Chapter 83: Volume 3 - CH 5.1

—Bedroom 4—

St. Marguerite Academy, far from the reach of Saubreme’s hubbub, lay in silence at the foot of the mountains.

The faculty room on the first floor of the large U-shaped school building was the most modest and practical room in this otherwise luxurious school. The desks, chairs, wallpaper, and other furnishings were sparsely decorated. The whole space was brown overall.

On the large desk in the middle sat a young, petite woman. Ms. Cecile. She was grading exams, reading the students’ answers and expressing her admiration at some of them.

“I’ve been at this for hours and I’m still not done,” she grumbled. “I wonder why… Maybe dwarves are coming at night adding papers to the stack.” She looked up and sighed.

The phone on the wall started ringing. She quickly got up and picked up the receiver.

The operator told her that someone was calling from Saubreme’s police department. For a moment Ms. Cecile was rattled, but when she heard Kazuya’s voice on the other end of the phone, she calmed down.

“Oh, it’s you,” she mumbled in relief. “Did you want to hear Victorique’s voice again?”

“Yeah. Let’s just go with that.” He didn’t sound very genuine. Ms. Cecile smiled. “I’ve been away from Victorique for a day, and I’m just dying to hear her voice. Happy? I’m in a hurry, so please give her the phone.”

“Okay. I’ll be back in a minute.”

What’s he so mad about? Ms. Cecile wondered.

Darkness was creeping in on the huge flowerbed maze in the corner of the campus. White, and pink, and yellow petals swayed uneasily in the wind.

Past the labyrinth, in a small bedroom of a small house, Victorique was curled up inside the comforter of her canopied bed, not moving an inch.

Ms. Cecile opened the door softly and peered inside. Staring at the bulge on the comforter, she murmured, “Is that her?” She poked it with her finger.

“Who is it?” came a husky, arrogant voice from under the covers.

“You have another call.”

“Oh, it’s you.” Victorique shifted.

After the painful injection, she returned to bed and fell asleep. Either the medication proved effective, or she fainted from the shock. She felt like she just had a strange dream, but she couldn’t remember what it was.

Victorique opened her eyes, but her vision was still blurry from the fever. Her head also hurt, and she could not think straight.

“I’m done with you,” she hissed vacantly.

“Is that so? But you’re good friends with Kujou, right?”

“He’s… my stupid servant, yes.”

“Oh, okay. If you say that to him, he’ll get angry. You don’t want him angry, right?”

“Indeed. He’s so annoying when angry.”

Victorique slowly rose from the bed and poked her head out from under the covers. Ms. Cecile looked surprised. Victorique brushed the long golden hair out of her face with her small hands, frowned at her sweaty nightgown, and then turned to Ms. Cecile.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Your face is beet red.”

“…”

“Was the shot not effective?”

“Phone… phone… phone…”

Victorique rose to her feet, but staggered and fell on her buttocks. It felt as if someone had slapped her small and round bottom. She almost cried from the pain, but she held back the tears and stood back up.

She wobbled again, so Ms. Cecile put Victorique back on the bed.

“Just stay in bed,” the teacher said. “I’ll tell Kujou myself.”

Victorique frowned. “I’ll take the call,” she said stubbornly.

“No, you can’t.”

“I said I’m taking the call!”

Hugging a large pillow, Victorique tottered to the next room.

“Victorique! Are you there? What took you so long? I bet you were reading a thick Latin book again, eating macaroons, saying ‘Who’s Kujou?’. Hello?”

After all that effort of picking up the phone, Victorique felt like hanging up now.

Stupid Kujou… Always with the annoying tongue. And he’s even worse over the phone…

Only the fever prevented her from cursing at Kazuya.

Before she could speak, Kazuya said, “We have a huge problem over here. And I mean huge. People are disappearing from a department store, a girl was rambling on about demons before she fainted, and this room in the department store changed completely. So—”

“Kujou…”

“What?”

“I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m hanging up.”

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As she was about to put down the receiver, she heard Kazuya scream. Frowning, Victorique reluctantly brought the phone back to her red ear.

“Don’t hang up, please! I need your help!”

“No, you don’t.”

“I truly believe you’re a kind girl who cares about her friends.”

“You’re not fooling me.” She was holding the heavy receiver with shaky hands. Her legs were wobbly, and her arms were getting tired, so she sat down on the floor and leaned against the wall. “Explain it to me,” she said in between gasps.

“Really?”

“Yes. I am bored. It better be an interesting case.”

“It is. It’s a strange case, and I can’t make heads or tails of it. But I don’t know how you’d feel about it. I still don’t know what it would take to stave off your boredom. Sorry.”

“No need to apologize. Start from the beginning. What you said just now made zero sense.”

She could hear Kazuya taking a deep breath. Breathing heavily, Victorique listened carefully.

Kazuya began recounting everything.

A female classmate had told him about stories set in Saubreme, the capital of the Kingdom of Sauville. A young lady entered a department store’s fitting room and disappeared, leaving only a bloody head, and someone disappearing after following what seemed like a lost child. There was also a story about a killer pretending to be a hobo, walking around with children’s corpses in their clothes.

Kazuya also told her about how he met Inspector Grevil de Blois on the train to Saubreme. The inspector told him about the frequent disappearances happening in Saubreme over the last few years, a case dubbed “Those Who Vanished Into the Darkness.” He thought that perhaps the stories were based on real incidents.

Inspector Blois was asked by the Saubreme Metropolitan Police Department to investigate the smuggling routes of art works that disappeared during the war.

Kazuya, upon arriving in Saubreme, got lost in Jeantan and entered a strange room. When he returned with the police, the room had changed, and a girl he saw had been replaced by a mannequin. The sales staff insisted that they had not seen him before.

Later he met the girl again, and she was scared. She claimed she was dragged into the looking glass through the fitting room, and that others with her were being sacrificed in demonic rituals.

“Achoo!”

While listening intently, Victorique sneezed.

“What was that?” Kazuya asked, startled.

“Achoo! Achoo! Achoo!”

“Are you sneezing? What a weird sneeze!”

Victorique slammed down the phone, breathing hard. Her fever was rising.

Ms. Cecile appeared. “Victorique, it’s Kujou again.”

“Hmm?”

“He’s very mad. Did you have a fight?”

“He’s mad? The nerve!”

Breathing hotly, Victorique took the receiver with trembling hands, then crouched down on the floor again. She shivered.

“What is it?”

“Why did you hang up?! You idiot!”

“What?!” Victorique gave a start.

“Listen,” Kazuya said. “If you hang up again, we’re done.”

Victorique was on the verge of tears. “I don’t want that,” she said shakily.

“Me neither! Wait, what?”

Kazuya sensed something wrong.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, creeped out. “The Victorique de Blois I know is not this meek. Are you not feeling well? Oh, right. You caught a cold this morning. Did your temperature go up?”

“It did,” she growled.

For a while Kazuya rambled on about some incomprehensible cold remedy from his country. “Sauville leeks should be fine. You stick two of those in your nose. And sour pickled fruit in your belly button. Also… Hello? Are you listening? I guess you don’t really care, huh? Oh, you got a shot? You should be good, then. Must’ve hurt, huh? You cried from a forehead flick, after all! Hello? Are you mad at me?”

“I will never help you even if you were in mortal trouble.”

“You’re such a handful. If you don’t help, then you’re just another mean girl.”

Victorique’s green eyes widened and grew moist. Squeezing the receiver tight with both hands, she said, “I-I’m not mean…”

“Then help me!”

Kazuya was bossier than usual, and a little mean. Her mind hazy from the fever, Victorique realized that he was acting brash because he was talking to her over the phone from somewhere far away. Her eyes glinted. She was thinking about how to torment Kazuya once her fever broke and he returned to the academy.

“Kujou,” she said. “Find a paperweight.”

“…For what?”

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