9.5 – End of Recess

Although Kato rejoined the group without trouble, they were evidently miffed by Mirabelle’s unannounced departure. Alice was the most visibly upset, expressing her concerns using some choice harsh words. Luckily, Evie eventually calmed her down enough to carry on with the last leg of their trip through the Bozz.

“Haaaai, we’ll go home on time.”

“We’ll probably go straight home afterwards. I’m pretty tired.”

“Here is your money for supper. Sisi is fortunate to not worry too much about the three of you, but get home safely all the same.”

The day ended uneventfully, with everyone waiting for their bus home. Since Sisi and Kato were on a mission, they were parting ways from the other three residents of the Habsburg flat. Of course, the home-goers would eat dinner together, minus Alice who had already left in one of her family’s limousines, not unlike Mirabelle’s departure.

The three other boys sat at the curb like they did in the morning, but this time, they were too tired to do anything inappropriate. They remained silent as they watched the long road that stretched towards the inner city. Without a word they passed their lollipops around to each other, business as usual.

In contrast, the girls stood diligently right at the bus stop’s metal pole. Attached to it at eye level was a plastic casing covering up the bus schedule inside it. Unlike the boys, they always seemed to have a topic of conversation and they filled the air with noise.

On the bench that Evie and Yui were sitting on in the morning, was now Kato and Bianca, watching their friends and family from afar. Bianca was still in Mirabelle’s pink outfit, but she already had her usual loose bun behind her head.

“How was Mira for you today?”

“No idea. I can’t get a peep of what goes on in her head.”

Bianca sighed at Kato’s despondent answer. She was torn because she felt relieved at his response when she shouldn’t be, but also sad that nothing seemed to have changed.

“Then what happened after the two of you left us?”

“You don’t know? Mira didn’t plan that part out with you?”

“I have an idea, but nothing more. It’s her prerogative, so to speak. Right?”

“Then how exactly did the two of you plan this out?”

“She didn’t explain this to you? Wow, she’s such a lazy bum.”

“I can tell you what happened if you explain to me your side of the story.”

Kato said as he put his arms across the bench, laid his head back onto the woodwork, eyes closed and facing the sky above. Bianca sighed again, this time with a hint of disapproval. It was best to take his offer before he internalized it and shut his mouth for good. Similarly, she stretched out her arms behind her, in a somewhat un-ladylike manner, definitely feeling the fatigue of walking around all day.

“It’s not very interesting. Mira came to me afterwards on Monday and retold how the two of you were flirting with each other at the playground.”

Kato furrowed his brows as he felt the words needle him at the heart, but he didn’t interrupt.

“She’s also my twin, so it’s only natural that she can come up with good ideas. It wasn’t bad, right? She wanted you to go on the Ferris wheel with her, and she needed a distraction for Evie, so swapping places with me became the plan.”

“But it shouldn’t have gone as easily as planned. By the next day, I’ve already given one of those tickets to Alice.”

“Yeah, we kinda needed to rethink that a bit, but luckily she was part of her little group with Mira and Evie, so it turned out better than expected. To make things even easier for us, your behaviour today gave her an easy reason to pull the two away from you.”

“You’re welcome.”

He said, bemused yet satisfied. She didn’t pull any punches, but that was expected from his old playground rival. Though thoroughly cutting, the familiarity of it gave him an unusual comfort.

“Ariel and Scarlett were already on board with it from day one, so there were no problems there either.”

“Then the biggest issue here is: what’s in it for you?”

“I spent the morning with you, didn’t I? That was my part of the deal.”

“Is that really it? I feel like that’s an unfair trade.”

Bianca turned to the deflated Kato next to her and saw that his eyes remained closed and expression unchanged.

“Why do you think that it’s an unfair trade?”

“So you thought it was fair?”

“What makes you think it has to be a fair trade?”

She shrugged at his non-response and replied with her own. Smiling lightly to herself, Bianca could see him making a face as if he ate something sour, satisfied that her words had the desired effect.

“Aight. Understood. My turn now, is it?”

“Whenever you’re ready.”

Kato didn’t move though. He continued to slump in his seat, feeling comfortable and unwilling to move out of it.

“I know I told you this yesterday, but it seems like you haven’t told her that I could already tell the difference between the two of you.”

“So you really could tell the difference.”

“You thought it was a joke?”

“Well, I still want to see it to believe it.”

“You didn’t even get to see it happen. Anyway, I figured out what happened the moment she spoke to me, but I didn’t let her know yet ‘cause I wanted to test her a bit.”

“Test her?”

“You knew we were going to the Ferris wheel, right? We passed by the souvenir stand we were at earlier.”

Bianca’s hand subconsciously held onto the little trinket in her pocket.

“And you didn’t expect me to tell her about it?”

“I thought the chances of that happening were low, so it was one way to catch her in the act red-handed.”

She tightened her grasp on the star-shaped metal accessory.

“And did you?”

“Sorta. She did let go of the act quick enough, but then she returned to being her usual self, which is very very very hard to deal with if you didn’t know.”

“Only for you.”

Bianca laughed as he made another sour face. Mirabelle always seemed to give Kato a hard time, every time.

“Then we were on the Ferris wheel for a while. We ended up talking more about you rather than the two of us. Well, it was Mira who did that. Any reason why?”

“What exactly happened?”

He peeked over to Bianca, who watched him expectantly.

“Hmm.”

Kato thought carefully. Contrary to her usual self, the Mirabelle he saw on the Ferris wheel today did not seem like someone who took joy in witnessing her plan unfold perfectly in front of her. She even went to the lengths of bribing the caretakers in advance as a part of her plan. If it was indeed Mirabelle who called the shots, then why did she feel like she needed to say those things?

Something happened in between Monday and today. That must have been the case. Otherwise, Mirabelle would never willingly show her weak side to Kato like this on her own. If so, then what could have eroded her confidence?

“Bia, y’know the song, Happy Ferris Wheel? I always thought that it was Mira’s favourite song, but it didn’t seem like she remembered it at all. Did she really change that much?”

“Huh? Really? She didn’t remember?”

Bianca was visibly surprised.

“Yeah. She used to love this song so much, but when I mentioned it she just kinda glossed over it as if it was nothing.”

“That doesn’t sound right. I mean, she only wanted to do this because this song made it all the more special to her.”

“That’s what I thought too, but I don’t know why her response was so mild.”

“Beats me. Are you sure she was paying attention to you?”

“Most definitely, I assure you.”

“I dunno about that, dude. That song was really well-liked, even for the rest of the crew. Can’t imagine her forgetting about it completely.”

Then, he was reminded of a crucial detail. It was true that this song romanticized the Ferris wheel for Mirabelle, but if that was the case…

“…then, Bia, you like this song a lot?”

“Yeah, I like that song. Why?”

“A favourite of yours too?”

“Of course it is. Stop being stupid, ye already know.”

“I do?”

“Hm?”

He did not know that. And from both their reactions, they assumed he did and that was why Mirabelle’s reaction was so muted and he was given the cold treatment for that answer.

That aside, Kato’s hunch was correct. As Bianca was a very faithful music student, she too probably loved that song as much as Mirabelle did, if not even more. And if she did, then she also had every reason to go on the Ferris wheel with him.

He sat up from the bench, no longer slouching. He didn’t mince his words, laying it out clearly in the open.

“Then why did you accept this kind of a request from Mira? Did you not want to go on the Ferris wheel with me?”

Bianca opened her mouth but she didn’t speak immediately, as if she couldn’t find any suitable words to answer with. Her hesitation was all that was needed to be said. Of course she wanted to.

“I didn’t think it would have mattered, so I let her go.”

“So you don’t want to go on the Ferris wheel with me?”

“No! I do! It’s just that, it wouldn’t matter in the end if I went. On the other hand, it would matter to her if Mira did.”

“What do you mean it would and wouldn’t matter? Where’s the difference?”

“Our crew’s gonna be together for only one more year, right? There’s not much time left, and it’s because this was her idea to begin with, not mine!”

“But neither of you would have memories of me after the end of this year! You’re just going to let that go? What kind of a reason is that?”

Bianca held her tongue, again not knowing what she should say. Kato continued, ignoring her unnatural lack of a retort.

“I just can’t believe that. I know you more than I know Mira, and you would never just let her have her way. This ain’t about me. It’s about the two of you.”

His aim had found its mark. For somebody who lived in Mirabelle’s perfect shadow for so long, and then to have rebelled against it in the past, Bianca wouldn’t just quietly put herself back into chains. Because she had yet to overcome this spectre completely, there was no reason for her to back down at this juncture.

However, at the time Bianca didn’t think of that, or rather, she didn’t want to think of that part of her strained relationship with Mirabelle. Instead, her original intentions were for the sake of the status quo, especially with regards to their little-now-large group of troublemakers. She tried her best to put the triangle between the three of them as secondary, but it seemed like the other two did not treat this situation that way. And she herself too, her determination to keep it that way had also faltered a few times when she was overwhelmed by her own desires, in spite of the fallout from two years ago that caused her to insist on maintaining this distance in the first place.

“So I can only think that you’ve got something from her in exchange for your help, right?”

She held her trembling hands together tightly. Somehow, the air was harder to breathe and her heart beat ever louder in her ears.

“No. It’s something I did for her without any strings attached. There’s nothing in it for me.”

Even though that was true in a sense, Bianca refused to make eye contact with Kato, who was staring at her beautiful figure in anticipation of a real response. However, he could only frown as she spoke those feeble words, and somehow inexplicably felt betrayed at her attempt to brush off his accusation.

“Then explain to me this. Why did Mira do the same thing you’re doing right now?”

Bianca froze. She only now realized that if Mirabelle broke down in front of Kato, as she was about to in this moment, then it would have been abundantly obvious to him that something was terribly amiss and her denial would quickly fall apart.

“What did she do?”

She murmured those words, almost afraid of having the question answered.

“She told me that I should choose you instead of her to take with me on the Ferris wheel. That to her, choosing you was the correct choice.”

Bianca closed her eyes as she heard what she feared. It was beyond doubt that Bianca and Mirabelle were hiding something from him, but at the same time, he felt awful to subject Bianca to this kind of scrutiny when he wasn’t willing to test Mirabelle to this extent.

Also under the shadow of two years ago, he felt especially terrible that time and again he needed to say things she didn’t want to hear, but he found himself unable to stay silent at this unfairness against him. If the twins really did decide on something to change the status quo between the three of them, then he had every right to do the same. Whether his intervention would bring them to where he wanted, he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure where his heart laid in the first place.

“And what was your answer?”

“She cried as she said that, so I didn’t answer.”

She finally turned to look at Kato, tears welling up in her eyes. Mirabelle didn’t do anything wrong. It was Bianca’s short-sightedness that brought her to this point. She couldn’t foresee that Mirabelle would react that way and that Kato would have the courage to push her. He didn’t have the same awkwardness to him as he did two years ago. In fact, this more mature Kato kindled an ever-stronger passion in her to desire it, but her actions up to now might have cost her everything.

“And your conjecture is, that I’m the reason that she would say that?”

“There’s no one else besides you who can make her say something like that.”

However, Bianca was not the same from two years ago either. If it was her former self, she would have broken down right here and cried. She found a bit of solace in the fact that her perfect elder twin sister had let her emotions take over, and it calmed her down as much as it made her feel petty. She didn’t let her tears flow, and struggled to force out of her mouth a lie that she thought would protect all three of them.

“Unfortunately, I’m not sure what I’ve said would make her do that. I don’t think anything from me was that out of line.”

“…is that so?”

Looking away quietly, his purpose rapidly faded, leaving behind a cold and desolate expression. He was not allowed to have the truth, so what could he do? Flail out recklessly in desperation? He couldn’t make the same mistake again. He forced himself to let go of the spiteful feeling that was welling up from within, knowing fully that it would only bring further harm. In the end, nothing had changed, so he candidly decided to move on. Bianca was as strong-willed with her convictions as she ever was.

“Mm.”

Bianca fell silent as well, letting the tension between them hang in place. She didn’t know what to say either, other than to acknowledge his capitulation.

In this reprieve, she lamented on how it all had come to this. Like countless times before, she replayed the events of the past in her mind over and over, unable to let go. She wished she could jump back in time and redo that scene, with the firm but perhaps naïve belief that any other outcome would have been better than the one that had played out.

They watched their friends and family at the bus stop, who were oblivious to the discord on this bench. Time passed, flowing as smoothly as the falling sand of an hourglass.

“Bia! Let’s go!”

After what seemed like an eternity, a bus finally arrived to take passengers out of the park. Scarlett waved and called out to her sister, and to that both Bianca and Kato got up from their seats.

“Well, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

As she said her goodbye she didn’t turn to make eye contact, and instead merely waved with the back of her hand, unable to bring herself to face him. She began to walk in the direction of the idling bus, and her mind was in such a mess that she almost stumbled over herself.

“Bia.”

After she made some distance, he called out to her in earnest. She halted in place but she didn’t turn around, and only waited for Kato to finish.

“Next time, let’s go on the Ferris wheel together.”

Bianca felt as if her heart was twisted up and wrenched out by an invisible hand, and it hurt so much that her knees almost buckled. Of all the times he could give her hope, it had to be when her emotions were smothering her alive. She began walking again, but her thoughts were a thousand miles away in a hypothetical universe.

“Mm.”

She only nodded, and in no time she and the rest of the crew disappeared into the awaiting bus, which eventually left the turnabout noisily for the city, leaving Kato and Sisi behind at the side of the road. He couldn’t see her face as she left, leaving him in the dark about the intentions behind that affirmation. He wasn’t upset though, since at this point he couldn’t expect anything more. But what he could say was that Mirabelle was wrong. Bianca didn’t make a scene of it. She simply accepted his suggestion, pinning her impossible hopes on him time and again, knowing that none of it would live beyond this fateful year.

CONSTITUTION ACT, 1668

An Act for the peaceful establishment of institutions for the exercising of the sovereign powers of Korolev Senior Secondary School; and for purposes connected therewith

Whereas the sovereign is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of the rule of law:

And whereas the institutions of the sovereign would conduce to the welfare of the students, school and society at large, and promote the interests of Eternia and the continent of Candor:

And whereas on the establishment of such institutions, not only that the constitution of the legislative authority be provided for, but also the nature of the executive government and the procession of the judiciary unit therein be declared:

And whereas the holistic result is the provision of a wonderful formative experience for all students:

Short title

1. This Act may be cited as the Constitution Act.

Institutions

2. The provisions of this Act referring to the institutions shall be construed as referring to the institutions of the sovereign in which the powers of the sovereign are exercised by.

Korolev Senior

3. Unless it is otherwise expressed or implied, the name Korolev Senior shall be taken to mean Korolev Senior Secondary School as constituted under this act.

Geographic, physical jurisdiction

4. Korolev Senior shall be the privately-built school, bounded by the privately-owned land belonging to Eternia, provisioned to the Korolev Senior Faculty Administration, located in general in Hunghom, Livia, Central, Auxiria.

Census

5. In the general census of the population of Korolev Senior is hereby required to be taken every year before the start of the school year, in order for the numbers to be distinguished for the purposes connected therewith.

Continuity of the Faculty

6. The appropriate authority of and over Korolev Senior, as provisioned by the Board of Public Education or an equivalent authority of the relevant jurisdiction, is to continue to be vested in the Faculty, and shall remain inalienable therein.

Student Government

7. There shall be a general Student Government of Korolev Senior to exercise the sovereign’s powers, consisting of the Student Council, the Legislature, and the Council of Six, the powers therein being delegated to these student institutions.

Constitution of the Student Council

8. There shall be a Student Council of Korolev Senior to aid and advise the Student Government of Korolev Senior, consisting of: the Student Council Executives, representing the Student Council and the general Student Government; the Department of the Treasury; the Department of the Administration; the Student Liaison Office; and the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

Student Council Executives and its Offices

9. The Student Council Executives consist of the leadership of the Student Council which occupies the following offices: the Office of the President for the Student Council President; the Office of the Treasurer for the Chancellor of the Exchequer; the Office of the Secretary for the Undersecretary; the Office-General for the Executive Manager, and any other Deputies Without Portfolio, appointed as the President sees fit, to reasonably carry out his duties; all of which shall be responsible to the Office of the President.

All powers under Acts to be exercised by the Student Council

10. All powers, authorities, and functions which under any Act of the Assembly, or any Proclamation of the Faculty, are vested in or exercisable by the Student Council or adjutants thereof.

Responsibility of the Treasury

11. Where the Office of the Treasurer is responsible, there shall be a Department of the Treasury, to be responsible for the implementation of fiscal policy of the student institutions; and student organizations and functions, events or occasions thereof.

Responsibility of the Administration

12. Where the Office of the Secretary is responsible, there shall be a Department of the Administration, to be responsible for the record-keeping of transactions of any nature of all student organizations; and the petitioning for redress of grievances.

Responsibility of the Student Liaison Office

13. Where the Office-General is responsible, there shall be a Student Liaison Office, to be responsible for the general management of student organizations and functions, events or occasions thereof.

Responsibility of the Independent Commission Against Corruption

14. There shall be an Independent Commission Against Corruption, to be responsible for the oversight of the work of the Student Government with regards to the principle of good government.

Appointment of Offices

15. The Office of the President is elected to by universal suffrage of the student population, completed before the start of the school year, for a term length extending to the end of the school year; the Office of the Treasurer, the Office of the Secretary, and the Office-General, when vacant, is appointed to by the President, for a term length extending to the end of the school year.

Executive order of precedence

16. In case of invalidity of the Office of the President, the order of precedence is: the Chancellor of the Exchequer; the Undersecretary; and then the Executive Manager.

Constitution of the Legislature

17. There shall be one Legislature, consisting of an upper house styled the Senate, and a lower house styled the Assembly.

Privileges of the Legislature

18. The privileges, immunities, and powers to be held, enjoyed, and exercised by the Assembly and the Senate, and by the members thereof respectively, shall be such as are from time to time defined by Act of the Assembly or Proclamation of the Faculty respectively, as it pertains to the following, with regards to its respective assembly:

(a). the regulation of its own internal affairs;

(b). the authority to maintain the attendance and service of its Members;

(c). the power to discipline;

(d). the right to institute inquiries and to call witnesses and demand papers;

(e). the right to administer oaths to witnesses appearing before it;

(f). the right to publish papers without recourse to the courts.

Constitution of the Senate

19. The Senate shall consist of the teachers of the third-year classes of the school year, who shall be styled as Senators.

Tenure of the Senate

20. The Senate is summoned upon the start of the school year, and its term ends at the end thereof.

Quorum of the Senate

21. The presence of at least one half, and added the remainder after division, shall be necessary to constitute a meeting of the Senate for the exercising of its powers.

Voting in the Senate

22. Questions arising in the Senate shall be decided by a majority of voices, and when the voices are equal the decision shall be deemed to be in the negative.

Constitution of the Assembly

23. The Assembly consists of two constituencies, the Class Constituencies and the Functional Constituencies, of which their members are styled as Members of the Assembly.

Class Constituencies

24. At the first summon of the Assembly, it shall consist of Class Constituencies of: forty students from Class 3-A; twenty students from Class 3-B; ten students from Class 3-C; five students from Class 3-D; three students from Class 3-E; and one student from Class 3-F, if and as such classes exist, named and appointed by the respective classes.

Functional Constituencies

25. The Assembly shall consist of Functional Constituencies of the following categories:

(a). the Class Representatives of each third-year class;

(b). the Presidents of School Clubs as sanctioned by the Senate;

(c). the Student Council Executives, and up to four Deputies Without Portfolio;

Simultaneous qualifications of an Assembly Member

26. For any student qualifying to multiple seats in the Assembly in any manner, must declare their one seat to remain in, and declare all other seats invalid, starting with seats in the Functional Constituencies.

Speaker of the Assembly

27. The Speaker of the Assembly shall be a Member from the Student Council Executives Functional Constituency.

Speaker to preside

28. The speaker shall preside at all conventions of the Assembly.

Provision in case of absence of the Speaker

29. If the Speaker is excused in advance, or absent for any other reason for a period of one hour to a convention of the Assembly, the Student Council Executive Functional Constituency may appoint one of its members to act as Speaker, and if such an arrangement is not possible, then one may be elected from the Assembly; and such a Member should have and execute all the powers, privileges and duties of Speaker.

Tenure of the Assembly

30. The Assembly is summoned at the start of the school year, and shall continue until the end thereof.

Quorum of the Assembly

31. The presence of at least twenty Members of the Assembly shall be necessary to constitute a convention of the Assembly for the exercise of its powers, and for that purpose the Speaker shall be reckoned as a Member.

Voting in the Assembly

32. Unless provisioned otherwise by this Act, questions arising in the Assembly shall be decided by a majority of voices other than that of the Speaker, and when the voices are equal, not otherwise, the Speaker shall have a vote.

Bills from the Assembly

33. Bills of any nature shall originate in the Assembly.

Recommendation of money votes

34. It shall not be lawful for the Assembly to adopt or pass any vote, resolution, address, or bill for the appropriation of any part of the public revenue, or any monetary demand from students, to any purpose that has not been first recommended to the Assembly by the Faculty or the Senate in the session in which such vote, resolution, address, or bill is proposed.

Disallowance by the Senate

35. Where the Assembly passes a bill in its own name and authority, it shall by the first convenient opportunity send an authentic copy of the Act to the Senate, for voting of the bill at a reasonable pace according to the temporal nature thereof, or for withholding its duties by declaring contempt for the bill, in which case the bill is returned to the Assembly, for no more than twice of a bill with the same intent in a fiscal quarter.

Supremacy of the Assembly

36. Where the Senate declares contempt for a bill of the same intent for more than twice, the Assembly may present the bill to the Principal for his Assent as if the Senate voted in favour, only if the Assembly votes in favour of the bill, and also votes in contempt of the Senate, with more than two-thirds of the total number of Members voting for the motions therein.

Assent to bills, etc.

37. Where a bill passed by the Legislature is presented to the Principal for his Assent, he shall declare, according to his discretion, but subject to the provisions of this Act, either that he assents thereto, or that he withholds his Assent, in his own name and authority.

Legislative authority of the Legislature

38. It shall be lawful for the Principal, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate and the Assembly, to make laws in the form of Acts for the peace, order, and good student government of Korolev Senior, in relation to all matters not coming within the classes of subjects by this Act assigned exclusively to the Faculty; and for greater certainty, but not so as to restrict the generality of the foregoing terms of this section, it is hereby declared that (notwithstanding anything in this Act) the exclusive legislative authority of the Legislature extends to all matters coming within the classes of subjects next hereinafter enumerated; that is to say,

(a). public debt, assets and property;

(b). the raising of money by any mode or system of taxation;

(c). the borrowing of money on public credit;

(d). public morals, order and defence;

(e). student welfare, insurance and life services;

(f). school-wide events;

(g). student organizations and functions, events, or occasions thereof;

(h). the constitution of classes with respect to students;

(i). intellectual property;

(j). school facilities;

(k). functions under the rules of the Class Wars;

Constitution of the Council of Six

39. There shall be a Council of Six, consisting of one student from each of: Class 3-A; Class 3-B; Class 3-C; Class 3-D; Class 3-E; Class 3-F, each thereof are styled as Judges.

Appointment and tenure of Judges

40. At their pleasure, the Senate shall appoint the Judges of the Council of Six, whom shall not hold any other public office while appointed as Judges.

General Court

41. The Student Council may, notwithstanding anything in this Act, from time to time provide for the constitution, maintenance, and organization of a general court for the better administration of the laws of Korolev Senior.

Funding

42. All revenues over which the Legislature have power of appropriation shall form one consolidated revenue fund in the Department of the Treasury, to be appropriated for the public service of Korolev Senior in the manner and subject to the charges in this Act provided.

Expenses of collection, etc.

43. The Department of the Treasury shall be permanently charged with the costs, charges, and expenses incident to the collection, management, and receipt thereof.

Property, etc.

44. The Student Liaison Office shall be permanently charged with the maintenance and the good housekeeping of public property and facilities as pertains to the students thereof.

Oath of allegiance, etc.

45. Every Member of the Assembly shall before taking his seat therein take and subscribe before the Faculty, the oath of allegiance contained in the First Schedule to this Act.

Rights and freedoms in Korolev Senior

46. The constitution guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

Fundamental freedoms

47. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

(a). freedom of conscience and religion;

(b). freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;

(c). freedom of peaceful assembly;

(d). freedom of association.

Democratic rights of citizens

48. Every student of Korolev Senior has the right to vote in an election of the Student Council President, or of any public office in which an election the general electorate is to be held for, and is qualified for such a position amenable to the term length thereof.

Maximum duration of public offices

49. No assembly, committee, body or other public office shall continue for longer than the school year it has been elected or appointed to.

Continuity of allegiance

50. Every holder of any public office must do so with allegiance to his class, and where that is no longer true the public office is relinquished.

Sitting of legislative bodies

51. There shall be a sitting of the Assembly at least once every month.

Mobility rights

52. Every student has the right to enter, remain in and leave the grounds of Korolev Senior.

Hierarchal mobility rights

53. Every student has the right to move to and take up residence in any class, provided that the student has been granted assent by and obtained scores of qualified examinations amenable to the teacher thereof.

Life, liberty and security of person

54. Every student has the right to life, liberty and security of person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

Search or seizure

55. Every student has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure.

Detention or imprisonment

56. Every student has the right not to be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned.

Arrest or detention

57. Every student has the right on arrest or detention: to be informed promptly of the reasons therefor; to retain and instruct counsel without delay and to the informed of that right; to have the validity of the detention determined by way of hapeas corpus and to be released if the detention is not lawful.

Proceedings in criminal and penal matters

58. Any person charged with an offence has the right:

(a). to be informed without reasonable delay of the specific offence;

(b). to be tried within a reasonable time;

(c). not to be compelled to be a witness in proceedings against that person in respect of the offence;

(d). to be presumed innocent until proven guilty according to law in a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal;

(e). not to be denied reasonable bail without just cause;

(f). not to be found guilty on account of any act or omission unless, at the time of the act or omission, it constituted an offence under the law;

(g). if finally acquitted of the offence, not to be tried for it again and, if finally found guilty and punished for the offence, not to be tried or punished for it again;

(h). if found guilty of the offence and if the punishment of the office has been varied between the time of commission and the time of sentencing, to the benefit of the lesser punishment.

Cruel punishment

59. Everyone has the right not to be subjected to any cruel and unusual treatment or punishment.

No self-crimination

60. A witness who testifies in any proceedings has the right not to have any incriminating evidence so given used to incriminate that witness in any other proceedings, except in a prosecution for perjury or for the giving of contradictory evidence.

Interpreter

61. A party or witness in any proceedings who does not understand or speak the language in which the proceedings are conducted or who is deaf has the right to the assistance of an interpreter.

Equality before and under law

62. Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination of any kind, including but not limited to discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age, disabilities, socioeconomic status, political affiliations.

Official languages

63. Old Yue and New Yue are the official languages of Korolev Senior and have equality of status and equal rights and privileges as to their use throughout, including student institutions.

Languages in the Assembly

64. Everyone has the right to use Old Yue or New Yue in any debates and other proceedings of the Assembly.

Languages in public records

65. Public records, documents or other methods of communication from the Student Government of any form shall be printed in Old Yue and New Yue, and both language versions are equally authoritative.

Languages in public service

66. Any member of the public has the right to communicate with, and to receive available services from, any office of an institution of the Student Government in Old Yue or New Yue.

Enforcement of guaranteed rights

67. Anyone whose rights or freedoms have been infringed or denied may apply to a court of competent jurisdiction to obtain such remedy as the court considers appropriate and just in the circumstances, and where a court concludes that evidence was obtained in a manner that infringed or denied any rights or freedoms, the evidence shall be excluded where the admission of it would bring the administration of justice into disrepute.

Recognizing multiculturalism

68. The laws shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of the students.

Exception by the Legislature

69. The Legislature or the Faculty may expressly declare in an Act of the Assembly, that the Act or a provision thereof shall operate notwithstanding Articles 54 through to 62, where the application thereof shall cease to have effect at the end of the school year.

Great majority of the Assembly for exceptions

70. An Act of the Assembly in part or in whole containing provisions operating notwithstanding Articles 54 through to 62 shall only be an Act after voted for with more than two-thirds of the total number of Members.

Commitment to an ideal school life

71. Without altering the legislative authority of the Legislature, or the rights of any of them with respect to the exercise of their legislative authority, the Student Government is committed to:

(a). promoting equal opportunities for the well-being of students;

(b). promoting extracurricular activities to the benefit of social awareness;

(c). providing essential public services of reasonable quality to all students.

Amendment procedure

72. A general amendment to the Constitution, in relation to all matters not coming within the subject classes provisioned elsewhere in this Act where the amendment procedure is declared to be different, shall be made by Proclamation of the Faculty or by the Principal where so alone or recommended by: resolutions of the Legislature where more than two-thirds of the Assembly and more than two-thirds of the Senate voted for; and of the Class Representatives of all classes where more than two-thirds voted for, and those voted for represents more than two-thirds of the student population, where the passed resolutions shall be identical.

73. An amendment to the Constitution in relation to the following subject classes shall be made by Proclamation of the Faculty or by the Principal where so alone:

(a). Articles 1 through to 7;

(b). any rights, privileges, or similar thereto of the Faculty or of the Principal;

(c). any part of legislation of Acts with exceptions;

(d). Article 72;

(e). this part.

(f). Article 74;

74. An amendment to the Constitution in relation to the following subject classes shall be made by Proclamation of the Faculty or by the Principal where so alone or recommended by: resolutions of the Legislature where more than two-thirds of the Assembly and more than two-thirds of the Senate voted for; of the Class Representatives of all classes where more than two-thirds voted for, and those voted for represents more than two-thirds of the student population; and of the general student population where more than two-thirds voted for, where the passed resolutions shall be identical:

(a). the Rules of the Class Wars, or the Rules of the Game.

Revocation of authorization

75. A resolution for the purposes of amendment may be revoked at any time before the issue of a Proclamation authorized by it.

Primacy of the Constitution

76. The Constitution is the supreme law of Korolev Senior, and any law that is inconsistent with the provisions of the Constitution is, to the extent of the inconsistency, of no force or effect.

Constitution of the Constitution

77. The Constitution comprises of this Act, the Schedules therewith, and any amendments thereof.

Nature of amendments

78. Amendments to the Constitution shall be made only in accordance with the authority contained in this Act.

Old Yue and New Yue versions

79. Where any portion of the Constitution has been or is enacted in Old Yue or New Yue, the Old Yue and New Yue versions of that portion of the Constitution are equally authoritative.

THE FIRST SCHEDULE

OATH OF ALLEGIANCE

I, A.B. do swear, that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Eternia, and to uphold the values and principles of Korolev Senior Secondary School.

Treaty of peace between Class 3-A and Class 3-F for the settlement on the question of the restoration of the conventional class order (August 1887, a.k.a. the Alice Protocol)

Of the participants of the exalted Class Wars of Korolev Senior Secondary School;

With Class 3-A, of the one part; and Class 3-F, of the other part;

Whereas on the request of Lady Eterna an armistice was granted to the parties on the morning of 29 August 1887, during the time of second period, in order that a treaty of peace may be concluded, and;

Whereas the parties are equally desirous that the war in which the objective of restoring order was delivered to Class 3-F by Class 3-A in an effort to achieve so, should be replaced by a firm, just, and durable peace.

For this purpose, the parties have appointed as their plenipotentiaries to discuss, settle, and sign the present treaty of peace, namely;


Class 3-A:

Mr Gilbert Paul de Lafayette, Class 3-A Representative, Member of the Assembly, Marshal of the Public Safety Committee;

Ms Mona Serine Mackenzie, Member of the Assembly, Chairwoman of the Activity Council;

Class 3-F:

Mr Kato Abel Danubius, Class 3-F Representative, Member of the Assembly;

Mr Eon Atelier Koziko, Member of the Assembly;

And together with the witnesses to the treaty in order to affirm the legislative authority of the present treaty of peace, namely;

The student council executives:

Ms Ganymede Bianca Jupiter, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Member of the Assembly;

Ms Europa Ariel Jupiter, Undersecretary, Member of the Assembly;

Ms Io Scarlett Jupiter, Executive Manager, Member of the Assembly;

The Faculty:

Mr Alan Jeremy Guilford-Fong, Class 3-A homeroom teacher, senator;

Ms Elizabeth Miklos Romana, Class 3-F homeroom teacher, senator;


Who having exchanged their full powers, found to be in good and due form, have agreed as follows:

From the coming into force of the present treaty the state of war will terminate;

And the acceptance in full of the following articles of peace, with the same authority of an Act of the Assembly;


ARTICLE I.

That peace between Class 3-A and Class 3-F is extended to at least the end of the current year of the Candoran Calendar (i.e. 1887), when the parties will renegotiate the length of said extension, or the termination of this Article.

ARTICLE II.

Where Class 3-A must relinquish their claim to the cause for war that was claimed for the war which this treaty of peace is providing for.

ARTICLE III.

Where Class 3-A must restrict their aggression, that they cannot declare war on an ally of Class 3-F while the provisions in Article I continue to be applied.

ARTICLE IV.

In light of the circumstances that developed on the eve of war, in which with almost certainty that, directly or indirectly, resulted in a state of war between Class 3-A and Class 3-F, that in the context of said circumstances neither party is to be pursued by the other in any capacity for any purposes, including but not limited to extraordinary retribution or conflict.

ARTICLE V.

Class 3-A agrees to transfer exactly ten points to Class 3-F.

ARTICLE VI.

Class 3-A agrees to transfer Ms Alice Sonora Westgrove to Class 3-F, following all appropriate procedures and protocols of a class transfer.

ARTICLE VII.

Of their respective class constituencies, Class 3-A agrees to transfer two seats in the Assembly to Class 3-F, where the respective outgoing and incoming Members for the transferred seats shall be determined at a later date but no later than the next convention of the Assembly.


The present treaty in all, of which the Old Yue text is authoritative, shall be ratified and enter into force without delay.

The instrument of ratification is provided by the witnesses to this treaty.

The present treaty shall be regarded as having entered into force pending the administrative discretion of the provision of the instrument of ratification.

In faith thereof the above named plenipotentiaries and witnesses have signed the present treaty.

Done at the Assembly Hall, Korolev Senior Secondary School, on 29 August 1887 of the Candoran Calendar.


For Class 3-A

For Class 3-F

For the student council executives

For the Faculty

Afterword

Hello all, this is tickles.

After much literary struggle, the second volume of my shounen series has been completed. Although I didn’t expect Alice’s story to take this long, it just all added up to a lot… except there wasn’t much exploration of the world outside of Livia’s vicinity, but perhaps some of you will recognize certain parallels with certain situations in the real world. I think I made it obvious enough, but, I also deliberately didn’t match those parallels to a tee. Maybe there’ll be a chance to explore some more of the world at a later time when I’m not just exploring the characters.

The Jupiter sisters took a surprisingly extensive amount of screen time in this story. Well, only the twins. Somehow, they’ve become a bit too central to the show, usurping the Elites who have more of a sidekick role like Eon and Caius. To be fair, they are sidekicks. Interspersing focuses on different characters did develop the relationships, so despite a supposedly Alice-focused volume, a lot of the Alice-related characters got their turn in the sun to push the story forward. Each of them will definitely get their own main spotlights in later novels, so please look forward to that.

For Alice, she falls in the typical born-into-privilege-but-hates-their-responsibilities archetype. To be very honest, this archetype’s been used over and over, but the struggle to overcome societal barriers is always an appealing idea, which is why good (making a normative statement here) archetypes are defined by its literary persistence. The archetype is there, but how it’s used and portrayed is what makes the character refreshing and stand out. Alice’s conflict vs. society is one that’s on a certain level shared with Kato’s too, which made them quick to understand each other. Nothing like a heart-to-heart comradeship to cement their relationship.

As for her individual character, her abrasive nature is one I really enjoy portraying. Through the dense shrubbery with prickly thorns, there’s a cute flower in the middle of a small clearing that is her kindness. She’s really not out to be evil, she’s just a bit confrontational (hehe). I knew from the start that this was the kind of character for Alice; a rude girl to contrast to someone of her stature, but it wasn’t until I remembered somebody I knew who also had this character to her, that I finally understood how to execute on this portrayal. I particularly enjoyed making her hesitate and muddle around the same things over and over despite appearing to be a very strong-willed woman, which gave her character a sense of realism instead of being subject to an instant fix found in a fantasy world; she was strong-willed, but just not in the areas she needed to be.

The pendant was the first part of her character that was laid down, and that idea came to me in a dream. In it, she waited for a miracle atop an electrical pylon in the middle of a thunderstorm, in a Frankenstein-esque scene. That miracle, of course, is related to her former significant other from her childhood. In chasing after this miracle, she had to put her family duties to the side, until the day that miracle was truly out of her grasp. Then Alice returned to earth from her dreamlike flight and had to once again deal with her family, namely arranging a marriage with Gilbert.

Her relationship with Gilbert isn’t one that’s too difficult to understand. It’s a result of an unfortunate set of circumstances for Alice, and of course it’s an archetypal situation that’s been portrayed many times over. I’m actually on the fence on how Gilbert’s character should develop and progress further into the future, and as a result I thought his character was somewhat weak. Despite that, he’s already a lot better than who he was originally a long time ago, which was a character that heel turns from Kato’s enemy into friend, something that wasn’t too realistic the more thought you put into it. The many nuanced details of their showdown guaranteed the death of that path.

This is also the first standard novel-length piece I’ve finished. In contrast to the first volume, which was akin to a pilot project more than anything, this one should be closer to what you would find in print at a bookstore. Proud? Of sorts. It is a passion project, after all. I’ll see you next time.

15 – And Then, Reality

“Achoo!”

Kato sniffed as he walked slowly along the hillside path past the Elites’ old playground. It was very early Tuesday morning and as usual he was experiencing the usual afflictions of waking up too early in the morning.

It had been a day since the end of the war between Class A and Class F, and although the win was decisive in Kato’s favour, he felt like things changed as much as things stayed the same. For instance, the partisan conflict between the establishment and the masses, the cause for the siege of the 3-F classroom, had not yet been resolved. Despite the enforced peace between Class A and Class F, Chantal and her allies continued the struggle with multiple scuffles throughout the rest of the day.

“Kato, do you not take care of yourself properly?”

That question had no trace of sympathy; rather, it was accompanied with a sneer. The girl with luscious curly blonde hair and a flat chest quipped with such cynicism and disdain that it actually hurt Kato a bit inside.

“You must be fun at parties.”

“Never was.”

After Class A’s defeat and the subsequent peace, Alice’s ego was obviously filled to the brim and bled into each of her obstinate words. Kato could only hope that it would abate with time.

“Oh, we’re supposed to bring lunch today, right? I forgot to make mine. I hope Teto sees that I left behind my lunch box and stuff at home and remembers to put food in it and bring it.”

Kato said nonchalantly, as if he had no care as to what he would have for lunch. But this was merely a symptom of his morning lethargy and his displeasure would be made well-known as time approached noon. Alice sighed.

“I saw it too. Your lunch box was still in the dish rack.”

“You saw it?”

“You forgot about your lunch because you were moving around like a zombie. I swear you were spacing out the entire time.”

Mildly exasperated, Alice berated him without holding back. She heard that Kato wasn’t a morning person, but she never thought it was this bad. At the very least, once he was in the sunshine he was slightly more animated. But only slightly.

“Aight. I get it.”

Hesitating, Alice twiddled her thumbs as she looked away from him and down at her feet. She felt the heat rush to her cheeks as the words tried to leave her throat, and only by gagging herself a bit was it able to come out.

“D-do you want to have some of my lunch instead? I went back to pack some more food because I saw that…”

Though she started off with a bright smile, her voice trailed off into a mumble, but Kato answered swiftly.

“Sure. What did you pack?”

“Oh. It’s fish fillet in corn soup.”

Suddenly, Kato grinned merrily, clasping his hands together in joy.

“Blessed, that you’re good at making Yue food. Really.”

“Hmph. If only you weren’t this sloppy in the morning, you wouldn’t need to beg me—persuade me to give you my lunch.”

Almost instinctively, the words left her mouth before she was even conscious of it, and within her mind she silently cursed herself. Why must she be so belligerent all the time, especially when she didn’t want to do that to Kato?

Then her next thought was why she didn’t want to be like that to Kato, but she quickly banished the thought, preferring not to think about the reason. However, that only made her loud heartbeat ring clearly in her ears, and unable to steer her mind away from the issue.

Beside her, Kato grinned some more, feeling a bit in the mood to retort.

“But you’re the one who offered me in the first place, so who’s begging who?”

She turned deep red at the provocation, and only managed a tongue-tied response that completely exposed herself.

“I-it’s obviously you! I-I’m only giving you an option because it would be uncivilized if I didn’t!”

Kato chuckled haughtily, dodging and slapping away the hand that was reaching out to pinch him, which only riled Alice up even more. He was not fully awake yet, but he was certainly much less lethargic. Only after a few angry exchanges and a bit of chasing did she give up and stop.

“Are you getting used to living here? I’d imagine it’s quite different from what you used to live in.”

Kato diverted the conversation in a different direction and Alice’s fire was extinguished almost instantly. He noticed that she had that sharp context switching quality to her, something not a lot of people had.

“It’s not too bad. I’ve always taken care of myself, so it’s not a problem. Besides, I always wanted to live closer to the inner city like this.”

Kato and his sisters were surprised when Alice told them that she would live with them starting yesterday, and even more surprising was that Karl, their long-time caretaker, reappeared when they arrived home after school. Alice was given one of the guest rooms on Karl’s side of the double apartment, sharing with Sisi the living space and the well-equipped kitchen.

“That’s good to hear. I was surprised Karl was able to find you.”

“Well, that’s your problem. If you weren’t so obvious with your grandstanding, you wouldn’t have made Karl’s job more difficult.”

In the fallout of the Class War and the long shadow of the looming conflict between the Westgroves and the Lafayettes, Sisi notified Karl of the events that led up to that point and had him make new arrangements for Alice. After all, Karl was tasked with the objective of erasing people’s memories, and now with the whole of the Westgrove and Lafayette families and their peripherals taking the existence of Kato seriously, it was only inevitable for Karl to take care of this mess. The key family members who were nomenklatura might not end up having their memories erased, but many of their peers probably would be. Plus, if Alice was looking to become a nomenklatura herself, this was also a good opportunity to make herself known and useful to her future peers.

“But couldn’t Karl have found a different place for you to live in?”

“Do you have a problem with it?”

She shot him a glare as she asked him pointedly, to which he relented and raised his hands. She then sighed and continued.

“It’s the safest option at the moment. I don’t have my own mob like my brother and my uncle does, so what I can do is turn to Eternia itself for help.”

“What does your ownership stake entail anyway? The way your family business is structured, is not normal, is it?”

“You’re right. It’s not normal. This is what happens when there’s a succession crisis. Normally the head of the family owned everything, but there was a clear irreconcilable difference between Albert and Uncle Justin, so my father decided to split the company between the two, knowing full well that the business has a good chance of splitting into two separate entities in the near future.”

“And that’s not what happened eventually, right? What about you?”

“My brother convinced my father to give me the majority, so that neither my brother nor uncle could split up the company. That’s what my father wanted. It worked well enough for all parties, because Albert and Uncle Justin both liked me a lot, and my father’s hard work wouldn’t be scrapped so fast.”

Kato nodded. It made sense.

“And now? What happens now? Are you in control of part of the company?”

“Yes and no. I have access to the equity that my shares held, but in terms of general operations, that’s a nonstarter. I’ll have to establish my own clique from the ground up.”

“Sounds difficult. What about the Lafayette side?”

“I don’t know yet. I hope that Gilbert’s stunt yesterday made them think twice before actually taking action against my family.”

Kato made a double take, surprised at Alice’s conclusion. He didn’t tell her of the exchange between him and Gilbert at the end.

“How did you know?”

“So he told you? What a contradictory person. He wouldn’t for the life of him tell me his intentions, even though he’s acting on it for me.”

Her eyes were once again distant, almost painful. After all, it wasn’t every day that she abandoned somebody who was devoted to her, even in that warped and unbalanced way.

“Well… he did explain that to me, but how did you figure it out?”

“He was way too gung-ho about the whole thing. I sensed it from him yesterday when we talked for the last time. Even by arresting me to prevent me from declaring war on your class too soon, that wasn’t enough reason; I was not actually a threat. He never does anything he saw as useless, so unless he has some other motives, only this made sense.”

“I can’t say that I’m not impressed with your deductive skills.”

She smiled ruefully.

“Despite what he says, he still cared about me, but of course in his own twisted way.”

She said, more to herself than to Kato. She wanted to say a little bit more, but she stopped and left it there. Sensing that hesitation, he smiled earnestly to dispel her doubts.

“Alice. You should just take his parting gift to you at face value. You don’t owe him anything anymore, y’know? Except for one thing, probably.”

“What’s that?”

“To use your newfound freedom. Else, he’d probably be pretty cheesed, dontcha think?”

Alice laughed, a cheery one that was devoid of the pride and arrogance that was so typical of her. A fitting end to a rather unhappy chapter in her life.

The road to school was, as usual, a long one, but Alice didn’t seem to mind the distance. One would think that a seemingly sheltered lady like Alice would not be agreeable with this long of a walk, but she wasn’t a normal upperclasswoman by any standard.

They passed through the front gates of the school, where only yesterday Alice was arrested by the PSC. Pushing through the great front doors and into the atrium, they saw that in the middle near the spiral staircase were several mobile wooden bulletin boards where teachers tacked pins to put up posters and notices. They were usually put aside against the transparent glass walls that separated the atrium and the cafeteria on the far side, but having them in the middle meant that there was a public notice of considerable importance from the faculty.

Looking at each other for a moment, they rushed across the fairly empty atrium to the bulletin board, where a couple of other early-bird students were also looking at. Tacked there were a dozen A4 size sheets of paper, all in Old Yue and in tiny font for ants.

“…the faculty review on the Public Safety Committee, which shall be established on the thirty-first day of August, eighteen eighty-seven, shall be charged with the investigation of the PSC and its operating history for wrongdoing and misconduct. The results of the investigation shall be presented to the Senate for review. Following the review, the Senate shall make recommendations to the student council.”

Alice read the abstract off of the first page.

“That means the faculty answered one of our five demands.”

Kato grinned at Alice, whose eyes also lit up at the miraculous turn of events. Historically, no matter how ugly things got, the faculty never interfered with student issues, and especially not political ones. Today, perhaps under Sisi’s influence, they stood up.

“It ends with recommendations to the student council. This will end up with Ariel?”

“Exactly.”

As the head of the Department of the Administration, Ariel was named the student council’s undersecretary, and was formally addressed as Madam Secretary. Besides managing the Records Office, an informal responsibility of the administration was also to provide legal advice to the student council, and therefore the undersecretary also functioned as an attorney general. In short, Ariel would ultimately be responsible for the prosecution of police officers who had abused their privileges, according to whatever results the faculty found,

“We did it. It actually worked!”

Alice smiled brilliantly. She was generally apolitical when it came to issues like these, but perhaps because of how this particular movement was entangled with her own personal predicaments, the shared experience brought her sympathy for the anti-neutrality protests and protestors.

“Yeah. We did it!”

They double high-fived with glee, startling the couple of other students who were also reading the tack board. They both laughed, the sense of relief and victory for the protestors had not yet abated.

After they visited their separate lockers, it turned out that the same notice was also posted in the third music room that was their destination. Maybe it was posted to every classroom to inform the students of the severity of the situation.

It was Tuesday, and Mirabelle still had not returned to school, so Kato continued to supervise this music room in her absence. The difference from a week ago was that Alice now lived under the same roof as him.

“Oh, I forgot I left some of my sheet music in the classroom. I’ll go get it, and also put down some of my stuff.”

Alice declared seriously only moments after they stepped inside, prompting Kato to give her a bemused look. Alice shrugged exaggeratedly, returning his contempt in full. Sometimes, these things happen.

“All right.”

Kato sat down at the supervisor’s chair anyways, waving the blonde girl away as he pulled the notice and its many pages of text from the wall to read it. With how it was even posted in the music room, he was sure that this faculty review would be the hot topic in the school for the foreseeable future.

He realized that a part of the faculty’s notice included not just an excerpt but the full text of the peace treaty between Class A and Class F, and he snickered at the thoroughness of the faculty. Certainly, they didn’t need to provide such a detailed and comprehensive report so soon, but they did. Perhaps the faculty wanted to crack down on the PSC for a long time already.

“I’ll just read through the whole thing here, eh?”

He waved again at the blonde girl who was taking out her other stacks of sheet music from her backpack and placing it on an empty music stand. It wasn’t piano practice today. She made a quick stride for the door and returned the wave.

“I’ll be right back.”

She hustled for the nearby stairs, and fortunately after she got to the third floor she no longer had to cross the length of the school to her classroom. The early morning sun filtered through the windows, blinding her a bit every time she stepped inside its light.

Like downstairs, there were barely any students around for morning activities on the third floor. Most school clubs operated after school, and for those that also operated in the morning like the music department, it was only the second week of school and not every club was up and running yet.

She arrived at the front of an empty classroom, one where its doors’ vicinities were still discoloured from the rubbish slung around during yesterday’s siege. The area was all cleaned up and thoroughly disinfected, but the stains from food, paint and the like remained, which were haphazardly splattered on the floor and walls around the door, as if somebody took a humongous barf all over. She chuckled to herself, the stains a stark reminder of the struggle that took place here, and unbeknownst to the public, a struggle for her sake.

After wading through the rows of desks and arriving at her own, Alice pulled out a few textbooks from her backpack to put inside her new desk, and at the same time took back out the sheet music that she left inside her desk yesterday. As she rummaged through the inside of her desk, she was reminded by the cassette tape in there that she should return it to its owner. She smiled widely. The album on this tape was great. Starting today, it was her age of bliss.

She looked around. Her desk was to Evie’s right, at the back row and fourth column from the left. Of course, on Evie’s left was Kato and then Eon, while in front of those two were Franco and Caius respectively, and then Yui sat in front of Caius. These were the Elites of Class F.

Stapled to the tack board at the back of the classroom was the public notice again, confirming that it was being posted everywhere. This time, she scowled as she caught sight of a detail on it that brought her some unease and embarrassment. Major peace treaties were often given shorthand names so they were easier to refer to, and this particular peace treaty was named the Alice Protocol, in reference to article six that transferred Alice from Class A to Class F. Even the faculty used this informal name to refer to the results of yesterday’s Class War.

Up until the last moment, it was really hard for her to imagine that she would end up here. If she were to guess, this was the condition that Kato planned to demand from Class A from the very start. There was not much in Class A that was particularly hard to leave behind. No matter the consequences, she only needed to accept them, and that was all. And if she could make heart-to-heart friendships that she had not made for a long time, then all the better.

Subconsciously, her hands wrapped around the tiny trinket that was tied about her neck. She was allowed to have wishes and pursue them, was she not? She looked over longingly to the desk one over Evie’s as a complex fusion of guilt and desire surfaced in her consciousness.

“Percy, I’m so sorry. I’ve found somebody else. I can’t be hung over you forever. I still have a life to live. A life that you saved in that moment of madness.”

There was nobody around, so she spoke out loud to emphasize to herself the importance of it. On this subject, Alice still wavered and was filled with doubt and uncertainty. Her grasp tightened around the trinket, unable to let it go.

“It’s enough now, isn’t it? It’s time to stop living in the past and start living in the present. If I leave Gil and the family behind, I also leave you behind too, but that’s fine. I have friends who know me as you once did. It’s time for me to move on.”

She was suddenly reminded of the final moments of the fight between Gilbert and Kato. In the midst of the noise, cheers and confusion of the audience, she heard the faint screams of Kato in that confrontation, and although she would never know how Gilbert answered, she remembered Kato’s words crystal clear.

Do you not know the cry of someone in despair? Can you not empathize with her feelings? Love is not something so easily convinced of just through worldly actions.

After a moment of silence, she promptly put those thoughts away and let go of the dull glass-like shard. Looking forward was what she promised herself to do, even if the doubts remained inside her head. She would just have to live with it and continue searching for answers. With her sheet music in hand, she smiled widely again, suddenly bright and hopeful. She headed for the door to return to the perennially arrogant Eternian in the music room below.

“This is goodbye for the last time, Percy. Until our next lives.”

14 – Clashing Ideals

Even though somebody might be detained for up to thirty minutes, they were not allowed to be treated unfairly while arrested, so it wasn’t long before somebody opened up the interrogation room’s door to check up on the detainee. Usually when the PSC intended to hold someone for the full thirty minutes, they would visit at the fifteen-minute mark and then finally the thirty-minute mark.

One of the PSC members eventually did so, peeking cautiously into the interrogation room from behind the door. Obviously, due to the political nature of her arrest, the PSC didn’t need to conduct any prosecutorial work, nor did they want to divulge that intent to the public, so they tried not to interact with their political prisoners as much as possible. Glancing over, he gasped, seeing that Alice was doubled over with her head lying on the tabletop and seemingly short on breath.

“What’s the matter?”

The PSC member, who wasn’t from third year or from Class A, rushed over to Alice’s side, a bit flustered about what he should do. After all, to the PSC grunts Alice was once or was still their top boss’s bride. Either way, it was a difficult situation to assess.

“Allergy. My puffer’s in my bag.”

Alice turned her face, evidently twisted in pain, in the boy’s direction. He involuntarily took a step back, spooked by the apparent severity of the situation, but then he immediately regained his senses and ran back to the door.

“Anthony, bring her bag! Looks like it’s an asthma attack! Find her puffer!”

He rushed back and crouched down to her level to observe her state and brush her back lightly to comfort her. Most of the PSC knew the basics of emergency first aid and at least could help before a teacher arrived.

“Where else does it hurt? In the chest? Nod if yes.”

Alice nodded slowly, preoccupied by the distress caused by the difficulty in breathing and the chest pain. Through the door came the other PSC member with Alice’s backpack, placing it on the table and frantically rummaging it for the puffer. Seeing his colleague arrive, the first PSC member left Alice’s side to open the locker to the side.

“Find it and give it to her. I’ll bring out a mat for her to lie on—”

The PSC member opened the locker to find the spooky existence known as Kato aiming a kick at his groin, which connected by the shin before the dude realized what happened. By the next second he was already writhing on the floor in pain, and fortunately no real damage was done because he had his cleanse tag on.

“Hah!”

Kato emerged from the metal container, jumping over the struggling PSC member and landing firmly on the ground next to the other frightened PSC member, petrified by the abrupt change in events. He was merely searching Alice’s backpack during a medical emergency, and suddenly his comrade was temporarily incapacitated by a freak that had been hiding in the locker, so it was not unjustified that little Anthony felt at a loss at how to respond in the moment. Though they had prior training, they were neither battle-hardened nor physically superior, so it couldn’t be helped.

Unfortunately, the pause basically sealed his fate, because Kato was not going to wait for him to ready his posture. Using the same tactic, Kato’s knee was thrust into the PSC grunt’s groin, sending him writhing on the ground like his companion.

From the moment the first groin was struck by Kato, Alice had already given up on the act and bolted for the open door, past Kato and the two PSC members who were now on the ground. Of course, Alice was never afflicted with asthma and there certainly was no puffer in her bag, the entire charade a brainchild of Evie’s imagination.

“Kato, take care of them!”

“Yeah!”

Kato nailed the two officers hard, as all they were able to do was grunt in pain for a good eight seconds before they were able to recover enough to reassess their surroundings. Within that time frame, Kato had already nicked Alice’s bag from the desk, slung it over his shoulders, and closed the door on the interrogation room. The room was locked from the outside, as it should be so that it could actually lock in prisoners. He fumbled with both the doorknob’s old-school key lock and the sliding metal bolt lock and sealed the interrogation room shut.

He didn’t expect the doorknob to hold up as they would probably have the keys, but the metal bolt would definitely be a problem without tearing down the door. For good measure he took a chair from nearby, angled it against the door and pushed the backrest underneath the doorknob, making it even harder for the two inside from opening the door. And just in time, he heard muffled voices and banging and shaking on the door from inside the interrogation room as he began to move away. Mission accomplished.

“I found it! We’re done here! Let’s go!”

Alice waved her left arm at Kato, who saw her cleanse tag once more strapped around her wrist and gave her an approving nod. It seemed like it wasn’t too hard to find where they stored the confiscated cleanse tags.

“Yeah! Let’s go!”

Just like that, the two fled the PSC office for the staircase they came up through, flying down the steps to the ground floor. Instead of heading back into the hallway towards the atrium, they took the opposite direction and went straight out the doors facing the inner courtyard, ending up on its grass with both of them panting from the sudden physical exercise and exasperated at how Evie’s plan went.

“Your physical’s not bad, eh?”

“I’m not just a music student; I do everything in the performing arts. Of course my physical fitness is good.”

“Haha. That makes sense.”

Letting out a chuckle that didn’t seem like he was convinced, Alice stuck out her tongue in protest.

“I was also the best player on the volleyball team when I was in middle school. Get the fuck outta here.”

She replied in Old Yue instead of New Yue, which was very much sanitized compared to the very explicit vulgarities that were available in Old Yue, its complexities so deep that Alice was only really able to grasp the ones on the surface. Despite her retort, Kato’s arrogance remained.

“Look at you, the extracurriculars student. Then let’s bring some of that energy back. We’re headed for the other side of the cafeteria, for the Class F windows.”

“The windows?”

Kato began running again, west and around the protrusion of the cafeteria as Alice kept pace closely behind him. He tossed her bag back to her as they moved along and she caught it smoothly.

“We’re climbing up a ladder. How else are we gonna get in? The front doors are under siege right now.”

“Ladder? What ladder?”

“Some of my classmates are gonna evacuate the classroom from a stepladder. We’re gonna go back up it.”

“Wait a minute. We’re locking ourselves into the siege? How does that help?”

“It’ll be a symbolic thing, right? Both to him and everyone else.”

“I guess it is…”

They stopped before the corner that turned into the open yard below the 3-F classroom, both peeking from behind it to observe the situation. They saw, in horror, the clouds of smoke continuously escaping from the windows as if the classroom was on fire. Of course, they understood that it was mostly harmless smoke and tear gas and not actually a real fire emergency, but the scene was not immediately indicative of that understanding.

“Alice. I think you know what my class is fighting for, right? Ever since the Act of Neutrality was tabled, people were on edge. We even managed to pull people from across classes together, not least because of the different views on the situation in Lien.”

“Mm. I understand.”

“But at the same time, however that turns out, our first priority is to solve your problem first, so we’re gonna do just that.”

“Wait a sec, what do you mean by that?”

“I’m gonna use my class as a sacrifice to bring you to Gilbert.”

“…”

“That way, you can confront him in a situation he can’t just hand-wave away, so you can say everything straight to his face without the rest of the family watching from behind you, and have him give you a real response for once.”

Alice made a difficult face, halfway between apologetic and sombre. That was a part of the note she received from Evie, and the reason why Kato was sent to the PSC office to break her out of prison.

“You didn’t have to do this, y’know. You could have settled the political fight with a full-blown Class War. Will your classmates forgive you if that kind of struggle was used for my own personal reasons?”

She pointed to the raging smoke in the distance, not to mention the shouts and noise from the 3-F classroom on the third floor.

“Of course not, but that’s my burden to shoulder. I will manage it somehow.”

“No, it isn’t! All of you didn’t have to make this all so complicated! And it’s still my fault if your class loses in this battle, no matter how you look at it. I can’t take that responsibility! No, that’s not it. They don’t need to take responsibility for my own problems. Those are mine to start with!”

“Those problems aren’t only yours anymore, Alice. That’s what friends are for, aren’t they? Friends who would stand beside you through thick and thin.”

“But… this is still too big! You’ve turned this into something like an international incident, Kato!”

“If it isn’t this big, we’ll never find an endgame, Alice. Not just for you, but for the anti-neutrality protests as well.”

“…”

Alice stopped. She knew what he meant, understanding the political turmoil that had been brewing ever since last Tuesday. The Elites themselves didn’t contribute much to the resistance effort, where most of the work had been done by their classmates and students from many other classes, but as the de facto leaders of Class F, they were invariably pushed to the forefront of the resistance. She sighed helplessly as Kato reassured her.

“Class F is only the first of many classes to challenge the establishment. The trigger would have been pulled sooner or later. Then the only road forward is to win, and I want to carry you with us over that finish line.”

Kato patted her on the shoulders as she nodded slowly, finally accepting reality as it is. The worry in her expression faded and was replaced by her usual determination, to which Kato grinned. It was time to get down to business.

“Here, wear this.”

Seeing the dense smoke they were going to enter into, Kato gave her a face mask for her to wear and he too also wore one as well. From the window, the stepladder that Kato mentioned earlier was indeed extended out to the ground below with a cluster of students already grouped a short distance from its base. Mr Khosa was among the students, seemingly mediating some kind of dispute between the two camps of Class F and PSC members.

“Alice, climb on top of me.”

“W-what?”

She flustered at the non sequitur command, but he didn’t let her have a chance to stumble over herself and her ever-inventive imagination. He moved quickly to put himself underneath her and pick her up on a piggyback, and as she realized what he was going to do, she quickly returned to normal and braced herself.

“I’m gonna rush there, and you’ll jump off and run up the ladder. I’ll be right behind you. Got it?”

“Mm!”

Kato sprinted toward the ladder and covered the distance with only one breath. The speed and force he put into the dash was almost superhuman, undoubtedly wilting the grass underneath his feet. He dug in and braked to a halt just after the ladder to jettison Alice back onto the ground, and both of them jumped for the rungs while bathed in a skin-burning veil of smoke and tear gas.

It was in part due to the confrontation between the PSC and the recently disembarked Class F party that the lightning-fast Kato moving in went unnoticed until it was too late. The PSC only noticed something wrong as Alice jumped up the first few rungs.

“Wait! Stop this instant!”

One of the PSC members shouted out, but of course to no avail. The two were already a few steps up and off the ground. Scanning the crowd behind him as he climbed up, Kato spotted the person he was looking for. He grinned and nodded quickly at Yui, who was among the Class F evacuees. She returned with a warm smile and waved elegantly to him, giving him a burst of confidence that manifested in an odd way.

“Suck my dick!”

He snapped back at the two PSC officers below him, to which they got agitated at, but they were immediately shut down by Mr Khosa. Yui giggled at the farce, and continued waving at her extraordinary classmate-now-also-stepbrother like the affectionate elder stepsister she became. Her minor role in the plan was now over.

“Kato, was that necessary?”

“It wasn’t, but something just compelled me to do it, Alice.”

“Remind me to pinch you later.”

“Why in the world would I ever remind you to do that?”

They clambered into the classroom one after another, entering a shifting fog of white. Kato turned around to retrieve the stepladder, which was a special one that was retractable from the top rather than the bottom, apparently designed for evacuations from high places. For whatever reason, the school custodians had this kind of equipment, ostensibly for work on the school’s rooftop that was readily accessible to the general public.

“You almost got them to chase after us, if it wasn’t for Mr Khosa.”

“You’re right. We’re lucky he’s there, but I would have overpowered them anyways.”

“You never learn, do you?”

Alice sighed, giving up on Kato’s stubbornness. She turned to meet with a 3-F classroom in chaos, filled with smoke and sand that obscured vision and attacked exposed skin. It only took a few moments for Sisi to run up to the two new arrivals and handed them helmets and goggles for them to wear as she had a worried yet stern look, not unlike the face of a parent taking care of her children.

“Suit up, both of you! Kato! Take this already and put it on! We can’t have you coughing up a storm and incapacitating yourself.”

“Thank you, Ms Romana.”

“Got it, Sisi.”

His guardian and homeroom teacher gave him a double thumbs-up in approval, and strangely, only at this juncture did Kato finally feel a sense of no turning back. Maybe he was foolish to expect the Elites to live out their time here in Korolev Senior peacefully when they were quite literally the model troublemakers of their class, perhaps of their year. He took in a breath of the tear gas, taking the inflammation that it came with and feeling ready to join his comrades in their struggle.

Then his concentration was shattered by an agonizing pinch on his arm, flinching at the surprise pain inflicted by the person he rescued.

“Actually, though, what was that for?”

“Don’t even think you can get away with peeking at my underwear.”

“That was an unfortunate part of the operation! Besides, there’s nothing worthy there anyway.”

What was unfortunate? And nothing worthy?

A figurative vein popped, perhaps actually visible at her temples. Alice’s cold, bloodless face was reminiscent of Evie’s, and worse yet she twisted at Kato’s belly’s side without letting go, prompting Kato to jump away in a panic when he realized that was the case.

“Okay, okay! I was just joking! Please don’t do that again!”

“I’m gonna hold you to it.”

She let him off coolly, dusting off her palms like a job well done, but Kato was already on to the next set of business to settle. The clouds of smoke and tear gas were a constant reminder of that, for one.

“Kato!”

“Eon! What’s the situation?”

Actually, the visibility was low enough that he treaded forward with caution. Just as Kato reached where Eon and Evie were, the mound of desks shook violently, but luckily there was no breach yet.

“One, two, three!”

They could hear the drilling on the other side, and saw that the PSC officers used their grime-covered riot shields to ram into the barricade in an effort to break through. The students who were manning the barricade still managed to hold it in place, but the charges from the PSC weren’t going to stop any time soon.

“Let me do this!”

Evie ran to the front to help with her superhuman strength, just in time as the third charge came. Along with their classmates, they dug in their heels and put their backs and shoulders against the desks, holding it in place as the riot shields collided with the barricade.

“One, two, three!”

The desks shook for the fourth time, but with just Evie it held together. Her classmates too continued to hold up umbrellas to shield from the tear gas rounds flying through the air, and to pick them up to throw it back over or throw it out the window.

“One, two, three!”

At the other door, somehow Chantal and Franco held out against the first collision with their barricade, mostly due to Franco’s great strength. From Kato’s vantage point, he could barely make out their silhouettes due to the abundance of the irritant gases in the atmosphere despite the number of canisters being chucked out. Many more still remained as it was a dangerous job and the runners needed to constantly rest and recover before looking for the next gas canister.

“Kato! I’m here!”

Coughing under her face mask at the invasive tear gas, Alice made her way to the front where the Elites were. Eon and Caius both stopped running around to throw away the canisters and formed up around Kato as well.

“We could continue to hold out like this for a while, but the battle fatigue caused by the tear gas will wear us down soon. At some point, Evie will have to charge out into the police and break up their formations before they break up ours.”

“I don’t think they have any more tricks left. It’s been tear gas for a while and now it’s down to the charge. This should be the time.”

Kato’s two most faithful servants reported to him immediately.

“You’re right. It’s just about time. Good work, everyone. Your efforts are not in vain. Caius, he’s behind this barricade?”

“He was, but not sure where he is now. Shouldn’t matter if you show up anyway. They haven’t moved back to their base to get more supplies, so this is probably it.”

Kato nodded curtly and motioned to the girl standing beside him, shoulder to shoulder.

 “Alice, climb on top of me again.”

“What—”

Without sparing even a moment, he crouched down again to carry Alice on his back in the same manner he did only minutes ago. The barricade shook one more time, but that would be the last time the PSC would get a charge off of it.

“Hold onto me tight! I’m gonna let go of my hands! Here we go!”

“Wahhh!”

Kato said over his shoulder at the same time he lunged forward towards the barricade along with his passenger, prompting Alice to squeal for just a moment as she realized to tightly bind her arms around his neck and her legs around his torso before she slipped off of him. He mentally braced himself. Though the barricade was only a bit taller than him, it was still too dangerous to vault over.

He jumped off the ground and used Evie’s shoulder as a stepping-stone to launch himself onto the top of the barricade, his arms and feet finding their grip on the jumbled mess of desk legs and surfaces. He didn’t fear the barricade from collapsing as Evie was holding everything together, but it was still a dangerous move nonetheless.

The sudden appearance of a head poking out from above the barricade momentarily surprised the PSC officers. The ones still holding onto their firearms lowered them as they were generally not allowed to aim it at people, leaving them at a loss as to what they should do. The only time they were allowed to do so was if they equipped it with beanbag rounds, and they were still fully unloading tear gas canisters at the moment.

Kato quickly took apart the top of the barricade, throwing the offending desk behind him for Eon and Caius to catch. He jumped off the barricade and over the riot shields, Alice and all in tow, further surprising the PSC officers below him. He didn’t choose a clear space to land, rather, his kneecaps collided with the helmet of one of the PSC grunts as he descended, pummelling the unfortunate victim into the ground with him.

“Oi!” “You fuck!”

“Hold up!”

The officers around them immediately cursed at the new arrivals, but once they saw the blonde hair and pink headband of the passenger, Stephen stopped them from closing their distance on them and instead they all hastily backed off. Now firmly on the ground, Alice dismounted from her express train as she checked her surroundings.

The hallway was still a mess of gases, food, paint and scrap paper. Surrounded on both sides were cautious PSC members, unsure of what to do. They were all Alice’s classmates, and even in the short time that she was in their class, she was able to recognize most if not all of them even through the full gear hiding their body and faces.

Kato picked up the confused PSC officer below him by the lapels and with his superior strength, tossed the boy into his comrades, who caught him neatly in their clutches. The two delinquents stood tall together among the sea of police in riot gear, unwavering and determined.

“Alice. Kato.”

From between the ranks of the police line far down the hall, next to Franco and Chantal’s barricade, emerged a familiar tall black-haired man, unarmed but nevertheless possessed a commanding presence. Maintaining quite a distance, Gilbert unmasked himself to declare that he meant no physical harm to them as a PSC officer, to which the two of them relaxed a bit and followed his lead. Their helmets, goggles and face masks came off though they hadn’t worn them for very long yet.

Gilbert signalled his men with a wave, and to that everyone except Stephen backed off and proceeded to cordon off the hallway on both ends, isolating the group of four in the middle. The attempts to breach the barricade at the other door ceased as well. The PSC members and the Class F students watched the standoff from afar and from behind the barricades in a strange, eerie silence.

“Do you have business with me?”

“I have some for you.”

Although Gilbert initially addressed Kato, it was Alice who spoke up in response.

“I thought we’ve already closed the case on what was between us.”

He denied her assertion immediately.

“If that’s true, then why would you need to have the PSC arrest me?”

She shot back just as fast, and to that he gave it a moment’s thought before he nodded and seemingly conceded.

“Go on.”

Alice took a deep breath, and called out to Gilbert across the hallway.

“Can you call off the siege?”

“No, I cannot.”

“Why not?”

“We’re enforcing the laws of this land. That’s more than enough reason.”

Alice then took several strides forward until she was right in front of Gilbert, stopping only when she was mere inches from his face. Both Stephen and Kato started moving in response, but again they stopped at Gilbert’s hand signal. Stephen snarled and retreated all the way back into the police line that was set up next to the barricade at the other door. Kato too followed suit, retreating to the police line behind him next to Evie’s barricade, leaving Alice and Gilbert with a thirty feet radius of open space between them and the police lines; the 3-F classroom was around sixty feet in length.

She looked back into the calm, emotionless black eyes of her former fiancé, and saw what she always saw there. A closed book of a foreign language that Alice could not open nor read, but this was what she was here for. To open this book, at least once.

She threw her arms around Gilbert to embrace him, cheeks touching so that they were right at each other’s ears. Alice needed to tiptoe to reach it, but it wasn’t straining or uncomfortable as she put her weight onto his body. He didn’t return the embrace, or even move an inch for that matter.

“I have to do this, before you leave me behind for good. Or the other way around for you, I suppose.

“I couldn’t say anything more last night because the families were there, but I want to make clear to you my thoughts about what was between us that I couldn’t say at the time, and then I hope you can answer one question of mine. Is that all right?”

“Tch.”

Gilbert took his helmet off of his head and threw it onto the ground. She could sense the frustration in the toss and harsh landing, but he didn’t reject her. The residual hissing of smoke and tear gas continued from the canisters that were thrown back outside into the hallway, covering up their figures as well as their whispers. What seemed like a long pause was only a mere few seconds as he finally nodded. Alice closed her eyes and slowly began.

“I’m thankful for you. Truly. Out of all the suitors I have had the misfortune of meeting, you’re the only one who wanted to marry the person and not the family. I know you love me. Without you saying those words, that was obvious to me from the start.

“But why did it have to turn out the way it did? You probably know subconsciously, but haven’t realized it consciously yet. It isn’t because of Kato, as much as it is easy to blame him. Think about our relationship for the past two years. At what point were we more than just distant friends? Coworkers? Why is it that we can’t be more than that?

“It’s not that I’m in the right. It took me a while to figure out what I want or expect out of a relationship. And one thing I realized that I can’t negotiate with is that my significant other would not just understand my pains and miseries, but stand together with me in it. Is that not what a marriage is for? In other words, my feelings are more important than my family.

“But you have a different set of values. It’s the opposite, in fact. Most everyone in our social world shares your sentiments and not mine. The world isn’t perfect, so all I can do is reach out and meet you somewhere in the middle. That’s my expectation. That’s why at home I act the good girl, and at school I’m the bad girl. I hoped that you would come to understand both parts of me, one that has to bear the responsibilities of a Westgrove, and the other of my personal desires. The former, you knew exactly what it was about, but the latter still seemed to be a distant dream.

“I can’t, for the life of me, read your intentions. Your emotions, whether it was at home or at school, seemed to be the same, unreadable to the point of apathy. I can’t tell when you are real or you are fake. Maybe that nice guy is already the real you, but nothing you do makes me feel confident that that is the case. Instead, the small pleasantries slowly suffocated me. It felt as if there was a permanent distance between us, a gap I can’t cross no matter how much of myself I share with you.”

Gilbert twitched a bit. Kato had said the same thing before.

“I know you meant well. You went along with my selfishness the whole time, and when you’ve made your first selfish decision in a long time, the result is this. It doesn’t look fair to you at all. But if you understand what I was saying this whole time, if I didn’t postpone our engagement, it won’t be fair for me either. I’m not willing to sacrifice myself for the family anymore. Not my current self. Even if I have to face the consequences of evading my duties to my family, my personal happiness is still more important.

“That’s why, within our vicious cycle of contradicting worldviews, I still want to know your thoughts before we go our separate ways for good. What was our relationship to you?”

Alice couldn’t see Gilbert’s face, but she felt the emotional strain in his body. He didn’t interrupt her throughout her soliloquy, letting her thoroughly finish with her thoughts. And although Gilbert was clearly upset, true to his calm disposition his voice barely carried that emotion.

“I cherished our relationship. I do love you. But perhaps I’ve been too narrow-minded. Despite all the work I put in to make you happy, none of that was returned in the slightest. Only after yesterday did I realize that you were looking for none of the things I did for you. Kato was right when he said that the way I loved you was not what you wanted at all. I thought at some point, that you would realize your duties to your family and your responsibilities as such, but it seems like I was wrong to expect that to happen, just as you were wrong to expect that there could be a compromise between your freedom and your responsibilities.

“But just as you have your responsibilities, I have my own and I take pride in assuming these duties. Despite being casted out as a useless son of the Lafayettes whose only future is inside the mob, I climbed out of that hellhole alone to bring myself up to the heights I’m at right now. I’m not doing it because I’m forced to do it, but because this is what I believe the whole existence of Gilbert Paul de Lafayette had been and should continue to be.

“To exemplify my will, I’ll blame this whole affair on Kato, even if the situation is more complicated than just him. Obviously, I’m not going to blame myself for being selfish, and this siege here is justice being served from my point of view. To me, he’s merely a homewrecker who deserves the retribution.

“But I can’t deny your worldview either. You’ve already made a choice, so let’s not dwell on it any longer. I don’t need to hear any more self-serving excuses to justify what was unfairly done to me. Let’s just leave the past where it belongs: in the past.”

Alice didn’t snap back the way she normally did when Gilbert said something that she didn’t agree with. Instead, tears trailed down her cheeks as Gilbert gave her his own version of the “breaking up speech”. Naïvely, she thought it could have been possible to separate on amicable terms, as their whole relationship had always been, but she was too optimistic. The rift between them only widened, and there was nothing she could do about it. They were truly too different from each other to come to a compromise.

“Yes, let’s. If this is how our paths diverge, then I must accept that reality as well.”

She didn’t say anything more. The couple of minutes of time to themselves were over. Alice separated herself from him, taking a few steps backward before she addressed him again.

“You wanting me to transfer to Regia Miriam, was also something you thought would correct the unfairness done against you?”

“Exactly. I believe any other man would be just as furious if this betrayal happened to them.”

“Fair.”

It couldn’t be helped. After all, Alice’s choice was definitely unfair to Gilbert from his point of view, especially when it was Alice who chose him in the first place. A broken promise was still a broken promise, no matter how much she justified it.

“Then, I’ll ask one more time. Why was I arrested the moment I returned to school?”

Gilbert didn’t reply immediately. Instead he made a rare smile, surprising Alice as his words up until now was on the edge of patronizing and spiteful, even if the emotion didn’t surface in his voice. It wasn’t the usual calm and unreadable one that he often carried, but one that was genuine in its expression. It was not a happy smile; rather, it conveyed a tacit satisfaction or realization of some sort.

“To have this conversation with you, though not in this particular manner.”

Alice returned the thin smile. She knew, in that moment, that she would never be able to speak to Gilbert in such a manner ever again. She took several steps further back, accepting that they would separate for good.

“Is that all to it?”

The smile disappeared from his face, returning to the usual calm posture that was his defining characteristic. It would never reappear in front of Alice again.

“Of course not. But if you’re asking that, then you also know exactly why there was a need to take you into custody.”

“I do. So are you going to call off the siege?”

She kept backing up until she bumped into Kato, just outside the barricade and before the police line. The boy next to her held her hand firmly, in part to affirm his intentions and in part to comfort her. Across the aisle, Stephen reappeared beside his boss, his outer appearance as sketchy as ever.

“No, we’re not lifting the siege.”

“Then you know what’s going to happen.”

“Yes.”

She first turned towards the barricade to see that it was already partially dismantled. Sisi was standing in the new opening, staring straight back into her eyes, and Alice nodded. She finally turned to her friend who was holding onto her hand, and smiled helplessly. He grinned back fearlessly, and reassured her.

“Let’s go.”

She admired his confidence. It was something she could never bring out on her own. Perhaps that was why she wanted to chase after him. With her free hand she poked at Kato’s chest, somewhat humorously.

“Class A possesses a restoration of order casus belli against Class F. With a valid casus belli, Class A shall declare war on Class F.”

As Alice finished the declaration of war, the students around them began to rile up in both excitement and panic. They were in the middle of a siege, paused by the arrival of an unknown quantity, and now escalated from a police action to a Class War.

Normally, a declaration of war would be made by the class representative, but there were actually no rules on who could declare war on whom, as long as the people involved were part of two opposing classes, the attacking party had a valid casus belli, and they wore cleanse tags. This was why Alice needed to be arrested; to prevent her from starting a war on her own. Hell, even in the absence of all the students of a class from school, a declaration of war could be made to that class’s teacher, though the resulting war would be very meaningless. To declare war, one class would need a casus belli to do so, and those were often rare to produce and almost always involved teachers or students with representative authority. However, the restoration of order casus belli was one of the few special ones that were always valid. It was automatically given to all classes above the offending class who broke the “normal” order.

At the start of the year, Class A was given sixty points, Class B was given fifty points, and so on, down to Class F with ten points. Classes below F did not start with any points. The “normal” ranking order was this order, denoting that the classes were in their rightful places. Since Class F has won over Class E and stolen ten points from them, Class F was now “out of order” and could be put back into place by any class with more points than them. That was the restoration of order casus belli.

Even after the end of a restoration of order war, if Class F still had fewer points than Class A and was still “out of order”, the casus belli would still remain and would become valid again after their truce expired, making it very dangerous for lower classes to challenge those above them. It was conventional wisdom that only classes A to C were in contention for winning the Class Wars.

Sisi clambered over the barricade to put herself out in the middle of the corridor, reuniting with Alice and Kato quickly. She was the only teacher in the middle of the fighting, and therefore the only Supervisor for the Class War in the vicinity.

“Alice! Kato!”

But she was only able to call out their names before an earsplitting school-wide announcement blared from thin air. The school’s principal, Eterna, was an alchemist of the highest order and this kind of auditory physics was merely child’s play. Under her passive watch over the school from a higher plane, she managed the Class Wars for the two-hundred-something years of this school’s existence.

“Attention, school. A casus belli has been claimed by Class A against Class F. As the ultimate arbiter of the Class Wars, I, Eterna, will determine that the casus belli claimed is true and justified. I now declare the commencement of war between Class A and Class F. Let’s get crackin’!”

Without a moment to spare, the police line behind them started to shuffle forward, evidently going after Kato. However, Sisi slipped herself between the rushing Class A students and Kato and Alice, stopping them in their tracks. As a teacher and therefore a Supervisor of the Class Wars, she was normally not allowed to intervene in this physical brawl, but as Sisi had demonstrated before, she was willing to push the rules to its limits.

“Ms Romana!”

One of the PSC members exclaimed, but they didn’t charge through her, still respecting her position as a Supervisor. Meanwhile, the school’s barrier was activated as it turned into rainbow-coloured auroras outside and everyone’s peripherals turned all purple, the primary indicator that a Class War commenced. While the barrier was active, everyone was protected from most injuries, with or without cleanse tags.

“Gilbert! Shall we have a Duel?”

Kato ripped off his mask that he had lowered to under his chin as he pointed his index finger at his opponent, who similarly glared back with the same hostility.

“Of course. On what conditions?”

Duels were a special feature of the Class Wars, where participants from the opposing parties would fight on the terms set out by the Supervisor who approved of the Duel. In the modern day, most Class Wars were actually settled on these Duels instead of a physical battle royale, and those Duels consisted of academic challenges in a trivia quiz format. It was very rare for Class Wars to devolve into violence like it had been decades ago, as the school moved forward together with the progress of civilization.

“How about a winner-takes-all, one-vee-one? It shouldn’t leave you unsatisfied, win or lose, right?”

The winner-takes-all condition was not uncommon. Score-wise, it was equivalent to all of that class’ students’ cleanse tags being fully saturated. Sometimes, classes did agree to hinge the war’s outcome on a single Duel, though the format of the Duel might be varied and may even take hours to finish. As for the one-on-one, Kato was alluding to a physical battle. Since a Class War was won by fully saturating the cleanse tag of the opposing class representative, only class representatives were allowed to propose such a condition to the Supervisor.

A cleanse tag could either be saturated by physical injury, or artificially saturated by the Supervisor after a Duel. Although preventing injury was the common approach of understanding cleanse tags and the school’s barrier, it was actually a misnomer. More precisely, it healed injuries at a rapid pace and immediately as they occurred. If someone was cut, immediately the skin would be repaired and even push the blade back out from the healed opening. However, the rapid regeneration process tapered off as it approached fully healed, akin to the growth of a logarithmic function. This was why small cuts and bruises remained on the person.

As for the reason why it was called “saturated”, it came from the patches of dark that appeared on the cleanse tag as one took damage, until it turned completely black. Luckily, a fully saturated cleanse tag functioned just as normally as an unsaturated one; it was merely a convenient measure of physical injury taken by the wearer. This system was an age-old method for fighters of all kinds to spar with each other without causing serious injury. This particular barrier was a special one, as it also protected non-cleanse tag wearers while it was active. The class representative whose cleanse tag was the first to fully saturate became the losing party.

Unsurprising to Kato, who had the chance to go through the intelligence this morning in the Records Office to confirm Alice’s tip off from yesterday, Gilbert grinned faintly at his suggestion. If Gilbert was as old-school and traditional as he presented himself to be, then there was no chance that he would turn down this kind of Duel. After all, it was a fair-and-square battle, brimming with the sense of chivalrous pride that he stood for.

“I have no objections to these conditions. Let’s make the winning criteria the same as street rules.”

“I’m down for it.”

He held up his left arm, cleanse tag and PSC scarf together, in the air. Kato mirrored him, but obviously without the PSC credential.

“What street rules?”

Alice tugged on the Eternian youth’s right hand that she was holding, rather forcefully, sensing the danger in those words.

“It’s a euphemism for a fight to incapacitation. Because street rules basically means no rules, people beat each other up until one passes out or outright dies. In our context, that’s worth about two fully saturated cleanse tags.”

Alice’s expression hardened at the cold explanation, but she didn’t speak. Beating someone up until they were halfway to passing out was no small task. Though she didn’t want them to, she kind of expected and accepted that they would go this far.

Sisi was also holding up her cleanse tag, which glowed blue while the two men’s glowed yellow. It meant that the two were now locked in a Duel and Sisi was the Duel’s arbitrator. Technically, the Supervisor could impose whatever conditions on the Duel they wanted regardless of the participants, but it was an unspoken constitutional principle that they would respect the conditions that the two class representatives agreed on.

“The challenge is a physical contest. The winner is determined by street rules. That is all.”

Sisi declared succinctly to the two fighters and the crowd around them, which roared in anticipation for a glorious battle. The Class A students were quite confident in the abilities of their boss, despite the open secret that Kato and Evie were trained Eternian fighters.

“Alice. It’s my turn to show you that your choice is correct.”

Kato let go of Alice’s hand, sparing a glance at his newfound friend for the last time before the fight commenced. He saw an awkward combination of emotions on her face, including worry, anxiousness, and most importantly, determination.

“Then show me.”

Her reply was as crude as she ever was, eliciting a snarky smirk from him, but he turned away just in time to not let her see it. He took a few steps away from Alice and faced Gilbert straight from the front, who took apart his body armour that he wore for the siege to reveal the usual school uniform underneath.

Behind the barricade that Sisi emerged from, Chantal arrived from the other barricade like the other students of Class F to watch the Duel. Because they made the Duel a winner-takes-all, there was no point for the other students of Class A and Class F to fight each other. Moreover, the siege was essentially temporarily lifted as well, as once the Class War finished with the Duel the two classes would be forced to negotiate a peace settlement and that happened in the Assembly Hall, requiring most of both classes to attend. If the PSC still insisted to continue the arrests, it would be attempted inside the Assembly Hall immediately after peace was concluded.

“Wait a minute. Gilbert should know that Kato’s a deity. Why would he agree to fight him?”

Chantal asked the Elites next to her.

“It’s because Gilbert’s a challenger. He came to our school during middle school, remember? He was actually trained as a bodyguard up until he moved in here.”

Caius answered first. All of today’s Class F came up from the main feeder school, Korolev Junior Secondary School.

“Yeah. He originally wasn’t supposed to take over his family’s company, and he was physically superior, so they thought they could make him into a reliable asset to the family. But then his older brother died in an accident back then, so with his smarts it made him the next in line. Of course, his granddad is still in control right now, but it’ll eventually be his to run.”

Eon explained further for his classmate, to which she was very surprised.

“How did you guys know that?”

Caius and Eon looked at each other, and slowly grinned with a twinge of smugness.

“Trade secret.”

Chantal shook her head in disapproval, knowing fully that Caius and Eon had been up to no good, and with that in mind she didn’t press them further. Of course, the Elites learned all of that from the Records Office this morning, but they obviously weren’t about to admit to wrongdoing. Alice had told Kato that Gilbert was physically superior and most likely a challenger, so his file was scrutinized for traces of his martial pedigree, and to the Elites’ disappointment they could not find much beyond confirmation that he was indeed a challenger.

That was why Kato had faith that this contest would go through. He didn’t know exactly how well-trained Gilbert was, and he wouldn’t know until he actually fought him. Despite this unknown, somehow Kato was still confident that he would win. Kato and Gilbert kept their eyes on each other’s cleanse tags, waiting for the signal.

“I won’t be holding back.”

“Neither would I.”

After a very short exchange of words, the glows on their cleanse tags on both their arms instantly turned from yellow to blue, a glow which would persist for a good ten seconds or so before it receded to a dim light so that it was not distracting. The preparatory phase was over; the challenge phase began, and so did their fight.

Even before their feet left the ground they could instantly feel the extreme intensity of each other’s killing intent. They closed the distance between each other in a flash, carrying with them the intent of inflicting maximum pain. Their fists bore the weights of their opposing ideals, principles that they could not compromise over, and there was no way to settle the fight other than through a physical battle.

“Hah!”

“Keh!”

Kato landed the first punch, putting Gilbert’s stomach into a world of hurt, but to Kato’s surprise Gilbert didn’t budge. Instead, the tall man absorbed the pain and went on the offensive, managing to throw Kato into the adjacent wall. Surprised, Kato flinched on impact, and that cost him dearly. He received several more punches and kicks to his body before he was able to dodge the final one and regain his footing.

“Arrgh!”

Although the barrier prevented almost all injuries, guaranteeing protection from fatal injuries, oftentimes superficial bruises and cuts remained, and Kato was going to have lots of those after this fight. The wall he was slammed into was made of brick, and certainly a human body was not enough to pulverize brick, so his body was pulverized instead.

Mentally fighting the blinding pain, he managed to clear a bit of distance away, but Gilbert attempted to immediately close it to continue his rapid attacks. Seeing that, and true to his skill and experience, Kato fought the pain to clear his mind and made a split-second decision to go all-in on the offensive, and both sides connected their hook and kick, sending each other staggering back and into the ground in intense pain.

“Ayyy~!”

“Wayyyy~!”

Cheers roared from the police lines that still blocked off the corridor on both ends.

“Kick his ass, Kato!”

“C’mon, get up already!”

Similar cheers came from inside Class F, though with more words than Class A’s primitive noises.

Neither fighter inside the ring, though, took notice of the cheers. They immediately recovered onto their feet and continued their attacks. By now Kato had warmed up and got a grasp on the angles that Gilbert took and was able to parry some of them, but Gilbert was the same too. They were in a sort of a stalemate of close-range exchanges for a good, long thirty seconds, both shuffling back and forth with the flows of attack and defence, cycling through a pattern of absorbing hits while weaving in the next hook or punch. After the first encounter where Kato was pummelled, they now seemed to be evenly matched.

Alice watched in silence and astonishment, leaning on the wall to keep herself on her feet. In place of Kato’s hand, Sisi’s was there holding hers instead, watching over the fight together with her. Although Gilbert’s style seemed to be more on the attack than defence, somehow he was being pushed backwards by Kato.

“Agh!”

“Hn!”

In a moment of miscalculation, Gilbert lowered his guard and allowed himself to be kicked hard backwards, crashing into the police line at the other end away from Kato. It bought a moment of reprieve for Kato who entered that deadlock from a disadvantage, controlling the pain by gritting his teeth.

“—!”

During that exchange, he realized that Gilbert’s style of attack was very offensive-oriented, and was surprised at his proficiency in empty-handed combat. All of his hooks, punches, knees and kicks were well-formed and those that connected caused lots of damage. In fact, it was very similar to the way the masked girl in the jumpsuit fought him yesterday, if not the same.

“Ssssss!”

A mechanical hissing sound reached Kato’s ears as he saw several smoke grenades thrown at him from Gilbert’s side’s police line. By law, non-participants of the Duel were not allowed to interfere themselves, but certainly Gilbert could use his surroundings to his advantage, especially when this Duel was fought on street rules. He nicked the smoke grenades that were flying in Kato’s direction from the pockets of his fellow PSC colleagues.

Almost instantly the whole corridor was once again filled with smoke, reducing visibility to almost nothing, inducing the crowd of people to back off from the rush of the fog. Though it was not too much of a problem, it was still a disadvantage for Kato if Gilbert was from that jumpsuit girl’s school of empty-handed martial arts.

He backpedalled immediately, evading the approaching gas cloud and crossing the length of the corridor back to Alice and Sisi’s end, knowing that an attack would quickly emerge from the white smoke. In no time he reached his classroom door’s barricade and yanked a chair out from it by its backrest, swinging it forward just in time to intercept and parry the police baton that swung out from the smoke. The chair’s metal frame under the seat connected, creating a piercing ping of metal on metal.

Fighting at mid-range, it was much easier to read the opponent’s moves as there were only one or two things that could reach his body, but naturally, it meant that the opponent enjoyed this advantage too. However, Kato’s forte was not dependent on that. It was that he was much more practiced with something in hand and the creativity it afforded. He inclined the chair to one side and pushed forward, using the chair legs to guide and glide the baton away to expose Gilbert’s side. Following through the momentum with the rest of his body, Kato landed a roundhouse kick that again threw Gilbert off his feet and crashed him a good twenty feet or so backward, all the while using his sixth sense to the limits as he could not see anything beyond a foot in front of himself.

“Yah!”

“Uuugh!”

Gilbert falling to the floor face-up, Kato launched himself at him, landing on his stomach and pushing the backrest of the chair against his throat under the chin. With no end in sight for the smoke, Kato leaned forward until he was only inches from Gilbert’s face, which although it was showing fatigue, it was still as passive and emotionless as it ever was.

Despite the physical abuse, the cleanse tag on Kato’s arm was probably only forty percent saturated. Dark patches dotted his cleanse tag, as if someone put those patches next to a flame and burned the false fabric. From his estimations, Gilbert should be about the same. They both breathed heavily from the pain and exhaustion, but there was still a long way away from knocking someone unconscious.

“Hey. Do you actually intend for this Duel to beat each other up until someone passes out?”

Kato asked him seriously. With the chair locked at his throat and his centre secured by Kato underneath his weight, Gilbert didn’t make any rash moves. He used this time to catch the little breath he was allowed as he struggled to make a strenuous reply.

“That’s what I signed up for.”

Kato’s eyes narrowed, upset at his obstinacy.

“Can you surrender here?”

“That’s impossible.”

“Why?”

“Hng!”

He shoved the wooden backrest into Gilbert’s throat for a good two seconds, evidently impatient.

“You already lost! No, your loss was decided by Alice. It was always decided by her. You even knew it from the start! If you have understood her, it wouldn’t have come to this point. So why this childish tantrum?”

“Kuh!”

Gilbert coughed violently as Kato pushed on his throat once more, closing the airways and depriving him of the air he needed to recover.

“You two are allowed to do as you wish, but I cannot? Don’t make me laugh.”

Gilbert croaked. Every time Kato used the backrest of the chair to strangle him, the dark patches on his cleanse tag grew larger, eating up the white of his cleanse tag under the dim blue glow.

“I’d agree if this was beneficial to you, but all this is only making Alice cry. Even if you’re not the one she chose, she still thinks of you as a friend. She should have shown you this. Is your love for her so conditional, so superficial that the moment she leaves you, you can trample on what remains between the two of you?”

For once, a shadow of doubt materialized in Gilbert’s eyes. It was as if he saw an inkling of why Alice charged through the middle of the siege, just to have a conversation with him.

“AAAAAGGGGHHH—!”

Gilbert realized that, somewhere along the way, he had relinquished his grip on his police baton. He wasn’t conscious of it until this moment because of the lock Kato had on him and the multiple stresses at the throat. Kato had used his free left hand to pick up the baton and stab it into Gilbert’s open right palm, wringing out a painful gasp from him. Not only that, Kato pushed the chair on his throat again, shutting off the gasp instantly.

“Do you not know the cry of someone in despair? Can you not empathize with her feelings? Love is not something so easily convinced of just through worldly actions.”

Those worldly actions referred to Gilbert’s attempt to separate Alice from Kato. Kato wasn’t mad. He was disappointed, frustrated, and most of all, felt pity for the man in his grasp. From the combination of smoke and a twinge of tear gas, tears formed at the corners of his eyes.

“You should know this. I believe that you genuinely love Alice. But that’s only half of the relationship. Love is not earned. It can only be given away without conditions.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that you stole her away, and why I have the right to exact revenge—AAAGGGGGGGHHH!”

Kaot stabbed him in the hand with the baton again. There was little Gilbert could do from this position; his legs would not be able to reach Kato, his body was squashed to the floor by Kato’s weight, his arms would not have enough power in them as his centre was pinned down, and his throat was under direct strangulation. Kato spat out.

“There’s nothing good that comes out of this! It’s not exactly a secret that I’m a deity! Your chances of winning are slim, so why?”

Gilbert’s breath was still laborious. His eyes flickered between open and shut as he struggled to fight the fatigue and the lack of air.

“You should know. What Alice had done will not sit well with either family. Despite what Alice promised her brother and uncle, they will make every effort to force Alice out of the Westgrove business, because my family will take action against the Westgroves as retaliation.”

Kato froze. The revelation wasn’t too out of left field, but he sensed something dreadful coming.

“Like what?”

“Smear campaigns, extortion, sabotage, every crime in the mafia handbook will be used to punish the Westgroves. It won’t be a war, but it’ll just be threatening enough to force Albert and Mr Justin to play their hand.”

Gilbert shook his head sluggishly as Kato grimaced. What were the uses of family, if all they cared about was the money?

“Don’t get me wrong; I want to bash in that head of yours into the pavement. But this fight, if I can demonstrate that I lost to a rival too strong for me to defeat on so-called street rules, then my family would be less inclined to put that kind of pressure on the Westgroves.”

Kato gasped, reeling back from Gilbert’s face. He didn’t let go of the chair in his hand and the lock he had on his throat, though he relieved the strangling. Gilbert immediately took a huge breath but he didn’t move, allowing himself to remain restrained.

“Explain yourself.”

Kato kind of knew, as he had seen his file earlier this morning, but he wanted to confirm.

“The Lafayette Group, like a lot of other businesses, is part of the mafia. I was going to become the top boss of the mob that did the physical fighting, until a few years ago. That was when I joined your class, so that I can get an education worthy of a new heir to the company. I will be the boss of both the business and the mobsters. If someone of my standing loses to Alice’s new chosen one in a street fight, it’ll put a damper on my family’s desire for retaliation against the Westgroves. They’d think twice to push on the issue if they were in an unfavourable position.”

“What about your own reputation?”

“For better or for worse, there’s nobody that could replace me right now. I wish I could say that my younger sister could, but alas, she’s not enough. So even if my reputation tanks, it won’t amount to anything substantial.”

“…”

Suddenly, Gilbert grabbed hold of the chair’s backrest that was being pushed against him and threw it aside, wresting it away from Kato’s grasp. Like Kato, he absolutely was tired but definitely not out of commission yet. However, Gilbert still did not move from his position, and instead he grabbed Kato by his lapels, pulling him close to his face again.

“That’s why, Kato, you must defeat me here, convincingly and without doubt in the eyes of my allies and your enemies, because this is your responsibility for taking Alice away from me and her family. This is all your doing, and you have a duty to serve the consequences of your actions.”

“Is this why you accepted this Duel? Because you knew you would lose?”

“No, my main objective was to beat the shit out of you, but also yes, I expected to lose.”

Despite being in such an adverse position, Kato admired Gilbert’s will and modus operandi. His sense of duty and responsibility had not wavered once, even in the face of a devastating loss. Kato straightened up and said seriously.

“I will do my utmost to bring Alice wherever she wants to go. That’s all I can say.”

Kato gritted his teeth. Though he was prepared for a fight to the death, he still was upset at the shackles all of them were under. He briefly wondered, once he became an Eternian assassin, if he would constantly think about these shackles, just as Gilbert was doing here. Would he be able to carry out a mission if the objective was directly against his own principles and values? He did not know. He reared back the police baton in his hand.

“Then let’s get this over with. It was my loss. My mistake was to not keep you empty-handed.”

Gilbert closed his eyes, surrendering himself to Kato. For sure, if Gilbert’s school of combat was similar to the jumpsuit girl that Kato had fought the day prior, then allowing Kato to use mid-range weapons would not be favourable.

The white smoke around them continued to billow, and they could hear the voices of their classmates shouting over and over again in the distance. The resignation in Gilbert’s pensive expression was something Kato learned to hate, and even at this juncture they were prisoners of their own fates, actors that were compelled to fulfill their god-given role in society.

“Yes, that was your first mistake. Your second was to succumb yourself to your shackles. But that’s a subjective take. I have no doubt you take pride in decorating your laurels with those shackles.”

“Both you and Alice will one day reach a wall that you can’t scale. When that time comes, I wish the two of you will find a way to find comfort in these shackles.”

Gilbert’s will had not faltered and instead fired back. Kato raised the baton high in the tear gas-laced air.

“If she can’t get out of her cage, she just has to be strong enough to fly while carrying the cage and all.”

“And one day, she’ll be just as tired and miserable as if she didn’t take that ridiculous form of flight. Flying from inside and carrying the whole cage with her is not easy.”

Kato frowned. He didn’t know what to say. Their ideals were opposites. He aimed at Gilbert, ready to make the final strike.

“I’ll see you later.”

With all his might, he skewered the baton squarely in the chest. Gilbert gagged horribly from the pain, and Kato even thought he heard bones shattering underneath the pressure, but that was his imagination. The barrier would not allow any fatal injuries to occur.

“Kuh!”

The dark spots on Gilbert’s cleanse tag grew to occupy all of the surface area, turning it completely black. His eyes were closed shut and his face writhed in pain. If they weren’t in the barrier, his ribcage would definitely have shattered.

Kato picked himself back on his feet and staggered back from Gilbert as he dropped the baton, feeling just a bit surreal at finally reaching the end. With the cleanse tag of a class representative completely saturated, the Class War was finished, and not a moment too soon the high-pitched voice of their headmistress thundered across the school.

“Ding dong! With a fully saturated cleanse tag, Class 3-A’s representative has been eliminated from the war, and with it the war itself was also lost. This is the second war in a row that Class 3-F has won! Once again, congratulations!”

Before anyone outside could make a move, Eon and Caius both jumped from behind the barricade and into the smoke-filled hallway, followed by several of their classmates. The latter carried behind him a bunch of metre sticks taped together as a makeshift flagpole, and clipped to it was a huge variant flag of the Yue homeland. Instead of a white five-petalled blossom, the flower was half-wilted, the stars in its petals were missing, and was painted on a black background. The missing stars were supposed to represent the star in the star-and-chevron pattern in the Auxirian national flag. The black blossom flag was a symbol of resistance in Lien.

“Glory to Korolev! Glory to Livia! Glory to Lien! Long live the revolution!”

Eon cried into the megaphone in his hand, in the midst of the silent crowd outside the classroom. Caius waved the flag furiously in the white smoke, somewhat visible as the flag was black. Their classmates began neutralizing the smoke grenades in the hallway that were still spewing out smoke. The silence only lasted a moment before the rest of the school rose in an uproar.

“—————!”

Students who were watching from a distance or from inside neighbouring classrooms poured into the filthy sector of the corridor, euphoric with cheers and chants. Conversely, the PSC carried with them their equipment, ducked out of the way and quickly retreated, slipping through the crowd. This was the first time in living memory that Class A had lost a Class War, and on the back of a political crackdown. The rebels of Class F also came out to greet the jubilant students from the other classes. In a normally class-segregated school, at this moment yesterday’s enemies were today’s allies.

“Stephen.”

Kato breathed as he saw the man pick up Gilbert from the ground and slung his slump arm over his shoulder. Stephen spared him a vicious parting glance, but nevertheless nodded, recognizing that his party had lost this fight. Gilbert was still breathing and conscious, but was undoubtedly fatigued and in serious pain as well. Stephen carried him away, following the rest of the PSC out of the vicinity.

Though the white smoke was thinning thanks to his classmates’ efforts, it was still difficult to make out things in the distance. Lot of people rushed past Kato to the Class F doors to celebrate with the Class F resistance, leaving behind an auspicious atmosphere in its wake. He thought to himself, today was quite eventful. From Alice’s worries to the fallout of an intractable political issue that traced all the way back to the Yue homeland, he wondered how many things went right and how many things could have went wrong. But for now, he appreciated the glory of victory, knowing that it was only for this moment in time that he had won.

13 – Flames of Resistance

It was very early in the morning, but a good number of the Elites and Ariel were already inside the school library, which occupied a large expanse in the middle of the school on the third and fourth floors. This was also the location of the Records Office and all of its bookkeeping assets, both public and classified records. The Records Office, as the main function of the Department of the Administration, maintained these assets over the many years of this school’s existence. Some of the records were even given to them by the faculty, allowing the student government access to information on students and student organizations that would not be available in the public domain. In a sense, the Records Office was more of an intelligence agency than a public service.

Public records like the minutes of each convention of the Assembly, attendance sheets, historical records of the Class Wars, among many other records, were out in the open in the library for anybody to inspect. Classified records like personal information on students or intelligence on student clubs or organizations were sealed away in a huge, windowless storage room in the library on the fourth floor, and this was where the children were.

After Kato and Sisi returned Alice to her residence, she didn’t mope over what had transpired in that final hour. Instead, she was already looking ahead to what needed to happen to make her wishes come true. She called a few of her retainers out to their front yard to instruct them to pack as much of her belongings as possible and prepare sufficient funds for her use in the immediate future. As a stakeholder in a huge company, she would never really run out of funds in the long term, but hard cash was always nice and liquid to make things happen at a moment’s notice. Alice then had Kato and Sisi bring her alone to a hotel near a local government office that was conveniently in the general vicinity of Korolev Senior, so that on this morning, she could assume full ownership of her shares without delay and make it to school by herself.

“Kato, I’m sorry I got you involved in this mess.”

“No, it was my decision to break off the engagement. It isn’t your fault.”

“That’s not it. It’s not just about me. It’s about them and their group of people. Now that I’m no longer their ally, they will naturally see me as an enemy, and you’ll definitely be in their sights because you stand on my side.”

“What exactly did you say to Gil this morning? He’s never been so angry before.”

“I’m really happy that you’d say that for me, and I can see why he responded like that. We’re all selfish, aren’t we?”

“That’s why I’m here, almost like I’m running away from home. And it’s not just me who’s in danger. I have no doubt he’ll attack you from his position as marshal or 3-A’s class representative.”

“I won’t be surprised if something happens by tomorrow morning. It’s fair game the moment I finish with the paperwork, after all.”

Once Kato and Sisi got home, he phoned his classmates to prepare and gather the next morning, taking Bianca and Ariel’s advice to do research on their adversaries. Sitting here together with his buddies in the Record Office’s storage room, they continued to read through all the documents on the students of Class A, anything to try and gain an advantage over a class that was bound to defeat their pitiful classmates.

“This is the last of the docs on Class A. Let me know if you need anything else.”

“Thanks, Ariel.”

Really, only Kato, Eon and Caius had the wits to use this information in a concrete plan. Though Evie, Franco and Yui were also reading through these docs, they couldn’t really contribute much on the strategic front. It had already been more than two hours since the room was first occupied, planning out an imminent confrontation that was supposedly disadvantaged toward Class F.

They were gathered around a tiny desk clustered with coffee mugs that was definitely not meant for six people to sit around, and in time Kato left his comrades inside and was already standing up and pacing back and forth on the ceramic floor among the shelves of books just outside the storage room. Most of the plan was already set in place, and he let the rest of them wrap up the final details as he caught a short break out in the open library.

As the person who was the most knowledgeable of the situation, the responsibility for this conflict ultimately rested on him, and from this burden he felt a great pressure to secure success in his and Alice’s favour. The Class War strategy itself aside, he was also very wary of what Alice’s status would be, now that Alice had cut her ties with Gilbert. News of them breaking off would not be kept secret to the rest of Class A. It was impossible not to be the case with Alice’s newfound course. Not only that, Alice had cut her ties for key members of Class F, a conflict of interest that would definitely not fall on deaf ears among Class A’s leadership.

The lack of sleep also contributed to Kato’s distress, as he had to come to school very early to have this storage room opened. It wasn’t known if time was of the essence, so he had to treat it as if it was the case. Every class above Class E had a restoration of order casus belli against their class, and with Class A’s rep now having a personal motivation to declare war, there was not a second to spare.

To Kato, it wasn’t about the Class Wars itself. It was about Gilbert’s personal beef with him, but if this was going to engulf their classes in war, then so be it. He could only take the challenges as they come.

“Kato, you’re committing your class to Alice?”

“It seems like it, isn’t it? Then again, we’re the only real forces within Class F, so it’s not as bad.”

“Alice is important to you?”

He paused at the question, with Ariel looking up at his face that had black rings around his eyes. On the other hand, the clear golden eyes of Ariel were as alert as they ever were, seemingly unaffected by the early bird call.

“Yeah, she’s a friend.”

She nodded, seemingly satisfied with that answer. Then, for some reason, she sat on the floor, chin to the knees and feet together. Kato sighed and crouched down to her, who stared back at him intently, her expression sagely calm as usual.

“Then that’s settled. As for the situation at hand, there’ll be more than just war, that is certain. A completely separate confrontation, outside of the Class Wars. That part is on you. But if a Class War erupts, you can count on me to help you out.”

The legality of a peace treaty at the end of a Class War was essentially the same as a law passed by the Assembly, and for the making of such a peace treaty, the student council executives presided over this procedure, which was where Ariel and the Jupiter sisters could influence the terms made in the peace.

“The only path is to victory or death, eh?”

“You don’t have a choice, do you? Neither by your own principles nor by the circumstances around the school right now.”

Kato stared back into Ariel’s pensive eyes soberly, expectant of a response. She was just as unperturbed.

“Remember the ridiculous restricted zone you placed on Class E around your classroom? That was effectively a restraining order placed on all forty-something students, a power usually exercised by the courts. A peace treaty is only as powerful as a law passed by the Assembly, and laws that are deemed to contradict the constitution are of no force.”

“So you expect that peace term to be appealed?”

“It conflicts with the principle of freedom of mobility. Sooner or later somebody with a brain would appeal. However, because historically a peace treaty not only legislated but also intermittently exercised the powers of the courts, any appeal would lead to a long court case. And as a student council executive, we’d prefer to keep the powers of the courts within our grasp.”

A mildly sinister smile appeared on her face, akin to the competitor she was against the Elites. Wasn’t this against the constitution? Maybe Ariel was born to be a lawyer. She continued on.

“I assure you they will come up with more ridiculous terms than those. I will try as much as I could to prevent them from making unfair demands, but it’ll be very harsh if you lose hard. For example, they could send some of you into other classes.”

Kato then remembered what Mona said yesterday night. They could really do that in a peace treaty, but of course on reasonable terms. If they lost the war in a crushing defeat, then it was not hard to imagine one or two of Class F’s essential human resources to be uprooted from it.

“I see. Then we’ll have to make sure we don’t lose everything.”

“Tough luck with the quality gap between the two classes. But at the end of the day, it isn’t the war; it’s Alice who’s the key to the endgame. Depending on what’s done to her, the conflict between Class A and Class F would continue beyond this coming war.”

“So you’re saying there’ll probably not be a lasting peace unless something is done about Alice.”

“I mean, she is the cause of the war. Eliminating this cause would naturally lead back to peace between your classes.”

“Well, if she decides to leave for Regia Miriam then everything’ll be over, but it ain’t happening.”

“That’s a problem for you to figure out. Class F’s problems aren’t mine.”

“Wow. Why you gotta be like that.”

“Just keep that in mind. Anything less than a total victory will mean a continuing struggle, until the flames of war are extinguished.”

The other children began piling out of the storage room to find Kato and Ariel sitting on the floor like grade-schoolers, which brought snickers to Eon and Caius. Kato only shrugged as he got up from the floor, and held out his hands to reach Ariel’s outstretched arms to help her up.

“Thanks, Ariel. I can’t believe the day where using connections to positions of power for personal gain has come so fast.”

“Eon, I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or not, but I’ll take it anyway. Good luck.”

“Have a little faith in our plans. We aren’t the Elites for nothing.”

Eon and Caius both grinned, almost eager to put their plan into action. Kato was not as giddy as they were, but at the same time felt an indescribable excitement well up inside him, a kind of excitement that was in anticipation of the execution of a well-thought out plan. Regardless of the long-term worries that Ariel spelled out for him, what was in front of him was the fight at hand, and he needed to focus on this as much as he needed to find a lasting political settlement afterwards.

“Then let’s get started. It’s almost time for class.”

The plan for the war wasn’t only on the war itself but also involved the situation around it, and thus the Eternians were camping out in one of the other physics classrooms, empty due to being period one. Kato sat atop a tall stool that he brought before the wide windows that spanned the length of the classroom, eyes peeled and watching over the front gates of Korolev Senior in the distance below him. Evie, on the other hand, just put her head down on one of the counters and was softly dozing away.

From Alice’s conjecture, it was very likely for Gilbert, or Class A for that matter, to take action on Alice and Class F as soon as possible, and Kato agreed with that assessment. Not only that at this moment in time Gilbert would be prone to making decisions on clouded judgment, there was not a moment to waste to assert Class A’s supremacy on the rest of the school. Mona’s faction were the warmongers, so if Gilbert’s personal reason to not rush into war with Class F was gone, there was no more reason not to expect him to cave to the Mona faction’s hawkish demands.

And also from his own experiences, corroborated by the Records Office’s intelligence, Gilbert and Mona were historically allies, and the initial factional separation only existed because they pursued different levers of power within the school. Then, there was a real, personal rift between the two when Alice arrived as Gilbert’s fiancée, to which the two factions actually began to crystallize in real terms over the last year, up until this point. With Alice out of the picture, the two factions could work together once more, likely immediately.

An hour elapsed, almost at the end of the first period, passing the nine o’clock mark by ten, just ten more until the end of first period. The government office that Alice would visit was only a ten minute walk away from Korolev Senior. She planned to visit that office as soon as it opened at eight and then immediately get to school for class, so if all went well, she would arrive at the end of first period.

“Kato, it’s almost time. We’ll need to move to the alchemy room.”

Evie whined from her awkward sleeping position. Kato nodded at her. One of the alchemy rooms was unoccupied for second period, so they would move there to continue watching over the front gates. The Records Office had the overall school schedule handy, and although it was technically public information and it wasn’t hard to build and tabulate their own spreadsheets without the help of the Records Office, it was nice to have it readily available at a crunch time like this.

“We’ll move out once the bell rings.”

But not a second too soon, their target of interest arrived at the front gates of Korolev Senior in school uniform and a backpack on her, seemingly as if nothing was out of the ordinary. At Kato’s wave, Evie rushed over to the window to watch with him, suddenly wide awake in comparison to her loafing around moments before.

There was a wide expanse between the gates and the great steps to the front doors, out in the open and in broad daylight. However, this was where it happened anyway. Suddenly, four students from the Public Safety Committee appeared from below, ostensibly waiting somewhere inside or on the steps and obscured from third-floor’s view by the protruding overhead roofing over those steps. They were immediately recognized by their red scarves around their left forearms with the PSC symbols sewed on them, buckled on by large paper clips to their cleanse tags, which looked like white bandages but were in fact a heavy plastic-like hybrid material that was similar to what was used to wrap electrical wires. Cleanse tags though were as thin as bandages, so the material bent easily and did not retain its shape, much like real bandages. Though they had smaller badges on their uniforms, those were more for decoration while the red scarves showed that these PSC members were on active duty.

From their vantage point, they saw that the PSC members hurried over to Alice, who barely stepped into Korolev Senior school grounds, and stopped her there as they showed their PSC identification. Alice, seemingly composed, only shook her head disapprovingly and handed over her backpack to them. One of the PSC members then held out their hand, to which Alice took off her cleanse tag and put it into the outstretched hand.

Their cleanse tags around their wrists were by now personalized and had their names stamped on it along with the school faculty’s chop, which made their cleanse tags into official student identification, a requirement for participating in official extracurricular activities. Only after the first convention of the Assembly last Tuesday did the faculty apply this personalization to the students’ cleanse tags. By tradition, the first Assembly marked the start of a new year for student life, which ceremonially affirmed all the rights and privileges of students, and therefore marking the start of operations of official extracurricular activities, like school clubs and student organizations such as the AC and PSC. Although most student organizations still operate before the first convention of the Assembly, as they would naturally be for returning students from last year taking charge for their clubs and so on, those activities would officially be considered as activities operated on the budget from the previous fiscal year.

Most students decorated their cleanse tags with designs of their own choice, as long as it still had a white background and the names and school seal visible. Because it served as a form of student identification, especially with regards to student organizations, it was pretty much a requirement for almost everything in school. For the PSC, if they were to put somebody under arrest, they had the power to confiscate the person’s student identification, which in almost all cases meant their cleanse tag.

Evie’s face turned grim, and Kato nodded in agreement. Handing over the cleanse tag around her wrist meant that the PSC aimed to put her under arrest. It was as they feared. Without even a parting wave, Evie ran out of the empty physics classroom for their homeroom. A successful plan was only as good as its flow of information. The crew back in their homeroom was waiting for Evie’s return before they could take the next course of action.

On the other hand, after the five students below him disappeared underneath the roofing over the front steps, Kato yanked the windows wide open and proceeded to jump out without a second thought. The rush of summer air, today returning to normal after the chilly variations for the past week, blew through his untucked dress shirt breezily, and he landed squarely in the fresh lawn next to the building below him. With his physically superior body, it wasn’t much of a hassle to make the jump, but it was dangerous nonetheless if he wasn’t careful. He made a dash for the steps, disappearing from under the sunlight and into the shadow of the steps’ overhead shelter.

Tailing the group he was following with his sixth sense, he snuck himself silently through the front doors and into the atrium, the grand open expanse that was the main hall of the building. Remaining out of sight of the PSC members surrounding Alice, they escorted her to the east end of the atrium, past the black market and into one of the hallways.

Not taking the great spiral staircase in the centre of the atrium and instead going east could only mean one destination: the Public Safety Committee’s main office on the third floor. The other, previously plausible destination was the faculty’s office, which was on the second floor only a short distance away from one of the exits of the central spiral staircase. Taking great care, he ducked in and out of the various crevices, lockers and doors along the way behind them, and followed them to make sure they actually headed for where he thought they were going.

Throughout, Alice complied with the arrest quietly and obediently, having passed by many first-year classrooms and made a left turn, and then up the staircase that was next to the gymnasium at the end of the hallway. It was nearly the end of the period, but until the bell rings to declare as such, the hallways were as empty as they should be. As Kato predicted, they exited on the third floor to bring her to the PSC main office, only a few rooms away from the stairs’ exit.

Trailing behind them, Kato watched as they ushered her into the PSC’s home base, an expanse that was as spacious as a couple of classrooms and seemed nothing more than a plain white-collar office space. However, he was only able to take a glimpse of the inside before the doors closed shut on the room and all but one of the escorts broke off from the group and headed west along the hallway.

All of Alice’s escorts were from 3-A, and as students from the same year it wasn’t that hard for Kato to recognize them. At least this time, somehow, he remembered the names from the notes he read this morning, but that was not important. What was important was that they were all from Gilbert’s faction, which meant that it was a possibility that Mona might not be involved in this operation.

There was only one course of action for Kato from this position, and if their projections were correct, then he hoped that his comrades made the best out of their situation. He turned back from the PSC office and into the staircase again, and then clambered himself out of the window and onto the thin ledge between the second and third floors. Standing carefully with his feet parallel to the ledge, the base of his neck barely reached the bottom of the window. Although he was gifted with physical superiority and the strength and dexterity that it came with, it was still a slow and steady shuffle along this ledge. The destination was quite straightforward: one of the windows of the PSC office. He didn’t care that someone might be looking out of a window from the classrooms facing across from him from the west side.

Reaching the first window of the PSC office, he ducked underneath it to make past it, which surprisingly strained his back as he also needed to remain balanced on the ledge. Once he made it to the second window, he took a peek inside from the edge of the window, and although looking in from outside was difficult due to the reflective nature of the outer glass, he was somewhat relieved to see that the Records Office’s intelligence didn’t fail him.

There was a smaller room inside to hold detained students, complete with plain white walls, unmarked lockers and cabinets, ceramic flooring, a small desk with a lamp and a few lawn chairs. One glaring detail out of place was of course the window, but because in the building’s floor plan the PSC office as a whole was supposed to support occupancy, it must abide by safety regulations, which meant that this smaller room had to have a window. Sat alone inside the tiny interrogation room was Alice, who seemed unfazed by the arbitrary arrest. In fact, both Alice and Kato expected it to happen.

There was a thirty-minute period where the PSC needed to charge her with wrongdoing that a teacher had accepted as lawful, or else they must release her. Most likely, there was no real reason to detain her, and Gilbert was only using the PSC’s powers to remove people from school before the commencement of a Class War. At the start of a Class War, only the people with their cleanse tags worn could participate in the war, so by putting key enemies under arrest, their cleanse tags would need to be removed before taken into custody and thus would be unable to participate if a war broke out. Seeing as there was nobody in the room with her, PSC member nor teacher, it was almost certain that Alice was detained for a purpose related to that. This tactic was not unknown, and in fact it was standard for all the past marshals of the PSC.

He tapped on the window lightly, and it immediately caught Alice’s attention. Kato quickly put a finger to his lips to signal to her to remain silent, as was ironically her right in this situation. She shuffled to the window to slowly and quietly slide open the window so that Kato could climb through, who landed inside softly on his feet. From his pocket, he took out a pen and a blank notepad, and passed it to Alice. Evidently, he was letting her ask the first question.

What are you doing here?

You know what’s gonna happen. A siege into a Class War.

But still, why here? You can just fight him, no?

Yes, but the surrounding situation is important too.

She arched her eyebrow, unsure of what he meant. He continued writing on the notepad.

How many are outside there in the office?

Two.

Kato nodded, ripped another sheet of paper from the notepad and shoved it in Alice’s hands before nodding one more time and pocketing the notepad and pen. Then he carefully opened one of the nondescript lockers to insert himself into, and slowly closed the locker door on himself as Alice watched him with mild amusement. Whatever Kato and the Elites were thinking of, they were bound to be ridiculous. She unfurled the piece of paper to see a set of instructions written in Evie’s slanted and elegant handwriting, and only after reading it once, she let out a sigh as her expectations were amply met. She chuckled to herself quietly and folded it into her pocket. The Elites were an amazing bunch of people, she thought.

She moved to the window and slowly put it back in place, leaving no evidence of his break-in. She leaned her forehead into the glass of the window, watching the courtyard below as she collected her thoughts. If Kato was doing something as absurd as barging in and climbing into a hiding spot, she could only imagine what the other Elites were doing.

Not just that, but the whole of last week too flashed by in a blink of an eye. A week ago, it was simply another day in her preordained life as a small gear in the bourgeoisie’s huge contraption, suspended in a state of perpetual emotional slow motion. Today, not only did she break free from her cage, but also found a destination for her flight. That destination, she thought wishfully, could be wherever that man in the locker would bring her to. The bell rang for the end of first period and Alice continued to look out the window at the school grounds, where students flowed in and out of doors to make it to their next period’s class.

A few minutes ago, Evie returned to the 3-F classroom that was nearing the end of first period. Because homeroom and their homeroom teacher were decided by their first period class, the teacher who occupied the 3-F homeroom was of course Sisi. In the first three periods, they consisted of the core courses that were requirements for the People’s Diploma, alternating from day to day or week to week, depending on what the faculty decision was for the year, and there would be final examinations for each of these courses at the end of the year. After lunch, there were two longer periods for the elective advanced courses. They were run like crash courses with their final examinations happening every three months or so, two electives a semester for a total of six different electives in three semesters a year. The morning classes plus the advanced afternoon classes were both required for the Standard Diploma. There were still a few students on the People’s curriculum, including the Eternian children, but most students in this day and age take as many advanced courses as possible anyway, regardless of which diploma they were ultimately eligible for.

Today, the scene around the 3-F classroom was dire, to say the least. From inside the classroom, the doorways out into the corridor had about a foot of open, indented space before reaching the sliding door because of the thickness of the wall. In those indented spaces, both doors on both ends of the classroom were barricaded with desks and chairs, donated to 3-F’s vanguard by the boys in the class.

Peering into the 3-F classroom from outside were about a dozen PSC members, all of which were from Class 3-A, including Gilbert and his right-hand man, Stephen, who were at the doorway on the chalkboard’s side. Glaring back at them from behind the barricade were Evie and Eon, both unrepentant at their handiwork.

It was a miracle that they got a physical barricade up as soon as Evie and Kato saw the PSC jump into action against Alice. Evie ran back to their classroom to get the class to begin setting it up, and had them finish the job by the time the PSC, who were waiting for a signal from ground floor, made it to their classroom from wherever they were camping at, most likely the PSC office or 3-A’s own classroom.

“I repeat: Evianna Kirin Misaya; Eon Atelier Koziko; Caius Magellan Evans; Franco Adrian Atkinson; Ms Elizabeth Miklos Romana; you are hereby defying arrest by the PSC. The charges against you are for the illegal organization and assembly of students.

“This is your final warning. If you do not comply, we will have no choice but to use force.”

Stephen blared from a handheld loudspeaker, with two of his colleagues having a huge black flag raised in the air beside him as a clear signal that this was indeed the final warning. As expected, the PSC went after key members of Class 3-F at the same time that Alice showed up to school. What was unexpected was that even Sisi was named in the group of people they wanted to arrest, ostensibly to prevent Sisi from abusing the Duel mechanism of the Class Wars. There were many instances of the PSC laying charges against a teacher in Korolev Senior’s history, and for the purposes of a Class War as well. But unless it was a real problem, nothing ever came of it, and if it was indeed a real problem, the rest of the faculty would take action as well.

Students from nearby classes had gathered around here since the first period ended, albeit at a distance to observe the siege. Outside of the alchemy classrooms, use of non-pre-programmed alchemy was prohibited so many things were done using conventional methods, including how the PSC operated. Two new members arrived on site carrying a large trunk with them, and in no time the siegers unpacked its contents to distribute among its ranks. They were quickly equipped with body armour, helmets, goggles, riot shields and even a few launchers that lobbed nonlethal rounds like sandbags. The bell rang for the start of second period, but the siege was not going to be lifted.

Inside the classroom, there was a clearing in the middle where the desks used to be, and was now occupied by a jumble of strange supplies that looked like the front to a very odd garage sale, which Class F had gathered and prepared from different places around the school throughout first period. The students wore surgical face masks over their nose and mouth, swimming goggles over their eyes, as well as yellow heavy-duty helmets over their heads. Among some of the Elites were small megaphones that alchemically projected their voices when they spoke into it. However, it was Sisi with an old-school megaphone that made a reply.

“Our response is: we will not back down, until all our demands are met.”

And then, over the mound of desks and chairs, they threw eggs at the officers of the PSC standing with their transparent riot shields up, covering them with the gooey mess of egg white, yoke and shell fragments. Some landed on the ground, splashing its contents everywhere and dirtying the corridor. Among the pile of supplies were more eggs and other groceries, and runners quickly moved in and out to keep up the barrage of expired food.

They had, of course, been having a standoff for some time. In the past week, after the introduction of the Act of Neutrality to the Assembly, there was a big reaction to the new policy from the lower classes of all years. The Elites’ classmates in Class F in particular agitated heavily against the draft bill since last Tuesday, and began distributing pamphlets across the school to garner support among the students to resist the passage of this law. From the regime’s perspective, this kind of student activism was deliberate action to distribute seditious material to incite a rebellion to overthrow the regime, and thus was a movement that needed to be crushed. There were already a few scuffles last week between the PSC and students from different classes on this issue.

Despite this police action being a personal vendetta by Gilbert against Kato, it was also convenient to strike down this base of instability to Class A’s hold on power. This was all done in spite of Gilbert publicly criticizing the law during the convention, but if anyone had been around long enough, it was easy to see that it was merely resistance against the Mona faction rather than the substance of the new policy. As a result, general discourse outside of Class A always treated Class A as if it was a single homogenous unit.

In a strange set of precedent and laws from the distant past, portions of administrative authority that was supposed to be the student council’s were bestowed upon the PSC and the AC instead, and in turn they were de facto responsible only to the Assembly rather than the student council. Since Class A almost always controlled a majority in the Assembly and controlled the PSC and AC by corollary, even if the directly elected student council president and therefore the student council escaped their grasp, they were still well in control of student affairs.

Among the dissenting material from Class F was a call for a series of demands against the Assembly, and therefore the PSC and AC through association. The first was the withdrawal of the Act; the second was the retraction of the characterisation of social activism as “seditious”, as they had been accused of by the PSC last week; the third was the exoneration of students who were charged with offences that were politically motivated; the fourth was the establishment of an independent commission to watch the PSC’s use and abuse of power; and the fifth was the resignation of Gilbert de Lafayette as PSC marshal as well as the implementation of direct elections to the Assembly. Needless to say, none of these demands were friendly to the PSC.

“What the hell?”

“Fuck, this is disgusting.”

Curses from the PSC members in gear flew across the hallway that was not only covered in bits of egg but also milk and bread to complement the messiness. Eventually, the cardboard containers were chucked outside at the PSC as well, emptying the stock of food that Class F students had taken from the school cafeteria.

“Eon, we’re out of food. What’s next?”

From the other door’s barricade was a call from a tomboyish blonde girl on the front line, Chantal Delacroix, who was one of the students with leadership roles pushing for the resistance against the proposed policy. She, Franco and several others manned the other barricade together.

“We keep going with the next thing. Caius! Yui!”

Meanwhile, some of the non-combatants like Caius and Yui remained in the centre of the classroom, distributing supplies to the troops from the pile of rubbish. Together with some of their classmates, they tossed some plastic water bottles to the men of both barricades.

The barricaders in turn also had handy stationery of their own with them, so instead of just unscrewing the cap off those half-filled water bottles, they used scissors to cut the bottle in half like a sausage, poured half its contents into the other half, and sparsely stuffed the openings with newspaper shreds to lightly plug it. Once that was done, they tossed it over the barricade like a shot put, its contents spilling out along with the shreds of newspaper.

Although they could have been nastier, the bottles’ contents were merely regular paint that they took en masse from the art classroom and filled up in empty water bottles. It could have been something as dangerous as gasoline to make petrol bombs, but they would get in deep trouble with the faculty for sure if they escalated to that level of resistance.

“Eat shit!”

“Fuck ya bastards!”

Under the cries of the protestors, the paint splattered all over the walls, the floor and the riot shields on the other side of the barricade, with the shreds of paper contributing to the spread of the mess, obscuring the views of the PSC officers from behind the transparent riot shields. The paint and the eggs fusing together with the scrap newspapers and other foods was not only putrid and disgusting, but it also hampered their operations just as much. Hiding behind the riot shields the whole time, their persons didn’t get terribly dirty, but their surroundings turned into a disaster scene left behind by a manmade hurricane without being able to do anything. The moment the barrage from Class F let up, Stephen issued an order immediately.

“Ready your arms! Sand first! Fire at will!”

Not a moment too soon, to take advantage of the lapse, those with firearms aimed their weapons from behind the stained riot shields. They had a variety of ammunition in the bags tightly bound over their chests, slugs that they would load at the breech of their launchers for it to hurl inside the 3-F classroom.

“Umbrellas, men!”

The barricaded Class F students also heard the command from Stephen, and they too spent no time to change tactics. Hearing Chantal’s cry, those who were sitting right up at the barricade picked up the pre-prepared umbrellas on the ground next to them. Stopped with the paint-throwing, they immediately opened them up and took shelter underneath.

One after another, the PSC officers fired slugs from their grenade launchers over both barricades and straight at the ceiling inside the classroom, where they exploded on impact and showered sand over the Class F students. The umbrellas protected them from the immediate avalanche of sand, but it nonetheless seeped through between the edges of the umbrellas and still kicked up a dusty storm underneath. The barrage of sand slugs continued relentlessly, and eventually the dust clouds reached the windows on the far side of the classroom where the rest of the non-combatants of Class F were gathered, staying away from the front line.

“Quick! Open the windows!”

“Ugh, I need goggles too, not just a mask.”

“Man, my hair is filled with sand now.”

“This is too much sand.”

In a low ceiling setting like this, sand slugs were used first to disorient the rebels and cause maximum chaos and confusion with minimal harm. If this was the gymnasium, the atrium or the theatre, sand slugs would have to be fired ballistically and timed to explode in midair, which was less accurate than having it disperse on impact with the ceiling. Sand slugs often did not affect the core members of a protest, but it would demoralize and disperse the less committed to the cause, and the complaints from the back of the classroom were a statement of that effectiveness.

The PSC officers took turns firing into the classroom, one stepping forward to shoot as the other retreated to reload. Another coffin-sized trunk was shipped to the site of the siege from the PSC’s office, and those holding onto the riot control firearms resupplied themselves with more ammunition from the new trunk.

“There are no rioters, only tyranny of the Assembly!”

“Glory to Korolev, revolution of our times!”

From under the umbrellas, the Class F students repeatedly chanted slogans in their continuing resistance, including Caius on his megaphone aimed out of the window, virtually broadcasting to their sector of the school. The sand slugs, as expected, did not confuse or deter most of Class F. The sand slugs were most effective in dispersing ragtag bands of poorly organized unrest, and Class F was clearly too organized to expect that to work. Instead, it was only a formality to escalate the use of force.

“Cease immediately! Those are political slogans! You do not have a permit to publicly promote it at this time and place!”

“Shut the fuck up, or else you’ll be getting more than just sand!”

Similarly, the PSC shouted out warnings over Class F’s voices with their own megaphones, and of course immediately after raising another black flag, the officers began a second barrage of fire, this time launching real smoke grenades into the classroom. Instantly, visibility inside the classroom was reduced to less than an arm’s length in the front, causing some panic and confusion among the besieged. However, they remained fairly disciplined and expected the smoke grenades, so they and a few of the sitters in the middle of the classroom took action. Pedestal fans powered by alchemical engines (or colloquially, magic batteries) that were placed throughout the classroom were turned on and dialled to the maximum in order to circulate wind currents that would eventually carry the opaque smoke out the open windows.

“There is no sedition, only police brutality!”

“Withdraw the bill! End the Assembly’s dictatorship!”

“Bring the Public Safety Crooks to justice!”

The effect was immediate, and although visibility was still very much reduced it was no longer much of an impediment to their operations, including the chanting of slogans. The PSC continued to unleash smoke rounds into the classroom, but after a while it was obvious that the volume was not enough as they turned on even more fans, stolen from many, many classrooms across the school.

On the other hand, the wind kicked up a sandstorm that prompted the students to readjust their goggles and face masks, and those who still had not worn them must do so now. With an acceptable level of visibility, a few students with gas masks stolen from the chemistry classroom instead of the regular surgical face masks went ahead and picked up the smoke rounds with plastic gloves, also stolen from the chemistry classroom, and hurled the smoking chunk of metal and plastic back over the barricade, smoking up the hallways as well.

With the barricaded students distracted, some of the PSC officers tried to approach the barricade to dismantle it by hand, but they were still met with metre sticks poking out from the gaps between the stacked desks and chairs, some of which at its ends were duct-taped with sharp metal barbs, possibly stolen from the rooftop, making the PSC retreat back behind their riot shields.

“Use tear gas!”

It wasn’t hard for Stephen to see the adaptation in strategy inside the 3-F classroom, and he responded in earnest. The formations that the PSC took were very tight so the subsiding smoke rounds had not much effect on them, though it was harder to see where the top of the barricade was. Quickly, they changed out the ammunition in their launchers to tear gas canisters, and without delay they slung them over the barricade, its chemical contents diffusing into the air inside the classroom.

“Turn them off! Turn ‘em all off!”

“I know, I know! I’m on it!”

The fans made the situation worse. The low-concentrate chemical particles that continuously sprayed out from the new rounds permeated the classroom in no time, and it didn’t take long for it to lock Class F down in fits of coughing and sneezing, the irritant agents working its magic on the nose and lungs despite the masks. Exposed skin also took a painful toll with the chemicals, and a couple of students who didn’t have the greatest respiratory health began convulsing, so a few comrades had to take them to the open window to get a bit of fresh air. Others who saw the tear gas immediately mashed the off buttons on the fans in an attempt to minimize the gaseous spread, but otherwise the united front was momentarily paralyzed with most everyone’s bodies involuntarily reacting to the tear gas. After all, most of their equipment was makeshift at best, and this was only against a very weak variant of tear gas manufactured for true non-lethal crowd control.

“Tighten up everything! Don’t expose your eyes and nose!”

“I’ve got this! Let’s go! Make way for me!”

Kirill was one of the runners fully covered up who had been throwing back the smoke grenades with his head and face completely hidden behind scarves, goggles and a gas mask. Along with the other runners they already wore a long-sleeved sweater and boots to cover up all exposed skin, expecting the confrontation to escalate from the very start. Although less equipped, the students not so handicapped by the tear gas also helped Kirill and his little squad with countering the tear gas, either by attempting to throw the canisters back over the barricade, or temporarily stunting its spread by using pots appropriated from the home economics classroom to clamp on top of the canisters, and then dragged it along the floor toward the window so they could quickly pluck it out from underneath and toss it out into the courtyard below.

By this time the PSC was in full gear and like the smoke grenades, the returning tear gas did not obstruct their activities too much, if at all. A couple of them needed to cover up some more and rest up from the initial respiratory reactions, but they were more or less still in control. However, the spread of the tear gas scared off a bunch of the bystanders, except of course students from the newspaper club who were also in their own versions of full gear. Interestingly, although they were colloquially called the newspaper club, they were in fact not a school club by the student government’s definition since they were not funded by the student government. Instead, they were an entity known as a non-partisan union, which was basically something like a school club that was registered through the faculty instead of the student government, and its budget was determined through the faculty by decree. Some called these organizations as puppets of the faculty members who wanted to meddle in student affairs, but mostly they were merely clubs that were marginalized due to their public opposition to the student government, including the former newspaper club.

“We’re almost there! Keep firing!”

Stephen, now sufficiently covered up, spoke into the microphone in his face mask to his troops. The PSC continued firing tear gas into the classroom, sustaining the panic and chaos within it.

Not all of Class F was as hardcore as those who stood right at the barricade chanting and throwing trash at the PSC members, who were really just students from another class. Although pretty much the entirety of the class were indeed radicals who aligned with the Elites quite well, there were still some who were far away enough from the Elites’ orbit that they took on different roles in the struggle. They didn’t oppose the radicals, but they sure didn’t support them to the point of eating tear gas with them, and to that end they took on the responsibility of evacuating those who had bad reactions to the tear gas.

A retractable stepladder was extended out of the window to reach the grass below, and together with their backpacks and belongings the neutral party of Class F slowly evacuated from their chaotic homeroom to ground level in orderly fashion, leaving their radical classmates behind. Some students from other classes were already down below, originally watching in curiosity of the smoking classroom and the political messages being broadcasted, but now ready to lend a hand to the escapees as they descended from the smoking window.

A few PSC members were also waiting below, and clearly they were sceptical of the intentions of the Class F students crawling out, even in the presence of a teacher who was also down there.

“What do you want? We’re being forced away by the tear gas, exactly as you’ve got us to.”

“In all fairness, we still need to make sure you’re not contributing to the rebellion in Class F. We’ll need to check you before letting you go.”

“Fuck off! You guys have already got away with enough abuses of power!” “That’s right. Your warrant this time is only against the Elites, and for obvious reasons. We’re not dumb, retards.”

“Hey! This is a zone of operation! We have every right to stop any student in the vicinity for cooperation or arrest.”

“And we’re not helping you nor preventing you from charging into our classroom.”

“Now let’s calm down, everyone. Nothing is allowed to happen here except for the safe evacuation of these students. I do not want to see any measure made by the PSC here related to the political nature of this siege, and that is final. Do you hear me?”

“…understood, Mr Khosa.”

At the stern request of Class 3-E’s homeroom teacher, the PSC members backed off from the group of Class F students and bystanders from other classes, but the atmosphere remained tense between the PSC and the others. They were fortunate that Mr Khosa was around to put a brake on the PSC. The grouping was actually somewhat far from the base of the stepladder as the tear gas canisters that were thrown out of the classroom window were still discharging its noxious gases on the open school grounds.

Then, two students with face masks on suddenly appeared from around the corner and made a desperate dash for the stepladder. With the boy carrying the girl on his back, somehow they were able to approach the base of the ladder without being noticed, disappearing into the clouds of smoke and tear gas that continued to billow out from the canisters scattered on the ground around them. They hopped on the ladder in a brisk and before the PSC members could reach out to restrain them, they were already well off the ground.

“Wait! Stop this instant!”

The boy and girl ignored the cry from the PSC member, instead quickly scaling the ladder so that they were enough rungs up by the time the PSC members recovered from their surprise to take any further action than a verbal command. The Class F students looked on silently without comment, as if this was nothing out of the ordinary, or worse, as if they anticipated this to happen.

“Suck my dick!”

Following behind the girl, the boy taunted the PSC members below him. It provoked their anger, but Mr Khosa prevented them from approaching the ladder, giving the two the chance to climb to the third floor for the 3-F classroom. The two scaling the ladder could hear their former enemy class’ teacher holding the PSC back.

“Don’t even think about touching the ladder, now that they’ve already climbed on. If you do so, it’ll be a very serious offence to the school.”

The girl ahead of the boy looked back with a long shadow of disgust on her face. Half of it was from the obnoxious jeer, and the other half was from the boy ogling at what was beneath her skirt. However, her character was not close to innocent enough to care about it, as long as she was confident she could clap back at him in return.

“Kato, that wasn’t necessary, was it?”

“It wasn’t, but something just compelled me to do it, Alice.”

“Remind me to pinch you later.”

“Why in the world would I ever remind you to do that?”

Sneering at each other, the two misfits were as sharp as ever. Alice never thought that things would blow up into these proportions, but it did, and secretly she welcomed it warmly. It was infinitely more fun than her own mundane, previous life as a powerless member of the Westgrove family, and somehow she felt this was still too surreal despite the very real change in her life’s and her heart’s path. And this euphoric sensation, the anticipation of finally finding something to be real, gave her the motivation to climb straight into the midst of this battle, and true to her style, in full force and without hesitation.

12 – This Day Next Year

The four of them, led by the bandaged fighter in the jumpsuit, arrived at the edge of the trail in front of the main yard, where the sedans that Sisi and Kato had previously spotted were. Though they were in view of the front doors of the mansion, their little huddle was too far away for somebody at the door to make out anything in this dimly lit parking area of the trail.

“Alice.”

“Uncle Justin.”

The middle-aged man with a wide smile and his second cigar in his mouth stepped out of one of the cars to greet his beloved niece. He walked up to her to give her a big hug, which Alice returned with a smile on her face as well. They seemed to get along well, his demeanour a complete opposite from what he showed earlier in the great hall. His bodyguards, including the young lady in the bandages, gathered themselves around their boss, facing the two Eternians behind Alice.

“I’m sorry we had to subject you to this, but we didn’t know what to expect. Seeing everyone in one piece is reassuring for sure.”

“No worries, Uncle. I expected nothing less. So, what did you need me for? It must be something big.”

Her uncle spoke in Old Yue, in contrast to Alice’s insistence on speaking New Yue.

“Do you like your current school right now? Having fun?”

“Yes, of course I do. What about it?”

Justin scratched his head, almost apologetically. He took a deep breath before continuing.

“Hm. The thing is, we’re transferring you out of your current school to Regia Miriam. We’ll get it done by next week, and you’ll be moving in with me.”

Jaws dropped on the other side. Regia Miriam All-Girls Academy was a private school on the other side of the city in Tuenmun district. Even out here in Tseungkwano town, it was still far enough away to justify moving out.

“Why? Why am I being transferred?”

“Uh, hmm. I take it that you’re against being transferred?”

“Yes, of course! There’s no reason for me to be transferred out of Korolev.”

“So you like it there in Korolev? That’s good to hear. I was very worried that your depression would come back, but it seems like it’s gotten a lot better for you.”

“Uncle! Enough of that! That was from when I was younger.”

Her voice suddenly rose by an octave, embarrassed by the bit of her unspeakable past being revealed in front of Kato, who had a grin slowly spreading across his face.

“But anyway, this is kinda hard then. If you like it there a lot, I’ll feel bad having to move you out of it, knowing it’s you.”

He scratched his head again, showing a sheepish expression to the three guests. Behind him, another person got out of the car and into the dim spotlight that they stood under. With one surprise after another, the newly arrived girl wore a haughty and arrogant expression, as if she was in charge of the situation here. From Justin’s expression, she might be.

“Alice, I’d suggest you give it up. Class A has no use for a traitor. If you accept the transfer, it would be better for all parties involved.”

The piercing voice belonged to the small girl with a short auburn bob cut, a Class A faction leader, and chairwoman of the Activity Council, Mona Mackenzie.

On the other side, Alice and Kato both gasped at the appearance of a contemporary from school. She wore a suit like the rest of Justin’s goons, except for the shades with a pink frame. Alice was perhaps just a bit less surprised than Kato since everyone in Class A was a part of the one percent. As Mona was someone who she did not have good relations with at all, she could only assume nothing good was going to happen.

“What’s the meaning of this?”

“That’s what I want to ask you! Why is Kato clutching his stomach and has a bruise on his forehead? By the looks of things though, our bellhop got the worse end of it, eh?”

Laughing out loud without care, it was clear Mona was enjoying herself at the others’ expense. No one said a thing as she doubled over at her own hilarity. Slowly, a snarl began to take form on Kato’s face.

“And to think, this is going to be our new generation of Hearts! How farcical is this!”

“You’re one to talk, midget. Do you want to clutch your stomach too?”

She was not perturbed by Kato. In fact, she laughed even harder at his provocation.

“Hah! I’ll let you know what situation you’re in, Kato. If you dare touch me, it’ll be the end of you.”

“Hold on, Mona—”

“Don’t worry. It’s not about you.”

The bandaged girl stepped forward into Mona’s line of sight, which Mona anticipated and waved her away with her hand. She then waved to the goon behind her, who then motioned to the driver of the car behind them to lower the glass of one of the windows.

“Ms Romana. I presume you don’t want any more blood to be spilt around here, eh? I implore you to put a leash on your mutt before we kill ourselves over nothing.”

Under the poor lighting, it was hard to discern with the naked eye who she revealed behind the tinted window. But Sisi didn’t need the naked eye to sense the passenger who was intentionally exuding his aura into the atmosphere around him, and she recognized who this aura belonged to. Next to her, Kato could also sense that this halo belonged to one of a deity. On the other hand, the bandaged girl seemed surprised at the appearance of the mystery deity, to which the man curtly answered her bewilderment.

“Don’t mind me.”

Just as swift as the reveal, the windows rolled up, obscuring the man once more. Finally, Sisi shook her head reluctantly, and though Kato was forced to hold his weapons at ease, the grimace remained. Seeing Alice’s two guards accept the situation, Mona’s grin spread even wider. Witnessing Kato’s plight, it especially delighted her since he was an opponent in the Class Wars.

“Kato, you haven’t changed very much from the looks of things, and if only you knew how ridiculous this situation is, you would blow up right away.”

“Ho. So the girl who came into Class F and moved up and out together with Gilbert is this kind of a bitch. I’m pleasantly surprised at the impunity with which you have with your words. Class F taught you well, didn’t we? Not that we’d want to take any credit for it.”

The smirk disappeared quickly and her face hardened, the arrogant joviality drained from her face. Normally, she would snap back at his words, but she needed to get business moving along before anybody from the inside of the mansion got wind of this strange assembly of important people.

“Well, you’ll learn about it soon enough, so let’s drop it here until then.”

Mona addressed Alice immediately after.

“Right now, I need you to agree to transfer to Regia Miriam. You don’t have a choice, actually, since your guardians are Justin and Albert, and either of them can give consent on your behalf. But of course, we want to let you know of our decision, and what you think of it.”

“What’s going on here? There’s no way I’m transferring away. Not on your orders, anyway. Why are you even here in the first place?”

“Does it matter if I’m here? Your beloved Uncle here will pick you up anyway.”

“Then why is this happening? What’s the reason for transferring me to Regia Miriam?”

“The very first thing I said. To not be a hindrance to Class A.”

“Excuse me? I don’t have a place in your Class Wars in the first place. How does that justify removing me from school completely?”

“Not when you’re colluding with an enemy class. Normally, treason like this would warrant banishment to the unprivileged classes, but seeing as you’re Gilbert’s fiancée, we’d prefer to have you transferred out instead of suffering from the humiliation of demotion.”

The unprivileged classes were the classes below Class F, with no representation in the Assembly or the Council of Six, the judicial commission of the student government system. Though they were the least prestigious of the classes as they sheltered the lowest scoring students, Korolev Senior was still an elite school. A placement in an unprivileged class was not the end of the world, but it was certainly a blemish on one’s trajectory up the social ladder after they graduate. Since class placement in Korolev Senior was more or less a meritocracy, it really did lend credence to your abilities and social worth, which naturally led to Alice’s confusion.

“How would you remove me from Class A? That’s not something for you to decide. It’s a position that you earn.”

“But we have the Class Wars, Alice. A peace treaty is all that’s needed to cast undesirables out into the wilderness.”

That was a very dangerous proclamation, and Kato’s distorted frown was all that needed to be said of this abuse of the Class War system. He didn’t hesitate to interrupt.

“Then why would you support the Ewiger Landfriede? You can’t do that with eternal peace.”

“It’s only one method, young man. I’m not the AC’s chairwoman for nothing.”

She shrugged at Kato as if it was nothing out of the ordinary, yet the power she wielded inside Korolev Senior was terrifyingly great. Alice took the conversation back from Kato.

“Frankly, at this point, I’m not surprised that you would have this kind of power. Your ambitions in the Class Wars aside, the question still remains, why are you the one forcing me to transfer to Regia Miriam? You don’t have power over my attendance. How did you get Uncle Justin to do this?”

“Hmm.”

Strangely, Mona fell silent for quite a long while, as everyone waited in anticipation for an answer from her. Justin, who Alice expected an answer from also, didn’t speak up at all, preferring to let Mona make the explanations. Mona refocused herself in due time, sensing that the crowd around her was expectant.

“It’s a request from Gilbert.”

The two opposing Eternian guards looked at each other in disbelief, wide-eyed at the sudden turn of events. Alice took an involuntary step backward at the mention of his name. That he was the one who would want her to leave their school was unthinkable on every level. Time around her seemed to slow to a crawl. She could not believe it.

“How? Why?”

Mona was unrepentant. Actually, she was quite upset and visibly impatient with Alice’s response. In every other moment, she would have had the civility to keep her mouth shut, but Gilbert wasn’t by Alice’s side for once, so she didn’t hold back.

“Do you know how much Gil suffers when you make selfish decisions without him in mind at all? He just takes your bullshit for the past two years as if it was nothing, and now, when he makes a selfish request of his own, you’re still a self-centred bitch who doesn’t give a fuck about the person who supported you all this time.”

Pointing her index finger squarely at Alice and lashing out in Old Yue, the choice of words were, to say the least, not pretty and it stunned the surrounding group.

“You’ve taken his kindness for granted, and now you feel shocked, even betrayed, that he would do such a thing, right? He was the one who brought you here to Livia, to Korolev Senior, and rightfully, he should have the privilege to take you out of it.

“I don’t care what kind of past you have or what hardship you’re going through. This isn’t a place for your childish desires. If you wish to be freed from your status and your household, then just fucking leave. Gil doesn’t deserve to have a woman who doesn’t even respect him, much less love him.”

As Mona continued to unload, Alice’s face distorted with grief and frustration. Without a shadow of a doubt, Mona’s accusations were as accurate as much as it stung. She could feel that Mona wanted to say this to her for a long time, but it probably was Gilbert who prevented Mona from raging.

“I’ll tell you too, now that I’ve already said this out loud. I personally want to force you out of Korolev Senior too, not only because your treatment of Gil is shit, but it’ll be better for Gil to stay away from a bitch like you. Now that he’s agreed to do it, I’ll gladly pull out the pitchforks to do the dirty work.”

Alice, sufficiently terrified, looked over to her uncle next to the firestorm. Justin shook his head, signifying that he expected this kind of outburst and accepted the accusations Mona made. It took a moment for Alice to realize she couldn’t blame her uncle, as he watched over her childhood in place of her late father and so he knew what kind of a person she was.

“Isn’t this enough for Alice? She knows her faults all too well. Please, give her some time to think it over.”

“Mr Justin, I know she’s your niece, but there needs to be a line to appeasing her whims. I, of my own authority, will draw that line, and Gil has accepted this.”

Mona did not even peel her glare off from Alice to address the boss next to her as if she was the real boss, which in this case she really was. Justin was well-connected with the Mackenzie family, who were real estate tycoons in this city, and served as Justin’s faithful allies in his business dealings. On a personal level, Justin and Mona were related through Justin’s daughter, Alice’s cousin, who was married to Mona’s dear elder brother. Since Mona was Gilbert’s die-hard protégé outside of school, Gilbert was therefore an acceptable partner for Alice from Justin’s perspective.

Alice closed her eyes from the madness and covered her mouth with her hand, which trembled as it gripped her cheekbones tightly. Slowly, she lowered herself to the ground, crouching and downcast with tears in her eyes, sobbing quietly.

“You still haven’t answered the question. You’ve been dancing around the problem the whole time. The Class Wars aren’t the real reasons why Alice is being forced to transfer. If the move is truly Gilbert’s idea, then explain, what is his motivation for imposing his will on Alice?”

Kato asked warily, stepping forward to Alice’s side. But he had a hunch on the true answer, no matter what kind of drivel Mona would reply with. After all, he was there to not only witness but incite Gilbert’s silent indignation only earlier today.

“He deemed it necessary to remove her from Korolev in order to safeguard his interests in Korolev, at home and in higher society.”

“And most importantly, his own ego?”

Mona’s eyes twitched at the slight that was thrown. From this small gesture and the bitterness exuding from her aura, it didn’t seem like she wanted to give any ground. Even though he declared his intent so clearly, she still gave vague answers, which meant it was likely a reason not meant for Alice’s ears.

“It’s not even his ego; like I said, it’s merely the respect that he deserves as her partner.”

“So, let’s say that her insolence has finally crossed this imaginary red line. Not that I don’t understand, she is a selfish person. Are we all not? Then, something must have happened, the straw that broke the camel’s back. Do you have any idea what that might be?”

Mona bit her lips, not knowing how to answer, or perhaps not knowing how she should answer.

“No idea. How about you ask Alice? She’s the source of Gil’s troubles, I can assure you.”

Kato nodded, somewhat exaggeratedly. He looked down at the crouching blonde girl next to her and smiled. Alice looked up in response and she turned somewhat bemused at his lightened mood.

“Right. Then, I’ve determined that, without good reason, there’s no need for Alice to transfer out. I’m glad we’ve solved this issue.”

“You fuck! What gave you any say in this? Why do you keep on fucking causing trouble?”

“So in the end, I’m the troublemaker. I get it.”

After blowing her top again, her face turned livid at the now-gung-ho attitude on Kato’s face. But even so, she didn’t let much slip through her mouth, as expected of a person of her calibre. Kato would have to take a gamble in his accusation, though it wouldn’t have really mattered what the outcome was, since he now made the decision to play it through to the end.

“The real story here is: Gilbert’s determined that I’m a bad influence on Alice, so he’s taking a roundabout way to get her transferred out of my reaches. A fair attempt, not gonna lie, but if you’re gonna do that, how about you try and get rid of me instead of punishing Alice?”

“Nice to see that you’re still the diva you always were. You think the world really does revolve around you, do you? Either way, this is not a place for you to make decisions anyway. All of this is really to just let Alice know of the decision, and see what opinions she has on it, nothing more.”

Contorted with frustration, Mona’s face was as unsightly as it could get. She glossed over his theorycrafting completely and instead just tossed the insults back in his direction. It was neither a confirmation nor a denial of his hypothesis.

“Then we’ll do everything in our power to resist your efforts to transfer her out of our school. It’ll only happen over my dead body.”

Alice stood back up, scared at the severity of his proclamation. He turned to her once again, giving her a grin to reassure her of his confidence in himself to follow through with it. It was no different than making a promise to her. It was just done in a roundabout sort of way. She felt a curious warmth settle within her chest, and it cured her of the gloom that had washed over her, reminding herself once more of the things she sought for.

“That’s right, Mona. I’m not going to transfer out of Korolev Senior. Please let Gil know about it.”

Mona’s glare trained on Alice again, evidently furious at Alice’s determination. Her hands curled into tiny fists, straining to contain her anger. Her voice was quite steady for the amount of outrage that was written all over her face.

“You do realize that your legal guardians have the right to remove you from the institution on their own.”

“That’s true, but there are ways to change that.”

“How?”

“By taking control of my own finances. If I do, then I’ll be considered as an independent by the school and my wishes will be first in the order of precedence. Both you and Gil are independents, as far as I know, right?”

The crowd on the other side stiffened. Mona was especially tense, as she was the first to realize what Alice becoming financially independent meant. Cautiously, as Mona knew it would affect every single person around her, she asked to confirm.

“What do you mean, taking control of your finances?”

“I’ll assume normal control of my shares in Westgrove Logistics, removing myself from the protection of the minors’ law. It can happen as soon as I visit the local office tomorrow morning, and with Sisi here, can also get my status in Korolev changed just as quick.”

“Alice…”

As Mona had expected, Justin was the most concerned and first to react. His expression was a mixture of surprise and disappointment.

“I’m sorry, Uncle. If I’m pushed, I don’t have a choice but to react. The reason I agreed to marry is to not take charge of this ownership stake, but now I have to do it.”

“If that’s the case, then what if we don’t push you on this transfer?”

“It’s too late now. There’s no more reason for me to not do it at this point.”

“So will you call off our marriage?”

Everyone froze in place at the voice of a person who wasn’t present in the group. Turning around, they saw two familiar men side by side, one a tall blond in the same shade as Alice’s and Justin’s, the other just as tall with wavy black hair. The speaker, in his usual monotone voice, was of course no other than Gilbert.

Though Alice didn’t flinch at the surprise this time, she was still clearly emotionally wrecked from earlier. The appearance of Gilbert wasn’t totally impossible, but what was actually surprising was Albert’s attendance, as Gilbert must have directed Mona and Justin on this because Albert would be against transferring out of Korolev.

“It depends on your attitude. I know my uncle and Albert just wants a piece of my shares, and in fact, I’ll still let them have it; for the right price, of course.”

Though not completely loosening the tension in their bodies, the two blonds did substantially relax their expressions upon hearing Alice’s assurance. Even if Alice didn’t want to have any part in the operation of the company, she was still way more than qualified to do it, and therefore knew how to handle operations properly. She motioned to one of Justin’s bodyguards to hand over a notebook and a pen, and quickly scribbled a note to give to Justin.

“It’s not exactly a promissory note, but it’ll put in writing that the contract we had, is now amended.”

Justin took the note, and found a small surprise on it.

“You’re giving each of us ten percent instead of the original one percent?”

“The extra nine percent is not without a price. Do you agree with the terms?”

Just as quickly as his niece did, he took out a pen to sign the note. He held it out to Albert, who stepped forward and took it from him cautiously. Slowly, Albert read the note, and he too was surprised.

“Hmm. I don’t have a problem with this either. If I’m to take this at face value, then from here on out, this is an issue for you children to settle, right?”

Albert too whipped out a pen to sign the note, and pocketed them both in his breastpocket.

“Yes, exactly. If I’m responsible for myself now, then that’s what’s going to happen.”

“What are her terms?”

Mona asked the two adults in the conversation, to which, surprisingly, Gilbert answered instead.

“Once she assumes normal control of her assets, Alice will transfer twenty percent to these two gentlemen here, ten each. In return, she wishes to have her marriage not be a matter of the Westgrove family.”

“And one more clause. Albert and Uncle Justin will be my references for my admission to the nomenklatura.”

Kato was mildly surprised, but he didn’t express it out loud. She really took what they discussed in her room to heart, and it was touching to see a friend value their friendship.

“Gilbert. If this is what Alice wants, then you’ll have to settle the rest of it yourself. I’ve already given my opinion on the matter to you just moments before, so you should understand my position on this issue.”

“Yes, I understand. I will, of course, take responsibility for my actions.”

Albert nodded solemnly to the rest of the group and excused himself from the discussion. Somewhat like Gilbert, his face was sombre and hard to read, and he alone departed quietly for the well-lit mansion.

Turning to Gilbert, Alice was neither angry nor unhappy as she was just minutes ago. Instead, she mirrored the seriousness that was so quintessential of Gilbert, showing to him that she had made up her mind.

“I didn’t expect you would take such drastic measures, though perhaps I was too conceited to not expect that.”

“No, Gil. You just didn’t understand what kind of a person I am. Or maybe you did, but your own principles blindsided you at almost every turn because I’m so contrary to those principles.”

“You’re right. I won’t say I’m sorry, because this is my ego speaking.”

“I’m also the same. I didn’t know your ego would push you this far. There’re so many things that we’ll never be on the same page for.”

The conversation that unfolded was unusually amicable, but the atmosphere was still evidently tense, as the two were obviously still dancing around the main issue.

“Gil! Are you going to just accept this? Giving up on everything you did?”

“The agreement was ultimately based on Alice’s consent, after all.”

Unwilling to wait, Mona snapped at her ally impatiently, making her way up to Gilbert to glare upwards vehemently at his pensive reaction. Unfortunately, nothing in his words or tone did anything to assuage her concerns.

Legally, the original agreement surrounding her marriage was based on Albert’s consent, as it was delegated through him because Alice was a minor. Of course, deliberating as a family, both Albert and Justin would have considerable influence on which suitors were appropriate.

Normally, the young man and woman involved in an arranged marriage wouldn’t already own considerable assets of their own. Because they didn’t, it would make their marriages truly arranged, as their parents could dictate their fates by virtue of feudal law.

However, Alice’s situation was different. If she took control of her ownership stake, she would no longer be considered a minor under Auxirian feudal law. She would no longer be protected as a minor, but then it meant that only her consent was necessary for her marriage. Up until this moment, although Albert technically held the power to consent for her, because she could always claim the status of an adult by assuming control of her ownership at any time, Alice was given the discretion to choose her partner, albeit within her family’s limitations.

Alice, by writing those pseudo-promissory notes to Albert and Justin, rewrote their original agreement, which was becoming a non-actor in the family business once she was married to Gilbert. Instead of that, the new agreement was to have herself become the sole consenter to her own marriage. By corollary, because her marriage was stripped of its political use, it meant her ownership stakes could no longer be inherited by her descendants. In other words, her shares essentially became lifetime leases, and if she were to give it up or pass away, it would be returned to the larger family instead of going to her children.

In addition, by giving Albert and Justin each ten percent, her ownership would be reduced to only fourteen percent. With both Albert and Justin controlling more than twice that, it was a number very unlikely to become a controlling stake ever again, and definitely no longer enough to exercise much control over the broad business at the board of directors. Thus, not only were these terms way more favourable to Albert and Justin than previously, but it also didn’t require the involvement of an outside family, albeit a closely-related one.

“So, Alice. What’s the final verdict?”

The main issue was finally raised, which was what Alice wanted to make of their original agreement. She sighed, but looked at him bravely in the eye, somebody who was not quite a friend but certainly not just an acquaintance. In her signature awkward fashion, one filled with pure selfishness and wishful innocence that came from a deep-seated desire for something real, she gave him her response.

“I want to indefinitely postpone our marriage. This day next year, will not be our wedding. Under these new circumstances, I think there’s a lot of conversation that needs to be had first before deciding on something.”

For the first time for many of the onlookers, Gilbert was visibly troubled. He closed his eyes and put his hand to his mouth, seemingly at a loss for words. Slowly, amidst the silence that hung over them, he started again.

“And I have no say in this?”

“No. This is a selfish decision I made, based on my circumstances.”

“You don’t want to get transferred out; enough that you would throw away everything you’ve worked hard on to avoid being a part of the bourgeoisie.”

“That’s right.”

“If that’s what you want. I just want you to know that, for me, I don’t want to call off our engagement. Just so you know.”

Alice nodded quietly, but didn’t respond at the sombre Gilbert with a slight sense of desperation in his voice, struggling to accept the turn of events.

“Then what are you going to do about this? We’ve just announced it to everyone today, and now you’re calling it off.”

“We’ll leave it as is for now. Closer to the date, we’ll announce something to that effect, depending on the situation.”

“Why not do it sooner? If I’m to guess, an indefinite postponement means giving up on the engagement, no?”

Alice’s eyes widened at Gilbert’s blunt and ruthless presumption of her intentions. She swallowed hard, steeling herself. He wasn’t wrong, but she originally didn’t want to hurt him so much by saying those words herself.

“That’s true, but it’ll be hard for the public to accept now, no? It’s better to give it some time to digest before announcing it.”

“Then, again, my feelings are not of any value? Am I not allowed to be selfish? If you want to make it clear that you don’t want to marry me, then say it out loud here. I have no need to hang on to something for the next several months, just to let it go anyway.”

She bit her lips, feeling a pressure from Gilbert that she had never felt from him before. Maybe she did take it for granted that Gilbert would never do such a thing, but it was presumptuous of her at best. With how much Gilbert pandered to her wishes, he must have expected something in return, and this was the last straw for him. Interestingly, this was probably the only time that Gilbert was frank with his thoughts in front of Alice. What an ironic time for Alice to finally see this happen.

“No, you’re free to be as selfish as I am. I can’t tell you not to be if I’m doing the same. If that’s the case, then yes, I don’t want to marry you.”

But then, why did you want me to transfer to Regia Miriam in the first place? If you haven’t done that, then all this would have never happened.

Alice wanted to ask him that, but she was hesitant, unsure if she wanted to push him on it. Without asking, she could already guess at why he would do it, according to Kato’s testimony earlier in the day, but she wasn’t sure of it. What exactly did Kato say to Gilbert?

“That’s enough, then. I have no more purpose to remain here, and neither do you. From here on out, you’ll be another Westgrove, and not my fiancée.”

Both people had very hard expressions on their faces. Gilbert’s was of the unyielding stubbornness type, whereas Alice’s was one of incredulity and frustration. One speaking on his emotions and ego, the other unable to rebuke the accusations because they were more than warranted. And in true Gilbert style, he turned around right after his curt reply, no fuss no buts.

“Gil!”

Alice called out to him, but couldn’t find any words. What could she do? She was essentially breaking up with him, but she didn’t think he would be just as brutally quick and honest with it, that even if there wasn’t any romance between the two of them, they were still close.

Maybe it was because that he didn’t view her as somebody close. Or he did, and it was his way of coping with the separation. This was the kind of hesitation that plagued her relationship with Gilbert, and it continued to this very last moment. They remained people who didn’t understand each other, and neither took the initiative to reach out and come to an understanding.

“It seems that all was in vain, so I don’t have a choice but to move on. It’s about time for me to be selfish.”

He didn’t turn around and left behind these words for Alice, who couldn’t help but tear up again as she watched his silhouette disappear back into the confines of his grand villa. She didn’t know it pained her so much to let go of Gilbert.

“Good riddance. Gilbert can have a peace of mind again.”

Mona, who was awfully quiet at the end there, whined annoyingly one last time in Alice’s direction, who was only met with a cold stare from Kato. She made her way back inside one of the black sedans, and the bandage-face challenger dutifully followed her, showing that Kato’s opponent was indeed under Mona’s orders rather than Justin’s.

“Alice, sweetie? I know Uncle isn’t and shouldn’t be the one to pick you up and bring you home right now, given that Mona’s still with me. I know Albert’s taking good care of you, and it seems like your bodyguards are from your school too, so I’ll have to leave them to you. Get home and rest up. You’re a big girl now, and Uncle knows that too, hmm?”

After having a short conversation with Sisi on the side, Justin came back to Alice and reassured her much like a parent. He embraced her and kissed her on the forehead before he had to eventually let go and retreat to his own vehicle. The SPs surrounding them, whose background presence in the confrontation felt a bit awkward to Kato, joined their bosses in their sedans and started up the engines. One by one, they left the villa quietly, leaving the three of them on the side of the street.

“Just wait here for a moment. Sisi shall bring the car.”

Once they were left alone, Alice turned around and thrown herself onto Kato, hugging him tightly and perching her head on his shoulder. They were suspended in time like that for only a short while before Alice spoke. Although her voice didn’t sound like she was shaken at all, prideful even here, at the very least she didn’t want Kato to see any more of her pitifully distraught face.

“Did I make the right choice?”

She spoke in Old Yue, together with her awkward accent. Kato returned her embrace good-naturedly, placing his hand over her head.

“That’s up to you. Make it so that your choice was right, and we’re gonna be right here with ya.”

“Then are you gonna take responsibility for me?”

“I already told you that the nomenklatura is not a recommended career. Besides, I thought you said you’re doing this because of Evie.”

“No, I’m doing this because of you.”

She let go of him as another sedan rolled up to the side of the curb from behind her, its front lights shining brightly in Kato’s direction as it obscured Alice’s form with a blinding backlighting. Even then, he could make out the warm smile that she now wore, beautiful together with her curly blonde hair flowing over her bare shoulders and her white dress. This expression was really what a bride-to-be should have on her face, and this was the first time tonight he had seen such a thing from her. Slowly, he crossed his arms and gave a single, lengthy nod before smirking as usual.

“That’s what I thought you said. Now, tell me what you really think.”

“Hehe. You got me there. I’m doing this for myself, of course, never for a self-involved asshole like you.”

Alice’s face lit up, perhaps brighter than even the headlights from the car that the two Eternians borrowed from their bosses. The arrogant and confrontational Alice that Kato saw every day at school resurfaced, and somehow, that made him felt lighter and more hopeful that things would turn out just fine.

11 – Kindred Spirits

“I will send somebody over later on to pick you up. Go have a rest.”

“Thanks, Albert.”

Stepping over a guest barrier and into one of the many corridors on the second floor, Alice arrived in front of a room near the end of the hallway. Opening the door with its key in hand, she entered a modest bedroom with a simple bed and office desk. The top of the desk was tidy, the wardrobe was closed snugly and the sheets were made neatly. The cushioned office chair seemed to offer fluff and comfort of the highest level, while an impressive radio set was stacked on the desk. The room was dimly lit, but as she walked further into the room and past the tiny washroom to the side, the ceiling lights lit up brightly, automatically sensing her presence.

Alice threw herself face-down on the bed, fatigued from treating guests alongside her family. Plus, she came off of a whole day outside with her friends, so both her mind and body were tired and in need of rest. She turned over on her bed so she faced the ceiling, collecting her thoughts on what had happened today.

While she was grateful of Kato’s presence when she was compelled to join Gilbert on his surprise visit, the more thought she gave it, the more she was inclined to know about what happened between Kato and Mirabelle. After their disappearance and Kato’s return, the rest of the Elites weren’t as surprised of the situation as she was, which left her even more curious as it seemed related to the Elites on some level. It was on her mind the whole time she was downstairs, and she had been waiting for this moment.

She leapt back onto her feet, crossed the room and poked her head out of the door. Surveying the corridor, carpeted and lavishly decorated, it was quiet and dim as it was away from the main lobby and great hall. Feeling a little nervous, she called out softly.

“Kato?”

Seconds passed, but nothing followed.

“Kato? Kato. Katoooooo~”

Calling out his name many times, panic crept into her expression as the clock on her desktop kept ticking. She gently closed the door behind her and leaned her back against it, her face slowly flushing red with embarrassment.

Hopefully, no one heard that…

Because she definitely looked like a weirdo. But it was very strange. From what Albert described, Sisi’s partner should definitely be Kato, and as her bodyguard, he should be nearby, at least within earshot.

Unless, she thought, that they weren’t supposed to interact with their clients, i.e. herself, which made it even more embarrassing if Kato was indeed within earshot. She could hear the stifled giggling from an imaginary Kato hiding in the shadows of the corridor, which infuriated her as much as it was embarrassing.

“Alice?”

Then, a voice and a knock on the door dispelled all the worries in her imagination. She turned around quickly to open the door to a handsome-looking Kato with a bemused look on his face. Her smile was as wide as it could be, relieved that he was indeed here with her, to which Kato was even more confused by.

“What’s with that creepy grin? You okay?”

“One hundred percent okay. Come in here already, Kato. You can sit in that chair.”

As she sat down on the edge of her bed, inexplicably, the smile on her face refused to disappear, which continued to shine down on Kato’s somewhat exasperated expression. He began asking questions almost right away.

“How did you know that I was your bodyguard?”

“I took a guess, from what Albert told me earlier. I didn’t actually know for sure it was you.”

“Huh. Not a bad guess.”

He spun himself around and leaned back on the chair before he continued.

“I heard about your situation from Sisi, by the way. I’m sorry to hear it, and second-hand from Sisi as well. So it’s true that you chose to marry Gilbert?”

Alice’s eyes widened, but she was not surprised. She guessed as much, if Kato was Sisi’s sidekick. Her smile slowly disappeared as she began to explain.

“So I take it that you’ve already been told of my place in my family’s company. Yes, I chose to marry Gilbert. As incompatible as we are as people, he’s also the most trustworthy of the bunch.”

“You can’t just give up all of your ownership stakes to your brother and uncle, and recuse yourself from your family business entirely?”

“Even if I did, there wouldn’t be any freedom for me to choose who I marry anyway. A marriage with the Westgrove name is always a piece of the political game. So I’d rather choose my partner while I still can.”

“I mean, breaking off relations with your family completely. If you wanted neither of those things, then why not just renounce your claims and family name? Their business will carry on without you.”

“Hah, I’ve considered that many times, but I guess it’s up to your values. I’m grateful for the few things I have because of my family, but I have just as many complaints. For example, if I were to ask you, what’s in it for you to become one of Eternia’s greatest servants, what would you say?”

“Servant?”

“Your future as a Heart. I take it that you’re not in it for the ideological reasons. You’re a realist at heart, pardon the pun.”

He was surprised. Alice really gave lots of thought to everything. She would never let a single bolt stay loose.

“You’re right. I don’t heed the chivalrous duty of noblesse oblige. It’s all meaningless to me. If I could, I would walk out in an instant.”

“Then why can’t you walk out?”

“Maybe it’s because I feel indebted. My life was made possible because of Eternia’s patronage, so I guess I’m trying to repay them in my own way, as long as I’m able to protect those who are dear to me.”

“It’s a lot simpler than that. We’re just unwilling to part ways with whatever made us who we are today. Because whatever it was, it became an important part of us, so it’s natural for it to be difficult to say goodbye to.”

Kato stopped. She was right. The idea of owing responsibility to what they were born into came up earlier in the day with Gilbert as well, but neither he nor Kato explained why exactly they felt that responsibility. Here, Alice summarized all their feelings in one short breath.

“And until that day when you can’t tolerate it any longer, in the meantime you have to continue living through it, so why not use what you can to make it better for yourself, right?”

He smiled brightly at Alice’s words, and in response she straightened up at the sudden change on Kato’s face. He learned something new today, thanks to this girl from a completely different world.

“And if indeed you need to run away from it someday, you’ll be carrying the same baggage anyway, so you better look for a good timing for that.”

“That’s right. I’ll carry the Westgrove name no matter what I do, and with it the gangs and mafiamen that would be after me for it.”

“And similarly for me, Eternia would follow me for the rest of my life, no matter what I do.”

They both nodded soberly, staring at each other, understanding each other’s inextricably difficult situations. Then, suddenly, they broke into laughter as the atmosphere became comically too heavy for them to stay serious.

“What the hell, aren’t we supposed to not get along? When did we start agreeing on things?”

“That’s what kindred spirits are.”

Removing her heels easily, she pulled her feet up on her bed, laughing at the insurmountable barriers around their lives. Musing endlessly about it wouldn’t help. At the moment, the best she could do was to look past it and enjoy the here and now.

“Is this supposed to be your room?”

“Yes. It’s my room for whenever I needed to stay over here in this house. How does it feel being inside a girl’s room?”

“You’re talking to somebody who lived and still lives with girls their whole life, and recently only increased in number.”

“But surely it feels different from family.”

“Maybe, I’m not sure. I’ve been normalized to a great extent, probably.”

Kato, ever restless, fiddled with the stationery on her desk idly. Somehow, the unfazed young man pulled in Alice even more; the desire to ask Kato questions about him grew ever stronger. She took a deep breath and hesitated for only a moment.

“By the way, what’s between you and Mira?”

“Between me and Mira? What do you mean?”

Hugging her legs close, she let herself fall onto one side, curled in a ball, allowing her curly hair flow around in front of her.

“Like, after the two of you ran away and then came back to us, literally no one else seemed to mind or ask questions about it. Well, they did, but it was way too soft, and the response to going on the Ferris wheel together was just as soft. So there must be something between the two of you that the Elites already know about and wouldn’t need to ask, right? I’m the only one left out here.”

“Hahahahahaha. Very perceptive, I see.”

“Perceptive or not, spill the damn beans already.”

“Mira haven’t told you anything? Though I wouldn’t expect her to.”

“It seems like both of us know that part of her quite well.”

Kato continued to fidget with the things on the desk. For a spare room that she only used on occasion, it was well-kept and tidy, with no traces of dust or misplaced items.

“Well, I guess it’s better for you to know now than surprise yourself later. ‘Coz it’s not just about me, but the Elites too. We’re a very old group of children, minus Franco, who grew up together.”

“That cheap shot at Franco. I feel bad for him.”

“Heh. Franco’s proven himself to be a great friend. But the rest of us are childhood friends in the most literal sense of the phrase. I think it’s fair to say that we became inseparable over the years, including the Jupiter sisters.”

“But what about your training as a Heart? Surely that took a lot of time away.”

“It did. For the longest time, we only went to school for two out of the six days, and it was only in the morning, but apparently it was enough to bond over. Conveniently, we would always have Sunday to play with each other.”

“So things just worked out, even though your job actively worked against you all.”

“Well, Evie and I were, and still are, the ‘cool’ kids of our class by a long, long shot, so there’s that social aspect which helped us stay relevant in school. Kids will be kids.”

Alice giggled at his characterization of himself.

“I’d bet all your teachers were on edge every time the two of you appeared in class.”

“And you’d be right. At best, we were troublemakers. As time went on, we went to school more often, so that helped too.”

“That’s the original genesis of the Elites. Now, where does Mira come in?”

“Hah. I’m probably not qualified to explain her part for her, but I’ll try. From what I can remember, it was Mira who brought the two groups together. It helped that we played in the same old playground, and they were just as eccentric as we were, so we bonded real fast.

“Mira, she started getting serious tutoring in, like, grade three or four? She was at school and at the playground steadily less and less often, sometimes absent for months on end, but she would always come back to us in the end. By this point in time, Eon and Bia were leading the charges across the playground.”

“Bia? Bianca?”

She was reminded of a name that slipped from her mind, and many metaphorical dots connected in her brain. With her imagination in overdrive again, she imagined that, likely, Mirabelle wasn’t the only main character in this situation, which inexplicably worried her.

“She’s like you in many ways. She was cool and aloof, but once she got used to the infighting it became second nature to her.”

“Heh, infighting. Is this the disrespect I hear?”

“You’ve seen Bia in action before; her speech is as crude as a guy’s. And yours is up there as well, sister. Don’t be so disrespectful to the disrespecting.”

Alice smirked, for once proud of the poisonous tongue she had.

“Anyway, all that continued until we hit senior high, and she slowly came back to us. Though she still disappears from time to time, like right now, she’s more or less back in full attendance.”

“The history lesson is nice and all, but what’s actually between the two of you? Please answer the question.”

“Ah, I thought I could bamboozle you with my longwinded misdirection. I guess not.”

They snickered at each other as Kato said in a pretentious voice, a bit of his natural grandstanding shining through. He crossed his arms as he shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly, turned his back to the desk, and faced straight in Alice’s direction.

“Well, Mira’s rather attached to me ever since we were kids. Overly attached, I should say. I don’t think there was a time where that wasn’t the case. We’re super close, despite all the missing time between the two of us. Eh, how can I explain it? Like I said before, we’re true childhood friends, and we have all the baggage that comes with being that, so that’s why, I guess, we didn’t have such a heated reaction as yours.”

“What kind of baggage? I never had any childhood friends of your magnitude. Explain it like I’m five.”

“Heh. It’s the kind where we know each other so well that we know exactly which topics to not bring up. You know how it’s conventional wisdom to never talk about politics with your family, unless you’re prepared to permanently part ways with them? It’s sorta like that.”

Alice narrowed her eyes at the vague answer he gave, but realized that Kato was right to explain the origins of the Elites; the expression on his face was one of fatigue, and she could see an inkling of why it was the case. Nevertheless, this was the best time to weasel out information from him, while he was separated from his friends and family, so she pressed on.

“So something big happened in the past related to this, and it seemed to have involved most everyone, that we’re all fine with sweeping it under the rug, right?”

Kato arched his eyebrow.

“Wow, you’re pretty sharp.”

“It’s not that hard. You don’t know what really hurts until you run into it, right?”

“Fair.”

Silence drifted between them, and Alice watched him on quietly for a while as he spaced out, eyes unfocused. She sighed. There was not going to be an explanation about that from him willingly, so she left it at that. She sat upright on the bed again and clasped her hands together in front of her, thinking carefully of her next move.

“I’m going to make it real clear. Mira’s side, it can be left to her to answer, but you, do you like Mira?”

Slowly, Kato smiled widely in response. He put his elbow on the desk, and rested his chin on his knuckles, supporting his tilted head, staring back into Alice’s unyielding blue eyes.

“What do you think?”

His expression was one of amusement, halfway between joking and serious. It was obvious that he was enjoying the moment, but it nevertheless held some importance to him.

“I think it’s obvious that you like her. To what extent, I can’t be sure, but it’s obvious that you see her as way more than just a close friend, and for a long time.”

Alice said bluntly without holding back anything. Her face was serene, neither jesting nor perturbed: just proclaiming a statement matter-of-factly. Part of it was she wanted to see a more earnest reaction from Kato without distracting his thoughts with her emotions.

“Ahahaha, does it look like that? It’s true that she’s more than just a childhood friend to me.”

For some reason, Alice felt a sinking feeling in her chest as he admitted just a little bit of it in front of her. Though she steeled herself for any answer, it was still rocking nonetheless. But as a person who constantly dealt with her emotions, she quickly internalized that moment and moved on from it without missing a step.

“But still, why are the two of you not together after all this time? If you’re willing to run away from us and go off on your own, going on a Ferris wheel of all things, from an outsider’s point of view, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be the case.”

“What, are you jealous that I would take Mira away from you?”

“Idiot. Your situation looks suspect regardless of who was looking on from outside.”

Kato’s smile unwavering, she felt her face suddenly heat up. There were mixed feelings in there, consisting of some bits of pride, jealously and disappointment. And when a bit of arrogance crept into his eyes, Alice knew that her uneasiness was written all over her face.

“Your promise from earlier today is still in effect. No shenanigans allowed.”

“Aw, I was hoping it you’d forget about it.”

“How can I forget about—?”

She stopped herself before she said out loud what she was thinking, and was surprised at it herself; the ability to stop herself, that is. In a rush that seemed remarkably natural, she cleared her throat to cover up her stumbling and continue.

“If you can’t share it with me, that’s fine. That’s just what your relationship seems like from an observer’s standpoint.”

“And you’re probably not wrong. Hell, I’m used to it by now, getting glares from guys around me all the time. Evie is also another one that they’re all jealous for.”

She let out a long sigh. As expected from a master of deflection.

“I can see why; and why you’ve become so numb towards both Evie and her crowds.”

Kato stood up from the chair and leaned against the edge of the desk, just a slight bit restless. Alice watched curiously, as he took a moment before he began again.

“I guess there’s no single answer to that question, only scattered parts that don’t even make up the whole answer. One part of it, I answered a bit earlier. Another part of it is related to our upbringing as Hearts.”

She was pleasantly surprised that Kato went back on topic, but then she narrowed her eyes, a little apprehensive at what the reason was if it pertained to the organization. It reminded her that despite all the human-ness of his gang, they were an exceptional existence to not only Eternia, but likely this world too.

“Because we’re brought up as future Hearts, there’s a need to remove evidence of our pasts so that we’ll be reliable assets to the organization. Our identities will be hard to trace not only for enemies, but allies alike. And one of the things done for that purpose is alchemically erasing the memories from the people of Livia.”

Alice’s face turned sour, confused and upset by this revelation.

“What? Erasing memories from people? How?”

“I’m not exactly sure, but our guardian Karl, I’ve mentioned him before I think, he’s involved with that job right now, and that’s why he’s not home anymore.”

“So he’s going around the city, looking for people with memories of the three of you, and erasing them? Is that even something that can actually happen? Not just literally but logistically?”

“It must be. Sisi is a living example of that.”

Alice slackened her arms and head as her fatigue suddenly returned to her. Downcast, she had a thousand-yard stare aimed at nowhere on the floor in particular. Though she could already guess the answer, she asked anyway, seriously hoping it wasn’t the case.

“Then will the Elites, the Jupiter sisters, all our classmates, will they be subject to the mind wipe? Will I have my memories erased too?”

“Of course.”

She closed her eyes, taking a moment to process the affirmation from Kato. A sense of hopelessness crept into her mind, now knowing that Kato and Evie would be erased from her memories. Would their friendship be meaningless, if she would forget about their existence?

“The deadline is shortly after the end of this school year. That’s when the people closest to us will be subject to the mind wipe. Once that’s done, we’ll be ready to serve Eternia as the leading Hearts candidates.”

Alice remained silent and forlorn, as if mourning for a loss that had not even happened yet. Kato tapped at her foot lightly with his foot, trying to elicit some kind of response from her, to which she slowly raised her head to make eye contact. There, she saw a sheepish grin that epitomized his powerlessness and acceptance of the situation, which only now she truly understood the shackles that he and Evie had to live with, just as she had been under the chains of her own circumstance.

Seeing her evidently distraught, he closed the little distance between them to pat her on the head silently, as he did many times for his sisters. She didn’t say anything, only lowering her line of sight once more, staring down imaginary holes into the ground. Grasping at straws, she had it in her to ask one more time.

“Who won’t get mind wiped? Certainly, there’ll be at least a few outliers. Sisi must be one.”

“I suspect some of the nomenklatura and above wouldn’t need to be wiped. It’s useful for them to know, after all. I don’t know the status on Karl, but hopefully his memories don’t need to get erased.”

An idea sprouted from the depths of her mind at the mention of the nomenklatura. Alice looked up at him once more, this time with an obvious sense of desperation.

“So if I become a nomenklatura, there’s a good chance that I’ll be spared from the mind wipe?”

Kato removed his hand from the top of her head, just a little confused at her far-fetched idea.

“A good chance, yes. Why? Don’t tell me you’re going to join Eternia just because of this? And aiming straight for the high place of a nomenklatura too.”

“I can make my way in there. From my position, it’s possible for me to make it in there. It’ll take a lot of effort, but it’s definitely doable.”

“Whatever ideas you’re having right now, I suggest you leave it alone. Joining the nomenklatura is not a joke. It’s not worth it.”

Alice jumped up from her bed, standing tall and looking straight at him with indignation.

“It’s not you who determines if it’ll be worth it for me. Evie is my foremost consideration in this decision.”

Kato was taken aback as she snapped at him, though not so much for the rudeness than the words she used. He said something similar to what Alice said, just earlier on the Ferris wheel to Mirabelle. He smiled lightly at that thought and leaned back on the edge of the desk once more, casting his eyes away from the fiery girl in front of him and nodded.

“No, you’re right. It’s your choice.”

Now her turn to be surprised, Alice still was unfamiliar with Kato being agreeable and her cheeks tickled pink. What she said was a lie. He was the reason why, not Evie. But just as quickly, she calmed down as her thoughts returned to his original point.

“Then is this why? Do the rest of them know about this? Did you tell them?”

“That’s certainly a part of why things are the way they are. And yes, they do know about it. I myself have learned it not too long ago, and I told them about it very soon after that.”

“Is this the big thing that happened?”

“It was a significant part of it, I’d say.”

Alice stared on at his non-response, but dropped it quickly. There were other things of concern to her that she still wanted answered, and she asked hesitantly.

“If, hypothetically, Mira was somehow able to keep her memories, what would you do?”

“It wouldn’t change what I’m doing right now. There are other things between us and the others that need to be sorted out.”

Kato said, rather bluntly and seemingly preoccupied with something. Somehow, Alice felt lighter at the sound of this apparently intractable issue that he saw between himself and Mirabelle. While on that train of thought, the next question was out of her mouth before she knew it.

“Then, would you be happy if I managed to keep my memories of you?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

He said offhandedly, still very clearly absentminded, which turned his affirmative answer into an equivocal one to Alice. Strangely, she couldn’t help but feel disappointed, to which she was concerned about once she was self-aware of it. As he was still staring off into space, she found herself wanting him to look her way. In which manner, she wasn’t so sure.

Abruptly, the door behind them was blasted wide open. There was no noise, however, from the slam of the door into the wall beside it, and instead white sparks flew out from the points of contact, obvious that they were the residue of an act of alchemy.

Standing at the doorway was a young woman, clad in a black full-body jumpsuit. On her head was a large piece of headgear with a tinted visor, obscuring her eyes and most of her face from view, presumably to prevent the person from being identified. She held no visible weapons, but wore a pair of tactical gloves that were sparsely metal-studded on the back of the hand. Her long black hair was tied back in a large bun, not unlike the way Bianca made hers.

“Hey—”

However, Kato apparently already anticipated the intruder’s appearance, and the moment that the door flew open, he pushed Alice out of the way and onto the bed, which was at least somewhat out of the view range of the mini-corridor between the door and the open space of the bedroom. He walked up to the intruder, standing only a few arm’s length away in a battle-ready stance, feet shoulder-width apart and balancing his centre of gravity.

“Hand over the girl. She won’t get hurt, and she will be returned here within the hour. Surrender.”

A robotic voice in Old Yue came from the girl’s mouth, alchemically scrambled from the white adhesive bandage that was pasted on her neck. She was clearly not allowing her identity to be recognized; not that Kato would be able to recognize her anyway. At least the words themselves could be somewhat trusted. The aura around the intruder and her killing intent was not one that suggested she was after Alice’s life, but it was definitely strong enough that she was serious about her intentions.

“No can do. Those conditions are against my orders. If you want her, come at me.”

If her goal was merely to subdue him and retrieve Alice, which seemed to be the case from the low intensity of her killing intent, then he would also return the favour. From his apprenticeship at the Chang temple, he was taught that the act of killing was a last resort, a line that can only be crossed once one accepted the consequences of it.

The intruder quickly closed the short distance between herself and Kato with a light step, and threw a lightning-fast jab at the centre of his torso with the left arm. The speed in which it was executed surprised Kato, but he was no slouch either. He took a big step backward on his right foot to tilt his body out of the effective range of the short-reaching jab, and then used that momentum to spring back on that foot to lunge forward with his left elbow.

Unlike Kato who utilized the mobility of his limbs, the intruder raised her right arm to block the elbow strike with the back of her hand, a technique that matched direct force with direct force, which would not be recommended unless she was armoured with her metal-studded gloves and had foreknowledge of the physical strength of her opponent. With Kato’s counter-strike checked, she knocked Kato’s stopped limb upwards with her left arm that was just pulled back from the missed jab. With his left arm knocked up, it exposed his lower torso to attack and she attempted to follow up with an upward elbow strike with her now-freed right arm.

In the split second his left arm was knocked upwards, Kato realized he was too greedy with his counter-strike and was likely to take the coming blow. As he steeled himself to take it, he forced himself to take a step backward with his left to soften the blow, even if it meant destabilizing his centre of gravity.

He took a blunt strike to his left ribcage, with its full force softened as expected from his forced step backwards. He immediately felt the pain and momentary flinching that came with that force, disabling his movements for a split second. Without hesitating, the intruder followed up with a step forward of her left foot to pivot on it and performed a hook with the left arm. Executing on the basics of basics, her hips and body followed the natural flow of the hook, turning significantly in the clockwise direction to put her entire body’s power into the strike.

Fortunately, he blocked the hook with his right arm just in time, but it sacrificed much of his balance and the force of that strike almost sent him off of his feet. He dug in his heels hard, preventing a fall that would have meant the end of any control for him in this fight. However, by standing his ground it opened up another window of opportunity for the intruder to launch another jab with the right hand, this time aimed for the base of the neck and if it connected, it would result in a serious loss of balance and flinching from which he would not recover from.

Of course, Kato didn’t bank on fighting empty-handed. From his left arm being knocked up to the transition between the blocked hook and the upcoming jab, he was able to unsheathe the hidden knife in his sleeve, slip it into his hand in a reverse grip, and bring it up to block her jab with the edge of the blade. The metal on metal clanging seemingly stupefied the intruder for a short moment, allowing Kato to take another step backwards to recover his usual centre of gravity.

Realizing that his posture had recovered and equipped with a short-ranged weapon, she tried to step up her attacks in order to prevent her opponent from using it offensively. With both fighters on equal footing again, they exchanged many more blows as the intruder advanced into the room while Kato continued to dodge by moving backwards.

In seconds, they covered the distance from the mini-corridor to the edge of the office desk. Once Kato reached the desk, he instantly leapt behind the office chair and pushed it into his adversary. While she was momentarily distracted, he reached down into his leather pants, grabbing an extendable rod from underneath it with his right hand, and then throwing away the knife under the table with his left.

From the exchanges just prior, he realized that the intruder wore chainmail underneath the jumpsuit, at least on her arms, which made the attacks of edged lightweight weapons meaningless. As the knife had already served its purpose, it called for an immediate change of tactics.

With extended reach, instead of going for swift and dominating control as was usual with hand to hand combat, he could play the longer game both in distance and time. He saw the chair being thrown back into his direction on its wheels, to which he slammed the chair to the side and into the edge of the bed with his fully extended baton, while the whole time watching on the intruder beyond the chair advancing quickly toward him.

The moment she came within range, he lashed out several quick swipes in succession, all aiming for the head and neck. The intruder parried every one of those attacks with her arms, but more importantly she was stopped in her tracks, as Kato did not need to step backwards any further.

With the swipes being parried, Kato lowered his posture and made a thrust towards the neck, expecting another parry from a fighter who always stood her ground. But like Kato, as the fight evolved she changed tactics too, and elected to dodge the upwards attack by taking a step back and ducking. At the same time, she clasped the extending rod with both hands, completely restricting the weapon’s axes of freedom, and even wrestling for control of it from Kato.

However, Kato was already prepared for this eventuality and she took his bait. In the moment she tried to yank the baton from his grasp, he let it pull him forward, still grabbing the rod along its length as if he was holding onto a rope in a tug of war. It brought them back into melee range, but Kato had the slight initiative this time around as the baited yank caused her to lose balance, which required a split second to recover before she was able to form a solid defence.

In that moment of unbalance, he closed the distance quickly and following through with the momentum that his intruder contributed to, he smashed onto the visor and the face using his forehead. It was a no-brainer that he was aiming his headbutt for the nose, an easy target, and crushing it at full force.

Flinching, she staggered a step backwards as the visor crumbled under the impact to reveal an abundance of bandages wrapped over her eyes, forehead and cheeks. The debris scattered around her, with some bits of it stuck to the point of impact on Kato’s forehead.

She was clearly a student of an empty-handed school of martial arts, and one that did not use eyesight, for that matter. It meant that she depended solely on hearing and the sixth sense to seek out enemies and movements. He doubted that she was blind. Rather, eyesight most likely interfered with her techniques’ focus on sound and the mana flow around her.

Now with the nose dripping blood, it soaked into those bandages and gave it a bright red hue. Kato was not going to leave it at that. He weaved in his next attack through a knee kick at the stomach, which connected and sent the adversary tumbling backwards several feet towards the doorway, letting loose of the rod that Kato regained control of, while his opponent was knocked out of her effective ranges.

However, the intruder was just as tenacious as he was, and was no doubt a highly trained physically superior fighter like him. Unfazed by the bludgeoned nose and the knee, she dug in, willed herself to resist the effects of her injuries and recovered her posture in seconds.

Kato did not make any follow-up strikes in her recovery window, and instead immediately backed off and reached for the inside of his shirt for his handgun. Because he was ambidextrous, it didn’t matter which hand he held his weapons, and it just so happened that his extendable baton was in his right and the handgun with a silencer in his left. Now that there was some distance in between them, it was possible to use the pistol at its effective range.

The opponent, of course, anticipated his possession of ranged weapons from the start and purposely maintained melee range the entire time. But with them standing at least eight feet apart, he had the upper hand with range. Knowing that, she froze in position as she watched, from her sixth sense, Kato’s loaded gun aimed at her head. Her senses were sharp, especially in this adrenaline-charged fight, and though her intuition told her that the end was near, whose victory was not yet decided.

And it was for good reason, as Kato too remained in position, unwilling to continue the melee. He was at a disadvantage at that range. However, he refrained from firing immediately as he suspected, correctly, that those metal-studded gloves could easily deflect a bullet from a pistol. And from the strength and finesse of her movements, being able to keep up with and even surpass Kato, she could definitely do that, and was definitely a challenger if not already a deity.

Seconds ticked by as the stare-off continued, though with one side having no naked eye to stare from. There was actually another, more pressing reason for both sides to take a pause, as both the intruder and Kato sensed her presence reaching them imminently, and that reason finally appeared behind the intruder at the doorway.

“Freeze!”

The intruder, failing to subdue Kato before her time ran out, could only accept the stalemate in her fight against Kato and surrender once reinforcements came. She quietly tore off her gloves and raised her hands high in the air, signalling her acquiescence to Sisi’s demand. She turned around to address the tiny girl who held a long, embroidered lance in her hands, which emanated quite an evil aura from its body.

“Number Two. I didn’t expect her guard would be you and this gentleman here. Mr Albert must be a well-connected man.”

Sisi squinted at the opponent, who was still splattered with blood on her face and bandages. Sisi’s expression was devoid of emotions, unperturbed by the situation and the intruder’s nonchalant attitude.

“Sorry, but this is mine mission. Miklos shall see that it gets done. You, on the other hand, have not had the best of fortunes, Miklos can see. It was not just this battle you have lost in.”

Elizabeth Miklos Romana was Sisi’s true name. It seemed like she used her middle name to refer to herself among her peers in the underground.

“That is indeed unfortunate, isn’t it?”

“And you shall suffer a failure here. Don’t take this too personally.”

“How could I? At this point, I can only accept what had happened.”

She shrugged, and the adversarial aura around her disappeared as she dropped her gloves to the floor. Sisi lowered her weapon as well, sensing the change. The robotic voice still sounded strange to the ears, especially when it tried to convey some emotion.

“Sisi, do you know this person?”

Kato asked his mentor warily, his gun still trained on the intruder.

“Yes. And stow away your weapons. It is over.”

He did not move at all, his eyes remained hostile towards the young woman, evidently still distrusting her intentions. Seeing that he was not yet ready to let go of the fight, Sisi sighed and began with a question for the girl, hoping that Kato’s hotheadedness wouldn’t blow over.

“What are you after?”

“I need to take Alice away for a short period of time. Then, we intend to let her go.”

The intruder stated her aims once again. Alice, who had been unceremoniously thrown onto the bed and remained there until now, stood up from it and called out to the intruder.

“Hey, miss, are you under orders from Uncle Justin?”

“Yes.”

Alice’s bodyguards were taken aback, wide-eyed. Alice replied immediately to the girl.

“Then I’ll come with you. But my friends will come with me, is that fine?”

“I don’t see a problem with that.”

The girl affirmed Alice’s intentions. Kato was unrepentant.

“Alice! Are you absolutely sure?”

“Definitely. Uncle Justin told me earlier he would see me again. I just didn’t know it would be in this manner.”

Alice waved a small piece of paper for the crowd to see, presumably slipped to her when Justin approached the stage earlier in the night. It was a plan already put in place from the other side.

Kato looked to Sisi, who eventually nodded at Alice’s decision.

“We are bodyguards. We do not dictate our client’s demands, only adapt to them.”

Reluctantly, he lowered his gun and put it away. Kato knew already from the mana flow around him that his opponent would not fight, especially now that Alice was basically acquiescing to her original objective. The excessive overflow of killing intent from both fighters disappeared as quickly as it appeared. He nodded in the end, as there was no other choice but to follow through with it.

10 – A Family Matter

“I wonder how Teto is doing. What’s she going to eat?”

“Stop. Leave her to your sisters. Sisi already called Karl to come back to the house for the night.”

Sisi and Kato were inside a safe house, in one of the gentrified areas of the city. The group left the Bozz without much trouble, leaving the two behind to catch a cab. The rest of them had jumped on the buses toward their homes. As night approached, so did Sisi’s mission and Kato was there to shadow her job.

The safe house was just another small flat in the area, but of course it was emptied of most furniture. Surrounded by plain wooden flooring and painted white walls, there were a few chairs and a wooden table with some basic stationery and sheets of blank paper on it. At least toiletries were maintained by the Eternian agents who used this safe house.

In Sisi’s hand was something like a blocky mobile phone, but it had more than just cellular capabilities. It had the functionalities that would merit it being called a handheld command-and-control relay post.

“It isn’t just for bookkeeping your missions. It’s for making sure you have the resources to complete the mission.”

On the floor were a few cardboard boxes, presumably prepared by said Eternian agents who were at Sisi’s beck and call.

“Like how?”

“Sisi shall contact the right agents, or they shall come to Sisi in one way or another. With time, you shall learn who to contact and who shall contact you.”

She opened one of the cardboard boxes to reveal a mound of clothes wrapped in clear plastic, a couple of sets each for Sisi and Kato.

“Quick, let us change into these clothes and get started. Sisi is going to need some help with it.”

She pulled an extravagant white one-piece dress out of the box, semi-surprised at both the preparation involved and the details of the mission.

“Now, help Sisi.”

Without hesitation, she stripped off her clothes to reveal a small and flimsy frame that didn’t ascribe to her real status as a super-soldier. A scar ran down the middle of her chest, splitting the lanes of her taxiway in two, and superimposed on her centre was Eternia’s emblem, a simple unicursal hexagram. Sighing at the old lady who was not only his guardian but also his superior, he grabbed a part of the dress from the back and tied up the knots.

“Do you strip for just any guy?”

“Of course, not. Who do you think Sisi is?”

“So I guess that means that I’m just your slave.”

“Bingo. You are also your sisters’ slave too, are you not? This is not a new experience for you.”

“Not false. But I liked the version of you on the first day of class. You were cuter and more honest.”

“You are fifty years too late to hit on Sisi. If you were mine equal, then Sisi would definitely be head over heels over your flattery. No wonder all the other girls flock around you.”

After clipping on the accessories to her dress, he kneeled down to help her with the tiny heels, as if he was the prince putting on the glass slipper for the princess.

“Thanks for your appraisal, but what can I say, I’m too good at this. And you’re too good at this too. When you were a kid, were you as awkward as you were when we first met?”

“A lot more so. Mostly because all mine contemporaries were mine equals. Sisi is a lot calmer to those above and below her.”

Kato retreated from her as he finished and Sisi was happy with the new dress. Without wasting time, she put back her usual Oriental pin in her hair, and tore open the next box to find an assorted array of combat equipment, enough to outfit a commando in full gear. Needless to say, she could only carry a few of those items.

Similarly, Kato stripped his casual clothes off for the plain-looking vest and dress pants that were underneath her dress. If his grandma was going to change her clothes out here, he had no problems doing it too.

“Sisi, how did you get that scar?”

“Oh, mine scar? Just real bad luck.”

Kato gave her a bemused look, to which she shrugged as she put a revolver into a built-in holster beneath the fluff of her dress at the hip. He guessed that he would find out when she was prepared to tell him.

“Then what about your tiny body? Is it supposed to be combat worthy? Though Evie too looks like she’s not, it’s because she’s a partial designer child.”

“Sisi is the same as Evie. Sisi is a partial designer child too.”

“Really? I thought Evie was the only one.”

“Nah, but Sisi’s transformation was a prototype and was only considered a partial success. Sisi’s specs are well within deity levels, but there were a few strange side effects. Sisi has her height stunted, but also gained great longevity. If the natural laws of this world allow it, Sisi can live on forever.”

“So you’re expected to live for a hundred and fifty years?”

“That’s right.”

He whistled as he slotted a small knife into its holster under his dress shoes. Tied around his heel was a pouch for a few miniature pen-shaped smoke grenades.

True designer children were modified at or before conception, but Sisi and Evie had their bodies alchemically modified after they were born, so at best they were only partial designer children.

“Then how come Evie didn’t stop growing after grade school?”

“Obviously the technology used was more advanced, though Sisi’s mod worked out well enough. Evie’s mod was a lot more ambitious, and as a result she is perfect in every regard, whether it is appearance or combat strength.”

“Yeah, she’s perfect. But that power came at a great cost.”

“Umu. Sisi has heard as well. At most, she shall live for twenty-five more years. Without a doubt, Sisi shall outlive her.”

Opening the firing chamber of a pistol he picked up from the box, he checked for gunk and dirt to clean out.

“She used to have black hair, back when we first met her in the orphanage. She was also an ugly duckling too, but she turned out to be the most popular and envied in our class. Is that a result of the modding?”

“Her body, yes, her hourglass figure was partly the result of the transformation, but her face is all-natural.”

Kato whistled again. Sisi was already finished with changing into her new clothes and pocketing her equipment, and was now at the washroom mirror putting on makeup.

“What about you, Sisi? How come you’ve got chosen to do the transformation?”

There was a short break before she answered.

“It is a long story. The short answer is that Sisi made an emotional choice that a typical twelve-year-old like mine past self would choose.”

“An emotional choice?”

“Yes. Think of what you were doing and the kind of choices you were making when you were finishing grade school.”

Sisi reappeared from the washroom, her appearance now fitting of a typical aristocrat or bourgeois. Facing her was Kato in his new sleeveless blazer over a long-sleeved white dress shirt, taking on the role of her butler on this mission. She gave him a once-over, making sure everything looked spick-and-span on Kato.

“Looking good, Kato. Your training has served you well.”

She gave him an earpiece, which he took and put into his ear. The microphone was on the wire, clipped to his lapels, while the rest of the wire went into his shirt and into an inner pocket that held the miniature radio that served as their walkie-talkie. Similarly, Sisi had already set it up on her person. The technology was definitely way more advanced than the ones that the children used last week in their operation against Class E.

“A bit too good for someone from the slums, Sisi thinks. Normally, Sisi would imagine you did not get any chance to wear anything this formal at all.”

“And normally, you’d be right. But fortunately, I’m not originally from the slums.”

After staring intently at Kato, she grabbed a small squeeze bottle of hair gel from the desk, dumped some on her hands, tippy-toed up behind him and combed through his hair vigorously.

“Yes, Sisi knows too. As a result, the rest of the Hearts are wary of you and Teto’s allegiance.”

“And that’s why you’re here, right?”

She shrugged. Finished with his hair, which was now thoroughly gelled back, she pocketed the bottle in Kato’s vest pocket and went into the mini-kitchen to wash her hands of the sticky fluid.

Non, whether the other Hearts are going to listen to Sisi is another story. Or Lady Eterna, for that matter. When Sisi said y’all shall be evaluated by Sisi, y’all really are being evaluated for only Sisi.”

“Is that how it works? Sounds like you’re doing something for nothing.”

“Hah. It may be meaningless technically speaking, but you are not out there to make the world do everything in the right way. As you see more of the real world, you shall learn what to do and not to do to achieve what you want.”

“And you took this job being our grandmother, because there’s something you want to do?”

“Exactly.”

Walking to the door, she opened it and strutted out the flat, her steps bouncing cheerily like a leprechaun’s. Kato followed her out the door, ready for tonight’s mission. The same cab was downstairs, as the driver had given over the keys to Sisi beforehand, waiting to take them to their next destination.

 “Are you gonna tell me what it is?”

Sisi grinned, as if she was the twelve-year-old that her outward appearance was. She held out her hand to him, to which he knew to extend his elbow for her to grab onto.

“Nope. Sisi shall tell you when it is time to.”


The Westgrove residence was not too far away from the Eternian safe house, it turned out. Though it was imperative that operating procedures were kept as inconspicuous as possible, there had to be a compromise with operational effectiveness. In less than fifteen minutes, they arrived at the front of the gates to a large mansion on the edge of the urbanized city, some ways up the hills that ring the valley floor.

It was already close to seven, the time that the initial reception would officially close and have the banquet started. For the upper class, it was more common to show up way earlier to the party so that they could mingle and find out what was new and trending in the elite circles. It was important to be a social person so that one could keep oneself on top of things to survive under shifting power balances and whatnot.

Alice, unfortunately, was not interested in any of this, and so they were only barely getting to the party on time. They waited in their small car on the long, circling driveway as they watched the Westgrove family march out of their house, surrounded by caretakers and bodyguards. There were several black sedans in front of the two Eternians, parked and ready to take their passengers.

Alice, whom Kato saw not even an hour ago, was transformed completely from the trendy gal look to one fitting of an aristocrat. Like the little girl in a white dress next to him in the driver’s seat, Alice too wore a dress just as refined and fluffy, pale in colour and cut short above her knees. Her shoulders and back were bare, and she had white gloves and a purse. Not exactly a wedding theme, but it did give off that feel.

One of the men in the party, seemingly the big boss of the family, broke from the group alone and walked over to their car’s driver window. Sisi rolled down the glass at the push of a button, so that the handsome man with plenty of facial hair was in clear view of the persons inside the car. His blond hair, in the same shade as Alice’s, was short enough already but was gelled back anyways.

“Good evening, Number Two. Thank you for coming along for today. I trust that you have all the things you need by now?”

“Of course, Albert. We are as ready as we shall ever be. A Heart’s pride is in our mission.”

Sisi used an interesting set of honorifics in her words. Unlike her speech patterns with the children, she put even more distance in it by using the first person plural to refer to herself.

“I’m glad that’s the case. Who’s the gentleman next to you?”

“The future Number Seven. He is a good kid. The Elders have high hopes for him.”

Though Kato’s expression didn’t change, in his mind he was incredulous at how he was assigned a Number by Sisi on her own. No doubt this was the first time he was hearing this.

“It puts me at ease knowing that there will be two Hearts at the venue. Once again, you have my thanks, Number Two, and may you have an outstanding career, future Number Seven.”

Sisi nodded as Albert bowed and left for the car in front of their own. Hearing the engines rev before them, it suddenly reminded Kato of the degree of seclusion that was typical of the outskirts of the city. This everyday sound he could hear on his street was loud, but it was extra loud and eerie here on the edge of Tseungkwano town.

He remembered how Alice told him of the emptiness she felt living in a place like this, and without a doubt, he could feel the inkling of loneliness already. If he were to live long-term like this, he would probably go insane himself, so he felt both admirable and unfortunate that Alice had to put up with it. Starting the engine too, Sisi and Kato followed behind the Westgrove family as they moved out of their villa for the Lafayette household.

“I’m the future Number Seven?”

“Ya. A Hearts candidate. Excited?”

“Not particularly. It’s the same to me.”

The trip was not far at all, even shorter than the ride to the Westgrove residence. They passed through hillside roads and subtropical forest to the next villa, giving Kato a nice view of the clustered city below him. It was like hiking to the Chang temple near their home, idly admiring the scenery behind him from time to time. Throughout the ten or so years making that hike countless times, he didn’t really notice as the city slowly changed below him. Kato, on some level, took it for granted that the city below was his home. Now, on his first mission as a Hearts candidate, a job he was raised for, he realized that Livia was not as eternal as he thought it was. Each time he looked on, he could feel the tears well up in his eyes, knowing that he would soon leave behind this place for good.

Driving into the wide taxiway of yet another giant residence, significantly larger than the Westgroves’, they saw that the home was very lively. Various peoples of different backgrounds in fancy and formal attire were mingling at every open expanse on this property. Complete with wine glasses, cigars, monocles and women, the party was indeed something straight out of a movie.

“Let’s go.”

And so, grandmother and grandson walked together along the steps to the entrance of the manor, some distance away from the Westgrove party in front of them, which was already immediately flanked by several SPs. It was as if the Eternian squad was an afterthought, but it was probably better off if the Eternians weren’t so conspicuous about who their clients were.

The atmosphere was quite laid back, with people slowly moving between the house and the yards. Here, comfort was king. The party passed through the reception at the front lobby fairly quickly, as the receptionist only needed to nod at Albert at the helm. Many others came up to Albert of their own volition to greet and shake hands with the blond man, clearly showing that he was one of the great influencers in this gathering.

“Kato, do you feel anything out of the ordinary?”

“Nope. No alchemical anomalies yet either.”

Normally, Sisi’s outward appearance would have stuck out like a sore thumb, but then again, there were children of the upper classes here as well. More importantly, both of them were suppressing their presences among the crowd, making them less recognizable in people’s peripherals. No doubt, if there were any would-be assassins present, they would be doing the same thing.

“Remember to read the air within your natural flow. That way, the enemy is less likely to detect that you’re on the lookout for them.”

It was a basic scientific principle where the observer affected the observed because there was information flow from one space to another. It was especially true for users of alchemy, which was all about reading mana flow in the natural environment and manipulating this energy. It was intricately tied to the existence of life, specifically souls. Living beings themselves were the interfaces through which they could interact with the flow of mana around them.

Arm in arm, they too let themselves past the front lobby and into the main hall. The ceiling was high and the walls built and decorated with a very baroque and church-like feel. Normally, this kind of architecture was traditional to the aristocracy of Candor and Auxiria, but it was popular and classy enough to be copied by the bourgeoisie. There were long tables covered in plates of various cuisines from across the country, meats and vegetables alike. Servers waited at the ends of the tables, servicing their patrons with the food and wine. If only Evie were here, Kato thought.

As they were masking their presences, they drifted through the crowd unhindered while picking up on tidbits of conversation. There were plenty of people around, having conversations that Kato thought were bizarre due to the overly patrician speech and otherworldly discussion topics.

It was not quite the same as Sisi’s speech patterns; it was more of a modern set of honorifics with a different set of vocabulary from the lower classes, and entirely in New Yue. As for their contents, it was certainly different in worldview, coming from people who lived a life of luxury. Although Kato had some reservations about their warped perception of the situation on the ground for the lower classes, he also noticed the thriftiness and the drive to succeed in their voices. It was obvious that they didn’t take their fortunes for granted. They were the bourgeoisie for a reason.

“Let’s have a bit of the veal there.”

Suddenly, the little kid in Sisi resurfaced as she pulled him along to one of those tables, eyes sparkling at the abundance of meats.

“What?”

“You are too uptight, Kato. It is a mission, but we are only here as backup, so we need to stay as inconspicuous as possible. This means blending in with the crowd. Suppressing our presences only go so far.”

“But you’re famous, aren’t you? Wouldn’t blending in make you stand out even more?”

“Actually, only a few recognizes Sisi as a Heart. Sisi is more known as a nomenklatura.”

“So the Hearts aren’t actually famous.”

“They are only famous titles. Those titles do not have a face, and they never had. You saw how Albert addressed us.”

Mirroring Sisi, Kato too took a plate from one of the self-serve tables. Hearing Sisi’s indifferent tone on the matter, he felt he could loosen up his form that he didn’t realize was rigid as stone. Sisi was right; he was a bit too nervous about his first day on the job.

“Why’s that?”

“Because that is how the position is. Across history, the feats of the Hearts are always tied to their titles. Due to the nature of the job, the persons behind them may change in an instant.”

“But that Albert guy knows you, right? At least you are famous.”

“Sisi is an exception. She has been around for how many years? But even then, not many people know who Sisi is. Probably, only Albert here knows who Sisi is.”

“Not any of the Lafayettes?”

“Maybe some of the older Lafayettes, not sure actually. But today there is only one here.”

“Wait, isn’t this their home?”

“Hah. If you think a family would only have one residence, then you have got another one coming. In fact, they have a few in this city, and this one is used exclusively by Gilbert.”

Scanning his vision towards the end of the long and expansive hall, not quite yet but just about comparable with the atrium at Korolev Senior, he spotted the tall Gilbert in his usual appearance. His wavy hair that almost reached his shoulders was no different from when he was in school, and his attire was modest yet tidy like his school uniform. It was probably his uncommon height that made him stand out despite the lacklustre outfit.

Unsurprisingly, Stephen stood next to his boss, but his transformation was much starker versus his school appearance. The normally straggly look was replaced with a sleeker and cleaner makeover, in both his attire and his demeanour. In short, he did not disgrace his status.

“Look, the two families are coming together now.”

The Westgrove party, with Albert and Alice at the helm, greeted the Lafayette side at the slightly elevated platform that they were standing on, surrounded by other family members and their various clients, though Gilbert was the only one from the Lafayette family. It said a lot about the position of the Lafayettes in this kind of a situation.

Suddenly, the ringing of sleigh bells sounded throughout the premises. As if responding to a secret code, the guests dropped their idle conversations and began to gather at the end of the main hall, where the two host families were. The shuffling of people was smooth and civilized, with everyone preserving their dignified grace in their steps.

Watching the platform at the hall’s end, Kato could see that their clients lowered themselves back onto the marble flooring, leaving Albert, Alice and Gilbert left on the mini-stage. The crowd of people, not dense at all as they wouldn’t bring any kind of discomfort to themselves, looked on expectantly.

“Good evening, all.”

Surprisingly, it was Albert who was first to speak. Somehow, Kato realized correctly that this whole socialite gathering was his idea, and not Gilbert’s. There was a wireless microphone in Albert’s hand, his voice alchemically projected to the audience without any speakers.

“Thank you for coming out tonight. As some of you may have known, there has been almost a year of discussion on the direction and projections on the future of Westgrove Logistics, and that our current major initiative is to closely integrate with an ally in our industry, the Lafayette Group.

“Fortunately, our main competencies lie in different sectors of the defence industry, so instead of direct competition, there are plenty of economic benefits from an alliance between the two companies. From the efforts by both sides over the last year, we are happy to conclude that a continued alliance will bring countless opportunities for years to come.

A big applause from the audience followed. Kato lowered his head to Sisi’s ear to ask her, and remained half-crouched for her to answer.

“Is that a real reason?”

“Of course. The Lafayette Group is known mainly for its research and design in small-arms, and also acts as an independent manufacturer and supplier. Westgrove Logistics, as in its name, is mainly a supply chain business who is contracted with lots of different manufacturers to be their distributors. As such, they also have a professional private army to safeguard their supply chains from supplier to end-user. On top of that, they also have a design and manufacturing wing for auxiliary equipment like body armour or electronics.”

“Wait, is that private army us?”

“Yes and no. They have their own numbers too, but Eternia is deeply involved in it.”

Slightly more enlightened about the situation, Kato turned his head back towards the front of the stage as Albert continued.

“To cement this alliance, we’re happy to announce that the date of the marriage between Gilbert and Alice has been determined. This day next year, we will come here once again to celebrate our newlyweds’ important moment. Thank you for everyone’s support.”

He began to clap as the two high-schoolers behind him stepped up next to him, who were waving to the crowd arm-in-arm, bearing smiles that did not reveal any inkling of dissent. Applause from the people followed Albert’s, seemingly in agreement with his announcement.

“Although Gilbert’s father is busy handling affairs in our neighbouring city of Lien at the moment, he has also given them his blessing very early on. With this, we wish their union will bring prosperity to both the Westgrove and Lafayette families.”

Without a moment to spare, the gigantic doors at the other end of the great hall opened with a literal bang. Both Sisi and Kato, trained repeatedly to recognize it, immediately knew it was a blank shot from a gun. Someone was trigger-happy.

Storming through the doors were perhaps a dozen men in dull black suits, not unlike the other men at this banquet, but also wore bowler hats and sunglasses, and carried various firearms. One even carried a brown-and-grey automatic weapon with a drum-shaped magazine.

At the vanguard was an older blond man who was not too different from Albert, parting the crowd in half as he approached the three on the platform belligerently. The people around them seemed mildly spooked at the surprise raid, some even dodging out of the room or finding shelter behind the tables, but none of the goons trained their weapons on any of the crowd. While they were held onto, ready to be used, they all clutched onto their weapons on their chests, as if they were performing military drill. More likely though, the onlookers were accustomed to the appearance of gangsters with firearms.

Hand on hip, the middle-aged blond man stopped along with his crew in front of the mini-stage. He too was dressed in a black suit in the style of his companions, but the only one with a cigar in his mouth. Like a true mafia boss, one of his minions held up a glass ashtray for him to use.

“Congratulations, Albert; and to Alice and Gilbert as well.”

He started with Albert’s name, making it abundantly clear that he knew it was Albert who wanted to throw this party.

“Uncle Justin. Welcome, and thanks. There is no time like the present, am I right? A wedding is definitely something to celebrate without reservations.”

“Certainly. It’s my niece’s wedding, after all.”

“So, what’s with your peashooter squad here? This should be a peaceful gathering, no?”

The sharing of pleasantries ended quickly enough. Justin waved to his men, who put their weapons at ease. Guns were hanging off their persons by the straps, pointing down at the floor and their hands were off the triggers.

“Not when I’m here. Unfortunately, danger follows me wherever I go, ain’t it a bitch.”

“That’s fair. But did you have to come into the hall like that? Other guests are here today as well.”

“Well, it isn’t the same if I don’t arrive in my usual style, don’t you think?”

“No, you really don’t have to.”

Albert folded his fingers together as his cool expression remained unchanged. Justin, on the other hand, shook his head in disapproval. His men remaining at ease, he stepped onto the platform they were on, and extended his hand to Gilbert.

“Gilbert. I will most likely say it again later on, but my niece will be in your care. I expect you to treat her well, and respect the names that both of you hold.”

“You have my word, Mr Justin Westgrove.”

Gilbert took his hand firmly. Short and to the point, they separated as quickly as their words have been. Justin turned to Alice, who stepped forward on her own to greet him.

“Alice. I will probably say it again soon enough, but congratulations. I wish you nothing but the best.”

“Thanks, Uncle Justin.”

Patting her head fondly, they exchanged pleasant smiles as family should. They too shook hands before they separated as well. The uncle lowered himself back down on the floor, walking among his men without looking back.

“Uncle Justin. Is that all you’re here for? I have a hard time believing that.”

As Albert made that remark, more guys with guns appeared through the different doors along this hall, also carrying similar firearms to the gang that Justin brought with him. The only difference was that the newly joined gangsters had blue ties instead of the black ones on Justin’s party.

Boasting maybe double the number of gangsters, they wormed themselves around the tables and surrounded Justin and his minions. By this time, the rest of the crowd was hiding behind whatever furniture they could find. They gave the two belligerent groups a wide berth, but somehow still thought that a real battle was unlikely to ensue.

Strangely, both sides kept their weapons at ease. They held their firearms in their hands, but not yet pointing it towards each other. It was more like a standoff in the literal sense of the word.

Standing in the midst of the men was Justin, who was the only one on the floor unarmed. He didn’t bother to turn around to address Albert’s inquiry.

“I take it that you still want to cause trouble then, Albert? Or is this just grandstanding?”

“I guess it’s more of the latter than the former. But if you truly aren’t here to cause trouble, then we can solve this in a more civilized manner, can’t we?”

Albert smiled lightly. He gestured to his men, and a couple of his retinue jogged to the other end of the hall. The clicks and clacks of their boots sounded on the hard marble floor, which was followed by the creaking of the great doors at the hall’s end. The door was already half-open, but the two gangsters opened and held it wide.

“Of course. I’ll be taking my leave.”

Striding at the vanguard once again, Justin led his troops across the hall as Albert’s men in blue ties escorted them along. The clanks of their boots and weapons were loud to the rest of the motionless hall. In no time, they were out the doors that they busted through just mere minutes prior.

“Please, enjoy yourselves.”

Albert addressed everyone once the troublesome uncle left the room. The entire scene was so surreal that the remaining crowd didn’t really react, only a buzz of murmurs among themselves. The hall quietly returned to their regularly scheduled programming, as if the interruption had never happened.

The three of them also lowered themselves from the mini-stage and made their ways to one of the food tables, and they were immediately surrounded by a crowd of their peers, eager to ask them questions. At the very least, none of them showed that they were startled by Justin’s grandiose appearance. In fact, their cool attitude suggested that they expected it in the first place.

As for Sisi and Kato, they stood their ground the whole time from the behind the crowds, food in hand and their backs against the sparkling, gemstone-studded walls.

“That was really weird.”

“You are telling Sisi. She is also confused, but no matter. There was no real danger to our VIPs.”

Sisi was referring to the lack of killing intent in the air during that confrontation. Though the display of weaponry was impressive, neither he nor Sisi detected any killing intent from Justin or Albert. With that in mind, perhaps it could be seen as a well-prepared charade, but that would only be half correct. It only meant that they weren’t prepared to end each other just yet.

Emotions and alchemy were closely related, since emotions were expressions of the will of the soul in the real world. Sentient beings constantly interact with the surrounding mana flow through their emotional states, and also subconsciously read from the mana flow, albeit at a very primitive level for normal people. This subconscious interaction was the cause of various psychological phenomena, ranging from momentary premonitions like déjà vu to more advanced techniques like extrasensory perception, but most commonly, this was the main source of a person’s intuition.

Through training on this interaction, one could mask their presence like Sisi and Kato had been. They minimized their “thumbprints” on the mana flow around them, so that those nearby could not pick up these traces and recognize them in their peripherals.

On the other hand, harbouring killing intent easily disrupted the surrounding flow of mana, just like how throwing a large rock in a pond would cause great splashing and strong ripples. As such, an assassin would need to learn to control this intent until the last second, lest they alert their prey. For normal human beings, they did not have this kind of control. It was a skill that took years of training, and it would most likely not be perfect, so if there were any real intent to shoot up the place, it would have been clear as day to the two Eternians.

“What was the point of all that?”

“It was a standoff in a family feud, what can you expect? An odd standoff, but still one.”

“If that’s the case, then what exactly is the point of this marriage?”

“It’s a temporary truce between Albert and Justin. Did you know; Alice has the controlling stake in their company?”

The atmosphere around them steadily returned to how it was before Justin’s appearance, filled with chatter and glitter. The two of them stopped by a table with rows and rows of fruits from different places, and began picking out pieces of the rare and foreign fruits that didn’t grow in Livia’s vicinity.

“Alice inherited that stake, at thirty-four percent, from her father who passed away some years ago. Because Alice was and still is a minor, she did not actually have the control that that stake would normally grant, and the ownership stake is frozen instead. It is a law to protect minors from being targeted. Though we are people who live on the edge of the law, as you should know, it is a law adapted from the aristocracy, so it is respected by us and the bourgeoisie.

“The remaining ownership of Westgrove Logistics was split between Albert and Justin and their allies, each side controlling thirty-three percent each. The battle lines were drawn a long time ago. While Alice’s stake was considered uncounted, the situation was as if the two men owned the company half-half.

“But once Alice comes of age, if she decides to side with somebody, the other would lose. Or, if Alice is willing to join in the feud, then at thirty-four percent ownership she would always have the controlling stake, assuming that Albert and Justin would always vote against each other.”

“Now, where does the marriage part come in?”

Sisi poured herself a glass of mango and watermelon juice, a strange but sweet combination of fruit juices. As for Kato, he just went for the strawberry milkshake from the DIY machine.

“Let Sisi explain first. After Alice’s father passed away, the conflict between Albert and Justin only got worse, and in the past few years, they were in such opposition that the company grounded to a halt. Think of a parliament that is in deadlock, unable to pass laws. In such a case, there are some reserve powers to break the deadlock, such as calling for a snap election, but in family-owned businesses like these, a deadlock could continue indefinitely, until they burn themselves to ashes.”

“But this is only until Alice comes of age, right? Then she will have the legal decision-making power in the company, and possibly break the stalemate.”

“Right. The first problem is that she does not have the will to join the feud herself. That should be obvious enough. If she merely does nothing when she comes of age, then the feud continues unabated, and may even bring harm to Alice herself, who would now be a target for either faction to ‘win’ over, using whatever means they decide to use.

“The second problem is the uncertainty of their company’s future tied to Alice’s marriage. Her future spouse would co-own Westgrove Logistics with Alice’s stake, which is what Albert and Justin are more afraid of. Therefore, they decided that Gilbert was amenable to both parties, and convinced Alice to marry into the Lafayette family for that sake.”

“Isn’t that kind of dangerous? To give the largest stake of the company to someone outside the family?”

“I do not believe they are worried about this type of paternal way of thinking too much. They secured this marriage for their own benefits. Think of it from their point of view. Their number one priority should be, by the time she comes of age, have convinced Alice to join their side by any means necessary, including force.

“But Alice is not exactly alone in this feud. Apparently, she has made it abundantly clear to everyone involved that she has no interest in running the business, to ward off any overt foul play against her by either side. In addition, word on the street is that when she is married, she shall divest to each side one percent of her ownership so that she no longer has the controlling stake. Both Albert and Justin shall face each other at thirty-four percent, leaving Alice in peace.”

“I see. Altogether with the law, she was able to stay away from the feud.”

“As much as it was possible. Of course, both sides approached her countless times to curry favour from her. It was only natural. But without a strong support base, as Alice was too young to be involved in the business, the moment she turns eighteen, it is fair game and she shall not last long.”

“Ah, now I see the predicament. That law, while meaning to protect, also backfires. If her stake in the business is frozen, then without a previously established faction supporting her within the company, it’s hard for her to start building her clout inside the company, since her decision-making rights were frozen by the law.”

“That is right. She is a lady, so she was not tied to the company’s business very much to start with, and as a result, her father did not leave much behind for her within the company. In fact, she was not supposed to receive any ownership stakes at all. At the time, her father had decided to split the company’s ownership in exactly half, between Albert, Justin, and their respective allies. It was through Albert’s scheming that he convinced their father to give everything to Alice instead.”

Casually throwing away some tissues, Sisi picked up a glass of wine from one of the roaming servers. On the other hand, Kato took another plate from the table and gathered more fruits instead.

“And Albert did that because, assuming he’s after the control of the company, he thought Alice would be easier to convince than the opposition.”

“Correct. And by doing the legwork to get Alice her stakes, he expected Alice to be more willing to bend to his will.”

“And is she?”

“No, by the looks of things. Maybe there are some details that are missing, but the most damning thing to not suggest otherwise is that she called for this marriage. In a sense, it was her choice to marry.”

Kato choked on the fruit he was chewing on. Sisi sighed, slapping him on the back with a bit of force and he quickly recovered. His mouth gaped as he asked in disbelief.

“It was her choice?”

“It was really the only choice she had. She is a smarter girl than anyone would think. If she does not marry somebody who is friendly to both sides, she shall be caught in the crossfire once she comes of age.”

“And the two guys just agreed to it? I can’t imagine the two of them being on board immediately.”

“You can see that Justin is not so careful in hiding his dissatisfaction. Meanwhile, Albert seems to be content with this, probably because he agreed with the choice of Gilbert in the first place.”

“It was Albert’s suggestion? And Alice agreed to it?”

Non. Let Sisi try again. Alice decided that she shall marry somebody on the day she turns eighteen, and she suggested that Gilbert was a suitable spouse. Perhaps because Gilbert is friendly with Albert, he agreed with her suggestion and recommended them to marry.”

“So in actuality, Alice is siding with Albert, isn’t she? Or at least, Albert sees that their marriage brings him benefits and maybe control of her shares.”

Sisi tinged the glass in her hands with her nails, shaking her head.

“They are friendly, but they are not friends. Compared to Justin, Albert is the one more friendly with Gilbert. But this is as far as Sisi knows. Any further is speculation on the relationship between the four of them. On the surface at least, they all seem to agree on this marriage, even if Justin agrees begrudgingly.

“Even if, in the short term, neither Albert nor Justin gets closer to the ownership stakes they sought from Alice, the alliance with the Lafayette Group is no laughing matter. Most likely, they see it as an opportunity to expand their influence while the internal feud at home remains in a stalemate. Neither of them is losing with this marriage.”

Kato gave himself a moment to digest the information. It was eye-opening as much as it was mouth-opening, to say the least.

“Gilbert, while he was still a minor, acted through his mother, by the way. He has been involved in his family business for a few years now, but since he came of age this year, he was given a big percentage of ownership of his family business. That is why now; their marriage is set in stone.”

“He’s a year older than us? I didn’t know.”

“He was held back for a year at some point due to extreme tardiness, supposedly. Sisi looked into the school records.”

“Hmm. That reminds me. How did you learn of all of this, Sisi?”

“Sisi asked Alice on it.”

Kato sighed deeply. He didn’t expect that.

Suddenly, they both turned in the direction of Alice at the same time, both sensing movement in that direction. Seeing her bow to her peers around her and leaving for the main doors, the two of them began following her as well.

“Hey, what’s our mission again? Alice, right? Not Albert or anybody else.”

“Correct. But on the other hand, Sisi is more intrigued about the situation outside.”

“Outside?”

“It’s hard to sense it while we are concealing ourselves, but the number of people on this compound hasn’t gone down.”

Kato nodded. Naturally, being able to read mana flow at Sisi’s level meant that it was easy for her to detect the presence of normal people around her. Sparing a last glance at Albert and Gilbert, he and Sisi followed Alice on the path that those goons took a bit earlier out of the great hall and into the front lobby.

Now that the party was well under way, the lobby had much less people than when they first entered. As he neared the front doors of the residence, he too felt the same presence that Sisi told him moments ago. Peeking out from behind the giant set of doors, it confirmed what he could already sense. Parked on the side of the thin road were many luxury cars, but there were four that were obviously occupied. There was little doubt that that was Justin’s group.

“I think they’re just sitting in their cars. Are they waiting for something to happen?”

Whatever sunlight that was left was disappearing quickly, signalling the arrival of evening. The surrounding bushes took on a shadowy character as it blended with the darkening sky.

“Seems like we must keep them under surveillance, at least until their intentions are confirmed. Ah, what a bother. Kato, please follow Alice. Sisi shall stay here.”

He was surprised. Kato didn’t have a problem with separating from Sisi; it was just that Sisi seemed to have faith in his abilities. He was strangely buoyed by the thought, and had her let go of his arm. She tapped the tiny machine in her ear.

“Remember, Sisi is always here if you need her.”

Kato nodded. He turned in the direction of the wide stairs that led to the upper balcony, his eyes following Alice’s soft footsteps above them.

“Got it.”