“H-hey, it’s all right! That plan just happened not to pan out. The next one will work for sure!” I said. We’d made sure to have some insurance against the possibility that Riviere’s idea didn’t work out.
“Looks like it’s my time to shine,” said Elaina, stepping up as the rest of us squabbled.
She was our insurance. If Riviere couldn’t make things work, she would take over. Which was all well and good—but why was she always showing up late?
“Just leave this to me,” Elaina said. “My way of breaking up those two is ten times smarter than Miss Riviere’s.”
Well, her face was certainly ten times more self-confident than Riviere’s. I wondered what made her so sure.
“Are you serious?” Cattleya looked like steam might come out her ears, but Elaina paid her no mind at all.
“Just you watch. I’ll show you how a grown-up handles these things.” She gave a flick of her hair.
“I’m a grown-up,” Riviere grumbled from beside her.
“Let’s reconvene tomorrow,” Elaina said, ignoring her completely.
And so, the next day…
“Ha-ha-ha!” laughed Bruno.
“Tee-hee-hee!” giggled Annie, next to him.
Their smiles were implacable; the previous day’s events seemed to have vanished from their minds. Naturally, they went straight for the crepe stand. As I watched them, I couldn’t help thinking that these kids could use some variation in their diets.
Then I watched as Elaina walked up. She made it look natural, passing by them as if she were just, well, someone passing by.
If anything made her stand out from your average nondescript citizen, it would have been the glass of water in her hand. No sooner had I wondered what she was doing with it than I realized it was a sancta. “Yah!” she cried (sounding sort of silly) and splashed the water on Bruno.
“Arrrgh!” Bruno exclaimed, stunned. I was almost as surprised as he was. What did she think she was doing?
“Oh my gosh. I’m so sorry. Are you all right. Silly me. My hand must have slipped.” Elaina said. Was she…trying to be a terrible actor? There was no emotion in her voice at all. Apparently, this was what passed for “how a grown-up handles these things.”
I was still trying to figure out how that was.
I give Elaina a proper squint, but beside me, Riviere nodded with a knowing look. “I see… Yes, that’s not a bad move at all.”
“Do you know something I don’t?”
“That’s one of our shop’s sancta. The Water of Drawing Out True Personality.”
“Water of Drawing Out True Personality?”
Meaning…what, exactly?
“Just what the name implies. That water can bring out a person’s hidden true nature. If they drink it, it has the effect of a truth serum—but there’s another application if you pour it over someone’s head.”
“Another application?”
Meaning…what, exactly?
“Just wait. You’ll see.”
Riviere answered my question by pointing at the trio down the street. Annie was frantically trying to dry off her sopping friend, while Elaina was saying “I am very sorry” in the world’s most unconvincing apology.
And then there was Bruno, looking at Elaina with…was that excitement?
“Huff… Huff… Hey, you’re cute. How old are you?”
“What is that about?” I snapped.
“When you pour the Water of Drawing Out True Personality over someone’s head, everything they think immediately comes out of their mouth.”
“Is that right?” I stole a glance at Riviere.
“You would look amazing in a good pair of tights. Like the ones my maids wear. Any chance you’d like to join the team?”
Bruno reached out toward Elaina, who slapped his hand away. “If you touch me, I’ll kill you.”
Annie stood beside Bruno, aghast. She was, to put it simply, positively horrified.
“It won’t take long for her to dump him at this rate,” Riviere said.
“I guess…” I gave a noncommittal nod and watched the three of them.
“Yaaarrrghh! Put on some damn tiiiiights!” Bruno, transformed into a full-on pervert, flung himself at Elaina.
“Eeeek! No, stop! I’m scared!” Elaina said, dancing out of his reach and raising her voice just enough to make sure everyone nearby could hear her.
Annie continued to look on with a glassy stare.
“Hey, what’s happening?”
“Gross! Isn’t that guy from the school near here?”
“He’s scaring me!”
Whispering and pointing started among the townsfolk. There was a charge in the air like when people run across the scene of a crime.
“This seems likely to ruin his school life. Are we okay with this?” I said.
“Not my problem.”
Ah, Riviere, always ready to ignore an inconvenient truth. A filthy representative of grown-ups everywhere.
Elaina spent the next little while running around town.
“…And that’s pretty much how it went,” she concluded. We were back at the shop, where she was telling Cattleya all about it, no small hint of pride on her face. She smiled as if to say, Thanks to my fine work, all your worries are over.
“I can’t shake the feeling that you went a little overboard…but fine,” Cattleya said with a sigh. Then she asked, “So how did it turn out?” She seemed to feel that even if we had stepped over the line, as long as she got what she was after, then she didn’t care.
Elaina’s smile grew even bigger. “It failed completely.”
“Oh, what the shit!”
Bam!
Poor table, getting pounded in anger day after day.
“You went completely overboard and still messed up?! I didn’t ask you to just make him a laughingstock! I didn’t ask you to just make him a laughingstock!”
“You said the same thing twice.”
“Shut up! Shut up!”
At least it was easy to tell when Cattleya had snapped. She looked like she might just flip the whole table over. She glared at us and our multiday losing streak. “What happened?” Her voice took on the tone of a manager scolding some delinquent employees. “What went wrong today? I can’t even imagine how that situation could have ended well for them.”
For some reason, she was looking at me. Maybe because I’d been the one to do all the explaining yesterday under very similar circumstances.
Then, equally mysteriously, Elaina patted me on the shoulder. “I believe she can explain in more detail.”
So there were no-good grown-ups here, too!
“Uhh… Well, um, you see…”
Ugh! This was not the role I wanted to play, I thought, as I launched into another distilled but truthful explanation of what had happened: Elaina fleeing through town, Bruno in hot pursuit.
Long story short, as the Water of Drawing Out True Personality dried, the effect faded. About fifteen minutes after Elaina had doused him, Bruno had returned to being a sane, self-controlled young man.
“Urgh… What…what have I done?!”