Villainess [3]: Rosalie’s Followers

Red Pill [0]: Evictions, Beatings

Before this tale continues with Janet Fleming, it must take a detour to the fortunes of three other ladies attending Lassen Academy, so let the mind’s eye shift from Mariana House to Guinevere House, where the scene of another outrage was about to begin. Just before 7:00 a.m., while Janet was still asleep, another lady named Mindy Kessler was already up and dressed in her school uniform and combing her green shoulder-length hair before the mirror at her vanity table. And right beside her was her silver-haired maid waiting for Mindy to finish and holding Mindy’s book bag in the meantime.

When Mindy Kessler put her comb down, she reached out for her book bag, and her maid obliged her with it, and Mindy slung it over her shoulder and stood up, thinking of the events of last Friday for the umpteenth time. Mindy Kessler had a lot of things on her mind as she stretched out her arms and yawned, ready to greet another day, yet what she had witnessed on that fateful Friday afternoon last week still haunted her, still left her mulling over the details of it.

“My Lady, are you okay?” her maid said.

“I’m okay,” Mindy said, smiling. “Why do you ask?”

Her maid was about to explain—

When there came a knock on the door, accompanied by a voice that said, “Lady Kessler, there’s a message for you that you need to see at once.”

Mindy’s maid was about to utter something abrasive, but Mindy stopped her with a grab of her forearm and a shake of her head, then said, “Is that you, Lady Felton?”

“Yes,” Lady Felton said. “May I come inside?”

Mindy and her maid traded glances, and her maid said, “Don’t.”

“It’s okay, Ellie,” Mindy Kessler said, then to Lady Felton: “Yes, you may.”

The double doors opened, revealing a gray-haired lady dressed in her school uniform with a ribbon in her hair and a piece of paper in her hand. Lady Felton was looking at Mindy Kessler with a flash of her steely velvet eyes and said, “This is for you, Lady Kessler,” and she handed it over to her.

Mindy Kessler took it and read it through to the end, where she noticed Prince Blaise’s signature on the underline and said, “What the hell is this? This is a joke, right?”

“It’s not a joke,” Lady Felton said.

“What did I even do?” Mindy Kessler said.

“You must’ve done something to anger his Highness,” Lady Felton said. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have received that notice. Goodbye, Lady Kessler,” and she exited the room.

Mindy Kessler just stood there.

“My Lady?” Ellen said.

Mindy Kessler said, “Keep an eye on this room for me. I need to talk to Jean and Saraya about this.”

Exiting her dorm without listening to her mind’s response, Mindy Kessler headed down the central hallway of Guinevere House. On the way, she passed by Lady Felton talking with Rosalie Edgeworth still in her nightgown at her own dorm and felt their gazes on her back as she reached the back of the dorm house. Then Mindy Kessler ascended one set of half-turn stairs and passed by another student named Lady Childeron descending the stairs and paused on the steps.

Mindy Kessler turned and looked back down the stairs at Lady Childeron, her long brown locks swaying after her in her descent, and realized what was going on. She ran up the rest of the stairs and cleared the top step and ran down the second floor hallway towards two sets of opposing double doors open at the end of the hall, where she heard Jean and Saraya complaining about the same eviction notice.

She peeked into the doorway of Saraya’s room but found it empty to her left. So she walked to the other doorway and saw Jean and Saraya still in their nightgowns, Jean sitting on her dressing bench and readjusting her glasses and Saraya pacing around before their two maids, Diana and Niana, standing by the doorway looking flustered.

When Mindy Kessler saw both sisters holding their eviction notices in their hands, she said, “You got ones, too?”

Both sisters looked up at her.

“Wait,” Jean said, standing up, “you also received one?”

Mindy Kessler held hers up and said, “Yeah.”

“That’s crazy,” Jean said.

“Why would they do that?” Saraya said.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Mindy Kessler said, “but tell me what happened first.”

So Jean and Saraya approached Mindy Kessler and complained about the way Lady Childeron just banged on their doors, waking them up and making them open up for her, only to be handed an eviction notice. When they asked Lady Childeron what the heck was going on, Jean said, they were brushed off and told that they must have done something to Miss Edgeworth for his Highness, Prince Blaise, to issue both of them an eviction notice before Lady Childeron left a few minutes ago.

Moments passed.

Then Mindy Kessler said, “Don’t let anyone else know about this, till I talk to Professor Palmer.”

“Do you think he’s gonna help?” Jean said.

“I’ll find out,” Mindy said, stuffing her eviction notice into her book bag, and walked out through the double doors and back down the second floor hallway and down the half-turn stairs and down the first floor hallway. And along the way, she passed by the closed double doors of Miss Edgeworth’s dorm and figured she was getting dressed for school and exited through the foyer with her book bag beneath the shadow of Guinevere House in the cool morning air.

Mindy Kessler ran down the walkway towards the fountain in the courtyard and headed up the entrance steps through the open double doors of Lassen Academy and into the Eastern side of the campus building past the restrooms and entered the double doors of the Professor Commons Office, where she spotted Viscountess Durham arranging things on her desk.

For a moment, Mindy just looked around the shared office space for Baron Andrew Palmer, till Viscountess Durham said, “Are you looking for someone?”

“Oh, sorry about that,” Mindy Kessler said. “I was just wondering if you saw Professor Palmer just now?”

“No,” Viscountess Durham said, “I haven’t seen him yet. Is there anything I can help you with?”

She thought of the eviction notice in her book bag, but since she didn’t have Viscountess Durham in any of her classes, she refrained from telling her anything about it. Instead, she shifted her thoughts onto a safer topic and said, “Yeah, there is. Jean and Saraya Drevis and I are looking for a clubroom right now.”

“You’re a little late for that,” Viscountess Durham said. “Why didn’t you join one at the start of the semester?”

“None of the available clubs interested me then,” Mindy Kessler said, “so we decided to make our own.”

“I see,” Viscountess Durham said, “but three members aren’t enough to make a club. You need at least one more member before I can approve of it.”

“Okay,” Mindy said. “Thanks for letting me know.”

The Viscountess nodded and said, “Let me know if you’ve found another member, and I’ll approve your club.”

“Thank you,” Mindy said and left the Professor Commons Office, wondering if she had just dodged a bullet or overlooked an opportunity, then walked up the first flight of stairs into the second floor and then up the second flight of stairs into the third and last floor.

By the time she had cleared the last step on the stairs, Mindy Kessler felt the urge to take a no. 2. So she hurried down the Western half of the hallway towards the restrooms at the end just before the hallway turned into a side hall with more classrooms. She opened a heavy door into the women’s bathroom and rushed towards the nearest stall and hung her book bag on the door hook of her stall door, then raised her dress skirt and pulled down her panties and plunked herself on the toilet, where she relieved herself of last night’s dinner. Then she pulled out toilet paper and wiped herself and pulled up her panties and lowered her dress and flushed the toilet and took up her book bag and washed her hands in the sink.

With that done, Mindy Kessler exited the women’s restroom and headed for her homeroom class past the auxiliary room. She figured that during Homeroom 1, she could ask her homeroom professor, Count Archibald Wilhelm, for permission to visit Baron Andrew Palmer, but she knew the count was the nosy type that would want to know why. Instead of risking that, she doubled back around the corner into the main hallway, deciding to wait for Baron Palmer at her former homeroom, Classroom 1-3C, and ask him if she could talk to Lady Fleming about the club, and perhaps, maybe let Baron Palmer know about this latest predicament about the eviction notices she and—

She got shoved from behind, and she fell to the floor, and stars flew across Mindy’s eyes on impact. Then she heard running footsteps, and she thought she saw Lady Childeron coming up and kicking her in the stomach, where she felt pain shooting up her diaphragm. Mindy covered her face with her forearms, and when her assailants started kicking her legs, she gritted her teeth and stole a glance and recognized Lady Felton and Lady Childeron with the former kicking her legs and stomping on her knees and the latter kicking her forearms and stomping on her hands. They were cursing at her, too, saying that Mindy and her friends were wrong about Rosalie, that they were just jealous of her, that if she or either of those Drevis sisters disparaged Rosalie again, they’d kill them.

“Hey, get off of her!” someone said.

It was Saraya, and she and Jean came running.

Mindy Kessler’s assailants backed off, and Mindy heard running footsteps and Jean and Saraya cursing at the assailants going down the stairs. When Mindy raised herself up into a sitting position with her butt on the floor and her legs extended, she winced at the pain in her knees and shins and ankles, fisted and opened her aching hands, and noticed her friends ascending the stairs again.

Both sisters came running up to her and crouched on either side of her, asking her if she could stand.

“I can’t,” Mindy said.

So the Drevis sisters took both of Mindy’s arms across their shoulders and raised Mindy to her feet.

“Can you walk if we carry you?” Jean said.

“I think so,” Mindy said, and step for agonizing step, her friends guided her down the hallway and down both flights of stairs into the open-plan parlor area, where Saraya and Jean looked out for Mindy’s assailants. When there was no sign of either one nearby, they trio of girls passed the restrooms into the Western side of the campus building and passed the clubrooms, but they paused at the sight of Miss Edgeworth exiting the infirmary where the main hallway turned into a side hall full of more clubrooms.

The trio waited for the two-faced Rosalie Edgeworth to pass by, the same girl they had seen tearing her own dress at the fountain in the courtyard and blaming it on Lady Fleming, the same girl that had Prince Blaise publicly denounce Lady Fleming in front of unsuspecting bystanders, the same girl that was now walking past them as if today was just another day at school. Mindy and the Drevis sisters looked back at Rosalie before making their way towards the double doors of the infirmary, commenting on what they just saw.

They were met with the school nurse getting up from her seat by her desk and saying, “Oh my, what happened here?”

“She got beaten up,” Jaen said.

“What?” the nurse said. “Didn’t you fall down the stairs?”

“Wait, who told you that?” Saraya said.

“It was Miss Edgeworth,” the nurse said. “You must’ve met her on your way here. Did she say anything to you?”

All three girls shook their heads.

Then Jean was about to say something, but Mindy caught her glance and shook her head, so her friend relented.

The nurse led them to an available bed next to a window, where she pulled the curtain aside, revealing a clean bed with pristine sheets and a fluffed-up pillow. With Jean and Saraya’s help, Mindy Kessler managed to perch herself onto the bedside and swing her legs up onto the mattress and lay flat on her back, still aching in her legs and knees and forearms and hands, but she toughed it out the best she could.

When the nurse looked over the bruises on her limbs and hands, she went back to her desk, pulled out a few drawers, and came back with bandage wraps doused in red mana that colored it in a pinkish glow. She wrapped Mindy’s hands and calves and knees with them, leaving her forearms that had only sustained minor bruising throughout.

But after the nurse went back to her desk to fetch her clipboard with a sign-in sheet, Mindy whispered to her friends, saying, “Don’t tell the nurse what happened.”

“But why?” Jean said, looking back at the nurse.

“Just don’t, okay?” Mindy said. “If the nurse asks again, just go with what she said and be done with it.”

Saraya adjusted her scarf around her neck and looked back at the nurse taking the sign-in sheet and a pen with her and approaching them again, so Saraya turned and said, “Do you think Miss Edgeworth bribed her or something?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Mindy whispered, “but let’s not take any chances. Okay?”

Saraya and Jean traded knowing looks, then nodded that they understood, so Mindy breathed out a sigh on the hospital bed. The nurse asked questions, and the girls answered them, and the nurse filled in the sign-in sheet and asked where Mindy was hurting. Mindy answered the nurse’s questions, and the nurse said Mindy needed bed rest, till lunch period. After that, the nurse said, she was free to go. So between now and then, Mindy chatted with her friends in conspiratorial whispers about their next move, till it was time for Jean and Saraya Drevis to go to their homeroom class, Classroom 1-3J, on the third floor right next to Mindy’s homeroom class, Classroom 1-3K.

Mindy bid her friends goodbye for now and then lay there on her bed with a lot of things on her mind. First were those eviction notices they’d received from Lady Felton and Lady Childeron; second was the tussle with those same bitches; third was finding another member for their club; and fourth was the problem of that two-faced Rosalie Edgeworth and her Prince Donavan Blaise. Mindy thought hard on that damning Friday afternoon, recalling the sequence of events: turning around and listening to Miss Edgeworth arguing with Lady Fleming, then seeing Rosalie rip her own dress, then seeing Prince Blaise exit the double-door entrance of school building and confront Lady Fleming over what Rosalie had done, then seeing a lovers’ quarrel in which the Prince defended Miss Edgeworth against Lady Fleming’s accusations and denounced Lady Fleming with a few unforgivable words against her honor. She tried calling up what Prince Blaise had said to Lady Fleming in front of Mindy and her friends, remembering his exact words:

“‘Only a witch can give birth to someone like you.’”

After repeating his words in her mind, Mindy remembered seeing Lady Fleming in tears, but what surprised her the most was Lady Fleming’s response when she said, “My mother is dead, your Highness. Don’t make light of the dead.”

Lady Fleming left after that, leaving the Prince and Miss Edgeworth and Mindy and her friends speechless by the fountain, till the Prince came up to them and asked what they had seen and heard. So they told him the truth, but the Prince shook his head, saying, “You’re lying.”

“Maybe that’s why,” Mindy said under her breath, recalling the Prince’s signature on her eviction notice and wondering why the Prince was so damn protective of Miss Edgeworth, wondering if giving them the eviction notices was Rosalie’s idea, and wondering if Prince Blaise was complicit in it. She then looked over at the nurse organizing her desk as another thought came to her, which she articulated only in her mind: “What are you hiding, your Highness?”

End of Villainess [3]