Chapter 2: Episode I - She Has Refined Tastes
"Lyrian's story seems cold to me. It's like the virtue of falling sleet melting on your tongue—the calmness you receive from that coolness and ephemerality. It has that same beauty and misery to it." Alice sighed with pleasure as she flipped through a collection of Lyrian Colsten's stories.
We belonged to the Quinillia Academy literature club, which met in the western corner of the school's third floor.
As the day ended, the sunlit the room with a beguiling golden light the color of honey.
An aged oak table was placed in the midst of the miniature room, which was mainly used for storehouse and breathed of old paper and dust. Cardboard crates were loaded to dizzying peaks along the walls. There were likewise two steel bookshelves and a closet. That occupied the room to shattering, so we bundled old books we had no capacity for on every usable surface. If there was ever an earthquake, the towers of books would perhaps tumble over and bury us alive.
Alice was perched on a metal folding chair, her knees stretched up to her chest. It wasn't a particularly prudent way for her to sit. Her pleated skirt was relatively wide open—but not entirely. If she turned her legs even slightly, she would flash me.
She breathed a pale cheek on her bare knees and wound one arm around her legs so she could act lovingly through the book with her delicate fingers.
Her black bangs fell across the silver skin of her forehead and trailing braids went down over her shoulder to her hips. The whiteness of her skin made the black of her hair, her eyebrows, and her eyes stand out.
When she was quiet, Alice seemed incredibly refined. Like a living doll.
But then… she deliberately tore a page out of the book, loaded it into her mouth, and started chewing it like a goat.
She's eating it… That never gets any less surreal.
R-r-rip, crinkle, flupp.
Nom-nom-nom—gulp.
Her slender throat formed a charming sound as she swallowed the page. She shredded out and swallowed another page, her gentle expression transforming as her eyes closed with joy. She grinned.
"Lyrian really is de-licious. Did you know he was born in London? Everybody recognizes him for the movie The Adam's Trip and Mrs. Pott's series of children's books, but if you ask me, his finest story has to be The Legends of a Goose. Words are impotent to describe the deep affection for the tale. Ah—the story is so natural!
"Got that, Andy? You shouldn't just be wandering on and on. You have to carry the truly significant sentiments with you to the grave. It's the battle to not talk of things that give them poignancy and refinement. The last act makes me cry every moment I read it. Lyrian's stories are like a delicate sorbet, softening your burning passion. It feels amazing, sliding sweetly down my throat! You've got to read Jennie and Snowflake, too. And if it's not translated, don't bother."
I was at the lopsided table writing a short story in a notebook with a
mechanical pencil.
Words were pouring onto the page, so I had my eyes down and calmly interjected, "It tastes like sorbet? Alice, you're a goblin. Writing is the sole thing you can chew. How can you measure it to anything?"
She pouted at me for that.
"Why not? I can imagine it just great! I can say, 'Oh, sorbet must feel like this!' Besides, 'gremlin' is an innuendo. I'm just a literature maiden: a beautiful high school student like any other, who cares for all the stories and literature of the world so profoundly that she devours them."
"I don't think most high school girls rip pages out to eat on, though. Or at slightest, you're the only misfit like that I usually heard of in the sixteen years I've been around."
Alice puffed her lips out even more. "You're horrible! How can you call a lady a misfit to her face? That stings. You look so nice on the surface like you would carry roses at home and name them things like Nancy and Betty and take fantastic care of them, but I consider you're losing a little in tenderness toward your elders."
"Wait, you think I losing tenderness?"
"What's that presumed to mean?" Alice grumbled. But her attitude was restored almost immediately. She hopped out of her armchair and leaned forward with a timid expression in her eyes. "Well, never mind. My grace is as boundless as the Andromeda Galaxy, so I'll look over one or two rude remarks from an upstart kid. More important, is my sweet ready yet?" she asked excitedly.
She was such a straightforward woman. If she were a cat, she would have been purring. One year my senior, Aliceliese Granger is the president of the literature club—and also a goblin who eats stories.
Instead of eating bread and drinking water, she gobbles up pages from books and any paper with writing on it.
One year ago, I don't recognize how, this literature maiden with the long pigtails towed me into the literature club, and ever since suddenly as soon as classes were over, she would nag me. "I'm hunnngryyy," she states. "C'mon, compose something. Pleeease?" And I slap together a sonnet or an essay for her.
Even now that it's May and I've carried up to the second year, Alice and I are still the only two students in the club. Just the other time, She was bewildered about the fact that not a particular first-year student showed up.
"Take these, Andy. This is a direct order from your president!"
And, trailing behind the times a little, she crammed some recruitment flyers into my palms. I passed them out, my face blazing the whole time I stood outside the school gates, but it didn't consider like any new members were leading to come. I wonder if I can remain with this club if it's just me and this freakish president.
Why am I in the literature club anyway, of all things, after I swore I would never write another novel? I was supposed to be through with writing of any kind.
And now writing little snack stories for my peculiar goblin president isn't indeed unusual anymore. It's become totally normal.
Alice picked up a silver stopwatch from her pocket and presented it to me.
"Look, you only have five minutes left. Write a fully exquisite snack for your respected president. Lyrian had a suppressed, refreshing sweetness. So now I prefer something dripping with sugar. A heartbreaking story would be great, too, but love stories should have happy endings, after all. Don't do anything where the love interest passes from leukemia or a weak heart or in an airplane crash or from choking on a strawberry or anything like that."
Got it.
Plot twist—I'd drive him to run into the first girl he ever cared for on the steps of the Diet Building and later have a box of strawberry fall out of the sky and kill her.
Alice leaned on the table, chin in her hand, smirking.
At first glimpse, she looked like a low-key beauty, but when she was standing by for food, she turned into a full-blown pig and acted as an equal brat. Her black eyes sparkled with expectation.
"Mmm, I just love handwritten stories. James and Lanny have a finely arranged aroma when you read them in books, but amateurs have their own elegant naiveté. Especially when it's handwritten. I feel as if I'm slipping my hands into a gurgling stream to take a drink. It's like tasting a freshly picked tomato or cucumber or something! Even the slight tastes of grit just blow my mind!"
So I write like tomatoes and cucumbers…
I doubted what she would do if I told her that two years ago I was that mysterious girl who won a prize for new authors and developed into a best seller.
But of course, nobody would literally make me say that.
"Only two minutes left! One last push! You can do it!"
Alice cheered me on. She angled her delicate neck to peer up at me eagerly.
I got you now, Alice. Things aren't gonna go as easily as you think.
Just then we heard a voice.
"Hellooo, is anybody in? Ack!"
The moment the door opened, we heard a thud and someone fell into the room.
A girl was splayed out on the floor, her skirt flipped up in her fall, uncovering her bear-print underwear for all to look at. It revealed to me that my little sister had the same pair of underwear, but she was only just starting elementary school.
The girl pulled herself up, grunting noisily. But as she reached out a hand, she brushed against one of the towers of books, which rapidly toppled on top of her, and she dove to the ground again.
"Waugh!"
Bang!
"Muh… mah nothe (my nose)… mah nothe (my nose)…"
The girl was trembling slightly, her hands squeezed to her nose. Alice dashed over to her.
"Don't look, Andy!"
She quickly adjusted the girl's skirt to hide her underwear, but I'd already seen it. Besides, I wasn't such a perv that I would get aroused by bear-print underwear.
"Are you all right?"
Alice put an arm around the girl and backed her up. As soon as she was on her feet, the girl crumpled back down into a little ball and turned a bright, undignified red.
"Y-yeth, thankth. I fall a lot. I'm actually good at falling in empty rooms. Don't worry, I'm used to it."
I wouldn't call that being "good" at something.
"Um, my name is Janella Christine Pendelton. I'm a first-year student in the second class. I showed up to see the literature club for a great important request."
She was a small, chubby girl with a cloud of hair that fell to the tops of her shoulders. She was sort of reminiscent of a small dachshund or a toy poodle. Something like that.
Could she be an expected new member? Had the leaflets Alice made me hand out actually paid off? If so, that was perfect. If we got a junior member, I could foist Alice's snack duty off on her.
As shortly as I had latched on to this slight hope, Janella clasped her hands closely and implored us in a speech overflowed with courage, "Please grant me my affection!"
My mouth slipped open.
"Uh, you know we're the literature club, right?"
Janella turned to me and responded firmly. "I do! I saw your mailbox!"
"Our mailbox…?" I had no clue what she was talking about.
"There's a mailbox tucked under a tree in a back corner of the schoolyard. It looks like it's hiding! A sign on it says, 'We will grant you your affection. Interested parties, please send us a letter. By, the Literature Club' and it was absolutely like a thud! or a zzzzap! or anyway, like a sign from heaven. I figured I didn't have time to write a letter, so I ran straight here."
Despite my confusion, I suddenly realized what had happened. "Alice!"
No one but her would do something so outrageous.
Alice laid a hand on Janella's shoulder and smiled at her. "It's a good thing you came. I'm the club president, Aliceliese Granger. You just leave everything to us."
I stood up behind her and shouted, "Hold on! Are you including me in that 'us'?"
"Yes, I am. The entire literature club is going to do everything they can to support this little lady in her romance."
"Gosh, I really appreciate it!"
"Are you kidding me? Urgggh."
"In exchange, we have one condition," Alice informed her gently, clamping a hand over my mouth. "Once it has attained your affection, we want you to turn in a full love report, thoroughly detailing how it all developed."
"Oh no, really? A report? I'm pretty awful at writing."
"That's fine. All you have to do is write the things that happened and how you felt, exactly the way you encountered them. As long as you try your very best, the genuine words of someone who rarely writes can touch the heart and the appetite so much more than works that rely on technological proficiency. Write your every thought proudly and give us a delightful story—I mean, report. Oh, and you can't use a computer! You have to write it by hand on clean paper. Promise?"
Alice linked her slender finger with Janella's, confirming an exuberant pinky-promise.
So that was her intention all along.
Unsatisfied with receiving only the snacks I wrote for her, Alice was so food-engrossed that she had organized the idea to set up a relationship advice box and extort steamy reports from the people who came for help.
If all she had done was think it up, that would have been fine. But putting it so eagerly into practice demanded a particularly Alice-esque reason.
This is why you have to watch your back around book girls.
Their minds are full of literature with no approach to reality, so if you take your eyes off them, there's no telling what mischief they'll get into. They'll drag other people into their schemes without even a twinge of regret.
"Okay! I'll try real hard and write lots of reports!"
I just couldn't accept how submissive Janella's personality was (though if it weren't, she never would have come to this questionable club after seeing that shady mailbox). Her eyes glimmered as she gazed up at her. I could just imagine her thinking, She's so amazing and trustworthy!
Puffing up her flat-as-a-table A-cup (give or take) chest generally, Alice said, "Heh-heh. You just set your mind at ease. We've studied romance novels old and modern, the world over. We're love experts, but also masters of the written word. We'll write the best love letter the world has ever seen for you, Ella. Andy here can handle it."
"What?!"
Fed up with Alice's unflagging desire for pleasant dining, I had been playing dumb this whole time, but that got me.
"I'll have Andy think up something good. He's our top guy; one of his letters will execute an arrow straight through the heart of your beloved, Ella."
"I didn't agree to this, Alice! I've never written a love letter."
Alice covered my mouth for this last part, so I'm sure all Janella heard were muffled cries.
"He is our love letter specialist. He's written hundreds of them, and he thinks you'll be impressed. Andy is a champ. He made it to the final round of the Adanta Literature of Love competition."
What kind of no-name competition is that? It rings like something even locals wouldn't have heard of.
"Oh wow, that's incredible! It's so exciting that such a great writer is going to write my letters for me!"
Hey, I'm not a writer!
Well, I mean, I guess I was a writer… and I was a best seller… But still! Now I'm just a typical high school student, just Alice's snack-maker, and there's no way I could write love letters for someone else.
While I was lost in thought, the conversation wrapped up without me.
"Thank you, Andy!"
"Sure thing. It'll be a cinch, right, Andy?"
And so I assumed to be a girl—again—and wrote the love letters.
Addendum
After Janella left, Alice let out a little sob as she ate the improv story I had written for her.
"Oh, grooooss! A box of strawberries fell on his first love and killed her! Blech, blech! This tastes weird! It's like pork soup with jelly beans in it! Blech! Ppth! Soooo gross!"
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