Gosick

GosickS I - 1.1

chapter one — the traveler who comes in spring brings death to the school

[1]

Kazuya Kujou was a serious boy.

One could say that in itself was his strong suit, or at least not a handicap. He was serious and straight-laced, taciturn and prosaic, an altogether dour sort of man.

As the youngest child of four siblings, he had an expert in martial arts for an eldest brother, an accomplished amateur inventor as his second eldest brother, and a beautiful older sister who had graduated with a diploma in dance.

To compensate for having no special talents of his own, Kazuya was earnest to a fault, and always achieved top marks in school. For this reason—apart from the fact that as the third son, there would be no need for him to inherit the family headship, and therefore no problem in the unlikely event he were to encounter an early demise while abroad—his father decided to allow him to attend school in the kingdom of Sauvure, which had recently begun to accept foreign students from allied countries.

His father was a military man, and took every opportunity to lecture Kazuya on his duties as the third son of an imperial soldier. Accordingly, Kazuya made sure to remind himself constantly, so as to avoid making any mistakes, that the third son of an imperial soldier must behave with utmost seriousness....

*****

"...Kujou! Kujou!"

It was slightly past seven in the morning.

By this time, Kazuya would normally already be awake in his room in the boys' dormitory, having washed his face, combed his hair, and changed into his uniform. Then he would make his way down the stairs to the dining room, the even sound of his footsteps echoing stiffly down the hall.

Since his aristocratic classmates were accustomed to sleeping in until the last minute before the morning lessons began, Kazuya targeted his arrival at the dining room to occur while it was still empty. The voluptuous, red-headed housemother, who appeared to be slightly past twenty years old, was usually the only one in the room. He would find her sitting on a stool with her legs crossed, engrossed in the morning newspaper while smoking her cigarettes. Since there were few boys willing to accept Kazuya, who was not only Asian but a commoner, he had still made no close friends. Therefore, he had been forced to adjust his schedule to this earlier hour in order to ward off his loneliness.

But today would be different.

Kazuya was in the middle of washing his face when a sudden loud knocking on his door and the sound of a woman's voice startled him. Already clad in his uniform, he opened the door.

Flaming red hair and a shapely figure came into view. The voluptuous housemother stood there with a drowsy expression on her face.

"...Good morning. Wh-what's the matter?" said Kazuya.

"Great! I knew you would be awake. You can go buy some ham and cheese for me!"

"...Huh?"

The housemother unceremoniously dragged Kazuya out of his room, and stuffed something shaped like a sandwich into his breast pocket. This only confused him more.

"Wh-wh-wh-what are you doing? Ham and cheese? Me? Where? ... And why?"

"To be exact, what I need is five hundred grams of ricotta cheese, and one kilo of ham. You can find them at the morning market in the village. I forgot to buy them yesterday," answered the housemother in a rapid-fire prattle.

Kazuya shoved his necktie into his pocket. "Wh-why?"

"I had planned to go to the grocer's, but I ran into a friend along the way, and got invited to a dance party. I danced and had a few glasses of wine, then I came home, empty-handed.... There, I've told you, now go, quickly! Otherwise I'll have no breakfast to serve anyone! I'll lose my job! Hurry along now!"