Incidentally, choosing another love interest’s route results in Gilbert’s removal from the entirety of the narrative, probably due to his personality. He disappears as if he never existed to begin with, which his fans bemoaned across social media.

Cecilia gave her brother an encouraging pat on the shoulder. “You should be a little less shy while you’re here at school!”

“Shy? What are you talking about?”

“I mean, you actually want to get to know Lean, don’t you? Love at first sight! I know exactly how it feels to get tongue-tied around the person you like!”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying…,” he replied, confused.

Cecilia beamed at him. “It’s all right—just let your big sister handle this! Although, I don’t want to have anything to do with Lean, so all I can really do is provide backup support. But anytime you need to talk, I’ll give you advice! You can count on me!”

Gilbert said nothing in response. He just closed his eyes and shook his head wearily, the look on his face clearly betraying that Cecilia was a lost cause already.

They finished their sandwiches while idly chatting, then left the greenhouse. The area around it really was entirely deserted.

“Hang on—you said there were three candidates for Holy Maiden, including you. Who’s the one besides Lean? You haven’t mentioned her at all, so I’m a little curious,” Gilbert said in a whisper, conscious of their surroundings.

After the tutorial battle, the royal envoy in the auditorium had once again asked all the students about the identities of the potential Holy Maidens.

Prodded by her suitors, Lean had hesitantly raised her hand. But no one else had named themselves.

Ordinarily, that would have been when Cecilia shoots her hand up, but since she certainly wasn’t going to, the female students were sent to undergo physical examinations to check for the presence of a floral mark.

However, none of them possessed the mark, making Lean the Selection Ceremony’s sole candidate.

Some students had been absent that day, and if a girl’s mark had been in a feminine private place, then it would have been as good as invisible. The envoys had convinced themselves that the other candidates had refused to come forward, unwilling to handle the great responsibility of a potential Holy Maiden.

Cecilia frowned, tilting her head to one side in befuddlement. “Hmm. I don’t actually know.”

“What do you mean?”

“By this point in time, the other candidate for Holy Maiden should be dead.”

“Dead?” Gilbert replied, his voice going hysterical.

In the game, there is indeed a potential Holy Maiden with an azalea mark on her skin. But she dies early on in the prologue.

A week before transferring into Vleugel Academy, Lean reads a news article about a murder case. The report says that the murder victim has an azalea mark on her shoulder. At first, Lean doesn’t know how to make heads or tails of that detail, but once she arrives at school and finds out she is a candidate for Holy Maiden, the mark’s significance becomes clear to her. When this fact dawns on the rest of the country, the authorities summon Lean and Cecilia and warn them to be on the lookout for someone targeting potential Holy Maidens.

Later in the game, some crimes occur that seem like the work of the Azalea Holy Maiden’s murderer. They come to be known as the Killer.

“But I haven’t heard anything about that, and I’ve been checking the newspapers. Not a single article on the murder has come out…,” noted Cecilia.

“H-hold on a minute. This feels too much like someone is just waiting for our next move…,” Gilbert stammered, clearly flustered, which puzzled her. “I only just heard that you could die if we keep going with this.”

“Yeah, I did only just tell you,” she admitted.

“And yet, now you’re telling me that someone might be trying to murder you?!”

“What? Should I not have said anything?”

“I’m saying that you’re informing me about this way too late!” Gilbert shouted, angrier than she’d ever seen him before. She blinked at him in shock.

In the game, Cecilia dies in two main ways. The first is via death penalty: She is punished for bullying Lean and/or harming someone.

The second is murder: Someone, possibly the Killer, does her in.

Unlike the death penalty ending, the details of her murder remain unclear, and the case goes unsolved.

The day after an attack on Lean, Cecilia is found stabbed in the chest with a knife, floating dead in a river, or hanged from a tree in a forest. The Killer is the suspect every time, and their motive is presumed to be Cecilia’s candidacy for Holy Maiden.

Lending credence to this theory, an unidentified person who appears to be the Killer nearly assassinates Lean several times. But the main difference between her and Cecilia is that Lean survives the majority of these encounters.

Lean gets killed in a few bad endings, too, but in those instances, it is not the Killer but Cecilia who does the deed. Then she’s decapitated in turn. Basically, if Lean gets murdered, then so does Cecilia.

“Why didn’t you say anything until now?” Gilbert asked.

“I mean, you didn’t ask…”

“This is something you should have brought up regardless! Why do you think I’m helping you?!” he roared in an earsplitting voice, causing Cecilia to cover her ears.

She really hadn’t been trying to hide it. She’d just never had a chance to mention it.

“Well, forget it. It’s not like you hid it on purpose… But in the game or whatever, do you ever find out the Killer’s identity?”

“You do in the true love route, apparently…”

“But?”

“But I actually never got that far…,” she admitted.

Gilbert heaved a sigh of obvious disappointment.

“I—I can’t help it! I think I died before I could get to it!” she cried.

“But we can’t come up with a strategy if we don’t know who they are. What if they’re targeting you?”

“I get that, but I’m not a candidate for Holy Maiden this time, so I don’t think I…”

“You don’t think you need to be all that careful? You’re acting way too naive. Do you know the name of the candidate who gets murdered?”

“That never comes up once in the game…”

Gilbert let out another long sigh.

“That’s something I really, really can’t help!” she protested.

“I know. But does she have any defining characteristics besides her mark?” he asked.

“Uh…,” she answered, sifting through her memories. In the game, the royal envoy displays a photo of the slain girl, but there’s a mosaic overlay like frosted glass over it that makes it difficult to see.

But as she desperately combed through anything she could remember, they exited onto a path filled with students.

Right away, a thrilled voice shrieked loud enough for all to hear. “PRINCE CECIL!”

“Uh-oh…,” she said under her breath, startled by the sudden cry and stumbling over her next step. A wall of female students instantly surrounded her.

The prince of the school now bore the title of renowned knight, which had driven them into a frenzy over their beloved idol. There was no way they were letting him go.

“Where were you? I wanted to have lunch with you…”

“I made you a lunch, Prince Cecil! I couldn’t feed it to you today, but some other time is all right, too!”

“Ladies! You promised you wouldn’t try to get ahead of one another, didn’t you?! If Prince Cecil is going to eat with anyone, it’s going to be with all of us!”

“Um, would you like to have some post-lunch coffee?”

“Not you, too!”

They just kept babbling, leaving Cecilia with a somewhat pained grin on her face. The girls were just like baby chicks whose parents had abruptly appeared bearing food. It was honestly always a pain that they crowded all together every time, but that didn’t mean Cecil could treat them rudely. Cecil had to be the manliest and most gentlemanly of all…

From the topic of lunch, the conversation turned to singing the praises of how dashing Cecil had been in the auditorium earlier, which then sparked discussion on all kinds of other things.

Using a hand to stave off the crowd of girls excitedly attempting conversation, Cecilia pasted a charming, princely smile on her face. Then she reached out and traced a line down the jaw of the girl in front of her. “Don’t twitter so much, little birds. I’d much rather listen to your sweet songs in turn.”

(Translation: Speak one by one; I can’t hear everything.)

At Cecilia’s low-pitched voice, the crowd let out another round of squeals and screams.

From the edge of the throng, Gilbert was eyeing her coldly, predictably enough. “It’s because you act like this that things escalate and get even more annoying to handle.”

“Huh? What was that? Sorry, Gil—I didn’t catch that.”

“Nothing,” muttered Gilbert after a pause, leaving Cecil to his crowd of adoring fans and heading to the classroom alone.