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.”
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.