3 bar menu

A Golden Fairy Lives At the Top of the Library – Part 02

---

Translator: Kell

---

Meanwhile, Avril Bradley—no, the second Ciaran was running up the library’s meandering stairs, an empty suitcase in her hand.

She was breathing hard. She climbed and climbed, but she still had a long way to go to the conservatory at the top.

Finally Ciaran made it up the labyrinthine stairs. She leaned against the thin railing worked in scroll-leaf designs.

“Where is… the doll…?”

She tottered around, searching for the porcelain doll.

The luxurious doll of a girl that she hid behind the small chest earlier was not there. She swallowed.

Setting the suitcase down, she looked around in search of the doll.

“H-How?!”

She finally found the doll, crouched in the shade of the tropical trees growing in the conservatory. Only its long golden hair peeked out from between the lush greenery. Ciaran pulled its hair roughly and grabbed the doll’s thin torso.

“What’s it doing here? Did Kujou move it? Or did it try to hide from me… No way.”

Ciaran laughed at her own remark.

She opened the suitcase and tossed the doll inside.

Suddenly, she heard the sound of the library doors opening from far below. Ciaran closed the suitcase and stood up, looking down the first-floor hall over the railing.

It was Kazuya Kujou. Ciaran clicked her tongue. She grabbed the suitcase and started running down the winding stairs.

---

“Victorique!” Kazuya shouted as he started up the stairs.

He looked up and saw a girl with a sharp look in her eyes running down from upstairs.

Kazuya stopped, and so did she.

Cold eyes.

Abruptly the girl flashed a smile. She looked like a different person.

“Ah, Kujou.”

“Ciaran!” Kazuya snarled.

The girl’s face froze momentarily. Then, slowly, her face reverted back to its intense look.

“I guess my cover’s blown,” she said.

“I know who you are. The real Avril is already safe.”

Avril… no, Ciaran the Second clicked her tongue. “Damn right. I’m the successor to Ciaran, the great thief,” she declared. Her tone had changed drastically, crass and aggressive. “I was taken in when I was young and trained as a thief. The First suddenly disappeared eight years ago. There were rumors that he hid his stolen treasures somewhere, and when I learned that that somewhere was this academy, I came. Do you know who the first Ciaran was?”

“It was Maxim,” Kazuya answered.

Ciaran’s eyes widened in surprise. “That’s right. I was shocked when the First rolled out of the crypt as a mummy in a knight’s attire. Then I found the purple book inside. It was one of the treasures that he hid all over the academy whenever he visited during spring. It was stolen from Sir Bradley’s estate that his granddaughter inherited. I picked the book up and hid it as soon as I noticed it. By the way, where is it now?”

“Where is what? Wait, so you’re not the one who knocked me out and took the book?”

“Of course it was me. But you only had the book with you.”

“Huh?”

“Where’s the Penny Black?”

“What are you talking about?”

Ciaran glared at Kazuya. “I don’t care about the book. That’s why I left it in the flowerbeds. I was looking for the Penny Black. Oh, for the love of… You saw the postcard between the pages, didn’t you? That’s Sir Bradley’s legacy.”

Kazuya gasped. When he found the purple book, Victorique showed no interest in it. Instead she disappeared somewhere with the postcard that was used as a bookmark. Kazuya could not comprehend her actions back then.

“Not the book, but the postcard?”

“That’s right. Where did you put it?”

Ciaran came down a few steps.

“Victorique has it—”

“What are you talking about?” Ciaran said. “There’s no girl in the conservatory.”

---

Kazuya and Ciaran were staring each other down.

Kazuya looked confused.

“I went up there twice,” Ciaran growled. “But there was no one in the conservatory. You claimed there was a girl up there, but I didn’t see anyone.”

“Wh-What are you—”

“It’s dark, dusty, and deserted. No one has been in the conservatory for a long time. You must have seen a fairy. I told you, didn’t I? A golden fairy lives at the top of the library. You’re an international student from the Orient, a boy who can’t make friends, so he copes by studying hard instead. There’s a legend back where I’m from. Lonely children befriend fairies and get their souls taken.” She glared at Kazuya. “There was never a girl!”

Her words deeply hurt Kazuya.

What Ciaran said was true. For the first six months of his study abroad, he had not been able to fit in with the children of the aristocracy and had difficulty making new friends.

So when he met Victorique, Kazuya, as the third son of an imperial soldier, tried to suppress his unmanly feelings inside, but in truth, he was extremely happy. Victorique was strange, sometimes an enigma, and other times annoying, but she was Kazuya’s first and dearest friend in Sauville.

She was real, he was sure.

“Th-That’s not true!”

Ciaran scoffed. “Don’t you get it yet?”

“She’s real…”

Ciaran snorted. “Here. I’ll show you, then. This is what your friend really is.”

Wearing a cruel smile, Ciaran lifted up the suitcase. Kazuya regarded it with confusion.

She opened the suitcase.

Long golden hair spilled out.

He saw the hem of a luxurious dress.

Wide-open, glass eyes.

“Victo…”

Ciaran turned the suitcase upside-down. A small girl fell out and rolled toward Kazuya. He quickly moved to catch her, but both the luxurious gobelin dress and the lace bonnet covering its silky, golden hair slipped through Kazuya’s hands, and fell toward the hall far below.

Kazuya screamed as he peered down.

A pair of detectives wearing rabbit-skin hunting caps and holding hands entered the library, in pursuit of Kazuya, most likely. They looked up, and when they noticed something falling, they immediately caught the girl—no, the doll of a girl.

Kazuya watched dumbfoundedly.

“Whoa! A doll just fell,” said one of the detectives.

“I think the impact broke it,” the other added. “Its neck is all bent.”

Kazuya turned his vacant gaze to Ciaran.

“Do you get it now?” she said with a scowl. “There’s no girl in the conservatory. Only the doll. That right there was the work of Grafen Stein, a German doll maker from the last century. It’s said that he made a deal with the devil to give souls to his dolls. His creations are rumored to be night-walking monsters with evil intentions. Now, then.”

Ciaran tossed the suitcase aside and approached Kazuya, who was standing there stunned.

Victorique’s not real? It can’t be.

The suitcase hit the floor below and broke apart.

It can’t be. She’s real. Victorique is real!

Ciaran grabbed Kazuya by the neck and strangled him with terrible force.

“Where did you hide it? Where did you hide the Penny Black? Give it back!”

“I-I don’t know… I don’t know anything about it…”

“If you don’t have it, who does? Give it baaack!”

Kazuya grappled with Ciaran in the middle of the labyrinthine stairs. The wooden staircase shook precariously.

Suddenly Kazuya spotted something small and golden. He squinted.

Far above, near the ceiling, there was a girl peeking her head out from between the railings.

Green eyes gleaming mysteriously. Long, magnificent golden hair that billowed and swirled in anger as if it had a mind of its own.

It was Victorique.

Opening her cherry lips, she mumbled, “If Kujou doesn’t have it, then I do.” Her voice was husky as an old lady’s.

Ciaran shrieked and slowly turned her head. She looked up.

Victorique was lifting something with her small hands. A thick book.

“Take your hands off Kujou.”

The book fell…

…and landed on Ciaran’s wide-eyed face with a loud thud. With the book’s cover to her face, she flailed and rolled down the stairs.

“That man is my servant,” Victorique added.

Under normal circumstances, as the third son of an imperial soldier, Kazuya would have vehemently denied her remark. But he didn’t hear her.

“Victorique,” was all he said. “I knew you were there!”

“How rude.”

Victorique exhaled sharply. Slowly, she moved away from the railing and disappeared. Her golden hair, wriggling like the tail of a small dinosaur, followed her figure of laces and frills.

“Of course I’m here!” she said.

---

---