(Part 7)

Kyrano exited from the car, waiting patiently for the chauffeur to receive his belongings from the trunk. It did not take long, and soon Kyrano had his bag in hand as the chauffeur bowed lowly while he passed with a short gesture of thanks. Walking straight through familiar doors, the Kyrano that had now returned to St. Clair was not the same man who had walked out.

At the gate, Butler Maiko awaited his arrival. There was a marked expression of pride glinting in Maiko's cold eyes, and Kyrano met them fearlessly, black eyes completely expressionless.

"Head Butler Maiko." He greeted with a deep, polite bow. "I trust that you and Miss Louise are well?"

"Yes," The butler answered, and there was satisfaction on that tone. As butlers, they were supposed to address their young mistress as the first subject of priority, but here Kyrano was, addressing Maiko as the more important between the two. "We are doing quite well. I am thankful that you are well enough to come back to serve the lady."

"Certainly." Kyrano answered humbly once more. "A Head Butler should never be far away from his Master."

"Remember your teachings, young one." Maiko said haughtily, then picked up the bag that had been resting on the ground by his feet, turning to make towards the awaiting car that was to fetch Maiko back to the Main House. Pausing so that their shoulders almost touched each other, and they faced opposite directions, Maiko made sure that no one was around to hear his departing whisper.

"Remember your mission well."

"Understood." The answer that came was in an equally quiet whisper, and Maiko, satisfied, started on his journey back to his Master.

Kyrano's hidden blade underneath his sleeve itched, but he gave it little care as he began his journey to his lady. As he walked past the garden, he was rather surprised to find a lady standing before him, a bright glint in her eyes that matched her brilliant smile as well. Her butler Scott stood behind her as well, carefully schooling his expression but also betraying a welcoming smirk.

"Kyrano!" Miss Rowena expressed happily. "You're back!"

"Indeed, Miss Rowena." Kyrano bowed politely in greeting. "I am glad to once again be of service to Miss Louise and the school."

"I do hope that you are well." The woman asked with a hint of concern, but Kyrano shook his head respectfully.

"I am fully well and recovered. Thank you for the concern, Miss Rowena." Kyrano answered respectfully again. He had expected for the short conversation to stop there, for him to be allowed back to his mistress's side, but it appeared that Rowena had more to say in the way she hung around uncertainly, her face betraying a want to say more.

"Is there anything more, Miss Rowena?" Kyrano obliged to ask, and the woman seemed utterly grateful for his prompt.

"You know, Kyrano, I heard..." She hesitated, looked around and then stepped closer while lowering her voice. "I heard that you were absent because you were caught kissing Louise. I'm in no place to care for business in the Crawford family, but I'll just give you fair warning. That butler that served Louise while you were away? Maiko? I remember him –he was an assassin for hire when I was younger. My uncle... my uncle hired him before."

"Is that so, Miss Rowena?" Kyrano answered mildly, doing his best to pretend his surprise. "Butler Maiko, no matter his past, has been a rather capable butler in his servitude to Crawford. Has he done anything beyond his butler means during his duration serving Miss Louise and the school?"

"No..." Rowena looked embarrassed now.

"Then I would rather appreciate it if you were to keep your judgements to yourself, Miss Rowena." Kyrano answered, still holding on to his pleasant smile, but carrying something deeper on the inside now. "Also, it is not very apt for a lady of your status to be listening and believing of rumours. You, of all, should understand the futility of listening to hearsay because they are very rarely the truth."

By the end of his speech, Rowena looked completely and thoroughly embarrassed and admonished while Scott reeled in shock at Kyrano's audacious move. Leaving both the young lady and her butler in shock, he bade them a polite goodbye and moved on.

The butler that walked out of the school, and the butler that was now returning to Miss Louise's side was completely different.

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The rest of the journey to his mistress's room was undisturbed, and Kyrano knocked on the door, taking a polite step back to create a formal space between him and the door –and the lady that would be standing at the door. He held his bag in both his hands in front of him, bowing his head slightly so that he would appear nothing but polite in his return.

The door opened shortly after, and Kyrano let his eyes travel the woman up and down.

She had gotten thiner. Her eyes were slightly more deep-set than they were, and he could see a marked attempt at putting more makeup to hide these new flaws that Kyrano found. His mistress must have found her appearance becoming more and more sallow and frail and tried her best to hide it up in an effort to maintain her prestige and beauty as the Rose of the Academy.

A light that had sparked dead in blue eyes was suddenly ablaze as Louise finally understood who it was that stood in front of her, his bag held carefully in his hands as he bowed low once.

"Good Evening, Miss Louise." Kyrano greeted humbly along with his bow. "Master Oscar has deemed me... well enough... to come back under your servitude. I do hope that this does not present you any inconviniences, and please do allow me a few days to be updated upon all that has happened in my absence."

Kyrano was not sure whether he had anticipated his mistress's reaction, but he was definitely surprised when a warm body was pressed against him all of a sudden, arms wrapping around him as a head leaned itself against his chest.

"Kyrano! You're back. How are you?" The lady hugged him tight like a teddy bear, and Kyrano, instead of replying the hug, looked around cautiously to make sure that no one was looking.

Then, resisting his urge to shrink away at the touch of a lady that he was conditioned to avoid, Kyrano rested his bag softly on the floor between them, and allowed both his hands to touch the lady's arms, pulling it gently but firmly away from around him. With a soft push, he ensured that his lady took a step back, creating another polite space between them.

"Miss Louise, please compose yourself." Kyrano informed coldly. "A lady should not be hugging her butler."

"But, Kyrano-"

"I have been punished for my past mistake, Miss Louise, and allowed back to serve you under orders of Master Oscar. I do not intend to fail him once more, and thus I implore for you to behave in a way appropriate for a lady of your status." Kyrano interrupted lightly, picking up his bag again and giving another low bow. "I am but a butler to you, Miss Louise, and there is nothing else that we can ever be."

Louise stared at the man who stood outside her door. He looked so much like Kyrano –and he even had his golden coat of arms shining brightly on his lapel. His eye patch was as attractive as she remembered it to be. Everything about him was Kyrano –even his physique that was slightly different from his twin brother.

There was no mistaking –this was Kyrano.

But Louise saw no inch of her butler within the man. The man was behaving as if he were a new butler attached to a new lady, and was setting his boundaries.

What sort of boundaries could he set if they had grown up with each other since they were 5? What exactly had happened to him while he was in the Main House? In the two months of suffering, Louise had almost worried herself sick wondering how her butler was doing, and when he was ever coming back –if he even was.

Now that he was back, safe and healthy, she wasn't sure if it was exactly the same person that she had been looking forward to seeing.

It was Kyrano, but strangely not him.

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"Brandon," Keyron leaned in to whisper, making sure that he attracted no external attention, because if anyone looked over their way, they would immediately think that his master was acting rather weirdly, "you might want to put your spoon back down in the bowl and actually focus on drinking the soup."

"What?" Keyron's master jerked at the sudden reminder from his butler, then seemed to process the words said half a moment later, dropping his spoon back in the bowl, but making no attempts to lift it up once more. Now that he had been caught distracted, spacing out in the middle while holding the spoonful of soup halfway to his mouth, Brandon didn't exactly feel like drinking anymore.

"I know you are worried." Keyron continued to whisper. "I am worried as well. But right now you can't do anything, and it's not going to reflect well on you if you continue being distracted."

"If only it were so easy." His master answered with a pout, leaning back against his chair and crossing his arm. The man suddenly seemed to have been transformed into a young boy all over again, and Keyron did his best to refrain from hanging a teasing grin on his face. They were in public, and though they usually embarrassed themselves constantly without a care for the external eye, it was getting increasingly harder to transgress the boundaries of a butler-master relationship now that he was back.

He, case in point, was Keyron's twin brother.

"We simply have to continue to keep a lookout for possible signs of danger for Miss Louise's sake." Keyron answered his master shortly, then straightened quickly again to assume his role as a respectful butler when he casted a quick disapproving eye over in their direction.

It did not help that Brandon had purposely sat himself in a position that was had a completely clear-view of Louise right in front of him, and that Keyron was now forced to face both the lady and her butler while the Rose of the Academy dined.

"It's Kyrano we're facing." Brandon reminded flatly with a sharp gaze stuck on the man in question accusingly as if it would make a difference. The butler was not even giving a single recognition to the fact that someone else had made an obvious stare at him, simply focusing his dead eyes on the surrounding –anything but his mistress.

The connotation hiding behind his master's words were clear. It was Kyrano that they were facing –that it was the most capable butler still alive and around at the current moment. If Kyrano wanted to do relatively anything at all to his mistress, he didn't even have to bother putting in too much effort at all. Kyrano had a million and one ways to do something harmful to Louise, and both Keyron and Brandon would be left none the wiser.

"I really don't understand." Brandon sighed after another long pause in which Keyron's master remained simply staring shamelessly. Keyron didn't really even bother asking his master to focus anymore –because it was becoming increasingly harder for him to keep his own eyes off his brother as well, trying to find out exactly what had went wrong all of a sudden.

"I don't understand it either." Keyron answered absently, barely aware that the rest of the ladies were almost all done with their food and were slowly leaving the dining hall. Louise herself, even though she had reported to the dining hall slightly later than the rest thanks to some Council duties that she had to attend to, was already mostly done with her well-prepared meal.

"How does someone learn to react like that?" Brandon asked as he watched Louise finally finished her food, gesturing to her butler –who, in the most subtle of motions, winced at his lady's addressing of him. Even though the butler was back to his prime –his most perfect standard that stood above everyone as usual –Kyrano had a streak of something that made him less... of a butler. The Kyrano that used to attend to his mistress with his heart and with all the effort that he could make was now gone. The Butler in Black that had returned even seemed reluctant to be serving his lady.

"To be honest," Keyron answered, watching the same scene as Kyrano reached forth to clear his mistress's plates, but hesitated a little then stepping clearly out of the way to allow his mistress to leave the room first –as if he could not stand the thought of brushing her. "I don't think he was taught. At least not in the traditional sense."

"What do you mean?" Brandon finally gave up pretending to eat, letting Keyron clear his things up while they continued the conversation quietly. They were the only ones left in the dining hall, and the after-lunch lesson was about to start soon.

"To make someone like Kyrano act like that," Keyron paused just as Kyrano seemed to deflate visibly as Louise exited the room, "I think he had to be broken first."

Brandon gulped. He had briefly considered that theory, but because it sounded almost impossible for something as unethnical and barbaric to be practiced in contemporary times, he had tossed it aside –putting it down as the result of an overly active imagination. But now that his butler was addressing the same train of thought, Brandon was beginning to see that maybe the Crawfords was exactly as barbaric as he initially thought. While he couldn't say about Oscar, Brandon and Keyron had researched enough about Maiko's background to know that the man was not above torture. In fact, torture seemed to be something that Maiko used to specialize in before he was drafted to be a butler serving Oscar Crawford.

Perhaps Oscar had learnt a thing of two from his own butler.

Perhaps both of them had practiced a skill or two on Louise's butler.

Brandon kept his eyes on the butler in question the whole time Kyrano efficiently cleared the plates and utensils, the conscientiousness still in his hands and mannerisms, and in everything that Kyrano did. It was still the same Kyrano that he had watched before the man returned to receive his punishment in the Main House, but this version of Kyrano only appeared when Louise wasn't around.

"Keyron." Brandon called all of a sudden as he caught a flash of something in the light that he wasn't very sure he recognised or not. "Look at Kyrano's sleeves."

Watching his own butler –the twin to the man that he was currenltly observing –focus carefully on the retreating butler who had not even given them a single look throughout the whole meal. Keyron's brows furrowed.

"Are those hidden blades? The stiffness of the sleeves that you said you could see from Maiko?" Brandon confirmed, and knew from the way Keyron persisted with his confused frown that it was correct. It made so much sense and yet no sense at the same time.

The fact that Kyrano was back, and now armed with hidden blades fit very well with his butler's theory. All evidence was pointing towards that, and Brandon was getting increasingly afraid that it might be true. In Kyrano's time of punishment in the Main House, perhaps he had been brainwashed completely by Oscar and Maiko. That could explain how Kyrano was conditioned to flinch, wince, and even display unconscious ticks in the presence or even the mention of his mistress. It made sense –that Oscar and Maiko could have brainwashed Kyrano and made him their puppet. And since Louise's feelings for Kyrano had not changed much at all throughout his disappearance –and even now at his apparent coldness towards her –it made sense that Oscar might use Kyrano to kill Louise. It all fit into place –because Kyrano was in the best position to hide all evidence.

But it made no sense at the same time as well: because Brandon knew exactly how strong Kyrano was. In fact, Brandon wasn't afraid to declare that Louise's butler was the strongest, most intelligent and capable man that he had ever had the fortune to meet. Brandon had never met someone better than Kyrano in every sense, and even though his butler was not far behind Kyrano at all, it remained a fact that the Butler in Black was the best.

And it simply could not sit well with Brandon that the best butler would break so easily. Did he dare to believe in Kyrano's strength? Or did the Crawfords' Main House do something completely out of his imaginary depth to Kyrano, to make someone as strong as the man break? Brandon was not naïve enough to believe that a man could have no limits, but he wasn't sure if he wanted to believe in Kyrano's strength to outlast tortures.

These questions continued to plague Brandon the whole day until school was done, and he laid lounging on his bed, his butler placing both of their coats neatly on the rack before joining him on the bed. Brandon usually had various club meetings and training in the past –because as a Greaves he was still expected to make good connections with the fair ladies of the many famous, powerful and influential family. However, as his worries began to pile, the less Brandon turned up for those club meetings, and the more he began to spend his time with Keyron in the room, theorizing, fretting but able to do completely nothing at all to aid the situation.

"I give up." Brandon sighed after a long time of silence, in which he did his best to rub the frown out of his brow that he knew had been hanging there since... since Kyrano came back from the Main House. "I want to go back home."

The childish whine from Brandon was only replied with a heavy sigh.

"Can you, Brandon?"

There was honestly no one else in the world who knew him better than Keyron. In fact, Brandon was sure that he didn't know himself as well as his butler did. Keyron always knew exactly what he was thinking, even if he wasn't aware of it himself. In fact, it had been Keyron who had told him that he was in love with Louise when they first arrived in school. Brandon hadn't even been aware of his own feelings until his butler told him to look inward and see the truth. Keyron had known even before Brandon did.

And like how it was, Keyron was doing it again –reading his emotions like an open book.

"Can't you just entertain me?" Brandon sighed, obviously having wanted to have someone to simply suit him. Then again, what was asking for a servant to suit every of his whims for? The purpose of his butler was to have someone who knew him well –someone who could tell him that he was being stupid, being rude, not thinking at all, being naïve and childish. Basically, Brandon needed Keyron to be able to tell him all of these as a friend, as someone closest to him.

"I would, but this concerns me also. Kyrano is my brother, just in case you haven't remembered." Keyron's answer sounded as if he were deep in thought, as Brandon passed his butler a semi-curious look. Like him, it was rather rare to find Keyron ever serious. Both of them tended to take easy views on life –which went very well with their happy-go-lucky, carefree nature. To have Keyron appear so serious was a rare moment, but also an important moment for the both of them.

"Of course I-"

"I lost a sister not too long ago, Brandon. I'm not going to lose my brother because of some petty businessman trying to take control and wipe out the heir of his title." Keyron's words were filled with surprising determination, and Brandon blinked in surprise. While it was understandable that Keyron would think this way, Brandon had not really imagined that his butler would have such a strong stand.

Then again, Brandon would never have imagined them coming to this point in their lives –Brandon falling in love with Louise Crawford, and having a butler who was also the twin brother of the butler of his lover. As if that itself did not make things complicated, now his butler's twin was –might be –brainwashed to do something bad to the woman that he loved, and he was in no position to help because he was no longer her fiancé. Things were getting out of hand.

"I WANNA GO HOME." Brandon rolled in his bed until he reached his pillows, and shouted into the soft material over and over again till his frustration was vented. Keyron could only watch with helpless amusement as his master continued rolling on the bed like a lazy worm, hugging his pillow as if it would make a difference to their complicated situation. Brandon was still whining like a child about how he wanted to go home and forget everything even though both of them knew that it was now impossible.

How could Keyron expect his master to un-love Louise? In fact, how could Keyron expect himself to forget that he had a twin brother, and a little sister that he had loved as well as a family that loved him despite of their absence?

They couldn't just go home like this. Things weren't right if they just left like this.

Things needed to be done, Keyron decided as he watched his master helplessly roll about.

Brandon was kind, gentle and forgiving. Keyron's master always saw the best in men, and never had the stomach to imagine the horrible things that humans could do. But Keyron was not as naïve as his master.

He knew how bad things could get.

He knew how bad power could change a man, and he was very sure that power had changed Oscar Crawford, Maiko and –by a long shot –his twin brother.

They needed to do something.

And they needed to tackle right at the root of the problem.