Chapter 49

✧Like A Wing✧

*.·:·.✧.·:·.*

“This hairstyle doesn’t suit you.”

Matthias immediately said the moment their eyes met.

His remark startled Layla. Momentarily bewildered, she mused over his words, grasping the mocking nature of it in an instant.

‘This man! Is he trying to pick a fight again?’

“I know. My hair is a little… untidy.”

Leyla said sharply, in response to his unsought criticism.

“A little?”

Matthias scoffed, eyes scrutinizing her from top to bottom. Under his disdainful stare, Leyla squeezed at her bike handles, fighting the urge to run away. Her inability to restrain the strange emotions stirring in her heart as she stood in front of him was already upsetting to her—Leyla refused to look like such an easy target, blushing at just the sight of a man.

“Why don’t you untie your hair?”

“I’d like to, but they said I won’t look like a proper teacher.”

“Who?” He asked, forehead creasing with suspicion.

“The headmistress,” Leyla replied. As his eyes lingered on her, she averted her gaze, cheeks heating up into a rosy red.

“She said that if I look too young, I wouldn’t seem like a teacher with authority.” She continued hesitantly, fearful that the profound silence between them would make things even more awkward. “So the headmistress advised me not to have a ‘student-like’ hairstyle.”

Matthias burst into laughter the moment she stopped speaking, a faint chuckle that sounded like a soothing breeze. Ears burning, she continued to avert her gaze, feeling like a fool.

With a scoff, Matthias looked down at the petite woman standing before him.

“So that windswept, tied-up hair is a symbol of a teacher’s authority…” he drawled, full to the brim with sarcasm. Hurt pride flashed across her face, and he dranked in the coy yet cute expression.

“I’m practising a lot, so I’ll get better at styling my hair soon.” Her quick retort, filled with the same pride he saw, left him momentarily transfixed.

‘This woman never wants to give in even if it kills her, doesn’t she?’

Amused by her persistence, Matthias smirked once more.

“Well then, let’s see.”

“I’m absolutely sure that I can do this. And if my skill doesn’t get any better…I’ll just cut it short.”

“Cut it?”

The beam fell off Matthias’s face at her words. When he saw Leyla nodding, absorbed in thought, his eyes narrowed as if he was witnessing something truly horrible.

“Yes. I’d look a lot more mature, and….”

“Don’t cut it.”

His demand was oddly soft and calm.

Puzzled and annoyed, Leyla shot him a look. “Don’t tell me, I need your permission to grow or cut my hair?” She groused.

“Your hair… it’s beautiful.”

It was a stupefying reply to an irate question that was nearly impossible to believe.

Above all…. It sounded ridiculous.

Doubting her ears, Leyla frowned at him. Matthias looked back at her, calm in the face of her agitation.

“It’s like a wing.”

His voice had taken on the same exact tone he had used to insult and hurt her with merely a single statement in the past, a cold bleakness that reminded her of winter.

Leyla could still recall how calm and unchanged his voice had been, even as he was calling her terrible slurs.

As she stood fuming in anger, her memory flashed back to the day of their first meeting. It had been a hot summer day when she first saw Duke Herhardt at the top of a tree, his voice cold yet eerily tranquil even as he came dangerously close to shooting a child.

His soothing voice had been imprinted in her mind ever since.

Clear as crystal, she remembered jumping down from the tree and running towards Uncle Bill’s cottage, crying out at the existence of such a human being.

‘The- There’s a man in the forest! A tall man!’

Struggling to catch her breath, the words poured out of her mouth, full of admiration in a way that only a child could have.

‘He has black hair, and his eyes are blue. And his voice is as light as a feather.’

At that moment, struggling to explain the texture of the voice that had left her smitten, the only image that came to Little Leyla’s mind was her most precious possession—the soft feathers that belonged to the riverbirds from Schulter River, which she had painstakingly collected during her many walks along its banks. Anything else would have came up short when compared to his voice.

Flustered by his bluntness, Leyla hurriedly avoided his gaze. Cruel and aimed to hurt her, Matthias’s words had made him the person she most feared and disliked— after all, it was the Duke Herhardt whom she knew of.

However, no matter how long she waited, Matthias stayed silent. Not a word or insult flew past his lips.

Instead, he simply walked away, leaving a bewildered Leyla behind. As the autumn leaves fluttered to the ground she fretted, wondering if his odd compliment was but a hallucination, brought on by the autumn leaves falling gently to the ground.

Her hair had cascaded down to her shoulders, strands fluttering in the cold autumn wind. Shaking away her thoughts, Leyla combed a hand through her hair. She flinched as a sudden gust of cold wind blew past her. Losing her grip on the handle, she tried to grab at it—only to crash into the ground with her bicycle in tow.

“Ackhh!”

Her scream blended with the thud of her bicycle colliding with the pavement, a cacophony in a quiet road.

Matthias grimaced as he watched Leyla struggle to stop her own bicycle from crushing her into a pancake against the dusty road, unaware of his lips quirking up into a laughing sneer the longer he watched.

“You trip and fall just like always, it seems.”

Leyla bit her lip in shame at his laughter. Oddly enough, it made her feel relieved.

‘Just laugh, harass me, and leave.’

Full of hope, she waited for him to do just that. As Matthias quietly pulled up her bike and walked towards her bag, which had landed far away from where she had fallen, her hopes began to falter, and it died completely when he brought it to her, kneeling at her side.

“Nnn…no-! No, it’s mine!” Leyla snatched the bag from Matthias in a blind panic when he attempted to pick her scattered belongings. “I-I’ll do it myself.”

Matthias’s brows scrunched together at her blatant hostility.

“I….I’ll do it,” Leyla mumbled. Lowering her eyes, she began to collect her belongings with trembling hands, even though Matthias had done nothing to frighten her so.

Even though he was agitated by Leyla’s actions and quivering tone, Matthias decided to watch her patiently. Noticing her flushed cheeks and neck, he had an epiphany—it was merely emberrasment and shyness that made her shy back from him, nothing more.

Standing in front of her, Matthias’s looming figure casted a shadow onto Leyla’s dropped items. She appeared very distraught, he observed, gathering even roadside leaves and stones into her bags in her frantic scramble to gather her belongings. Oddly enough, the quirkiness of it all quelled Matthias’s ire.

When she had gathered all of her belongings into her bag, Leyla rushed to her feet. Oblivious to the dust that was all over her clothes and hands, she shot him a look.

“I know it’s rude, but Duke….”

Her eyes drifted between Matthias and the entrance to the mansion located on the opposite side of the road. Perplexed, she wondered what to do next.

“If it’s rude of me to go ahead of you, I’ll wait for you to leave first.”

Her words were bold, as if she no longer wanted to walk with him, but Matthias could see the anxiety in her eyes. She had a nosy attitude, but for once he tolerated it, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to walk alongside her after passing the entrance of the mansion.

“Go on.”

His permission surprised her.

“Me first?” She asked, full of confusion.

Matthias clicked his tongue in lue of an answer. Leyla’s face lit up, and she quickly lowered her head.

“Thank you, Duke.”

Matthias seemed offended with her excessive politeness, as if it was an affront to his very being.

Leyla made her way to the entrance. Before mounting her bicycle she halted in her tracks, turning back to the man with a frown, eyes full of suspicion. It was obvious that Matthias was being oddly kind towards her, but she still didn’t trust him. After a quick glance, she tilted her head and turned her back to him, riding off down the road.

“Should I have made her cry instead?”

Matthias’s regret came too late. Keeping a relatively pleasant expression on his face, he kept walking until something shiny on the ground caught his attention.

It was a pen.

A pen that belonged to a woman who fell and lost her belongings with ease.

Swiftly, Matthias picked it up. As he kept his gaze on the woman in question, his grip on the pen grew tighter. Momentarily, he considered stopping her.

Leyla was close enough that she could hear him if he called, but Matthias stayed silent instead.

He spun the pen with his long fingers as he strolled along the road. Meanwhile, Leyla, who was diligently cycling her bike, soon disappeared from sight beyond the Arvis’s gate.

*.·:·.✧.·:·.*

“That bird came again.”

Smiling, Mark Evers informed the man seated facing away from the window.

Despite the lack of explanation, Matthias understood. He didn’t even bother to look at the window. He didn’t need to, not when it had happened so often that it had become a part of his daily routine.

It was time for ‘Phoebe’s’ visit; a pigeon that was much gentler and smarter than its owner.

Leaning against a chair by the fireplace, Matthias signed the last document required of him for the day, handing it to his aide. After his aide retreated from the room with the paper, he was left to his own devices in the living room.

Capping his fountain pen, Matthias glanced out of the window. Phoebe, as always, was seated on the railing, preoccupied with gulping down its food with gusto.

He looked away from the bird, gaze falling onto the thin pen in his hand. He examined it carefully, noting the pen owner’s name engraved in gold on the cap.

‘Leyla Lewellin.’

The pen appeared to be brand-new. It didn’t look like she had bought it with her own money, so it had likely been a gift from the gardener.

Matthias hoped so. He was sure that Leyla would do everything she could to get it back if it was a gift from Bill Remmer.

‘Would she have noticed by now?’

Matthias stared at the pen with a crooked grin. He uncapped the pen. Acting like a gentleman towards a woman who had praised him didn’t seem like a bad idea. Besides, it was time for the pigeon to pay for its own meal.

Matthias walked up to the balcony, folding a letter containing a single short sentence. Chuckling at the thought of the bird’s owner fleeing on her bicycle, he tied the letter onto the bird’s ankle, which leant its body docily towards him.

After Matthias made sure that the note was secure, he launched Phoebe into the sky.

And the carrier pigeon began to fly eagerly towards the gardener’s cottage.

*.·:·.✧.·:·.*

Once the sun, gleaming like copper, settled behind the horizon, night came, along with Phoebe’s return.

Leyla was sitting and staring mindlessly at the empty desk when the sound of pecking on the window startled her. Turning her head, she called the bird in chidingly.

“Phoebe!”

Leyla hurriedly wrapped the shawl over her shoulders, standing from her chair. The chilly wind blew into the room as she threw open the window.

“Are you hungry? Wait a minute… huh?”

Her eyes widened with astonishment at the sight of the letter tied to Phoebe’s leg. She rubbed at her eyes, sure that she was seeing things, but the letter remained present on the bird’s leg.

“…Kyle?”

Without thinking, His name slipped from her lips, even though she knew it wasn’t him.

‘No, Kyle has already left. There’s no way anyone else would tie a letter to Phoebe’s feet.’

Leyla stared blankly at Phoebe. Hands trembling, she opened the letter. As she skimmed through the short sentence written in the letter, her countenance quickly changed from curiosity to dismay.

She gasped. The letter slipped from her fingers as she took an instinctive step back, fluttering gently onto the floor beneath the window.

Staring at the letter, eyes blinking rapidly, Leyla took a step back, then another until her back slammed against the closet, bringing her to her senses.

“I-It can’t be!”

Leyla mumbled shakily under her breath as she rummaged hastily through her bag. The pen she was searching for was nowhere to be found. Even more baffling were the stones and leaves inside her bag instead—she hadn’t the slightest idea how they had gotten inside her bag.

Leyla frowned and staggered back to the window, letter held in a hand that was now pale and wan like moonlight.

‘[Where’s your pen, Leyla?]’

Wrapping her arms around her head, she read the note Phoebe had brought in once more.

She sighed.

‘No way.’

No matter how many times she muttered the words, Leyla knew nothing would change.

Guu… Guuu… Guu…

In the pale white moonlight of an autumn night, Phoebe, the pigeon whom the Duke had fed to the point of rotundness, cooed calmly.

*.·:·.✧.·:·.*