Leuthold Preparatory | ✓

Chapter Twenty-Four: Part II

Father Antoine returned and, in his strange manner of speaking, told the group that Mi Na had gone. Taller than the sunflowers, Hannil was able to see along the field and got up first. Soon, he gestured for the other three to get up. Hannil held back the sunflowers that were still surprisingly strong and smellier than Noah had ever imagined. Noah was surprised to see that Mi Na was nowhere in sight, nowhere in earshot--truly gone. 

Father Antoine gave them new clothes, theirs' dirtied and sticky from the sunflowers and dirt. They took turns in the church's small bathroom to clean themselves up and change their clothes. Celeste and Noah were given some of Father Antoine's clothes to change into that were unsurprisingly all-black. Ines changed into a dress that was teal and white, clearly left behind as some kind of donation. Hannil was given a set of clothes Father Antoine seemed reluctant to hand over; the shirt was a white button-up and the wool trousers were a dark grey, Noah noticed that they were "rich" as his mother would have said. Still, Hannil compromised for the heavy wool by rolling his sleeves to his elbows and leaving the buttons around his neck and the start of his chest undone. Later, he even rolled the end of his trousers around his ankles, his feet bare. 

They were given a salad and baguette for dinner at a small table off of the main area of the church; Father Antoine left them in favor of his own rooms. Noah supposed he was grateful that the Priest was neither imposing nor reluctant in helping them. It allowed for Noah and Hannil to fill in some gaps with Ines and Celeste, both of whom were curious about Mi Na yet little was said about the incident.

Despite that he hadn't slept the night before, Noah wasn't tired enough to go to bed when the girls did. They were given their own rooms through doors off of the small dining area; each was small and the room for Hannil and Noah was hardly big enough for the two of them. Noah missed the luxury suite he had woken in. It was a fleeting longing; Mi Na was too involved in his mind. 

She nagged him; the idea of her nagged him. She had been friends with Hannil, or she had claimed, and it only seemed truer by the way she shouted at him. She had been bargaining with him, not attacking him--with Hannil, she had been ready to deck him. Noah wondered how he got away from her, Hannil was certainly larger and stronger than Mi Na, but he had no marks on him, Mi Na had left angry but unscathed. The more he thought about the impossibility of a fight, the more the idea of it nagged him. 

"She sounded really mad," Noah broke the quiet. His thoughts ran ramped in the quiet; he couldn't keep them contained. He hated the quiet, he hated the thoughts more. 

Much as Noah was, Hannil was unmoved since they had sat down at the small table for dinner; he blew cigarette smoke out of the open windows that were hardly that. They were only slits a few inches wide, no glass in them, it opened the room to the bugs but let a surprising amount of fresh air inside. 

"She was," Hannil replied, his voice was clear but soft as if he didn't want to speak. 

Noah tapped the table anxiously. He did not enjoy how his mind played Mi Na's voice over and over, he had previously thought that he was merely caught on her scream rather than Mi Na herself. It was her, he realized, she was an enigma in the entire event. What kind of influence did she have over Leuthold? Even if she was Berg's step-daughter, it hardly made her so dangerous. Why was she alone? Why did she feel the need to declare that she wasn't against Noah? Why did she take Hannil's presence so personally? 

"Why was she so angry?" Noah asked. 

Hannil blew his smoke through his nose; when Noah got up the courage to look at his eyes, he looked conflicted. Noah didn't know about what and he disliked the thoughts that traveled into his mind about him. He disliked how Mi Na's eyes sat with him, the way they had looked at Hannil.