SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant

Chapter 701: Watched

Xavier said nothing.Alfons watched the calculation move behind his face, the slow grind of a mind turning a problem over from every side and finding no good edge to grip. Whatever decision was forming there, Xavier had no idea yet which way it would fall.

What Alfons could not see was the rest of it.

Because Xavier knew the accusation was only half true, and the half that was false was the half that counted. Vivienne had slipped into the Council, yes. That part had happened. But nothing more had come of it, no stolen secret, no ruined house, no crime worth the word, and Trafalgar du Morgain had been standing right there when it did. Beside her, in fact. Beside her almost the entire time.

Which meant that if this ever reached daylight, it would not be Xavier's word holding the line. It would be Trafalgar's against Alfons's.

That was the part worth weighing.

Who would the world believe, handed the choice? Alfons au Vaelion, the spoiled son everyone whispered about, the heir carrying a chip on his shoulder the exact size of Trafalgar du Morgain? Or Trafalgar himself, whose name only ever surfaced attached to another victory, another record broken, another reason for people to nod and agree the Morgain boy was going somewhere?

It was not a close contest, and Xavier knew it. Slowly, he let himself know it fully.

Alfons, of course, read none of this. He read only the silence, and his patience for it had run out.

"Well?" he said. "What is your answer, Xavier au Roquefort?"

Xavier let out a long breath. He lifted his head and met Alfons in the eye, straight into those red eyes that always ran close to the color of fresh blood.

"Suck my dick, Alfons."

And with that he turned and walked off to whatever he had been doing before, leaving Alfons's expression behind him like something not worth bending down to pick up.

Alfons did not move.

He had braced for a dozen answers. Hesitation. Bargaining. A frightened yes dressed up as reluctance. He had not braced for that one, and for a breath his mind simply declined to process it.

Then the heat arrived.

He was angry. He was angry in a way that wanted hands on it, a fury that pictured taking Xavier apart at the joints and leaving the pieces where they dropped, arms here, legs there, the smugness knocked out of him for good. How dare he. How dare a Roquefort speak to him like that, to him, to Alfons, an heir of the Eight Great Families, a talent the world had not produced the equal of in a generation.

He breathed it down, because hands were for fools and a corridor was a poor place to spend his name.

'You will regret this,' he promised the empty air where Xavier had stood. 'Whatever you think you just protected, you are going to regret it.'

And he was left with the same problem as before, only worse, and not one open door left to walk through.

So he did the only thing the situation still allowed. He watched.

Over the days that followed, Alfons made a quiet study of Trafalgar du Morgain.

Finding him was never the hard part. The Morgain boy moved through the Academy as though it had been built to flatter him, and the galling thing was that it nearly had.

In the two classes they shared, Alfons chose seats that gave him a proper angle, and he watched how people behaved around Trafalgar.

Students passed near him more often than they needed to. Some looked at him from the corners of their eyes. Others slowed their steps as if they had something to say, only to think better of it and keep walking.

No one approached him easily.

A few wanted to. Alfons could see it in the way their steps slowed, in the half-formed greetings that died before reaching their mouths. Curiosity circled Trafalgar often. Courage did not.

Trafalgar did not have to push them away for the distance to exist. Everyone knew he was reserved, and those who did not know learned quickly from the way he carried himself.

The corridors told the same story. Space opened ahead of him. Heads turned and pretended they had not. Alfons trailed at a distance he kept telling himself was careful, marking who Trafalgar spoke with, who he passed without a glance, which doors he favored, learning the rhythm of a person he could not simply walk up to and question.

Even the circular platform fed the habit. Each evening the slow disc lifted the upper-floor students toward their rooms, and more often than not Trafalgar stood somewhere on it, calm in the lamplight, while Alfons held the far edge and studied the back of his head with a resentment that had long since stopped being only about rank.

It was patient work, and it was humiliating work. A hound on a scent, Lucard would have called him, and the thought by itself set his jaw aching.

He told himself it would be worth it. He told himself one thread, pulled from close enough, would carry him where no report could reach.

He did not consider, not even once, that a thread pulled from close enough tends to tug back at the hand holding it.

Across the courtyard, on the far side of the same platform Alfons had spent his evenings haunting, two figures stood together in the failing light.

Trafalgar du Morgain did not turn his head to speak.

"Tell me something, Xavier. Is Alfons not watching me a little too closely lately?" The corner of his mouth moved, unbothered. "Does he honestly think I cannot see him?"

Xavier au Roquefort let his gaze drift to the distant figure of Alfons, who stood pretending to read a notice he had clearly read three times already.

"Funny you should bring that up," Xavier said. "I had a rather interesting conversation with him. About you. Not long ago at all."