“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.”
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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.”