Chapter Text
You slammed your hand down onto the worksheets in front of you as another breeze blew through the gardens, preventing the pages of Latin from flying away with the wind again.
It was mid-spring now and the days had grown both longer and hotter, cool breezes passing through the trees. You looked down at the work once more and glanced to your blue watch. You hadn't quite reached your goal of forty-five minutes of uninterrupted work but another 3 minutes wouldn't mean much anyway if it was just spent trying to hold your classwork down to the table. You reached into the bag beside you and put the sheets back into their respective folders, tucking your notebook away with it as you took out your water bottle to drink from as you enjoyed the view.
The countryside was beautiful at this time of year: the fields were full of colour, the trees in bloom, the flowerbeds were full of fragrant plants that looked as delicate as they smelled.
Your deep blue cardigan was placed beside you now, the heat getting to you even in your light black trousers and your thin white blouse with its short puffy sleeves. You glanced over to the cows on the hill only two fields over and took a smaller notebook from your bag, opening it up to find all your scribbled bits of writing from various occasions in the school year.
You didn't like this place.
You liked things that were direct, honest, that made sense; this place was none of those things. You were being given a cheap private-school education at a boarding school where no technology was allowed and students were constantly falling ill or going missing, usually one after the other. You were never allowed to leave and it was almost impossible to sneak out of the school grounds. At first, seeing the buildings and grounds, it had felt like you were attending Hogwarts. But your image of it began to distort more and more with time.
You'd spoken about it to all of your friends here but, judging by the looks they gave each other when you brought the topic up, they were fed up with you going on about it. They had often told you to just appreciate the opportunity you had been given but it didn't sit right with you. You didn't like not being in the know and you were determined to find out what the deal with this place was. Your parents were the ones who made you take up the opportunity when it was presented to you: an all-girls boarding school with excellent grounds, opportunities, education and more. It seemed too good to be true and you were sure that it still was. You'd wanted to go to college to chase a course in criminology and go to university from there but instead, you had been pressured into coming here by your family. It was a four-year course and you were in your third year now and part of you was afraid that you would be the next to fall ill or go missing before you could finish your last two years here.
Alongside regular classes, there were also lots of places for work experience in the parts of the grounds that were open to the public: the café, the restaurant, the hotel, the library, the list went on. You had taken a job as a maid in the hotel between classes.
The grounds themselves were odd too: they were very old and had many buildings scattered around them, one side of the grounds was only attended by students during their work hours and was strictly for public use other than that. Some of your friends had argued that you had no need to be suspicious of why the tuition fees were so low because it must be paid for through the profits made from the public side of the grounds.
But, from working in the hotel, you had gathered that only the wealthiest stayed here: you knew you shouldn't but you often found yourself snooping around to see what you could find. Most of them seemed to be here to sample a famous wine: Sanguis Virginis. You had learned that this translated to 'Maiden's Blood' through your classes and it made you uneasy. You weren't the type to jump to crazy supernatural theories but it did sound like something out of a cult horror movie.
You'd read in one of the guest's magazines that the wine was owned and produced by the Dimitrescu family. A plaque in your house's common room told you that this was also the name of the family who once owned these grounds. You were still uncertain if they still own the place or not but had not been able to find out that information and you didn't trust asking the teachers or managers anything.
You grabbed your cardigan and tucked it into the crease of your elbow, pulling your bag over your shoulder as you began walking along the perimeter of the student grounds for your lunch break.
The place felt like a fortress at times, there were no exits that weren't guarded by staff around the clock. Part of you felt like maybe you were going mad sometimes. No one seemed to care as much as you did, they all seemed to accept this gift and didn't spend their time meticulously looking for the strings attached as you did.
You made your way down to one of the fields, stopping at the tall barbed fence and sticking your hand through the gaps in the wire towards one of the cows in the field. It was a smaller one that approached you and allowed you to pet its head before it licked your hand and you both grimaced and smiled at the same time, retracting your hand to wipe it on your cardigan, reasoning that you could wash it later.
You looked towards your house building, knowing that you would have to change for your work shift after dinner. But you wanted to enjoy the nice weather some more so you caught up with a friend who was lingering around the back of the building.
Louisa was finishing up her cigarette as you approached her, the blonde smiling as you came closer. You had no clue where she got the cigarettes from considering you weren't allowed to leave. Maybe she brought enough for the term in with her suitcase? Maybe she was getting them through her job in the kitchen of the restaurant? Perhaps, someone there was trading goods with her? You didn't poke your nose in there too much: you were inquisitive, not invasive. Her cigarette stash had no impact on you and, therefore, it was none of your business.
"Want to walk around?" You offered and she flicked the end of her cigarette to the ground, stepping on it to smother the remaining embers.
"Sure." She replied simply, joining you as you both followed a route to no destination at all.
"How's that Wilde essay coming along?" You prompted, knowing was yet to start it since your last conversation. This earned a sigh from Louisa.
"I don't have the energy to work on it." She replied, looking towards one of the school buildings, "He's really deep and between my huge workload for anatomy and my shifts in the kitchen, I don't have the..." she brought her hands up, gesturing to her head, "...brain space to pick apart his work!" You nodded your head in understanding.
"Yeah, I get what you mean."
"My anatomy teacher's been offering apprenticeships with that company, Umbrella, but honestly, working in the kitchen has made me realise how much I enjoy cooking."
"That's good!" You replied, "You should maybe start asking for harder tasks or get more involved with the higher-up chefs if you want to go with that. I'm sure they could find something f... hey, are you ok?" You noticed how she had paled and brought a hand to press over her stomach. She seemed to pause to consider the question, the both of you stopping in the path now. Louisa began nodding her head before shaking it quickly and running over to one of the bins.
You could hear the sound of her vomiting and ran over to pull her blonde locks away from her face, grimacing at the black colour of the contents she was throwing up. That didn't look right at all.
When she was done, you searched through her bag for some water, seeing her rinse her mouth out and spit that in the bin too.
"Feeling better or worse?" You asked cautiously, seeing her shake her head, bringing a hand to her stomach again. You reached towards her to press the back of your palm to her forehead, feeling burning up. "You're far too hot, you should see the nurse." You suggested.
"Can you come with me?" She groaned.
"Of course."
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Since then, you'd eaten your dinner and finished your work for the day at the hotel. Usually, you covered half of your hours early in the morning, had a nap between classes in the afternoon and finished your hours late in the evening. You hadn't been feeling too well since you ate. Part of you was worried that Louisa had infected you with whatever she had but another part worried that it was the food you'd eaten. Some part of you felt like you shouldn't have touched it as you ate it but rationality said you were just being paranoid about the food and what was really happening was an illness was going around the school.
As you were returning, dressed in your typical black and white dress that was designed to both suit the time of the grounds and reflect its modern renovations, you found yourself gagging with a twisted feeling in your stomach, you found yourself falling to your knees before a tree and vomiting that same black substance that you had seen from Louisa earlier on that day.
You didn't trust the staff so you decided to simply head back to take some anti-sickness tablets and rest then see how you were doing in the morning.
As you pushed yourself up, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand and frowning at the bitter taste in your mouth, a member of staff approached you.
He was stout and build roundly with a bald head and a stern look. He was also your head of year.
"What're you doing?" He asked with that constant hostile look which he had.
"I'm going back to my house building. I just finished my shift at the hotel." He glanced over to the tree where you had just been sick.
"You're ill. Let's take you to the nurse." And he turned to leave, his aura demanding.
"I'm fine. I'm not sick. I was just offered some seafood while I was on shift. I didn't want to refuse but I can't stand it either. It makes me feel ill. That's all there is to it: an upset stomach. I'm not sick." You spoke adamantly. "I'm going back to my room to rest." He glared at you and you glared back equally. You decided to get the killing blow in while you could, "Maybe I'd feel a little better if the faculty here gave us more support between our jobs and classwork. I'm tired and need rest. Have a good evening, Sir." With that said, you turned on your heel and left.