Work Text:
When Cater had left the venue of the Farewell NRC party, Trey saw from the windows that he was heading for the Hall of Mirrors. After fifteen minutes, he got worried as Cater had yet to return from his venture. There were a lot of things left to do on their last day of being third years, so what was Cater doing?
Trey told Lilia that he was going to search for Cater, then slipped into the corridors. Cater had turned right after hastily running outside, which meant he must have went to the Hall of Mirrors.
Normally occupied by students from all dorms entering and leaving the main campus, the Hall of Mirrors was quiet. It felt weird to be walking around when all the other students were in class, and the green candlelight flickering soundlessly did not calm the unsettling feeling that has been inside his stomach ever since he woke up today. He gulped, stepping through the mirror with its rims adorned with hearts and roses.
After passing through the mirror, he now stood in front of the Heartslabyul dorm, wondering which way Cater might have went. Did he go to the dorms to say goodbye? Trey assumed not, as there was plenty of time left later for them to say goodbye to their kouhais. Besides, he doubted there was anyone left in the dorms at this time of the day.
Which means… Trey looked in the other direction. Without the students of their dorm painting roses and trimming the hedges, the maze was tranquil. The roses on the heart-shaped bushes were freshly painted red by the first-years, in preparation for the tea party tomorrow.
Cater sat not far from the entrance, legs crossed, with his palms pressed against his face. He was trembling. He thought of the melancholic expression Cater wore on his face when he was alone or zoning out. The expression Cater made sure not to show anyone, but whenever a trace of it drifted across his face, Trey would feel a tug inside him.
Concerned, Trey walked closer. “Cater, are you crying?”
The boy in front of him froze up. He peeked up from between his fingers, where Trey saw that his eyes were red. Tears lined his eyes, trickling down his face and smearing the black diamond symbol on his cheek.
Cater’s eyes widened when he saw Trey, and he shrank backwards. His hands were still covering his face, the green eyes that stared back at him filled with fear, and his words came out in a tremble.
“...no.”
It sounded like multiple Caters were saying the same thing at once. Trey looked around him. Cater stood slumping with his face pressed against the hedges. Cater flopped face first on the ground in forfeit. Cater laid sideways on the ground and buried his face in his knees, the ceremonial robe spread out underneath him.
From the multitude of the voices, Trey was certain that there were far more Caters than the ones he could see. “Cater,” he said, alarmed, “why are you using Split Cards like this? This will drain too much of your magical energy.”
He squatted down so as to not appear threatening. Cater pressed his back against the bushes, his breaths coming in short gasps.
“No, leave me alone!” he cried. “Don’t get any closer to me!”
The layers to the voice grew, and more defeated copies of Cater popped up, huddling and cowering and hyperventilating. An aura of negative energy loomed the rose maze, and the air around him became dense. Trey’s heart sank. He quickly grabbed his magical pen and sent a signal in the sky to alert everyone.
Still hoping there was something he could do, Trey crouched down in front of the Caters.
“Cater, I don’t know if you can still hear me, but please listen. I should have probably said this before.
“If there is anything you want to talk about, you can always come to me. I’ll be here for you… no, I am here for you. We’ve been friends for three years, so please know that whatever you’re going through, whatever you have on your mind that you want to say, you can always come and talk to me. I’ll listen.”
As if his words were the spell to end it all, Cater all turned away from Trey, and were engulfed by the negative energy that surrounded them.
The magic released from overblotting shook the ground, and Trey struggled for balance. He breathed in sharply in a struggle for air, and his sight hazed from the large concentration of negative energy.
Cards rained from the sky. Cards, coloured charcoal black, scattered onto the ground in an unending stream. Several blood red shapes, four red diamonds were on each of the cards that fluttered down, cutting into the hedges and covering up the ground.
When the cards were almost up to his knees, they stopped falling. Just like that, the air became more clear, and it almost seemed like everything went back to normal. He stood in a sea of black cards that filled the paths, cut into the roses, and had ruined petals fall from the bushes. All the copies of Cater had disappeared.
Trey suddenly realized how little he knew about overblots. Over his years at Night Raven College, he witnessed so many cases of overblotting, the most impactful of them all being none other than his childhood friend. To this day, he could remember Riddle’s overblot as if it only happened a day ago.
The figure of his friend tainted by blot, the patched up monster that appeared behind him, none of that was present here. Under the sun that hung midway in the sky, the black four-of-diamond cards were chilly against his legs, and more stuck out askewedly from the rose hedges. He fisted his hands, frustrated at how powerless he was.
There must be some way to bring Cater back, he thought. What made him leave the venue? What caused him overblot?
He gritted his teeth.
Which part of his words ended up hurting him?
♣
“Hey, hey! Idia-kun, join us!”
Idia looked like he wanted to run away, but Cater was quick, and he pulled him into the group of third years faster than Idia could complain that he wanted to grind for gems rather than coming to the party. Cater held out his phone and tried to fit everyone into the range of his selfie camera.
“Alright everyone! Say cheese~”
Trey looked into the phone and smiled. He was one among the many people Cater had gathered for the selfie as soon as he entered the venue. Cater was now vigorously tapping away on his phone, probably adding filters to the photo they had taken.
“#FarewellNRC #selfiewiththirdyears #itspartytime #ceremonialrobesaresocool… and posted!” he exclaimed.
“Everyone, please remember to sign your name on the sign-in sheet!” called Vil on the other end of the venue.
“Ah, a sign-in sheet for an event like this? What a pain,” Leona grumbled, having just entered through the venue door. Still, he followed the other third years and headed to the sign-up table.
Cater was still staring at his phone, the cheerful expression having faded from his face. He stood unmoving with his green eyes fixed on the screen.
“Cater,” Trey said. “They’re calling for us.”
Cater almost jumped, lifting his head to look at him. He slid his phone inside the pocket of his robe.
“Sorry, I’m coming!” Cater walked towards Trey, the playful smile back on his face. However, his expression was stiff. Trey thought something might be bothering him, but he didn’t ask.
“Seems like your habit of drifting off in history class is now affecting you at other times,” he joked.
“Well… there was just this Magicam post that grabbed my interest, y’see.”
No, that probably wasn’t it, thought Trey.
“You should focus more on your surroundings, at least for today.” he said. “This is the last day we’ll spend with all of these people together.”
“Right? Ah, I seriously gotta take more photos of everyone to capture the memories of this party!”
Cater rushed off to the sign-up table, hugging some random staff for a quick selfie on the way there. He joined the line of students by the table, and Trey followed behind him.
“Bonjour, Chevalier des Roses. I can’t believe this is le dernier jour of our days at Night Raven College!”
Trey could recognize Rook’s peculiar speech manner even without turning around.
“Why, these three years have passed si vite, don’t you agree?”
“They sure have,” he agreed, though he didn’t understand what Rook had said. He couldn’t think of why feelings of unease were bubbling up inside him. Something felt wrong.
When Cater didn’t return to the venue, everything in his mind clicked.
“Do you know where Cater is?” he asked Lilia, who was grabbing some ice cream from the snack corners.
“Ah, I think I heard him say he was going to the washroom.”
There were no washrooms in the hallway Cater turned into, however. The only place there was the Hall of Mirrors.
“Lilia, I’m going to go look for him. Please tell the others for me.”
He didn’t hear Lilia’s reply, running out the door as soon as he had finished that sentence.
♣
“Clover-senpai!”
Ace and Deuce hurried towards him, both wearing their gym uniform.
“We came… as fast… as we saw the sign,” said Deuce, breathing heavily.
“Trey-senpai, what are you doing here? Were you the one who sent the overblot signal?”
“Yeah,” he answered dejectedly.
“The garden is a mess!” Deuce walked closer and looked at the scene in front of him. “There are black cards everywhere...”
Ace picked a card out from the hedges. “A four-of-diamonds card,” he muttered. His eyes widened. “Does that mean- Cater-senpai?”
“Cater was the one who overblotted,” Trey said finally, his tone grave.
“Then, we have to find senpai right now and beat him unconscious, otherwise he’ll use up all of his magical energy!”
“That’s the thing, Deuce. I can’t find Cater anywhere.”
“But usually when someone overblots, they get all dark looking, and this monster-like thing appears behind them, right?” Ace gestured a shape with his hands.
“I thought that as well.”
Trey massaged his temples, his head hurting from the possibilities coursing through his head, and none of the outcomes were good. Perhaps Cater was almost out of magical energy by the time Trey found him, and the overblot drained the last of his energy. Perhaps the overblotting caused his magic to be spread out among the black cards across the ground. Perhaps the overblotting went wrong, and Cater was obliterated in the process.
He needed to calm down. It’s also possible that the cards were Cater’s overblot monster. This meant that Cater had used up lots of energy already, but the thought of that was slightly more comforting than Cater just being… gone.
Deuce ran off, saying that he’d get the teachers, and Ace was now examining the cards on the ground.
“Trey-senpai, you still haven’t answered me yet,” said Ace. “What were you and Cater-senpai doing here? The Farewell NRC party was on the main campus, right?”
“Cater ran out, and I came here to find him.”
“Wow, Cater-senpai must be feeling off today.” Ace took out his phone. “S’ weird. He was literally spamming photos on Magicam less than an hour ago.”
Trey leaned against the hedges and didn’t reply.
“Trey-senpai,” he said, “have you tried Paint the Roses yet?”
“Hmm?”
“You said it can overwrite characteristics and all that. Maybe something would happen if you use it on the cards. It worked with Housewarden Riddle last year.”
Trey took out his magical pen, concentrating on the one spell he knew so well and had perfected over the years. “Paint the roses!” he yelled, pointing the pen at several of the black cards on the ground. Colourful sparks lit up the cards, and they melted, magical energy drifting like fireflies into the air.
“The cards disappeared,” said Ace. “That means they were created from magical energy, right?”
“So it would seem,” Trey raised his hand to cast his unique magic once more onto the cards. Glimmering energy floated up from the dissipating cards.
“Paint the Roses,” he yelled as sparks shot out from his pen. “Paint the Roses, Paint the Roses, Paint the-”
Ace grabbed his arm, holding him back from casting more spells onto the cards. He tugged on his arm, but Ace wouldn’t let go.
“Oi, Ace, what are you doing?” he growled.
“Do you seriously plan on going through all the cards like this, Trey-senpai? There’s got to be hundreds here.”
“You were the one who suggested that I use Paint the Roses.”
“I asked if you had tried it yet, senpai. I never told you to waste your magic going Paint the Roses on all the cards!”
Trey tightened his grip on the pen. “Got any better ideas, then?” he said, his voice coming out more sharp than he had intended. He pressed a hand to his forehead and shook his head.
“Sorry. I didn’t expect this kind of thing to happen again on graduation day.” With Cater, no less, he thought, covering the frustrated expression emerging on his face with his palms.
He thought Cater would tell him if something was wrong. Trey would listen to Cater no matter what he had to say, he had hinted that at Cater so many times with his gestures and words throughout their three years together at NRC.
Day after day, Cater continues to smile in front of Trey, as if nothing was wrong. And Trey let himself believe that. Things wouldn’t get to this point if nothing was wrong. He wouldn’t have left the party. He wouldn’t let clones of himself fill the entire rose maze. He wouldn’t pull away from Trey and cry so brokenly. Why didn’t Cater share any of his true feelings?
Or had Cater, in his own light and playful way, let his feelings dance along the surface of his speech, and quickly brushed it away as another one of his jokes.
♣
“Hey, Trey-kun.”
Cater barged into his room a moment ago, fully dressed in his ceremonial robe. He sat on his bed, staring at his phone as he struck up a conversation with Trey.
He finished tidying the papers on his desk and didn’t reply. His silence invited Cater to continue speaking, and he did.
“Don’t you think these three years passed by really, really fast?”
“They sure did, huh?” Trey sat down beside Cater on the bed, buttoning up his robe and making sure everything looked neat. “I’m really going to miss this place.”
“Me too.” Cater lay down on Trey’s bed and dropped his phone, looking at the ceiling. “Almost makes me want to repeat third year again! Just kidding!”
“Well, we’ve still got a year ahead of us,” Trey said. “And it’s not like we’re never coming back here again.”
“Hehe, you’re right! I can’t wait to travel all around Twisted Wonderland and take a whole bunch of great pictures for my Magicam feed!”
Cater’s voice was a little strained, but Trey pretended that he didn’t notice, and continued the conversation with Cater with a smile on his face. On the screen of Cater’s phone that had darkened a little, was a photo of the rose maze.
♣
He’d done it again.
Trey knew Cater well. He knew the happy front Cater always wore before everyone, even Trey, and he knew that there was always something going on behind his smiles. Cater said it himself, that he was great at multitasking.
Even though Trey was the only one who noticed, he didn’t say anything. Whatever thought he had, whatever he wanted to say to Cater, he hid them so as to not disturb the delicate balance kept between them. This was the way it went yet again. He was now responsible for the overblotting of the two people closest to him.
Trey wanted Cater to slap him in the face and tell him what a terrible friend he had been all these years, and he’d take the pain on his cheek without saying a word, because honestly, he deserved it. But before all that, he’d have to find Cater first.
“Ace,” he said. “I think I might know where Cater is.”
“Then go,” said Ace. “I’ll stay behind to explain to the teachers what happened… not that they’ll even come, I don’t think,” the first year muttered under his breath.
Trey nodded, and followed a familiar path through the maze as fast as he could in the leg-high sea of cards.He ignored how hard blood was thumping through his body and was making him feel nauseous. He stopped himself from imagining all those terrible scenarios. His movements were rushed, every step so forceful and sending cards flying, before the cards plopped back down on the surface of black cards almost silently. The red of the diamonds on the cards flashed before his eyes, reminding him of the diamond on Cater’s right cheek.
After the Unbirthday parties, when all the tables were moved out and the dishes cleaned and the hedgehogs and flamingos were put back into the cages, the students of Heartslabyul returned to their dorms. Cater would go to the centre of the rose maze and sit with his back resting on the hedges.
“Ah~ I’m so exhausted that I don’t want to move!”
Trey would sit beside Cater, and both of them enjoyed the tranquility given to them by the tired Heartslabyul students in the dorms. Cater dozed off sometimes, and a soft smile would linger on his face, spreading all the way to the diamond on his right cheek, so different from the wide smile he usually wore.
That place where they often spent their evenings was now covered entirely with dark cards, so much that it’d drain a normal person of all their magical energy even if the cards were summoned. The concentration of negative energy was especially strong here, and once again Trey found it hard to breathe. The cards shuffled around his feet, and he5 followed the hedges to the spot where he had been to so many times before.
Leaning against the hedges was a broken bottle the shape of a diamond. Ink trickled down from the cracks in the glass, the dark liquid pooling on the cards below. The bottle rested against the leaves of the rose bushes, just like how Cater had rested his head against the hedges when he napped.
Of all the places to be, he was here. Trey felt his stomach twist into a knot. He bit his lips and ignored the uncomfortable feeling inside him, raising his magical pen and pointing at the spot right in front of the blot bottle. After a heavy sigh, he breathed out the words in a low voice.
“Paint the Roses.”
♦
Everyone was smiling in the photo. Well, why wouldn’t they be? Cater was the one who told them to smile. Over the course of these three years, all of the people in the picture had become so familiar to him. It was a fact that was almost frightening.
Ugh. Going through his own Magicam feed this morning was totally a huge mistake.
“Cater. They’re calling for us.”
He almost dropped his phone when he heard Trey’s voice. Oh right. Earth to Cater, he was at the Farewell NRC party, and they were going to the sign up table.
“Sorry, I’m coming!” He stuffed his phone into his pocket and went over to the boy waiting for him. That’s right, there’s no use thinking about all that right now! The school year is not over yet, and Cater was going to enjoy this day as much as he can.
The food corner was loaded with desserts, but there were also snacks like salsa chips and cheese plates, and ohhh those crackers looked so good. When there was no one at the corner, he casually walked by and grabbed some snacks to eat. Yup, a little food is making him feel better already.
He stuffed some spicy pretzel sticks into his mouth, when he heard some students approaching. He quickly took an orange tart from the plates and pretended he was eating it.
“You’ve already chosen your internship, Trey-shi?” That was Idia. And Trey, apparently.
“Not really. I do have an idea of some careers I want to explore, though. Baker, police, medical worker… but I’ll probably end up taking over my family’s bakery in the end,” he chuckled.
“I could see you doing any of those jobs, to be honest,” said Idia.
“We’ll see what happens. In a way, I don’t know what I want to do in the future, either.”
The future, Cater thought. The word flickered in his mind, and he refused to process what it meant for him and everyone in this room. Cater didn’t like this feeling. Something was coursing through his body, and for the first time in his life, he wanted to run away from a party.
No, no, it’s alright. Cay-kun has totally got this! He was here to have fun, not worry about his career and nonsense like that. He’ll take a selfie with everyone and post it to his story, he decided. Having an objective to stick to will keep his mind from wandering off.
Someone behind him grabbed the tart in his hand. “Don’t force yourself to eat something if you don’t like it.”
What. When did he tell anyone that he disliked sweets? Oh, nevermind. It’s just Trey. He stuffed the tart into his mouth and swallowed it.
“Tch, don’t scare me like that, Trey-kun,” he said. “And maybe I did want to eat that tart.”
“Oh, well, sorry about that. You can always take another one.”
Cater didn’t take another tart, but Trey knew Cater wouldn’t, so Cater didn’t bother taking his words back. Neither did Trey tease him about it.
“Alright! Time for selfies with everyone!” he exclaimed, bluntly changing the subject. “Trey, you wanna be first?”
“No,” Trey laughed.
“Expected. See you later, then!”
Cater ran towards the venue door, knowing perfectly well that his actions didn’t match his words. The rim of his eyes felt hot, and the people talking around him were too loud and overwhelming. He felt like a mess inside. He hoped that he didn’t look like he was breaking down, hoped that none of the people saw through his pathetic state.
He needed to disappear from this place. The main campus was too familiar, and he felt too attached to everyone. If it continues like this, there’s a possibility that he’ll turn into a crying mess in front of all the other third years. Not good. Definitely should avoid that scenario from ever happening, or it’s bye-bye to Cay-kun’s image.
He didn’t feel good, and a wave of nausea made him slump against the walls of the corridor. Pushing himself against the walls, he grabbed the rims of the mirror and let himself stumble into Heartslabyul.
Only then did he dare to let his tears fall.
♣
Cater’s eyes were hidden by the hood of the ceremonial robe, and the cards that buried his body were beginning to melt away. He lay on the ground with his limbs sprawled out, and every few moments he would sniff quietly.
Trey sat down beside him. He always did when Cater looked like he wanted someone to stay with him.
“Hey, Trey-kun,” Cater muttered, his voice choking up and nasally. “Why do I feel so tired?”
He lightly brushed his hand along the side of Cater’s head, trying not to let himself tear up.
“It’s the sun, Cater,” he said. “On a warm day like this, the best thing to do is to lie under the sunlight and let your worries fade away.”
“Will you leave if I fall asleep?”
“I’ll stay by your side for as long as you want. I promise.”
Cater tightened his hold on Trey’s hand. He squeezed back comfortingly, stroking his thumb on the back of Cater’s hand. Cater’s breathing gradually slowed, and the expression on his face softened.
He wiped away the tears lingering on Cater’s cheeks, and thought back to their conversation that morning. Back then, he was almost tempted to say he wanted to repeat his third year at Night Raven College as well. Trey wondered what would have happened if he said it. Would that prevent the overblot from happening?
It wouldn’t change a thing, however, the fact that they’ll have to say their goodbyes today. And even if they did repeat their third year, their eventual separation would only be put off for another year.
For now, he didn’t want to worry anymore. Cater was beside him, and he wanted to savour this moment, just the two of them alone in the rose maze, so that the pain would be tolerable when it was time for them to leave.