The Simulacrum

~Chapter 147~ Part 3

"… and that's your new job," I said into the phone while waiting for my sisters by the front door. "Congratulations on your promotion."

Silence lingered on the line, long enough so that I had time to peek back into the living room and check the time. The clock on the far wall quietly ticked away the seconds of the morning with complete indifference. Though again, that's what clocks were supposed to do, so I had no idea what I was expecting. Maybe I should buy one of those novelty cuckoo clocks and nail it up there, just so that I could give more flowery descriptions of it in the future.

While my mind wandered, and my sisters were still nowhere in sight, the other side of the line finally came alive with a stifled groan.

"You can't be serious," Moose protested a tad limply. "Listen, Admin. I know that I made fun of you because of that whole instant-takeover incident. I admit, I may have gotten it a little carried away, but getting back at me like this is beneath you."

"What are you talking about? I'm not holding a grudge."

"You do! You totally do!" he cried so loudly I had to move the phone away from my ear.

"You act like it's a prank, but I'm seriously promoting you, you know?" All I got in response was an indignant huff, so I further emphasized, "It's not that bad. You just have to listen to what our ex-directors say, give it a sanity check, and then hand me the streamlined version later. It's easy."

"If it's so easy, then why are you trying to pass it to me like it's a ticking hot potato?!"

"I think you're kind of mixing your metaphors here, but to answer your question: it's because I'm busy with other things, while now that the Archonists no longer need organizing, you have free time."

"But my brother is—!"

"Oh, my sisters are here. I have to go. Good luck with your promotion Chief Communications Officer Raziel."

With that, I cut the line and muted my phone with well-practiced motions, just in time for Penny to show up in the vestibule.

"Sorry! We can get going now!" Today was a bit windy, so she was wearing a sporty jacket over her school uniform. She also had her hair done into a thick braid (the handiwork of Snowy), and she overall had a 'fresh' impression. In the meantime, I put away my phone, but it didn't stop her from craning her neck to try and take a look at the screen. "Who were you talking to?"

"Just delegating some Celestial business."

"Oooh? You mean, the thing that Eleanor is always pestering you about?"

"One and the same." Seeing the smirk on her face made me want to tease her a bit, so I pretended I was planning to pinch her cheek. She deftly hopped back and out of reach… only to then bump into Snowy, who just entered the entranceway. "Whoa. Careful there, kiddo."

"H-Hauu! Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. I was just startled," Snowy said with a smile, eliciting a relieved sight from my fussier sister.

I belatedly noticed that they were wearing matching jackets. Not only that, on closer look, I had to realize I'd never seen them wearing these before. Did they buy them when they took Tajana out for shopping, I wondered.

"Stay safe, My Lady!"

Speak of the devil. The ill-starred spymaster called out to us before I could ask my sisters about their new outerwear, and then the topic naturally slipped my mind as we headed outside and began our routine ritual necessary to gain access to humanity's accumulated knowledge base. It was also colloquially known as 'commuting to school', but I liked my description better.

As far as Mondays were concerned, this was fine. A little on the windy side, as I had noted previously, but by this point we were firmly in springtime, even if the leaves and flowers were still firmly tucked away in their buds. But speaking of flowers, I had to admit one thing: I was a bit curious about what colour the trees in front of Blue Cherry High will be in a couple of weeks' time. If those cherry trees will be dressed in the usual whites and pinks instead of blue hues, I was planning a file an official complaint at Lord Grandpa's desk about false advertising. It's going to be the biggest scandal in the history of this island, I say.

…

By the way, I was kinda-sorta totally mentally exhausted to the point of near brain-death by my meeting with the ex-directors yesterday. Was it still showing? Who was I even asking?

While pondering about these, and many other equally profound topics within my mind's currently rather decrepit palace, we rounded a few corners. I was fully expecting that Penny would start discussing something girly with Snowy, like swords and video games, as usual. To my mild surprise and amusement, I found her acting unusually flustered (or rather, she was usually flustered, but not at times like this), and the way she was sneaking glances at me as if waiting for the right moment for something piqued my interest.

"What's on your mind?"

She was clearly angling for my prompting, as by the time the last syllable left my mouth, she was already responding.

"You know, I've been thinking."

"Uh-oh. That's already starting bad."

For extra theatrics, I glanced at Snowy, and she stifled a giggle, though it felt more out of politeness than actual amusement. As for my other sister, she immediately puffed up her cheeks and hit me with her bag.

"I'm serious!"

"Easy there, kiddo. I'm just messing with you." Once she finally stopped trying to clobber me with her textbooks, I straightened my clothes and asked, "So? What's the problem?"

"It's not a problem, just…" She hesitated, as if afraid that she was overstepping a boundary, but she eventually steeled her resolve. "Why are we going to school?"

"… Do you mean that in a literal, or metaphysical sense?" She looked at me funny, so I tried again, "You know? In that navel-gazing, 'Why are we going anywhere? Is it the destination that's important, or the journey? Is there even a destination?' kind of way."

"Nonono! Literally! I meant it very literally!" She interrupted me, and this time, Snowy in the back giggled without having to force herself. "It's… I'm just asking what's the point?"

"The point," I echoed her, maybe a bit too flatly.

"Yes. I mean, it made sense when we were still the Brotherhood and we were, you know? Infiltrating and stuff. But now…" She paused for a bit while looking for words, but they still didn't come easily to her. "It's like… you know? Everyone knows who you are, or… erm… who we are, so there's no reason to blend into society, and it's not like we need to go to school. Do you get what I'm trying to say?"

Blinking, I had to gather my wits for a moment, so in the meantime I squeezed out a rather bemused, "Wow. I'm having the mother of all déjà vus right now."

"W-What does that mean?"

"That I had already had this conversation before," I said off-handedly, and since we were getting close to Judy's home, I tried my best to explain myself as expediently as possible. "It wasn't with you, but to put it simply…"

While I might've started confidently like that, I soon fell silent and my brain tried its best to hammer together a suitably convincing answer. Unfortunately, that lead to a completely different tangent about why I needed it to be 'convincing'. That implied that I needed to convince someone, but Penny didn't need that. She wasn't calling me out, she was just curious, so… was I trying to convince myself? Maybe.

After all, from an entirely rational standpoint, it would've made a lot of sense to just completely drop the school altogether. If I wanted to, I could easily set up a cover about us being home-schooled… Heck, there wasn't even a need for a cover, now that I thought about it.

Elly told me a while back that she had been tutored at home for most of her life. If not for her insistence on transferring to Blue Cherry High in order to 'catch' Josh back in September, things would've stayed that way until she got old enough to inherit the family business. Considering her standing, homeschooling made infinitely more sense for her, and considering our standings, the same applied to us. It wouldn't even have been hard to arrange.

Or wait… did I even need to get tutored? It's not like I would need qualifications in the future. Considering all my titles and positions of power in the underground world of mystical folk, I sure as hell wasn't going to work a nine-to-five job. Also, while it hurt to admit it, I kind of lacked Angie's drive to get a diploma just for the sake of self-improvement (and self-justification for all the worship, I imagined).

None of that had anything to do with why I was still walking to school even as I pondered all this though. There certainly were reasons against it, and also reasons for it; both of the Doylist and the Watsonian variety. I could've brought up narrative uniformity, maintaining our school life romantic dramedy core to keep things steady and mostly predictable, or mentioned the child protective services and their digging into our backgrounds, and that was only scratching the tip of the proverbial iceberg, but… Well, it wasn't that complicated.

"There's no deep reason." Penny was looking at me sideways, probably thinking that I was trying to dodge the question. "It's all about consistency. It's expected, it's convenient because the school is right on top of the Magi headquarters, and it's good for our social lives."

"So… it's just a habit?"

"In a way," I said with a shrug. "It's just what we do. We don't discriminate, we don't kill, and we don't miss school unless necessary. We kept ourselves to these rules until now, and I don't see a reason why we should change them in the home stretch."

"I… don't understand," Snowy cut in from behind us, awkwardly wedging herself between me and Penny. "That implies that there's some kind of goal or… um… destination? Something we are heading towards? What's that?"

"Don't wrack your pretty head over that, sis." I punctuated that by playfully rubbing her noggin and adding, "It's just a metaphor."

"I… see."

She obviously wasn't convinced, and neither was Penny, so after some thinking, I gave her one of the many random excuses that popped into my head the first time she brought up the topic.

"Also, Angie, Josh, and Ammy would keep attending school anyway. Judy too, I guess. It would be weird if only half of us quit overnight."

"Ah! That's a good point."

My knightly sister looked almost relieved, as if I just answered one of those great questions about life, the universe, and everything. Thankfully, this one didn't involve mice, or the number forty-two. She looked like there were still some doubts on her mind, but before she could voice them, we were surprised by Judy and the Princess flagging us down even before we reached the usual intersection.

"Morning, girls," I greeted the two of them once we got closer, and raised a curious brow at the awkwardly fidgeting princess. "I don't remember agreeing to meet up here."

"Elly had a small problem, and she came to me for advice," my dear assistant explained in a voice that was a strange mixture of deadpan, affectionate, and just a smidge amused.

"It's not a small problem," my other girlfriend fumed.

Seeing her reaction, Snowy made a few subtle gestures with her fingers, signalling that they would go ahead, and when I nodded, she pulled Penny along and started walking. For the record, my other sister was still lost in thought about the whole 'Are there really no nefarious motives behind our school attendance?' topic, but it only made it easier to be led along, as she was paying less attention to my girlfriends.

Speaking of whom…

"So, what is this big problem?" I prompted the princess, and even as I did, the three of us naturally formed a line and started walking a couple of steps behind my sisters.

"It's not a big problem either, it's just… It's so weird…"

I waited patiently for my draconic girlfriend to collect her wits, but when she only continued to awkwardly glare at thin air, Judy came to the rescue.

"Elly's chambermaid made some unexpected remarks, and now she's all confused."

"Oh? You mean Melinda?"

The princess nodded, her golden ringlets buffeted by the wind in a surprisingly picturesque scene she naturally didn't appreciate as much as I did. She swept a few strands of stray hair from her face and let out something between a huff and a groan, closer to the latter than the former.

"Last evening, she said she wanted to help me bathe. We used to do that a lot when I was younger, you know? There's nothing strange about it."

"It must be a maid thing," Judy noted, and deadpan as she might've been on the surface, she couldn't hide the hint of expectation in her voice. I'm not going to lie, that alone made me also feel a bit anticipant about the punchline of this story.

"I guess. We could ask Snowy, to be sure?" I proposed, but Elly shot me down with a flushed face.

"No! I tell you, it's normal! We also took baths with Judy when she was staying with us, and there was nothing strange about it!"

"Chief. I'm being implicated in this love-dodecahedron."

"Hush, Dormouse. You're spoiling the punchline," I whispered with a playful wink my other girlfriend didn't appreciate.

"You two! This is serious! Melinda… she was acting odd, and she kept talking about… um… things! Weird things!"

"Please be a bit more specific."

"It was complicated! For example… she said that you're the one who's marrying into the Dracis family, and we're the ones who are okay with polygamy. Then she said that instead of Judy and I being engaged to you, I should think of it as you and Judy being engaged to me, and that meant I could have more partners, and then she talked about how since I already had Judy, I should have more girls, and that was the point where I completely lost the thread of the conversation, and I don't know what to think about all this!"

Blinking, I glanced at Judy to see if the princess was only pretending to be dense, but when she shook her head, couldn't help but vocalize the mother of all baffled hums.

"Huh. I didn't expect her to go on the offensive so soon."

"What do you mean? Wait, no." The princess shook her head so hard, it made her hair cascade around, only for it to get caught in the wind again. She really needed a cap. Or maybe a beret. I was sure she would look cute in a beret. More importantly, once the wind died down, she grabbed hold of my hand. "There's some kind of misunderstanding! I think Melinda thinks I'm attracted to girls!"

"Are you?" I asked, and she squeezed my hand so hard it almost hurt.

"No! I don't like girls!"

"Not even me?" Judy teased her, and for a moment, she was completely stumped.

"I… I mean, I like you, but not like that! Come on, I know you know what I'm talking about!"

"For the record, there is nothing wrong with liking girls. For the record."

I had no idea why Judy said that twice. Probably for emphasis? In any case, my draconic girlfriend squinted at her in return, an expression that was about as silly as it was oddly adorable.

"Do you like girls?"

"No," my beloved assistant responded promptly, without any hesitation, and then grabbed my other hand. "I'm certified Leosexual."

"Certified?" I asked with a curiously raised brow.

"Yes. I made it myself," she declared with a surface-level seriousness that was hiding an impish smirk. "I'm also planning to make my own flag. I still have to figure out the color combination though."

"Oh, come on!" Elly whined and pulled on my hand. "This is serious! What if Melinda thinks that I like girls… you know? Romantically? Maybe she thought that I was… uuu… trying to s-seduce her when we bathed together again after such a long time?"

Once again, I could only blink and then whistle as I looked at Judy.

"Wow. She really doesn't get it."

"I know. It's funny." She responded in her usual deadpan tone. "I didn't tell her what's going on because I wanted you to see it yourself."

"What are you two talking about?"

This time, I could almost see the question marks floating over Elly's head, so I figured it was best not to tease her too much and let the cat out of the bad.

"Princess. I don't want you to be alarmed, but I think you have it backwards. She's the one who's trying to seduce you with the subtlety of a… hmm… what would be a good simile?"

"A drunk kabuki actor at a late-night talk show?" Judy proposed.

"That's… oddly specific, but yeah, let's go with that," I concluded with a shrug, and it took until this moment for the princess to digest what I just said.

"W-Wait! Slow down! Are you saying that Melinda… likes girls?"

"Or maybe she's Ellysexual," Judy spoke offhandedly.

"Hush, Dormouse. Don't confuse her any further." After lightly chiding her, I waited for a beat before adding, "Also, please stop coming up with new sexualities on the fly."

"Why? I already have a good idea for the flag for it. Something with red and gold."

Ignoring her for a moment, my attention was drawn back to Elly.

"Leo! Since when did you know about this?"

"Since about the time I first met dad-in-law," I answered nonchalantly, which only confused her more.

"And you're… approving of it?"

"Eh, 'approving' is a strong word. I'd go with something like 'not openly opposing' instead." She was still looking at me like I was speaking gibberish, so I clarified. "Let me put it this way: Back then, she asked me if I would be okay if you decided to have more love interests. This was just after we started going out; when our relationship was still a bit vague between the family-approved polyamory and the anti-harem countermeasures. She put me on the spot, and since I felt indebted to you two for accommodating our arrangement, it would've felt wrong to say I wouldn't do the same if you wanted to expand our triang relationship. Tit for tat and all that, you know? And since I told her that, going back on it now would make me feel like a hypocrite, so I just told her to do whatever she wanted."

To be fair though, part of the reason why I was so laissez-faire about the topic was because I figured Elly would turn her down anyway, but I didn't need to say that part out loud.

"Uuu… Then, what am I supposed to do now?" Elly whined as she nuzzled up to my shoulder, so embarrassed she wanted to completely hide her face.

While my initial reaction was to just shrug and tell her to figure it out, I bit back those words and gave the situation a bit more thought. Since she had known the blonde chambermaid since they were kids, they were closer to childhood friends than employer and employee. Bouncing her off would probably result in lots of awkwardness, especially since they would still routinely meet each other. That could lead to discomfort, and in the worst-case scenario, Melinda could leave the employ of the Dracis family to escape the daily emotional friction, which would end up hurting Elly.

Recognizing that the situation was trickier than I first thought, I was about to give her some advice, but Judy beat me to the punch by letting go of my hand and grabbing the princess's instead.

"Calm down. I don't think the Chief can advise you on this one."

"Why not?" I blurted out, and she gave me a sideways look.

"Face it; you're terrible at friend-zoning people and letting them down gently. If Elly listens to you, we might end up in a harem after all."

"What was that about harems?"

I was so startled by the sudden appearance of Ammy that I literally jumped, nearly dragging my girlfriends along.

"Whoa! Class rep! You seriously need to stop doing this!"

"Doing what?"

She looked at me like I was an idiot, and in response to my previous act, my girlfriends let go of me and moved a bit to our left to have a more 'private' chat about Elly's interpersonal problems. At least as much as that word could even apply to strategy meetings held in the middle of the sidewalk, but I digress. Back to the class rep.

"This whole 'appearing out of my blind spot' thing," I complained and rubbed the back of my neck. "I think I pulled a tendon just now. That means you've caused more damage to me than the French sniper guy and his gaggle of assassins combined. Congrats."

The class rep, wrapped in a pretty thick white winter coat over her uniform and wearing a grey ushanka of all things (seriously, how the heck did she manage to sneak up on me while looking like that?) menacingly adjusted her glasses at me. Her mouth was set in a thin line and her brows swung between an annoyed glare and a garden-variety frown like a pendulum.

"Stop clowning around. I wanted to talk with you." I stopped massaging my neck and gave her the go. "I managed to convince Grandfather to let me touch his Grimoire Key. Can you come with me when the time comes to test it? I would feel much safer if you were around, just in case destiny would need a nudge in the right direction."

"Sure, sure. Let's discuss the details during lunch break." That was more or less the end of the topic, but then I remembered something, but waited until we reached the crossing right before the hill leading up to the school gates to ask, "Can I borrow your notes again? On last week's lessons?"

"Of course." After a long beat, we continued on our way, until she let out a strange sound. "Ah. That request was so normal, it's feeling out of place."

"I had similar sentiments in the past, yes," I muttered while nodding sagely, and we might've started a philosophical discussion about the nature of normalcy, if not for Josh and Angie catching up to us, finally rounding out our group.

"You see?  I told you we would make it!" Angie declared with gusto as she came to a screeching halt next to it. "Hi, Leo! Hi, Ammy!"

"Morning, guys," I greeted the childhood friend couple. Or rather, only the girl side of it, as Josh was about ten meters behind, doing his best to catch up.

"Hurry up, slowpoke!" the Celestial girl called out to him, and the guy yelled back something along the lines of, "I told you to stop running ahead! What if there's another…?"

It was only when then that he realized we were in public, so instead of shouting across the street, he quickly power-walked over to our side and finished the sentence in the form of a low hiss.

"What if there's another assassin out there? You have to be more aware of your surroundings."

"It's going to be fiiine!" she argued back, and then stuck out her tongue before catching up with my sisters, leaving Josh behind in my company.

"Man… She's an extra-handful today. Must be those darned chocolate-chip corn flakes we ate for breakfast," he grumbled, sounding more like a tired father looking after his rambunctious kid rather than a boyfriend complaining about his girlfriend. At last, he greeted us with a lazy wave of his free hand (his other arm was still in a sling), and said, "And here we are, off to school again. Did I miss anything?"

"Eh, not really." I jerked my head to indicate the clusters of our segmented group one by one. "My sisters are discussing the necessity of formal education, my girlfriends are working on anti-harem countermeasures, and the class rep here is eager to discover her destiny and learn how to throw fireballs."

"Among other things," Ammy noted, conspicuously not denying my allegation.

"In other words, everything's back to normal," Jost noted a tad wistfully, only to pause and give me a skeptical look a second later. "What? Why are you staring at me like that?"

Instead of answering right away, I properly glanced at our little gaggle of friends and family, then at the guy recuperating from a bullet wound, and ultimately let my shoulders droop in resignation.

"It's nothing. I'm just thinking that having a philosophical debate about the nature of normalcy might be warranted after all…"

And with those slightly confounding words in tow, we finally passed through the gates of Blue Cherry High, ready to begin yet another allegedly normal school day.