In This Hell ( V i o l e t ) [Kuroshitsuji 2] {Completed}

Chapter III : A Lonely Dinner

But does anyone notice?

But does anyone care?

Admittedly, it was quite a ridiculous idea to wear all black on a summer's day along with a haemorrhage-inducing corset, so I chose something different for dinner - a light, floaty dress the colour of raspberries that drifted around my ankles.

I managed to avoid my parents (more specifically, my mother) by darting out of my room half an hour before the eight o'clock meal and creeping downstairs.

Most of the occupants of the Scarlet Fox Guest House were still locked away in their bedrooms, so the halls were practically silent. Well, that was the way I wanted things. As I strolled, my soft gold shoes padding against the wooden floorboards, I took in my surroundings. It was an incredibly luxurious place - the wallpaper was a deep ruby colour, with amber swashes of paint at regular intervals. The floorboards and skirting were of a rich, dark brown wood. Bronze candelabras were nailed into the walls, and the doors were a delicious jasmine shade.

As I turned down the next corridor, I was confronted not by a row of doors, but by a row of portraits. The first was a picture of an attractive young man, his features high, and haughty; underneath was his name.

'Ivan Gaskarth, 1745 - 1750'

Ah. They were past students. Interesting. I passed onto the next portrait, and the next. The one thing that all of these boys had in common was that they were cruelly good-looking; obviously past students of Scarlet Fox. Each one of them were wearing different waistcoats, and had a badge pinned to the breast of their blazer. I began to form the conclusion that they'd been past prefects -

Something out of place caught my eye. It was a portrait of a boy with fair hair, strands escaping his ponytail and falling over his face. The curve of his smile was confident, the same confidence glinting in his eyes. But his irises were an indeterminate colour, as was his waistcoat; because the picture was a pencil drawing. The background was different, also - he appeared to be outside, in some sort of gazebo, while the rest of the prefects were inside. And the style was different.

It seemed as though this portrait had been drawn by Violet.

I glanced down at the name - 'Edgar Redmond, 1884 - 1889' . Ah. So he had been Violet's fellow prefect. And obviously, he hadn't been around long enough to have a portrait commissioned of him, so they'd used one of Violet's drawing instead. Hm.

He was very attractive, and vaguely familiar, but I brushed it off. Maybe I could ask Joanne about the picture at dinner. Maybe he'd actually explain to me what had happened with those P4, finally. I'd been curious before, but meeting Violet... he was a pleasant man, with polite airs. A bit strange, but that was it. I'd always had the image in my head of four rowdy, uncouth boys who had terrorized their underclassmen... what had happened? I knew that before I left Weston College, I wanted to find out.

At quarter to eight, the chime of the dinner bell rang throughout the building. I picked up my skirts, and hurried down the stairs - I wanted to get a good seat, away from my mother.

The guests were milling around the doors to the dining hall. Luckily, I saw no one that I recognized, until Joanne came up by my elbow in his school uniform, golden hair clean and soft from a bath.

"No one to escort you yet again?"

"Shut up, Jo," I grumbled, taking his arm. We began the slow shuffle outside. "I heard about the mach. I'm sorry."

"The Green House nearly always slaughters their opponents, anyway," he sighed. "One of their past prefects, Edward Midford, came back to train them. They're nearly unbeatable."