It had been the first morning assembly of the semester. The auditorium was enveloped with a strange excitement while the principal introduced Diana at the altar, in front of the entire student body. She had translucent white skin. Long, ebony-black hair. Her large, dark eyes were as lustrous as the waves of the Dead Sea that crash on the shore of her homeland. She had a rigid-looking nose and well-proportioned lips.
Diana was stunning. She had a mysterious Southern Slavic allure—unlike the blond-haired, blue-eyed inhabitants of the West or black hair and black eyes of the East. Our school uniform looked surprisingly nice on her. Until then, I thought no one as lovely as Itsumi could exist. But I had to say, Diana’s unique beauty may have been on Itsumi’s level.
The students weren’t just making a fuss because they were impressed by her beauty; Diana was also identical to the painting of the girl in the new church. The painting’s title is Jesus Christ and The Devil who Fears Christ with His Servant. The Devil’s female servant looked eerily like Diana.
“My name is Diana Decheva. I’m from Levagrad, a village in Bulgaria. It’s nice to meet you,” she announced in Japanese with astonishing fluency. She demurely pinched the hem of her skirt, put one leg behind her, and bowed her head as she curtsied. It certainly wasn’t an elegant gesture; it looked more like the folk dance of a village girl, but it had its own rough charm. This gesture assuaged the students’ initial dark impression, and they welcomed her to our school with a friendly round of applause. But even with all the students clapping, I still felt that there was something dark lurking within her.
It isn’t like me to think this way, I know. The resemblance between Diana and the girl in the painting had made me uneasy. Then, when I saw her dragging her leg after stepping down from the altar, I was only more disturbed. The painting of the Devil’s servant used to hang in another convent, which was destroyed in a fire. The fire had also burned off the portion of the picture with the servant’s leg. Itsumi and Diana were close from day one.
Itsumi said that she had stayed at Diana’s house when she studied abroad. She must be a good person if Itsumi likes her, I thought. I felt relieved.
I tried speaking with her and found her extremely easy to talk to, which made me feel embarrassed for pegging her as some menacing character. Plus, she also spoke almost perfect Japanese. She knew quite a bit about our culture. I heard that Diana’s twin sister was originally supposed to study abroad at our school, but I had a funny feeling that Diana would have a more fulfilling experience than her sister ever could.
Diana’s village was so filled with flowers that it wouldn’t be wrong to call it “Flower Village.”
“That’s why I just love flowers,” Diana explained, decorating the academy with them. On top of the obvious places like the classrooms, she also decorated the faculty room, sunroom, bathrooms, entrances, and the hallway windows—surrounding students in a sweet aroma wherever they’d go. Seeing such delicate scenery, one couldn’t help but feel that prior to Diana’s arrival, life at the academy had been regrettably dreary.
“I want to give the school flowers from my village to thank them for letting me study abroad and to commemorate my stay,” Diana remarked as she planted seeds in the flower bed next to the new church. I anticipated that the flower of Diana’s hometown was the rose, but I was mistaken.
“Everyone thinks of roses when they think of Bulgaria, but the lily-of-the-valley is what my hometown is famous for. The village is blanketed in white during the first days of summer. It’s very lovely,” the Bulgarian girl mentioned.
“You got lily seeds all the way from your village?” Itsumi asked Diana.
“Yes. It took some time for my parents to send them to me, but I luckily got them in time to plant,” Diana replied, assiduously piling soil onto the seeds she had placed in the ground.
“When will they bloom?”
“I think around May. These lilies are resistant to warm weather. This garden will stay cool in the shade, so they might even make it through the summer.”
“Ah. I can’t wait,” Sayuri said, looking entranced.
✦ ✦ ✦
Itsumi invited Diana to join the club, and of course she joined.
Since I had assumed that Diana couldn’t read Japanese, I was astonished to see her read through all of Yukio Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask and comment on it in Japanese, without even having to pause, at her very first meeting. She often put herself down for her “clumsy Japanese,” but I thought it was unbelievable that she was so fluent with just one or two years of study.
Diana was already acquainted with Shiyo, and they frequently reminisced about their memories in Bulgaria. It seemed like Shiyo had had a great time in Bulgaria, as she flaunted the pictures she took with her single-lens reflex camera, her prized possession, and told us about the history and legends of all the places she had visited.
Every one of Shiyo’s photos—which captured the naïve, lovable faces of the wild foxes and rabbits, the mountaintops enshrouded in billows of white clouds, the lush green river banks—teemed with life. The pictures filled you with joy just from looking at them. But in the midst of these brilliantly-colored photos was one painted over in black.
I was startled.
Seeing it was as ominous as seeing the words of an obituary.
“Hey, what do we have here?” Sayuri asked innocently, picking up the photo.
“Ohh, that…” Shiyo started to say.
“That was taken at Lamia’s Feast,” Diana broke in.
Upon further examination, I realized that it hadn’t been painted over; the lighting of the photo was just so dark that it just looked that way.
“I wanna see,” Akane said. Sayuri handed her the photo and she looked at it.
“Oh, everyone’s dressed in black,” she remarked.
The photo was passed to me. Itsumi was sandwiched between Diana and a girl who looked like her (I assume her twin). All three of them had their hair down, and wore black feathers and bright red lipstick.
“What’s Lamia?” Sayuri inquired.
“Lamia is a witch. A vampire. Diana says there are a lot of legends about vampires in Bulgaria,” Itsumi answered. “Lamia’s Feast is a festival. It’s kind of like the American ‘Halloween.’ ”
Goosebumps spread over my body the moment I saw the photo. Diana was smiling creepily at the camera. The blazing flames reflected a terrifying spirit within her eyes. Diana looked like her twin, but her energy wasn’t kind and warm like her sister’s. What was that feeling? That menacing, unsettling feeling. It was almost as if…she wasn’t human.
I looked up and accidentally met eyes with Diana. Her gaze was abnormally sharp. As if a criminal were threatening a witness. As if she were warning me. As if she were preying upon me.
We stared at each other for a moment, neither of us looking away.
✦ ✦ ✦
Just so you know, I don’t believe in what cannot be explained by science. Which is why I am hesitant to write about what I witnessed. I still can’t believe I saw it with my own eyes. Was it real? Was I half-asleep? No…but I know what happened best. It was not a hallucination, but reality.
Therefore, I must write it down. This is my account of that peculiar incident.