Part 2[แก้ไข]
The garden was noisy from the loud chirping of cicadas.
"Enough of this. Silence!" Kudou Asuka yelled towards the garden.
And suddenly there was silence.
The crowd of cicadas stopped chirping all at the same time, as if they had rehearsed it beforehand. It seems the words of the Kudou family’s Ojou-sama were more important to them than their courting activities.
Without even finding this odd, she continued strutting through the well maintained mansion’s corridors at a fast pace. She wondered why, even though this place belonged to one of the five biggest conglomerates in Japan, it didn’t have air conditioning in the hallways.
She stormed into her room, wiping the glistening sweat off of her hair. She made sure to lock the door and then threw herself on the bed, which caused it to shake from the momentum. But it seems that she wasn’t satisfied with just that, and she bounced one more time.
"So my relatives are having a meeting about the dismantling of the conglomerate? I did not expect that they would call me to the farthest corner of Japan for such a reason."
To put an end to a meeting that had been going on for months already, she was dragged before the Head of the family. The family Head was already bedridden, but his authoritative voice was still widely feared and respected.
She was speechless when the relatives came to her pleading "Please, do something about him!", asking a girl, barely 15 years old, to resolve the situation.
The still dumbstruck Kudou Asuka traveled to the family Head’s mansion and said to him only one short sentence.
"Stop complaining and cooperate with the dismantling of the conglomerate!"
"Understood."
He agreed without even a single complaint. It didn’t even take 10 seconds. It couldn’t even be called a meeting anymore at that point.
Without waiting to see if it really led to a real conclusion, she immediately turned around and left the mansion. Even the relatives who were expecting this outcome could not help but doubt their eyes and ears.
As the relatives would put it, everything that the Kudou family’s Ojou-sama says will happen without fail. It’s not like there is a law or rule about it - anything she says will simply happen, just like that. They claim it to be a powerful suggestion, hypnotism, or even brainwashing, but she didn't agree with any of them. She just says what she thinks out loud.
No one can go against the flow of the current society, so there was no choice but to dismantle the conglomerate. She tried reassuring herself with these thoughts.
"....Ludicrous, even against that Ojii-sama, this is all it took. It is laughable, really."
She grasped the bed sheet tightly, lying face down. That was what really bothered her. Relationships where the only answer you hear is "Yes" are plain and without substance. To put it simply, she could only build meaningless relationships, and Kudou Asuka was tired of those meaningless relationships.
"....It is hot. What is it with this humidity?"
This dress is the greatest problem of all, should I just leave the hair ribbon and change the rest?
Asuka’s eyes wandered around the room, suddenly fixating on a suspicious sealed envelope that was left on the desk.
The following was written on the envelope: "To Kudou Asuka-dono."
"......?"
Asuka tilted her head.
She immediately glanced at all the possible entrances, the door, the window, and the secret emergency escape route, but they were all locked and none of them showed any signs of entry. At that moment, someone knocked on the door, and a maid’s voice could be heard.
"Asuka Ojou-sama, I brought some refreshments-"
"You there, did someone enter my room while I was gone?"
"? Only Ojou-sama has the key to this room, therefore no one could have entered."
"Right...that is true. It is fine. You can leave now."
The maid bowed politely and then left the room. Kudou Asuka rechecked all the possible entrances, but none of them appeared to have been used. Which meant that it should have been impossible to leave that envelope in this room.
"....Fufu. I do not know who you are, but a 'sealed room letter' instead of a 'sealed room murder'... I like your style."
She even forgot about the blazing heat, and for the first time in a very long time, a smile appeared on her face. She joyfully broke the seal on the envelope.