Chapter Text
“Come on, Trey. It’ll be fun,” Chenya said with his wide grin that seemed to stretch across his entire face. His purple cat ears twitched with excitement as he hopped from one cobblestone to another.
“That’s subjective, coming from you,” I said, following after him.
We were both ready to start our last year in primary school and enjoy the last bits of freedom. My family's patisserie closed early today, so they let me spend the rest of the afternoon hanging out with Chenya, and as usual, I followed his strange zig-zag path as he stretched out his hand like the wings of a plane and made engine noises with his mouth.
We passed the shopping district where mornings were filled with farmers selling fresh produce and afternoons were filled with restaurants and shops selling homemade food and wares.
“And where is this place we're going today?” I asked as we waved at a couple of the familiar adults who were out shopping as well. Quite a few of them were customers of my family's patisserie.
"The Tumble twins told me about this big garden where we can play croquet,” Chenya grinned mischievously as he skipped down the cobblestone road. His white shirt was so big that the sleeves covered his hands.
“Really?” I said, interested and also hesitant.
Gardens tend to belong to someone, and I learned early on that Chenya never really understood what the word ‘trespassing’ meant. I don’t care too much about sneaking onto other people’s properties for some harmless fun, but I prefer if we didn’t get into too much trouble if we got caught.
“Yup!” Chenya pointed down a small and quiet side street. He quickly ran down it before I could react.
“Where is this garden? Chenya?” I called out and found myself alone. Or at least that’s what it would look like for a passerby. “Very funny, Chenya,” I said, glancing around my sides. “Come on, tell me where we’re going.”
“Doesn’t matter!” Chenya said, his head (and just his head) suddenly popping up in front of me. He'd done it so many times, but it still made me jump. “If mew don’t know where mew are going –”
“ – Any path can take you there,” I finished. It was something Chenya’s grandpa always quoted though I never understand what it meant, and I couldn’t figure out how to apply it to our situation here - other than the fact that Chenya was admitting he was lost.
“And this path will take us where we don’t know!” Chenya declared. His entire body reappeared, and he held his hands up high above him so that his floppy sleeves fell down.
I couldn’t help but chuckle as he led me down the street.
The noise from the shopping district faded away, and soon we were in a residential area where houses were two times too big with wrought iron fences with spikes on the top. And the gardens…
The front gardens were beautiful with large colorful flowers and animal topiaries. Already my fingers were twitching as I tried to imagine how to transform that large peacock into an edible design.
However, I paused for a second. The bumpy road turned smooth as it ran between two rows of houses. Bordered between the houses and the paved road were thick dark green bushes that were neatly trimmed and well-cared for. My parents had never taken me down this street before, but I could tell that this wasn’t a place where random kids could just show up and play or even just take a pleasant walk without raising suspicion.
“Chenya… are you sure this is where the garden is?” I asked.
“We’re almost there,” he said, this time in a whisper. Then, to my surprise, he immediately jumped into a bush. His little hand poked out of the bush, and he gestured for me to follow him.
Sighing, I took off my glasses first and pushed my way through the thickets. As soon as I could crouch down in a comfortable position, I put my glasses back on and glanced toward the house that we stopped at. It was a much large and imposing house. The other houses couldn't be compared and looked like tiny cottages. The garden, on the other hand, was less colorful or fancy. The trees and bushes were trimmed into simple ornamental shapes, and the monochromatic flowers were lined up in one orderly fashion. Even though the sun was shining, the entire estate gave off a rather gloomy feel.
I was about to open my mouth to ask why we were hiding in front of this particular house when the large front door suddenly opened. A woman about my mom’s age stepped out in a rather stiff-looking bottle green dress that covered her neck and arms. The hem went down to her ankles, revealing a small pair of unassuming black boots.
“See, that scary woman always leaves at the same time,” Chenya said, pointing to the woman as she closed and locked the door. "And doesn't come back for more than an hour."
Wait a second… I glanced over at the house number and immediately gasped in shock.
“That’s not a scary woman. That’s Mrs. Rosehearts!” I exclaimed before I could stop myself. I clapped my hands over my mouth, but it was already too late.
The stern Mrs. Rosehearts stopped and looked around as I desperately kept myself hidden in the bushes. Chenya had the sense this time to not hum or laugh though he did have this giant smile on his face that looked ready to burst out into a song.
Finally, Mrs. Rosehearts shook her head and quickly walked down the front steps and out to the sidewalk. I could hear my heart pounding against my chest as she stopped briefly next to the bush that we were hiding in. However, she finally turned down the street that we came from and headed toward the shopping district. Soon, there was silence again.
“Silly Trey,” Chenya giggled as he quickly popped out of the bush and scattered leaves everywhere. “We almost got caught!”
“I’m the silly one?” I said as I got up as well and tried to remove the leaves stuck to my shirt. “Chenya, we should head back. This isn't worth it.”
“But I bet their garden is amazing,” he said. Before my mind could figure out what he was planning to do, he quickly disappeared – the 'turning-invisible' kind of disappeared – and I heard his tiny little sandals scuffling near the wrought iron fence.
“Chenya!” I said exasperated. Honestly, sometimes, he acts even worse than my little brothers and sisters, and they were half his age.
I heard the metal vibrate as he nimbly climbed over and dropped down to the other side. The indentations of his sandals in the grass were visible from my side.
“Come on! Every adventure requires a first step,” his voice cheerfully called out from the other side.
I hesitated as I glanced up at the gate again. Despite their celebrity status, the Rosehearts family was not friendly, to say the least, specifically Mrs. Rosehearts. She was the best healer in the kingdom, if not the entire land, and getting an appointment with her was near impossible as she was always booked with foreign clients from different kingdoms. Although she was praised by these particular clients, she always had this proud and rather vain attitude that hasn't made her exactly popular with the locals. She would go around telling others what was right and wrong - whether it was buying organic vegetables from a certified farm from who-knows-where instead of Mr. Joe's local vegetable stand or canceling a festival's firework show because the size of the fireworks didn't produce the right shade of color that was up to standard with the town's obscure rules.
Mr. Joe and everybody else despised her.
She also bragged a lot about herself - talking about her prestige healing degree and graduating at the top of her class, but recently, she had been bragging a lot about her son. I've never met him, but it sounded like he was pretty much a genius like her if her stories could be taken at face value. I heard many complaints about her from the patrons at my family store. She never came to visit the pâtisserie, and sometimes, I wonder if that was why I hear so much gossip about her there compared to everywhere else.
I’ll admit, I did kind of want to see what the Roseheart estate’s gardens look like. Typically, one can tell what a person was like based on what their house was like. The richer and more famous they were, the more they wanted to brag and flaunt their wealth. The garden might help with inspiration for designing the cakes. Unlike Chenya’s fancy acrobats, I went for the good-old fashion squeeze-through-the-gate method.
We stayed near the thick bushes that border the garden until we reached the back. The gardener wasn’t there which was a good thing I supposed. However, there was something wrong with this garden. Like… like…
“Everything looks boring,” Chenya said suddenly, looking rather disappointed. “They should have more colors.”
Chenya was right. That was what was bothering me. Although clearly designed expertly, everything was just too symmetrical. Too sterile. Too uniform.
I supposed it really does represent Mrs. Rosehearts, I thought to myself.
“The twins were lying. How are we supposed to play croquet like this?” Chenya complained.
“Let’s just go back,” I said quickly. “We can play in the park instead.”
However, Chenya didn’t hear me and was busy staring at the house now. “Who’s that?”
He pointed to the window on the first floor. The room inside looked like a study room or a small library. Sitting at the table was a small kid about our age with red hair and in a fancy pinstripe suit.
I didn’t recognize him. However, it wasn’t hard to figure out who he must be. “I think that is Mrs. Rosehearts’ son,” I said quietly.
I thought back to the rumors I heard from the customers at the store. His parents apparently locked him up in the house all the time except for private school and give him private tutoring since the age of three. His mom kept a strict schedule on his daily routine to the point she even decided what clothes he had to wear every day. He was supposed to have been smart enough to skip some grades too.
“What’s he doing in there? He should be out here playing!” Chenya declared with his hands on his hips. I’ve never seen him so indignant other than one time when I tell him that we ran out of his favorite cat-shaped cupcakes.
“He looks like he’s studying,” I said as the guy turned another page in a rather thick book with complicated lettering stamped on the cover and spine. Maybe it was just me, but he looked kind of sad. Suddenly, a thought occurred to me.
He must be all alone in that big house.
“He's studying?!” Chenya looked horrified now. “But it’s summer! Hey, let’s see if he wants to play with us!” he said. Before I could stop him, Chenya turned invisible again and ran across the garden before his head popped out and floated over to the window. He tapped the glass with his invisible fingers and waited until Rosehearts boy opened it… Only for the guy to scream in terror.
“Hey, hey! Come play with us!” the disembodied Chenya purred.
Groaning, I hurried over to apologize.
“W-who are you?” the guy sputtered as he got back up. He was so small that he had to stand on his tip-toes to see our faces. His gray eyes peeked out from the window sill underneath neatly combed red hair. His hands and pinstripe suit looked like they had never encountered dirt in their life.
“Me? I’m Chenya!" he said. "This here is Trey.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said quickly before turning Chenya, “Chenya, you’re showing only your head again.”
“Oh, so that’s why he screamed.” The rest of his body slowly appeared, and Chenya continued to hop around, amused at the shock he had caused.
The Rosehearts kid blinked several times and looked at us in bafflement. I couldn’t blame him. Two random peasant kids just appearing before him? That was enough to warrant an explanation. I quickly opened my mouth to apologize for our rudeness and intrusion when Chenya suddenly yelled,
“Come play with us! Let’s play croquet!”
“Cr-Croquet?” The Rosehearts kid's gray eyes widened with surprise, but he hesitated and bit his bottom lips, “I must decline. I have self-study right now.”
“Boo, that’s boring,” Chenya complained. “Self-study means that you can study whatever you want, right? Besides, my grandpaw always said playing is a type of self-study mew.”
I could tell that the Rosehearts kid was still hesitating. He had a longing look on his face, and I suddenly realized that this might be the first time anybody asked him out to play. He was alone. He was all alone in this giant house with no one to talk to but his mother. Suddenly, it didn’t matter that he was a Rosehearts. He was just someone who needed a friend.
“Will you come and join?” I asked, kindly. “I’m sure you could use the break.”
The Rosehearts kid bit his bottom lips again, clearly contemplating. However, the temptation was too strong, and he nodded quietly. “Just for a little bit, okay?”
Chenya had a victorious grin on his face and hopped around joyfully.
“May I ask for your name?” I asked the Rosehearts kid politely. I held out my hand which he accepted gratefully.
“I’m Riddle,” he said as he swung his leg over the window sill, “Riddle Rosehearts.”