PandoraHearts ~Caucus Race~, Vol. 2 by Shinobu Wakamiya Page A

by Elliot’s menacing glare, Ada explained hastily. However, most of what she said didn’t reach Elliot. All heunderstood was that the cat’s name was Snowdrop, and that its owner was…
    Elliot’s shoulders quivered. Slowly, in a terribly cold voice, he spat out the words, “You’re the owner?” Ada probably meant to answer, “Yes,” but she was so overawed that it came out as “Ye-yesh.”
    That said, Elliot didn’t care about the response. The uproar that had taken up his entire day swept across his mind like a whirlwind.
    Elliot drew a deep, deep breath, and then:
    “It was
you
, Ada Vessaliuuu

    uuus?!!!!”
    Ada was petrified. Snowdrop was so startled he jumped and nearly dropped the bookmark.
    Elliot’s roar was his last, and loudest, of the day.
Ada Vessalius
    THAT WEEKEND. THE FINAL DAY OF
DISCIPLINE REINFORCEMENT WEEK.
    “………Haaah.”
    Morning classes had ended, and it was the noon recess. Ada leaned against the wall of the corridor and sighed. The corridor was filled with students heading to the cafeteria to have lunch, and students making for the courtyard with buns they’d purchased.
    If I wait here, Elliot-kun and Leo-kun should pass by…
    She murmured the words in her heart.
    Ada was watching the students who crossed in front of her, dazedly, but her mind was elsewhere. She was remembering that night.
    The first day of Discipline Reinforcement Week. When she’d met Elliot and Leo behind the girls’ dorm.
    She’d patrolled the inside of the school briefly and had been on her way back to the dorm when her pet cat, Snowdrop, had leapt out from a thicket beside her. Ada had been terribly startled; she’d thought he was waiting for her at home. It would have been awful if anyone had seen him, so she’d picked him up and gone around to the back of the dorm.
    Then the wall of the girls’ dorm had opened up and those two had emerged. Ada had been horribly startled.
    When he saw Ada, Elliot had also looked startled. Then he’d seen Snowdrop.
    He’d yelled,
“You’re the owner?”
at her.
    And then—
    He got awfully mad at me.
    After he’d yelled, Eliot had stomped over to her and, still glaring at Ada, gently removed the bookmark from Snowdrop’s jaws.
    Snowdrop had been holding a bookmark, and Ada had wondered whose it was.
    “Oh, that bookmark…”
    “It’s mine! If you’re his owner, watch him properly! Better yet, don’t bring him to school! In case you didn’t know, let me fill you in: The academy isn’t a second Vessalius residence! And anyway, you’ve shown up everywhere I go today, and all you do is get in the way. You’re an eyesore! Hey, are you listening to me?! Get that vacant look off your face!”
    …And so on and so forth, for a very long time.
    She thought it was probably the first time she’d ever been criticized so acidly and at such length. Ada had been engulfedby Elliot’s fury, and she’d just stood there, silently, and let him take her to task.
    How long had Elliot angrily chewed her out, shaking his friend off when he tried to restrain him?
    Finally, possibly because he’d run out of complaints, he’d left with an irritated snort.
    After being showered with complaints and abuse for so long, Ada had come to understand something. She knew she might not be very perceptive, but even she’d understood. He might have yelled at her because of the trouble Snowdrop had caused him, but Elliot hadn’t liked her to begin with.
    Ada knew about the discord between the House of Vessalius and the House of Nightray. However, she’d thought that, as long as she didn’t pay any attention to it, it wouldn’t matter at all, wouldn’t be anything to do with her.
    She’d wanted to be friends with him simply because he was
his
little brother, and she’d thought that she could.
    That hadn’t been the case.
    “…Onii-chan…” Ada murmured, quietly.
    “I wonder if you could be friends with Elliot-kun…”
    She was proud of her big brother. He was intelligent