Everyone ran away after a week of teaching Rapunzel; to them, she was a girl who was far too energetic and impossible to keep up with. Her mother had tried calling in teachers from all over the country, but they all ended up running away.
Margaret gave it one last go; she called a teacher who charged a low fee because her finances were in tatters at the time. A man of unclear origins, but he was said to be able to get on easily with any child.
The moment Rapunzel first laid eyes on him, she could sense the friendly aura Sullivan radiated; he even brought chocolate for them to share. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and Sullivan remained loyal as Rapunzel's private tutor; he had also begun to earn her mother's trust—everything was going smoothly—or so he hoped.
One day, Sullivan and Margaret got into an argument over a difference of opinion, which ended with Sullivan being sacked. Since then, Rapunzel had never met a person who could understand and tolerate her behavior. Time kept passing, and Rapunzel still thought about him; she had even prepared all sorts of plans and topics of conversation in case they met again.
But it took years for them to meet again.
Sullivan reached into his jacket and pulled out a piece of paper—it was a photo of Rapunzel standing beside him. "How old were you when this was taken, Rae?" Alice asked, looking at Rapunzel in the photo, who didn't look much different from how she looked now.
Rapunzel tried to clear her mind and think back. "About eight, I suppose?" she said before taking the photo from Sullivan's hand, "But I didn't expect you to still have it, sir..." From her voice, I could tell her heart was melting right now.
There was a question gnawing at me and I couldn't contain my curiosity. "Have you always had long blonde hair?" I asked, and all heads turned towards me, as if I'd asked the most pointless question in the world.
"Yes, I even have a photo of myself as a toddler and my hair was blonde then too. Why?"
"No, I was just curious."
"You really are a one-of-a-kind person, aren't you, Red?"
Her answer puzzled me even more, because however you looked at it—she and her mother were nothing alike; they had different hair, and their faces didn't resemble each other either, let alone what Rapunzel had told us when we first met—a piece of information I hadn't even shared with Alice.
Alice, ever the perceptive one, realised something was bothering me. "Red, can we have a word—?" Before I could even reply, the sound of hurried footsteps reached us, and as we turned towards the noise, a woman in a police uniform, her piercing blue eyes fixed on us, was standing there.
Beside the policewoman stood a middle-aged woman with dark red hair, her face contorted with fury. "GIVE ME BACK MY DAUGHTER!!" she screamed, her fists clenched tightly. I let out a long sigh, yet at the same time I was impressed that they weren't giving up so easily.
"Mother?!" Rapunzel was startled and hadn't expected to be caught so quickly, even though they'd actually been caught a while ago. "It's not what it looks like—!" Before she could say any more, Alice and I had already shielded the two of them.
"I never thought we'd meet this soon, Ciel," Alice greeted with a teasing smile; a blue light appeared and, after fading, immediately produced a card between her fingers. "Have you already missed us? You're such a clingy woman."
"That's why you should just accept our dinner invitation, Ciel," I added, and after the red light vanished, the shotgun fell into my grasp.
"Shut up!" She was still flustered, and though her cheeks were flushed pink, she brandished her sword at us, returning to us better prepared than before. "I'll arrest you two right now and hand that girl over to her mother!"
Alice, hearing that, smirked, and I immediately got a bad feeling from that grin—without any warning, a card flew out and stuck into the ground where Rapunzel and Sullivan were standing. From within the card, a towering stone lifted them upwards; everyone's eyes widened and some mouths gaped in shock. "Take them if you can," she said in a challenging tone.
Seeing her daughter hundreds of feet in the air drained the colour from her face; she collapsed to the ground and lay unconscious. "Madam?!" Ciel was shocked to see her faint, "Take care of her!" and her subordinates immediately replied, "Aye, Captain!" and carried the unconscious Margaret away from the place that was about to become the battlefield.
Rapunzel and Sullivan were now standing atop the clock tower, trapped there with no one to rescue them except Alice herself, who had brought them up, leaving the three of us to fight.