A Firefly's Glow

Chapter Fifteen: Part Five

“Megane,” Keita’s voice coolly pronounced.

“Y-Yes, Hanabusa-sama?” Megane stuttered in response.

“Everyone in this room except for Kasumi is dismissed. I wish for privacy.”

After a few seconds of hesitation, the people that were scattered across the room slowly filed out the doors. There wasn’t a single voice afterwards.

The only other person besides Keita who stood completely still without filing out of the room was the girl named Kasumi. She watched Keita nervously as he peered at the mounds of people exiting the room. When he was sure that there were no other people in the room besides him and Kasumi, he turned towards her with his blunt gaze.

He recognized her dark hair held in a tight ponytail and her wide, black eyes.

When he approached her, she gave him the same nervous look that everyone else gave him. And Keita was sure that he never did anything to receive this look from someone.

“Stay here.” He murmured as he glanced away and headed towards the doors.

Kasumi obeyed Keita’s orders, staying as completely still as she could.

Meanwhile, Keita approached the doors. He shoved his head around the corner of the doorway and he shot the faces that he saw with a piercing glare.

“I thought I said that I wished for privacy.” Keita enunciated, gritting his teeth and glaring at each individual face he saw.

“Y-Yes, Hanabusa-sama!” They nervously cried as they dashed out of Keita’s view.

Keita turned away from the door in satisfaction, knowing that his servants did not dare to disobey him when he shot them glares.

When he turned his attention back to Kasumi, his blunt gaze returned onto his face.

“Would you care to explain all this?” Keita flung his hands towards the collapsed glass that sat on the table.

She began to stutter, saying fragments of words and then interrupting herself with even more fragments of words.

“I—you—I mean, she—um—“

“She wasn’t the one who tipped the glass over last night,” Keita confirmed, folding his arms against his chest. “You had this—“ Keita ran his fingers over the thread that Kasumi still held in between her fingers. “—all set up the exact same way last night, correct?”

Keita made sure that his gaze met hers. He knew that no one who served him would dare to lie to him about something he already knew.

Kasumi kept her eyes on his stern gaze, clearly nervous and shaky. She slowly nodded her head.

“So last night, you were the one who tipped over the glass?”

“Yes.” Kasumi shyly answered, her voice sounding rough and wobbly.

Keita tilted his head upwards. “So when she flung out her hands—“

“She tried to stop it,” Kasumi whispered, fiddling with the thread she held in her hands. She began to twirl it around her fingers.

“I seem to be answering all of my own questions,” Keita stated, peering away from Kasumi and towards the ceiling of the dining room. The chandeliers that hung from the ceiling glittered like they were made from shards of diamonds.

“I just having one question that I don’t think I can answer by myself.” Keita kept his gaze focused on the gleaming shards of the chandeliers. “Why did you try to frame her the way you did?”

Her voice seemed to hesitate. Her hands still continued to twirl the thread around, and the light from the chandeliers reflected off the thread, creating small glints.

“I thought that maybe if she looked like she purposely spilt the glass on you, you would get angry and she wouldn’t be able to stay.” She murmured in slight shame.

“You’d think that I’d be angry over spilt water?”

Kasumi stiffly nodded her head.

Keita followed Kasumi’s answer with silence. After a few more seconds, he uttered, “She’s incredibly klutzy.”

He knew that Kasumi was lifting her head towards him, glancing at him and silently questioning why he was now being so random, but he continued.

“She’s clumsy. Informal. Loud. And instead of demanding that everyone believe she wasn’t the one who spilt the glass on me, she kept apologizing and freaking out because she believed what happened was her fault when it wasn’t.”

Keita glanced back at Kasumi. “Did she ever do anything to you to make you angry?”

“She’s going to turn into something different,” Kasumi informed with a wobbly voice. “She’ll hurt you. She might look innocent and pure now but after a while she’ll—“

Keita did not hesitate to interrupt her inferences.

“Do not mistake her for Hana.”

Kasumi silenced herself immediately. This was a name she hasn’t heard in a while, and it sounded cold and shrill coming out of Keita’s mouth.

Keita, however, found it very hard against his voice. He hated hearing that name, let alone saying it aloud. But he let it pass by without any sort of scene.

“You’re not wrong. She might turn into what you think she’ll turn into, but she’s not Hana.” Keita found this conversation leading into a subject that he clearly did not want to talk about, so he simply twirled on his heel and slowly stepped towards the door.

“And she’s not innocent, by the way,” Keita informed without turning back around to glance at Kasumi. “She could injure someone with how klutzy she is. She would have figured out a way to knock down that glass of water without you or your thread.”

When he reached the doorway, he announced, “Megane.”

“Yes, Hanabusa-sama?” Megane immediately materialized before Keita, arriving from around the corner of the hallways.

Keita assured himself that Megane had found some way to listen in on his and Kasumi’s conversation, but now that that conversation was cover, he couldn’t say anything about it. If he said something, it wouldn’t gain him anything.

“Please escort me to the limousine,” Keita calmly instructed. “I’m having dinner out tonight.”