SIDE STORY
AN INEXPLICABLE PUZZLE
On the night of her father and older sister’s audience with the king, Christa passed Drossell in the hallway on her way back to her room after dinner. It had been a long time since she had seen her twin sister outside of the academy. Christa only glanced in the direction the silver-haired girl was going in when they passed each other.
Drossell, who was carrying three books at her side and had one open in her hand, ignored the gazes of those around her, too focused on her reading even though she was walking. It was as if she knew the way without having to look.
There really is something off about her. Christa returned to her own room when Drossell’s figure disappeared at the bottom of the stairs. Still, the image of Drossell that she had seen earlier was burned into her memory. How can she move like that?
Throwing herself onto her sofa, Christa looked up at the ceiling and let her thoughts run wild.
She’d overheard the servants gossiping about how Drossell had been going in and out of the library lately, taking a copious amount of books to her room each time. But that wasn’t what surprised Christa.
A butler carrying a tray had been going up the stairs just as Drossell had been about to go down them. Christa had clearly seen Drossell dodge the butler while still absorbed in her reading.
Christa subconsciously squeezed the upper part of her left arm tightly. Her older twin sister had had a strange power ever since she was little. She could make objects move, make a breeze blow where there was no wind, and there was always something strange happening around her.
Those strange phenomena had disappeared for a while, but they seemed to be occurring again lately. As someone who knew Drossell’s past, the zigzagged movements she had made earlier made Christa wonder if some sort of force was at work.
“Miss Christa, do you have a moment?” There were two knocks at her door. Christa gazes shifted from the ceiling to the door.
“You may come in.”
The door opened and a butler with a tray laden with a tea set entered. It was the same butler who had almost bumped into Drossell on the stairs earlier.
“Pardon me. I brought you your after-meal tea.”
“Please put it on the table.”
The butler placed the tea set down and poured a cup of tea before bowing and leaving the room.
Christa had noticed that there was something strange with her twin sister about a month ago. It all started with a trivial moment, when Drossell had answered a teacher’s question perfectly.
At first, she had thought that Drossell had just decided to study on a whim. But from the next day on, Drossell stopped attending classes for some reason. She only appeared in the cafeteria during lunchtime and disappeared for the rest of the day.
And that wasn’t all. She spent all her time in the Great Library, which she’d never even entered before; immersed herself in swordsmanship training, which she shouldn’t even be able to do; and even received a research laboratory of her own. Drossell had changed in ways that seemed impossible to those who knew her.
It was almost as if she’d returned to her old personality, the one she’d had before her sudden change. But this new Drossell was different from her old self.
It was true that Drossell used to enjoy reading, but in the past, she preferred easy, relaxing stories, like fairy tales. Now, she only read difficult academic books. The fact that Drossell had completely severed her relationship to Rocheford, whom she had absolutely adored, only served to heighten Christa’s doubts.
Stepping away from the window, Christa opened her desk drawer and took out a letter. It was originally addressed to Scarlough, but she had pleaded with and forced him to give it to her.
It was a letter from the king announcing the dissolution of Drossell and Rocheford’s engagement. The king had written about Rocheford’s current state as an excuse for the engagement’s dissolution.
There was no known treatment for the mental illness currently plaguing Rocheford, but Christa felt like she had seen his symptoms before.
It’s similar to back then. She traced her memories to that night two years ago. That day, a party was held at the duke’s manor to celebrate his twin daughters’ birthday. The moon was exceptionally beautiful that night, with nothing but the sound of tree leaves swaying in the wind.
Though the birthday party was supposedly for both twins, in reality, people were only celebrating Christa. Drossell, who had been rejected from society, didn’t even show up, nor did people talk about her much.
The birthday party ended without any issues. But when the servants were cleaning up afterward, one of them went outside to remove the tables and found Drossell lying unconscious near a hedge surrounding the garden.
Drossell was immediately carried to her room, but she stayed asleep for three days. When even the servants who had never paid her any mind started to worry, Drossell regained consciousness with a completely different personality from before.
She seemed calm, but she would get upset over trivial things, start throwing things, and yell. Sometimes she would suddenly start crying and physically press against others, hoping that they would soothe her. Even if her actions weren’t the same as Rocheford’s current situation, they were similar.
“What in the world is happening to him?”
Thanks to the strict gag order within the academy, Christa didn’t know any of the details of what had happened at the academy. There were rumors that Rocheford had been the perpetrator, but she had no idea how the series of events had been resolved.
Still, Christa couldn’t help but feel like Drossell had something to do with the incident. Her engagement had suddenly been annulled and she had left the ducal manor. It was entirely possible that she had decided the engagement would be impossible to continue considering Rocheford’s mental state, but Christa couldn’t help but feel that her twin sister was involved somehow.
Because Drossell had changed again suddenly in the past month and was severing her relationships with people in the manor even more than before, Christa sometimes felt like she was living in the same house as something terrifying. To be honest, she had been relieved when she heard that Drossell would be leaving.
If she felt that way as someone who lived with Drossell, she could see why Rocheford might loathe his own fiancée.
“A witch, huh?”
Wanting to know what had happened to Rocheford, Christa had spoken with the curator, Gilm. Gilm said that Rocheford had said he was going to stab the witch before taking the witch-slaying sword. Was Drossell the witch he had set out to slay?
Christa huffed. She couldn’t come to a conclusion no matter how much she thought about the subject. Cutting off her train of thought, she took a sip of the tea that the butler had poured for her earlier. It had gotten lukewarm in the time she’d been thinking, but it was still better than burning her tongue.
There were containers with milk, sugar, and jam next to the teapot, but Christa didn’t put anything into her tea. Looking at her reflection in the swaying waves of the liquid’s surface, she wondered when she had started to drink her tea straight.