“Gray?”
“… it’s nothing. I just thought I saw something,” I said, narrowing my eyes.
It was beyond the trees.
Standing within the fog was the figure of a woman clad in white, someone I hadn’t seen at all on the train earlier. Around her was a cloud of vibrant flower petals, as if she was being decorated in another world.
Rose petals.
Around where the woman stood, dozens of bright red roses bloomed proudly. Not just around her, but the brilliantly coloured flowers also wove through her hair like a crown, making her look like a personification of the flowers themselves.
The woman raised her face.
Her sharp, scarlet eyes met mine …
(… huh?)
And in the next moment, she was gone.
At that point,
“Uhh, little disciple?”
“Is something wrong?”
Both Yvette and my master were standing beside me, frowning.
I immediately became flustered, thinking of how hard to miss that person must have been.
“What? But, now, there was a a white woman, with red roses …”
“That would be the Manager’s representative of the Rail Zeppelin,” an unexpected voice came to the rescue as I pointed helplessly at where I saw her.
It was the conductor that had introduced himself when we first boarded the train. His name was Rodin, if I remembered correctly.
“The Manager’s representative?”
With a sudden intensity, my master turned around.
That’s right. On that first invitation we had received, that was the name that had been written. That’s who my master had been looking for the moment he had got on the train.
“Yes. Since the owner of the Rail Zeppelin retired, she has been looking after it,” the conductor calmly explained.
“Even we meet her only rarely, but it seems you have a sensitivity beyond that of any ordinary magus.”
Sensitivity. I understood that, in some way.
Case Files IV, Chapter 2, Part 5