The Perfect Knight and the Illusionist (BL)

MARIUS

"Oh, Mario! Right on time," Skylark said with that bright, welcoming smile of his as he saw me enter the art room.

"Excuse me. I hope I’m not bothering anyone," I said to the rest of the art club members.

"Not at all," Blanche said, waving me off. Then she went over to Skylark and asked,

"Have you finished your picture now?"

"Yeah, just now," Skylark answered enthusiastically.

Then Liesel and the sculptor guy stopped what they were doing and walked over to see Skylark’s first piece of artwork at the club. I, of course, went over as well—intrigued.

"A table with a man and woman... sitting on chairs. Is this also your dream?" Blanche asked.

"Yeah," Skylark confirmed.

"Who are these people?" I asked him this time.

"Mom and Dad," he said.

"They look a little concerned," the sculptor said, leaning in closer to see their faces. I was surprised he could read the facial expressions at all from Skylark’s somewhat messy drawing, but when I looked closer, I also felt that the man and woman had a sort of worried look on their faces.

"Unfortunately, yes, they are worried about me," Skylark said, but still smiling.

"Are they worried about how you might be doing at the Academy?" I asked.

"Nope," was the short answer.

"Look closer," Skylark said, clearly enjoying making us figure out what his drawing was about.

"They are looking at this thing in the middle. It’s square and yellow. Is this what they are worried about?" Liesel asked.

"You have good eyes! Yes!" Skylark said, happy that someone understood.

"Where are you in this picture? You said you had a dream where you were not a human," Blanche asked, her voice also curious.

"I’m the ’yellow thing’ here! Haha!"

"Eh?" we all said in confused unison.

"What is this even?" the sculptor asked Skylark.

"It’s a piece of cheese!" Skylark said.

"You were a piece of CHEESE in your dream?!" Liesel couldn’t believe what she had just heard.

"Yup. I was cheese in my dream."

"Skylark... that is... really odd. How did that even feel?" I asked.

As someone who didn’t dream, it was impossible to understand, but judging by Blanche’s expression, she also seemed to find it highly unusual—and amusing—too.

"It was really bad. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t smell, but somehow, I could see and hear. It took a long time for my parents to realize that their son had become cheese! But this picture is the moment they realized, and they were very concerned, wondering about what to do with me."

"So... what did they actually do?" Liesel asked again.

"Nothing! They couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t do anything. We just sat around helplessly. I’ll tell you—when you are stuck in one spot and can’t move and can’t speak and can’t do anything, time goes super slow. It was a long, long dream until I woke up."

"I bet..." Fabian said as Blanche burst out laughing, saying,

"This is a wonderful picture, Leo."

Skylark scratched his head in embarrassment, but he did seem quite happy with the picture.

We all laughed. It was wonderfully absurd—two words that I never thought to put together before.

"Anyway, so how was your club, Mario?" Skylark asked me once the laughter died down.

"It’s not a club. It’s student council," I said, correcting him.

"Oh, wow. You are in the student council?" the sculptor asked me.

"Yes. And excuse me, I don’t think we’ve properly introduced ourselves before. I’m Marius Valenkraft. It’s nice to meet you," I said with a slight bow.

"Fabian. Fabian Auvernne," he said and offered a handshake, which I took. I was surprised by how softly he held my hand. I shook it gently, as it felt more appropriate that way.

"We call him Auvergine—or eggplant," Blanche said.

"Shut up, Blanche," Fabian shot back and gave her a glare while Liesel laughed. Skylark also joined in, seemingly not so concerned that he might offend Fabian. It had only been a day, but Skylark seemed to fit naturally into the group.

"So, how was it?" Liesel asked me this time.

"It was my first time meeting President Mikael. He was very—"

"Full of himself," Blanche blurted out.

"I certainly wasn’t going to say that," I clarified.

"Blanche’s still holding a grudge," Liesel said, sighing.

"Oh, what happened?" Skylark asked.

"Well, there is a long story and a short story, but the short version is that the student council tried to shut down the art club last year and we barely managed to survive," Fabian explained.

"Huh? Why? That’s so not nice," Skylark said, judging immediately, although neither he nor I had the context for why the student council had made such a decision. I was more curious about the reasoning behind it, which I was sure existed, but felt it was inappropriate for me to probe now.

"Luckily, we were saved in the end. We came so close to getting kicked out of this club room," Liesel added.

This particular detail, I thought, was probably fine for me to ask about.

"How did it happen?"

"The president himself came to the room, together with the student council secretary, with the club closure and eviction notice. Then this gentleman turned up, took them outside to talk a bit, and that was that. The council never bothered us again."

Something clicked in my mind.

"Do you know who the ’gentleman’ was?" I asked.

"Nope, we never found out," Fabian said.

Blanche kept quiet throughout the conversation, as if she didn’t want to say anything about the matter.

Skylark and I looked at each other. I thought he had the same suspicion as me.

A ’gentleman’ who could just turn up and void a student council decision on the spot. It had to be—

"Well, whoever it was, that was very nice of him!" Skylark said, earning nods of agreement from Fabian and Liesel. Blanche did not react. In contrast to her laughter over Skylark’s picture earlier, her expressionless face now almost read as contempt.

Just as I was trying to process the meaning behind this particular intervention and arrangement, something caught my eye.

"Skylark, those aren’t your pencils," I said.

"I told you they’d have them at the art club!" he protested.

"Irrelevant. You did forget to bring your pencils after all," I stated firmly.

"Aw, don’t you get started again..."

I just sighed.

Maybe there was no helping this boy who dreams of being a piece of cheese.

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