Secrets of the Silent Witch - Volume 4 - Chapter Ep

EPILOGUE

The Happiness of the Hero Who Became a Star

After sitting Monica back down on the sofa, Cyril took the blanket that had fallen to the side, spread it out, and tucked it over her shoulders.

“I need to get back now. Rest here until you feel better.”

“Yes, sir. Um… Well, I’m, um, sorry about everything.”

She’d meant to help him, but he’d come to her rescue instead. And when she thought about how much consideration Cyril had shown her, she couldn’t help the guilt swelling in her chest.

But Cyril just folded his arms like always and gave an arrogant sniff. “As the prince’s right hand, this is nothing. And Officer Maywood should return soon as well.”

At first, she’d been intimidated by his haughty behavior. Lately, though, she found it oddly comforting. She fingered the ribbon hanging from her rose ornament and looked up at him. “Lord Cyril, thank you…um, for the good-luck charm. I did a lot better than usual today.”

The vice president’s eyes softened ever so slightly, and a subtle smile played at the corners of his lips.

“…Is that so?” he said, seeming to reflect on her words before finally leaving the room.

As she listened to the door quietly close, Monica pulled the blanket more tightly over her shoulders. The dizziness had mostly passed, but she’d fainted not long ago. It was probably best if she rested a little longer.

Her eyes wandered to the window, and she breathed a sigh of admiration at the sight of the stars glittering in the night sky. She wondered if the Starseer Witch was looking up at them, too, watching over the kingdom’s future.

Come to think of it, I wonder what she meant by all those things she said before.

When Monica last visited the woman’s mansion, its owner had been somber. “I pay particular attention to what the stars say about the future of the kingdom and the royal family…,” she’d said. “But for around ten years now, I have found Prince Felix’s fate alone unreadable.”

Major incidents had been happening around Felix for a while. Casey’s attempted assassination and the intruder at the chess competition, to name a few. And that same intruder—Ewan—had come again that very day with another assassin named Heidi. Each of these, even taken alone, was no small matter, and yet the Starseer Witch hadn’t been able to predict any of them.

I’m curious about that Ewan man… He wasn’t trying to kill the prince. But then why did he sneak into the academy?

Ewan had said something strange. “I wasn’t able to make direct contact, but I got a good look up close, and I saw the traces. It’s the work of the traitor Artur. The prediction we were given was correct after all.”

What had he needed to confirm by getting so close to Felix? Who was this traitor named Artur? And who had given them that prediction? The more she thought about it, the more questions she had.

Monica went up to the window and stared idly at the twinkling stars. Was Felix’s fate somewhere among them?

“…Huh?”

While she couldn’t see the prince’s fate in the night sky, she happened to see the boy himself right underneath it, next to a tree. For a moment, she doubted her eyes, hastily casting a farsight spell. It was indeed him—the boy with a body that adhered to the golden ratio.

“Wh-what’s the prince doing out there?!” she exclaimed in astonishment as she watched him.

But just as she began to speculate on why he had snuck out of the ball, the prince took a look around and—still in his formal attire—began to climb the tree.

“What?!” she cried again. Felix was the star of the ball. What in the world was he doing all alone outside?

Whatever the case, Monica had been tasked with guarding him. She couldn’t ignore this. She hurried out of the room and headed for the prince.

Monica remembered the shape of the tree Felix had climbed, and she spotted it right away once she was outside. If she peeled her eyes, she could see his gorgeous blond hair between the leaves.

“Pri-Pri-Pr-Prince…!” she called up the tree.

The leaves rustled. “You sure are good at finding me at times like this,” he called down. Then he chuckled before nimbly leaping out of the tree and landing in front of her.

Monica panicked, worried he might hurt himself jumping from such a height. But he seemed fine as he casually plucked a leaf out of his hair.

“Pri-Prince, um, what about the ball?” she stammered.

“My grandfather left, so I figured I’d get a little fresh air.”

“Did you need to climb a tree?” she asked hesitantly.

Felix flashed her a mischievous grin. That was Ike’s smile—the one she’d seen that night in Corlapton. “I thought I’d take a look at the stars. They seem especially bright tonight.”

“Do you, um…like stars?”

“Not especially,” he replied easily, looking up at them and squinting. “I’m not into them much myself, but I had a friend who was. He used to talk to me about them a lot, so I know a thing or two, and I always get the urge to come out and have a look when the night is clear.”

With the most natural of motions, Felix took her hand, then placed his other on her waist—like they were about to start dancing.

“Um, Prince, we should go back inside…”

“Keep me company out here for just a few minutes, won’t you? I know you’d never agree to dance with me in the ballroom.”

He was completely right, so Monica decided to keep her mouth shut and let him lead. It ended up being less of a dance and more of them walking in time to the music. Monica’s steps were all over the place, but that only seemed to amuse him more.

“This reminds me of when I taught you how to dance. You were thinking about something else at the time, though. The reflectivity of gemstones, was it?”

“Urk…”

“What about me? Won’t you think about me instead?”

Right now, Felix was all she could think about. Mainly how best to protect him and why the Starseer Witch couldn’t see his fate. She wasn’t dull enough to come out and say that, though, and just mumbled something inaudibly.

Felix shot her a teasing grin and brought his lips up to her ear. “That dress really suits you. It’s pretty, but not gaudy, and it brings out your charms. Green is really your color. Mm. A dark, forest green would be nice, but I like this one, too. It’s like new spring foliage.”

“Th-thank you…” Receiving compliments on her dress was a little embarrassing, but since Lana had prepared it for her, it was like he was complimenting Lana. That made her happy.

“Your hair is cute, too,” he continued. “That flower braid—did your friend do it for you?”

“Yes! Lana and I match!” she said with a bit of pride in her voice.

Felix’s lips turned up into a little half smile. It was a kind expression, but it seemed somehow clouded. Was it because of the dark?

“Makes me a little jealous,” he said.

“…Huh?”

The hand holding her waist tightened. They stopped, though the music played on. Felix’s blue eyes looked almost mechanically at the floral decoration on Monica’s chest. And then, with his other hand, he reached out to touch her neck. His gloved fingers stroked her skin.

“You didn’t wear the peridot I gave you.”

The tickle of his low voice in her ear made her jolt. All of a sudden, she remembered how much attention he’d been paying to her neck when they watched the play together.

His voice, a little pouty, was that of the boy she’d met in Corlapton.

“…Ike?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“I’m… I’m still just a beginner at fashion, so…”

“I know, but I wanted to see you wearing the necklace.”

It was like Felix was jealous of how Lana had done her hair and how Cyril had given her the floral decoration. Though none of that made any sense.

As she stood there in confusion, Felix gazed at her, a strange heat rising in his eyes. “Gemstones and stars have a similar sparkle, you know. If only you’d been wearing that necklace, even a meteor shower would be nothing. I would have been more taken with your beauty than the stars.”

With Felix staring her right in the face, his sculpted features a mere hairbreadth away, Monica’s thoughts sped up and her eyes began to spin. “Sh-sh-sh-shhh…”

“Hmm?”

“Shooting stars are smaller and lighter than the pebbles at our feet, but the reason they shine so beautifully is because they’re moving at speeds so fast, they could travel from this kingdom to the next in a single second. Incidentally, the reason objects moving at high speeds shine is different from the reason gemstones shine, and anyway, unless a gemstone is imbued with mana, it doesn’t shine at all and it’s just refracting light…”

Felix put a hand to his mouth, and his shoulders trembled. She heard him stifle a few breaths before, at last, he burst into laughter. Ike’s laughter.

“I wasn’t aware you knew so much about stars. I thought you were only into numbers.”

“…Ummm…”

Monica hadn’t engaged in any serious study of astronomy, but she’d calculated the orbits of stars in the past at the Starseer Witch’s request. As a result, she had a pretty good grasp on the fundamentals.

“At the root of biology are layers of tiny, tiny numbers. Astronomy, then, is made up of bunches of really large numbers, far larger than even the kingdom’s budget… So, well, both of them are interesting to me, mathematically speaking.”

“Do you want to be a scholar?”

Monica’s words caught in her throat for a moment at the question. Then she smiled vaguely and said, “Maybe.”

She’d never known what she wanted to be. Always afraid of other people, pulled along by life’s current… Before she knew it, she’d become one of the Seven Sages. Ever since then, she’d holed up in her cabin in the mountains doing nothing but magecraft research. In that sense, she might already qualify as a research scientist where magecraft was concerned—possibly one of the finest in the kingdom.

As Monica fell silent, Felix’s attitude grew more serious. “If there’s a specific field you’d like to enter, I can have a word with Count Kerbeck.”

“N-no, that’s not… You don’t need to…”

“Most of the girls who graduate from Serendia have a single career path: marriage. I don’t know whether the count plans to marry you off, but… Is there anyone you’d like to marry?”

“No,” answered Monica immediately.

That, at least, she could say for sure. She didn’t understand romance or love. In fact, she was a helpless witch, terrified of other human beings. How could building a warm, comfortable family ever be in her future?

After she left the academy, she’d probably return to a life of solitude in her cabin, wrestling once again with equations and magic formulae.

But she’d always keep her memories of Serendia Academy close to her heart. They were treasures to her.

As she hung her head, eyes vacant, Felix took her hand again. She blinked and looked up at him, and he smiled back softly.

Is that the prince’s smile? Or is it Ike’s?

She still couldn’t guess by the time he spoke again. “Then I’ll tell you what a friend once told me. ‘I want you to find something that excites you—for your own enjoyment and nobody else’s. I want you to find all kinds of things that interest and entertain you.’”

Those were the words Ike had spoken the night of the Bell-Ringing Festival. That was the reason he was looking for something that excited him.

“I doubt I have much freedom left. So I’d like it if you carried on this wish for me.”

A lonely smile played across his lips. That was Ike’s smile.

“But what about…what about you, Ike?”

He was trying to give up on his friend’s words—words he’d always held close to his heart. He wanted to entrust the wish they held to Monica.

The moment she realized this, Monica sensed, for the first time, a precariousness in the young man before her.

“Your friend wanted you to find something you really liked, didn’t he?” she said, awkwardly constructing her thoughts. “Are you…just going to stop looking?”

Felix’s voice was quiet. “There’s a wish I want to see to fruition even if it means going against my friend’s.” He used his gloved fingers to point to a particular star in the eastern sky, glittering more brightly than the rest.

“Look—that big star connects two trapezoids to form the hero Ralph’s constellation. On his deathbed, the first king feared the people would forget about him. So his wife, Amelia, asked the King of the Dark Spirits, Eldiora, to make the deceased man into a constellation—all so that his people would remember him whenever they gazed at the night sky.”

Why was Felix suddenly talking about mythology? At first, Monica thought it was to deflect from her question. Her gut, though, told her that wasn’t the case. Monica was getting a glimpse into something fundamental to the young man before her.

His blue eyes seemed entranced as they gazed up at the hero’s star. “If one could leave their sparkle in the night sky even after death, just like Ralph… Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

Goose bumps broke out on the back of Monica’s neck.

Felix always wore a calm, gentle smile. Others might call him Duke Clockford’s puppet, but he was a model prince—like a well-mannered doll. Now, however, as he looked up at the stars, Monica could see the fires of attachment, of obsession in his eyes.

In his gaze, she felt a quiet conviction.

When the prince looked back at her, his face had regained its familiar, tranquil smile. “It’s getting cold out. Why don’t we head back inside?”

His sweet voice, his gentle smile—they were all to hide his true nature.

She knew he wouldn’t let her see any more of it, no matter how much she asked. Face pale, she nodded and followed after him.

From a distant balcony, someone was watching Felix and Monica as they hung around outside the grand hall.

That someone was Bridget Greyham, student council secretary.

The hand gripping her folding fan trembled, but not because of the cold. She was shaking because of the torrent of emotions rising within her.

Those emotions lent a deep luster to her amber eyes, but the noble beauty held them in check as she muttered, voice low:

“…You will give my prince back to me.”