The Classic Tale of You and Me

Chapter XV: The Knight and His Muse

The Classic Tale of You and Me:
The Knight and His Muse

The first night after Miku and her uncle came back from London, she had done nothing other than to blindfold herself to fall asleep. She wept and tossed on her bed, still reminiscing the cruel words Rei spoke to her on the night he claimed he saw Len. 'How does he look?' She remembered asking him when they found the hallways Len could possibly had gone to, empty. 'Blond and blue-eyed,' was his answer and she could never tell who was Len among the people dancing in the grand room. When she told him that his descriptions were broad and she could not help him finding a person as general as that, he snapped at her--amber eyes furious, face puckered and teeth gnashed. Rei was mad at her. 'You cannot find him because even if you have your sight back, you are still blind.'

The sharp words Rei spoke stabbed her heart endlessly. It surprised her to hear him spoke like he was not the Rei she knew and she expected to be. Her fingers unfettered his arm as she gaped at him in disbelief, tears forming at the corner of her eyes. His words were so heartless, it stung her with the kind of pain she knew before, other than the pain he gave was shallow.

This whole encounter put her in such place where all she did was to mope and withdraw talking to people to give herself some time. She never left her bed all morning to ponder her past actions and her future actions, scrutinizing all the beliefs she held on for so long. Rei was right, she was still blind. Miku was still blind because she never trusted what she could not see -- just like the old conceited self she was before meeting Rei and Len.

"I wish I can spend one more time with Len -- I want to believe that he is alive." She mused to herself that quiet evening, it was half passed one and she was still wide awake. Her blindfold never helped to give her some sleep even if all she could see was nothing but darkness. Her hands clasped her lips as she suppressed her soft sobs, wishing not wake anyone in the house -- not even her uncle nor the servants. "I want to be with Len again and be a child once more. The time when I care nothing other than to play piano and run with him in the fields, I want to go back to the time where there is yet no pain."

But at the stillness of the night, she listened to rustling of the wind. It helped her to enlighten her confused thinking as she listened to the wind, it knocked invisibly on her windowpanes and whispered, "it must be true love".

"He spoke like that because it might be true love," she whispered back in the empty air. "Rei loved Len so much, he could speak the sharpest just to defend him -- because he wanted no one to hurt him, even if it was against Len himself, Rei wanted him to be happy. It must be true love." She cried more, feeling like her love for Len was the tiniest grain of sand against Rei's universe of beaches. Her tears flowed unwarranted, drenching the blindfold of her eyes. It was fiddle-faddle to compare her love for the blond when Rei had stayed with him for almost eleven years. Miku never lasted more than a year with Len back in the Green Fields.

The night went on like that, she was crying against her pillows and her dog watched from where he was, laying idly on the hearth-rug. Flickering and crackling, the fire from the hearth of her room burned low and overpowered Miku's weeping. She was never this vulnerable -- all the furniture in her room witnessed that. The furniture witnessed how she lied being not vulnerable -- again.

People had tongues of newly hammered blades, cutting deep through you with the words they spoke. Miku kept that in mind and snuggled on her pillows, her sobbing slowly faded every tick of the clock. The hearth was coal red, no fire blazed by the time Miku fell asleep. Today was a bad day so tomorrow should not be, she mumbled against her pillow.

Tomorrow, she should ask the painter (or her valet - she never knew what to call Gakupo until now) about this for he is someone wise about people.

When the grandfather clock gonged, it was the time for the second sleep. Len rose from his bed and stared at the mirror on his closet, blinking at the sight Leonard on the glass. The blond pulled a seat and smiled at his reflection.