(2)
More days passed. The weekend came and went. Anise's absence from school continued.
Sometimes Seiran decided it was just a coincidence that she happened to fall sick right after taking his potion. As Kaede pointed out, ailments happened to people from time to time, and perhaps Lady Anise had truly remarkable timing.
Other times Seiran's mind flipped back into the assumption that he was the cause of Anise's illness. To be honest, this seemed more likely, but it was harder for him to bear. It felt much less painful to place the blame on pure chance. The only problem was that he couldn't always manage to do so.
In the times when his heart was weighted with guilt, he felt almost compelled to admit what he did to someone else, if only to take the weight off his chest. But he wouldn't dare. He couldn't begin to imagine what the other knights might do to him if they found out he drugged their sovereign. Actually, even if they didn't do anything to him, their anger and disappointment alone would be enough to devastate him.
He still wasn't sure of exactly how his potion affected Anise, but no matter what the final results turned out to be, he would have to take the secret of his involvement to the grave. How odd it was to picture himself going through life, day after day, storing this secret within him permanently, like a butterfly that is captured in a box and never released. That was the way it had to be, though, because the alternative was unthinkable.
A week into Anise's absence, Seiran's worry reached a peak; he was struck by the notion that he might have accidentally killed her. Once the idea entered his head, he couldn't kick it out, but luckily the resulting period of paralyzing fear was very brief – because Anise came back to school.
Now this had to be a coincidence. She could not have reappeared especially for him, just in time to calm his panic. Still, it felt that way to Seiran.
When he saw her again, she had returned to the same time and place that this whole fiasco started: the lunch period. What a sensation that was, walking unsuspectingly into the room, and feeling his eyes land instantly on the angel who was not sitting in that chair yesterday. The astonishment was so great that he kept his distance at first, hanging back near the door. It felt as though he was watching a ghost that could fade into the air again at any moment.
He was late to the party, it seemed. The other three knights were already in the room. Mutsuki, arms crossed, hung back in a corner, but the other two were sitting closer to her. Tenjo, in fact, sat so close that he was practically occupying her desk instead of his own.
"My world has been a cold, desolate wasteland without you this past week, Lady Anise," Tenjo was saying to her. Despite the lack of space between them, he managed to gesticulate extravagantly with his arms without bumping into her. "In your absence, I have been lost. Yet I would not trade my suffering for any treasure in the world, for it is through enduring pain induced by you that I learn about love all over again. The true colors of life become so brilliant wherever you're concerned!"
Anise merely grimaced and continued eating her lunch – a lunch that was a gift from Tenjo, Seiran noticed with a stab of irritation, judging by the exquisite decorations swirling over the box.
He couldn't hold onto that anger for long, however. Underneath the melodramatic speech, Tenjo's concern was genuine. Seiran could feel that. And when Tenjo finally paused to take a breath, Kaede took the chance to comment, "Well, I guess I should mention this, too. It is nice to have you back, Anise." Meanwhile, Mutsuki stayed in the corner, watching the display of group affection without participating, but even he directed toward Anise a scowl that was slightly less menacing than his usual one.
Seiran released a long, heavy sigh. It felt like a surrender. He'd been too hard on his fellow knights. While they didn't always do the best job of showing it, they loved her too.
Anise could roll her eyes all she wanted, but Tenjo was right: the rose knights were lost without their sovereign. They were linked to her, even if they didn't want to be. They felt her absence and they felt her presence.
"I wish I didn't have so much schoolwork to catch up on," Anise grumbled. "Still, it is good to be back. I never thought I'd say this, but I'm actually glad to see all three of you again. And when Seiran –" As if on cue, she apparently spotted him the moment she said his name. Slowly, her face lit up with a smile, and his heart thudded against his chest. In the surprise of seeing her, he'd forgotten about the love potion. Well? Did it work? Was there anything meaningful behind that smile?
"Hey, Seiran, come over," Anise said, waving at him. "I was just wondering when you were going to join us."
As he approached, he studied her so intently that it was a wonder if she couldn't feel heat from his gaze. He looked to her expression for signs of change, signs of new love.
Not that one could tell he was searching, underneath his innocent surface. "Lady Anise," he said, in a tone that sounded almost too polite. "I'm happy to see you. How's your health? Are you all right?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. It was just a cold."
The talk stopped there. She continued to smile at him. He smiled back – a mirror for her, he hoped once again. It was so strange. He meant every word he just said, so why did he feel like an actor playing a role?
"Well," he said. Infused with a sudden boldness, he grasped her hands in his own. The action caused them both to lean closer to each other. Their gazes locked. "I know I already said this, but let me say again that I am really, incredibly filled with joy to be near you again."
Her eyes were dazzling. He was losing his resolve, being so close while staring into them. He was losing himself and his mind and his focus. But he couldn't let that loveliness distract him from his purpose. He searched the depths of those eyes for any hint, any sign that the connection was mutual. Had anything in the world ever been sought so frantically? He was always drawn to her, magnetically, and if she didn't feel the same despite the strength of his emotions –
She looked away. Broke the lock between their stares and slipped her hands out of his as if it were nothing. Didn't even comment on it; just moved on to the next topic of conversation. "Thanks, Seiran. So, Kaede, you mentioned that recently . . ."
She's not.
In love.
With me.
After that, it was easy to lose concentration and tune out the conversation around him. He didn't need to know any more. He could only be thankful that Anise and the other knights thought she had gotten sick in the normal manner. (Who knew? Maybe they were right. It wasn't as if he had any idea what his potion actually did.)
Black and white rose seemed oblivious to his melancholy, but during the few times that Seiran came out of his reverie enough to notice, he saw Kaede shooting him a few odd looks.
"Oh, dear," Seiran muttered.
He was not saying this to Kaede. He was saying this to his house.
After school, he had returned home to his greenhouse-lab and resumed his hobby of experimenting. Unfortunately, something went awry with one of the many explosive substances and now he was staring at a large simmering hole in the wall.
After examining it for some time and determining that the gap was not getting any larger, he began running through calculations in his head. How much time, what materials, what needed to be done to repair this hole . . . It should be a simple task. He was no stranger to explosion damage. And yet . . . every thought that crossed his mind sunk him further into gloom. Why did it matter? He could deal with it later. Or maybe even not at all. The wall didn't need to look pretty for any guests. He lived alone in this vast, empty home. Alone.
He exited the greenhouse. He didn't want to look at that wall anymore. Upon entering the main house, and finding himself at a loss for what to do now, he took to wandering the halls. Questions and restless feet paired together.
Why didn't the love potion work? He was thinking about it too much; he ought to seal away the issue and forget he ever committed such a lousy act. Try as he might, though, he couldn't beat down his fervent curiosity. Letting go of a failed experiment without reflecting on it simply couldn't sit well with him. Perhaps some part of his research had been faulty . . .
His mind went blank for just a second when he stopped short in the hallway, in front of a tall decorative vase that caught in his sight. It was one of many vases that sat in his house, lining the walls, gracing windowsills. Due to his allergy, he couldn't fill them with real roses, but he adored the flower too much to empty his home of them. Most of the time, it didn't bother him that all his vases contained fake roses.
On the other hand, there were also instances like this, when looking at a static bouquet caused his eyes to reawaken and his chest to feel a pull of pain. Something just seemed sad about how similar the fake flowers were to him, the fake human.
That potion tried to create love between a real girl and an artificial boy. Maybe that was a doomed wish from the start.
His back slid against the wall as he sunk to the ground. A sudden tiredness had made him sit down, across the hall from the vase of fake roses. Mirrors for each other, the two of them were.
No . . . no . . . His memory must be playing tricks on him again, if he could've forgotten that he'd been through this whole process already. Didn't he learn his lesson the first time? Anise had fought to save him. When his life was in danger, she had fought for him. As if he had the same value as a human. She didn't care about his origin – there was shockingly little she cared about when it came to the old traditions of the rose knights – and she'd already gotten him to agree with her that it didn't matter.
The memories gave him a moment of gladness, but it was brief, because there must be something else. Another thing had caused his love potion to fail. Search, then. Search his own mind the same way he'd searched her face earlier today.
Among the many writings – essays, journals, accounts – that he'd read concerning the dysfunctional business of love potions, plenty had dismissed it as impossible. More or less, he'd willingly forgotten these warnings so that he could proceed with his crazy scheme, but details were coming back to him now. Writers with assured words and cool, levelheaded tones had theorized about why none seemed to succeed, out of all the trials done throughout history. One belief that kept cropping up was that bottled love could not interfere where real love existed.
Did that mean Anise was already in love with someone else?
Or maybe – did destiny truly exist? Was she simply destined to love someone other than him? His wish was really doomed, if that was the case.
Seiran pressed his hands to his face and groaned. Enough. It came to him in an abrupt burst of realization: this line of questioning was pointless to pursue. He'd been wondering what was wrong with the love potion, but the real issue here was what in the world was wrong with him.
He'd slipped a potentially mind-altering substance to Lady Anise. The person he was sworn to serve and protect. Even if it hadn't managed to work, that didn't erase his original intentions. Where had his mind gone, that he could do such a terrible thing? A knight should never commit such a wrong against his sovereign, a friend shouldn't wrong a friend, and a boy shouldn't wrong the girl he loves.
Happiness returned to him. A heavy happiness, tinged with the sharp bitterness of a rusted knife, but nonetheless he was honestly glad that his potion failed. He couldn't imagine how he would've lived with himself if he'd won her love through unfair means. Even her love itself likely wouldn't be enough to diminish his guilt.
It was already going to be hard enough to live with himself. He was going to live out the rest of his life, however long it turned out, trying to distance himself from this mistake of an experiment.
END