Chapter 67: Volume 3 - CH 1.3

St. Marguerite’s Grand Library.

At the back of the academy’s spacious, gently-sloping campus, stood one of Europe’s most prestigious halls of knowledge, with more than three hundred years of history behind it. The stone tower, shaped like a polygonal tube, its color faded by the elements, looked like a silent giant from its lofty perch, looking down on the entire campus.

The tower was of such a simple construction that one would wonder where the entrance was, but as you approached it, you would notice a leather door with brass rivets.

It was hollow inside, with a ceiling of dizzying height. Every wall was lined with bookshelves, filled with tens of thousands of thick, leather-bound books.

Solemn religious paintings covered the ceiling, but what really arrested attention was the wooden staircase, narrow and oddly-shaped.

A maze of stairs.

According to one theory, this place was a labyrinth that led to the heavens, built with precise calculations at the beginning of the 17th century by the then King of Sauville. A henpecked husband, he built a small room at the top of the tower to keep his clandestine meetings with his young and beautiful mistress from being discovered. He also built a maze of stairs so that no one but themselves could ascend to the top.

Today, a hydraulic elevator, installed during a partial restoration, sat at the end of the hall. But only faculty and one special student were allowed to use it.

Victorique de Blois, the special student, was reading from the top of the library again today, her long, golden hair hanging down like Rapunzel.

The topmost room, which was once a bedroom where the king and his mistress indulged in each other’s company, had now been completely remodeled and turned into a small, pleasant conservatory. Tropical trees and large, garish flowers glittered under the light streaming in through the skylight.

Between the conservatory and the landing of the stairs lay an extravagant porcelain doll of a young girl. Nearly life-size, it was about 140 centimeters tall, garbed in a satin aqua-blue dress overlaid with a bouquet of dainty laces. Her long, magnificent, golden hair, like an untied turban, cascaded down the floor. Her tiny feet were wrapped in boots embossed with rose patterns.

Her face, looking slightly downward, was impassive. Her bright, emerald eyes seemed to stare wistfully into some distant shore. A beautiful face wearing a ruthless expression.

The small, porcelain doll—no, the girl who looked like a doll herself—brought a ceramic pipe to her mouth and smoked it.

A wisp of white smoke drifted toward the skylight, rippled by the occasional gust of wind.

Victorique de Blois—St. Marguerite Academy’s Princess Locked in a Tower.

For reasons unknown, she was not allowed to leave the academy, and perhaps as a way of protesting, she never attended any classes. She was a very beautiful and very mysterious creature who spent most of her time reading in this conservatory.

As always, several thick books were laid out in a circle in front of her. Smoking her pipe, Victorique read at a rapid pace.

It was like a scene straight out of a painting, seemingly unreal, as though she had been there for a hundred years. Whenever Victorique reached out to turn a page of the book, there was a faint rustling of her striking satin dress, the only sound in this otherwise silent sanctuary.

But soon, an intruder disrupted her beautiful, still image.

Noticing an approaching presence, Victorique lifted her head. It was a movement akin to a wild animal. A fish forewarning of an earthquake. A critter sniffing the scent of a predator. A migratory bird heralding the coming of winter.

Her brows slightly furrowed.

A loud bang came from far below, around the library hall. Someone had opened the door and entered.

There was silence, as though whoever was down there was listening closely if anyone was around.

“Victorique?” a small voice called. “Are you there?”

The voice belonged to a boy.

Victorique frowned a little. “Of course I’m here.”

Her voice sounded peculiar—husky, like that of an old woman. There was a sharp glint in her eyes somehow distant from reality, like an old-timer who had already lived several decades. The impression she gave was a stark contrast to her tiny, doll-like appearance.

The rhythmic sound of footsteps indicated that the boy—Kazuya Kujou—had started climbing up the stairs. Like a straight-laced, straight-A student, his footsteps were steady and constant.

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Victorique listened to the sound of his footsteps as she smoked her pipe.

Suddenly, she heard a faint yelp, followed by the sound of something tumbling down the stairs. Startled, Victorique leaned over the railing and looked down.

She could not see Kazuya. He seemed to have tripped on the stairs and stopped short somewhere.

“Help! Victorique!” he cried. “Why am I even bothering? You’re never going to help. I know that all too well. Just wait there for me!”

Victorique shrugged and resumed reading as though nothing had happened.

Several minutes later.

Kazuya Kujou arrived at the conservatory, breathing hard.

Wiping the sweat from his forehead, he trotted happily, but tiredly, toward his little friend Victorique, who was reading a book.

“I tripped on my way up,” he said, sitting down next to her in a familiar motion. “Since I always climb these stairs, I got distracted. Gotta stay alert at all times. I bet you’d die if you fall from somewhere high up.”

Victorique snorted loudly.

For a while, Kazuya just stared at his friend’s cold face with a grin.

“Oh, by the way,” he said finally.

He got up and started collecting the candy wrappers that Victorique had left scattered on the floor. Victorique lifted her head for a moment and watched Kazuya, then turned her gaze back to her book.

“Did you receive a letter from your sister?” she asked.

Kazuya tucked the wrappers into his uniform’s pocket. “I did. I went to the post office and got one. But it was a very long letter… Wait a sec. How’d you know?”

“The same as always. Through the Wellspring of Wisdom,” Victorique replied wearily. She was about to flip through the book, when she pulled her hand back and balled both hands into fists. “Nothing is impossible to my Wellspring of Wisdom. Even if I am simply sitting here, I know everything. My heightened senses gather fragments of chaos from the world around me. The Wellspring of Wisdom then toys with them to stave off my boredom, reconstructing them, leaving only hard facts. The process brings me pleasure on the daily, and sometimes, if I feel like it, I may even verbalize them so that a simpleton like you can understand. It’s often too much trouble, though.”

Kazuya clicked his tongue in response.

“It’s elementary. I can tell by the package you’re carrying that you went to the post office. If it were a letter from your father or brothers, you would be miserable right now, but today you look happy. Thus one can assume that the letter is not from them.”

“Well, when you put it like that, I guess it’s simple.”

Kazuya sighed and hugged his knees. He picked up one of the candies lying on the floor, peeled off the polka-dot wrapper, and tossed it into his mouth. The candy was bigger than he had expected. Chewing, he glanced at his little friends’ face.

Victorique de Blois. A mysterious girl, who called Kazuya Kujou—a foreign student from an island country in the Orient, recognized as a brilliant student by academy staff—a simpleton.

Normally, Kazuya would never allow any other student to insult him. He had come to Sauville as a student representing his own country, and he had excellent grades to back it up.

But for some reason, when this little girl who had never attended class—yet somehow able to skim through difficult books with ease—said it, he couldn’t refute her.

This was partly due to the fact that when he first met Victorique, she was able to get to the bottom of an incident in which he was involved. In all of their subsequent adventures, she was logical and articulate, and her Wellspring of Wisdom quickly reconstructed fragments of chaos and verbalized them.

And yet, Victorique had a helpless side to her. She had to exert all her strength just to lift even a small chair.

Kazuya found himself stunned by Victorique’s mysterious mind, and deeply hurt by her insults, but rushed to her aid when she needed it.

Kazuya’s pride, his common sense, and his hidden kindness had all been running at full tilt in the months since he had met her. Even now, he could not decide whether to get angry at Victorique for her blunt attitude, or stay around. He just stared at her cold little face, chewing on a big piece of candy.

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