It was the first time Vallin had stepped foot into Pandora Hill Academia’s library. In the corner of his eye, he could see Monique staring in awe and he assumed it was her first time as well.

“I wasn’t expecting this place to be so big!” Monique exclaimed, stepping further into the library and looking around.

Vallin silently agreed with the pink haired girl, examining the room as well, it was obvious the school spared no expense on their library.

There were two stairs built into the two sides walls of the library, leading up to a second floor. Vallin could see the second floor if he looked up, noting that it was lined with railing, and the walls of the second floor were filled with bookcases. Behind the railing, there were rectangle tables with computers and chairs. If someone were up there, they would have a good view of the entire bottom floor. Luckily for Vallin and Monique, the library appears to be empty on both floors.

On the bottom floor there are bookcases against the sides of both the stairs. Accompanying each bookcase was another bookcase connecting to the side making the bookcases into an upside down L shape. Inside the space between the upside down L shape bookcases were small rectangle shaped tables with comfortable looking chairs.

“Who puts an archway in the middle of a library?” Monique asked with a laugh stopping under the dark wooden archway that appeared to be built into the side bookcases that made the bookcases look like an upside down L. 

“I don’t know, maybe to make the library have a look of class to it?” Vallin shrugged, going through the archway and continued walking further into the library.“Though I’ll admit I’ve never seen a library look as nice as this.”

“Well that is to be expected. Upper class families put in good money to send their kids here and it wouldn’t look good for the school if they gave their students a boring old library.” 

In the space Vallin was in there were two short bookcases in the middle of the room and two comfy armchairs in the back with a small side table in between them. On both sides of the wall were two sets of the same upside down L shaped bookcase from the front of the library. All with identical tables and chairs inside. 

“I haven’t seen a librarian nor a librarian desk. Does the school not have one?” Monique asked, finally joining Vallin with a confused expression on her face which tore his attention away from the library's interior design.

“Huh?”Vallin glanced around the library, not spotting a librarian or anyone else beside Monique and him.

“Now that you mention it,I guess not.”Vallin himself hadn’t noticed the lack of a librarian until Monique brought it up. He shook his head,reminding himself that they came to the library to help with their investigation not to explore the library.

“If there is no librarian we can ask, then how will we find out which bookcase has the yearbooks?” Monique frowned, furrowing her eyebrows, as her purple reddish eyes glanced at the bookcases around them. “There are so many bookcases and I don’t think that they are all labeled.”

“It seems we have no choice but to search them all until we find the yearbooks.” Vallin shrugged again and Monique visibly deflated at his words.

“You don’t mean…we have to search every single bookcase, one by one right?” Monique nervously asked and Vallin could tell the shorter girl was sweating at the thought.

“Yes, every single bookcase, one by one.”

“Well if that is what we are doing…I call dibs on the second floor!” 

Before Vallin had the chance to agree or disagree, the pink haired girl was already heading up one of the stairs. He let out a sigh, knowing Monique picked the floor with the least amount of bookcases. Leaving Vallin with the bottom floor that was bigger and had more bookcases than the second floor.

“Let’s get this over with.” Vallin muttered to himself, pushing the sleeves of his dark purple uniform sweater up before searching the nearest bookcase.

It was a good thing Monique and Vallin had a few free hours before dinner because it took some time for them to go through the books. Vallin was working on his 12th bookshelf, yes he counted each shelf in the bookcases he searched through, when he heard Monique shouting above him. 

“I found it, Val! I found a whole shelf full of yearbooks!” Monique was on top of the computer table, her lower body right beside the computer and her upper body leaning against the rail, a wide happy grin on her face as she waved down at Vallin.

“Okay, I’ll head up there but first get off the rail before you fall down and get off the computer table before you accidentally knock down one of the computers!” Vallin scolded her, wagging a finger up to Monique as he spoke, trying to keep a small smile off his face.

“Whatever you say mom.” Monique responded back sarcastically, rolling her eyes but the grin never left her face and she did as he said without any protest.

Vallin turned away from the bookshelf he had been searching before Monique called him to go meet her upstairs. However, he managed to knock down one of the books in the process. Vallin sighed at his clumsiness and squatted down to pick the book up. The book was open,displaying its pages to him.

“Hm?” Vallin caught a glimpse of some of the words off the exposed pages of the book. The first words he saw was "Dear diary," before he picked the book up and examined it closer with a frown.

"What is a diary doing in the school library?"

The book was black but when Vallin turned the book to the front side, there was a beautiful rose with thorns on the stem in the shape of a thorny heart printed on the cover. It was strange to say the least but who did the diary belong to?

He opened it back up and flipped through the pages until he was on the very first page. What he read next made him freeze, his multi-colored eyes wide and his mouth hanging open.He slammed the book shut and grinned.

Monique wasn't the only one who found a book that would be useful to their investigation, Vallin thought as he quickly made his way to the stairs, gripping the diary tight against his chest.

"Monique, I found something rather interesting and dare I say convenient?" Vallin announced as he arrived on the second floor of the library.

"I'm over here!" Monique shouted, waving at him from the floor as she sat in front of a bookcase with a yearbook in her lap. "What did you find?"

Vallin sat down next to Monique, passing the book to her with a small smile.

"I want you to see for yourself. Go ahead and open it."

Monique glanced at him with a raised eyebrow but she opened the book and read the first page out loud.

“This diary belongs to…Rose Hallworth?” Monique said in disbelief and Vallin watched as the pink haired girl reread the words again.

“I can’t believe it! I don’t know how but I can’t believe you found a diary belonging to our victim!”Monique flipped through the pages with an excited smile and wide eyes.

“Where did you find this?”

“I accidentally knocked it off a bookshelf.”

“So you found it in the library?”

“No, I found it at the bottom of a lake because it’s not like I’ve been in the library for the past half hour.”

“Ha ha your soo funny Val.”Monique rolled her eyes and nudged him with her elbow but he only shrugged in response with a smile.

Monique asked and Vallin gave her an answer. It wasn’t his fault she was asking very obvious questions. 

“Anyway, did you find a picture of Rose in the yearbook?” Vallin pointed to the yearbook that was underneath the diary Monique was holding.

“Oh I haven’t checked yet. I was going to wait until you came up so we can see what she looks like together.” Monique said, closing the diary and passing it back to Vallin.

“You should hold on to that until we get back to my room.”Vallin nodded, giving Monique a thumbs up while holding the diary to his chest again. Monique grinned and turned her attention back to the yearbook in her lap and opened it.

“Okay, so the bookshelf behind us has a row of yearbooks and I found this one that was dated for last year. Now let’s go find Rose or shall I say Rose Hallworth!” Monique began to look through the yearbook pages and Vallin leaned closer to get a better view of the pages.

They both scanned each page for any student whose first name was Rose or had the last name Hallworth. They only spent a few minutes scanning when Monique pointed at one of the pictures in the yearbook.

“Look, this one says Rose Hallworth, this must be my roommate!” Vallin stared at the yearbook picture Monique was pointing at.

The girl in the picture was the same skin color as him, just a shade or two lighter than Monique, her eyes were a dark shade of red,her pitch black hair was long and curly. She appeared to be a few years older than Vallin and Monique when she took the picture,maybe around the age of 16 or 17. Rose Hallworth smiled in the picture, a charming smile, a girl who had a bright future ahead of her or so Vallin assumed.

“I feel bad for Rose’s family, I could imagine how they reacted when they heard she went missing. Not knowing if she is alive or dead, waiting for answers, waiting to see her again. No family should go through that.” Vallin said, frowning as he stared at the picture of Rose Hallworth.

“Your right no family should go through the experience of losing a child,” Monique pouted, her hands clenched around the yearbook and her eyebrows furrowed. “The school had no right from keeping Rose’s disappearance a secret to the public and we can’t forget the other students who went missing as well.”

Vallin glanced at Monique’s tense shoulders, he slowly raised his right arm, and placed a reassuring hand on Monique’s shoulder. Monique turned to look at him and Vallin gave her a confident smile.

“With us on the case, I’m sure we can figure out what’s going on in this school and if possible find those missing students. So there will be no more families worrying themselves sick over their missing children.” Vallin said.

He felt Monique's shoulder relax under his hand and watched as her pout transformed into a matching confident smile.

“That’s right! Together we’ll bring this school down and save the other students from becoming victims as well! Now let's get out of here and go back to my room.”Monique slammed the yearbook closed, jumping up, and held the yearbook with both hands. Vallin got up as well, but not as fast as Monique.

“The first thing we are doing when we get back to my room is reading that diary. Hopefully Rose wrote down some useful information that will be able to help us.” Monique pointed at the diary Vallin was holding before walking away towards the stairs that were closer to them.

“I just hope we don’t read anything too private.” Vallin mumbled, sweating at the thought of reading a diary of a girl he didn’t even know, as he followed behind the pink haired girl.

“How about you read through the pages first and then let me know if it’s safe for me to read?”

“Sure.”

When they got back to Monique’s room, Monique placed the yearbook on her desk after changing her shoes while Vallin sat on her bed with the diary. Monique took out her phone to take a picture of Rose’s yearbook picture and Vallin rolled his eyes.

If he was thinking at the time, Vallin would've told Monique back at the library that she could have taken a picture of Rose there and returned the yearbook instead of bringing the whole yearbook back to her room.

Vallin kicked off his shoes before laying on his side on Monique’s bed with the diary beside him as he waited for Monique to join him. 

"You better not fall asleep before we can read the diary.” Monique said as she sat down with crossed legs on her bed, right next to him and grabbed the diary.

He was tempted to close his eyes and finish his nap that Monique interrupted before but managed to fight against the urge to sleep at least for now.

“Hurry up and get started then.” Vallin mumbled, sitting up briefly to grab one of Monique’s stuffed animals and hugging as he stared at Monique who laughed at him.

“Fine, should I skip to the end or start from the beginning?” Monique asked.

“I think we should start from the beginning. We should try to get to know Rose first before seeing if she left us any clues.”

“Okay, but we won’t be able to read everything tonight. I’ve checked the time,dinner will be ready soon and we have school tomorrow so we can’t stay up late.”

“Let’s read what we can for now."

“Alright,” Monique opened the book to the second page,took in a deep breath and let it out before starting.

“Dear, diary…”