Chapter Text
Lars woke up the next day in unusually good spirits. He had the artist's contact now and, lacking anything better, had saved it under the nickname Little Painter. It somehow echoed Little Tiger a bit too closely for comfort, but Lars chose not to dwell on that resemblance. What bothered him more was his own oversight: twice he had met her, and twice he had failed to ask for her name. For a man who prided himself on details, it was an embarrassingly amateur mistake. Still, he told himself there would be a next time. He had already decided, after all, that her gallery was worth backing.
His good mood didn’t survive the Stellaris Cup. The competition collapsed in the worst possible way.
At first, everything unfolded exactly as rehearsed. The venue was packed with buzzing energy, the audience murmuring excitedly beneath the MC’s bright introduction and opening remarks. The judges were presented one by one and Lars played his part flawlessly - the face of Feinz Group, the visionary investor, all charm and charisma, as if he was born for the stage.
Then the lights dimmed as the first contestant stepped forward. Not to Lars’ surprise, it was Little Painter’s quiet friend, dressed in lustrous white. The bodice hugged her lithe frame, while the skirt felt loose and airy around her legs. A flower fascinator adorned her hair - yellow carnations and glistening pearls accentuating the solemn focus in her light brown eyes. Under the spotlight, the girl had shed her shyness completely.
Drawing in a deep breath, she assumed her opening pose and the music began. From the speaker, a soft female voice rang through the vast hall, clear and melancholic, telling a tale of loss. The contestant herself did not sing; she gave form to the grief with sinuous grace. Beneath the melody, faint drums and bell-like tones chimed at intervals, guiding the mind’s eye to a sacred shrine.
The singer’s voice rose wave after wave, gathering emotion until it could no longer stay contained. In unison, the music grew fuller, more urgent before straining sharply upward. The grief broke out into a heart-wrenching wail toward heaven, and the dancer answered with her whole body. Her billowing dress shimmered at every swift turn, leaving behind a brief, ghostly trail. She looked less like a performer than someone mourning in pain, all her longing directed to the far shore.
Abruptly after the climax, the voice dropped. The dancer stopped as well, as if they were both waiting for the faintest reply from somewhere impossibly far away. For a moment, only drums and bells remained.
The audience fell into silence. Even Lars found it difficult to keep his composure - the performance struck a wound that could never fully close. Something lodged in his throat, as though some buried part of him wanted to join that cry. Around him, the entire hall seemed to hold its breath.
At the next beat, the singing voice returned along with the dance. The cycle repeated once more - remembrance, longing, followed by a poignant cry. As the song climbed towards its second peak, a pentagram of light flared beneath the dancer’s feet as if on cue. For one second, no one reacted. Then whispers rippled the crowd as the circle pulsed alive.
“Hey look, under her feet…”
“What is that?!”
Undisturbed, the music slowed to a chant toward the end, and the atmosphere shifted with it. What had sounded like mourning now seemed to tilt toward invocation. That was when black butterflies surged out from within the light. They poured around the girl like a living cage of fluttering wings. The dancer kept moving as if nothing could touch her, and that held the panic in place for those few precious seconds. The sight was unsettling yet deeply mesmerizing, and the audience remained frozen in place, unable to discern whether they were experiencing an extremely elaborate stage effect or a living nightmare.
Until the girl crumpled to the floor at the final chant, the light from her dress swallowed by the swarm.
That shook everybody out of the trance. The audience surged toward the exits. Screams and cries broke out. Faculty barked commands, curbing the panic before it could exacerbate into a stampede. Security moved with urgency, escorting important guests to safety. On his way out, Lars caught only fragments from the corner of his eyes: the volatile tornado of dark wings raging on, staff reaching for the unconscious girl, a flash of movement dashing out from behind the stage. Little Painter throwing herself toward her friend was the last thing he saw.
What followed only made the whole affair uglier. It was confirmed shortly after that the first contestant was dead. Little Painter, who tried to save her, disappeared in the immediate aftermath.
However, the misfortune had yet to end. Just two days later, St. Shelter’s Headmaster, Professor Heinrich was found dead in the cave system behind the Academy. Clarence Clayden - the Student Council President - petitioned for an investigation into the Professor’s death, but the process didn’t shed much light on the whole mystery.
Since the competition was broadcast live, it became the talk of the town at once. Tabloids, news outlets and social media each came up with their own theories. Some claimed it was a terrorist attack. Others speculated sabotage. Darker corners of the internet suspected some kind of occult - perhaps a curse.
The academy board couldn’t erase what people had seen, but it was more than capable of blurring the edges. With its connection to various laws and media firms, the official recording was taken down in record time. Afterwards, all reuploads from major platforms vanished one by one. Search results were soon flooded with cautious articles, official statements and careful recaps. Major outlets continued to update on the event, but their language had softened significantly.
St. Shelter Academia quickly settled on a narrative. Heinrich, they claimed, had been carrying out unauthorized experiments in the subterranean lab. The absurd phenomenon during the competition was allegedly either an attempt to divert attention from his misconduct or an uncontrolled spillover. Later, that very experiment destabilized the cave structure and took his life.
Of course, not everyone believed it. The Professor had been respected for years, and the idea that he would endanger his students and colleagues for personal benefits didn’t sit right with those who knew him. But the public merely needed a face to pin on the unknown, and St. Shelter offered them exactly that. The dead could not speak for themselves, and the living didn’t hesitate to exploit their silence.
Then, in less than a week, the vacancy was filled. The new acting Headmaster was Miss Liore - a woman tied to the world-famous fashion corporation Moirai Group, with degrees in economics, education, and fashion design among others. Officially, she was presented as a steady hand needed in a time of adversity, yet her signatures had already begun appearing on long-term plans and internal documents where a confirmed Headmaster’s authority was required.
Under Miss Liore’s watch, the Academy refused to slow down. A memorial was held, yes. Counseling services were provided, yes. Faculty and Student Council members tended to students’ mental well-being, yes. Still, the new semester wasn’t postponed by even a day. Meetings resumed. Plans continued. Students were quietly discouraged from discussing the incident, and within the campus ground, the general consensus stayed at unfortunate timing and regrettable death.
As an investor, Lars couldn’t help but respect the efficiency. The Academy knew well how to smother a fire before it spread beyond control.
As a person, that repulsed him.
A vacancy of that magnitude should have taken time, debate, and politics to settle. Instead, the new Headmaster was installed within days, as if the board had been waiting for Heinrich to vanish. Lars had traded words with the man and shaken his hand often enough since becoming an investor. Now Heinrich’s death was treated less like a tragedy and more like a liability. And though Lars retained his usual facade of calm, it rattled him that three people he had just recently spoken to were now either missing, dead, or erased from conversation.
Little Painter’s disappearance bothered him as well. Students were told to be on the lookout for the girl, but that was it. There was no public missing-person notice nor any urgent search beyond the school grounds. Either St. Shelter was avoiding further damage to its reputation, or it already had some idea of her whereabouts and only issued campus-wide instructions to keep up appearances.
So Lars extended his stay on Harp island to reassess the terms for his investment. He had come prepared to expand his relationship with St. Shelter after the competition, allowing for more collaborations and project funding. Most of it was personal investment, though some was tied to Feinz Group. Either way, the incident changed the calculation. Every event linked to St. Shelter would carry reputation risk, and no matter how Lars valued the young talent inside the Academy, he was not reckless enough to ignore that.
Besides, shrewd as he was as a businessman, he had never stopped listening to his gut. And now, his gut was telling him there was something fishy here that he couldn’t yet put his finger on.
After negotiation, Lars did not freeze scholarships or individual student support - talent was still worth nurturing at the end of the day. But large public-facing sponsorships and new high-visibility collaborations were placed on hold rather than expanded. That was due in no small part to Miss Liore’s crisis plan. It was clearly not her first time facing a media storm, and it showed. Still, Lars didn’t mistake competence for innocence.
Through private channels, he began hearing things that had never reached the public eye. Little Painter had reportedly been seen near the cave on the day Heinrich died, accompanied by Clarence. According to one source, the security guards stationed outside tried to stop them, only for Clarence to hold them back while the girl entered the cave alone. If that was true, then she might have been the last person to see Heinrich alive.
Yet there was no official record placing her there. The guards were dismissed soon afterward while Clarence never mentioned the encounter in any statement. On paper, she had still not been found on that day. That was the part Lars couldn’t ignore.
So the true version was: She had disappeared after the competition. Reappeared near the cave two days later. Vanished again before Heinrich’s body was found. Then returned just one day before the new semester, only to be brought directly to the new Headmaster on the following day. By pure coincidence, Lars ran into them on the day of semester start. Little Painter had looked completely normal, as though nothing had happened. He did not know whether to be relieved by that or disturbed.
Cael Anselm’s absence raised another question. Few people seemed to notice at first, but Emerald disappeared from public view after the competition as well. Perhaps he had gone looking for his protégé, but if so, the lack of a missing-person report or any official search actions felt wrong. And when he returned to St. Shelter Academia upon Heinrich’s demise and applied to do research overseas all of a sudden, the timing became difficult to ignore. Perhaps, Lars thought, both disappearances belonged to the same hidden thread.
Individually, each detail might have been explained away. Together, they suggested far more than met the eye. Lars suspected they all played their part in a larger scheme. He simply lacked the information to put the puzzle together.
The uneasiness followed Lars into sleep.
The dream carried him to a foreign town far away from Harp Island. Perhaps it was from one of his vacations - he couldn’t really tell.
He was in a cafe half-sunken below the street level. Its low window looked out onto a narrow cobblestone road, the type that could be found in any old European town. Outside, it was raining cats and dogs, and guests hurried in one after another, seeking shelter from the downpour. Most of them were wet from head to toe, coat dripping, boots leaving dark prints on the floor.
Lars was wet too. So was the one sitting across from him.
Sumiya was bundled in Lars’ coat, his fingers curling around a cup of tea. His hair clung damply to his temple, and his cheeks were flushed from the cold. Even like that, he still looked bright-eyed, as if hiding from a storm in a secluded cafe was exactly his idea of fun.
“Where are we?” Lars was the first to break the silence.
Sumiya glanced around, then gave him a sheepish smile. “No idea.”
Of course. His little tiger had never been good with directions.
“Then here’s a new quest for you,” Lars said, grinning. “Find out our current location and you shall receive a kiss from your local CEO.”
“Quest accepted,” Sumiya’s lips curled into a smile, matching his cheekiness. "Sounds like an adventure."
Lars laughed softly and took Sumiya’s hand. For a moment, the warmth of Sumiya’s fingers and the fondness in those dark eyes were enough to make him forget the rain, the cold, and the strange heaviness lurking at the edge of the dream.
Then a loud crack cut through the room. Chatter died at once.
Lars and Sumiya turned to the direction where the noise came from. A statue was split in half at the entrance, stone fragments scattered across the floor. A flower crown of yellow carnations was crushed by the debris, its petals already withering.
Lars hadn’t noticed the statue before. Or maybe he had and, in the strange logic of dreams, simply considered it a part of the background. Only now when he took a closer look at it did he recognize the face carved in stone. Professor Heinrich. He would be lying if he said it didn’t startle him.
Behind the broken statue stood a girl with purple-ash hair. Cael Anselm was next to her, still as aloof as always. They must have come in from the rain, yet not a single drop clung to them. Even the floor beneath them was dry.
The girl looked at the statue, unbothered, then at Lars.
Noticing the gaze, Sumiya tightened his fingers around Lars’.
“Lars, do you know her?” he whispered.
Lars tried to answer. He knew her. He had to know her, her dove drawing was still sitting at his mansion after all. But when he searched for her name, nothing came to his mind.
Curiosity got the better of him. He rose and walked toward the girl, and the warmth in his hand disappeared.
“May I have the pleasure of knowing your name?” he asked with a smile, polite and amicable by instinct. Cael didn’t say a word, his gaze fixed at the rain outside.
The girl looked up at Lars.
“My name is .“
Lars blinked. The sound scattered into noise the moment it reached his ears.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that.” He said apologetically.
“I said, my name is ,” she repeated, this time louder.
Lars did listen harder and somehow still couldn’t grasp it. It felt like a thousand words were spoken simultanously at the mention of her name.
Behind him, the cafe had gone silent. Sumiya was nowhere in sight.
And for the first time in the dream, Lars felt cold.