The Naked Truth

There were certain rules to being a gentleman.

Don’t speak ill of another’s mother.

Always bow before dueling. Dance invitations. Formal introductions. And most things to do with Vil Schoenheit.

Never—never—walk into a steam-filled room without knocking first, no matter how compelling the noise on the other side might be.

He had broken exactly one of those rules.

And now he was trying very hard to die.

Not because she had screamed—though she had, with the kind of shrill, bloodcurdling horror typically reserved for plagues, death warrants, or tax collectors.

Not because she’d thrown something—though he had narrowly dodged a bar of soap with the reflexes of a man who’d once caught an arrow with his teeth.

No.

He was trying to die because he had seen approximately one square inch of shoulder.

That was all. One shoulder. Damp. Glimmering. A little too perfect for the part of his brain responsible for rational thought to keep doing its job properly….And, perhaps there had also been a few feet of leg? It was all such a blur in the shock of it.

Rook had justifiable reasons for bursting into the shower room. There was a yelp—sharp, distressed, an obvious echoing like a cry for help. Noble instincts ignited, he charged in like a knight, track jacket fluttering at his waist, ready to slay a shampoo-possessed ghost or deal with a Savanaclaw prank gone too far.

Instead, he found… Yuu.

Soaked.

Towel barely hanging on.

Hair full of suds.

Staring at him like she was debating whether murder was worth the paperwork. His pupils dilated so quickly his eyes stung.

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"...Merde," he breathes, frozen. "You are—?"

“ROOK!? OUT. NOW.”

She threw the bottle in her hand. With the reflexes of someone who had once caught an arrow an inch before his face, he dodged it, only to have it explode against the lockers behind him like a coconut-scented grenade.

“You’re a girl?” he asks, as if that’s the most shocking part of this entire cursed tableau.

Yuu was scrambling to cover more of herself with the inadequate gym towel.

Rook’s knees were shaking under him—extremely uncharacteristic—but there they were, the traitorous joints—as his brain short-circuited.

“You are…female,” he repeated,

“This is not the men’s showers. Go!”

And you are… bleeding?” he said dumbly. “Do you need assistance?”

The towel was doing a perfectly terrible job, and something in his head was telling him to do as the lady said, but it was true: Yuu had blood streaming down one of her legs in the running water, staining the towel a bright cherry.

“I cut myself shaving. It happens. Out.”

“…shaving?” he asks, voice cracking, just a little. Then, under her furious glare, the situation FINALLY caught up with him.

He turned, of course. Immediately. Slammed the door shut, too. Stumbling and knocking his hat right off in the process. Which meant now he was kneeling outside the bathroom door like a clumsy amateur, cradling his beloved hat with both hands and desperately trying to remember the definition of “boundaries.”

“Mon Dieu,” he muttered, staring blankly at the floorboards. “I’ve perished.”

A loud thwack on the other side of the wall suggested she’d found another bar of soap.

“Go!”

He nodded solemnly to the wood paneling. “A thousand apologies, cher ange! I was led astray by the siren song of plumbing. And the yell... I thought perhaps—”

“No one thinks like that!” she snapped.

A pause. Then:

“…Do you always shower with music?”

“Rook!”

“I’m going,” he said at once, rising to his feet and gently placing his hat back atop his head like it might act as a penance crown. “But please know—I have removed my own eyes in shame.”

“That’s not how shame works!”

He hummed, already retreating down the hall.

How had he not noticed this detail about the prefect earlier? Had anyone else seen what he had not? Had he spontaneously gone blind?

It bothered Rook to no end that he’d missed this glaring, now potently obvious bit of information. Now, he had the delightfully perplexing question of what to do with it.