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Dreamer – Part 05

A few hours earlier that same day.

Within a stone chamber in the heart of the Black Sun, a girl with golden locks had spent the last ten months sprawled on a crude chair, her arms and legs hanging limply. The lamp light cast a faint glow on the girl—Victorique.

Beside her, Inspector Grevil de Blois occupied a somewhat larger chair, reading out loud from the documents spread out on his lap.

“In May 1925, Germany… Meanwhile, in the New World… According to Sauville Intelligence, the following month…”

This scene had repeated itself for ten months. The soldiers stationed outside the stone chamber no longer cast curious glances inside. Whatever secret lay hidden here had lost its novelty after the first month, becoming a mysterious yet mundane sight.

Grevil continued reading the documents. “As we enter June… Russia… And over in Asia…”

Now and then, he’d steal a glance at his half-sister’s pallid profile.

Victorique de Blois, with vacant emerald-green eyes, gazed into the emptiness without a hint of movement. Her once rosy cheeks lacked color, and her lips, once glossy as cherries, were as pale as a newly-manufactured doll’s. Her hair alone, a beautiful golden color, remained the same, cascading down like a river of gold, the only sign that she was still alive, that her body was still performing its functions.

“Hey, my sister…”

Grevil muttered abruptly and trailed off. No response would follow.

Ever since the brief moment when she regained consciousness on that autumn day and spoke, her mind had never again returned.

Grevil dreaded her piercing gaze, curses, cryptic statements, mockery, and cold detachment, feared how she would suddenly show vulnerability and the heart of a child desperate for love.

He couldn’t forget the peculiar guest who had arrived at the stone tower of Blois Castle during his boyhood. His father, consumed day and night by some unconventional pursuit, the unsettling cries of animals echoing through the night, and his mother, a dignified noblewoman, maintaining an air of composure, refusing to be bothered by any of it.

Eventually, the guest vanished, leaving behind the enigmatic half-sister, Victorique.

One day, Grevil summoned the courage to climb the tower. There, he found a girl in a lavish frilly dress resembling a medieval princess, surrounded by a mountain of difficult books, her green eyes gleaming like a mischievous imp. She was an incredibly beautiful young girl, unlike anything he had ever seen before.

Back then, Grevil, somewhere between boyhood and young adulthood, with wavy golden hair cascading down his back and dressed in extravagant attire reminiscent of a prince in a medieval castle, was instantly captivated by his enigmatic sister.

Should he love this unusual being, or should he hate her?

However, the sister released a luminous mouse towards her brother. After ridiculing the frightened Grevil, she casually returned to her books as if nothing had happened. Whether due to her strange birth, lack of human interaction, or perhaps her beastly nature, she harbored no human emotions. All she had was an empty heart, intellect, knowledge, and terrifying cruelty, as if an ancient goddess stood behind her, relentlessly wielding a hefty blade.

Grevil had a fondness for gentle women. Despite the pressures from his father and the struggles in society, his eyes would light up at the sight of the opposite sex. He appreciated kindness and brightness over mere looks and glamor. Being in the company of such an ideal woman brought him a sense of calm and joy. He longed for women to be like the sun.

Since then, Grevil developed a profound aversion to his incredibly strange and ice-cold sister.

Nevertheless, he found himself occasionally visiting the stone tower. Bound by dark dealings with his half-sister, he had to sport pointy hair, even twirling it around at one point. To make matters worse, she even took his favorite pipe—a small, white ceramic one he had taken up as a young man. Victorique, with an air of pride, took to smoking the pipe, and every sight of her doing so left him seething with frustration.

And so, years passed.

Grevil transitioned into adulthood, carving a place for himself in Saubreme’s high society. Just as he pondered stepping into government affairs, backed by his father, his half-sister was moved from Blois Castle’s tower to an enigmatic institution deep in the mountains—Saint Marguerite Academy.

Ordered by Marquis de Blois, Grevil found himself dispatched to the village as a supervisor.

Never having defied his father, Grevil seldom revealed his true feelings to anyone. Not even when he needed to express his affections to a girl he fancied.

Taking on the role of a police inspector in the village, he juggled overseeing his half-sister and conducting investigations. He wanted to prove that he was better than a certain man—the Police Commissioner of Saubreme.

And then…

Yes, and then…

Gradually, he started noticing.

The subtle changes in the ice-cold Victorique de Blois.

“My sister…”

The two siblings were alone in the darkness of the stone chamber. Winter of 1925.

Grevil, leafing through documents with a hint of hesitation, spoke, “Since you got transferred to the academy, you’ve been different. I don’t know how much you’ve noticed…”

He pulled out a pipe and placed it in his mouth.

“Sure, you’ve got a mind hailed as the greatest intellect in Europe, a powerful weapon of the occult. But surprisingly, your heart remains underdeveloped. You used to be a nasty little child, who’d cleave through your brother’s heart with a machete, gouge it with a shovel, and finally, sprinkle gasoline to set it ablaze.”

He lit the pipe, drawing a slow drag. Thin white smoke rose to the ceiling, much like how Victorique used to smoke in the library tower until the previous year.

“Why the change, Victorique, my sister?” Grevil continued his soliloquy. “I believe it started after that boy arrived. Almost two years ago, there was a creepy incident with a motorcycle and a severed neck, and he… Kujou Kazuya, a student from the Far East, became a suspect. For some reason, you, with the greatest intellect in Europe, used your brains to help a foreign boy you didn’t even know. Since then… your eyes occasionally quiver, as if emotions are surfacing.”

The smoke wobbled. Grevil’s hand trembled slightly.

“You were the ice princess atop the tower, a stranger to love. But since then, you moved like a cold puppet animated by the hand of that black Grim Reaper. When you were confined in Beelzebub’s Skull, Kujou went all the way to Lithuania to bring you back. During the incident on the return train, you and he worked together. It was a strangely perplexing sight. Because something that shouldn’t have happened started happening.”

Victorique’s eyes remained wide open, unresponsive. She seemed to be oblivious to her surroundings. Grevil stared down at her like he was looking at something creepy.

“Do you remember the conversation we had in the carriage when you left Saint Marguerite Academy and were being transferred here?” His voice turned soft. “You spoke of the fifteenth mystery—the greatest one of all—that Kujou left behind. You wondered what the feeling was.”

The lamp’s flame flickered.

“Back then, I hesitated. Should I tell you or not? Of course, I knew what it was, my sister. I kept saying you wouldn’t get it… That was why I despised your existence.”

The fire made a quiet crackle.

“It’s love.”

Victorique’s lips parted slightly, and a voice, like a song or some incoherent rambling, escaped. Grevil set down his pipe and, with reluctance, tilted his pointed head to the left.

“Should I have told you then? I was too astonished to speak. I was also uncertain of providing the answer you should find on your own. And now, here we are in this prison. Shortly after, you were made to drink drugged water and lost consciousness.”

Grevil sighed with distress, clutching the pipe once more.

“Being intelligent enough to see the past and future is one thing, but without a heart, you’re just an animal. I’ve always believed that. But… if that’s no longer the case, then you are human, my blood sister. On the night we met in the stone tower, I had two choices: to love or to hate you. Now, I need to leave the path of hatred and rejection that I chose back then.”

“Inspector! The Marquis is on his way!” shouted a soldier.

Grevil jolted so much that he nearly toppled the chair. Cold sweat dripped down his forehead. Trying to maintain composure, he nodded and said, “All right.”

He eased back into his seat, staring at Victorique’s distant profile with a conflicted expression, almost in pain.

“Oh, sister…” His voice quavered. “What do I do…”

There was no reply.