual to see all the volumes of a work as popular as Holy Knight in one place.

Maybe he’s from way out in the sticks?

He thought this, even as he felt that something about the idea clashed with the atmosphere the boy wore.

Elliot walked up to him. The boy must have been completely engrossed; he didn’t notice a thing. He seemed to be examining the toothless gap where the volume Elliot had borrowed should have been. He murmured, sounding perplexed:

“—But… Huh? There’s a volume missing…?”

“Aah, sorry.”

Elliot spoke from behind the boy, coming up to stand next to him. As he returned the volume in his hand to that gap, he said:

“I’d borrowed it just now.”

The boy apparently hadn’t noticed Elliot’s approach until he spoke to him. He stepped away from the shelf, mildly startled, and looked at Elliot. Elliot also shot him a sidelong glance, his expression cold. The boy had bright golden hair and deep green eyes. His features seemed childlike, and yet there was something about them that made him look a bit philosophical.

Elliot didn’t recognize his face; this was the first time he’d seen it. Of course, Elliot didn’t know every single student at Lutwidge Academy, so this wasn’t all that unusual.

“…Do you…”

Elliot spoke to the blond boy, who was watching him silently.

“…like this series…?”

Just as he said it…

—Tunk.

Elliot felt as if he’d heard a sound, inside his head.

What was that?

It was a very small sound. …Or maybe a faint feeling. Something so slight it would have been easy to think, It’s my imagination, and forget about it right away.

“Eh… Yeah, I love it…”

The blond boy answered Elliot’s question…

…And the hand of fate began to move.

~ Fin ~