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A Train Moving Away From Summer – Part 04

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Translator: Kell

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In the academy’s humid garden, flowers swayed in the summer breeze, and the small creek murmured occasionally.

The gazebo’s pointed roof cast a pitch-black shadow on the green grass. In the distance the heat haze blurred the summer landscape.

Ms. Cecile sat on the bench in the gazebo. “It was a very rough summer,” she mumbled, fiddling with her round glasses.

Kazuya, who had followed her, was standing before her, nodding. Ms. Cecile cast her large eyes down as she recalled the summer break six years ago—a very cool summer.

“It was 1918, the year the Great War ended. My father was missing in action, we lost all our properties, and suddenly I was an orphan. So I had to leave my beloved school before the summer break ended.”

With a wistful look in her eyes, Ms. Cecile shared the story of the red-haired maid who chased her as she was dragging her suitcase through the front gate. And how the cookies she gave her as a parting gift were so delicious, and how the deliciousness of the cookies helped ease her anxiety and sadness about what was to come. And then she wanted more, and she couldn’t resist stealing them. Regretting what she had done, she wrote a letter of confession and hid it in this gazebo.

“So what happened to you after that?” Kazuya asked.

Ms. Cecile smiled. “My father’s properties were gone, but he made it back from the war in one piece. He provided just enough tuition so I could graduate from here. Then I returned as a teacher.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“A fond memory, thinking back.” She smiled softly, and in a voice tinged with sorrow, added, “An eternal summer break.”

“Stealing is bad, though.” Kazuya remarked, ruining her reverie.

Caught completely off-guard, Ms. Cecile went quiet.

The wind blew.

The grass, petals, stirred.

“Am I a bore?” Kazuya asked worriedly.

Ms. Cecile snapped back to reality. “Did you say something?”

“I-It’s nothing.” Kazuya shook his head. “So you’ve been friends with the dorm mother ever since then, huh?”

“Yup.” Ms. Cecile nodded happily. “Ever since I returned to the academy. But lately I’ve been thinking. Even if Sophie and I had gone our separate ways, we would have met again somewhere, and we would have become friends.”

“I see.”

“I’m sure of it. I believe someday, somewhere, you will reunite with the friends you really care about.”

For some reason her words reminded Kazuya of Victorique, whom he had left in the dorm kitchen. He bid the teacher goodbye and left the gazebo, strolling down the path that led to the boys’ dormitory.

Water trickled down the fountain. Gigantic clouds were adrift in the boundless, blue summer sky.

Gravel crunched under Kazuya’s every step.

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Meanwhile, in the kitchen of the boys’ dormitory.

The chocolate cake was almost done, its fragrant aroma wafting through the kitchen. Victorique, sitting on a round chair and watching the dorm mother warily from a distance, was sniffing the air, her small, pretty nose twitching in anticipation.

“It’s still a mystery to me,” the red-haired dorm mother muttered to no one in particular as she whipped some fresh cream to coat the cake with.

“…”

“How in the world did Cecile steal the cookies?”

“…”

“I remember that night well. It was very strange, after all. I remember hearing her crying outside the third-floor window, but when I went outside, there was no one there. And when I returned to my room, the cookies were gone. There was no one outside the window, and I didn’t pass her in the hallway or at the entrance. How did she steal them, then?”

Victorique shifted in her chair. “It’s burning,” she said in a faint, barely-audible voice. She pointed at the oven with her little forefinger, rocking her body anxiously. “The cake… is going… to burn.”

“Argh, I really wanna know!” Distracted, the dorm mother kept sighing, oblivious to the slightly unpleasant aroma that began emanating from the oven.

“…”

“Aaaah!”

“…”
“How did she do it?!”

“…”

Victorique looked to be on the verge of tears. Her gaze flitted to the corridor in search of Kazuya. But he still hadn’t returned.

“That scoundrel,” she growled.

The dorm mother looked at Victorique. “Hmm? Did you say something, little girl?”

“Very well,” Victorique mumbled softly. “I’ll explain it briefly,” she reluctantly began. “Or else the cake will get burnt.”

“What?”

The dorm mother eyed the tiny Victorique curiously. Her hands never stopped furiously stirring the cream.

Victorique yawned. “First, Cecile’s voice that you heard outside the window.”

“Oh?”

“You heard a girl’s voice from outside the third-floor window and a metallic creaking, yes?”

“I did.”

“Try to remember. Cecile was carrying a certain object. I believe she climbed a nearby tree and hung that on a branch.”

“What certain object?”

“A silver birdcage,” Victorique said wearily. She stretched like a little black cat. “Cecile climbed a tree and hung the birdcage on a branch. It creaked every time the wind blew.”

“Why would she do that?”

“You said it yourself. Cecile had a parrot.”

“Hmm?” Sophie cocked her head.

Worried about the oven, Victorique went on. “Cecile had a puppy and a parrot. Parrots are birds that mimic human voices. The voice you heard outside the window was the parrot mimicking Cecile’s voice. ‘Papan, come home. Please come home from the war.’ She was probably saying that in her sleep, and the parrot picked it up.”

“I see…” Sophie looked a little sad. But when she remembered the stolen cookies again, her face turned dark. “But how did she get into my room? There was no one in the hallway, or at the front door, and there’s no other way inside.”

“She was invisible,” Victorique said nonchalantly. “You said so yourself. No one bothers to learn the names and faces of maids. If you walk down the corridor in a maid’s uniform, everyone will think you’re a maid, and you will be ignored like you were invisible. That’s why Cecile was unaware of your existence until you called her. Cecile probably did the same to you.”

Sophie’s mouth was agape.

“Think,” Victorique went on. “There was no girl who looked like Miss Lafitte in the hallway. But there must have been one girl in a maid’s uniform walking around in a magical cloak that rendered her invisible in the staff’s dormitory. Do you get it now?”

For a while the dorm mother just gaped at Victorique. Then, as though coming to her senses, she stood up, opened the oven, and took out a fluffy, delicious-looking chocolate cake.

Victorique’s cold, expressionless face stirred a little.

As the dorm mother poured the whipped cream over the cake, a white, shaggy dog burst in.

Victorique yelped. The white dog wagged its tail, eyes glistening as it stared at the dorm mother’s hand, expecting a share of the cake.

“Is this the dog from back then?” Victorique asked.

“Yes.”

“The puppy didn’t make a sound even when an intruder stole your cookies. It’s proof that Cecile was the culprit.”

“Ah, now that you mention it,” the dorm mother mumbled, looking up.

Victorique’s icy, expressionless little face seemed to twitch. A brief, faint change. “You didn’t suspect her in the slightest.”

“I didn’t,” the dorm mother said in a somewhat carefree voice. “She was precious to me.”

Kazuya finally returned. The dorm mother placed a piece of cake in front of the boy as well.

“Only women and children eat sweet food like this, not me,” he grumbled.

Victorique stabbed his side with a fork, shutting his mouth.

Reluctantly, he took a bite. Oh? He took another one.

Victorique was chewing her food with undivided attention.

The sun was slowly setting outside. The seemingly never-ending summer break was going by, slowly but surely.

“Stop poking me, Victorique. It hurts.”

“Hmph.”

“You should listen to others sometimes.”

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A cool summer.

One day six years ago, summer break at St. Marguerite Academy.

In a small, tidy room in the staff dormitory, a red-haired maid was looking up at the moon, her elbow propped on the window sill and her cheeks resting on her hand.

A white puppy was playing at her feet.

Sophie had changed from her stuffy, navy-blue maid’s uniform into a white-and-blue checkered nightwear. Her fiery-red hair was tucked into a round hat of the same pattern, with the rest hanging down her neck. Moonlight shone on the little maid sitting sad and pensive by the window.

There was no one else around.

Just the moon and the girl.

“Miss Lafitte,” she mumbled, dropping her gaze. “I don’t think I’ll ever see her again.”

Pearly tears formed in the corners of her eyes.

“Good luck. Wherever you are, I hope you hang in there..”

Only the moon heard the little maid’s melancholic wish.

A cool summer.

The night was slowly wearing on.

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“Sophie…”

The train to Saubreme was slowly moving away from the village in the darkness of the night, billowing black smoke.

In a crowded corner of a third-class carriage, Cecile was sitting curled up with her suitcase and a silver birdcage with a parrot inside.

I’m full and sleepy, she thought. I might’ve eaten a little too much.

The image of the maid who saw her off with tears in her eyes came back to her mind. She thought that if she had been able to stay in the academy, she would have become friends with the girl. She couldn’t get Sophie’s bright eyes out of her mind.

“Goodbye, red-haired Sophie. Thank you for crying for me.”

The train crossed the railway bridge with a whistle so loud that the whole carriage shook. The darkness of the night seemed to creep into the car from the corner of the closed window.

Lonely and anxious, Cecile bit her lip.

“I hope we see each other again.”

She closed her eyes to sleep.

The train’s whistle drowned out her soft murmur.

“I’m sure we’ll become good friends.”

The train, heading toward the capital of Saubreme, made it across the railway bridge, running further and further away from the academy.

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