Chapter 6 - I Read With My Eyes

“Ya—yok,” Dylan read aloud slowly. It was as if savoring the word in his mind.

Anna clasped both her hands in front of her apron and kept her gaze directed downwards. The gap between the two of them and the bookshelf was too small, so her body felt way too close to his.

“Was this a book you planned on reading?” he asked.

“It is,” Anna hurriedly replied. “I picked it, but…”

Her response was vague and her words escaped her in a mumble. She was scared of the prospect that Dylan might find the fact that she was borrowing and reading books from the library unappealing, forbidding her from ever reading any more books in the future.

“The title really matches you, actually.”

Anna raised her head slightly. “What do you mean by that?” she asked.

“Hah!” Dylan sneered. “So you chose this book even though you don’t know what it meant?”

Anna, dispirited, lowered her gaze back to the ground. Dylan’s stare seemed to belittle her, and his demeanor made her incapable of doing much else besides demure. He looked down upon her for a moment, his eyes cold, before he gave the book back to her. The thick book thumped heavily against her chest, pushing against it.

A low moan escaped her. “Ah,” she blurted reflexively.

“If you want to figure out what it means, read the book and see if you understand.”

Anna held aloft the book that he pushed to her chest. She couldn’t comprehend why Dylan was so angry toward her. Was he taking out his frustrations on her from earlier, when she messed up and dropped his folded clothes right in front of him? Or, perhaps he just didn’t like the fact that she was in the library in the first place?

“If you ever hurt that person’s feelings, I will pay back their pain tenfold,” Dylan began, his eyes like a frigid fire ready to tear Anna apart. “I’ll make you experience more pain than their heart could ever feel by ripping yours out of your chest. Behave while you still have the chance.”

He left like a whirlwind after he finished warning her, and it was only after he was completely gone did Anna feel like she could finally breathe again. 

She thought Dylan would definitely recognize her after coming back and she had been waiting for him every moment for the last three years. No one had instructed her to do so, but she planned to do her absolute best to pay back all he had done for her—the kindness he had afforded her—as much as she could upon his return to the mansion. Yet now he had a problem with her. What was it? How did she end up as the focal point of his hatred and anger?

Anna had to lean against the bookshelf to calm her racing heart for a long time before she could leave the library.

***

“Everything’s turned completely upside down!” Anna mumbled as she beat the laundry with a washing bat.

This had all begun once David and Carol chose to leave for a month to visit their parents. Not only did Anna’s trustworthy sponsor disappear, but Dylan’s started to treat her as a thorn in his side at all times. Her happy days around the mansion had come to an end.

“How am I supposed to wash all these clothes?!”

Although her arms felt like they were going to fall off from exhaustion, Anna couldn’t do anything else but continue to beat the laundry with the washing bat. The sky looked ominous and dark, as if it would rain at any moment. She tried her best to push away the thought that it might rain before she could finish. Samantha had told her to completely finish all of the laundry before the rain could start pouring down.

Unfortunately, not long afterwards, the angry clouds in the sky started to unleash its torrent of droplets upon the ground.

“N-No way! Is it really raining?”

Anna stomped her feet in frustration before rushing to collect all the laundry. She could hear the memory of Samantha’s firm voice in her mind instructing her not to let anything get wet.

‘Stop crying,’ Anna thought, looking to the sky with resentment. ‘The one who really wants to cry is me!’