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A Ghost Scattering Flowers – Part 01

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Translator: Kell

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Summer had finally arrived, casting blinding sunlight over the campus of St. Marguerite Academy, a school nestled on a gentle mountain slope.

Several days had passed since the beginning of the summer break.

With most of its students gone, silence reigned on the spacious and majestic school, as if an eternity had passed and all living things had perished.

Every now and then squirrels came scuttling down the hills inside the campus, chittering.

The colorful flowers in the flowerbeds swayed in the hot wind, despite there being no one to marvel at them.

The gazebos cast dark, square shadows on the lush lawn.

There was only stillness, the summer sun, and…

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“Oh, my goodness.”

A little before noon.

A petite woman came out of the school building carrying a bunch of what seemed like test papers, worried about the round glasses that were slipping off her nose. The teacher—Ms. Cecile—suddenly stopped, and squinted, peering at the soft grass beyond the flowerbeds and fountains.

“They’re over there again, huh?”

Shifting the bundle of papers back carefully in her hands, Ms. Cecile hurried away.

“Hanging out again today?” Ms. Cecile said as she passed by the lawn.

The pair—one of them, rather—nodded, an oriental boy of small stature. He was standing stiffly upright, wearing a serious look that was slowly becoming his trademark. Since it was summer break, he wasn’t in his uniform. Instead he wore an oriental indigo kimono, apparently a casual outfit in his home country, complete with a black sash and wooden sandals. On his head sat a familiar bowler hat. He was holding a pink, frilly parasol in one hand, a mismatch against his attire and no-nonsense expression.

Ms. Cecile’s large, droopy eyes narrowed in a smile as she stared at the Japanese international student, Kazuya Kujou, and a certain someone lying on the lawn under the shadow cast by the parasol.

Ms. Cecile nodded. “Look after her for me, Kujou.”

“I will.” Kazuya stood even more upright.

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After watching Ms. Cecile leave in a hurry, Kazuya’s serious façade crumbled.

“Hey, Victorique. Victorique! Ms. Cecile just asked me to look after you. Now I feel like I need to do something. Hey, are you listening? Earth to Victorique!”

Standing stiff-backed on a lawn in the corner of St. Marguerite Academy’s deserted campus, Kazuya regarded his beautiful, frilly, lacey, fluffy little friend, who was lying face down in the middle of the round shadow created by the parasol.

The girl—Victorique de Blois—possessing an intellect she called her Wellspring of Wisdom, Europe’s last and most powerful weapon, had been lying motionless on the grass since a while ago.

Her magnificent, wavy golden hair, like an untied velvet turban, was sprawled across the lawn. She was wearing a luxurious ruffled dress of white silk and woven black lace, and a similar black-and-white headdress covered her tiny head softly.

Kazuya, worried that she might have taken a nap, peered into her face. Victorique’s rosy cheeks puffed out, her green eyes, glazed over like someone who had lived for decades, wide-open, gleaming like jade.

“Oh, you’re awake.”

“Be quiet, Kujou.”

“Excuse me? I’ve been standing here holding a parasol for you, while you’re down there lying like an idiot, bored out of your mind. I might just go down from the heat before you.”

Victorique, still lying face-down, let out a groan, pursing her small, cherry lips.

“I’m so bored.”

“I can see why.”

“I don’t even want to read a book.”

“Because it’s hot. Why are you even in the hottest part of the campus? You really don’t make any sense.”

“Hmm?”

Victorique slowly rolled over to the right to lie on her back. Immediately Kazuya rushed over with his parasol, his kimono rustling, to give her shade.

Victorique frowned, exhaling sharply. She glanced at his feet. “Those are some weird shoes!”

“It’s called geta,” Kazuya said. “They’re the best in the summer. Would you like to wear them?”

“I’m not going to wear firewood as shoes.”

She rolled back to the other side face-down, and Kazuya quickly followed her. For a while, the pair continued playing their idle game of chase on the vast lawn, until eventually giving up.

A hot, dry summer breeze blew, ruffling Kazuya’s black hair.

Leaves and flowers rustled faintly in the distance.

Water continued cascading down the white fountain like a pillar of ice melting in the hot wind.

A quiet summer.

“Speaking of which, Victorique.”

Victorique grunted in response.

“Where’s your energy? Anyway, the reason I was running around looking for you today…”

Today, several days since summer break started, Kazuya had been looking for Victorique since morning.

With one hand holding the parasol, he reached into his sleeve and pulled out an envelope. Still lying face-down, Victorique glanced up curiously.

“What a weird pocket! Typical, I suppose.”

“Shut up. So anyway, the farting new—I-I mean Avril. Darn it. You’re rubbing off on me. I got a letter from Avril Bradley. She went to visit her grandma at her summer house in the Mediterranean.”

Kazuya tried to sound cheerful. He was, in fact, invited by Avril Bradley to come with her, but he couldn’t leave his friend Victorique de Blois, a small and lonely Gray Wolf, alone at the academy. After much internal debate, he decided to stay behind with her in the deserted school.

“She says there’s been a string of weird incidents. I don’t really get it, but it’s a mystery, at least. Your most favorite thing in the world. Well? Interested?”

Victorique gave a faint groan. Lying on her belly, motionless like a napping white cat, she said, very languidly, “A case brought by someone who loves ghost stories? Reeks of nonsense.”

“Hmm…”

“But I suppose it’s better than being bored all day.”

“Really?!”

“Yes. Read it to me.”

Nodding in relief, Kazuya straightened his back. Holding the parasol in one hand, and the letter in the other, he started reading the letter.

“’Bongiorno, Kujou!’”

“What is that about?”

“It’s what the letter says. Let’s see… ‘I’m writing this letter on the train to the Mediterranean. I was reading Ghost Stories Vol. 2.”

“Hmm…”

“’I just finished it, so I was left with nothing to do. And then…’”

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It was several days before Kazuya read the letter that Avril Bradley arrived at the town in the Mediterranean Sea, in the evening of the first day of summer vacation.

Dry sand. Clear blue skies. Endless coastline. The smell of the sea. The sandy white beach was packed with parasols and deck chairs. Summer visitors with sweaty, tanned skin were walking around coolly.

The sandy wind carried with it the powerful fragrance of suntan lotion mixed in with the smell of the tide.
Avril was in high spirits as the rocking roofless carriage, pulled by a donkey along the narrow cobblestone street, made its way to her late grandfather’s villa. Of course, her male friend that she left behind at the academy was still in her mind.

“Grandma! I’m here!”

Avril gave a big wave in front of the old, but well-maintained, square two-story house. When she saw the old lady waving back from the second-story window, she jumped down the carriage and ran off, overjoyed.

She bumped into a boy pulling a small cart filled with colorful flowers and tumbled, scattering her luggage all over the road. The adult vacationers who saw the whole thing chuckled, and Avril blushed with embarrassment.

The flower vendor—a boy of Italian descent who looked to be about the same age as Avril—swiftly picked up all of Avril’s belongings, then helped her on her feet.

“Th-Thank you.”

The boy studied Avril’s face for quite a while, then suddenly looked angry. He talked rapidly, but Avril didn’t understand Italian, so she just stared back at him in confusion.

This time the boy looked sad. He grabbed a small red bouquet from the flowers for sale and threw it at Avril.

She let out a yelp.

The boy took a couple of steps back, glaring at her.

“Is this for me?” Avril asked, bewildered.

As she glanced back and forth between the boy and the red bouquet of flowers, an old woman came out of the villa. Her grandmother.

“Th-Thanks again,” Avril said, then hurried towards the villa, carrying her suitcase.

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“Oh, that’s Mitch,” said Sir Bradley’s wife.

After exploring the villa and happily going on about her summer holiday plans, Avril had finally settled down and was having a cup of tea with her grandmother.

“Mitch?” Avril asked, munching on a cookie.

Her grandmother nodded. She was a tall, straight-backed old woman with silver hair pulled back in a tight bun. While her face was lined with wrinkles, her eyes, blue as her granddaughter’s, had the gleam of a mischievous child.

“He’s the son of an Italian couple who live around here. I see him every summer, but I don’t speak their language, so I haven’t talked to him.”

“I see.”

“The bouquet of flowers says he likes you.”

“He was glaring at me, though.”

“He doesn’t like you, then.”

“Which is it?!”

Avril’s grandmother giggled at the sight of her granddaughter’s angry face.

“Let’s forget about Mitch,” the old lady said, her face taking on a slightly serious look. “Do you remember Frannie Bradley?”

“Frannie? Nope. Who’s that?”

“Your cousin. You only met her once, though, when you were little, so it makes sense if you don’t remember. She’s two or three years older than you. She wanted to come here to the villa, so I said sure. Since she’s close to your age, I thought you’d get along. But apparently she hates you.”

“Wh-Why?!”

“Because of the Penny Black case.”

Avril’s face clouded.

The Penny Black was a rare stamp that the late Adventurer Sir Bradley bequeathed to his granddaughter Avril, who kept it in memory of her beloved grandfather without selling it.

“She used to be such a gentle child, but for some reason she grew up to be bitter. She said you were hogging all the inheritance and that you must be after this villa too. She’ll be arriving tonight. You two better get along.”

“Aw, really?” Avril frowned.

Her grandmother chuckled. “Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll get along just fine.”

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