Chapter 6: Chloe, Tiona, and Mia’s Syllogism

"A... gh-gh-ghost?" stammered Mia.

Dora nodded solemnly.

"I heard from one of my friends. Apparently, she was walking in the girls' dorm late at night, and she saw it..." She paused before opening her eyes wide and glancing up at Mia. "The ghost of a girl in rags!"

W-Would you quit it with the freaky expressions?!

Mia managed to keep the smile on her face as she suppressed a scream. Closer scrutiny would have revealed the twitches in her cheeks, but fortunately, none of the girls present were particularly observant.

"Rumor has it that it's either the ghost of a student who lost her love and took her own life, or a poor child who drowned in the lake."

As if on cue, the other girls followed up with a round of squeals and chatter.

"My, how scary!"

"I'm not sure I'll be able to sleep tonight!"

"We should start walking in groups at the dorm!"

One of the girls turned to Mia.

"What a dreadful story... Princess Mia, do you think ghosts really do exist?"

"Ghosts, you say... I think they make for a great story..." Mia put on a confident smile. "A younger me might have been scared, but unfortunately, I seem to have grown out of them."

Then she smoothly popped the last bite of her sandwich into her mouth before getting up and curtsying at her fellow classmates.

"In any case, I need to do some early preparations for my next class, so you'll have to excuse me."

With that, she hurried out of the courtyard.

As soon as she entered the school building she broke out into a run. By the time she reached the stairs, she was in a full speed dash. Her skirt fluttered wildly as she climbed up, taking the stairs two steps at a time. It was quite the spectacle for a girl of high birth to make of herself, but she simply couldn't care less at that moment.

She came to a skidding stop in front of a classroom, threw the door open, and yelled out the name before she'd even spotted the person.

"Chloe! Chloe!"

After a frantic scan of the room, she spotted Chloe staring at her in shock.

"Huh? Princess Mia? What's wrong?"

Chloe was in the process of preparing for the next class while Tiona sat at her side. The two girls had first met each other through Mia, and to her surprise, they'd become fast friends. Apparently, Chloe's expansive knowledge of plants was very useful to Tiona, who often helped out with the farm work at home. They seemed to have been in the midst of a pleasant conversation before Mia had brought everything to a screeching halt. It was perhaps a little rude, but Mia had no time for manners.

"Chloe, I have a question for you!" she exclaimed. "Do you think... ghosts are real?"

As a general rule, Mia did not believe in ghosts, and she considered it terribly childish to believe otherwise. She didn't think they were real... but her inner coward nevertheless ensured that they still scared her. Therefore, from time to time, she would need someone to assure her that ghosts were not, in fact, real.

Her experience in the library the other day had left her shaken, and she'd only managed to put it behind her by convincing herself that her eyes had been playing tricks on her. Still, she hadn't fully recovered from distressed-young-maiden mode, so she was particularly desperate for some reassurance.

She needed someone to tell her that ghosts aren't real. The problem was that not just anyone would fit the bill. Anne, for example, would gladly do so, but she might not mean it; there was always the possibility she would just be saying it to calm Mia down. She couldn't go to Abel or Sion either. The former would probably laugh and tell her she gets scared too easily... which, now that she thought about it, might actually be a great excuse to bury her face in his chest and—

No! No no no! Absolutely not! I-I can't possibly do something so immodest!

In the end, her sense of propriety prevented her from asking Abel for help. Sion, meanwhile, would just make fun of her for being a big baby, so he was definitely off the table.

Rafina was technically an option. She seemed like an expert on such matters... but that also had some spooky implications.

"Oh my, Mia, didn't you know? Ghosts are very much real. They're all around us. In fact, one of them is right behind you..."

Mia shuddered. If Rafina told her something like that, she'd be traumatized for life.

That left Chloe, who was both sufficiently trustworthy and likely to refute the existence of ghosts for her. Being a far more voracious reader than Mia herself, Chloe seemed like the kind of person who'd calmly, rationally explain to her why ghosts couldn't exist. So, with all her hopes resting on her dear book buddy, Mia had posed the critical question.

Chloe... didn't say anything. She didn't even laugh. Instead, she looked down at the ground, as though deep in thought. Light reflected off her glasses at an odd angle, obscuring her eyes. Her expression was unreadable... and more than a little eerie.

"Um, Princess Mia..." she finally said after a long silence. "I don't know much about ghosts, but..."

"But I can tell you that demoniacs definitely exist. They turn up all the time in our domain," said Tiona, answering in place of Chloe.

In general, it was said that demoniacs appeared more frequently in rural areas than cities. The Rudolvon Outcounty where Tiona lived was located far away from the imperial capital, so it made sense that she'd have more chances to run into those kinds of people.

"What do demoniacs have to do with ghosts?" asked Mia.

"Well, I just thought that if things you can't see like demons exist, then it can't be that much of a stretch to assume that ghosts exist too..."

Tiona's answer blindsided Mia; she hadn't considered that line of reasoning, and it was made all the more convincing by the fact that she had firsthand experience of an undoubtedly supernatural phenomenon. Ever since her mind-boggling leap through time, she'd been a believer. Not for any profound or philosophical reason, mind you. She just figured that a miracle like that could only have been the work of God.

"The almighty God has bestowed something terribly special upon me. That makes me... the chosen one, in a way..." she mused in a profound moment of whatever the opposite of humility is.

Her inflated ego notwithstanding, the logic on display was sound. If God existed, then there was a very good chance that all the other things written in the Holy Book existed too. That is, the Archdaemon... and demoniacs... Terrifying entities like those could certainly be real, in which case it was entirely possible that ghosts were real as well. Thus concluded Mia's syllogism.

Which freaked her out.

Wh-Wh-Why in the moons would you say something that makes everything so much scarier?! Gah! This girl! I hate her guts and I take back everything good I ever said about her!

She fixed Tiona with a hostile glare. Meanwhile, Chloe proceeded to pour salt on her wounds by saying, "You know, I have a book on me you might want to take a look at..."

Mia almost screamed at the sudden sound of Chloe's soft but — given the atmosphere — creepy voice, only to watch aghast as she produced an even creepier book with a skeleton drawn on the cover.

"H-H-Hmm? Wh-What's that book about?"

Chloe let out a short giggle of enthusiasm as she flipped it open.

"Well, this, you see, is a book from an island in the far east. Its title translates to Illustrated Compendium of Supernatural Creatures, and it's basically a collection of artwork that depicts scary monsters," she explained as she showed Mia its contents.

Sprawled across its pages were pictures of... things. One of them had an unnervingly long neck. Another one had three eyes. Yet another was devouring a person whole. There were more, but she didn't make it that far. Her vision swam, and she slowly began to tip over.

"Your Highness! What's wrong?!"

Tiona leapt up in a panic and managed to get an arm around Mia before she fell all the way down.

"I-I'm all right. I just... feel a little dizzy, that's all. I'll be fine soon," she said with her face ghostly pale.

"You look awful. I think we'd better call Anne."

Feeling extremely unwell, Mia excused herself from her afternoon classes and took a long nap in her room. When she finally recovered, it was already time for dinner. Since she'd missed her afternoon tea and its associated sweets, she decided to indulge herself a little, eating and drinking to her heart's content, woefully unaware that her gluttonous choice would soon lead to yet another tragedy.