Claire’s POV
THE STORY OF RAE’S first love was quite astounding. Rae fell in love with a girl named Kosaki but couldn’t accept herself for being a homosexual, met a girl named Shiko and learned to accept herself for who she was, confessed her love to Kosaki, then was outed and persecuted by Misaki. To top it all off, she’d actually been manipulated into getting rejected by Shiko, who had feelings for Rae the whole time. Afterward, Rae skipped school for a time. Her parents tried their hardest to understand and support her as a queer person, and eventually she got back on her feet.
It was hard to believe she could have such a troubled past, given how aloof and fearless she always behaved. She laughed it off, saying first love had a tendency to not pan out, but I felt like this went far beyond “not panning out.”
“That’s horrible. I’m furious to hear it. Rae, tell me where these people are. I’m going to set them on fire,” I said.
“I-I’ll help, Miss Claire.” Lilly voiced agreement.
That Misaki girl was obviously just awful, but Kosaki and Shiko were equally guilty for tattling and manipulating.
“There’s no need for that,” Rae said. “I didn’t know it then, but Misaki’s home life was really rough at the time. She was going through a bad patch. We actually became friends again after we graduated. We even formed our own Cryptid Club.”
“Cryptid Club?” I parroted back, confused.
“Yeah, we went hunting stuff like tsuchinoko.”
“And that is…?”
“Oh, sorry. Forget it.” More nonsense—not that that was anything new. “Anyway, there was a lot going on in all our lives back then. So it’s not really anyone’s fault.”
“Really? To me, it sounds like this all started with that Misaki person. Surely she’s to blame?” Kosaki and Shiko were guilty of exacerbating things, but there was no denying it had all begun with Misaki.
“Well, it’s more complicated than that.”
“Wh-why is that?” Lilly asked.
Rae’s answer surprised me. “Besides her problems at home, Misaki actually liked Shiko. But she couldn’t accept that about herself.”
“R-really?”
“Yes. The reason she chased me out of the group was because she thought I would steal Shiko from her.”
“Wh-whoa… So it was a love triangle?” Lilly moaned.
Love triangles featured often in romance novels and plays. It would seem they occasionally happened in real life too. Go figure.
“Not quite. It was a love square.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Kosaki liked Misaki.”
“H-how complicated…” Lilly groaned.
Rae borrowed a pen and paper to draw it out:
Misaki → Shiko
↑ ↓
Kosaki ← Rei
“What an absolute mess,” I said.
“A-agreed,” Lilly said.
“Well, we were all very young…”
“You’re still only in your mid-teens, though?” I said.
“Ah… How young we were…”
“Are! Not ‘were’! Use present tense!”
What was with her, looking all nostalgic and all?
“Anyways, the four of us eventually all made up,” Rae said. “It was a real riot when we found out what Kosaki was actually like, though. We had her pegged as our little angel, but she was actually pretty devilish.”
“I had a feeling,” I said. “She sounds like the kind of girl who thinks her cute face can let her get away with anything.”
“You’ve nailed it, Miss Claire.”
Girls like Kosaki were a dime a dozen. Well…girls with her kind of looks were, anyway. But quiet, reserved girls who flashed bashful smiles, were easy to dote on, and only ever wanted everyone to get along? They were few and far between. Some girls pretended to have that kind of personality to make others underestimate them, but the genuine article was vanishingly rare. The pretenders sought to make their targets dance to their tunes, then have them do all kinds of things for them. Falling prey to such deception was something of a regular hazing ritual for young noblemen who came to the capital from the countryside.
“In the end, Kosaki and Misaki got together,” Rae said. “Oh, and it was Ko × Mi, not Mi × Ko.”
“What nonsense are you on about now?”
“Nonsense?! This isn’t nonsense, this is critical information! The dynamic of a ship changes everything!”
“Wh-what are you suddenly angry for?!”
I didn’t understand why for the life of me, but the order of the names seemed important to Rae. I was flat-out mystified, but she seemed so worked up that I’d rather just let it go.
“Anyways, that’s the story of my first love,” she said. “Told you it’d be boring.”
“It wasn’t boring at all,” I said.
“Y-yeah. It was very informative,” Lilly added.
“Really?”
It was no wonder she came off as strange when she had such a past behind her. I felt I could forgive some of her eccentricity now that I knew the cause of it. “You’ve had a rough time of it,” I said.
“No, not really. It’s become something I can laugh about now. So, how about it, Miss Lilly? Disillusioned with me yet?”
“N-not at all. If anything, I like you even more now.”
“Perfect—wait, what?”
Honestly, what was Rae thinking? Her story was so heartrending that it was hard not to admire her after hearing it.
“Er, well, my point was that first love rarely works out—especially for queer people. So try to take rejection in stride,” Rae said. “Just look at me: I take getting shot down by Miss Claire so well, it’s become a joy of its own.”
“How shameless!” I exclaimed. I took back everything I’d just thought about forgiving her eccentricities. I’d rather she become less silly, thank you very much.
“Miss Claire, your first love was Lady Manaria, right?”
“N-no! Th-that was…different! Sister is just so incredible that I misunderstood.”
“Sure, sure. You have me now anyway, right?”
“…Don’t get too carried away or I’ll fire you,” I rebuked.
“Apologies,” she meekly said. “Wait, how’d we even get to this topic anyway?”
“Right… We came here to talk about solving the poverty issue…” And got completely sidetracked.
“I-It’s okay to go off on a tangent sometimes,” Lilly said comfortingly. “B-but to go back to what you were saying, Rae, our ideals don’t always line up with reality.”
“What do you mean?”
“Th-the Church has many ideals that we would like to see made reality, but politics get in the way.”
My father had said something similar earlier. Until recently, I’d believed reality trumped ideals at every turn as well. But I’d since remembered my mother’s words. Do not use reality to escape your ideals.
Right now, I was teetering between the two lines of thought—so there was merit in listening closely to Lilly’s words.
“E-even if something should work in theory, if it can’t be implemented in reality through political means, then it’ll never go anywhere…and often, it never does.” Lilly seemed to speak with wisdom beyond her years. I wondered what she might already have experienced, despite her youth. “I’ve already given up hope of politics getting anything done. The Church has erected a wall between itself and the political world, anyway.”
“That’s awfully honest,” Rae said.
“But even so, we shouldn’t give up on our ideals!” I raised my voice upon hearing the defeat in Lilly’s own. “If we don’t do anything…the people will only continue to suffer.”
Ideals alone can’t sway reality. But that didn’t mean one could use reality as an escape from their ideals. What, then, could we do?
“Let’s chase those ideals then,” Rae said. “Let’s work to make them a reality.”
“Rae…”
“You’re not alone. I may not be much help, but I’m here for you.”
“Thank you.”
The two of us had a good thing going on when Lilly exclaimed, “Oh, get a room, you pustules!”
We looked at Lilly.
“…I-I didn’t say that on purpose! Really!”
“Ah… It’s all right, we believe you,” Rae said.
What a bewildering tic to have, real or not.
“At any rate, thank you for all your hospitality today, Cardinal Lilly. Please let us know if there’s anything we can do in return,” I said.
“I-It’s been my pleasure to help you learn about the Church! I couldn’t possibly ask for anything in return.”
“We can’t have that. Tell us, are there any problems you have going on right now?” Rae asked nonchalantly.
“P-problems?”
“Yeah. You’ve really helped us out. We want to pay the favor back.”
“Aw… Y-you’re so sweet…”
“Watch it…” I warned, seeing Lilly get a little too happy. Even I had limits to my patience.
“W-well, um… There is this curse I’m researching called the Crosswise Curse…”
“Oh, that’s the one that affects gender, right?” Rae said.
I’d heard of the curse as well. It made one’s gender appear to be the opposite of what it actually was, if I recalled correctly.
Rae said, “Wouldn’t the Church’s Tears of the Moon cancel out or at least dampen its effects?”
“Y-you know about the Tears of the Moon?!” Lilly gasped. “But that’s one of the Church’s greatest secrets!”
“Oops.” Rae covered her mouth with her hand, like she’d made a gaffe. I wasn’t surprised, as I was also used to this sort of behavior from her. That said, I did intend to eventually make her tell me where she got all this secret knowledge.
“Wh-where did you learn about the Tears of the Moon?!” Lilly pressed.
“Er, umm… Master Yu told me.”
“Th-that can’t be. If Master Yu knew of a way to remove her Crosswise Curse, she’d have long—ah!” This time it was Lilly’s turn to seal up her mouth with her hand.
Wait, what? “…Cardinal Lilly, what did you just say?”
“Oh, no, no, no…”
“Is Master Yu affected by the Crosswise Curse?” Rae pressed for an answer.
Lilly let out a sigh of defeat. “I-I’ll tell you—but only because it seems Rae may know a way to reverse this curse. Please, please do not let what I am about to say leave this room. If it gets out, your lives will be in danger.”
“Understood.”
“Got it.”
The two of us nodded.
With resignation, Lilly began to speak. “Th-the truth is…”
To summarize it simply, it turned out Yu was a girl.