The Sleeping Beauty

"What a tragedy it was: the one face he found pretty enough to paint, and she didn't even spare him a single thought."

-About Sebastian Verde; Tales of the Black Rose Wiki

***

There was a scene in Sebastian's route that Rosanna — erm, Amelia — loved so much.

Amelia couldn't recall which run it was (maybe 10th? or 11th? Probably after Damian's route), but Amelia had vivid memories of a younger version of herself screaming into her pillow, unable to suppress her feelings.

On the screen, Rosanna lay in her bed, sound asleep. Moonlight streamed down her windows, shining down on her like a spotlight — almost in a crude reflection of Amelia's face, whose sleep-deprived face shone with a layer of sweat under the light of her PC.

"She looks so beautiful," the dialogue box said, alluding to the thoughts of an unknown speaker. Amelia had to agree: Rosanna looked like a doll when she was asleep, with thick lashes framing her lids and wisps of white hair spread all over the pillow like silver threads. As the player, Amelia rarely saw Rosanna's face, as she always viewed the game through the protagonist's eyes.

The normally bubbly music of the game had shifted to a somber, almost wistful tune. An unseen figure approached Rosanna's bed, causing the camera to shift to the third person's point of view.

"If only you could see yourself as I see you," a boy with olive-green eyes whispered. At first, he reached to caress Rosanna's cheeks, but he ended up pulling away so as not to smudge her with his dirty fingers.

"My bad," a chuckle. "We can't afford to dirty the artwork."

This happened for several more nights when Sebastian would sneak into Rosanna's room, sketching while she slept. As she played the game, Amelia admired the pining — of being able to revel in someone's beauty but unable to touch — making Sebastian's route her most preferred out of the three male leads. Unlike Damian who fed Rosanna honeyed words and Oz who kept her well-fed for some reason, Sebastian loved Rosanna from the shadows…a sentiment that Amelia knew all too well.

Sebastian never told Rosanna about those sketches, even when they got together in the end. As far as the original Rosanna was concerned, Sebastian was just her classmate who liked to talk to her about the roses in the Headmaster's garden and saved her whenever Viola and her bullies got ahead of themselves.

***

"Please relax your face, Miss Castus," a voice pleaded. "I'm sketching a sleeping maiden, not a constipated one."

Rosanna did her best to do as she was told.

"Now that's even worse," someone tsk-ed out loud. "You look like we're planning to do something bad toward you!"

At this, Rosanna's eyes finally flew open. Sebastian Verde stared down at her, disappointment splashing across his features. He twirled the pencil between his fingers restlessly.

Behind him stood more extras — erm, members — of the art club, waiting. Each of them sat in front of a canvas, mimicking the pose of their club president. They would bust out laughing now and then, as though Rosanna's predicament was a niche source of entertainment they didn't know they needed.

"They're laughing at me!" She hissed.

"No, they're not," Sebastian deadpanned, too busy with his sketchpad to tell the others to shut up. "Please get back to position, Miss Castus. We're almost done."

This was not how she imagined meeting Sebastian Verde. Of all the male leads, Rosanna expected at least something dramatic — like a midnight encounter or one of those, 'I saw you were in trouble and I had to step in' moments.

Who would've thought that Sebastian himself would come asking her to model, throwing their poignant meeting out of the window? Rosanna was supposed to be bullied by Isabella's goons when Sebastian found her! He would chase them away, and offered a hand and an ear for Rosanna's troubles, before promising that he'd escort her to class from now on.

Not this. Not with everyone in this troublemaker hellhole watching as Rosanna shifted pose after pose, each more ridiculous than the last. First, they had her dressed up in pompous, frilly clothes to resemble a doll. Next, they tied up her hair in all sorts of atrocious ways, even going as far as having Isabella mess with her locks. The poor girl was shaking the whole time she was braiding Rosanna's hair.

"This is a very uncomfortable position! Why does it have to be me?" Rosanna exclaimed, gesturing at herself. They had her lay down on one of the tables flat against her back, flowers in hand. She felt like some kind of sacrificial lamb, but Sebastian Verde had insisted it was 'part of today's theme.

"Miss Castus, the club purposely went out of our way just to see you." One of the extras said, piping up behind Sebastian. "There's no one else who can fit the theme better. We worked hard to convince the Headmaster himself!"

In front of him, Sebastian nodded vigorously. He shot Rosanna a look halfway between pleading and demanding, and it struck Rosanna how familiar it was, as though she'd seen it a thousand times before. Which was stupid as much as it was impossible because Sebastian Verde in-game didn't look anything like that. An unknown feeling bloomed in her chest, one similar to the one she got when she first saw Maximillian.

She'd gotten the same feeling when he'd called her Rosie. Don't be a stranger, he'd said.

Does that mean they weren't?

"And what was the theme, exactly?" Rosanna glared at the dorky version of Sebastian, so utterly removed from the dark, mysterious artist she'd come to know and love.

Sebastian kept scribbling. "I told you, didn't I? We need a sleeping beauty—"

The rest of the club members hollered at that. Unknown to the boy, Rosanna had already marched towards him, glancing over his sketchbook to see what he accomplished so far. Her breath hitched.

He wasn't drawing any sleeping beauties AT ALL.

"Wait! That's not—"

Rosanna's face stared back at her, wrought in tiny doodles that had no business looking well-made as they were. One was a side profile of her with her eyes closed, making it look like she was taking a fat dump. Then there was a scribble of her fighting back tears while hands tugged at her hair — presumably Isabella's.

But the most unforgivable of them all was a sketch of Rosanna with her mouth open, drawn in the perspective of whoever it is she was screaming at. Sebastian had captured her likeness in just a few strokes, capturing her indignance in ways that her past self would be caught dead in.

That was the last straw.

An uncharacteristic chortle slipped from her mouth, silencing everyone in the room. Rosanna couldn't help it — the more she tried to get ahold of herself, the more laughter spilled out.

'What the fuck', she thought. 'This place had memes?'

By the time Rosanna calmed down, everyone in the room was staring at her with strange looks on their faces, Sebastian included.

"W-what?" Rosanna squeaked out, finally realizing that she was supposed to be angry. Well, she still was, but could anyone blame her for laughing? In her old life, Amelia didn't have anyone to make these kinds of jokes at her expense.

No one would've dared to.

Sparing Rosanna from the growing embarrassment, Sebastian broke the silence: "It's nothing, Miss Castus. Please, uh, get back to your position. You weren't supposed to see that, but I promise you, those are nothing like the final draft."

Rosanna stared at him, trying to detect a semblance of bullshit in his tone.

Surprisingly, she found none.

"Alright," she relented, picking up the bundle of flowers she'd dropped along the way. She made her way back to the sacrificial table with a huff. "That better be one hell of a portrait."

This time, Sebastian Verde smiled for real — one that was much closer to the one she fell in love with that fateful night.

"Of course. Anything for you, Rosie."

***

Once they were done, Rosanna was left with a braid that she found too decent to undo (props to Isabella), makeup that she decided to keep for kicks, and a very flustered Sebastian packing up in the room.

Sebastian sent the last of the art club members packing, while the rest of the troublemakers scrambled away at the first signal of freedom. Rosanna would almost miss them — especially Isabella and her gaggle of friends — but this was their last day of detention too. Starting tomorrow, Rosanna wouldn't be obliged to do any of the Academy's dirty work, and that includes indulging last-minute requests.

Sebastian seemed to realize this too. He'd just finished packing his things and kept glancing at Rosanna like he wanted to say something to her, but didn't have the guts to.

Good thing Rosanna already knew what he wanted before he said it.

"I had fun," she said, meaning it. "If you want, we can do this again—"

At the same time, Sebastian said:

"I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to! I know you said you didn't want to see me—"

His words knocked the wind out of Rosanna.

Where did that come from?

"—but I wanted to see how you were doing!" Sebastian continued, lost to his world. Unable to meet Rosanna's eyes, he began digging through his bag, as though he might find all the words he needed to say if he looked hard enough. "First, you didn't tell me that you're enrolling here. Imagine my surprise when I saw your name in the hall. N-not that you're obliged to tell me anything—"

"Wait, please slow down—" Rosanna tried. It was all she could do to keep up with him. The aching feeling in her chest was back, almost as if the body remembered what its current host didn't.

But Sebastian was on a roll:

"Then I find out that you've been having some sort of relationship with someone else's servant! And don't get me started on what those girls did to you! Gods, could you imagine how worried I was, Rosie?"

The nickname struck a nerve that Rosanna didn't know she had. She grabbed Sebastian by the wrist, stopping him from whatever scavenger hunt he was onto.

"What in the world are you talking about?" she whisper-shouted, meaning it. As far as she could recall, she'd never met Sebastian before. And yet there he was, talking to Rosanna like they were close friends.

Sebastian stared at her with watery eyes, seemingly hurt over Rosanna's lack of…what? What were they supposed to be, even?

Amelia remembered Sebastian from the game, but this Sebastian had called her Rosie.

"You're serious," Sebastian concluded. His voice had taken on a hollow note, his feelings trumping over his natural awkwardness that the game never got to capture.

With a sigh, he took out a piece of folded paper and handed it to Rosanna. Still, at loss, Rosanna began to open to paper, only to have Sebastian putting a hand over hers and shaking his head. Later, he said.

That was how Rosanna's favorite butler found them.

"Rosanna, m'lady's looking for you—oh." Leo stood in the doorway once again, forever the intruder.

Just like that, Sebastian ignored Rosanna like the past few minutes never happened, slinging the bag over his shoulder. He brushed past Leo in a rush, leaving Rosanna with no fucking clue what was that all about, and a suspicious-looking letter in her hands.