A Practical Guide to Ending a One-Sided Love - Chapter 56

After the mass ended, while her parents were discussing complicated matters about donations with a high priest, Leila secretly slipped out of the main hall and saw that pretty boy again. It was the most secluded place in the vast temple garden.

The impulse to greet him in delight lasted only a moment, and Leila quickly hid behind a tree.

‘He’s crying…’

The boy was sobbing loudly. As if the world had collapsed, he wept in deep sorrow.

Unfortunately, Leila’s guess seemed correct. His mother had left him here.

The boy cried so pitifully it almost felt wrong that Leila was secretly watching him. He shed so many tears she worried he might melt away like a sugar doll.

If she could, she wanted to approach and comfort him, but she somehow felt the child would not like that.

Thinking of cousins and boys her age she occasionally met, boys hated being seen crying more than death.

Besides… from Leila’s experience, children her age usually did not like her. More precisely, they tended to strongly dislike her.

That boy would probably be the same. People’s eyes were all alike. To him, her glasses and sack-like clothes would surely look strange. For the first time, Leila felt embarrassed about her differing appearance.

He was a stranger whose name she did not even know, yet she did not want to worsen his feelings further. But pretending not to see a face soaked with tears and snot also felt wrong.

As she wondered what to do, a gentle breeze brushed her ear. With it, a good idea suddenly came.

‘Alright, maybe…’

The wind brushing her face was not strong, but it seemed enough to carry a very thin lace handkerchief away.

The handkerchief her mother always made her carry as a lady’s basic etiquette had only been annoying, but today she felt grateful for its existence.

The child crying so hard would likely not notice her presence, yet she carefully tossed the handkerchief without being seen.

At the end of her anxious gaze, when she saw the handkerchief softly land on the back of the boy’s hand as if heaven had helped, Leila almost cheered aloud.

The boy checked what had fallen onto his hand and soon looked around. Leila reflexively hid herself, clutched her pounding chest, and ran toward the main hall.

She could not confirm whether he used the handkerchief. Still, she felt proud she had comforted him in her own way.

It was Leila’s first memory of Bjorn, and the first moment she felt meaning in life.

* * *

Unfortunately, several years passed before Leila saw him again.

Boys taken in by the temple usually lived as apprentice priests, so ordinary devotees had no chance to meet them unless they deliberately sought an audience.

While living only with memories of the boy, she eventually turned thirteen, and finally the fortune of meeting him by chance came. Walking in formation at the very back row of apprentice knights, he was clearly that very boy.

‘Did he become a paladin?’

He had grown much taller and shed much of his childishness, but the boy still had a beautiful face.

Judging from the training uniform, he must have manifested divine power and begun life as a squire. The fact made Leila want to clap in excitement. A paladin was the most honorable and noble position for a citizen of the Principality.

In her mind she had already held a grand celebration, yet the boy and Leila still had no connection. She could only swallow her regret and send congratulations and encouragement in her heart.

A few days later, after mass as always, while walking in the garden waiting for her father, Leila discovered the boy as if by fate.

‘He’s… crying again.’

For some reason the boy hid behind a tree and cried much like he had five years ago. He was not sobbing loudly this time, but he wiped his tears roughly as if deeply frustrated. Of course, Leila quickly hid herself again as before.