I ran into an old friend of mine from high school between this and the last update, and while we were catching up she was like "Oh yeah I saw you were updating The Teacher again" and I was like yes! Feedback! But then she was like "Oh I haven't read any of it yet" and I bluescreened for a moment before I remembered that when you follow a story here you get email notifications when it updates, which I have NEVER gotten because the email I use for my fanfiction account I ONLY use for that account and hardly ever log in to, never mind read, so all I can say is I am vERY SORRY FOR THAT MONTH OF CONSTANT SPAM BACK IN SEPTEMBER AND AUGUST, I DIDN'T REALIZE WHAT THAT WAS DOING TO YOUR INBOXES. I also won't able to end this neatly on the anniversary of its publication, which is...fine. Its fine. Totally fine. I'm not disappointed or anything. And I probably won't get so absorbed in life I can try for November 2020…I hope. Also, Ciel actually did get raped by the cult during his forced stay there, but again, Arya would not be aware of that at this point because she has not read past the Emerald Witch arc in the manga.
January 1st, 2020
Arya's POV:
For the next few days, I was able to relax a little as life settled into a schedule. Almost every morning after turn-out, I impatiently checked my fingers under the bandages to see whether or not my nails had grown far enough to preform daily functions without pain, and always heaved out a sigh and wrapped them back up. My tolerance for how short my nails could be had gotten a lot easier of late, since I'd spent nearly seven months without the use of practically any nail whatsoever on my hands, which was raw and painful and often nothing short of excruciating, but I was also not keen on ripping my new nails clean out (again) by going too hard with unbandaged fingers at fencing or cricket or whatever new macho challenge the other members of Green Lion House threw my way.
Inhaling my two breakfasts and studying (and drowsing) the morning away in the stupor-inducing annoyance of lessons, I tended to intensify my inquiries and non-honeytrap cozening later in the afternoon, when I could weasel my way into the two members of the P4's circle more easily by actively participating in their sports. This was a new experience for me, trying to pry information out of someone, and more than once I had to twiddle my fingers and mutter under my breath to erase whatever damning statement I'd made from Greenhill or Edward's mind, an experience that always left me on edge.
Because, as previously stated, getting memory spells even a little bit wrong was tantamount to lobotomizing someone with a soup spoon –painful, messy, and not at all good for the brain.
But anyways. I was learning, slowly but surely figuring out how to subtly direct a line of inquiry and how to avert suspicion (something I was already good at), how to introduce a subject without making it obvious that I had, and how to actively attempt to befriend someone in a very short period of time with the aggressive intent to milk them for information. This was very good for me, because Ciel had been sending letters nearly every day, subtly and rather impatiently asking me about my progress –he was most likely raring to get out of this "stuffy miniature garden," as he called it later in the manga, and honestly I sympathized. Maybe it was because I had been playing truant for nearly a year, but being dropped into school again was maddeningly boring and constrictive, and I was certain my annoyance and ennui was due in part to how stultifying Weston lessons were, prestigious educational history be damned.
Maybe they just give Green House students boring useless lessons because they know we're more focused on our pitching arm or whatever and not paying any attention to the teacher at all.
Mind, I did learn some things –they just weren't practical in any age I would find myself in later. Finding out how to properly skin a lion in our Naturalistics class, for instance, while fascinating, was not exactly something that would come up, ever, when I got to the twenty-first century.
A subtle but equally fatal factor, for my attention span at least, was the fact that we were diving right into May in a time period without even a nodding acquaintance with air conditioning, and it was warm in all the classrooms, which did not help my efforts to keep from dozing off on my desk at all. Granted, my drowsiness was partially because I wasn't used to using my legs as much as I was now, chasing after stray balls on the cricket pitch and lunging all around in fencing class, and staying up perhaps later than I should writing reports to Ciel, but it wasn't entirely my fault, I swear. Those lessons truly were boring as shit.
Speaking of which, I had to write all my letters to Ciel by candlelight after my roommates were asleep, or at least drowsy enough not to take notice of what I did with these notes afterwards, which meant I had to stay up nearly past curfew, which was tense enough as it was.
I did feel fantastically like an old-age spy though, or perhaps a Gothic novelist, writing by candlelight in an old Gregorian building covered in vines and ivy and filled with old-fashioned Victorian furniture, but that didn't signify to my alertness levels in the morning.
In response to your earlier letter,
The dandelions in my garden are thriving, sadly. I can get no information on how the weeds keep popping up, and I can't seem to get any true flowers to grow –is your little window-box of bluebells having the same problem?
The under-gardener tells me that I should focus more on my studies, and that it is the head gardener's duty to attend to the flowers, not mine. I just can't help myself, though! Why, just the other day, I suggested that perhaps we take a leaf out of our neighbor's book (who grows such superb aconite, as you remember), and it was suggested that I was being
Here I paused, trying to think of the right British 19th-century word. Finding it, I groaned and crumpled up the entire page –there were no words on this earth to express how much I missed the backspace button in this time period– and held the little ball up to my candle as I pulled another sheet towards me, waiting until the first one caught and smoldered before dropping it on the base of the candlestick. I painstakingly repeated the previous parts of my letter, continuing to scribble as my pen hand ached. I still wasn't used to writing everything out by hand –when I took my notes for magic, I did so in short bursts, frequently with abbreviations and slang.
-it was put to me that my wits had gone out wandering! True, my neighbor is a bit of an eccentric, and of course the under-gardener did not dare to speak to me so, but I saw it in his eyes and the stance of his shoulders. What has the world come to, when such men may dismiss us by virtue of the working secrets that they know and we do not? Because, after all, I know they know such secrets, because no man may simply lift up a flower, roots and all, and plant it in another place without some kind of secret knowledge. Have you discerned any of them yourself? I know that, despite your life in the city, you are still a devoted gardener, and personally I would wish for some aid, for I just do not know what to do with my staff.
–A Fellow Botanist
I held the letter up and inspected it with a jaundiced eye. The bit about uprooting and repotting "plants" was a bit heavy-handed, but sue me, I couldn't think of a better gardening-related metaphor that Ciel would understand –or at least, not one so specifically tuned to the situation at hand. I shrugged and rolled the foolscap paper up into a scroll, sealing it with a slightly clumsy blob of sealing wax from my red wax stick, before standing up and carefully licking the fingers of my free hand, making sure to drool over the pads of my index and middle finger almost to an embarrassing extent. I pinched the wick with these two damp bandaged fingers, wincing a little at the burn of heat against my fingertips before the candle was snuffed out –without leaving a telltale waft of scented smoke, proof that I had been using it until recently. Granted, I could've done that with the ice spell I was still working hard to master, but I was trying not to be too profligate with my magic in order not to alert Undertaker to my presence, and anyways, this was a neat trick to master for any parties in the future. I just slathered my tongue all over my fingers because, well, cotton wicked away moisture, and also, I didn't want burn marks all over my bandages.
In plain terms, I was a sissy about it.
Nonetheless, I tiptoed over to the window and gingerly eased it open –iron hinges and old fastenings meant that our window screeched like an owl when you tried to move it anywhere– enough for me to stick my hand out, and I carefully placed my letter under the hasp, before easing the window shut again, pinching the scrolled letter between the window and the windowsill. Presumably Sebastian came by every night to check and remove any scrolls he found, since mine were always gone when I checked in the morning.
Daily, or rather nightly letter delivered, I tiptoed back over to my bed and wiggled beneath the covers, waiting for sleep to take me.
Given as Ciel and I had different schedules and different houses, my first sign of the inevitable confrontation between Ciel and Maurice Cole was when Greenhill stalked up to the cricket pitch one afternoon about two weeks after I showed up at Weston with thunderclouds of temper practically rumbling tangibly on his brow, and he grabbed his bat and changed into his cricket uniform with short, jerky, angry movements, each one accompanied by a cross, barely-audible mutter, just enough that to know he was mouthing words, but not quite enough for the rest of us (who were shamelessly eavesdropping on him as we climbed into our own uniforms) to articulate what he was actually saying.
My opportunity to poke the bear came up, of course, when we paired up for practice, which thanks to my determined cozening happened rather frequently –or at least, frequently outside of his clear self-allotted time to practice with the actual team, help anyone else who seemed to struggle at any time, or play with any student who wanted to whack a few rounds with the so-vaunted house prefect.
"So," I began in a perfectly innocent tone, eyeing my partner sidelong as we marched towards a clear strip of grass. "You seem, uh, upset today."
I was going to go for "pissed," but realized midway through my sentence that that might be another of the words that either linguistic drift or different cultures rendered incomprehensible for Greenhill. We had those moments rather more frequently than I liked, and I wanted to avoid another blank-staring-filled language session right now.
Since people fermenting in a temper always took the opportunity, when presented, to vent their grievances to a sympathetic ear, Greenhill immediately burst out into an outraged tirade.
"The disrespect!" he growled vehemently as he took his position as batsman, evidently in a mood to hit things, and I nodded and set my own bat down, beginning to back up towards the appropriate spot a few dozen feet away. "A prefect's day is filled with tasks and responsibilities, and should we extend an invitation to attend upon us during the rare hours of leisure we have, it is a privilege and an honor to accept and attend!"
I made a sympathetic noise and lobbed the ball straight and hard: Greenhill adjusted his stance seamlessly and whacked it nearly all the way to the stands, where a bespectacled ginger and his stout friend paused to toss it back.
"And then –Phantomhive!" he heaved as I caught the ball and wound up for another pitch. "He shows up to our scheduled meeting two hours late, and has the audacity to question us as to what we mean when we ask him why he's late! The –the utter disregard for another's time, for our position as prefects!"
"Mm." I commented wisely, watching the tiny black dot that was the ball sail away into the blue sky, landing with a faint thump a few meters away from another pair halfway across the field. I caught it as they chucked it back, and pitched again.
"I can hardly credit it! Would you have disrespected common courtesy to such an extent, Thompson?! No! Not a single student at Weston would, would have the clout to do such a thing! Ugh!" Greenhill snarled almost to himself, hitting with all the strength in his muscular arms and shoulders and putting the torque of his body into the swing as well, so that I watched gloomily as the ball sailed all the way over the back of the stands. "Pardon my language. But –but still! The carelessness! The audacity! Does he have no respect for the rules and traditions of Weston College?!"
"Mm." I agreed as I went to get a spare ball from my bag of spares in the grass beside my bat.
"Bluer has reprimanded him already, of course, and no doubt he has been punished suitably, but all the same! He has let down my expectations: it seems his polished reputation was nothing but gossip after all!"
Greenhill paused in his ranting as I walked back over with the new ball: he seemed to be considering something carefully behind his dull green eyes.
"I don't suppose you, too, have been laughing into your sleeves at the prefects?" he asked gruffly, hefting his bat. "That you would do something similar? Have I simply…lost all respect from my fellow students at Weston? Have we not been attending to our duties well enough, to match up with our forebearers?"
I paused, touched a little by Greenhill's display of human vulnerability to another student he hadn't even known for that long, rather than the icily polished and robotic demeanor of a-prefect-and-his-duties that he otherwise exuded all the time, and then grinned.
"I'll respect you heaps, sir, if you show me how to do that slug you did yesterday." I said, not so much tossing as gently sliding Ciel under the bus as I wound up for another pitch. Greenhill looked at me and managed a wry snort.
"I think that can be managed."
My Dear City Companion,
The strangest thing happened today! My undergardener, whom you will remember as the man attempting to groom our garden's hill of those pesky dandelions, came to me in ferment just this past afternoon! Evidently some inconsiderate soul had reneged on a promise to deliver some rare, newly discovered items for our gazebo...?
In any case, he was quite put out. I did my best to soothe him, but do you have any advice on dealing with this situation? After all, those pesky weeds will not tend to themselves.
-A Fellow Botanist
Having sent that missive, I was not at all surprised to find another folded note under my pillow when I tried to drop off the next night, sealed in a thin cheap envelope with a formless blob of bright red wax.
I rolled over a little in bed to consider it, squinting at the dark ink letters as my silhouette, while conveniently blocking out the fact I held something, also obscured the light from the full moon leaking in through the mullioned creaky window.
My Fellow Botanist,
Considering the importance of that gazebo and your cultivation of the plants thereof, I can understand his outrage. You may wish to check the credibility of your suppliers, as such men may sometimes fall into the habit of lying and deceit, in order to further their own ends.
I myself have recently run across similar difficulties, and can only recommend you employ an expert in that particular field –if you may pardon me the pun– as I have done. You plan to plant a bower of roses around that gazebo, correct? I may suggest a mutual acquaintance: you no doubt remember our guests over Christmas, just this past year? I believe that they have a very capable man: we shall have to discuss his work at our next meeting.
Speaking of family events, Father does send his greetings, and has reminded me to inquire after your efforts on the grounds. Have you managed to wheedle any education out of those groundskeepers of yours? I certainly know I have faced endless frustration in attempting to wrest their gardening knowledge from them, but what else are we to do?
In any case, I see we have much to discuss at our next meeting.
Until then,
-Your Fellow in the City
I blinked once or twice when I finished reading, then groaned and rolled my head back a little on the pillow. According to our code, talking about "father's greetings" meant to meet in the chapel after lights-out on the same day as the delivered message.
And since it was lights-out right now…
Muttering salty words under my breath, I wiggled out from the nice warm covers and crept on tiptoe over to the window. The doors were locked at night –which was a fire hazard waiting to happen, quite frankly, though in all fairness the doors were also thin and liable to be kicked in on the off-chance of an emergency– so my only options were this or lock-picking, which I was abysmal at…and the locks were on the outside of the doors, anyways.
Continuing to crossly mouth certain choice words that would be inaudible to anyone at any distance whatsoever, I put my shoulders against the wall and roughly levered the creaking window open, the thick iron hinges near-fused together from time and the elements. Once it was about a foot apart, I leaned into the gap, twisting my head a little to see what my options were for late-night escapades. It was hard to see how students, teachers, or prefects would know if someone snuck out, save if they hadn't made it back by turn-out in the morning, but the way Greenhill and the other prefects had investigated Derrick in the manga seemed to imply that there were patrols throughout the corridors, or at the very least someone who wandered about every so often to check that things were still locked down.
In any case, I was going to have to be careful about this, given as I would be sneaking out (and down a wall) in a radiantly bright, loose draped nightshirt, along with tighter dark trousers, not to mention bare feet.
I saw a thick scroll of ivy vines to my direct left, and peering closely at the moonlit stone wall gave me a good idea of the nicks, scrapes, and divots in the bricks and mortar that I could take advantage of on my way down. The doozy would just be getting out of the dorm room.
With a gulp, I eeled my way onto the thick stone windowsill, half-straddling it as I awkwardly reached out to grip the frame and balance myself, sweating a little and hoping I wasn't about to need to cast a wall underneath myself and potentially alert the Undertaker of my presence here on campus. Thankfully, I didn't.
With some careful wiggling, I was eventually half-crouched in the aperture with both hands anxiously gripping the top edge of the stone framing the window, balanced on the balls of my bare feet on the lead-lined frame of the bottom and facing into the room where my three dormmates slept tranquilly, unaware that Ryan was currently poised outside our window like some too-enthusiastic Batman cosplayer.
I swallowed hard as a soft evening breeze languidly blew by.
Alright then. I was in a good position to start. I could start. At any moment now, I could start. Just as soon as I found a good foothold on the wall. I could start.
"Motherfucker." I whispered vehemently to myself, my palms feeling slick with sweat as I nervously, shakily slid out my bare foot, wincing a little at the touch of dew-wet leaves on my bare sole as I blindly fumbled around for a hold, perhaps on a good thick branch. Rule of three and all that –when climbing, never search for a new foot or handhold unless you had your other three holds secured already.
I found my not-so-metaphorical footing on a stout intersection of two vines, and with a hefty gulp, I shuffled sideways a little, crabbing my way along the wall and window until I was poised over more of the former than the latter. With even more care than before, I slowly shifted my left foot, hunkering down and slightly loosening my grip on the stone as I reached blindly down with my foot, looking for another hold.
Found it. Okay. Good.
The whole problem with ivy-climbing down or up a wall, despite what period novels may tell you, is that ivy, and all other manner of climbing vines, really isn't meant for bearing up the human bodyweight. Granted, some ivy vines grow to the properly prescribed climbing length (as thick or thicker than one's wrist), but those were rare, and generally monstrously huge and old as a matter of course. And since ivy and other climbing vines had adverse effects on buildings (despite their lovely effect), most people uprooted the plants before they grew that big.
Take this vine I was using. The thickest, most central parts of the trunk were about three fingers-width wide, which meant that with every tentative shift and hold I did I could both hear and feel minute creaks and tears in the entire plant, as my correspondingly gargantuan bodyweight threatened to rip the tendrils holding the ivy to the wall right out of their moorings.
A nerve-wracking experience, and one I do not recommend.
In any case, I finally made it to the ground with a wordless wheeze of relief, and dropped from the vine as soon as I was within safe jumping distance. The grit and dirt scratched at my bare feet as I landed, but with a faint grimace, I ignored that and looked around for any potential witnesses, before making off at a rapid run across the grounds.
***Time Skip***
I arrived at the chapel only slightly out of breath, and very pleased with myself. Once I had figured out the texture of the earth, pavement, and grass hereabouts, I could pelt across the lawns with relative impunity, and two things about that were infinitely satisfying to me. Firstly, it seemed that my wind hadn't suffered from my long abstinence from running: that, or all the exercise I was doing had built up my endurance and my leg muscles again. In either case, it was good to know I was ready for a good long sprint, should anything horrific happen in my near future.
The second thing, of course, was that running barefoot through a forbidden, dew-sprinkled grass lawn in the dead of night, surrounded by old lichen-covered British buildings and wearing a loose, trailing white nightshirt, made one feel wonderfully ghostly. I was half-disappointed that no younger students were there to peep through windows, so I couldn't flutter my fingers at them and shout "Boo!"
Ahem. In any case.
Since several important people's offices were located in this building –not to mention the fabled Midnight Tea Party was held somewhere on this location– I didn't dare knock on the large, carved wooden doors, carefully polished through years of exposure and elbow grease, and instead tentatively pushed the nearest one just a little more open.
Wary as a torn-eared alley cat, I crept into the chapel proper, glancing all around for any sign of Ciel and Sebastian –or the prefects, whom I knew to be present somewhere in the building.
Or were they, though? Was the Midnight Tea Party an every-night event, or just a celebratory thing after the cricket finals? I couldn't imagine it was every night, now that I thought of it, or how else would the prefects manage their daily workload on such little sleep?
I swallowed hard as my eyes raked the stone-shrouded darkness of the murky chapel, searching for the least little flash of lantern-light, the tiniest glint of artificial illumination. In either case, I wasn't going to be taking any chances.
The barest thread of a hiss met my ears, and I turned swiftly, hand falling to the knife I had belted to my thigh, seeing a tucked-back nook near the far way of the church. Doubtlessly, it was intended as a sort of rectory for some statue of a saint –likely of St. George, for whom this college was dedicated– so that students could pray or sit in silent contemplation away from the echoing vastness of the larger chapel, and appreciate whatever statue it was away from the other decorations and carvings.
In that pocket of deeper darkness against the gloomy black of the stone church walls, I could pick out two shadows. As my eyes slowly adjusted to the lack of moonlight in the chapel, I saw the smaller of the figures was crowned by a murky blur of lighter blue-black darkness –Ciel's hair– above an indistinct paler shadow cut in half by the inky black slash of his eyepatch. Sebastian rose behind him in the gloom, thin as a gallows-tree and as ominously looming as the statute of a life-size dragon, an amalgam of shadows that seemed to deepen the complete black of the windowless nook they were tucked away in. I crept over, wincing a little at the scrape of grit on my feet grinding against the smooth stone of the cold floor as I walked.
Though it was hard to see in the cave-dark of the rounded aperture we found ourselves in, I thought I glimpsed Ciel's eye widen as I passed through the last dim bar of moonlight filtering through the stain-glass windows.
"What are you wearing?" he hissed as I slid into the nook with him and Sebastian, and I raised an eyebrow, then realized he probably couldn't see that cue any better than I could see his.
"My nightshirt. S'that a problem?"
I saw the dark gap of his mouth open in Ciel's face as the young earl spluttered faintly. "You -a lady -how can you- do you know how indecent that is?!" he managed to squawk, and I glanced over at Sebastian, who seemed coldly indifferent to the both of us. I then shrugged a little as I turned back to look at Ciel.
"Boo-hoo, bitch." I said flatly. My bed was warm and everything between here and there had not been, and the soles of my feet were scraped, scuffed, and dirty from clambering down a vine-covered wall and walking across a lawn in the dark. "I'm wearing a male illusion and feminine undergarments underneath this, just in case someone can see under the illusion."
By this I meant Sebastian, who seemed to scoff quietly as he caught my undertone.
"Ain't we here for something else?"
Ciel drew in a sharp breath through his nose, then let it out. "Fine. Very well." he muttered tersely. "You are aware that I…slipped up in attending a meeting with the prefects?"
"Greenhill came to the cricket field complaining about it."
"My lack of attendance was due to the machinations of one Maurice Cole. Heard of him?"
"Redmond's fag, allegedly the 'prettiest boy in school'. Given how neurotic you are about doing things in time and on schedule, I'm gonna guess he hoodwinked you into that slip-up."
I heard a faint scraping sound in the darkness as Ciel worked his jaw slightly, obviously grinding his teeth, and on my right, further into the nook, Sebastian rumbled an amused-sounding note deep in his throat.
"The young master miscalculated how precocious some humans are in their deviousness, jealousy, and manipulation, and was thus all-too-easily entrapped." he murmured, and I could hear the slight curve of his smile in the demon's voice. "In any case, Maurice Cole instructed the young master to attend to the prefects at 4, whereas the actual meeting time was 2 PM, thus forcing the young master to inadvertently keep the P4 waiting for two hours."
"Ouch." I muttered sympathetically. Ciel huffed with anger.
"Regardless, Maurice Cole is evidently a highly-practiced liar, and exposing him as such will both exonerate my deeds and further ingrain me with the P4 in one fell swoop. To that purpose, I have written and enlisted that wretched prince in our plans."
I raised both eyebrows, as if this was news to me. "Soma? You're inviting him? Is this to infiltrate Red House, then?"
"Exactly." The thin slice of Ciel's smile was as icy and sharp-edged as a glass splinter in the dark. "He will be able to trace Maurice Cole's movements far more intensely than either one of us, and Sebastian is preoccupied with my chores during most hours."
I wasn't sure if I either heard or sensed the exasperated breath of air from the demon looming in the shadows a few feet away from us, at a respectful distance from his contractor.
"As you are leery of preforming magic on school grounds, I want you to continue supporting both Soma and myself in whatever ways you think you can manage." Ciel continued in a low voice, folding his arms over his chest. "Your contact with Maurice Cole has been completely minimal thus far, and in case our plans go awry, I wish for you to remain in the back pocket, as it were."
"Having me be the secret cavalry, ready to swoop in at the last second, then?" I asked with a wry smile, and Ciel huffed, rolling his visible eye.
"Don't flatter yourself. Additionally, if at all possible, I would also like you to avoid contact with the prince: everything he thinks shows on his face, and I don't want him blowing your cover."
I frowned in disappointment, but understood his reasoning.
"Maurice Cole may be a pathological liar, but when all's said and done, he's a schoolyard brat who has yet to cut his eyeteeth on the real world." Ciel's smirk was positively toothy now, all lethal and mercenary and sharklike. I was surprised he wasn't tapping his fingertips together while seated in a plush leather chair. "I'm convinced that there shall be evidence somewhere, somehow, of his misdeeds, and once we have found it, I shall contrive a way to bring it fully to light."
"Trick him into confessing?" I tried.
"He won't utter a word to his detriment, not without proof." Ciel dismissed me. "But nonetheless, a good strategy for after we've got the evidence firmly in hand. Public opinion can be swayed by any number of lies and half-truths, but an admittance from the very liar's mouth is hard for them to deny afterwards, especially when their utterance was made in the presence of witnesses, which we shall, of course, ensure."
"It shouldn't take much to find evidence of his lying after we get a few nibbles." I said, folding my arms and chafing at my elbows through the draped sleeves. It was a bit cold in here with only a thin white nightshirt and a half-bra half-binder between me and the outside world. "You're right in that he's just some childish bully –and their schemes tend to be built on a careful network of lies. Once one little detail falls out of place, the whole palace of cards tends to come crashing down."
"Indeed." Ciel's evil smirk grew bigger. "And I intend to teach him a lesson for squandering my efforts."
***Time Skip***
It was therefore no surprise to me –or rather, even less of a surprise than usual– when I slouched out of Green House the next morning, bleary-eyed even after the business end of five consecutive cups of sugar-laden tea, and saw nothing less than an extravagant parade of Indian royal staff mincing onto the grounds, complete with an elephant with a palanquin and mahout atop it, with Soma, undoubtably, seated inside the former. The whole procession was raising quite a rumpus near the gates, with students from all four houses gathering around to marvel at it.
"Neat." I grunted, and sourly tugged down my top hat as I went about my business. Ciel's order to stay away from Soma made sense –the dude's poker face sucked worse than a defective vacuum– but I was still somewhat disappointed, to say the least, at being unable to continue our acquaintance while at the school.
Oh well. Class awaited me.
I dozed my way through most of my morning coursework, having discovered, providentially, that since Ciel and I wouldn't be here any longer than early June, and it was already sliding into May, I didn't actually have to care about getting good grades, since I'd only be here three months: I just had to pacify the teacher. Furthermore, my existence was now nicely ingrained enough in the general populace that, while risky behavior was still a definite no-no, I didn't have to religiously tiptoe my way through every day acting as sickeningly innocent and rule-abiding as humanly possible.
So I caught up on some lost sleep, snarfed down some extra food, and tried not to humiliate, overexert, or cut myself in fencing, all of which were harder than one might think, before dashing off to scribble out my stuff in the afternoon homework hour. Greenhill suckered me into playing an actual cricket match with the rest of the Green House team, all of whom were vastly more competent than I was. Due to all the horseback riding and my morning exercises, I was strong and fairly athletic, and I had good reflexes, but these men had been playing this sport for years in a highly competitive setting, and were all natural athletes to begin with, and had been honing their skills for just as long as they'd been playing.
Still, I managed not to disgrace myself, which was the important thing, and returned with the others to our dorm in a state of sweaty satisfaction.
My Dear City Companion,
It turns out our gazebo is putting up more of a fight than we thought. The acquaintance you so kindly suggested has indeed arrived, but wading through all the thorns around the roses has become quite the challenge. Our gazebo looks as though it is locked away behind the rose bowers! I am doing my best to continue, but I fear it will be some time before we can prune the roses down to a manageable size.
I seem to recollect you have some plans to cut down the thicket near your own gazebo? If you could share any tips and tricks on how that was achieved, it would be most wonderful.
With salutations,
-A Fellow Botanist
My Fellow Botanist,
I regret to inform you that I relied quite completely on the gardener I suggested to you earlier: he was the one to cut the thicket down to size and penetrate all the way through. He was quite adept at gathering and arranging the sheared blooms for my benefit afterwards, as well. I am afraid that in this case we must rely on him entirely to solve your problem.
Best wishes,
-Your Fellow in the City
My Fellow Botanist,
Splendid news! The gardener I suggested to you has finished with his work, and sent me the most wonderful bouquet of red roses. Father really was most impressed with them, and sends his hearty thanks and invitation for our next ball. I know you will be pleased to attend, and then we may continue our interrupted game of chess, which I know you so enjoyed.
On another tangent, Father also expressed the strangest wish for a bouquet of dandelions from your field. I can hardly understand it, but we must both work together to appease his wishes, I suppose. You remember where we met in my home to discuss business last time? I would be pleased if we met there again to speak on the arrangement of our flowers.
Seeing you very soon,
-Your Fellow in the City
I raised an eyebrow as I read Ciel's latest missive: only two days had passed since Soma had been invited to the school, and unless I was reading this letter wrong, he had already delivered proof of Maurice Cole's wrongdoing straight into Ciel's hands.
Dude works fast.
Then again, if I remembered correctly, Ciel had pretty much ordered Soma to tail Maurice Cole all day every day, so perhaps it wasn't surprising that he'd caught on to the bully's methods so quickly.
If I was also reading the rest of this letter correctly, Ciel wanted me to come meet with him in the Blue House dorms instead of the chapel to discuss our strategy for exposing Maurice Cole. With a shrug, I tucked the letter back into its envelope and stuffed both into the bottomless depths of my apocalypse bag, before going over to the window again and wrenching it open with a wince. The ivy had not exactly improved in strength –actually, since I'd used it multiple times, it had ripped away from the wall more– and going down, or up, was an increasingly ticklish task.
But I managed it, somehow, and set off across the unearthly nighttime grounds, sticking close to walls and ducking under windows and darting across doors, sprinting as fast as I could across the darkly shimmering green lawns in the large open spaces and on a sharp lookout for the faint spot of candlelight glowing off somewhere down along the paths. Why –when carrying one made you stand out like a sore thumb– the upperclassmen and the other authority figures that occasionally went on rambling patrols across the grounds and dorms carried a brightly-lit lantern was beyond me, unless it was to obliquely warn students to get back to their proper places before the patrol caught them instead of having to go to all the tedious effort and rigmarole of actually catching and punishing wayward pupils.
In any case, my way was pretty much clear, and I circled around to where I remembered Sebastian's, or rather Housemaster Michaelis's, office to be. Scaling the wrought-iron fence was a bit trickier in the dark and with some dew on the already-sheer lengths of iron, but I managed it with only one probable-bruise across my heaving stomach as I yanked myself over the top and felt something blunt and metallic dig sharply into my side before I hastily shifted my angle.
Striding placidly across the lawn, I dug my foot –since this time I had been smart enough to grab a pair of soft leather fencing shoes before venturing out– into a convenient gap in the mortar of the stone wall, climbing up slowly and with many grunts and heaves of effort. If a patrol came by right now, I was pretty solidly fucked, since the drop below was far too dangerous to just let go and plunge and I was about ten feet away from a window to crawl through, but true to form, nobody bothered to circle a fenced-in dorm full of bluestocking boys, most of whom were undoubtably dreaming boring dreams of schoolwork and tests, having gone to a virtuously early sleep. And since the Housemasters sometimes patrolled, and Sebastian was the Housemaster of this particular dorm…
Well, needless to say, I wasn't all that worried about getting caught at this point, which was good, because coming up with a plausible explanation for why I was scaling the walls of a dorm not my own at lord knew what time of night was beyond me, and potentially even beyond Ciel or Sebastian.
As I grunted and awkwardly, strenuously jerked my elbow over the thick stone sill of the window, hauling myself up, I saw that a candle was lit inside a glass lamp in the room, with a blurry shape that was almost certainly Sebastian –I recognized the shape of the head and angular shoulders– going about some kind of business at his table beside it. Feeling for another hold with my other foot, I found it, and pulled myself a little higher as I yanked my other arm over the sill to knock a rapid tattoo against the class before gravity pulled me down again and I had to protectively cup both arms over the sill for risk of falling.
"C'mon…" I wheezed, sweat breaking out in a fine sheen all over my body, before sighing in relief as a small figure moved across the window and it was pulled in by Ciel, who unlike me was fully dressed apart from his morning coat. He looked distinctly unimpressed by my trembling and panting as I held myself up on the mostly-sheer wall, which was dumb because he had asked me to come meet him tonight.
"Can't you enter a room without all this nonsense?" Ciel sighed, closing his uncovered eye in exasperation, before he moved aside slightly, inviting me into the room.
"I could walk through an entire dorm full of people that would raise the alarm upon seeing me, possibly getting lost on the way, or I could just scale the wall and be done with it." I said with a roll of my eyes, stretching my toes and reaching out to laboriously haul myself into the room through the window like a fish on a line. "Its faster and easier this way, though honestly I would love to use some stairs instead."
"Mm." Ciel gave me a dubious look as I straightened and cracked my back, before rubbing the vaguely achy part of my stomach where I was sure that bruise was forming and glancing at Sebastian, who continued to work while ignoring both of us.
"So, you wanted to plan?"
"Indeed." Ciel walked over to where Sebastian was working so industriously, plucking a flat, rose-shaped card a little larger than his palm from a stack of the same on the demon's left side. The little card was tattered and torn into what looked like dozens of tiny pieces, patched back together with a series of adhesive tape strips, with a decorative design like rose petals on one side and a blank white face with ruled lines on the other, covered in neat copperplate handwriting and with a red silk ribbon tied in a loop around one hole-punched point. "Prince Soma has most helpfully discovered that Maurice Cole spends his time in the dead of night delivering these."
He held it out to me, and I carefully took the card, turning it over to the printed side. The stiff paper was slightly sticky, which led me to believe that adhesive had been painted over the restored version to keep its shape, and contained a polite request for a "trifling little trouble" in collecting data and delivering it to Maurice Cole on a certain day at a certain time. It wasn't signed, but the mention of his name, not to mention the specific delivery details listed, was pretty damning.
I grinned slowly. "So we got our evidence now."
Ciel matched it with a far icier grin of his own. "Indeed. All that remains now is to exploit it."
My eyebrows furrowed a little. "What's the big deal?" I asked, walking over to Sebastian and laying the card back on the pile, noticing with interest and perhaps the teeniest grain of pity that he had a bowl of clearish fluid, undoubtably the same adhesive I had felt, and paintbrush, as well as a roll of tape, some miniscule tweezers, and a conical pile on a dish of what I initially thought was flaky ash but then realized was fragments of the same cards. He was working carefully and patiently at assembling a new one, wearing white gloves different from his normal ones and squinting in silent concentration as he carefully arranged the torn fragments on the table in preparation to splice them back together.
Yeesh, better him than me. I thought with a grimace, before continuing. "I mean, can't we just show these to Redmond and be done?"
"We could." Ciel acknowledged with a huff, collapsing in a nearby armchair that I was pretty sure was actually meant for the Housemaster. "But Maurice Cole would undoubtably deny it, and that would not serve to drive home the message that I am an indispensable and truly dedicated student at Weston to the prefects and their retinue."
I raised an eyebrow a little at this, but didn't argue.
"Ideally, we combine this with a spoken confession that Redmond overhears." Ciel continued, narrowing his eye a little as he stared off into the middle ground. "I plan to confront him in a secluded area, so he believes we are alone and his tongue will be that much looser. The third art room just before Fag Time shall suit admirably, as that is tucked far away from any student activity but close enough to the Swan Gazebo that he will not feel any pressure to be hasty and end our little "interview" too quickly. Undoubtably, he will suspect me of attempting to retaliate or otherwise confront him for my humiliation with the prefects, so he will have a contingency plan in place to keep me from talking."
"You sure you want to do this solo, then?" I asked uncomfortably, thinking of all the times someone had wanted silence for secrets in the past, and how often that silence involved fatal force and shallow graves.
Ciel smiled at me thinly. "That is where you come in, Thompson. I want you to contact Greenhill and ask him on my behalf to allow the rest of our plan to come to fruition. Beyond that, of course, I have Sebastian, so I will not be in real danger for even a moment. Maurice Cole will likely use schoolyard tactics for his defense in any case, which means he will most probably employ some of the more blindly obedient members of his entourage to humiliate, blackmail, or otherwise intimidate me into holding my tongue. He's clever enough, too, and knows how badly those little cards of his could cut him, which is undoubtably why he ordered his minions to rip them up and dispose of them, so it's not at all unlikely he will also provide some means of physically dealing with whatever proofs I bring to him as an outside bet. So…"
The Phantomhive's eye gleamed.
"This is what we'll do."
***Time Skip***
The next day, I was preforming every anxiety tic in the book, bouncing my leg from where I sat on one of the steps up to the Swan Gazebo, tapping my fingers spasmodically on my knee, glancing around everywhere, shifting awkwardly where I sat and compulsively adjusting my tie. I'd had a talk with the four prefects and gotten permission to arrange (well, for Sebastian to arrange) all the gramophone horns and trumpets tied to the Grecian pillars of the gazebo, and begged their indulgence as to listen and wait for whatever came through them, but I knew I'd stepped on pretty thin ice to convince them all of this, and if for whatever reason Ciel didn't spin this how he had originally, I would fall out of line.
Faint shuffling sounds echoed from the brass horns as the prefects and Edward Midford abruptly quieted.
"Well?" The voice wasn't Ciel's, so I had to guess it was Maurice Cole's. "What do you want with me? You've called me to this room and all…I really must be getting to the Swan Gazebo, you know."
"I won't take much of your time." Ciel's voice filtered through. "I simply wanted to confirm a small matter. Cole: regarding your summons to me from the other day…it seems the message you conveyed was incorrect, after all."
"You're still saying that? Its not nice to blame others for your own mistakes."
"A friend confirmed it with our classmates. Since you're the most fair-faced boy at school, Cole, the onlookers were many. By the way, eighteen students testified that you "mistakenly" said 'at 4 PM.'"
There was a sharp scuff of polished shoes and a swift intake of breath from the other party.
"No. To call it a mistake, a mere slip of the tongue, is misleading. Because you allowed your tongue to slip on purpose."
Maurice, however, seemed to have regathered himself. "Hmph. Such a false accusation is serious indeed!"
"In that case!" Ciel reposted. "How do you explain the incidents involving four other students, including Joanne Harcourt?"
"Huh?" Maurice asked, seemingly with a tinge of wariness to his tone.
"Of the students who were invited to the Swan Gazebo by the prefects, all those who broke their appointment claim it was due to communication troubles with you. For a prefect's fag to cut down the weak as you've done, goes to show just how much of a sly coward you are. Yours are the actions of an outright liar!" Ciel shouted. "Moreover, you even leave your duties as a prefect's fag to other students."
Maurice scoffed. "Whatever can you mean?"
"Compiling the data Redmond requested. Ironing and shoe polishing. Even the preparing of dishes…you haven't done any of it yourself! Your competence is an utter sham!"
Though Maurice Cole's voice still feigned to be smooth and unruffled, I caught more than a hint of tense bluffing under his calm tones. "What wild fancy. How can you claim all that when you haven't any proof?"
"Ah, but I do have proof." Ciel said with smugness coating every syllable, and there was a rustle of fabric as Maurice gasped.
"Th-that's-!"
"Recognize this, do you? It's one of the cards you employ when commissioning your hangers-on to do your work for you." Ciel exposited for the benefit of us in the gazebo, as I turned a little to see Redmond pale and bite his lip as Bluer covered his face in shame or resignation. Ciel continued ruthlessly as I heard the faintest whisper of paper cards shuffling. "This here is a request for the compilation of data. This one is for ironing. This one, shoe shining. This one, a request to the Red House cook to make a snack! Shall I go on? I've got many more. Each one is quite clearly written in your hand, down to the date and time."
"How could they, after I made a point of telling them to get rid of the cards-?" Maurice gasped to himself, and Ciel pounced on the advantage.
"Oh, they did just as you asked and disposed of them. What a relief that the refuse hadn't yet been collected! Such trouble it was, unearthing these tiny cards from the heap of rubbish gathered from all over the school!"
"Wha-!"
"And carefully restoring the cards, which were torn into very small pieces, was quite difficult as well." Ciel continued implacably.
You say that like you actually did any of the work. I thought with a sweatdrop, remembering Sebastian's painstaking efforts that continued throughout our meeting last night.
"What would Redmond think if he were to find out about all this? As a student of the storied Weston College, aren't you ashamed of yourself, Cole?!" Ciel said passionately, then lowered his tone, becoming peaceful, encouraging. "I'm willing to overlook your deception of me and the others. But you should speak plainly to Redmond about this. Yours is a brotherly relationship built on trust…right?"
"…yes, you're right." Maurice Cole muttered. "I'll tell him."
Still watching the prefects as they sat on their fainting couches, I watched Redmond sigh quietly at that response, melancholy relief suffusing his features as Greenhill, who had been standing tense with his cricket bat at parade rest, relaxed.
"I'll tell him absolutely nothing! Who in their right bloody mind would?!"
The prefects tensed again as someone snapped their fingers and there was a loud bang of a door, or several doors, being slammed open as multiple sets of pounding feet entered the room with Ciel and Cole, and Ciel cried out. Greenhill, Edward, Bluer, and Violet all took to their feet and rushed down the other set of gazebo steps, running for the building, as Redmond sat in hypnotized silence and I cocked my head, wanting to hear the full resolution of this little play.
Paper shuffled and shoes squeaked, and Maurice Cole spoke again, his voice filled with snide mockery. "You didn't actually think I'd come here unprepared, did you? You're a fool!" he snickered, and a match was struck as paper ignited with a hiss and rustle of flames. "There we go! Evidence destroyed~! After you went to all that trouble to find it too…what a pity~!"
Ciel grunted as there was a scuff of moving bodies.
"You irritate me! Who do you think you are?! You're getting uppity because the seniors have taken a passing fancy to you." Maurice snarled. "Making use of other people is a talent too, you know? And I am particularly talented at making good use of the plain students! I, the most attractive boy at this school!"
Ciel remained passively silent as Maurice Cole's voice darkened again.
"Whether or not I become a prefect at this school can make or break my future. That's why I've flattered and fawned over the prefects to within an inch of my life! Someone like you, a winner with a title, can never understand the feelings of a second son, who will never be in a position to inherit, can you?"
"I don't believe there's any value in a victory obtained by deceit!" Ciel cried with all the valiant pathos of a parable lead.
"Your good boy act makes me sick!" Maurice snarled, an attitude I honestly agreed with, if only because I actually knew Ciel to an extent and knew he was probably cackling on the inside at how much deeper his opponent was digging his metaphorical hole of trouble with every word and action. "I will be the next prefect of Red House! And I will be the one Redmond loves best! And I am the most beautiful one here in this school!" Maurice cried as there was a shrill ripping of cloth.
"What are you-" Ciel suddenly cried, sounding honestly alarmed as I sat up straight, before there was a violent thud of something meeting flesh and Ciel was choked off into a spittle-flecked cry. "Kah-haah!"
"You really are a fool for picking a deserted place like this~!" Maurice sang as there was a heavy clunk, like someone had set down some sort of machinery. "No one will come to your rescue, you know? Now then! Time to take some photographs~! The kind that's so embarrassing you'll want to die~!"
Ciel grunted as there was sounds of frantic, aborted movement, before he evidently was forced to still.
"All right. Do it~!"
I lunged to my feet, becoming seriously alarmed, as Ciel began letting out muffled but still very loud cries of genuine distress and I heard something that sounded disturbingly like clothes being forced off of him.
"Please stop!" Ciel managed to scream, and to my infinite relief the next sound that filtered through was the door slamming open again, and Greenhill's voice raised in a bear-like roar of anger.
"WHAT THE HELL IS THIS, YOU LOT?!"
The other boys cried out as I heard a series of thuds, presumably of cricket bat meeting flesh and then bodies meeting the floor, and a slight pause before Maurice whimpered.
"You're going to pay dearly for forcing me to break my vow of non-violence, Cole." Greenhill rumbled, and there was a shuffle, like someone going forward on bended knees.
"P-please, I beg you, Greenhill! Please don't tell Redmond…" Maurice sniveled, before Bluer spoke up.
"Do you not want us to keep silent as well?"
"Bluer! Violet! Wh-why are you here?!"
There was a groan and a shuffle as Ciel was evidently helped upright. "Upon hearing the able and talented Maurice Cole's violent act, it would be odd indeed for them not to hasten here."
"But the Swan Gazebo is well away from the school building! They should not have been able to hear m-"
"Cole." Ciel interrupted, sounding once again firmly in control, to my relief. "Sound is not transmitted by its amplitude, but by vibration. As long as the vibrations can be transmitted, sound can travel over any distance in theory. For example, if thin, plank or sheet-like devices are connected by taunt strings that allow vibrations to be conveyed with ease, they can become devices that transmit sound to a distant location. For example…"
Bare feet moved across the floor, and one of the trumpets –connected by a line of taunt string that disappeared into a window of the school building– thrummed faintly as the string twitched. "…like so."
"No." Maurice Cole gasped as he realized, undoubtably, what all the paintings set up in the room were, paintings that I regrettably had to help Ciel set up the night before, since Sebastian was busy with the cards. "No!"
"I've heard every last word." Redmond said icily, spine stiff and posture rigidly correct as he mastered his own feelings, the rage and disgust that had similarly overcome him as we heard Maurice Cole and his goons assault Ciel.
"Red…mond…"
"To think even you betrayed me…" the prefect continued, unswayed. My interest was piqued by the odd emphasis, before I remembered how Redmond's last fag –now deceased and the object of our investigations– had been. "I am ashamed for being such a poor judge of character." Redmond inhaled deeply. "Cole. I hereby sever my brotherly ties to you!"
Maurice Cole screamed, a high, piercing scream that descended into a muffled sob and an impact against the floor, like had fallen onto hands and knees. There was a scuff and a scrape of fabric as Ciel evidently knelt before him in a pose I remembered very well from the manga.
"Cole." he said in a kindly tone. "If you face everyone with honesty from now on, I'm sure you'll be able to regain their trust."
"Phantomhive…"
"And to help you with that, I made certain to share your "true face" with everyone, Cole." Ciel continued pleasantly as, as if on cue, a brisk wind blew a shower of square black-and-white photos over the roof of the school, which fluttered down onto the grass and in the pond behind me. I snatched one out of the air, and grinned as I saw Maurice Cole, decidedly less pretty, squinting into both the camera sights and apparently a mirror as he layered on his daily makeup. Looking up, I saw what looked suspiciously like a certain black-clad butler precariously balanced on the highest spire of the school clocktowers, scattering more of those photos like leaves in the wind.
"You can take pride in yourself, I think." Ciel said sweetly. "Your skill with makeup is the real thing."
***Time Skip***
"Soooo…" I began, hands locked behind my head without a damn for my top hat as Ciel and I strolled along the paths after prying ourselves away from the prefects' congratulations. "What was with that?"
"What?"
"You freaked out, like, seriously freaked out, when they did that whatever with your clothes, dude."
Slightly ahead of me on the path, I could catch Ciel's shoulders stiffening, and raised an eyebrow. This was…interesting. And not in a good way.
"I should think anyone would be disturbed at being forcefully undressed." Ciel said stiffly, his tone warning me from pushing this topic any further as I got a sick, twisty feeling in my stomach.
Oh no. Oh please no Yana please tell me that was not included in his horrifically scarring backstory with the cult before Sebastian came in and slaughtered them.
"U-uh, yeah! Okay!" I said with as much brightness as I could force into a single word, shoulders shaking a little myself as I tried to dispel the grim mood threatening the air. "Still, it was awesome how you trapped that guy!"
I pulled Ciel into a playful headlock and ruffled his smooth short hair in what was just a fraction short of a noogie. "You're a clever little bastard, you know that?"
"Stop treating me so familiarly at once, Thompson!"
"Whaaat, c'mon, we're friends, aren't we? Allies! Comrades in the ongoing pursuit of trickery and deceit!"
"Release me this instant, you madwoman!"
There, that fixed it…I hope.
4.20 PM, USA Central Time
Happy New Years!