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THE students filed into the dining hall after getting dressed in the morning.
Charles had slipped away from the rest of them and was walking along the school hallway with a dreary expression. The headmaster had prepared the apples for the game of snap apple, only for them to be manchineel fruits instead. He never should have sent away for something so dangerous in the first place.
The headmaster had made the arrangement to kill his students.
From his merciless use of the whip to the way he rarely spoke to students outside of class, Charles had known for a while that the headmaster thought little of the student body.
As a prefect, he would have to confront that man if he tried to hurt his students.
He didn’t try saying anything to Robins because his friend was already in a state of shock. He’d been muttering incoherently about having to get rid of the fruit immediately when Charles walked him back to Unicorn Dorm.
The plaza had been cleaned by the time Charles got there early the next morning. Robins had definitely done it on his own.
Robins was small but had no lack of bravery. He was Charles’ kind-hearted partner who agreed to shoulder the burden of corporal punishment alongside him.
Robins had already protected the students. That was why it was Charles’ turn now.
“I’d like to speak to you, Headmaster.”
He knocked on the fourth-floor office and entered the room.
The teachers were all gathered in the room, hazy from the smoke of the hookah pipe. At the desk in the back of the room, the headmaster raised a bushy eyebrow and asked what he wanted.
“It’s about last night’s snap apple competition. The fruits were the poisonous manchineel fruit, not apples. Robins stopped it before anyone could be hurt, but things could have easily taken a turn for the worse. Why did you prepare something like that for our game?”
Then teachers started to let out mutters of “Why didn’t they die?” and “We were so close.”
What’s going on?
The headmaster took his lips away from the pipe to answer the confused prefect. “Phew… Why, you ask? That’s a strange question. Weren’t you the one who told me that female student and her followers would participate in the match?”
“What…? Did you really mean to kill them with those fruits?”
The headmaster rose out of his seat slowly and walked around the desk, his robe dragging behind him. “I didn’t expect everyone to make it out alive. Robins must be going through a rebellious phase to defy the owner of his contract like that…”
When he suddenly heard his friend’s name mentioned, Charles erupted angrily. “What contract?! What are you people doing to Robins?!”
“What’s with that tone, hm?”
The headmaster cracked his whip, its tip striking Charles in the shoulder and bringing him to his knees. It came down on him again and again. He curled up to resist, but each strike felt like it would split his skin open.
Robins, what do these people have on you?
The image that came into his mind as he gritted his teeth was Robins’ innocent smile. He was always in a bright mood and encouraging the other students. That was when Charles realized something. He’d never seen Robins expressing pain before.
“You won’t be able to endure this.”
Crack! His head was struck with the whip, and he finally collapsed.
Charles’ hot blood spilled out onto the floor and made his body wet.
Those demons were discussing something that he could barely make out as he drifted out of consciousness.
“We should discipline the extra students who came here this year, no?”
“The other students need a way to blow off steam from time to time.”
“Public executions used to be put on for amusement in the Middle Ages, after all.”
I’m sorry, Robins… Charles silently asked for forgiveness. If I’m killed, be sure you make it out of here without me.