Chapter 164: ~Chapter 58~ Part 1

I threw my curtains open to be greeted by the light of the morning sun... except not really, because the sky was still completely overcast. I opened the window as well and stuck a hand outside.

"Oh great, it's still raining," I grumbled to myself before closing the window and wiping the drizzle off my hands onto the back of my pants. It was such a nice morning too, why couldn't the weather match my mood for once?

I shook my head and put such irrational thoughts aside for the moment in favor of continuing my morning routine. PC turned off? Check. Schoolbag packed for the day? Check. Mysteriously well-ironed school uniform? Check. My umbrella? Now, we had a problem.

After rummaging through my room for a while, I still couldn't find one, so I did the logical thing and checked the entryway. On my way there, I ran into Snowy preparing her lunchbox, and after the customary head pat, I finally reached my destination and searched every nook and cranny in the room.

My efforts bore fruit, as I soon found an umbrella. On the other hand, it was only a single one, which posed a different kind of problem, namely that there were two of us in the house.

"Hey, sis?" I called out as I walked back into the living room. In the meantime I also absently inspected the thing in my hand. It was huge, black, and with a hooked handle, the kind that Mary Poppins would hold onto as she flew off into the sunset. It was also heavy enough where I figured it could serve as an impromptu self-defense weapon. Seriously though, this thing was so solidly built I imagined it could stand in for a parachute if push came to shove.

Meanwhile, my sister stuck her head through the kitchen door with a curious look on her face, so I asked her, "Do you have an umbrella of your own?"

Her brows furrowed at my question before she completely entered the living room and shook her head.

"No, I don't think so. I never needed one until now."

"Well, that's a pickle, because this is the only one we have, and the rain doesn't look like it would let up any time soon."

She glanced between me, and then her umbrella in my hand, and at the end of the day she timidly proposed, "We could share that one. It looks big enough."

"Sure, but it's a trope I don't really want to deal with," I replied, earning me a funny look in return, so I hastily shook my head and told her, "That said, it's not like we have much of a choice in the matter."

With that sorted out, she went back into the kitchen to finish packing her snacks. Once she was out of sight, I stretched my back a little and then glanced at the clock. We were still quite early, but considering that I still had to pick up Judy, and then Elly after that, it never hurt to get moving soon-ish.

With that in mind, I put on my outerwear, put my phone away, and put up with waiting for Snowy to do the same (I kid, she was done quite fast), and once the morning routine was well and truly over, we closed the door behind us and headed out. My sister, naturally, took shelter under my enormous umbrella; it's big, black bulk sheltering us both from the outside world. I think there was a metaphor hidden in that somewhere, but I was still a little brain-dead after the previous day's overexertions, so I didn't even try to unravel it.

On our way to Judy's place, I couldn't help but let my mind wander and make small, inconsequential observations left and right. For starters, even after two months, the streets were still impeccable as ever. Scratch litter or dust; not even any puddles were left behind by the rain. In retrospect, that wasn't too surprising, considering that those generally formed in indentations or potholes on the road, but since everything was still brand sparkling new, there obviously weren't such imperfections present. Well, either that, or the invisible ninja maids not only swept but also mopped the road whenever nobody was looking. One or the other.

Aside from that, we also had a lot more placeholders on the street, especially considering the weather. The variety of them also increased a lot; we had everything from elementary schoolers in bright yellow raincoats and office workers in business casual, to housewives carrying bags with obligatory baguettes and celery sticking out of it and even the occasional high-schoolers with matching uniforms and colorful umbrellas over them. All in all, the streets finally felt completely natural... save for the uncanny cleanness, but hey, it was still progress.

While I mused about these things, we unceremoniously reached our first stop on our daily commute. We came to a halt in front of the picket fence in front of Judy's house, and a couple of seconds later, their front door opened to reveal my girlfriend's absurdly youthful mother.

"Good morning, cubbies! Judy will be here in a second!" She greeted us with an energetic wave of her hand holding a pair of wooden-handled metal grill tongs. No, I don't know why this was her 'thing', but I have long since accepted it. Also, for the record, 'cubbies' are supposed to be us. Don't ask why; she just started calling me 'cubbie' one day (it had something to do with my name having to do with lions, and lions having cubs or something), and since Snowy was my sister, we both turned into 'cubbies'. Some say I have an odd naming sense, but that was still a stretch even by my standards.

Anyhow, I thanked her and we waited for my dear assistant to arrive. It really didn't take long, as she soon burst through the door holding a small, foldable white umbrella featuring some kind of brand logo; a big-eyed cartoonish teddy bear, with a snazzy green bowler hat. It looked vaguely familiar, and it took until Judy walked over to us for me to finally remember where I saw it.

"Did you get that umbrella from the amusement park?" I inquired, and my girlfriend gave me a curt nod.

"It was one of the consolation prizes during the shooting game," she told me as she opened it up, and now that I could take a better look, it was indeed one of the park's many mascots.

"Oh, so I was the one who actually won that? Sorry, after the tenth or so attempt to get your owl plushie, I completely ignored the other prizes and—"

"Never mind that," Judy cut me off as she stood in front of us and made a vague gesture in our direction. "What's this?"

"What's what?" I asked back reflexively, head tilted juuust a smidgen to the side and one brown raised high.

"You're sharing an umbrella," my assistant pointed out in a flat voice that still sounded more than a tad sulky to me.

"Is there a problem with that?"

"Of course there is," Judy declared with one hand on her hips. "That's something you do with your love interest. That's me."

"I'm fairly sure you are way beyond that category, but putting semantics aside… do you seriously want to invoke that tired old trope on purpose?"

My incredulous rhetorical question was met by a completely serious nod.

"Not all tropes are bad, Chief," she reproached me with a huff, and then explained, "Walking under the same umbrella became a trope because it's inherently a very heartfelt and romantic situation. Just because it's overused, it doesn't mean it's bad and shouldn’t ever be invoked."

"That's true, I suppose, but that doesn't mean you have to invoke it," I countered, only to be dismissed out of hand.

"No Chief, we must. I believe the most surefire way to solidify our relationship against outside threats is by purposefully engaging in wholesome romantic tropes."

"Do we really have to though? Do we really?"

"Yes," she replied on no uncertain terms. "It's about time we start exploiting some of the more benign tropes by manually enforcing them."

I was under the impression that I had been doing that for a while now, but my protests fell on deaf ears as Judy unceremoniously wedged herself between me and Snowy. It was getting a little crowded, but then she turned to my sister and presented her umbrella to her.

"Here, Neige. You can have this."

"Hey!" I immediately protested. "Dormouse, you are being really, really rude right now."

"I detest your accusation, and I will see you in civil court over defamation charges," she responded off-handedly, but then she finally noticed my less than amicable expression, and she hurriedly continued with, "Excuse me. What I meant to say was, 'Neige, I wish to trade your place by the Chief's side for this limited edition Bonta Jr. umbrella'."

"Come again? What the heck is a 'Bonta'?" I complained, but I was immediately overruled.

"Hush, Chief. I'm negotiating." After proclaiming so, she turned back to my sister and added, after reaching into her pocket, "I'm also willing to throw in this limited edition Kowalski Jr. keychain."

She dangled the small plastic figurine of a penguin wearing a top-hat and monocle in front of my hapless sister, and to my sincerest bafflement, her eyes instantly lit up with greed.

"Can... can I really keep both?"

"Yes," Judy confirmed with a big nod.

"For good?"

"For good," my assistant nodded again.

After only half a second of hesitation, my sister snatched the items out of her hands and took a step to the side, allowing Judy to immediately move up to me and link her arm around mine on my free side.

"Was... I just traded for an umbrella and a keychain?"

"Don't sweat the small details, Chief," my girlfriend told me and then rested her head against my upper arm.

I wanted to complain, but both of the girls seemed very satisfied with their deal, with Snowy already in the process of hanging her new acquisition onto the side of her bag. Maybe it was a new fad I didn't know about? Or was it just Snowy who was really easy to please with cute things? Looking at the giddy expression on her face when twirling her new Bounty Senior or whatever umbrella made me lean towards the latter, but one could never know.

"Let's go. We're running a little late," I prompted the girls, and they followed my lead in silence... for exactly ten seconds before Snowy threw us on a loop with a simple question.

"Leo? What's a 'trope'?"

"Pardon?" I asked back reflexively, and she might have thought I couldn't hear her, for she immediately repeated her question.

"What's a trope? You two talked about it just now."

Judy and I shared a distressed glance for a moment, and it turned out she was quicker on the uptake this time around, as she quickly explained, "A trope is a common element in a story."

"Precisely," I followed up with an authoritative nod. "Like... Do you remember that bad movie we watched the other day? Where the hero points his mecha's gun at the bridge of the big bad's skull-shaped ship and says, 'Alas, poor Yorickus. I hardly knew ye.' before he pulled the trigger? That's a trope called Pre Mortem One-Liner."

"It was also an overwritten, badly justified reference," Judy added after a click of her tongue.

"True, but that's kind of beside the point," I chided her, and she accepted it with a shrug.

"I see," Snowy mused aloud as she absent-mindedly twirled her new mascot umbrella left and right, but then she point-blank asked us, "But why were you talking about these 'tropes' just now?"

The question was innocent, but it caused us no little headache to explain it to her without revealing too much, and it took us until we arrived at Elly's place to make her come to the conclusion that "Oh, so it is like… an inside joke?"

"Exactly," Judy agreed on the spot, and that was the end of the discussion for the time being, as even though we barely stepped in front of the gate, Elly was already running towards us. That wasn't surprising, but the fact that she was wearing a dark green camo-patterned raincoat was all the more so.

"I'm ready, we can go!" she declared as she slipped through the wrought iron gates and closed them behind her, but then she looked at me and Judy and added, "Is it just me, or are you two even closer than usual?"

"They are doing a trope," my sister helpfully informed her, but it only made the invisible question marks over her head multiply faster than rabbits in Australia.

"I don't get it," she finally admitted, only for my sister to shrug her shoulder as well.

"Me neither, but it looks nice."

"Your turn is tomorrow," Judy suddenly cut in, warning my other girlfriend before she could say anything, and I once again couldn't help but feel left out of the loop, especially when the princess subtly rolled her eyes with an expression that said, 'Isn't that obvious?'.

Anyhow, once the customary morning greetings were over (read: one kiss for Elly, and then an extra kiss for Judy, because I forgot to give her one before), we continued our merry commute towards the one and only Blue Cherry High. Most of the way was spent with small talk about the weather, which then led to Elly noticing my sister's new umbrella and fawning over that Bojack Junior or whatever mascot, after which the conversation progressed into the topic of mascot keychains. Apparently it really was a fad, and the three most important girls in my life were all inexplicably neck-deep into it.

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I, being a manly man, full of manliness and testosterone and all that good stuff, naturally only scoffed at their cutesy girly stuff with prejudice of the most extreme variety. It was due to that that I only sporadically engaged in their discussion, mostly just to explain to them on rational terms and in very meticulous detail why, in fact, the baby panda with the fedora and handlebar mustache was definitely the best, because mustaches are manly and stuff. Though again, the puzzlingly Irish baby seal keychain Elly had got sideburns under its green, buckled top-hat, so that also got a few points in my book.

Like that, we swiftly arrived at the school, and to my surprise, the childhood friend duo was already waiting for us in front of the closed gates. Angie was wearing a white plastic raincoat, but she had the hood down and stood under my friend's multi-colored umbrella.

"Hi guys!" the Celestial girl greeted us while we were quite a distance away, and she even waved at us with a happy-go-lucky grin on her face.

"Good morning," my sister greeted them back properly, but then after she looked them over, she turned to me and asked, "Are they doing the trope too?"

"I actually think they are."

My response earned me a couple of puzzled blinks from the duo, and Josh ultimately asked me, "What are you guys talking about?"

"Nothing. It would take too long to explain," I told them before pointedly glancing at the closed gates. "So, what's up with that?"

"Oh, that? You're not gonna believe this," Josh answered while his childhood friend repeatedly nodded. "The school is closed for the day. Do you know what that means?"

Before I could say anything, Angie threw her fist high into the air, almost knocking the umbrella out of Joshua's hand, and exclaimed, "It's a long weekend!"

"Errr… Cool, but why?" I enquired after I overcame my first surprise at her display of unbridled enthusiasm.

"Something about a gas leak," my friend told me while checking his umbrella for damage, and once he made sure none of the spokes were bent, he added, "Ammy was also called inside, so I think things are more complicated than that."

"You think so?" I prodded him to continue with a knowing smile that didn't escape my assistant's notice, but she didn't point it out for the time being.

"Well, yeah? I mean, if they only let Ammy in, it means it has something to do with the magical School. Maybe there was an accident there?"

"Or it could be because of what happened yesterday," Elly supplied the next guess with a finger on her lips.

"Or that," Josh granted her that, and there was a short lull in the conversation as everyone considered this new bit of information. On my end though, I was more curious about something else entirely.

"For the record, since when did you know there wouldn't be school today?"

"Oh, that?" Josh responded a little late, and then after some thinking he told me, "Since we came here, so about fifteen minutes?"

"And couldn't you call me to tell us about this?" I posed my next questions, and my friend flashed an impish grin at me.

"I figured we shouldn't be the only ones who had to walk here in the rain." I rewarded his honesty with a flat and in no way or shape threatening look, so there was no reason why he would hurriedly add, "A-Also, I figured that once we meet up here, we could go to my place together. You know? To talk, and plan, and have that Street Kombat tournament we wanted to do for ages?"

In the end, I couldn't help but let my shoulders drop in resignation, and I ultimately told him, "Fine, we might as well do that. I suppose we should wait for the class rep first."

"I'm here," came the sudden declaration from our left, and we all glanced there in unison.

"Uuum… Hi, Amelia," Snowy greeted her first, if a little uncertainly.

"When did you even get here?" I mumbled as I looked her over. She was also part of the raincoat-club, and hers was a blindingly bright orange one with reflective stripes. How we all managed to miss her was a complete mystery. My working theory still involved ninjutsu.

"I've been here for a while," Ammy huffed, but then she abruptly shook her head and stated, "It doesn't matter. Listen, there's pandemonium down in the School; everything's on lockdown until further notice."

"What exactly happened?"

The class rep glanced at Judy, then at me, and after a short sigh she explained, in a low voice barely audible over the sound of the rain.

"Someone broke into grandfather's office last night."

Shocked gasps! Wide-open eyes! Mouths hanging open in disbelief! Bizarre 'Dun-dun-dun!' sounds in the distance! All of those… were things that obviously didn't happen.

"So that's why the school's out!" Angie exclaimed with a toothy grin, completely unfazed by the dramatic revelation.

"This is no joking matter!" Ammy reprimanded her on the spot, and then for some reason she turned to me next. "Leo?"

"Yes?"

"By any chance, do you know anything about what happened?"

"Nope," I denied it on the spot with my patented 'I'm as innocent as a newborn lamb on the virgin snow' expression.

"Why, what happened?" Judy gave me a saving throw with impeccable timing, forcing the class rep to explain herself.

"Last night, someone circumvented the wards protecting grandfather's office," she repeated what we already knew, and then after a deep breath she expounded, "They took several important files from the archives, and at least one very, very valuable item." She paused here, probably looking for a reaction, but I was only giving her the same innocent smile, so she soon gave up and continued with, "They also stacked up all the paperwork in the office, threw away all the trash into the bin, and they took all of grandfather's liqueur."

"You mean… all of it?" Judy muttered, half astounded and half impressed.

"Yes," Ammy nodded, and then after a second added, "Including the cabinet in which they were stored."

"… Are you serious?" came the next question from Josh, resulting in another nod. "How did they even move that out from underground without anyone noticing a thing?"

"We don't know yet," the class rep admitted, but then she ominously declared, "However, we're soon going to find out. Whoever the thief was, they left a message on grandfather's desk."

"Really?" Angie burst out as she leaned forward, her eyes sparkling with excitement. "Was it a calling card?! Is it a phantom thief?! Is it?!"

"N-No, probably not," Ammy replied with a stutter, obviously taken more than a little aback, but then she quickly collected herself and clarified things. "It was a letter written in Celestial Script."

"Oh, oh! Do you need me to help?" Angie jumped to the opportunity with her hand raised high, and this time Josh was fast enough to get the umbrella out of the way. She didn't even notice.

"No. We have experts for things like this."

After saying so, Ammy fell silent for a long while, all the while drilling a hole into my forehead with her gaze.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"It's because I'm sure you know something about what happened," she told me frankly. "Any time something really weird or seemingly impossible happened in the past couple of weeks, you were always related to it."

"Well, I can't deny that…" I muttered under my breath, but before I could get to the actual denial part, Ammy cut me off.

"Leo. Look me in the eye, and tell me the truth."

Well, that was an easy request, so after a momentary consideration, I did just so.

"Oh, fine. I swear that I didn’t break into your grandpa's study, I didn't take anything valuable yesterday, nor did I carry an entire liqueur cabinet anywhere at any point in time."

"Why did you emphasize things like that?"

That calamitous question came from Elly of all people, so I did my best to keep up my smile and I told her, "It's important to be specific when you are testifying, to avoid being too vague. Isn't that right, Ammy?"

The class rep gave me a non-committal noise in place of an answer, but for the time being, it seemed I have successfully allayed her suspicions. All hail the power of half-truths.

"So, now that we're over that side-track, where does all of this leave us? Can we do anything?" I spoke up mostly just to move the conversation forward, but for the moment nobody gave me an answer. "In that case… Josh?"

"Mm? Yes?"

I sent my friend my brightest grin, and asked him, "What suits an impromptu fighting game tournament better: pizza, or Chinese food?"

"Idunno… Pizza, I suppose?" he responded a bit uncertainly, only to immediately get overruled by his childhood friend crossing her arms in front of her.

"Hold it right there! This is a serious issue! I propose we should put it up to vote!"

"Can we do that while we walk?" I proposed, feeling a little chilly despite Judy's best efforts to warm my side.

"We might as well." Josh shrugged, and we all began walking, even the slightly confused class rep, who apparently wasn't around when we discussed this bit after all.

"So, Elly? What do you vote for?" the Celestial girl interviewed her first subject, even going as far as to pretend she was holding out an invisible microphone to her.

"I… don't really know," my girlfriend answered, her face already scrunched up in a complex expression. "I've never eaten pizza or takeout food before."

"Did you seriously pick this of all moments to play the Oujo archetype?" my other girlfriend grumbled under her breath, but the princess still overheard her.

"Excuse me? What is a… what was that word again?"

"It's a trope!" my sister suddenly declared on our right, and then after a beat, she tentatively followed it up with a subdued "Right?"

I gave her a small nod, and while the relieved smile she flashed me tickled my big brotherly instincts, I couldn’t help but feel that we might have accidentally let a genie out of the lamp without realizing it...

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