I apologize for the extremely late update. It has been like two weeks?

Sorry, because I'm too caught up in my other fanfic 'Hollow' that I'm lacking of inspirations in this fanfic. They've come back now though :p

I appreciated who had reviewed, alerted, and faved my story. So enjoy this chapter~

"Look at this, Luce!" Natsu jumped beside me and sat down abruptly, making the grass rustle on his butt's contact, "What is the meaning of this? 'I love you like the infinite universe'? How can you love like a universe?"

I glanced at his clueless face, then to the pink paper he was holding in front of my face. Curved letters was written on it with black ink and the corny line had been placed at the bottom with bold. An envelope with the same colour was lying not far from dragon slayer's feet.

"You know, Natsu," I said as I blinked in realisation of what the piece of paper was, "It's impolite to read someone's love letter."

"Love letter? Where?" The pink haired boy turned his head from left to right frantically, then again, arrived on the paper he was currently clutching, "Oh. So, this is a love letter," he nodded with a slightly proud expression on his face, fingers on his chin.

I sighed, "You should really close it, Natsu. It's rude to invade someone's personal letter," I looked back to the box I had opened, a few old books were piled inside it and I flipped one of them open.

"Then what are you doing yourself, Lucy?" Gray snorted, when he himself was snickering at some embarrassing photo albums he found in a dark-blue box.

"I'm only peeping!" I protested, without looking at him.

"Fascinating, a cheese cake recipe...," Erza said with a dreamy tone that didn't go unnoticed. She was too caught up with 'her' own little box too.

"Natsu, I wanna see the love letter!" Happy whined and plopped on Natsu's head.

I sighed as I put back the book and close the violet metal box I was sorting and went to another pile of boxes. Seriously, none of them really match the property of a music box. Why could we be in the situation? Let's go back to a few hours ago.

A few hours ago...

"You called me, Princess? Do you wish to punish me?" The light pink-haired maid came out with a poof once I waved my key to summon her.

"Um...No," I sweat dropped. I always wondered why she asked me that every time I summon her.

"What do you summon a maid for, Luce? Is it time for breakfast already?" Natsu asked almost hopefully. Is there anything he could think of beside food?

This time, I ignored him, "Could you help us dig up this whole spot, Virgo?" I waved my finger around the area. The said grassy area was quite large and was located behind the hills we'd been. A big and old willow tree was planted in the centre, with a sparkling beautiful lake (thanks to the effect of the stars) beside it and a few flowers and even berries patches. Every time the wind blew softly, the leaves and twigs began swinging, flowers dancing along the flow, and grass shifting. The varying rustling sounds create a melody of harmony. In short, the place was beautiful and almost magical. And we're lucky that this area wasn't surrounded by buildings or it would be harder to dig.

"Certainly, Princess," she disappeared with a pop, and then reappeared seconds later with a digging machine.

"Please find a certain box, but we don't know what it looks like," I said again.

Virgo nodded, "I'll bring every box I could find, Princess," she bowed then started drilling.

"Quite a useful spirit you have there, Lucy," Erza remarked.

I laughed a little, "Yeah, she's great, isn't she?"

Gray snorted, "But, seriously? Princess?"

"Hey!" I said, offended, "That's insulting!"

"What he meant was," Happy whispered to me suddenly, but it was no use, everyone could hear the blue cat like usual, "You're too cute to be a princess!"

In matter of seconds, Gray's cheeks turned beet red which caused Natsu to laugh his head off. I looked at him, slightly worried.

"Are you sick, Gray?" I moved forward and touched his forehead.

He flinched, then moved backward abruptly and fell on his butt, "I-I'm fine!" He stuttered. Natsu laughed even harder.

"No, he's lovesick!" Happy pointed out and snickered, while Erza nodded approvingly. Lovesick?

Before I could ask any further, Virgo appeared from behind with a big pile of boxes in her arms, making us jump in surprise. My eyes widened. She couldn't be serious right? Must we check them one by one? Not to mention that they might be someone's personal things.

"Here are the boxes I found, Princess. Do you wish to punish me now?" She said with the usual stoic face of hers.

I quickly recovered from my surprised state as I heard her voice, "Uh no, Virgo. Thank you, you can go back now."

Virgo then bowed again, "As you wish, Princess. Please punish me next time," and disappeared leaving the five of us with jaws slightly dropping.

So, here we were. At that time, I just remembered that the Arion (the citizens of Aria) really treasured every precious memory they had. Every five years, each family would fill in their own boxes and buried it in the Arion Meadow, which was here by the way. The family who already had a box buried, would fill the box with a single thing every five year which marked as their most precious memory along the five years they had been. The once-in-a-five-year occasion was called the Memoria or the Festival of Memories. Quite unique if you asked me.

And yes, it was truly impolite to invade someone's precious memories. But what could we do? We had already dug up practically the whole citizens' boxes without even knowing about the festival. And at this time of night, I didn't even want to ask Miss Sarah about her family's box any further. Something just told me that we must hide whatever clues we had on finding this box. Weird, I know, because she was the client. And she had the right to know.

I walked to the pile of boxes which hadn't been checked. Great, thirty out of about seventy boxes to go.

"Look! Look! It's an old cassette player!" I heard the cheery blue feline yelled in unborn enthusiasm.

"Turn it on, Happy!" His pink haired partner responded.

"I'm not sure if it's still working though," Happy trailed on.

I ignored them as I continued to search on the piles. Now, now, which one should I choose?

Bzz bzz.

"It's working!"

I jumped at the sudden heavy metal tune and glanced back at the two. Natsu was doing an electric air guitar; his face was pulled in a certain way so that it would resemble an electric guitar player, or so he thought. His hands were shifting up and down and he was nodding vigorously which cause his pink hair to sway slightly. Happy was doing the lip-sync. With his eyes closed in a 'getting the feeling' manner. He balled his blue paw which resembled a singer holding his microphone and his mouth were screaming the words of the song silently. But no one had ever failed to see that he missed some lyrics. Gray was rolling on the grass in laughter, even Erza failed to contain her amused chuckles, which was rare to see. Me? I was actually gonna laugh, very hard, when something shone behind me. I tuned my body in reflex to face a surprising scenery. Music notes came out from the cassette player and they flowed into the pile of boxes, towards that something which was shining.

"Everyone, look at this!" I managed to yell louder than the music which caused the foursome to jerk their heads towards me.

"Do not turn the player off!" Erza commanded as she and the other three started stomping to my direction. I had managed to find the shining box among the others with the help of the melody trails which sipped between the closed lid. The box was actually quite ordinary in appearance with only a shiny black music note symbol on the top, no ornaments, no craving, only pure white in colour made of a material I hadn't ever seen before and it was emitting a golden-like ray.

"We found it," Erza announced, a proud smile tugging on her lips. And somehow, even nobody had ever told us what the box looked like, I knew at heart that Erza was right.

Erza's POV

Finally, after a few days, we could step out of this dreading mansion completely. Not trying to sound like a coward or anything. I was getting more and more bad feeling each day, and that woman kept acting creepier. It seemed that Lucy had suspected some things even if she had never mentioned it when the other two, I meant three, if I included Happy still remained oblivious though I could see that they were getting these weird feelings too.

I glanced to my left side where Lucy was sleeping soundly. Her fist clenched and unclenched like she was struggling with something. I sighed in relief when she finally stopped and didn't go for another session of shifting continuously. I spotted her twitching and stirring as if in pain a few minutes ago and when I intended to wake her up, she went back to her cute and calm sleeping face. I wasn't kidding, she was indeed cute. Well, I didn't mean it that way though.

"Mom...," she mumbled and I flinched at her extremely sorrowful tone. But in contrast to that, she was smiling softly. I patted her head lightly, careful not to wake her up.

What was it like to have a real little sister?

"Erza nee-san."

I sat up, frozen at the voice in my head. Boys' and a girl's voices remained ringing, as pieces of scenes appeared abruptly in my head. Those voices I couldn't ever forget.

"Scarlet. It's the colour of your hair..."

I clutched my cold-sweated forehead and shook it a little. My scarlet hair sweeping against my cheeks. Please, just...not now.

Lucy's POV (the next morning)

"Wow! You really found it!" Miss Sarah clasped her hands together in delight, but strange glints were playing on her eyes.

Last night, I had summoned Virgo once again, to bury the boxes in the designated locations, much to the dismay of Natsu who wanted to explore the boxes more. We were all lucky that Virgo remembered the exact places, or else we'd be very screwed. I narrowed my eyes on the box, my grips tightened. Somehow, I wasn't sure about giving it to her. It was definitely strange. What was she playing at?

"Now, may I have the box?"

A slight hint of impatience was heard there. And that was it.

"Oh, not that fast, Miss Sarah," Erza stated before I could. A fierce determination and awareness was all over her face.

"What do you mean, Erza Scarlet?" The woman emphasized Erza's last name in a strange tone, which made even Erza shudder for some reason, and I to the fact that we had never mentioned our last names.

"Your cover is off, Miss Sarah, or I should say Miss Imposter?" I deadpanned coldly hiding every pit of nervousness in myself, making my teammates looked at me in shock, except Erza who didn't seem that surprised. It looked like she had be expecting something, or even worse knowing it.

The woman's black orbs widened a little, "Pardon?"

"You...are not Miss Sarah," I pointed at her, "and you're hiding your magic presence."

I had expected her to deny, but instead she let out the laughter than would send shivers along our spines, "You're sharp, just like your mother."

"You know...my mother?" I managed to speak with my lower lips trembling slightly, the white box was hidden behind my back, though I wasn't sure how doing that could prevent the woman in front of me not to snatch it.

"I do," she smiled and made a step in front of me, "Or you can say I did."

Suddenly her form shone. Her dark blue hair grew longer and lost all its colour as it turned into pure snow-white. Her delicate pale face turned sharper, but still didn't lose its delicacies. Black eyes turned into a pair of evil bloody red orbs, even more intimidating than before. Her red lips formed a menacing smile as a huge wave of magic passed through.

I touched my keys inside my pockets and noticed my team mates moving in battle-position.

'Be aware, as danger awaits...'

okay, you may feel that it made no sense or maybe too fast, especially how Lucy know that Sarah is an imposter and all that. Don't worry because it will be revealed and explained on the next chapter.

So I hope you that you will enjoy this chapter (I may edit it though). so review please :))

~snowdrop03