Belle | #1

07| Sulit

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S u l i t 

(adj.) something that is worth it.

❋❋❋

We'll be friends forever,

wont't we, Pooh?

                                                  asked Piglet

Even longer,

                                                            Pooh answered.

– Winnie the Pooh

❋❋❋

If there was one thing Belle learnt in her four years of isolation, it was that pretty boys like Adam lie.

She couldn't believe her ears when she heard him say I'm leaving, and the smile that stroked her lips was one that she couldn't stop. Her heart was still, but Belle could feel her pulse in her throat and temples, and it was though this relief – this delirium – was already making her fingers tremble.

Once she heard the door close behind her, the first thing she did was rush to the window, her eyes already awaiting a boy – that only thing she knew about Adam – and it only took nine heartbeats and seven seconds before a boy, with suitcases in his hands, stepped on the front porch.

He was just as every fairytale said he would be.

Tresses of bronze, and aerial shoulder blades; a lean torso, and a smile intertwined with cosmos beyond men's comprehension – Belle could see how handsome this boy was when she was three floors above ground level.

A breath of gratitude escaped her lips, and Belle smiled unknowingly as she watched Adam get into a taxi and drove away.

❋❋❋

For this suitor, Belle knew she wasn't going to act like the insane psychopath she insisted on with the past twenty-six.

She really didn't know why, but she knew that she was tired. She was tired of having to put on this psychotic persona just because a boy so happened to be her future husband, and she was tired of having to live up to expectations and she was tired of being confined in this mansion of all things beautiful and she was tired –

Perhaps that's why Adam Belmonte left the Sinclair mansion mentally stable.

Antonelle closed the book she was reading – Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë – and her eyes couldn't help but glance at the giant clock now hanging in her library.

The clock was beautiful, that much was a given. A bleeding rose entwined with gold and silver, sculpted with emerald thorns and glistening petals; lined with the finest scarlet marble and smoothest glass – this clock – this beautiful clock – was a painful reminder of how little time Belle had left.

How much time she had before...before –

"Mademoiselle?"

Belle let out a tired breath. "Yes, Lumière?" she said quietly, already hearing the clattering of cups outside the library door.

"I have tea," Lumière sounded happy, unlike his pained voice for the past week, "and your favourite biscuits."

Belle smiled slightly. She shuffled around and grabbed her hoodie before concealing her face. "I'd love some."