22. Midterm Exams (3)
"I'm bored."
I'd spread the book open in front of me, but I hadn't managed to read a single line.
Isabel, seated beside me, spoke quietly.
"My lady, are you not going to study?"
"I am studying."
"The pages have not turned."
"That's because the book's boring."
"It's within the written exam's scope."
"I know."
I closed the book.
Roseline was probably in the library right about now, burning with desperation to shave off even a single question from the list I'd be allowed to ask her. She thought she'd won her freedom, and yet there she'd be, studying all the while with my conditions hanging over her head.
The thought made me laugh.
"It really is boring with Roseline out of sight."
Isabel fell silent for a moment.
"My lady, is Lady Beloa's body what you're after?"
I looked at Isabel.
"You're well aware of what will happen if any of this comes to light."
"Her body, you say."
The face I'd seen in the fitting room drifted back to me. The way she'd turned around the moment the last button slid into place — furious, and yet unable to walk away.
I rose from my seat.
"Fine, Isabel. Let's go out for a bit."
"I beg your pardon? Where to?"
"Get a mask ready."
"A mask, you say?"
"Yes. It's a nuisance if my face gets recognized."
Isabel's expression hardened.
"Where exactly do you intend to go?"
I smiled mischievously.
"An adult goods shop."
The shop sat tucked away in an alley a little removed from the capital's main thoroughfares.
From the outside it looked like an ordinary salon and sundries store, but the moment we stepped through the door, the atmosphere shifted entirely. The walls were lined with garments that exposed far more skin than they covered, and along the inner display cases stretched row upon row of blindfolds, collars, ribbons, and items whose purpose it would be difficult to disguise.
Isabel swallowed hard the instant she crossed the threshold.
"You truly mean to choose things here?"
"I do. Ordinary clothing shops only carry boring things."
I stopped in front of a black outfit.
A black choker. Long gloves. A small pair of rabbit-ear ornaments.
Every inch of it radiated an unmistakably lewd sensibility. Anyone who laid eyes on it could tell that the garment had been made not to function as clothing, but to be stood up in front of someone.
"This one."
Isabel shut her eyes tight at the sight of it.
"Lady Beloa will object most strenuously."
"I know."
"And you're choosing it anyway?"
"Mm-hm."
I smiled.
"I want to see that face of hers, too."
While the clerk fetched the outfit, I browsed the other displays. A thin ribbon to wind around the throat. Wrist ornaments. Small straps to fasten around the thighs. A black garter belt.
"These too."
"My lady."
"What?"
"Do you seriously intend to use things like these?"
"Use them, you say."
I lifted the ribbon up.
"It's just decoration."
"These are not things that can be explained away with such wording."
"Don't worry. If Roseline says she hates it, I'll stop."
"Am I to believe that?"
I considered it for a moment.
"Half of it."
"You have truly gone mad."
"Isabel."
"Yes."
"You've been climbing up onto your high horse an awful lot lately."
Isabel bowed her head.
"...My apologies."
I laughed and set the ribbon back down.
"But you're not wrong."
It was then that one of the objects on the innermost display case caught my eye.
Its shape was blatantly explicit — the kind of thing no one could earnestly insist was a mere ornament. A little placard labeled it a noble salon toy, but it was far, far too large for the word toy to fit.
I picked it up.
It was heavy.
What kind of face would Roseline make if I showed it to her? Would she rage? Would she freeze? Would she call me Serena in that low voice of hers and tell me not to cross the line?
The mere imagination of it wrung a laugh out of me.
"My lady. Are you truly thinking of buying a thing like that as well?"
"Why? Curious? As it happens, I was just in need of a teaching aid, so this is perfect timing."
I took the object in both hands and pressed it against her lower abdomen — and for the first time, Isabel's face froze in undisguised flusterment.
"My lady."
"Aren't you curious? What expression she'll wear when she looks at me with something the size of a forearm pushing into her. Whether she'll sob, or cry out in a voice she can't hold back."
"My lady... please."
"Pfft — don't look so terrified. It's a joke."
I set the thing back down on the display case, and Isabel went quiet for a long while.
"You have truly lost your mind."
"That's a bit harsh."
"You would have deserved far harsher words just now."
"Isabel."
"Yes."
"I'm the one who decides where that line is."
Isabel looked me straight in the eye.
"No, my lady."
This time it was I who paused. Isabel spoke in a low voice.
"That line is drawn by Lady Beloa."
The shop went still. I watched Isabel for a moment, then laughed.
"You really are climbing awfully high today."
"I apologize. But this time, I will not yield."
"Oh?"
"No."
I turned back to the display case.
The thing I'd just set down was provocative enough to rattle Roseline. But the moment I actually forced it into her, what rose to her face might not be the boundary and the shame I wanted to see — it might be genuine revulsion.
Which wouldn't be terrible, come to think of it?
"Fine. Skip that one."
The tension in Isabel's shoulders eased a little.
"Come to think of it, it's not truly mine. Why insist on using something that isn't?"
"A wise judgment."
"Was that a compliment?"
"The bare minimum of relief."
In its place, I chose ribbons, gloves, a collar, and thin garters instead.
Roseline would never guess. While she sat at her desk straining to get one fewer question wrong, I would be selecting the shame she'd have to face in the clothes she wore after the exam.
One could call it rotten of me, truly rotten — but there was nothing to be done about it. From the moment I'd pictured Roseline standing before me in those clothes, all thought of stopping had already evaporated.
When we returned to the Annex with our purchases, Isabel set the box down on the table.
The packaging looked like that of any respectable upscale clothing boutique. At least on the surface it did.
I asked as I peeled off my gloves.
"Has she read the letter by now, I wonder?"
"Given Lady Roseline's character, I would surmise she has not."
"We'll see."
I settled onto the sofa and toyed with the box's cord with a fingertip.
"I'd have caved to the pressure and opened it, personally."
Isabel did not answer.
"What? Something else you'd like to say?"
"I was merely astonished."
"About what?"
"That such bribes actually work at an institution called the Imperial Central Academy."
I laughed.
"Isabel."
"Yes."
"There's nothing anywhere that money can't solve. To be precise, it's only that there are things money alone can't solve. If what a person stands to gain outweighs what they stand to lose, most of them move."
I picked up the envelope lying on the desk.
A copy of the written-exam prep materials I'd sent to Roseline. It wasn't a stolen exam paper. I hadn't bought an answer sheet, either.
But I had managed to learn which professor drew heavily from which units, what style of answers he favored, and which books in the library were worth consulting first.
"It's nothing remarkable. I didn't buy the answer key, and I didn't pull the exam papers."
"Then what exactly did you buy?"
"Time."
I set the envelope back down.
"The information everyone else will have to grope around searching for — Roseline will get to see it straight away."
"Is that enough on its own?"
"It's plenty."
Roseline is righteous. A woman of noble character who cannot abide injustice and who never once steps outside the bounds of duty.
That was both her greatest virtue and her greatest weakness.
"Whether she reads it or not is her freedom."
I recalled the sentence I'd written on the outside of the envelope and smiled.
"Written like that, she won't be able to resist."
"Why do you think so?"
"She's more desperate for money than anyone alive. If someone throws her a rope, she has to grab it — even if only later does she realize it's a rotten one."
Isabel was silent for a moment.
"You seem to know Lady Beloa far too well, my lady."
"Do I?"
"Yes. And that is precisely what worries me more."
"I'll take it as a compliment."
"It was not one."
Instead of answering, I opened the box.
The black outfit revealed itself. The black choker and long gloves, the little rabbit ears. The shoulders cut in a deliberately exposed style, and beneath it all, brown stockings folded neatly in line. But what seized the eye above all else was the white puff of a tail stitched to the back.
Looking at it a second time changed nothing — it was a garment so blatant it bordered on the absurd.
What face would Roseline make, wearing this?
She'd ask what on earth I was thinking, preparing something like this. She'd tell me not to cross the line. And even as she said it, she'd remember the conditions she herself had accepted.
Freedom until the written exam. The outfit I chose, on the day it ended. One question per wrong answer.
And on top of it all, the fact that it was Roseline herself who had agreed to every last condition.
"My lady."
"What?"
"Your tastes are truly shameless."
"Was that a compliment?"
"It was an indictment."
"I know."
I lifted the rabbit-ear ornament out of the box once, then set it back down.
"That's exactly why I like it."
"If Lady Beloa sees this, she will be furious. Are you pleased even so?"
I smiled.
"I bought it because I want to see that face."
Isabel said nothing more.
I closed the box again and slid it into the back of my wardrobe. There was no way anyone would barge in uninvited, and even if they did, no one alive would dare rummage through my closet.
When the doors swung shut, the room returned to its usual stillness. To the eye, nothing had changed at all. But inside that wardrobe waited the shape of a condition Roseline knew nothing about yet.
She would never guess.
While she sat at her desk straining to get one fewer question wrong, I had already prepared the shame she would have to face when the exam was over.