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✧ Season of Roses Without You ✧
The night had fallen outside when Matthias stepped out of the bathroom after finishing his shower.
With the strap of his robe loosened, he leaned against the windowsill which overlooked the garden below.
Compared to the Arvis manor, a sprawling estate renowned for its beautiful gardens and forests, the garden of the Ratz mansion was considerably more homely.
Its garden wasn’t that big as the manor was located in the center of town.
Neither the previous Dukes of Herhardt nor Matthias himself had even the slightest interest in landscaping or floriculture. For that reason, the Ratz garden was landscaped modestly to add-on to the mansion’s austere style of architecture.
Once the spring season arrived and the roses of different varieties imported from Arvis were in full bloom, the flower beds transformed the drab gardens into a site that was well worth seeing.
When the scent of flowers began to linger in the blowing wind, Matthias had a passing thought about returning to the estate for the summer break.
Before suddenly, the shadow of a girl who had been diligently wandering about the garden, helping the gardener, snapped him out of his reverie.
Leyla.
Matthias unwittingly frowned.
That girl smelled like a rose.
A gardener with a natural aptitude for growing roses had painstakingly succeeded in blossoming one of the most beautiful roses in the world.
But he never thought the precious rose the gardener raised in the woods would soon become his misfortune.
Leyla, the nobody girl.
That was the name that had been embedded in her.
Matthias closed the window and turned around.  Droplets of water from his wet hair sprinkled over his feet.
‘Still, didn’t fortune favour her now?’
Someone like Leyla Lewellin could only dream of having a companion like a doctor’s son.
She was blessed with once-in-a-lifetime great luck. Thanks to Kyle Etman’s foolish naivety, she could become the future Mrs Etman and attend college in the nation’s capital.
“…Leyla.”
Matthias made a hushed mention of her name beneath his breath. He mused for a beat.
Perhaps, if that beautiful thing disappeared from his sight, things might turn out better for him as well.
Assuming this was true, he should give her a bigger round of applause for the marriage more than anyone else.
Even when he closed the window, the smell of roses still lingered on the tip of his nose.
Matthias spotted a vase of roses that had been put on the console table. Someone seemed to have plucked the roses that had bloomed in the garden and placed them in his bedroom.
After passing by the vase, his gaze was rested on the golden cage he had brought along with him to Ratz  and then turned towards the vase again.
“Leyla.”
Her name sounded even sweeter when he said it with more clarity.
“The roses have bloomed but you’re not here.”
Meanwhile, he was lost in his musings; Matthias suddenly snatched the coveted roses from the vase and clasped them firmly with his hand.
The memories of Leyla, who had tears pouring down her face, flooded back into his mind. The pale pink roses reminded him of her sobbing cheeks, which were dripping wet with tears.
Matthias’ grip on the rose gradually became tighter and tighter until the flower was crushed to a jumble of petals in his palms.
‘It’s a good thing.’
He conscientiously believed so.
‘But…’
Matthias’ eyes narrowed slowly.
‘Can there be a season where the roses bloom without you there?’
‘The flowers will blossom, and I will return, but why aren’t you there with me?’
In those questions, Matthias revived a memory that he wasn’t even aware he had.
That the child was always there.
In the rose-filled summer garden, as if she had become an inseparable part of Arvis itself.
Which means she was also a part of him.
His little yellow bird chirped when it couldn’t fly after he cut its wing off. Matthias now felt a strong urge to kill a person for the first time in his life at this point.
It was unclear which one of them, whether it was the doctor’s son?
….or that woman.
It wasn’t until the night had gotten dim when Matthias released the petals that became a hard lump. His rose-scented hand reached out and took one of the papers on the table and tore it into shreds.
It was a document required to be submitted by the end of the following week.
An eligibility document to extent one year service as a military officer.
*.·:·.✧.·:·.*
“I wholeheartedly give my approval.”
Bill strenuously broached his long hesitated words.
Sitting across the table, Leyla was gazing at him with a perplexed face.
“That glutton, Kyle. I agree. You have my blessing.”
“Hey, uncle…”
Leyla frowned. But Bill kept running his mouth off.
“Stop rejecting him now. Marry him and go to college. I really want you to do that, Leyla.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Don’t you like Kyle, too?”
“I do, it doesn’t make sense for me to marry him.”
“What do you mean by it makes no sense? What’s so strange about two people liking each other and getting married.”
Bill choked up, but Leyla’s eyes were fixed on him and didn’t budge.
“Kyle and his family will become everybody’s fool because of me.”
“Dr. Etman has allowed it, too.”
“But ….”
“Leyla, stop thinking about this and that and just look into your heart.” Bill raised the tone of his voice. “If you like Kyle, get married, but if you don’t like him, then don’t. You don’t need to think about anything else.”
Leyla blinked her eyes shut at his words and took a big gulp of the beer before her.
Bill quietly watched her. The child he had nurtured had now grown into a great drinker. Now, they were each other’s best drinking buddies. Ones who could share their woes while sipping a pint of beer together.
“I like Kyle. There’s no other friend in the world who is as comfortable, warm and kind as him.”
Leyla wiped the beer’s froth from the corner of her lips as she eyed Bill even more sternly.
“So, I don’t want to bring shame on him.”
“No, what’s wrong with you, Leyla? Why are you looking down on yourself?”
“It’s not like that. Uncle, I like the person I’ve become. No matter what other people think of me, I’ve never been embarrassed of who I am. All I want to do is be a good and responsible adult, much like you wish for.”
Leyla knitted her brows. Her eyes clouded over with somberness beyond her glasses.
“But, uncle, I’m completely clueless when it comes to marriage. If I were to get married right now, it would mean that all of my efforts have been in vain.”
“Ha. I hope you’re not possibly thinking of spending all your life stuck in this cabin old widower for the rest of your life, Leyla.”
“I’d love to. I don’t want to leave this Arvis forest, uncle. And neither do you.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say.”
“Now that I have a teaching certification, I’m going to get a job at a school nearby. And I want to live like this forever. Living here, together with you, uncle. Maybe I can help you, too.”
“Is this forest going to run? It’s going nowhere.  And I’m always going to be here in this forest. Well, maybe someday when I’m getting older and don’t have the stamina to continue working as a gardener, I’ll resign and leave this place. However, I’m still healthy, and I’ll still be in good shape for the next ten years as well.”
Bill gulped down his beer.
“Leyla, whether you leave here, go to college, get married, wherever you are, whatever you do, you will always be my little Leyla.”
Bill reached out and gently squeezed Leyla’s tiny hand on the table.
The college entrance exam was just around the corner, but Leyla still had no signs of changing her mind. Bill was so frustrated, that he had decided to arrange this talk with her today.
“If you get married to the Etman household, you’ll be living in the neighborhood, there’s nothing better than that.”
“Uncle.”
“Leyla, there’s a very rare kind of man in the world. A man who assured me that he would be a good husband and a good father. And Kyle is the kind of man who fits that bill.”
As he smiled, Bill patted the back of Leyla’s hand with his palm.
“Think about this. I hope you get married to a nice guy and build a real family. Make your home a hive of life, filled with the sound of children laughing. I believe Kyle will never let you be lonely.”
“…… We’re an actual family too.”
Leyla, who was fiddling with Bill’s fingers, raised her head.
The corners of her eyes were red
“Uncle, we are also a family. A real one.”
“… What’s that… … ?”
Since she came from Lovita, this hapless child had carried tear sacs full of sadness with her. Bill’s eyes would sometimes heat up and get teary when he looked at her.
“If you think we’re a real family, you should listen to me even more!”
Bill yelled and dropped an envelope he had prepared in advance in front of Leyla.
Immediately upon receiving and opening the envelope, Leyla’s eyes widened. Inside the envelope was a train ticket to Ratz with a sum of money to cover travel costs.
“The test is next week. Study hard from tomorrow.  You always work hard, but you still have to work harder to pass. If you don’t go to Latz, then I’ll consider us as a fake family.”
“Uncle!”
“If you don’t take the entrance exam, I won’t see you again, Leyla.”
Bill had let go of her hand and sat with his shoulders straight. He stared down at her with a severe look. Albeit, his eyes were endlessly warm, with no hint of a threatening expression in them at all.
Leyla was lost in thought with the envelope in her hand.
Bill looked at her deeply, wholeheartedly, at the figure of a bright and lovely child before his eyes, things that for him hadn’t changed and had remained the same since she was a little kid.
After contemplating for quite some time, Leyla ultimately made a difficult choice.
She stuck her sparkling glass of beer in front of Bill with a still severe expression on her face.
As she had done in the old days, drawing on her pupilage when she tried tried to bump her glass of apple juice into Bill’s glass of beer.
Bill gladly bumped his glass against hers.
Leyla downed the beer all in one go and drained the glass entirely of its contents. Her cheeks quickly began to flush, but she remained steadfast in her pretence of being a good drinker.
“Even though we’re apart, we’re still a real family, right?”
That smothering question came close to bringing tears to Bill’s eyes all over again.
“Don’t be worried about that.”
Unlike his blunt way of speaking,  Bill smiled so warmly at her.
Leyla smiled as she watched him still.
They were like a genuine family.
*.·:·.✧.·:·.*
“You will definitely like it the most. The museum of natural history.”
Kyle once again spoke excitedly.
“It’ll probably be like heaven for you.”
He was listing out the must-see places in Ratz and was most excited when he began to talk about the Natural History Museum.
Outside the window of the rattling train they were riding, a breathtakingly beautiful sight of springtime landscapes with flowers in full bloom greeted them everywhere.
This was Leyla’s first visit to Ratz, and she couldn’t have been thrilled.
But for Kyle, it was the umpteenth time since he often visited his relatives in the capital and thus was quite familiar with the city.
Kyle had meant for Leyla to stay at his relative’s house, but she politely refused his offer and opted to stay at a small hotel nearby.
“You must be tired right now. Shall we go tomorrow?”
“I have to study for the exam.”
“When it comes to studying, what is the difference between studying now and studying later before the exam day? You just need to make sure you memorize what you’ve learned.”
“Wow. You look very confident, Mr. Etman.”
“Of course I am, Miss Lewellin.”
“Well, that’s great.”
“So then, let’s get married.”
Instead of hurling her rejection at him like in the past, Leyla set her gaze intensely on Kyle’s face. Her sudden shift in reaction made Kyle startled a bit.
“W-why, what’s wrong?”
“You know, Kyle. Can you imagine it?”
“Imagine what?”
“We are married to each other and become husband and wife.”
The moment Leyla stated it with a serious expression, Kyle’s cheeks began to burn crimson.
“Of course! You can imagine it! Go ahead, do whatever you want!”
“I don’t know. It strikes me as a bit weird. Us getting married, having children… You know, getting into that type of relationship.”
“What are you saying now? It’s not weird at all.”
“Really? We’ve learned about the act of reproduction, haven’t we? How to make and give birth to a baby, are we really going to do that?”
“Make… Birth, what?”
Kyle doubted his ears. He felt like he had misheard something improper,  but Leyla, the person who threw the bomb words, precisely had an innocent face with not a trace of shamelessness on it.
“Act of reproduction.”
Leyla hurled a bomb for the second time without even batting an eye.
“There’s nothing to be ashamed of, Kyle. Birds, flowers, and all other living things do it to preserve their species.”
“Do you know what you’re saying right now?
“Yeah. I’m only a little weak in geometry, but I am pretty good at other subjects.”
Kyle’s throat tightened, and he turned head sideways to avoid staring straight ahead. He was embarrassed when Leyla seemed so proud of herself after uttering all that saucy stuff.
“Isn’t it a bit weird for us that we’re going to do that, and…….”
“uh… … Leyla, come on, eat this.” Kyle quickly slipped a slice of sandwich between Leyla’s talkative lips to cease her babbling.
Though it wasn’t yet summer, the temperature within the train, for some reason, was as scorching as if he were inside a kiln.
Leyla munched on the sandwich with relish. In between bites of the sandwich, she mumbled and opened her lips again.
“Eat this too.”
Before she could say anything, Kyle had already shoved another cookie into her mouth, clamming her up from speaking further.
‘Please, don’t say that stuff anymore.’
Kyle sucked in everything he wanted to say and just shook his head.
( ‘When you start thinking of shit, think about my shovel.’ )
Uncle Bill’s voice suddenly rang out in his ears.
He greeted Kyle with a very kind and creepy smile when he came to the cottage to pick up Leyla this morning.
‘Yes, shovel.’
Kyle’s thoughts wandered back to Uncle Bill’s giant dirt shovel, which looked close to a weapon.
“So Kyle, I mean…..”
Leyla’s lips began to twitch open once again as soon as she finished all the cookies. Her look was a mess yet lovely, with cookie crumbs smeared all over her dainty red lips.
“Leyla, if you say one more word.”
Kyle sighed and scratched the back of his head.
“Huh?”
“If you say one more word…”
He gulped.
After digesting his feelings that had been stifled by the shovel, Kyle made a tragic confession.
“I’m going to jump off the train.”