Key of Souls: Twisted Wonderland

Chapter 17: The Heartslabyul Dorm and The Four of Diamonds

Dawn's POV

After a long walk down Main Street, we were finally at the Hall of Mirrors; I notice after getting a better look that there are seven mirrors in total in the hall. Ace and Deuce lead me and Grim to a certain mirror which is labelled "Heartslabyul" which is decorated with playing cards, roses, and small mushrooms. The four of us stepped through the mirror and were transported to our new destination.

The moment I opened my eyes, I was amazed by what I was seeing now. Right in front of us was a castle-like building painted red, black and white with heart and diamond-shaped windows, a lovely running fountain in front of the building, and along the walkway were bushes decorated with beautiful red roses. On the lamppost was a flag which had a heart that read Heartslabyul; this was with no doubt that this is the Heartslabyul Dorm where Ace and Deuce reside in.

"Howoah! This is gorgeous! It couldn't be more different from ours!", Grim said as he was admiring the exteriors. I felt a little depressed at how Grim compared our dorm with Ace and Deuce's dorm. "Hey! Ours is still in development!", I chastised him.

Soon, we were following Ace and Deuce through the dorm's Rose Maze. The inside of the maze was just as beautiful as the dorm; since it also had ruby-red roses as well. As I inspected one of the rose bushes, I noticed something very peculiar about these roses.

"Crap, crap. I've gotta get these roses painted.", a voice said in a rushed tone.

"Oh, somebody is here.", Grim said as he pointed to an older-looking teen just a few feet away. He was standing on a step ladder with a paintbrush in his hand and several cans of red paint below him. He had orange hair, the top portion tied back into a ponytail while the rest hangs straight and green eyes. Under his right eye, he has red makeup shaped like a diamond. He wore the standard-issue uniform, except that his tie was slightly loose and the top buttons on his white shirt were undone. He wore no vest underneath, the bottom of his pants was rolled up a bit and wore light-grey slip-on shoes.

Whoever he was, he was invested in painting the roses that he didn't notice that we were there as well. "Oh, watch out. Any paint splatters and my head is gone.", he said.

The moment he said that I started to look around and started to feel a weird sensation. It was my first time visiting this dorm, but being in this rose garden maze, seeing that older teen painting the roses, and hearing the last sentence made me think, 'I feel like I've seen this before...'

The older teen stopped his painting the moment he saw us. He placed the paintbrush in one of the paint cans and walked over to us with a friendly smile. "...Hm? Do you all need something?", he asked.

"What are you doing with that?', Ace asked, wondering what this guy was doing.

"This? As you can see, I'm painting the roses red.", the teen answered.

We all blinked in surprise at what he just said which confused us and how casually he replied. "Eh? Why would you?", Deuce questioned him. The older closed his eyes and spread a bright smile.

"Hmm~ Your fresh reactions are so cute!", he said. "Now that I'm taking a good look at you, you're the freshmen that busted the 1,000,000,000 Madol chandelier yesterday." Ace and Deuce hung their heads in shame and let out a dejected sigh feeling completely embarrassed by what he said. "We're gonna hear about the chandelier until the day we graduate...", said Ace.

"Indeed...", I muttered. I was also feeling dejected since I was partly responsible for that "incident".

Suddenly, the older boy was now leaning close to me. I flinched at how close he was and I felt my cheeks getting red with embarrassment as he was now holding both of my hands. "Ooohh! You must be the rumoured girl who is now enrolled in our school. I gotta say, you're even cuter in person! What's your name?", he asked me with sparkles in his eyes.