Waiting until before dinner was more annoying than I’d expected.
The general dormitory wing was at its most awkward around that time.
Classes were over.
Some students had gone down to the cafeteria, and some remained in their rooms.
Some were gathering their toiletries, and some were holed up in their friends’ rooms, chatting away.
Too early, and there were too many eyes.
Too late, and patrols started making rounds.
We had to pick the gap in between.
Sometimes the most irritating option was the safest one.
I was leaning against the corridor window.
Mia sat a little ways off by the wall, a book open in her hands.
She wasn’t actually reading it.
Her ears kept turning toward the corridor.
Erka stood there hugging the metal box to her chest.
From her expression alone, anyone would think she’d been dragged here against her will.
“Why are you smiling?”
“I wasn’t.”
“You almost did.”
“You can see that too?”
“You usually almost smile when you’re in a bad mood.”
“You’re observant.”
“If that’s a compliment, I’ll pass.”
Just then, the door to the room next to the one in question opened.
Two students came out carrying toiletries.
One had a damp towel slung over his shoulder, and the other had a wooden comb clenched between his teeth.
Neither of them even looked at us.
They disappeared down the end of the corridor.
A moment later, another student came out of a room on the opposite side.
He was carrying a water pail and headed toward the washroom as well.
The sounds in the corridor thinned out.
I didn’t move right away.
One student administrator was still by the window.
He checked an old latch, then wrote something in a small notebook.
Mia’s ears turned that way.
We waited.
The student administrator shook the window one more time, then went downstairs.
Only then did I push myself off the wall.
“Now.”
Mia closed her book.
Erka immediately opened the metal box.
A thin piece of metal slid into the lock.
Click.
The sound was small.
I looked down both sides of the corridor.
No one was there.
Mia didn’t press herself against the door, but stood half a step away.
Only her ears were turned toward it.
Erka’s fingertips moved once more.
Tick.
Her expression grew a little colder.
“The lock is strange.”
“You can’t open it?”
“I can.”
“Then why is it strange?”
“The inner catch is too well behaved for a room lock.”
“There are well-behaved locks?”
“It means someone has tampered with it.”
The pin went in a third time.
Click.
A very small sound came from inside the door.
Erka took her hand away.
“It’s open.”
I took hold of the knob and pushed the door very slightly.
It made no sound.
The hinges were too smooth.
A dormitory room door should usually creak.
This one was quiet, like a well-maintained door.
Air from inside the room flowed through the crack.
Mia’s face immediately crumpled.
“I hate it.”
“The smell?”
“There isn’t one.”
“None at all?”
“Yeah.”
We went into the room.
Erka almost closed the door.
But she didn’t shut it completely.
She left just enough of a gap for us to hear the corridor.
The room was spotless.
The bedsheet was folded.
The pillow sat in the center.
There was no dust on the desk.
The chair was tucked neatly beneath it.
The wardrobe door was closed.
The window was locked too.
Rather than a room someone lived in, it looked like an empty room cleaned up before receiving a guest.
I checked the desk first.
There were no books.
No ink bottle.
No writing implements.
Only the right corner of the desk was slightly worn.
I brushed my fingertips over it.
I felt a shallow groove.
Someone had sat here.
Erka opened the drawers.
First drawer.
Empty.
Second drawer.
Empty.
At the third drawer, her hand stopped.
“Here.”
“What.”
“The inside bottom.”
I moved beside her.
There was a short scratch on the wooden bottom inside the drawer.
It looked as though a small object had been forcibly removed.
Erka lightly scraped beside it with her fingernail.
“It’s recent.”
“How do you know?”
“No dust has settled in it.”
Mia crouched beside the bed.
The tip of her nose moved ever so slightly.
“Here.”
“There’s something?”
“A little bit left.”
I reached under the bed.
My fingertips caught on something hard.
When I pulled it out, it was a bread crumb.
It was a little bigger than the one that had been caught in the crack of the door.
A piece of the hard bread served in the cafeteria.
He had eaten here.
Sitting on the edge of the bed.
Whoever cleaned the room had only looked at the big things.
They hadn’t noticed tiny crumbs.
Erka opened the wardrobe.
One uniform was hanging inside.
That was all.
Erka scanned the inside of the wardrobe.
“They wiped this down too.”
“They wiped everything down.”
“They did wipe everything down.”
Erka lowered herself near the bottom of the wardrobe.
“But there’s something they missed.”
She took a pair of tweezers from the metal box.
“Don’t touch it.”
“I won’t.”
“You too, Miss Mia.”
Mia had already been reaching out and stopped.
“Okay.”
Erka slipped the tweezers into a gap in the wardrobe floor.
A very thin scrap of paper came out with them.
It was torn.
The edges were rippled, as though they had been wet and then dried.
There were no signs of burning.
There were almost no letters.
Only the end remained.
“…ryu.”
I stared at those two characters.
My fingertips stiffened for a very brief moment.
Boryu.
That was what immediately came to mind.
I kept my mouth shut.
Erka looked at me.
“What is it?”
“What?”
“That expression just now.”
“What about my expression?”
“I told you, you’re a bad liar.”
“I’m working on it.”
“Don’t just work on it. Succeed.”
Her words were sharp.
But she didn’t press me.
Erka tucked the scrap of paper between folded cloth.
“I need to examine this.”
“Sure.”
“And.”
“What.”
“If there’s something you’ll need to explain later, think it over in advance.”
“What explanation?”
“The explanation for that expression just now.”
Caught red-handed.
That was when it happened.
Mia’s ears shot up.
“Someone’s coming.”
The air in the room immediately froze.
I looked toward the door.
Footsteps approached from the corridor.
One.
Two.
No, three.
One set of light footsteps.
One set of slow footsteps.
And one sound of metal ringing very faintly.
There weren’t many reasons for a metallic sound to be mixed into the general dormitory wing.
Keys.
A sword sheath.
Armor ornaments.
None of them were good.
Erka hid the paper.
Mia lowered herself beside the bed.
I approached the gap in the door and hurriedly closed it.
A voice sounded outside.
“This room has been left vacant, correct?”
It was a low, unfamiliar man’s voice.
The student administrator’s voice followed right after.
“Yes. According to the records, it is empty.”
According to the records.
So that phrase comes up here.
There was the sound of cloth brushing.
Mia pressed her lips tightly together beside the bed.
The man’s voice spoke again.
“Let’s check.”
The footsteps stopped in front of the door.
I made my breathing as shallow as possible.
Erka pressed herself into the shadow beside the wardrobe.
Mia curled herself even lower near the underside of the bed.
The doorknob moved.
Slowly.
Very slowly.
Metal scraped faintly from the inside of the door.
I tensed my fingertips.
If we burst out now, it was over.
If we hid, it might still be over.
The doorknob turned halfway.
At that moment, a very thin black line caught at the edge of my vision.
It wasn’t the doorknob.
Under the bed.
The tip of Mia’s tail had slipped out slightly.
I immediately stretched out my foot and pushed the end of Mia’s tail back under the bed.
Mia’s eyes went wide.
She didn’t make a sound.
The door opened a little.
Corridor light seeped in through the gap.
The low man’s voice sounded again.
“Was the door left open?”
The student administrator answered.
“No, it was locked.”
“Then why is it open?”
A brief silence.
The air in the room went cold.
Erka’s face hardened white.
I stopped breathing.
The doorknob turned halfway.
At that moment, a low voice sounded from the end of the corridor.
“Stop.”
The knob stopped.
The air inside the room froze as it was.
Only the sounds from the corridor could be heard.
The student administrator spoke first.
“Who are you?”
A brief silence.
Then the same voice answered shortly.
“I am Leona.”
Leona.
I narrowed my eyes.
The knight who had always appeared beside Serena Arsein in the game.
I had seen her a few times since the entrance ceremony too.
One of the knights who stood beside the duke’s daughter.
The one who looked at me with displeasure.
Well, of course the guy who grabbed Serena and pulled her in right in front of her wouldn’t look good to her.
The man outside the door said,
“We are inspecting the student dormitory.
Step aside.”
Leona’s answer came immediately.
“It is Miss Arsein’s order.”
It was short.
Like cutting paper with a blade.
“Take your hand off that door.”
I heard the student administrator swallow.
The man outside the door didn’t step back right away.
“Does Miss Arsein involve herself even in student dormitory inspections?”
“When necessary, she does.”
Leona’s answer was brief.
Even with a single door between us, the ends of her words did not blur.
“And right now, it is necessary.”
Inside the room, Erka pressed her lips together.
Mia didn’t move an inch beside the bed.
Only her ears stood rigidly toward the door.
The man outside the door said in a low voice,
“This room has been left vacant.”
Left vacant.
I turned those words over in my mind.
Not an empty room.
A room that had been left vacant.
Leona did not answer immediately.
For a moment, there was the sound of paper being turned.
A small, thin sound.
It seemed she had brought it with her in advance.
“That is strange.”
Leona said.
“In my records, this room is still listed as occupied.”
Outside the door went quiet.
The student administrator stammered first.
“T-that’s……”
“If it has been left vacant, who vacated it?”
Leona continued questioning without pause.
“When was it vacated, and in which record was it entered?”
The student administrator couldn’t answer.
The man outside the door spoke in his place.
“This is a simple management inspection.
We were merely going to confirm the condition inside the room.”
“Then all the more reason the student council should be present.”
“Why?”
“A room where a student had been living was processed as vacant, and you are opening the door without the room owner’s permission.”
Leona’s voice lowered slightly.
“This is a matter that must be reported to Miss Arsein.”
“So you use the duke’s name for things like this.”
The man laughed.
The sound of his laughter was thin.
“I am stopping you so that it does not have to be used.”
Leona answered at once.
“If you open that door here,
for the sake of my lady’s command, I will have no choice but to stand in your way.”
A brief silence.
The man’s voice turned cold.
“Is that a threat?”
“Yes.”
It was so blunt that even the air inside the room froze.
Erka drew in a very small breath.
Mia’s eyes widened a little too.
For a moment, I was at a loss for words.
Nice.
She deserved to be stationed beside Serena.
There was the sound of clothing brushing outside the door.
Mia moved only her lips.
‘Medicine smell.’
I nodded ever so slightly.
Dried herbs.
Damp cloth.
Oil.
That smell was outside the door.
The man outside spoke again.
“We only need to open the door and confirm.”
Leona said,
“Then confirm it in the presence of the student council.”
“How inconvenient.”
“It is my lady’s order.”
This time, the man did not answer right away.
The presence on the knob completely withdrew.
Metal rang softly.
It seemed the student administrator had stepped back.
The man outside said,
“Very well.
We will withdraw for today.”
For today.
I didn’t like that either.
“Next time, follow proper procedure.”
“Please convey that to Miss Arsein as well.”
“I will.”
Leona did not waver in the slightest.
The footsteps receded.
While the three of them disappeared down the end of the corridor,
none of us moved.
The door remained closed.
I counted to twenty in my head.
Only then did Mia let out a small breath.
“Senior.”
“What.”
“They’re gone.”
“Yeah.”
“But that knight.”
Mia looked toward the door.
“She knows we’re here.”
“She probably does.”
Erka swallowed a low curse.
“Haa. This is the worst.”
“We survived, didn’t we?”
“That’s true, but.”
Erka hugged the metal box tighter.
“Now we owe the Arsein side a debt.”
“It’s a little vague to call it a debt.”
“What’s vague about it?
She stopped them for us right before we were caught at the door.”
She was right.
The door had not opened.
Instead, the fact that we had been here had been passed to Serena Arsein’s side.
Serena hadn’t been unaware that we would come to this room.
That was why Leona had been here.
A short knock sounded from outside the door.
Tok.
Just once.
Leona’s voice came through the door.
“Come out.”
Erka looked at me.
“Is it all right to go out?”
“What if we don’t?”
“……We’ll have to stay here.”
“You hate that more, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
I put my hand on the doorknob.
I saw no black line.
Not on the threshold, not beneath the handle, not on the floor.
I opened the door.
Leona was standing alone in the corridor.
Her black-gloved hand hung near her sword sheath.
Close enough to draw at any moment.
Leona did not look inside the room.
More precisely, she pretended not to.
“Did Miss Arsein send you?”
“Yes.”
Her answer was quick.
“Why?”
“She told me to help if you found yourselves in a difficult situation.”
That meant she had known we would find ourselves in one.
I stepped out of the room.
Mia followed me.
Erka came out last.
She was still holding the metal box tightly to her chest.
“Your master is very good at making people feel unpleasant.”
“I will convey that.”
“Please don’t.”
“I have already committed it to memory.”
“You’re no pushover either, Sir Knight.”
“I will take that as praise.”
“It was an insult.”
“I see.”
Ah.
One more exhausting person had been added.
Mia grabbed my sleeve.
“Senior.”
“What.”
“Hurry.”
Right.
This wasn’t the time to stand here arguing.
Leona swept her gaze once down the opposite side of the corridor.
“You should disperse before more eyes gather.
If I stay here any longer, I will only draw attention as well.”
“What about you, Sir Knight?”
“I will leave last.”
I started walking toward my room.
Then Leona called me.
“Student Valter.”
I stopped.
“Yes.”
“Miss Arsein gave me a message for you.”
“What is it?”
“She said not to move tonight.”
For a very brief moment, I looked at Leona.
Leona did not change expression in the slightest.
Serena hadn’t said it to me directly, and yet, strangely, Serena’s face came to mind.
I turned away and deliberately drew out my words.
“Yeees, understood.”