The sky sat high like a cold judge. Thick clouds clotted like sticky silt, craving to shed weight through rain.

A breeze curled in from the east like a rolled ribbon. It gathered speed, then more. As it passed the Holy Maiden, it carried the stitch-sound of rain and rapped her eardrums like knuckles on a drum.

All at once, the guest room’s muffled hush, heavy as a damp quilt, was pricked by the gentle click of a door being pushed.

Selina stepped out. She wore a wan white dress uniform, an infirmary pallor over a martial cut. Her black hair lay combed flat along her temples, sleek as wet ink.

She paused in the doorway, breathing through pain the way a swimmer rides a wave. When the ache ebbed, she lifted her eyes to the Holy Maiden’s back and murmured, “Take me to the Professor.”

The Holy Maiden grumbled, puzzled, like a kettle barely starting to steam.

“I want to see the Professor,” Selina repeated, her voice a flint strike.

The Holy Maiden raised her right hand, slow and tired, and touched her left cheek as if soothing a bruise. Three words slipped out like pebbles: “This is your fault.”

“I’ll pay if I broke the bed!”

“That’s not it.”

“How am I supposed to know what it is?”

“You shouldn’t have shouted,” the Holy Maiden lowered her hand, the complaint dropping like a wet leaf. “And you let others hear.”

Selina flicked her lashes, a disdainful fan. “She’s a fake anyway. So what if they heard?”

“I’ve served as Holy Maiden here for six years—”

“All to tailor a wedding robe for the Professor!”

“Everyone recognizes my name—”

“And it belongs to someone else!”

The Holy Maiden stopped. Anger churned in her eyes like a storm under glass, yet her tone stayed level. “Will you let me finish?”

“Say it.”

“I just want to find what’s blocking the magic. Without that, I can’t wake Melvina.”

Selina rolled her eyes, savoring the cornered-beast thrill of pressing a foe to the wall. She drove the blade while it gleamed. “You’re changing the subject!”

“I’ve said what needed saying.”

“You don’t dare show your true face. Is it because you can’t get recognized? So you borrow the Professor’s name to become Holy Maiden?”

“What nonsense is that?”

Wind slipped in through the loose white collar, a cool knife down skin. The Holy Maiden’s body trembled, a reed in the draft.

Selina curled her lip and kept the barbs coming. “The Professor is full of fine qualities. It makes sense she became Holy Maiden. What about you? Nothing. So you want the title, and you fake being Hedi Melvina—”

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

The Holy Maiden’s steps hammered the wooden veranda. She closed in fast, breath sharp as rain on stone. “Don’t throw suspicion around at will!” She swallowed, then drew one ragged breath to settle the swarm in her chest. “Things aren’t what you think.”

“That face—ha—hit the mark, didn’t I…” Selina’s voice dipped, then spiked, a match flaring back to life. “You sent the Professor to your room because your status as Holy Maiden is slipping!”

“If I wanted Melvina gone, I wouldn’t have told the police she exists.”

“Who knows… what you’re planning…”

“People who force their own reading onto others—” The Holy Maiden’s lips bent into a crooked arc, a smile like a hooked blade. “Melvina is going to hate someone like you.”

“She won’t!”

“Leaving you without a word. Isn’t that hate?”

“She had to go back,” Selina stammered, the words tripping like stones in a stream.

“There’s no ‘had to.’ She just didn’t want to see you. I’ve known Melvina more than ten years. Who she hates, what kind of temper she can’t stand—I don’t even have to think.”

“If the Professor hated me, she wouldn’t stay with me!”

“You two are together?”

“We’ve done everything!” A quiet smile rose to Selina’s mouth like a crescent before dawn. “We eat together, bathe together, sleep together, work together, and the nights—those private hours.”

“Oh, amazing. Sweet love, the gold bar that never loses value—you thought I’d say that?” The Holy Maiden snorted, a cold drop off the eaves. “How could Melvina like girls? That’s not normal. She likes boys.”

“Who told you that?”

“Everyone says so.” The Holy Maiden pressed her lips together. Two tiny dimples held a shine, like water not yet evaporated. “What’s attractive about dating the same sex? The bodies are built the same.”

“I’m dating the Professor, and we’ll be the Empire’s first same-sex couple to marry!”

“She’s only with you because she can’t refuse. She’s forcing herself.”

“Impossible!”

The Holy Maiden took the reins of the talk again, the way Selina had first goaded her. She reached for Selina’s softest spot like a finger to a bruise. “That’s who Melvina is. She isn’t good at refusing. It hurts people. So she wrongs herself instead.”

“The Professor’s happy with me!”

“Did she say that herself?”

“On the road to Tilberma—” Selina shut her eyes and sifted for Hedi in her mind like shells in tidewash. “I asked her, ‘Are you happy with me?’ She said, ‘Very happy.’”

“Did she?”

“That’s exactly what she said!”

The Holy Maiden listened to the rain beat the eaves, letting the silence gain weight like a stone soaking through. After a beat, she struck. “She said something pretty because you were right there.”

“By that logic, the Professor hates you too!”

“I drag her everywhere, across half the map. Being disliked makes sense.”

Selina hadn’t expected such a clean admission. It threw her, and her anger sputtered like a damp fuse. “Even if she hates you, she won’t hate me!”

“Why not?”

“She just won’t… why do I need a reason…”

“Because making you cry draws eyes,” the Holy Maiden said, voice cool as river shade. “Melvina hates being the center of attention. So she acts like she likes you in front of you. Otherwise, what do you have that’s worth liking? You cry. You’re stubborn. You’re a bother… She doesn’t let you in on anything, does she?”

“She does! I’m the Professor’s assistant!”

“With her talent, is there any burden she can’t shoulder alone, one that requires you?” The Holy Maiden’s words cut clean as a paper fan’s edge. “This ‘assistant’ is a role she arranged to soothe your hunger to be needed. It’s your way to weave yourself into her daily warp and weft, to find your worth through her. In other words, you’re chasing the feeling of being needed by Melvina, not Melvina actually needing you.”

Selina’s head dipped low, like a flower beaten by rain. An unspeakable grievance welled up. Tears rushed to her eyes in a glittering tide, but held, strung on her lashes like tiny pearls.

“I got it right, didn’t I?” The Holy Maiden pressed the blade, steady as a drizzle that never stops. “You and Melvina live in different worlds. Why should she pick you over someone better? Think for once. Are you even on the same line? Don’t tell me you plan to pull Melvina down to level the view.”

“No. No. No!”

“What’s wrong in it?”

“The Professor likes me!”

“Think about what I said.” The Holy Maiden’s face took on a faint glow, like sun threading back after rain. “Your gap with Melvina is too wide. Money. Status. In the real world, rich daughters don’t fall for poor daughters.”

“Professor…”

“Professor, Professor, Professor—she’s all you say. Does Melvina not let you use her name? If you’re together, why can’t you call her Hedi even once?”

“I want to call her that way myself!”

“So you do know the gap. Melvina earns the title ‘Professor.’ What standing do you have to show? Dark Realm Investigator? Or Selina Viola? Is that name known to anyone?”

Tears spilled from Selina like a breached dyke. Once the gate opened, the flood wouldn’t stop. Even she couldn’t grasp the grief that rose, a river in her chest.

The moment the Holy Maiden pierced the difference between her and Hedi, she’d been holding her breath. Every rebuttal felt pale, like chalk in rain. She couldn’t hold it anymore. Pearly tears poured down, and sobs shook her like wind through bamboo.

The Holy Maiden took the umbrella from the guest room. She stepped into the rain with unhurried grace, the oil-paper arc blooming like a dark flower. She looked back at Selina standing rigid on the corridor and added, “Melvina… hates crybabies the most…”