Leuthold Preparatory | ✓

Chapter Ten

The Woodland

Noah's alarm wasn't any less abrupt the next morning, it still jolted him awake. He sat upright in his bed and shivered at the cold wind that came in through the window left open to the cold, Austrian air.

"The noise," Liam groaned from the other side of the room. It was so dark that Noah could hardly see him move to rub his eyes.

In agreement, Noah nodded and reached back to tap his alarm clock.

After his nap, Mi Na explained to him that all yard work started earlier than most students (or people) wanted to be awake. The sun wasn't up yet, the mist rolled in. Noah clung to his bedsheets in want to stay in his warm bed; all that stopped his shivering was the sound across the hall of someone already up and about in their bedroom.

Noah had been somewhat lucky to avoid Hannil Sinclair the rest of the day. Mi Na said that he truly did enjoy being outside and avoided being inside the castle unless it was absolutely necessary—which, to Hannil, it never was.

He could hear Hannil's footsteps that sounded as though he were pacing back and forth in his room. When the dorm was the quiet, Noah realized, he could actually hear a great deal of things he hadn't before.

Liam did snore. Only a little, it wasn't enough for Noah to truly notice unless the building was that still. There were crickets that sang outside his window, the chirping of birds wasn't to be heard yet. But, most importantly to Noah, he could hear the stillness of everything.

In his life, there were few times he was left all alone when he wanted to be. Where he could truly feel comfortable for just a moment or two, hear nothing, see nothing. The darkened dorm room was far different than his darkened bedroom. But no one fought, no one made a noise, it was as if Noah had the entire world to himself.

As they always did, the moments did not last as Noah heard Hannil's door open and close, a few clumsy footsteps and soft swearing before louder steps disappeared down the stairway.

He thought the night before that he was lucky not to see Hannil again. He had not considered that he was now stuck with Hannil for hours. He hoped, as he opened his door and peered into the hall, that Hannil would be stationed very far away from him.

Noah felt as though his wishful thinking was a waste as when he was instructed by Ms. Rae to an elderly man who pointed him to a shed that the moment he opened the door he saw Hannil Sinclair already with gloves on, his eyes fixated on an assortment of tools.

Out of instinct and want to avoid the awkward conversation that was forced to follow, Noah slammed the shed door shut and took a small step back into the dew-pressed grass and let the morning mist fill in the gap between him and the shed.

"Did you just see me and slam the door?" Hannil's voice came through the door. His voice was incredulous, as if he were soon to laugh but also serious in his question. 

Somewhere in his life, Noah had stopped chewing his nails in situations such as this. But now he wished he had a better habit than to stand awkwardly outside of the door with his teeth nervously chattering.

After a moment of complete silence, Noah opened the door again. He knew that he couldn't get around the shed. The groundskeeper said that his gloves and all the tools he needed would be in there. He just wished the man he had yelled at wasn't.

Hannil looked at the door when it opened this time.

"I, um," Noah stammered before he tried to walk inside, he fumbled over the foundation step and caught himself on the edge of a splinter-filled workbench. He stammered a few more times as he looked at Hannil's chest, his mind trying to think of an excuse for why he avoided him. He couldn't look him in the eye, and Noah felt it weakened his every stammer.