For a split second Erika froze, mouth agape. Shizuo sensed a shift but did not know what to attribute it to.
"Dotachin, why don't you get us some juice?"
"Okay…talk to you guys later."
It was Kadota's policy to stay away from unnecessary troubles. A good life philosophy and doubly so at Orihara Academy.
"Shizuo, I challenge you to a duel. Tomorrow in the dueling arena."
"Wait, what? You can't be serious…"
"Don't underestimate me. Be there."
Shizuo was left in complete confusion. Walking to the dorm with Izaya on tow Shizuo remained in utter darkness.
"I don't get me…one moment she was friendly, the next she wants to fight. What's the matter with her?"
"Everyone wants something, Shizuo-sama."
"Really? Well I just want to be left in peace and not have to be mixed up in weird things. What about you? What do you want?"
Shizuo was more than a bit curious.
"Me? I am the Rose Bride so I want nothing."
"That doesn't sound very good to me…"
"On the contraire. It is true happiness. If you want nothing then nothing can hurt you. Desiring things will always lead to pain."
"I guess…"
There was something highly disturbing about this line of thought but Shizuo could only shiver before it and hope it would simply go away.
Erika had not joined the student council with a particular purpose in mind. The letters she received from the highly vague End of the World had a hint of Romanesque to it and that was enough to her. Everything else, the mysterious arena, the equally odd castle hovering in mid-air and the Rose Bride, were part of a narrative and as such she embraced it fully. Which was not to say that she participated in it.
So far she had not dueled and that for the same reason that one does not actually address one's favorite anime character regardless of one's devotion. Erika was often accused of living with her head in the clouds but it was hardly so. Reality ran its course, dreams ran theirs, the two never intersected.
Which was why she saw the student council as a warped version of Comiket. The Rose Bride might be 3D but Erika could not shake the feeling that Izaya was a cosplayer. The crossdressing part added to the overall effect but everything else was in synch, from the highly ritualistic nature of the duels to the cool rings. It was the kind of thing she knew so well from anime even if it was weirder than usual. At times she could swear she saw rose frames spinning mid-duel and she anticipated each new one as if it was an episode of her favorite anime series. In other words, she watched (using some nifty binnacles with pictures of Haruhi, being official merchandise) but never even considered the possibility of participating herself any more than she thought of piloting a mecha.
Often she would muse whether she could get the Rose Bride to dress up in a frilly French Maid outfit if she were to win a match and if Izaya would actually address her and 'master' if she so ordered. But these were mere daydreams. She had all sorts of roles that she would find amusing to get the Rose Bride to fill, from being über moe to tsundere. But there was no real motivation to act.
Yet there were times when Erika found herself thinking that the world was very ugly as it actually was. She subscribed to the illusive motto of the student council – to shatter the world' shell – because there was indeed a lot of random ugliness that did not even advance the plot of life. Perhaps it was better said that reality was plot-less and as such deprived of those needed contrivances that redeemed – if you were destined to be a hero then you would be one, if you believed in yourself and fought to the bitter end you would be rewarded with the strength of comradeship, if you stood under a sakura tree when the wind was blowing just right you would meet your own true love.
When such things flitted through her mind her smile would falter and Erika would think, 'if only reality could be more like fiction'. But for that to happen she would need something impossible, she would need a kind of power to shatter reality itself and reshape it accordingly to how it should be.
Erika needed to conquer the Rose Bride.