“Did you hear? Lady Adelaide and her sister Mira aren’t actually bound by blood. Even during five years apart, her heart kept tugging like a thread in the wind. For Mira, Lady Adelaide even faced off with Prince Samir like a blade against a crown.”
The girl dabbed the dew at her lashes, and her voice rose like a lantern catching flame.
“Ah, if only I were Lady Adelaide’s sister—how blessed I’d be!”
“I think you need your head checked, Adelaide.”
Facing the wheelchair girl’s soulful recital like a stage bathed in moonlight, the person at the other end finally lifted her gaze from a lab report, her tone crisp as frost on glass.
“Sure, we could keep each other company in the hospital waiting room, like two sparrows on a cold branch. Right, Holywell Academy’s super troublemaker—Hazel.”
Adelaide drew out the last syllable like a kite string delighting in the breeze. “—Hazel.”
At that teasing lilt, Hazel’s unkempt brown curls trembled like startled grass, and behind round frames her eyes, ringed by bruised moons, flickered.
“Compared to someone boasting in third person like thunder without rain, I’m not sharing an ER with you yet.”
“How rude. I only repeated hallway gossip word for word, like a mirror catching sunlight.” Adelaide put on a wounded look, soft as cloud.
“Heh.” The scoff landed like a pebble in still water.
“‘Gossip’? You mean the kind where you lay the roots, guide the stems, then scatter the seeds, all like a gardener of shadows?”
Adelaide’s tears turned to a bright smile in a heartbeat, and she lifted a thumb like topping off a cup of tea. “Bingo. As expected of my dearest friend.”
She had ignored Samir and the others for a whole year, saving fuel to make the student council clash crackle like a storm at sea.
Thanks to that “dream,” she’d already pegged the princes’ roles like masks chosen behind a curtain, so she never feared Samir siding with the royals like a hawk with its old roost.
Every line that day sat in her palm like beads on a string—pure theater.
And if it was theater, there had to be an audience, like moths drawn to lamplight.
By letting gossip mongers eavesdrop at the door, she shaped a flawless “good sister” silhouette, a halo polished like jade, lifting an already high name higher.
“And now I can use ‘field study’ as my umbrella, staying close to His Highness Samir without looking like a hunter stalking prey.”
Adelaide sat in her wheelchair and counted benefits on her fingers like a merchant tallying silver under lantern glow.
“Then, I just need to ‘naturally grow feelings while we spend time,’ and nudge him to break off his engagement with Mira like cutting a silk knot.”
“All right, all right, you’re amazing, like a fox writing a play.” Hazel shot her a sidelong look sharp as a quill. “I’d rather know how you’re so sure you’ll become Vice President.”
“Huh?”
Her head tilted like a sparrow listening to rain.
“Even if Prince Neprah publicly said he won’t join the same group as his brother, there’s still Raya standing like a second peak. You’re not worried you’ll lose and watch your fortress crumble?”
“Not worried.”
Adelaide answered as if naming the color of the sky, calm as a lake.
“No girl wants to work daily in a small room with the fool who turned down her confession, like a thorn lodged under satin.”
She paused, and a sweet smile bloomed like sugar on candied haw.
“By the way, Toniel’s running for student council finance because I had a heart-to-heart with him, like pouring warm tea into a cold cup.”
“…You’re wicked beyond edges, like a blade that forgot its scabbard.”
“Wow, hearing that from someone who does human experiments stings like winter wind.” Adelaide kept smiling, bright as a paper kite. “But it’s fine. For my dearest friend, I’m happy to share a mental ward partition like two fishes in one tank.”
“That’s cal-led med-i-cal dis-sec-tion—not human experiments.” Hazel’s words clicked like beads.
“Leaning on your Chief Justice father’s power to fetch corpses of executed inmates isn’t experimentation—it’s an insult to the dead, plus skipping class like a bird dodging nets, and studying abroad in two leaps like a legend of misdemeanors. Conclusion: still a social thorn.”
Hazel started to speak, then simply sighed, long as wind through pines, and took off her glasses to rub her eyes like smoothing creased paper.
“If I’d known you’d cling like ivy, I’d rather the Disciplinary Squad had found me back then.”
They’d met because Hazel had been careless, like leaving a door unlatched before a storm.
In middle school, she forgot a bag stuffed with organs in the classroom, a shadow tucked under a desk, and never remembered until the sky turned red.
By the time she rushed back like rain, the Disciplinary Squad had ringed her desk like a fence of spears.
As they moved to open the bag and sniff out the blood-scent like hounds at dusk, Adelaide walked in.
Her eyes lit up like stars, claimed the bag as hers, and reached out as if it were a familiar book.
They pushed her away at once, voices cold as iron, warning of danger. Adelaide stepped back like a leaf in wind, while Hazel sank into despair like a stone in deep water.
Yet when they opened the backpack, they only found a pile of empty jars, hollow as shells.
Everyone was baffled, like bamboo rustling with no breeze, including Hazel herself.
She didn’t know how it happened, but she’d been saved—like a boat that missed the rocks by a hand’s breadth. The very next day, Adelaide, one grade above, slipped into her classroom.
Before Hazel could react, Adelaide leaned to her ear like a whispering willow.
“A scent-sealing spell only lasts fifteen hours. Don’t forget next time, junior Hazel.”
…
“Hazel, say things like that and I’ll cry like rain on paper. I don’t permit my only confidant to flirt with death.”
“Enough. Tell me what you want.”
“So heartless. Hmm, let me think…”
Adelaide tapped her chin, and thought for a moment like counting fireflies.
“This time I want one left eye, two fingernails… oh, and a small slice of the bandit’s brain you took today, like a wafer off a mooncake.”
Hazel said nothing, stood, and went into her lab, her steps steady as clockwork. Soon, three opaque bottles clinked out like stones.
Adelaide caught them, shook one, and the liquid whisper pleased her like rain in a gourd.
“Thanks. And by the way, school starts tomorrow—remember to actually show up, like a sun after fog.”
“None of your business.”
“Unless you want a record of repeating three years, becoming my junior again like a shadow behind a lantern. Better not miss Vice President Adelaide’s first opening speech.”
She spoke, then covered her mouth, playing late surprise like a magpie stealing a coin.
“Wait, did Hazel repeat two years on purpose, just to attend the same grade as me—”
Hazel rolled her eyes like marbles and pushed Adelaide’s wheelchair out, then slammed the door like thunder.
“Hey, I meant that with a full heart, like tea brewed twice.”
Adelaide said it, but her mood stayed bright as dawn.
To be fair, calling Hazel a confidant wasn’t all a lie—the heart part wasn’t.
She liked Hazel more than most, like favoring a steady star in a crowded sky.
Not just because she held leverage like a key in her sleeve, but because Hazel never asked what she did with those organs, respecting distance like a stone path between gardens.
She loved that space. Only with Hazel could the vicious—no, the real Adelaide von Douglas—rise for air like a koi breaking the surface.
**
After spending the last day of summer teasing her friend like plucking strings on a zither, Adelaide felt clear as mountain water, eager to return to school and wear her mask like silk.
“Adelaide, your speech is ready, right?”
“Mm. And His Highness Samir? Do we need one last rehearsal, like tuning a lute?”
On the way to the student council room, Adelaide and her maid crossed paths with Samir, like two rivers meeting.
They spoke easily about the opening ceremony, voices braided like ribbons, while the other students stared with eyes wide as porcelain bowls.
It was probably the first time they saw her and Samir chat like this, a ship setting sail under cheers—good, let those starry eyes multiply like fireflies.
Just as Adelaide basked like a cat in sun, Samir halted, his step fastening like a pin.
“What is it, Sami—”
Adelaide’s words cut off, her gaze following his like a compass needle.
Across the corridor, a golden-haired girl in ornate gothic dress leaned at the window like a swan by a lake.
Many eyes gathered, a tide pushing shoreward, but her proud posture was a blade; most only dared glance from afar like sparrows avoiding hawks.
A few brave ones went up to greet her, seeking warmth like hands toward a brazier, and she simply ignored them, cold as moonlight.
Her blue eyes locked on Adelaide’s group, their flicker complex as clouds over water.
The moment their eyes met, Adelaide held her breath like a candle cupped against wind.
She had… grown up.
Compared to the last time Adelaide had truly looked at her, the girl had shed that angelic down, like spring turning to summer.
If in Adelaide’s memory she’d been a bud, now she was in full bloom—unpainted yet striking, like a peony bursting, and curves proud even under fabric like mountains under mist.
Five years had passed; she’d become so beautiful Adelaide almost didn’t recognize her at a glance, like seeing a familiar tree after a storm.
Yet in the same heartbeat Adelaide knew it could be no one else, certainty deep as roots.
It was the exact image from that “dream”—the villainess heiress sketched in fate’s ink. Even those few fawners were the “script” cronies who’d once bullied the heroine, shadows tracing shadows.
No mistake—the stranger across the corridor was her sister.
“Mira…”
She breathed the name like a secret carried by wind. At this distance, the sound couldn’t cross the hall.
But Mira lowered her eyes, pushed aside the person before her like parting reeds, and slipped around the corner like a swift.
At that attitude, the corridor froze, air brittle as ice.
“Seeing her fiancé, His Highness Samir, and her sister—she won’t even say hello…??”
Adelaide, too, was stunned, like that student who blurted his heart, held by silence like a net.
