“What’s wrong, Alex? You’ve been all gloomy lately. It’s creepy.”
Neil said, sitting down in the seat opposite Alexander. It was a week after her father had begun his investigation in earnest, during lunchtime on a Monday in the cafeteria.
“Nah, it’s nothing.”
Alexander gave a curt reply to Neil’s words. Neil responded with equal curtness. “Righto, your loss. In that case, I’m havin’ this coleslaw.”
“Huh? Hang on a sec, Neil.”
“I’m hungry right now. This lunch box isn’t quite enough. So I want the coleslaw.”
“…”
“But, I don’t want that rock-hard baguette, the super salty onion consommé soup, that penne swimming in cheese, or the ham and cheese sandwich. Good enough reason, yeah?”
“You’ve gotta be kidding me…”
And so, without waiting for Alexander’s permission, Neil took the untouched coleslaw that sat before her. Just like that, Alexander’s lunch was one item lighter. Hmph. Alexander’s expression clouded over.
Neil stared at her face intently as he opened his lunch box. Then, with an uncharacteristic sigh, he said, “See? Something’s definitely up with you.”
“What is?”
“Well, usually you’d be blowing your top by now, right? Wouldn’t be surprised if you were yelling, “Ow, what’re you nicking my food for?!” I mean, that’s what you’re normally like. You’re weirdly possessive about your stuff, aren’t ya?”
“…I don’t think so.”
“But you hate lending and borrowing stuff, don’t ya?”
“Yeah, well.”
“You don’t lend your things to anyone, and you don’t borrow from anyone either. That’s why I don’t expect that sorta thing from you. If I forget something, I’ll ask someone else. But look at you now. None of that. It’s like you don’t care, like you’re completely indifferent.”
Neil placed the lid of his lunch box in an empty space and picked up a cafeteria fork. He pointed the four tines at Alexander and said:
“You’re so caught up in something that your usually sharp attention has gone walkabout. That’s what it is.”
“…”
“And that glum look on your face. It’s some kind of worry, isn’t it?”
Neil deftly spun the fork between his fingers, then turned the handle towards Alexander. He tapped her on the forehead with it.
“Not gonna force ya to talk. But I’m always here to listen. We’re best mates, aren’t we?”
Neil finished with a grin and stabbed a meatball in his lunch box with the fork. Alexander, meanwhile, listened as she dipped her rock-hard bread into the consommé soup.
Neil Archer. She’d been friends with him for a long time, but Alexander had always found him hard to read. He usually only talked about food, yet sometimes he’d come out with something that hit the nail right on the head. Just like now.
At times like these, Neil seemed like a different person. And it made her realise that he was, surprisingly, a keen observer of his surroundings.
“Just hearing you say that is enough for now. Thanks, Neil Archer.”
“That’s rare. The great Alexander Colt is actually being honest for once.”
“I’m always honest and straightforward, for better or worse.”
“Yeah, right. You’re always putting on a brave face.”
Alexander was indeed worried.
Neil was right. But her worries weren’t something she could easily discuss with others. They were about her father, and about that case.
Her father seemed to be making steady progress with his investigation. He had apparently tracked down the sender of the mysterious letter and gone to see the person… but it had been a dead end.
The sender was a homeless man, quietly getting by in a back alley. But he had only sent the letter. A young woman had given it to him and asked him to post it from a post office. He had received the minimum amount of money needed for postage, sent the letter as instructed, and then received a small sum as a reward.
The old man said he didn’t know the contents of the letter. Not only had he not opened it, but he was illiterate and could neither read nor write.
So, the next step was to find this “young woman”… but the clues were apparently very scarce.
The homeless man’s eyesight was failing. He didn’t own glasses, and said he hadn’t got a good look at her face. All he could provide were three keywords.
She was young. He thought she might have been wearing glasses. She was wearing bright, lime-green clothes. —That was all. But her father seemed to have realised something.
At the breakfast table that morning, her father’s face had been heavy. He had been muttering to himself constantly. But his words were too quiet and indistinct for her to make out what he was saying. Nevertheless, Alexander had felt a sense of foreboding.
“…Sigh…”
“Alex?”
“…Ah, they’re at it again. Seriously, they never get tired of it, do they?”
Barely touching her food, Alexander abruptly stood up. Her green eyes glared towards a noisy area.
It was outside the cafeteria, near the courtyard. A group of students with a nasty vibe had gathered there. Seeing them, Alexander sighed. Watching her, Neil, who had stuffed his cheeks with meatballs like a hamster, asked in a muffled voice, “At what again?”
“Isn’t that another drama involving Yuni’s twin sister? I can see the backs of the same lot from the rugby team and the cheer squad as last time.”
“So, what’re you gonna do?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Time to show ‘em the spirit of a beast.”
This time, Alexander intended to let loose properly… but.
“Whoa! The beast Alexander is here!!”
“You serious? Crap!”
“We gotta bolt!”
The moment Alexander appeared in the courtyard, the students scattered. And just as she had expected, at the centre of the dispersing crowd was a girl with white hair—Yuni’s twin, Yun —left all alone.
“You alright?”
Alexander called out to the white-haired girl, Yun. Yun, who was sitting on the ground with her head down, replied, “…I’m sorry.”
“Dunno what for. I didn’t do anything. They’re the ones who took off on their own.”
Alexander said, offering a hand to the seated Yun. Yun took Alexander’s hand and unsteadily got to her feet. As she helped her up, Alexander asked, “Anyway, why are they harassing you so relentlessly?”
“…I don’t know. If I knew why, this wouldn’t be happening.”
“I see. Well… that’s some rotten luck.”
Fortunately, Yun had no visible injuries. Her white legs, peeking out from the gap between her knee-length jeans and black high socks, were as slender as newly planted saplings, so pale that the bluish-purple veins were visible through her skin. Her arms were hidden under a long-sleeved hoodie, but it didn’t look like she had been hurt. There were no marks on her clothes from being kicked or stomped on, nor were there any wrinkles to suggest she had been hit or grabbed.
In that case, what did that whole mob do to her? —Hmm, Alexander pondered, staring at Yun. Just then, she heard the sound of frantic footsteps from behind her.
It was the Latin teacher, Mrs Jane, her crescent-shaped eyebrows raised, rushing over in a panic. “Alex, you again!”
“Oh, Mrs Jane. What’s the matter?”
“What do you mean, what’s the matter! I heard from Neil. Honestly! You and the boys from the rugby team again!!”
“I swear, Mrs. I didn’t do anything. They were gone before I could.”
“…Hah, well, as long as nothing happened, that’s a relief. Phew…”
Panting, her shoulders rising and falling, Mrs Jane looked at Alexander, then at Yun. “I see,” she murmured.
Then, Yuni and Neil arrived late at the scene. A situation similar to the last time, yet slightly different, was re-enacted in the courtyard.
“Yun! I told you not to leave my side when we’re at school, didn’t I?!”
Yuni approached Yun, grabbing her twin’s shoulders firmly with her slender white hands. Her face was flushed with anger and frustration, her long hair, tied in a single braid, whipping about as she scolded her sister.
In response, Yun simply looked down, biting her lower lip tightly. She showed no sign of speaking, and her frozen, rigid expression did not change. But her eyes were glistening with tears. Whether she was hurt by Yuni’s scolding or by something said to her earlier, Alexander couldn’t tell, but she had a faint suspicion that the girl named Yun was carrying some burden.
It was likely her true feelings, settled like dregs at the bottom of her heart. Tainted words that must never be allowed to spill from her lips, never be let out into the world. A kind of darkness she kept locked inside, knowing that once spoken, she would be rejected by everyone.
“Elaine and Lenny told you, didn’t they?! Even Dr Pevalossam said we don’t know what might happen… And yet you keep doing whatever you want! Please, just stay by my side! Because, if something happened to you, I…—!!”
However, it was not Yun , with tears welling in her eyes, who started crying first, but Yuni, who had just arrived.
Perhaps her emotions had run high while rattling off complaints at her twin. Yuni collapsed to her knees and began to sob hysterically. Mrs Jane rushed to her side, wiping away the large tears streaming from Yuni’s eyes with a handkerchief. As for Alexander, she could only stare at the scene in a daze.
—No. In that moment, Alexander found herself looking at the twins with suspicion.
“…”
Yun and Yuni. The two looked remarkably similar. One could dismiss it by saying, Well, they’re twins, but they were too alike. Yuni’s feminine hairstyle and clothes and Yun’s boyish hairstyle and clothes were worlds apart, yet their faces were so identical one might think they were the same person.
Normally, even identical twins have some differences, no matter how similar their appearance or personality. One might have a mole under their right eye while the other doesn’t. Their heights might differ slightly, or their shoe sizes…
But there were no such differences between Yun and Yuni. Even their height was exactly the same. The shape of their eyebrows, the size of their eyes, the position of their irises, the height of their noses, the thickness of their lips, the contour of their faces, their hair partings, the location of their cowlicks, the thickness of their necks, their shoulder width, the length of their legs, and so on. Everything was the same, without the slightest discrepancy. The only difference in their builds was that one was quite thin, while the other had a healthy physique.
It was like they were mass-produced mannequins… and Alexander couldn’t help but feel an underlying sense of unease.
“Well, good thing Alex didn’t do anything stupid. Lunch break’s almost over, so for now…—”
Just as Neil spoke in a drawling voice, checking the time on his wristwatch, there was a thud as something fell. A scream from Yuni followed, and Mrs Jane shouted.
“Neil, you go to the staff room and call for an ambulance! Alex, you go to the nurse’s office and get the school nurse!”
Mrs Jane knelt beside Yun, who had collapsed and lost consciousness. She continued to call out to the unconscious girl. Yuni covered her face with her hands, still crying. Neil ran off towards the staff room, while Alexander remained standing there, stunned.
Mrs Jane’s sharp voice cut through Alexander’s daze. What are you doing, Alex? she had said.
“As I have a duty of care for these students, I can’t leave this spot. So I need you to get a move on!”
“…Y-yes!!”
Snapping back to her senses, Alexander hurried towards the nurse’s office. But a sudden sense of wrongness dominated her thoughts.
—Something is off about those twins. And their family is strange, too.
“…I really hope it’s all in my head…!”
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