I nodded while looking through Casquada who was still cross-eyed before me.
The ghost continued. “Well, let’s just say those changes were quite…significant?”
I blinked slowly. “What the Hell did you do to me?”
Casquada protested, “I haven’t done anything to you—”
“Just be quiet,” I snapped at her.
The ghost sighed as though in surrender. “I may have exaggerated your female condition. Looking under the hood may not necessarily—that is to say convincingly—support your claims of manhood any longer.”
The saying ‘please kill me now and bury me’ paraded across my mind, as I began to understand what ghost meant, and because of it questions began to tumble haphazardly inside my head. I lost my grip on Casquada and took a shaky step back, and then another, feeling as though the rooftop was swaying under my feet.
Shirohime leaned her face into mine. “What the Hell’s the matter with you? Tick-tock. Remember? You don’t have time to act weird and space out.”
That was easy for her to say. She wasn’t in my shoes. Yet she was quite correct. Time was running out and I was being pulled along at Casquada’s pace and down Casquada’s off road track. However, I couldn’t cope with the ghost’s revelation. I tried blinking and shaking away the fog of confusion and despair blanketing the inside of my head but with limited success. Oddly, it was Casquada who came to my aid, though in my unhinged state I couldn’t fathom her reasons for doing so.
“Just tell me the truth? Are you really a guy underneath all that?”
I blinked a little more, and my eyes focused on her. “Last time I checked….”
As ambivalent as that sounded, it was the truth.
The girl pressed her lips together tightly as she stared at me intently. “And you cosplayed as Princess Silver Blue?”
“Cross-played, actually.”
Again she pressed her lips into a thin line, but she had rather full and expressive lips so thin wasn’t quite thin at all. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, but you asked me why I decided to investigate who had cosplayed as the Silver Blue Princess.”
I nodded a little distractedly, the fog in my mind thinning slowly into a mist.
In front of me, Casquada breathed in slow and deep. “It was the Student Council President who suggested it. She made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. If I discovered who the Silver Blue Princess really was, she would give the Newspaper Club an exemption and not shut it down because it was out of members. In other words, she was challenging my journalistic spirit, talent, and determination, as well as my wish to keep the club alive.” She paused for a breath. “I love the Newspaper Club. I couldn’t allow it to be shut down without making an effort to save it. So I accepted her offer.” She sighed and bowed her head a little. “Unfortunately the Witch Valjean learnt it was you—don’t ask me how—and spilled the beans to the world. So now I’m up the creek without an outboard and my club is pretty much dead unless I can get new members by the end of Club Week.”
I blinked and shook my head faintly. “So it wasn’t you? You didn’t leave that note for me in my shoe locker?”
“No…it wasn’t I.” After a moment she added, “But I did receive a note from Anonymous, and so too did a lot of students. That’s why we’re up here. The note said that the Silver Blue Princess would reveal herself to her faithful. Today. Here and now. Naturally, I had to come and meet you.” After another pause, she continued softly. “I just never expected that you were a girl.”
“I told you, I’m not a girl,” I denied weakly. “There’s something wrong with me and that’s why I look this way.”
Casquada arched her eyebrows as she stared at me intently. “Something wrong with you?”
As weird as it was, I crossed my arms under my breasts. “Do you think a normal guy my age would look this good as a girl?”
She closed her mouth and ran gaze over me again, giving my bust a good hearty look. “Okay. If you look this good then there’s definitely something wrong with you.” She leaned toward me conspiratorially. “Those are real, aren’t they?”
For a few moments I struggled to find a reply before eventually stating, “I can neither confirm nor deny whether they’re real or not.”
Shirohime emptied her lungs in an exasperated rush. “Just take his word for it. He’s not a girl. He’s a guy. It just so happens he looks like a girl. Are we done now?”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Casquada decided, then grew pensive. “But real boys don’t have boobs, so that opens up a new can of worms. So, won’t you give me an interview?”
I regarded her for a long, long while before admitting, “I don’t trust your kind. You write sensationalist crap just to keep your reader count. Forget it.”
“Not this time,” Casquada insisted and shook her head firmly. “How about this? You give me an interview, and I’ll help you find out who Anonymous is.”
Noticing I was gaping at her, I closed my mouth quickly. “Seriously?”
“I give you my word as a true journalist.”
I bit my lower lip, and to my detriment as a man it was very girly like, so I stopped but not before Casquada had noticed.
“Okay. You have a deal.”
The girl’s eyes widened and then a relieved smile brightened her face. “Thank you.” She chuckled and added, “I’d shake hands but someone tied me up.”
She gave Shirohime a meaningful look but the latter made it a point to inspect her fingers and mutter, “I broke a nail….”
I looked at the courtyard behind Casquada, and noticed Angela waving at me. “We’ll talk later,” I told the Newspaper Club President.
“You promise?”
I stepped past her and waved a hand. “Yes, yes. I promise.” Fortunately for her, and probably unfortunately for me, I intended to keep my promise. However, a couple of steps later, I stopped and half turned to look at her over my right shoulder. “Just one question. What do you know about The Game?”
Casquada’s eyebrows pitched faintly upwards but she shrugged a shoulder. “What game?”
“The Game that I played last Friday. What do you know about it?”
“Like I asked, what game?”
I studied her reaction and her demeanor for a long moment before turning away without giving her an answer.
Either Anonymous lied or Casquada is a better poker player than I took her to be. Regardless, even if she didn’t know about The Game, I knew someone who did – the ghost who talked into my ears – and I intended to have a private talk with it.
Arriving beside Angela, she explained that the girls kneeling neatly on the ground were fans of Silver Blue.
“Think of this as a meet and greet,” Angela said with a casual smile.
“I don’t have much time,” I cautioned her, but then stepped up to the girls expectantly looking up at me. At a loss for words, I resorted to be honest with them and bowed deeply toward the group. “I’m sorry for deceiving you. I’m not a girl. I’m a boy. Lots of weird and confusing things have happened, and I’ve ended up looking like this. I’m very sorry for tarnishing your image of Silver Blue.”
There was a long, heavy moment of silence during which I remained bowed, but then I heard and saw them stand up. The girl directly in front of me cautiously asked, “Will you be dressing up again for Club Week?”
I straightened slightly and looked at her in surprise. “What?”
“Will you dress up again as the Princess?”
“Ah, no. I definitely won’t.” I straightened a little more. “I really don’t want to be beaten up.”
“But you look so much like her. I mean, you could do it professionally,” another girl suggested without any hint of a concealed motive.
I cringed in response. “Oh, that would seriously land me in hot water. I mean, they’d probably toss me out of the academy.”
The girls shared long looks between themselves in a way guys never did, then regarded me thoughtfully as
a collective group. The girl standing closest to me appeared to speak on their behalf. “We think you should do it.”
“What…?”
Another girl wearing her hair in twin tails edged forward. “There’s Club Week, but next month there’s also a cosplay competition being held to commemorate the start of the fifth season of the Chronicles of Silver Blue. They say the voice cast, director, and the author will be there.” She appeared to be restraining herself from bouncing with joy. “There’s grand prizes and all.”
“You should compete,” another girl opinioned meekly yet resolutely.
I started raising my hands to ward them off. “Bad idea. And I’m not going to compete. I’d be arrested.”
“Are you sure about that?” Angela suddenly asked, catching me completely off guard such that I gaped at her. She dipped her head at me. “I think you’d be surprised by the response you’d get.”
I took a quick breathe before protesting. “Are you forgetting that’s the reason why I’m in this mess? I’m not looking to dig myself into a bigger hole.”
Angela’s gaze pointedly took me in from head to toes, and I winced at the incongruence between the sentiments I was expressing and the way I was dressed.
The group’s leader approached me with an imploring expression. Before I could resist, she had taken a hold of my hands and held them between us.
“You are Princess Silver Blue. I’d stake my yearly allowance that you’d win that competition.”
I flinched and tore my hands free of hers, distressing her and the girls when I suddenly recoiled from her.
“No—no, I can’t!”
A year ago when my world was still sane, I turned it upside down by accepting the Cosplay Club’s extraordinary request and learnt two things about myself that I would rather I had not.
The first was the reason why I was chosen out of the thousands of girls that attended Telos Academy.
The Chronicles of Silver Blue were animated but there was a considerable amount of photo-realistic artwork, both official and unofficial and in various mediums of print. Ignoring the insanity the situation – or suspending one’s disbelief – it may be a coincidence born out of the cruel whims of the Fates, or an innocent act of God, that I bore an uncanny and utterly disturbing resemblance to the Silver Blue Princess depicted in the artwork, and because of this the Cosplay Club took a gamble and approached me.
While that was disturbing on the surface, I also learnt something disappointing about myself.
Silver Blue wasn’t a tall girl. She was petite, very pretty, and quite feminine. In other words, she was dainty. She was loyal to her friends, caring toward her people, was bound by strong moral principles, and adhered to a strict code of chivalry that would have made the knights of yesteryear proud. Yet she was also stubborn, determined, and strong willed to a fault. That’s what made her so endearing to her fans. Silver Blue never gave up. She stuck to her guns – or rather her silver-blue blades – and persevered and prevailed against adversaries that were physically tougher and stronger than her. That wasn’t to say she wouldn’t retreat when the situation and prudence demanded it, only that she would fight almost bitterly to the end in the hope of finding victory in the face of defeat.
All of this served to make Silver Blue worthy of admiration, but I was nothing like her.
Appearances aside, I was a poor substitute for Silver Blue. It can be argued that I was taking the cross-playing too far, that it was nothing more than a fancy dress-up exercise, yet for me I now saw it as a daunting role fulfill. I may be described as delusion, but do we call actors delusional when they’re up on stage? I would think not unless they are clearly miscast in their roles. So for me to cross-play as her once again was to do her a disservice, and only serve to add to the disillusionment I felt toward myself while drawing more unwanted attention.
That being said, here I was standing on a rooftop courtyard en femme before a dozen girls and a spectating crowd.
Could I make things any worse for myself?
I took another step back from the girl and shook my head with regret and misgivings that made my voice stumble.
“I—I’m sorry. That—that’s not who I am. I’m not her….” I bowed my head quickly to her and the girls. “I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”
I whirled away from Angela and the girl who cried out after me, “Wait. Please wait and hear us out—”
I cringed and ducked my head as I cut across the rooftop in the direction of the courtyard hut at a fast pace. I could feel the weight of their gazes upon my back and as such I almost broke into a run.
The girls reminded me of the members of the Cosplay Club, and how they’d looked at me as though I’d found my calling in life. Their confidence had supported me during those three days, but I felt the entire episode had cost me too much. And yet despite the fallout there was one truth I grudgingly acknowledged, that for a short while during those three days, I had stepped out of my sometime dreary existence and become someone else – someone bigger than I could ever hope to me – and now it was time to close the book on my brief role as Princess Silver Blue.
Looking at Shirohime as I walked by, I declared somewhat hesitantly, “We—we’re leaving.”
“Good for you,” she retorted unhappily. “But I need to stay behind and wait for security.” Tossing her hair over her shoulders, she then planted her hands on her hips in annoyed fashion. “We need to report to them what happened with that gang of malcontents.”
Sweeping my gaze over the courtyard, I frowned at the boys beginning to wake up on the ground, and the small crowd spectating from a distance, then asked perhaps unnecessarily, “Are you sure you’re going to be all right?”
Shirohime snuck an errant lock of snow white hair behind her left ear, and snorted. “What? Are you worried about me?”
“No. But Mat might worry.”
She blinked sharply and faced me with a radiant expression of girlish joy. “Really? You think so?”
Whenever she acted like a Maiden in Love, it made my heart groan and my innards clench unpleasantly. Unable to bear looking at her shining like an angel with rainbows behind her, I frantically averted my attention and looked at Casquada who was peering at Shirohime with undisguised interest as though she’d spotted the source for her next trashy tabloid story.
“What about you?” I asked her. “What will you do?”
Casquada tore her gaze away from Shirohime and planted it on me. “Oh, I plan to tell Security that I was bound and gagged by those guys but the girls saved me.” She grinned at me. “How does that sound?”
I sighed and let my shoulders slump. “Fine. I get it. You help them, and I’m supposed to help you.”
“Something like that.”
I shrugged languidly. “I’ll keep my promise. But I can’t do the interview today. Too much going on. I’ll have to check with my agent for a break in my busy schedule.”
Casquada shrugged as best she could with her hands tied behind her back, and then threw me a grin. “Just don’t try leaving the city-state or the planet before then.”
“What? You want my passport now?”
My dry tone came off as mocking, but I realized to my surprise that I didn’t harbor any hard feelings toward this girl. I also noticed that my banter with her had helped lighten my mood.
Casquada and I shared a common thread having been manipulated by Anonymous, but she was also at the mercy of the Student Council President. Remembering that, I stopped and faced her with a question.
“Tell me one thing. Did the President tell you why she wanted to know who cosplayed as Silver Blue?”
Casquada contorted her lips into an odd shape before replying, “She has a Suggestion Box, and learning who was Silver Blue was high on the list. At least, that’s what she told me.”
I frowned inwardly. So that’s what it was.
Glancing at the girls talking to Angela, and remembering how I was chased across the school, I figured it wasn’t surprising
to learn that students had made use of the Suggestion Box.
The ghost cut in with a sharp warning. “Princess, you should hurry. I do believe Security will be here shortly. Princess Silver Blue needs to make her escape before then.”
“Shut up,” I hissed at it out the side of my mouth as I resumed walking toward the exit, picking up my pace when I remembered what the ghost had said regarding my anatomy, and muttering under my breath, “You and I need to have a little chat.”
I yanked the door open upon arrival, and hastened off the rooftop courtyard with every intention of changing back into my male uniform and somehow washing off the light makeup before classes resumed after lunch break. However, when I entered the stairwell there was no sign of Tobias, and to make matters worse there was no sign of my carry-bag that happened to contain my school uniform.
I stood on the top landing and muttered a curse.
Then I pulled my phone out of a dress pocket and used the installed app to track him down.
Chapter 9.
- I -
The application on my phone told me Tobias’s device was in the high school cafeteria on the ground floor, somewhere out on the balcony, but whether he was there as well was another matter. I chose not to go there directly, motivated to take a detour after catching a look at my reflection in the corridor window wall facing the school’s inner grounds, instead descending down the stairs to the first floor and walking into the girls’ toilet located closest to the stairwell.
My reluctance to step inside the toilet was swept aside by the conflagration of emotions burning within me, the hottest of which was an anger directed at Tobias, tempered by my better nature that chose not to jump to conclusions. As it was, my performance as a girl was so genuine that I drew little attention from the other female students occupying the toilets. After entering an empty stall near the far end of the toilet block, I closed and locked the door, put the seat cover down and sat on it.
After a couple of deep breaths, I undid the buttons running down the front of my dress, and looked at my chest to see the bra cups filled to the brim with a pair of modestly large, well rounded breasts that I wasn’t sporting when I woke up in the morning.
Gun Princess Royale: Awakening the Princess, Book One Page 24
