Leuthold Preparatory | ✓

Chapter Sixteen

Upon Expectation

"No, no! In the garden, Squeak!" Hannil had whispered harshly before he grabbed the excess of Noah's sleeve and pulled him into the garden. Noah spent the entire morning with Hannil, gathering and raking, picking weeds and having Hannil laugh at what little Noah knew of plants all because there were "fewer eyes and ears" than inside the castle.

    "A woman?" Hannil asked after he explained what he had seen.

    "She was just standing there," Noah replied with a small shake of his head, "Looking at her watch or phone or something."

    "Not like," Hannil pointed a long, fork-like tool he called a cultivator at a group of students that were mostly girls.

    Noah nodded, "Older. Fifty, maybe? Dyed hair and everything."

    Hannil looked surprised for a moment before he leaned on the staff of the cultivator and stared with scrunched eyes at the brightened forest.

    "Where'd she go?" He asked.

    Noah shook his head as he went back to weeding, "I didn't see. When I looked back, she was gone."

    "And you think that a teacher's going to help us?"

    "They might?" Noah replied weakly before he leaned back onto the cobblestone path and took off his gloves, a sigh of frustration left him as he tossed them aside. "Maybe she won't."

    "I'm just saying," Hannil held his hands out broadly before he dropped the cultivator and walked toward him, he sat down next to him on the cobblestone.

    "I think that we should tell someone, you know?" Noah looked at him.

    "Everyone in this place is beneath the thumb of the Headmaster," Hannil replied quickly. "Even us."

    "Teachers are good people...usually," Noah replied, "They're teachers to help take care of children."

    "Not to crash the world down on you, but we hardly qualify as 'children'."

    Noah took in a deep, ragged breath. "That's a horrible reminder."

    Hannil began to laugh before he took off his gloves and tossed them onto the hot cobblestone.

    "So, where do we find this teacher?" Hannil asked him.

    "I don't know," Noah replied as he wrapped his arms loosely around his knees, his ankles crossed as he looked out onto the yard and forest. "Their classroom? Teacher's lounge?"

    Hannil tilted his head from side to side in thought, his eyes were fixated on the forest and he watched the leaves sway in the breeze. The sun was striking him in such a way that Noah noticed how truly golden-brown his skin was, that his hair did seem to have a tint of blue in it, his eyes almost clear with sunlight streaming through them. All of his features were lit up by the sunlight, from his slightly arched, broad nose to his bowed lips and eyebrows that were scrunched together in thought, to his neck and collarbone that were just visible beneath his unbuttoned collar. When Hannil's eyes moved from the trees back to Noah, Noah panicked and darted his eyes back to the forest, his ears turned warm.

    "I'll take the area by the theater and Headmaster's office," Hannil told him.

    "Wh—What?" Noah stammered when he turned his attention back toward him.

    Hannil shrugged, "We have to search the castle somehow," he scoffed a laugh at the word.

    Noah looked up at the school, his house could easily fit in it time and time again. He looked back at Hannil curiously, remembering what Mi Na told him.