I can't give you a bouquet, but I can give you a rose

It's sadder like this.

The black tinsel that wobbles in the wind, the orange streamers that hang from the roof and the branches of dead trees beyond the fence like toilet paper, the pumpkins, cut, carved, and lit, already rotting, their jack 'o lantern smiles turned to wet, soggy frowns.

Ramshackle looked much better when it was just boarded windows and wood rot.

Trying to stick it in a costume (fitting, for the season), put some color on the peeling paint and some smiles on the front porch, only made it feel more hollow, more distant. The fuse box had been smashed in by something- a storm, or so you had heard- and, so, no twinkling lights or inflatable Frankensteins.

For the better. Any more color and you might have begun feeling a bit nauseous.

You keep walking, crushing fallen leaves and gravel beneath your muddy winter boots (borrowed, of course, from a locker left open outside the gym).

Maybe you're only bitter- envious, of Ramshackle's seasonal makeover, while you're covered in wet dirt and welts like an unearthed corpse. You hadn't had a shower since you were kicked out of Diasomnia last week, and there was only so much that cat baths in the bathroom sinks could do.

It's a pressing matter, and it's not out of pride nor shame that you hadn't told Crowley about what happened between you and Silver. It was only... procrastination.

You start each morning by taking a solemn oath that today will be the day you track him down and ask for another dorm to infest.

And then you don't.

You don't even have to avoid him. Mysteriously, the Headmage has been missing all week. You'd even had to retrieve your mail yourself- and only for one letter, two sentences, and all the worry in the world.

You were too ashamed to write Smokey back. You couldn't bring yourself to. Every time you set out to pen your thoughts on paper, your hand trembled and your vision went all blurry and your mind packed a bag and went on holiday, leaving the oven on and the front door open, just like the owner of the boots you stole- borrowed, you mean.

And it were beginning to seem as if, every time you really tried to write, some terrible thing or another would happen. Distracted by idle chatter, interrupted by fighting freshmen, quill spontaneously bursts into flame, evil squirrels steal your paper, the mail room is locked and the key hook is just a fingertip too tall...

It's like something is keeping you from disappearing. From slipping between the words in the letters of a boy from Fleur City.

Or maybe that's just the melancholic prose of your moody, sleep-deprived mind.

You suppose it's some sort of punishment, or, at least, a warning- you know that if you really could bring yourself to write Smokey (and if your stationary would stop spontaneously combusting), you would ask his permission to leave Night Raven College.

Not that you really need someone to hold your hand and walk you out of the school gates. But it would be nice, wouldn't it?

And if you had someone firmly grab your arm and drag you out of the college, you wouldn't feel the urge to turn back.

Tink, tink, tink.

You pause, footsteps falling flat, hopelessly distracted again. What was that? An ice cream truck?

...No, that's ridiculous.

Wind chimes? A children's toy? A music box?

Each answer seems less likely than the last. You can't imagine anything as innocent as a music box existing in a messed up place like this.

It's music, though, box or not.

It's coming from Ramshackle.

The light in the upstairs window is, of course, still burning. Pale yellow and sickly, like a candle at the end of its wick. It's always the first thing you check when you come this way (which you do, even when you don't really need to). But the music is coming from the attic, without a doubt, and pouring from every window and the crack in the door...

...Unlocked and open. Has it been open before?

You blink. Someone's inside?

You turn half a foot to investigate, and immediately smack into something firm and flowery (when did you get so clumsy? Or were you always this way?)

"Headmage!" you shout, but what stumbles back and tries steadies himself with a hand on your tie- pulling you both down into the wet dirt- is no six-foot birdman.

"DANG NABBIT! I JUST HAD THIS PRESSED!"

Epel Felmier swears so fast and furiously that it makes your hair stand on end. He pats down his blazer, swiping dead grass and mud off his sleeves.

"People around here ain't got a lick of sense, that's for certain..." he mumbles, and then glances up at you. "Why don't 'ya watch where you're going?"

You purse your lips. "Sorry,"

"Tch... making a mess of my new shirt..."

You make a valiant attempt to scoot out of sight, but he catches you through the corner of his eye and traps you in place yet again.

"What've you been doing, rolling around in a mud puddle?"

You look down at your mud-caked coat and the grime beneath fingernails as if this is the first time you've noticed them. You can just leave, a voice says, You don't owe him an answer.

Another voice shouts LIE!!! With no particular purpose.

"I can't imagine Silver'd let you go tracking dirt around in that dorm," he mutters. "They're more uppity than us now, y'hear? Though that may be on account of the new management..."

Epel waits for an answer. You have none to give.

He sighs. "Well, I'd feel real bad if I left you out here in this state... what would Vil think?"

He waits for an answer again. You still have none. You have no idea who Vil is.

"Well... c'mon. Let's get you cleaned up,"

Pomefiore dorm is a lot different from Diasomnia.

For one, it's white instead of gray.

The trees have leaves and flowers (in a permanent state of early spring, according to Epel) instead of black bark and thorns.

There are fine tapestries and paintings on the walls, of peacocks and hearts instead of horned figures in black cloaks.

And there are also six-hundred and eleven exact replicas of a thin, bony boy's face on every wall, window, couch, and vase. You didn't count- Epel told you.

"Six-hundred and thirty-four when those freshmen get done with the new tapestries," he explained, completely unhelpful in lending any context to who exactly this face belonged to, and why it was printed on all the lounge robes and drinking glasses.

"...Uh-huh," you say, letting him lead you through the dorm. Every student turns to stare at you with wary eyes. No, not you- Epel. Why Epel? What could he have possibly done to these boys than was more worthy of their ire than the stranger tracking mud on the nice carpet?

"Bathroom's up the stairs and to the left. Well, one of 'em, anyway. If it's full, there are three more down the hall, and four more after that," he says. "I'll be 'waitin downstairs."

"Thanks," you say it more as a show of solidarity- your way of saying, "Hey, I don't know what it is that makes you a freak, but I'm one, too. Let's not kill each other."

You drag yourself up the glittery marble steps and walk into the first door on your left, anticipating stares and mumbles and hours of taking yourself from room to room in pursuit of one empty enough to feel comfortable undressing in.

But there's no need. This bathroom is completely empty. Makeup brushes are abandoned by open canisters of blush, vanity lights are left on, some of the claw-footed tubs are still full of bubbles and flowery perfumes. It's as if everyone was suddenly spirited away.

...It's oddly comforting, to feel as if there are fellow ghosts on campus.

Soft golden light from the chandelier in the hall drapes over a modest dorm room with three beds. One tucked in neatly, one wrinkled and covered in socks, and one stripped naked, only a mattress, dust bunnies and pillow fluff.

"Sorry I can't get you a better room," Epel mutters, flicking on the lights. "I'd have to ask the housewarden..."

That same neatly contoured, bony face is printed on the ceiling, pointy nostrils breathing over the beds like an overbearing mother.

You- now washed, dressed in spare robes, and carrying a doggie bag containing all your belongings- sit at the edge of the bare bed.

"One of my roommates transferred out last month," Epel says, sitting on the bed opposite to yours. "So the bed'n desk are all yours."

"Thank you," you really mean it this time. Why is he being nice? Is this some kind of trick? A trap?

You should tell him you don't have any money (which is a lie, but you've gotten quite comfortable with telling those lately, especially to yourself).

"Don't mention it. I remember what it was like being a freshman..." he pauses. In a place where you felt completely foreign and everyone looked at you like you were a pile of dog poop in the street? "...Besides, Vil 'n Rook woulda wanted you here."

There's that name again. You're not necessarily as curious as you are making polite small talk- you owe him as much. Besides, you're getting tired of carrying the burden of a thousand names without faces on your back. "Who's that?"

"Old housewarden and vice housewarden. They're real busy on their student internships this year, so they don't write much..."

Epel pauses, and then presses his lips together in a thin line, as if he were suppressing a followup. You blink. Has he written his upperclassmen about the dorm management? Or the strange new magicless nuisance sitting across from him?

"...Anyway, as long as Quya doesn't find out you're here, you should be fine,"

Your capacity for politeness has has run out, and so you don't ask who this new name belongs to.

"Thanks,"

"Don't mention it," he's looking at his feet. "Really, don't."

You don't sleep.

It's equally comforting and disturbing to share a bedroom with two strange boys, though you're not at a liberty to complain. Wandering aimlessly around campus after dark and trying to catch some sleep in the library during school hours for a week (or something like that) hasn't done much for your circadian rhythm, and a mattress, a blanket, and central heating are more than you could ask for.

The hot bath with complimentary shampoo, conditioner, and body wash (seriously, what kind of school dorm has gift bags?) is a bonus.

Of course, there's always a price to pay.

This one happens to be your sanity.

"DANGIT, PUT THAT DOWN OR SO HELP ME!"

"YOU DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!"

"SHUT YOUR PIEHOLE BEFORE I GIVE YOU A REASON TO SHOUT!"

"I'D LIKE TO SEE YOU TRY!"

"BOTH OF YOU, SHUT UP!"

"WHAT'D YOU SAY???"

"YEAH, YOU WANT A PIECE OF THIS?"

"ALRIGHT, THAT'S IT!"

You shoot up in bed and slam your cranium on the headboard, sending hot, electric shocks of pain through your neck. When the ringing in your ears has subsided and you hadn't yet vomited out of every orifice (thus confirming that you are not concussed a second time), you creep out of bed and follow the sound of spit and insults flying to the lounge, where five or six students- your dear Epel included- are beating each other black and blue over the fine sofas.

You watch, wide-eyed, as they disperse, bruised and bloody. Epel has a swollen eye- the boy he was tousling with is covered in bites.

The sound of heavy breathing fills the room.

Finally: "That was a draw," says the bitten boy.

Epel bristles like a startled cat. "IT WAS NOT! WE WON, FAIR AND SQUARE!"

A student holding an abacus studies his painted beads. "Four to six, Epel's motion carries,"

"HAH!"

"FUCK!"

You jolt at the screaming, and just barely manage to get out of the way of a few angry boys as they storm out of the lounge.

Blinking, you turn back to Epel, who's busy strutting like a peacock. Mr. Abacus turns to another boy with a notepad.

"That means we're doing the red streamers for this Halloween,"

...The what?

You forget where you are until there's suddenly an arm slung around your shoulders, pulling you into the hall.

"How much of that didja see?"

You blink back at Epel, just as lost as before. "I heard more than I saw,"

"Huh. Guess you would," he pauses. "...It's not what it looked like."

What was it, then? Pro-wrestling? A battle reenactment? A dance rehearsal?? You had no idea what happened in there.

"What was that?"

Epel sucks in his breath. For a moment, he almost seems ashamed- is it possible for a student of this school to feel remorse? "Well, since Vil's been gone, and the new housewarden's not real interested in table manners..."

The students have resorted to beating each other to resolve their problems? And you thought this was supposed to be the posh dorm.

Then again, you shouldn't be surprised. Senseless violence seems to be an average Tuesday around here.

"Don't gimme that look! I tried to stop 'em, I really did!" Epel protests. "But under all that fancy makeup and perfume, they're still Night Raven College students like anyone else..."

He begins walking and waves for you to follow. You obey- where else would you go?

Your footsteps are soft, muffled by the plush, velvet carpets, voices drowned out by the drapery. Every inch of this dorm is covered in fur, silk, and cashmere, beaded with pearls and rubies, or finished in gold. Seeing a gaggle of teenage boys bleed out over the finely embroidered cushions could have sent an interior designer into a panic attack. Maybe that would've made it more of a comedy act and less of a crime scene.

You pass two, three, six bathrooms, each full of porcelain tubs and matching vanity mirrors, each as empty as the one you'd bathed in last night. And yet still, mascara wands and eyeshadow palettes are strewn on each surface, freshly used- it's not that the students had abandoned their posh routines, it's just that they throw themselves into a fury of flying punches and pillow feathers after blending their foundation.

They don't lack tenacity, they lack responsibility.

A quality you weren't so sure you possessed, either.

"The way I see it," Epel explains, "Is the only thing that really separates the student of one dorm from the student of another is whoever's in charge of 'em. You can't blame a dog that bites, it's the owner's doing."

You appreciate the biting dog metaphor. You'd had similar thoughts about the boys here.

It's a mystery how this school functions without a counselor.

"And when there's no one in charge..." you mutter, thoughts wandering back to the cries and crunching bones coming from Savanaclaw that one night.

"I don't even wanna think about that," Epel shudders.

"Are the students here really that bad?" it's a dumb question, but one that you find walking out of your mouth before your mind can follow.

Epel shrugs. "We have a reputation," and that's all he says.

But I'm not like that, you want to say, though you're not sure.

You don't really know what you're like anymore. Your thoughts have grown fuzzy and disorganized, a sink full of moldy dishes.

And you'd hardly call yourself a student, anyway. It'd been well over a month since you'd last stepped foot in a lecture hall, and longer since a professor had looked your way.

"It ain't usually this bad. The Halloween party's just got everyone in a tizzy... it's our first one without Vil,"

Was that guy really so important? He must have been, if he kept his dorm in such strict order that it completely collapsed when a slightly less competent leader stepped in.

"How'd that other guy get to be housewarden, anyway?" you ask, recalling some memory or two of Deuce explaining that the housewardens in his dorm are chosen through a duel (how perfectly archaic).

You're not sure why you think about the things people say only after they say them.

Epel blinks. "Oh, it's a..." he hesitates. He thinks it sounds dumb- but he cares about sounding dumb in front of you, which is fun. "...An old tradition."

"What kind?"

"...Whoever can brew the strongest poison gets to lead the dorm," he mutters.

You stare back. That is dumb. Better than a duel, maybe, but how is poison related to leadership at all? Are there a lot of political assassinations in this dorm?

You wouldn't be surprised.

"Vil'd been tutoring me for months," Epel goes on, "He'n Rook really wanted me to take over after they went on."

You blink. And he didn't get it.

"And I didn't get it,"

He pauses.

"I wasn't ready, I s'pose,"

You look away. Everyone you'd met so far- Silver, Deuce, Ruggie, and now Epel- seemed to have these things thrust on them. Responsibility. Duty. Obligation. Being needed. Like the world was on its dying breath, and desperately digging its heels into whatever good- no, gullible person it could drag down with it.

Maybe everyone here starts out that way, and then when they get chewed up and spat out, they think twice about being kind the next time.

The one who came before you- the other magicless student- was one of them.

Kind. Gullible. Good, maybe, too. They just left before they could become cold and cruel like the rest.

Well, maybe. Probably. That's why you're here, aren't you? To take on the burden they left behind. It's how everyone treats you, isn't it?

Like a replacement. And a malfunctioning one, at that.

Well, you think, following Epel down a flight of stairs. They chose the wrong successor.

You were cold to begin with, and you're not going anywhere.

"Where are we going?" you finally ask, as he stops at an iron-bound wooden door and pulls a bony key from the heel of his boot.

Epel tilts his head back. "Dungeon. Halloween stuff's down there,"

You blink.

Dungeon. Halloween stuff. Right. He says it so naturally, you almost accept it until the stench of wood rot and dust hits your nose.

"I used to think it was a basement. Ya know, a cellar," he says, leading you down a spiral staircase and into the black abyss, with only the light from his phone to guide you. You can only pray he remembered to charge it last night. This would be a bad place to get lost. "For wine, and pickled things, and broken chairs..."

Used to. It's cold, and the limestone walls are rough under your palm.

"Then what's actually down here?"

He doesn't answer.

"Do they got Halloween where you're from?" Epel asks, and the question hits you like a truck. Not the content of it, or the context, but the intent. He's making small talk. It's the first time anyone had really asked you anything about your home, and really wanted to hear an answer. You almost forget how to speak.

"Yes," you say, "In some places. And there's Christmas."

"What's that?"

You blink. "...You know... Christmas?"

Epel gives you a quick glance out of the corner of his eyes. "Never heard of it,"

"Huh," you say, acting as if that hadn't been like dunking a bucket of ice water over your head.

He doesn't know it, but here, in the depths beneath the dorm, in the dark and quiet and cold, the sound of clinking chains and the feeling of cobwebs sticking to the back of your neck, he had just opened a window for you. One overlooking the world outside of this school, and the first real one. Not Foothill Town, not the alley behind the lobster bar, not the mail room- even Smokey refused to answer your questions, the ones about culture and customs and language and, most of all, magic. You had given up on that one a long time ago.

But here was Epel Felmier, talking to you, the unwanted house guest, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

"Why are you so nice to me?" you blurt out, and he raises an eyebrow.

"I'm not,"

He pauses.

"...I just got other problems,"

Somehow, that's still the nicest thing that anyone had said to you yet.

"I have another question,"

It'd been following you all day. Out of the dungeon, up the spiral stairs, out of the box of Halloween decor and (hopefully, but who's to say?) fake skeletons, red streamers spilling from between their bones like guts and gore, through the mirror portal, and, now, here.

Condensation sticks to the skin under your arms and between your thighs. The air here is salty, and lukewarm, a sharp contrast from the dry, brittle dungeon. Each breath beneath Pomefiore had you worrying that your vocal chords would shrivel up and snap like plastic- here, your tongue is swimming in sweat and saltwater.

The identical henchmen standing on either sides of the VIP lounge door give you lopsided looks- one of passive disinterest, one of bubbling curiosity.

"Azul's in a meeting right now," the bored one (Floyd, you remind yourself) says. "So, beat it."

"It's important," you say.

But it's not, not really, more of an urge you need satisfied, an itch you need scratched. Epel had cracked the window, but now you wanted to throw it open and kick out the screen.

And you had no one else to humor you.

He yawns. "Listen, I'm not in the mood for this, so get lost before I squeeze 'ya."

"Now, Floyd," the other (Jade?) tuts. "Let's not turn away a customer so soon. What would Azul think?"

"He wouldn't think anything. We tell people to scram all the time,"

"Hush," Jade crouches to your eye level, barely holding back a smirk. "You're quite the interesting one."

Says you, you want to tell him, but you hold your tongue. You've been getting bold lately- not out of newfound confidence, but restlessness. You're flighty, on edge. Something's not right. Something's not been right for a long time. "Why's that?"

"Oh, you know..."

He says nothing else.

Floyd sighs. "I'm bored. Let 'em in, for all I care, I'm getting a snack," and then he saunters off, swinging a lonely key ring around his finger.

You narrow your eyes at the key, dark brown and pine- why does it seem so familiar?- but then Jade's breathing down your neck again.

"You really want to see Azul, don't you? ...I suppose we could make a special exception and squeeze you in between appointments... for a price, of course,"

"No, thank you," you're done with taking deals from teenage boys. "I'll just wait."

"Hm. Well, I suppose it won't be too long," Jade says, standing straight. "The wish he's consulting with now is impossible to grant."

The sound of something solid and heavy being thrown on the hard floor, and of two voices shouting, carries through the door, which then flies open- missing your face by a breath.

You freeze and are suddenly met with two fiery eyes, a body suspended mid-step as if the carpet was flypaper.

Ace Trappola stares at you, his hand strangling the door knob, his breath hot and heavy on your face.

One of the leather armchairs is splayed across the office floor behind him. Azul is standing on the other side of the desk, looking flustered, and completely unlike his calm, collected self, the one that you had come to loathe.

For a moment, there's almost an understanding.

A bit like what you had felt with Epel earlier- "Hey, I don't know what it is that causes you so much pain, but I'm hurting, too. Let's not kill each other."

But then, Ace's eyes narrow, he yanks himself away from the office, and he storms off as if his heels were on fire.

Jade holds the door open and smiles merrily. "Azul will see you now,"

The soft click of the door- preceded with a devilish smirk from the doorman- follows you into the room.

Azul is standing, collecting paperweights and pens that had been scattered over the floor. The chair stays upside down.

You feel smug enough to make a joke. "Unhappy customer?"

He narrows his eyes at you, and then awkwardly sits at his desk and pretends to read through a stack of papers.

"What, have you come to mock me, too? As if my staff weren't enough,"

You have a feeling that Floyd and Jade's mockery isn't as personal as he takes it- that's just what they're like.

Maybe if he weren't so unpleasant, he would have better friends.

Maybe the same could be said of you.

Oh, well.

"No," you say, sitting in the other (upright) chair. "I just wanted to talk."

"Talk?" he snorts, pretending to sign a blank sheet of paper (which he yanks out of view when he notices you looking). "I don't talk. I deal. I barter. If you want a fair transaction, you come to me. If you want to gab about your day, you find a therapist."

Or a friend. But he wouldn't know much about that, would he?

"It's not really the philosophical kind of talk," you say, recalling your first fateful offer from Azul. "It's just a question."

He glances up at you over the rim of his glasses. Slowly, he sets down his pen and folds his hands under his chin. The light in the room seems to dim, as if something big and hungry was swimming over the ocean above and blocking out the sun.

"And why, pray tell, would you come to me for that?"

"Because," You just want the satisfaction. "You know a lot of things."

Azul seems satisfied enough with that answer, though his annoyance lingers. You try to tell yourself he's just worked up after whatever had happened with Ace. Nothing personal. Just like his bodyguards. Nothing personal.

"The library is still open to students at this hour," he states, speaking like a search results page rather than a person.

"It's kind of a big question,"

"Big as in, existentially?"

"No, more like... geographically,"

Azul raises an eyebrow, and for the first time in the brief time you had known him, he smiles. Really. With no fine print or loophole hidden behind his teeth.

He thinks you're being funny.

"Well, fine. Just this once," he says, "Ask me your question."

Your mouth hangs open for a second, dry and unprepared. And then:

"What do you know about Christmas?"

It sounds even dumber out loud than it had in your head. You had no real urge to celebrate the commercial holiday, cartons of expired eggnog and carols on the radio that get stuck in your head for days, but it was the first important difference of the many mundane differences between this world and the last, and you had to know.

How far are you from home?

No, not that. You hadn't thought about home in weeks.

It's more like this:

How far are you from yourself?

Azul blinks. "...I've never heard of anything like that. Is it a food?"

His confirmation of Epel's window felt like pure relief. Like falling asleep after a long day, like quenching your thirst with cold water after running a mile, like The End, like rest.

"A holiday," you say, "A big one."

"Well, a variation of it may occur in pockets of the world," Azul says, pushing his glasses up with his pinky. "But it's nothing I'm familiar with. Does that answer your question?"

He's smiling again, strangely (but it's been a very strange day, anyway).

"Yeah, I guess so," you pause, feeling only half satisfied by his answer. And then you feel something else- something warm, salty, and smug, something that reeks of cologne and the sea. Being near these boys, observing them, their empty eyes, their restricted manners of speaking, makes you a sort of mirror to them- it happened with Riddle, and a bit with Ruggie, too. With Smokey, in your letters, and with Silver, in your silence.

Now, with Azul, you feel insecure and self-important. "You've been a real jerk to me, you know that?"

Azul's smile wavers. "Pardon?"

"It's like you want me to suffer," you say, "Like you want me indebted to you or something. I talked to Ruggie."

Azul stands and takes a step towards the imposing vault that sits in the back of the room, silent and unsettling, like a bigger, meaner bodyguard. He withdraws a handkerchief from his pocket and begins to shine the handle.

"I wouldn't go around asking busboys important questions,"

You narrow your eyes. "You really think I believe that crap about honoring deals? I know what I saw,"

"Do you, though?"

He tucks his handkerchief back in his pocket. The glint in his grin is dangerous again.

"I have no reason to give you special treatment," he says, "Unlike the others, I'm not caught up in some fairy tale where all my dreams come true just because I want them to. Do you believe in work, Not-You? Hard work? Do you believe people are born with purpose? Prescribed purpose by others? Or that they make it? Well, my purpose is to work. No good things in life are free, and the free things aren't worth the price you pay later on... everyone here learned that the hard way, not too long ago."

He pauses to sit. "In fact, I told the gentleman who was here just before you the very same thing. You reap what you sow."

You want to stay firm, but your glare falters. What he's saying isn't untrue, even if you're not committed to the idea of it yet.

Azul sighs in response to your pensive silence.

"And for your information, I have no interest in your services. But I am interested in keeping you away from that dorm,"

You look up. His expression has become stone cold and serious, though there's a touch of melancholy in the twitch of his fingers.

"Some memories are better off forgotten."

You may not have concussed yourself this morning, but there's still a few hours left in the day.

You've begun keeping count of all the times you'd nearly been decapitated and/or bludgeoned in Pomefiore:

When Epel asked you to get more boxes out of the dungeon and you almost slipped on the spiral stairs,

When a second year carrying a ladder turned to wave at his friend and nearly took your head off,

When you really did slip down the stairs (in the lounge, this time) and just barely avoided landing in a comfy pile of light bulbs.

Violence seems so much less appealing when it's not a quirky remark or an unpleasant daydream, when it's coming at you like an unleashed dog on an empty sidewalk and you're wearing roller skates. You've been struggling to swallow ever since that sophomore almost decapitated you.

You're trying not to think of it.

How much of a living, breathing, bleeding thing you suddenly seem.

The ignoramus attitude of the student body had slipped from between your fingers and fallen into the cracks in the tile of Heartslabyul, Savanaclaw, Octavinelle, and Diasomnia, and you had been seen and touched and spoken to in a manner that almost implied understanding, something like five times now, by boys who knew you weren't what they wanted, but could find some other use for you, anyway. Silver, Ruggie, Azul, Smokey, and now Epel, making you walk to the school store for an extension cord.

It was a bit of a mystery, how suddenly the seasons had changed. The trees bereft of their foliage, the grass dry and dirt wet, the clouds that seemed to drape over campus like a shroud over a grave, the actual graves, cracked and faceless from the wind and rain...

Your hand trembles around the handle of the plastic grocery bag, fingers pushing through the thin stuff as if they were breaking through the surface of the sea.

Something's not right.

And it's you, sure. You're the stranger, the unwanted house guest, the elephant on campus, the unsure breath between the words of boys who would never love you, never know you. You didn't belong. You had figured that out in the first ten minutes of being here.

But there was something else. The trail of blood that had been left for you, clues to a crime no one had witnessed, or at least thought about. The hollowness of it all- of the school, of the students, of Ramshackle dorm, as if they were missing a vital organ, a cog that had been keeping the whole thing ticking. Maybe more than one. There were more than one pair of shoes to fill on campus, after all, yours just happened to be the biggest. Azul's comment confirmed this- they were avoiding you, yes, but also the thing behind you. It's what they looked at when they wouldn't meet your eyes. The shadow that rode on your back everywhere, that wasn't there before- something that had attached itself to you like a fungal infection. Something that had been wandering aimlessly on campus until you showed up and claimed it.

You were a host for their guilt.

Of what? It still wasn't much of a murder scene, despite the coffins and graves and the light in the spooky old house.

Something's really not right.

They resent you for it. Or are at least cautious. They never answer your questions, not that you ever try to ask- but that word, that name, that title that rises to the surface like a dead body on a lake, You, it came through to you anyhow.

They didn't want to talk about it. Or you.

And you had to know.

Untangling the wires of your brain has gotten harder.

You feel less sure of who you are every day. But you have a motive, now, no matter how the world is trying to keep you from pursuing it, to keep you from asking questions, to keep you from escaping.

Tink, tink, tink. There's that music again.

You stop and turn to stare over your shoulder, at Ramshackle dorm. There's the light in the upper story window, sure, but there's an orange-ish something coming from the attic now, too.

You narrow your eyes. What is Azul trying to protect?

What are all of them trying to hide?

Plunk. You drop the extension cord on the pavement and turn to the Queen Anne-styled house, rolling up your sleeves and muddying your winter boots.

Door's locked. Windows are boarded. You tug at the gutter to see if it'll hold your weight, conspiring to climb to the attic, but no such luck- it creaks, groans, and crumbles like it was made out of wet paper.

The doors are solid oak, both front and back, and you only hurt your foot trying to kick them in.

You're nearing your limit, about to give in and return to Pomefiore, when you spot something shiny and flat in the grass.

A piece of rusty sheet metal? Two pieces of rusty sheet metal? With handles? And a broken chain laying in the flax a foot away?

Epel's earlier prose about wine and pickled things and old, broken chairs comes to mind. A cellar. The old dorm has a cellar. Of course.

And where there's a cellar, there has to be stairs, and a door, and a kitchen from where wine goes and pickled things come. And somewhere around there, an attic.

You nudge open the door with the toe of your boot and crouch, peering down the stone steps- it's pitch black. But you're sure enough that there will be slivers of moonlight coming from tall windows to guide your way, and so you take a deep breath, leaving the double doors wide open behind you.

It's impossibly dark.

Your hope-slash-delusion about there being windows in the basement was built off of a hunch, and not anything substantial, though your gut had never been so wrong before.

Well, there's a first for everything.

You take it one toe at a time, nudging into the darkness to keep from walking into anything sharp and pointy.

Brilliant idea, you mock yourself, Get impaled in a sweaty old basement that smells like ham and pennies, and no one will ever find your body.

Not that anyone would look for you in the first place. You left the extension cord outside, and one extension cord is all you're worth here.

The toe of your boot hits something solid. A shelf, you think, or the leg of it, and you casually maneuver out of the way, grabbing at nothing in the pitch black of the basement. At least you haven't walked face-first into a wall yet.

And at least there are no rats or giant spiders.

...Well, none that you can see.

CRRR-KAH!

You freeze at the noise. A shelf tipping over? The house collapsing? A rat?

Summoning the motivation to turn, you look over your shoulder.

The dumb cellar doors had fallen shut. Of course. You should've found something to prop them open with, especially on a windy night like this, but you didn't think of that. You consider retracing your steps to push them apart and then continue your foray into the abyss (they are your only opening to the outside world, after all, the single source of light in the dark basement), but then there's another sound.

The shuffle of chains. The clink of metal on metal. The scrape of something moving across the floor.

Not like in Pomefiore, where the breeze from your bodies and the wind of the world above had disturbed the old, abandoned chains hanging from bars on the wall like party streamers.

This sound moved with purpose.

You think you would've preferred rats and giant spiders.

The sound comes closer, and you take a cautious step back- CRKK! You step on something long and thin, and it makes a sickening crack beneath your heel.

That was definitely a rat.

But then there's a fluorescent green light coming from your foot, and when you look down, there's a glow stick under your boot.

Cr-crk!

Crk!

C-crik!

Crk!

Crk!

Yellow, orange, red, pink, green, all shades of the neon rainbow illuminate the dark, smelly basement, from shelves to tables to the rafters overhead. It's poor light, but it's light nonetheless.

"Well, well, well, what have we here?"

The last crack is followed by a loud fwmp. Something massive is sitting across the basement floor, legs crossed, chin held in one impressively big palm.

You blink.

This is... not ideal.

You had had your thoughts and theories about Ramshackle, and you had certainly wondered if there was still something living in it.

You've never hated being right so much.

"Lookie here, Mr. Swing's got a visitor! It's been a loooong time since I had a visitor," he pauses to grin. "Or is it dinner?"

Your eyes widen, and he barks out a loud laugh. It shakes the entire basement. You cling to the shelf behind you.

"Visitor," you say, forcing yourself to keep your cool (you haven't been practicing your poker face in awkward situations for two months just to slip up now). "...Nice to meet you..."

Your eyes dart to something long writhing beneath the collar of his shirt. You grimace.

"...Both."

Swing blinks back at you. Then, with another grin, he lights up like a Christmas tree, the neon colors of the basement dancing under the shadow of his brow.

"...Visitor it is. Dinner isn't usually so polite,"

You swallow the bubble of bile that'd been rising in your throat. Maybe the reason no one would let you in here is because of the squatter situation?

...No, they wouldn't care about that. If they even knew there was someone down here at all.

"No one comes down to visit Mr. Swing anymore," he sighs, and the thing coiled around his neck and collar worms around in agreement. "Not even the ghosts."

Literally or metaphorically? You wonder if this Mr. Swing is the same sort of thing Sebek is- you'd never asked, but the pointy ears, the fangs, the inhuman pupils... lots of Diasomnia students looked like that, now that you think about it. It's probably the same thing that gives some people animal ears.

Better not to think too much about the logic of a magical fantasyland.

"Not since... tch, well, Mr. Swing doesn't care about that," he says, standing again, the top of his head grazing the tall ceiling of the basement. "Wanna play a game?"

"No, thank you," you say, sticking your foot out with your tongue- that is, verbally navigating around the conversation while you maneuver around the cellar, eyeing the door. "I think I should go."

You've become very fond of finding excuses to leave. Unbirthday parties, equestrian club meetings, lectures and library study sessions... maybe you didn't hide those letters because you didn't really care if Silver found them. Just another excuse to get out and go. Go where? You hadn't figured that out yet.

You thought it might've been to Smokey, but now you're not so sure. The school doesn't seem so keen on letting you leave it.

Neither does Swing.

He frowns at your suggestion, turns, and then- with one hand- bends and twists the metal handles of the cellar door into a mangled knot.

He sits down with a smile. "Now... wanna play a game?"

You stare. For once, you have nowhere to go- and there's no amount of etiquette loopholes you can jump through here.

Not with someone who obviously doesn't care for things like social awkwardness.

You sit on the dirty cellar floor, far from him as you can manage. Closer to the glow sticks scattered across the dirt and stone, you can make out the water damage on the walls and the decades (no, centuries) of weather and wear on the dorm.

"What kind of game?"

You might've had a chance at winning (or at least at understanding the rules of the game, if he wouldn't keep changing them and insisting that this is a version of poker from a country that no longer exists), but you aren't all that interested in it to begin with.

At least Swing promises not to bet anything "serious" on it- he says he's in the "spirit of the season", whatever that means.

He mentions he's expecting a guest on Halloween.

"We already thought about keeping you to use as bait, but we don't think that'd work again," he explains. Again. Sure. If you weren't so used to feeling like a ghost in every conversation, you might've been uncomfortable with the way he keeps talking to the open air, as if there was someone else in the basement with you.

"I fold," you say for the thousandth time, admitting an easy defeat. Swing hums- he hasn't mentioned your lack of enthusiasm yet. He seems to enjoy winning.

Or maybe he's as disinterested in the game as you are.

"Mr. Swing hasn't seen you around before," he says. "How many years've they been gone?"

You blink, looking up from your hand of cards. "Who?"

You had almost forgotten, for a moment. You answer your own dumb remark before he can.

"Don't know. A few months,"

"Mhm," he hums. "And how've you been faring in their place?"

Your fingers curl around the cards, wrinkling the corners. Your vision tunnels, closing in on the ace of spades in the center of your hand. "Hm?"

Mr. Swing whistles an unfamiliar tune, folding and shuffling his own hand of cards. "Only wondering if the voices have started for you, yet," He's suddenly very lucid.

You look up. "What?"

"Or was it dreams?" he asks. "Mr. Swing's memory is not what it used to be."

The enormous head of a centipede peeks out from under his collar, nods, and then scuttles back inside his shirt. You stare.

"Dreams," you repeat, your eyes falling to your cards. "No, no dreams."

"No, it was voices. Sure of it now. They were always muttering about the voices. Or voices in dreams," he says. "Big whoop. We all have a little something whispering in our ear... don't we?"

The centipede circles the sides of his neck and hides behind his ear. You frown.

"They... You... was hearing things? In dreams?" you ask. "Like, the other students?"

It's not a ridiculous question. You had been haunted by the faceless names and the nameless faces that had been following you from orientation. Sometimes, in the moments between sleep and wake, you can hear Riddle scolding your posture, or Azul sneering at your weakness, or Silver's silence. And, as you had first noted with Riddle last month, you'd begun adopting those neuroses and personality traits against your will. Soaking them up, like a sponge.

You suppose that since the students here take so much of your waking thoughts, they'd easily creep into the sleeping ones, too.

But Swing only shrugs. "Never said. But Mr. Swing could tell they weren't all there at the end,"

You raise an eyebrow.

"They went home," you say, "Or..."

They died. Your heart stops for a moment. You don't say it. You don't want to.

It would mean that everything you had experienced here- the stares, the sighs, the painful pause between the breaths of boys who could never meet your eye- was meaningful. Justified. An open wound still bleeding, and you had been blind to it. Willingly, maybe.

It would mean that the anger and guilt and resentment that had been piled onto your back one after the other, the collective misery of a campus that had made you its beast of burden, was necessary.

Needed, but not wanted. That's what you were, and always would be.

You were serving a sentence on someone else's behalf.

Maybe it was a crime scene, after all, and you were the closure. You were being framed for a murder.

"No," Swing says.

He tosses his cards on the cold stone between you, scattering a hand of queens, kings, and aces. He could've won at any turn- he was drawing this out on purpose.

"They left,"

You look up. They went home, after all.

That's even worse.

Then it was all for nothing.

"Where did they go?" Your thoughts wander to Fleur City, to Smokey's letters, to the palpable pain in each word. To his responsibility. His duty to shield you from the secrets of this world.

And so far, he had done a wonderful job. After all, the moment you stopped writing him, you end up playing poker in a basement with a squatter.

Swing shrugs again. "Never said,"

You raise an eyebrow. Even this stranger's words and manners were beginning to rub off on you, and you feel a bit bolder than before. "So they just... what, walked away and never came back?"

"More or less,"

You blink. More or less?

How... anticlimactic.

"One day, You. Next day, no You,"

"They didn't tell anyone where they were going?" you ask.

"They didn't say they were going anywhere at all,"

"So they just vanished,"

He shrugs again. You take that as a yes. Or an "I don't really care, but probably."

You look down at your empty lap. They didn't go home. They didn't die. They just... stopped existing altogether. Disappeared into thin air.

Your thoughts touch on the doggy bag of paper and quills sitting in a Pomefiore dorm right now. To the stolen boots on your feet.

"They didn't take anything," you assume, not ask.

"Mhm," Swing says, "And no one's been here since."

So that's it.

Your eyes drift up, not to the something foul and brown dripping from a crack in the ceiling, but to the something beyond.

A bedroom. A bed. Two, probably. A desk, a chair. A dresser.

A light.

You weren't allowed in because you would soil it. Ruin it. Put your filthy letters in the drawers, track your dirty feet on the rug. Dig up the graveyard they had made of it.

You look back to Swing, whistling while taking rat skulls and spools of thread from his pockets, looking for the card sleeve. He seems to be enjoying the company.

"Why?" you ask, without any particular reason.

He hums. "They couldn't handle it,"

The responsibility? The pressure? The guy living in their basement?

Or... was it possible that they had been othered, and burdened by this otherness, like you?

You blurt out the first thing that comes to mind, as if this stranger would have any answer to give. "And I can?"

Swing smirks. "Dunno. Maybe. Maybe not. Mr. Swing thinks you're a fighter. Mr. Swing thinks you figured it out long before they did,"

Too many "its" in this conversation. "Figure what out?"

"It," he repeats. "Why you're here."

A few cards slip from between your fingers and flutter to the floor, rolling off the toe of your boot. A queen of hearts, a seven of diamonds, and a five of spades land in a puddle of brown water beneath you.

"I don't know why I'm here," you insist.

"We think you do,"

What does it matter what he thinks? He doesn't know you, nor does he care to- he was joking about eating you not twenty minutes ago!

"We think," he says, "You know that they need little things like you."

"And that's a bad thing," you state, not ask.

He shrugs. Your eyes dart to the side. Needed, but not wanted. That's the first thing you had figured out here. Everybody needs you, but nobody wants you. Nobody thinks of you, nobody looks for you. That's the second, and the reason you had begun unraveling. This place needs strong people to keep the gears running. Without them, it's chaos. That's the third.

But that's only about you. Nothing to do with You.

You look back at Swing. "They weren't from here, either. Were they?"

He confirms with another apathetic shrug, though he's been glancing at you out of the corner of his eyes with a subdued curiosity- like he's observing a bug on the wall.

"But they were brought here. So was I," you pause. "Needed. Needed..."

"Mr. Swing thinks you have some people to talk to. Starting with that Headmage of yours," he says, plucking the remaining cards out of your hand and slipping them into one of the large pockets of his coat.

"And you'll come back, won't you?" He asks. "At least before Christmas?"

The hairs on the back of your neck raise. But you don't have time for questions- not now. You should climb out the window while you still can.

You stand. He doesn't stop you. "I will,"

You're not sure of that, but you'd really like to see the sky and breathe fresh air again. You'll smell like mildew for days after this.

Another reason to be thankful for Epel and his dorm's thousands of baths.

Swing tears the basement doors open for you and you climb out into the night, nearly knocked unconscious by the cold, sharp autumn air pouring into your lungs.

With a loud creak, the doors shut behind you. You wonder how long Swing has been down there, and if anyone but You knew he was down there at all- better not to bring it up, just in case.

He may have joked about eating you, but he was still the only sensible person in this place.

...Maybe that's a bad thing.

As soon as you catch your breath, you turn on your heels and begin walking back to the path, intent on having both a bath and a bed to sleep in tonight.

Got to sleep. Got to eat. Got to find Crowley...

The wind is cold. Every breath is like an ice bath, a sharp contrast to the muggy, suffocating air of the cellar. You step ahead, turning around the corner of the dorm, where-

What's that?

You stop just a few steps shy of the porch.

There's something on it. Wide-eyed and startled.

You stare.

It stares back.

The space between you is blue.

You've never seen a cat with a forked tail.

Is that normal here?

Then, with a flick of its fiery ears, it steps back into the dark of the porch and disappears.

You stay still for a moment longer before your feet remember that it's below freezing and these boots are old, worn, and not really winter boots at all. You'd grabbed the wrong pair. Typical.

Midnight. No, just past.

One-ten in the morning.

Security efforts are always doubled at night. Between the hours of final curfew and first light, forty-five ghost guards, hired from the yellow pages of Crowley's one-hundred year old phonebook, keep their undead eyes eternally peeled for miscreants on campus.

But good as they are, Ace Trappola knows how to get around them. Which corridors will be empty, which paths less taken, which doors unlocked... and for no innocent reason, trust him, he's heard it. The ghosts might not catch him, but Housewarden Riddle would.

Tonight, he doesn't care about being collared.

Tonight, he's had enough.

Trey had once warned him that the walls of Heartslabyul dorm are thin as paper, and Riddle's hearing is positively inhuman- he could catch a dormouse in the cupboard by the sound of its heartbeat. Ace has to take extra precautions, carrying his sneakers under his arm and sliding across the smooth tile in his socks to muffle his footsteps, until he's outside.

There's never any wind in the pocket dimension that houses Heartslabyul dorm. Ideal for unbirthday parties (no lost napkins or overturned tablecloths) and for painting the shrubbery, not so ideal for hiding the sound of a second year sneaking to the back door.

The mirror chamber is swarming with ghost guards- duh. Any clueless freshman attempting to get out for a midnight snack on campus would try to take the main door (er... not that Ace has ever been caught doing that, no siree). Luckily, every dorm comes with five or six... fire exits, so to speak. That is, emergency exits that exist in between bookshelves and tea cupboards in case the main mirror portal weren't an option. Spells weaken. Magic fades. Someday, some poor sap will try heading to class and walk face-first into a cold brick wall.

And portals aren't easy. That's two, three months of repair. Crowley couldn't relocate an entire dorm for that amount of time, and, thus...

Fire exits.

The one Ace has chosen is at the end of the hedge maze, a path he's memorized by heart. It's the one he used to use to sneak out for snacks and midnight strolls on campus nearly every night.

It spits him out behind Ramshackle.

No longer in the pocket dimension that houses Heartslabyul dorm, the wind sticks dead grass and nettles to his coat. He pats himself down and keeps moving, taking extra care to avoid the cellar doors protruding out of the earth only a few paces ahead.

Yuu had never really told him what was down there, but he trusted them enough not to doubt their word.

He keeps on, kicking a pinecone across the gravel and dead grass until he's back on the main path. He takes his usual route around the back of the school, through a washroom window, and up a narrow, nearly crumbling set of stone stairs that had been blocked off with a "under construction" sign since before even Trey had enrolled, and then to the imposing pair of double doors he had never seen in this light.

Yuu was usually the one who spoke to the Headmage. Not him.

Ace supposes that's just what he's here for.

He doesn't knock- it's not worth it. He knows Crowley will be here, because Crowley nearly never leaves.

The doors open quietly, no creaks, no groans, no scrape of wood on stone. Ace peers into the candlelit darkness.

"...Trappola," Crowley greets him, calmer than Ace had expected (where was the girlish scream and long lecture on disrespecting the rules?) "You're up rather late. What time is it, now? Nearly nine?"

"One in the morning," Ace answers. "Where have you been? I've been trying to talk to you for like, two weeks now."

Crowley sighs and slumps forward, cupping his chin in his palm and nudging a quill around his desk. Bored. "Oh, yes, I see. Azul has already filed a complaint and demanded compensation for the damage to his VIP lounge,"

Ace frowns. "What? No, it's not about that," he wants to yell at the old man to focus, but he holds his tongue. He knows that Crowley can get scary when angered. "I want to talk about them. I want to talk about Yuu."

The golden pinpoints within the depths of the mask obscuring Crowley's face dart up.

"Oh?" he asks. "And what about them?"

Ace grits his teeth. That tone. Casual. Unbothered. As if Yuu were just any student. As if they had just gone home for winter holiday. As if they were never really there at all.

"It's not fair," he blurts out. "All that crap you put them through. The impossible tasks, the shitty dorm, the... the responsibility you put on the shoulders of someone who could barely take care of themselves, let alone everyone else! And to-"

He pauses, swallowing a hot, salty mouthful of saliva.

"To just let them do nothing- get coddled by everyone like some... some glass... thing! It's not fair. It's not fair!"

Crowley says nothing. He simply holds his chin in his palm and stares. Still as a statue.

His lack of reaction makes Ace's anger more volatile, more violent, tearing out of his throat like vomit.

"Giving them a proper dorm, letting them skip class, hand-delivering their mail, Crowley! Don't think we don't know about that! It's insane, you're insane! Don't you see what you're doing?"

A pause. Ace takes a hard, deep breath.

"Don't you think that Yuu might've stayed if you'd treated them half as well? If you let them do whatever they want? If you-"

"That's quite enough," Crowley says, standing to his full height, dark and intimidating in the dim light.

Ace takes a step back, but the Headmage only withdraws a box of matches from his desk and then walks to the window to light another candle. Warm, yellowish light flickers across the dark of his mask.

"I cannot change the past, Mr. Trappola. It's rather immature of you to throw such a tantrum over what cannot be controlled."

Ace glares. "But if you would just-"

"Obviously, the responsibility was too much. I see that now," Crowley murmurs, waving out his matchstick and admiring the blackened, burnt remains between his fingertips. "For all of you."

Ace glowers, but retreats, bowing his head. For all of you.

Riddle. Leona. Azul. Jamil. Vil. Idia. Malleus.

And, then, Yuu.

"It's not like that," the ginger mutters, more to himself than the Headmage.

Crowley slips the matchstick into his pocket and sits. "You're right," he says. "It was quite different, indeed. But the responsibility I gave to Yuu was no greater than what I gave to the housewardens. And they only had one member of their dorm to look after."

"Don't act like-"

The Headmage raises a clawed finger. "One must ask oneself," he says, "If it was not the position that wore them, then what was it?"

Ace frowns. "They didn't have magic,"

"True, true, but perhaps that wouldn't have mattered. Perhaps that was a strength, rather than a weakness," Crowley says, drumming his fingers on the desk- each metal talon making a sharp click against the wood. "Perhaps we all overestimated their ability to handle it."

"The magic?"

"No," the Headmage says, leering forward. "Not the magic. The burden. Of shouldering the sadness of an entire student body."