“I’ll kill you if you run. What should we do, Alice?”
“Let’s consult a prefect and have them decide on their punishment,” I decided.
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
The twins hid their weapons underneath their clothes.
“Follow us.”
“I’ll shoot your feet if you run.”
They made the boys stand in a line, hold hands, and walk in that state. The sheer bloodthirst they’d witnessed had turned their legs to jelly.
When we got out to the grass plaza, Robins was playing cricket while Charles sat on a bench reading a thick book. He came our way when we spotted us.
“Alice and the twins. What are you up to?”
“I was nearly attacked by these students,” I said, gesturing to the boys. “They grabbed my hair and tried to drag me back to the dorms. I shudder to think what would have happened if Dum and Dee hadn’t rescued me.”
“You guys did this?” Charles asked.
The cornered students’ faces twitched, pressuring each other with pleas of “You say it!” and “You’re the one who planned it!”
Charles seemed to give up on getting the truth out of them. He turned his eyes to me in my obviously battered state. “You went through something awful. As prefect, I’ll make sure this never happens again by teaching them—”
“Phew. Disturbances are such a nuisance…” Headmaster Caterpillar emerged from the castle. He came out onto the plaza, his robe dragging on the ground, and glared at the trembling boys. “Why have you done such a thing?”
“Allow me to explain, Headmaster.” When Charles stepped forward, his body went flying back.
My eyes went wide with shock. The headmaster had struck him with a whip.
“Why did you do that, Headmaster?!” I jumped in between them, and the headmaster sighed.
“We’re allowed to discipline students with whips at this school. Children get too unruly unless they experience a bit of pain. The whip is an effective tool for education.”
“Even so, why hit Charles? He didn’t do anything wrong!” I argued.
The man’s long eyebrows rose, revealing the eyes underneath. His eyes were so cloudy, I questioned if he could see his surroundings at all. “Bad students are born when prefects don’t keep a close enough watch. It’s perfectly justified to whip the representatives of the rest of the student body.”
“That’s no different from tyranny. There’s no need to punish someone who hasn’t done anything wrong!” I stood firm in my declaration. But still kneeling on the ground, Charles took the side of the headmaster.
“…It’s fine. This is what I…what Robins and I agreed to as an Ark School rule.”
“A rule?” I wrinkled my brow, confused.
Robins stood at my side and spoke to the headmaster firmly. “Us prefects will give these students strict guidance. I promise to offer the victim appropriate aid as well.”
“Good. I’ll leave the rest to you…” He wrapped up his whip, looking satisfied, and returned to the castle with his robe dragging behind him.
The twins, Brett’s group of boys, the students playing cricket, and I were totally still. Only Robins could speak—he had orders for some of us.
“Sorry, but I’m going to have to bail on our cricket game. I’ll be giving you boys who hurt Alice a talking-to later, so wait for me in the Lion Dorm common room. Could you twins take them there and be sure they don’t run away? I’ll join you there shortly.”
“Please do, Dum, Dee,” I said.
“What about you, Alice?”
“What about you, Alice?”
“I won’t be long. I’ll have Robins and Charles with me, so there’s no need to worry.”
“Be sure to join us soon.”
“Be sure to join us soon.”
Dum and Dee led the students back to Lion Dorm.
Once normalcy had returned to the grassy plaza, Robins crouched down next to Charles.
“Can you stand, Charles?”
“Yeah.”
He had a pained expression, but Charles got back on his feet by leaning on Robins’ shoulder.
I looked him over to make sure he wasn’t hurt.
Wait, what’s that?
Charles’ hands were covered in scars—not just the one he’d earned a moment ago.
“Does the headmaster whip you often, Charles?” I asked.
“Not just me.” He looked at Robins. Robins’ hands were covered in the same scars. “Most of the teachers here believe in corporal punishment. They whip the bad students until they lose consciousness. I wanted to get rid of that practice, so once we became prefects, Robins and I proposed the new rule directly to the headmaster.”
It was a sad, dreadful system.
The prefects were punished for every wrongdoing committed by the students. Seeing their prefects whipped forced the students to reflect on their actions and refrain from straying from the right path again.
My heart was broken by the prefects who sacrificed themselves to protect the other students.
“How can such an unfair rule exist? Why are you two the only ones who have to suffer?!” I asked.
“There’s no getting around it, Alice. Didn’t you see the graves in the Nameless Woods?” Robins was referring to the cemetery in the ghost town. “That’s where the students who died from corporal punishment rest. Some boys’ whip wounds never healed, and they died from fevers, and some fled to the forest to escape punishment and were eaten by wild dogs.”
Robins explained why they could never neglect to upkeep the graves.
Charles’ face was overcome with frustration.
“I want to get rid of corporal punishment, but I don’t have the power to do that. The headmaster and teachers are the real demons to the rest of us, more evil than any of the ones in our reference books.”
The teachers whipped their students, sometimes to the point of death, and called it an education. Trapped on this island with no place to run, the educators were the ultimate demons to the boys at this school.
“I’ve seen many students suffer, both younger and older than me. That’s why I swore I’d be the one to protect the student body and drive the teachers out of Ark School.”
I was touched by his determination to stand up in the face of oppression.
Students in their final year of school were the ones to become prefects.
Charles and Robins only had one year to carry out their plan. However, it was hard to imagine that they could change the boarding school in such a fundamental way in that short of a time.
They chose to stand up and defy the unfair system in part because they were still children.
“I want to help the two of you,” I said. “How do we get rid of the teachers?”
“Headmaster Caterpillar is the current owner of Ark School. No new teachers can be admitted without his approval, which is why we’re looking for a new owner to take over. We’ve spent years looking for good candidates and sending letters to suitable nobles.”
“So that’s why you asked me if I’d seen any noblemen when we met by the dock.”
Ark School had sent a letter addressed to Earl Knightley.
But it turned out that Charles was the original sender after all. He was so eager to see noblemen come to the island because he was trying to find someone powerful who could take over control of the school.
However, one person never wanted those candidates to arrive.
It was Headmaster Caterpillar.
These candidates were nothing more than rivals to him. Dark had sent Ark School a letter informing them of the time and date he planned to come to observe the school so it would have been easy to prepare traps for him.
Is Headmaster Caterpillar the trap-laying demon?
I glared up at the part of the castle that housed the headmaster’s office. He abused his position to do something as cowardly as inflicting violence, and he was bold enough to teach his students about demons, too. All of it was consistent with the other demons I’d encountered in life.
Now that I think about it, it all makes sense. Of course, a demon would know so much about demons.
The headmaster, a demon, had laid the trap for Earl Knightley’s visit. His goal was to stop him from taking over the school by changing his body. He wanted to keep reigning over the island by subjugating his students.
“You could have just killed him…” I muttered.
That’s what I would have done if I was the headmaster. After all, changing everyone’s body size meant he would no longer be able to tell who was who. It would be difficult to take out his intended target.
“Did you just say ‘kill him?’”
Charles went pale. He’d overheard my muttering. It sounded like he thought I was telling him to kill the headmaster.
I smiled knowingly, secretly feeling like that wasn’t a bad idea either.
“We have to hurry to Lion Dorm. Dum and Dee might tear the boys apart if we leave them to wait too long.”
“That’s not good. Let’s get going then.”
Robins and Charles began to head toward Lion Dorm. I followed them from behind.
As the two walked side-by-side, their gold and silver keys were close enough to collide, as if the sound they made was their way of consoling each other. Even if they got rid of the headmaster, the two boys were graduating next year. It wouldn’t be of any direct benefit to them.
They could have ignored the situation at their school and left the island like nothing was wrong.
But they didn’t—Robins and Charles loved this place.
They didn’t want the remaining students and the ones still to come to experience the same suffering they did. They didn’t care if their names were forgotten by the school or if no one thanked them for what they did.
All that mattered was the happiness of the people they loved.
Everyone is free to love who they want, even if that love isn’t returned to them.
I thought back to Dark and the sheet over his head. The memory brought a bit of relief to my weary heart.