Chapter 3

It was a day marked by warm sunlight pouring down from a clear sky, unbefitting of winter.

Having finished their final exams and waiting for the coming break, everyone had fully relaxed. Elott walked across the campus as usual. Around her, young ladies her age chattered brightly among themselves.

“What are you going to do, Miss Elott?”

“Pardon?”

While Elott kept only a smiling face as she walked, one young lady suddenly thr*st her head forward into Elott’s path. Elott had only been aware that things around her were noisy; she had not been paying proper attention to any of the conversation, and so she reflexively asked back, blinking.

“Oh, honestly, I mean about going home.”

Fortunately, she did not seem the type to pick a quarrel, and the young lady who had spoken asked again with a bright expression. Relieved by that, Elott turned her thoughts in search of an answer.

Come to think of it, she felt as though she had vaguely heard her schoolmates talking a few days ago as well, about whether or not they would be returning home.

Winter break lasted a little over two months, and during that time, students who stayed in the Academy dormitory often went back to their family homes. But unless it was a special case, she did not return home.

At the estate lived her stepmother and younger siblings, and Elott wanted to stay as far away from them as possible. But this time, she hesitated.

“I…… don’t really know.”

She finished with a smiling face. If she wanted to return home, she had to fill out an application by the end of this week. Students who did not do so remained in the dormitory even during the break, but they were very few in number. Elott was usually one of that small minority, and she was someone who took quiet pleasure in walking through the now-silent campus.

“I see. If you do return home, please come visit my estate too.”

The young lady clapped her hands, saying that her estate and Elott’s were not very far from each other. Only after hearing Elott answer that she certainly would did the young lady finally return to her own excitement. Soon after, bright peals of laughter rang through the sunlit corridor.

‘What could possibly be so fun?’

Elott nodded along with the young ladies’ conversation, but she could not properly tell what they were even talking about. Their high-pitched voices made her ears and head ache. Even so, her mind was elsewhere. She recalled what had happened yesterday.

* * *

Having run out of the archive room as if fleeing, Elott closed the door behind her and simply sank down onto the floor. The magic lamp, which lit automatically when its owner returned, illuminated the surroundings. A small desk and a bed. The clothes she had left strewn out that morning had been tidied away by the maid in charge. Only when her own private space spread out before her eyes did the tension finally ease.

She had no idea in what state of mind she had managed to return all the way to the dormitory.

She had come in later than curfew and ended up receiving demerits from the dorm matron, but that was not particularly important to Elott.

“……”

Still sitting collapsed on the floor, Elott lifted her skirt. Dampness lingered along the inside of her slender white thighs. Carefully, she pulled down her panties and examined them, and the small white cloth was more soaked than ever before, giving off a heavy scent. She could not bear to look any longer. Crumpling the panties, she tossed them into the wastebasket without hesitation.

‘Who on earth was he?’

Elott chewed lightly at the tips of her nails. It was a habit she had broken when she was young after being beaten for it, but when she became extremely anxious, it resurfaced like this.

At the Academy, the male and female classes were separated, and depending on the department, the proportion of men and women also differed.

Elott tried to recall every man she knew. The male students who had confessed to her during the school festival. People the family was acquainted with. Even those with whom she had gradually exchanged a few words.

But no matter how much she searched, there was no voice like his.

The Academy was so vast it could be compared to a small provincial town, and within it existed more men than one could easily count.

Elott did not know him, and the man knew her. In the end, that was all it came down to.

-Come here tomorrow at this time.

She could not forget those words.

It seemed she had stayed up all night until the skin around her eyes darkened. When, unable to withstand the drowsiness creeping over her, she finally lost consciousness for a moment and woke again, it was already morning.

After washing herself, she put on a gown and waited, and right on time a maid entered and helped her change into her uniform. The feeling of the corset tightening around her waist made the brightened morning feel real.

On the way to the dining hall in her neatly arranged attire, there stood a large full-length mirror. Reflected in it, Elott looked to anyone’s eyes like a proper and graceful noble young lady.

There was no trace at all of the appearance that had come undone in pleasure within that deep darkness. Elott’s face turned pale. Turning away from the mirror, she walked toward the dining hall.

And so half the day passed, and afternoon came. After eating lunch and finishing her moving class, the day’s schedule was already over. In winter, the sun set quickly. The sun, which already seemed ready to bow its head, cast an armful of crimson light and dyed everything in the world.

“……”

At last, the time had come.

Elott recognized in her body the hour he had set. But it was hard to make herself move. She could not trust a man whose face and name she did not know. Thinking that if she did not go, he might threaten her made her feel as though all the blood were draining from her body. But.

‘……He said he would teach me.’

That he would teach her a kind of pleasure she did not know. She had certainly heard it that way.

* * *

The sun set quickly. Even while her steps remained uncertain until the world sank into indigo dusk, somehow they had already brought her to the threshold of the third archive room.

The doorknob was hidden by the darkness, so she had to feel around with her hand. After a moment’s hesitation, the cold sensation wrapped her palm, and the door opened.

Stale air touched her cheeks. Once she slipped her body inside, even the mere sound of the door closing made her flinch. The interior was quiet, and dark as well. Yet that figure alone was unmistakable to her eyes.

“You’re late.”

It was the same voice as yesterday. Though it was only a single sentence, it brought back in full the shiver she had first felt. And yet it also sounded as though he were rebuking her, making her shrink back.

Each joint in her fingers throbbed with tension. She could only make out the figure that seemed to be sitting on the windowsill, while the man’s face still remained unseen.

“Come here.”

The man held out his hand. The moon-shadow was peculiarly deep. Even in the darkness, he looked at ease. Only Elott, like a herbivore before a lion, like a prisoner before a judge, had been reduced into a creature endlessly weak.

“And what am I supposed to trust about you……!”

Her rising emotions burst out in a cry. There was no way she could still be in her right mind after having the secret she had carefully hidden discovered. But Elott had maintained her composure all day. Her patience had worn down and worn down, and in the end, it burst before this unidentified man.

The cry she spat out as though it were the very last thing before death scattered quietly into the stillness. In the archive room, now silent once more, the only thing passing between Elott and the man was the chill unique to early winter.

Only after sensing the cold air did she close her mouth. Her chest heaved up and down with ragged breathing. Barely a few minutes had passed since she had raised her voice, yet the regret that she had been too rash made her bones ache.

‘I shouldn’t have done that.’

From the start, the one holding the hilt was that man. The right thing to do was to keep her composure, give him what he wanted, and preserve her secret.

Had she, perhaps, provoked his temper? It was the very moment her anxiety reached its peak. In the palm of the hand the man had extended, a tiny light flickered.

“……Huh?”

The light in the darkness gradually swelled larger and larger until it became a complete sphere and rose into the air.