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The Headless Lady Comes at 3 A.M. – Part 01

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Translator: Kell

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A warm spring morning.

St. Marguerite Academy.

Normally, the corridors of the school building would be filled with students who come out of their dormitories all at once, running past with textbooks in their arms, but today was Sunday, so it was empty and quiet.

A petite woman walked past a brown-tiled hall, down corridors with high ceilings and multiple beams.

Wearing large, round glasses, she had big misty eyes and a baby face framed by shoulder-length, fluffy brown hair. The woman—Ms. Cecile—was holding a bunch of keys in one hand.

“I think the textbook’s study guide is in the reading room,” she mumbled. “Why would Kujou ask me questions I don’t know the answer to? Does he think I know everything? Of course I don’t. For the record, Kujou.”

No one was around, but she continued talking rather loudly.

“When I was a student here, my grades were much worse than yours. Understand? Wait, that’s not something to be proud of.”

Shoulders sagging, she stopped in front of a room. She inserted a large key into the keyhole and turned it.

“Oh, no. The lock’s all rusty. Of course. No one’s been here for a long time that it’s earned the name the Forbidden Reading Room.”

The huge door, blackened like a laurel tree, opened. The smell of dust and moisture wafted into the hallway. The reading room was furnished with an oval tea table and bookshelves with glass doors.

Ms. Cecile hurried inside. “I’ve got to prep for Monday’s class with this study guide.”

She took one of the thin books and quickly turned to leave, when she glanced up at the wall.

She squeezed her big eyes shut.

And opened them.

She stared at the wall tearfully.

Frightened, she closed her eyes once more.

And then…

“A-A-A ghost!”

She screamed at the top of her lungs. She then took off her glasses and stamped her feet around.

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Meanwhile…

In the hallway on the opposite side of the large U-shaped school building…

“Uh… that’s the bathroom where the spirit of the Sphinx quizzes you. And that’s where the spirit of the Indian elephant that was brought to the Sauville shows up. And…”

A girl, wearing her school uniform, was walking around on a Sunday morning, peering into a notebook. She had short blond hair and bright blue eyes. Her arms and legs were long and slim, reminiscent of a young doe.

The girl, international student Avril Bradley, stopped. “Hmm… It’s hard with only a map. I barely know anything about this school. I don’t go to class until tomorrow, so I have no friends yet either. Oh, wait.”

She clapped her hands. “There’s Kujou. The oriental boy who rescued me from the abandoned storehouse. Let’s see… Where would he be? I’d like to ask him to show me around the school, but I can’t go into the boys’ dormitory…”

She let out a yelp. The floor beneath Avril’s feet shook, and she fell on her behind.

“Ow…” She glanced at her feet.

The floor had shifted in one spot, and her foot was stuck in a hole. Regarding it suspiciously, Avril pulled her foot out, and then looked into the hole.

Something was there.

Something purple and shiny.

Despite the darkness, Avril, whether out of bravery or pure recklessness, stuck her hand into the hole without hesitation. She then grabbed the purple object and pulled it out.

In her hand was a large necklace adorned with purple jewels, sparkly but somewhat sinister. Suddenly she brought her face close to the ominous and heavy necklace with wide eyes. She flipped it around, studying it.

Her breath seized.

“This is Countess Ashenden’s Poison Flower from that one story!”

She flipped through her notebook until she found the page she was looking for. She glanced at the page and then at the necklace.

“I knew it!” she exclaimed. “But what does this mean? Oh, no! What do I do? Anyway, I found something terrific. Yahoo!”

She stamped her feet around happily.

“Yaaaay!”

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Meanwhile…

In a room on the second floor of the boys’ dormitory, tucked away in a corner of the campus of St. Marguerite Academy…

“Whoa! What time is it?! Did I oversleep? Oh, it’s Sunday.”

A small oriental boy bolted upright on a large mahogany bed worked with scroll-leaf designs. He had short black hair and eyes as black as ebony.

He grabbed his watch. “No, no. Sure it’s Sunday, but the third son of an imperial soldier must not indulge in idleness. He must get up immediately, wash his face, have breakfast, and then study. Man, I’m sleepy. No, no. I was already late once this week—though that was because I got involved in a murder case—and was also marked as absent for leaving through the window even though I was technically present. That’s two screwups total. Time to get up. Ah, I wanna go back to bed.”

Half-asleep, the boy, Kazuya Kujou, rose from his bed. He tied the front of this dark-blue yukata that he was using as a nightwear and moved to wash his face, when a knock came at the door.

“Who is it?” he asked.

“Me!” answered a passionate and sexy voice.

His sleepy mind wondered if it was too late to pretend to be out. The door opened.

“Morning, Kujou!” The red-haired, sexy dorm mother was standing there. “There was this creepy guy with a weird hairdo.” She paused and studied Kazuya.

“Wh-What is it?”

“That looks nice! So oriental… Can I have it?”

“What?”

The dorm mother started pulling Kazuya’s nightwear. His resistance was in vain, as the yukata was stripped away from him along with the obi. Kazuya screamed and jumped into his bed, curling inside the covers.

“That’s my nightwear!”

“Can I wear it to the village dance party?”

“No! Please give me my nightwear back…”

“I’ll return it later.” Smiling, the dorm mother waved and quickly left the room.

“What was that about a creepy guy with a weird hairdo?” he called as the doors closed.

“What? Oh, right.” The dorm mother peeked inside. “There was this young man with pointy blond hair. Such a shame too, ‘cause he was handsome. Uh, what was it again? Ah, I forgot.”

“…”

“He wants you to go somewhere.”

“The library?”

“Yeah, that’s it!” The dorm mother nodded.

She waved with a smile and closed the door.

Kazuya sighed and looked out the window.

Warm spring sunlight shone through the French windows and fell onto the carpet on the floor. A peaceful Sunday morning.

“Hmm… The library, huh?”

Kazuya squirmed out of bed. He got dressed, reluctantly.

On the mahogany desk lay a letter from his second brother that he had received last night. Kazuya folded it up and tucked it into his breast pocket, then left the dorm room.

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St. Marguerite’s Grand Library.

Stone walls marked by time. Gray ivy and silence. The tube-shaped tower, one of the largest book repositories in Europe, looked as mysterious as ever on a Sunday morning, haunted by knowledge, time, and silence.

As Kazuya opened the riveted leather door and stepped into the hall, he felt the old books on the huge bookcases that filled the walls stir, as though saying, “He’s here again.”

Meandering, narrow wooden staircases led up to the ceiling far above, where majestic religious paintings looked down on the hall.

“These stairs again,” Kazuya mumbled. “I still can’t get used to it.”

He nodded determinedly and straightened his back. Then he began ascending the labyrinthine stairs, step by step, methodically.

This was the seventh time Kazuya had taken this bizarre staircase. The first time was to deliver a handout to a classmate on top of the library at the request of his homeroom teacher, Ms. Cecile. As for the next five times…

“What did I do again?” Kazuya wondered as he climbed the stairs.

He frowned slightly as he realized that he had been repeatedly climbing the twisting stairs to see her, as if it were a daily routine or something.

“I needed her help for all those cases,” he mumbled to himself as an excuse. “It’s not that I want to see Victorique or anything.”

After climbing the stairs for a while, Kazuya finally made it to the spacious area at the top.

A conservatory.

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The morning sun shone softly through the skylight, falling on the conservatory filled with large tropical trees and garish flowers. The bored princess, odd and enigmatic, surrounded by books, was not there today, but instead a weird young man was crouched in the elevator hall in the corner, sulking.

A stylish three-piece suit and sparkling silver cuffs. A fashionable man, but with an unusual hairstyle. He had blond hair, the tip of which was fixed into the shape of a drill.

Inspector Blois was hugging his knees, mumbling something.

“Two hundred one, two hundred two, two hundred three…”

Kazuya studied the inspector cautiously. He was counting the white tiles on the floor of the elevator hall. He raised his gaze and saw Kazuya retreating uneasily.

“You’re late, Kujou,” he said with both joy and resentment.

“Did you need something?” Kazuya asked. “What are you doing, even?”

“There’s no one around. It was boring.”

“N-No one’s around?’

Kazuya looked toward the conservatory. He was sure Victorique would be here. He went closer, and indeed, she was there.

Victorique, perhaps avoiding the inspector, was crouched deeper in the conservatory, doing something, just like the inspector.

A pretty red dress, fluffy like chiffon, and chic lace-up shoes. Her golden hair, long and magnificent, spilled down her back to the floor like an untied velvet turban… and covered in dirt.

“Victorique?” Kazuya called.

Victorique gave a start. She turned around. “Oh, it’s just you. The weird oriental guy… I think your name was Kujou or something.”

“That’s right. You can drop the ‘weird’ part. What the… you’re all dirty. What were you doing?”

Kazuya scuttled up to Victorique and patted down her hair, the hem of her chiffon dress, and her small hands. Victorique had apparently been playing in the dirt. Her pearly fingernails were brown with dirt. Kazuya fetched some water and dipped Victorique’s hands in it to wash her nails.

“So, Kujou,” Inspector Blois called from afar, still counting tiles. “Let’s talk about why I called you here today.”

“What is it? I’m a bit tied up at the moment.”

Inspector Blois reluctantly came closer and showed a bunch of papers. Kazuya took a glance, while Victorique ignored it and stuck her face into a large, bright-red flower.

“This is a list of the treasures that Ciaran, the master thief, is said to have stolen from all over Europe and hidden here at St. Marguerite Academy. So far, only the world’s oldest stamp, the Penny Black has been found, and returned to its rightful owner, Miss Bradley. The rest we’re absolutely clueless. My next job is finding Ciaran’s treasures.”

Kazuya looked up and regarded Inspector Blois. He knew that the inspector was talking to Victorique, not him. Victorique snubbed him, still burying her face in the flowers.

Whenever a case arose, Inspector Blois always solved it with the help of Victorique, a mysterious girl with a brilliant mind, and took all the credit. For some reason, however, Victorique and the inspector did not get along well; they never said a word to each other. When the inspector wanted to ask Victorique about a case, he sat Kazuya in the middle and pretended to talk to him.

Like he always did, the inspector directed his attention to Kazuya. “Look. First, this painting. It’s the last work of a genius painter who despised the European art world and moved to an island in the South Atlantic. It was stolen from a royal residence nearly twenty years ago. And this is Countess Ashenden’s necklace, also known as the Poison Flower. It was stolen from the National Museum in Saubreme. And then…”

The inspector showed a picture that appeared to be a reproduction of the painting, and another of a somewhat gaudy necklace that glowed purple. The inspector went on with his explanation.

“I don’t know what you want me to do,” Kazuya said as he washed Victorique’s fingers. “Victorique, how long have you been playing in the dirt? Your dress and fingernails are all dirty. Didn’t your mom ever get mad at you? This dirt is kinda hard to get rid off.”

“Hmm?” Victorique finally emerged from the flowers. She frowned grimly. “Two annoying dolts.”

“Well, sorry. But at least you’re not bored, right?”

“Didn’t I tell you that noise is my second greatest enemy?”

“Did you?”

Inspector Blois listened closely to their exchange.

Victorique glanced up. “By the way, Kujou.”

“Yes? There, all done. Your nails are finally clean.”

“Are you interested in the treasures that Ciaran left behind? Would you like me to find them for you?”

Kazuya stared blankly at Victorique’s small, incredibly handsome, yet intimidating face.

He shook his head. “Nope. Not at all.”

Victorique nodded. “I’m not interested either.”

“Right? Ugh, inspector?! Why are you strangling me?! I’m not interested in the treasures. Besides, treasure hunting is your job. How could you call someone so early on a Sunday morning for such a thing? I refuse! Ah, Victorique!”

Victorique shifted slowly like a lazy prehistoric creature, her long golden hair, like some sort of tail, swaying as she crouched down again on the ground of the conservatory.

“I just washed you clean!”

Victorique turned, sniffed audibly, and resumed playing in the dirt, ignoring Kazuya.

“Stop playing in the dirt! V-Victorique?!”

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