♠️ Exceptis Centrum ♠️ ✔︎

Chapter 8

Hello! Sorry that there is no title and description, but someone submitted this book and now I'm waiting for further development of this whole situation!

Anyway... Enjoy this chapter!

Spinning around on his chair, Alfred came to a stop and stared at his whiteboard, drumming his fingers upon the arms as he stared at every single piece of information he had gathered regarding Arthur’s Garden. He had recorded his last two visits and everything he had been doing just before he went there.

“What’s the connection?” he asked himself. “There just has to be one.”

He looked back to his first visit. It happened in his sleep right after the tree ceremony. The second happened on his desk just before he closed his eyes to take a nap.

“At first I thought it was triggered by sleeping,” pondered Alfred aloud, tapping his finger upon the rim of his glasses, “but during all the last ones I was wide awake, so it’s not sleep.”

He made a note of that in case he came back to that conclusion. The third happened during an argument over flowers. Was it stress then? No, because he was stress free at the spa during his fourth visit. A whole day passed after that and his fifth visit happened right after he finished breakfast and he was feeling particularly foul that morning, then on the same day he went on his sixth visit during his boring lessons.

“Is it boredom then?” He scratched his head as he looked back and forth between the separate visits. “I was kinda bored during all of these events, but I wasn’t bored during breakfast I was just tired. Plus you can’t exactly be bored in your sleep.”

Alfred sighed as he found that there was still no solid connection between any of these events. He even thought he had a pattern, that it happened daily but recently that was proven to be false. With a huff he slumped back into his chair and spun himself around, all of his thoughts in a bit of a muddle.

There had to be something that triggered his visits, something he was missing. This couldn’t be random, his gut was telling him that he was doing something during these events that made him go to the garden, he just had to figure it out.

“Ok, next time I go I’m going to write down everything I did just before I get there,” proclaimed Alfred, grabbing a small notebook and pen and shoving them in his jacket pocket. “Now I just have to wait...”

He drummed his fingers along his desk. The clock continued to tick away. Alfred looked from one side of the room to the other.

“I guess I might as well do something whilst I wait,” he huffed.

So Alfred decided to go for a stroll around the palace, saying hello to his subjects and checking out rooms he had never gone into or never had a good look at. He went to the library, a few guest rooms, a trophy room of sorts, Yao’s office which was currently vacant, a large lounge and even the indoor pool he hadn’t used in a while.

The day was going by pretty fast but so far nothing had happened. He did chat with some of the maids, joke with the guards standing on patrol, and accidentally engaged in boring conversations with the scholars. After all that Alfred strolled down a hallway by himself and lost himself in his thoughts. This day seemed like it was going to be uneventful.

“Alfred!”

Spoke too soon.

Alfred looked up to see Yao dashing over. He seemed neither stressed or concerned so hopefully this wasn’t anything serious.

“S’up Yao,” greeted Alfred with a smile, “what have you got for me?”

Yao cleared his throat. “Ok, I’ve got some news that you’ll like and some news that’ll possibly upset you,” he stated.