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The Golden Fairy – Part 03

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Translator: Kell

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St. Marguerite Grand Library.

Standing quietly in a corner of the campus was one of Europe’s foremost bookhouses, with over 300 years of history behind it. Its majestic stone-built exterior could easily be a tourist attraction, but St. Marguerite Academy didn’t allow non-related personnel inside the campus, so it was rarely seen by the public.

Kazuya’s footsteps crunched along the dry path. He arrived at the library, and went inside.

Shaped like a polygonal tube, the building’s entire walls themselves were giant bookshelves. The middle section was hollow all the way to the ceiling, where grand religious paintings glittered. A narrow wooden staircase connected the bookshelves like a huge, perilous maze.

Kazuya looked up and sighed. He glimpsed what seemed like a long, golden sash hanging down from near the ceiling.

“Victorique… Way up there as always, huh?”

Reluctantly, he began climbing the stairs.

“I wish she’d hang around somewhere lower sometimes. Does she climb these stairs every single day? Talk about diligent.”

As he climbed higher, the floor receded further away. Looking down made him dizzy, so Kazuya stared straight ahead, straightened his back like the third son of an imperial soldier, and kept climbing. He started to get out of breath halfway, but he pushed on.

“Why’s the library like this anyway?”

According to one theory, this grand library was built in the early 17th century by the king, the founder of St. Marguerite Academy. A henpecked husband, he created a secret room at the top of the library so he could indulge in the company of his mistress. He also arranged for the stairs to be like a maze.

At the beginning of the current century, hydraulic elevators were installed during some restoration work, but Kazuya had not had the chance to use it as they were for faculty members only.

So he had no choice but to climb. Up, up, and up through the maze of stairs. Still a long way to go.

When Kazuya finally reached the top floor, he called, “Victorique, are you there?”

There was no reply.

But he continued anyway. “I know you’re there. I saw your hair. Hello?” He addressed the golden hair hanging down.

Thin, white smoke rose to the ceiling.

Kazuya took a step forward. And there was the conservatory.

The secret room at the top of the library was no longer a bedroom for the king and his mistress, but had been rebuilt into a lush greenhouse. Thriving tropical trees and ferns glittered under the soft sunlight streaming in through the skylight.

It was a bright and unfrequented conservatory.

A large, porcelain doll was sitting on the landing that led to the greenhouse.

It was nearly life-size, about a hundred and forty centimeters tall. Dressed in a lavish outfit of silk and lace, its long, magnificent blonde hair hung down to the floor like an untied turban.

Its face looked as cool as porcelain. Wizened, pale emerald eyes, neither childlike nor mature, gleamed softly.

The porcelain doll had a pipe in its mouth, smoking. Thin wisps of smoke rose toward the skylight.

Kazuya approached the porcelain doll—no, the beautiful girl who looked like a doll.

“You could at least answer me, Victorique.”

The girl’s green eyes swept over the books laid out on the floor. Arranged in a circular pattern around her, they ranged from ancient history to modern science, mechanics, curses and alchemy. The language in which they were written varied from English to French, Latin to Chinese.

The girl—Victorique—came to her senses and raised her head.

She regarded Kazuya’s disgruntled face. “Oh, it’s you.”

Her voice was low and raspy like an old person’s, not what you’d expect from someone with a petite frame and bewitching features.

Her unbearable, snobbish attitude—a common trait to the nobility—ticked Kazuya off. Not that it was anything new from her. Every time he came, Victorique always found a way to annoy him.

When he remained silent, Victorique turned her gaze back to the books.

“What does the Reaper want with me?” she asked as she leafed through the pages.

“Don’t call me that.” Hanging his head low, Kazuya leaned against the railing of the stairs.

The Reaper was Kazuya’s unwelcome alias. The students of the academy had a penchant for the supernatural, and with the school’s rich history, there was no shortage of them. Such as a traveler arriving during spring bringing death to the academy, or a demon dwelling on the thirteenth step of the stairs, and many more.

Kazuya Kujou, a quiet traveler from the Orient with black hair and jet-black eyes, was designated as the Springtime Reaper. Students who loved horror stories stayed away from him. He didn’t know how much they actually believed in these stories, but the students of the academy played along, hyping up what seemed like a game to them.

This is why Kazuya had not been able to make any close friends, and thanks to Ms. Cecile, he became a liaison, or perhaps an attendant, to Victorique, the biggest oddball of the academy.

It wasn’t that he liked being in this pretty girl’s company, but he found himself climbing the maze of stairs to see her anyway.

“Kujou,” Victorique said, ignoring his brooding, “I know you can’t make friends, but I did not expect you to come to me again. You never grow tired. Or do you like the stairs perhaps?”

“Of course not. Here.” He showed her the handouts that the teacher gave him.

Victorique pointed to the floor with her nose as if to say, “Put it there.”

Kazuya then turned to leave when Victorique, her face buried in the books, said in a singsong voice, “So, the weather was so nice that you had a tryst in the flower garden?”

“It wasn’t a tryst. We were just chatting,” he replied. “She told me about this ghost ship named the Queen Berry—Wait.” He scuttled back and peered at Victorique. “How do you know that? Were you watching?”

“No.”

“Then how?”

“The same way I always do.” Reading a book, she added, languidly, “The Fountain of Wisdom told me so.”

While Kazuya waited patiently for her next words, Victorique smoked a puff. “Kujou, you are both methodical and overly-serious,” she said in a casual tone.

“…Well, sorry about that.”

“Someone like you would wear the school cap when going outdoors. I can see the mark of the cap in your hair. On your collar is a pink petal from the pansies on the garden. So one can reasonably conclude that you were there.”

“But you said a tryst. I could’ve been alone.”

“You’re chirpy today. Your footsteps as you climbed the stairs sounded jolly.”

“What…?”

Really? Kazuya inclined his head. I’m sure I climbed like usual, careful and precise, with my back straight.

“You are uncharacteristically vigorous in your responses. There’s only one reason for a male of the human species to be so jovial. Lust. Kujou, you’re aroused and in incredibly high spirits, which is unlike you. You wouldn’t be aroused if you were alone. So you were with a woman, and it must have been someone you fancy. That is what the Fountain of Wisdom told me.”

“Come on, now. Lust? Can’t you be a little more subtle? And what do you mean it’s unlike me?”

Turning red, Kazuya slumped down, holding his knees.

Victorique always guessed exactly what Kazuya did that day without even seeing him, but today was especially embarrassing.

Hugging his knees, he stared at Victorique’s face bitterly. “You never fail to amaze…”

Victorique was silent for a while as she went on reading. When Kazuya’s words finally seemed to reach her brain, she nodded. “Yes, about that. My heightened senses gather fragments of chaos from the world around me. The Fountain of Wisdom then toys with them to stave off my boredom, reconstructing them. If I feel like it, I may even verbalize them so that the average person, like you, can understand. Oftentimes, though, I can’t be bothered, so I keep quiet.”

“…Why can’t you keep quiet when I’m around?”

“I think it’s because whenever I see you, I get the urge to poke fun at you.” She then fell quiet. Her head sank deeper and deeper into her books.

Kazuya sighed and stared at her face. Normally, he would never allow anyone to call him, a brilliant man representing his country, average. However, when Victorique, the mysterious noble girl who never attended class said it, he would become speechless.

As a matter of fact, Kazuya didn’t know much about Victorique’s background and what kind of a girl she was.

She was very beautiful, very small, very smart, and very unapproachable. Given a masculine name for reasons unknown, she was a little crazy, but she could very well be a mad genius.

According to some well-informed people, she was an illegitimate daughter of a noble. Apparently, her family feared her so they sent her to this school because they didn’t want her staying in the house. Her mother was a famous dancer who went crazy. She was the reincarnation of the legendary gray wolf, and she was seen devouring raw meat. As one would expect from a school that loved supernatural stories, things grew weirder and more dubious.

Kazuya had never asked such questions of Victorique. As the son of an imperial soldier, looking at people with such inappropriate curiosity was unacceptable, and more than that, Victorique herself was so odd that he didn’t even know what to ask her.

Despite that, he climbed all the way up here only to feel irritated at her sharp tongue. Such was Kazuya’s current daily routine.

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