KEISHIRO

I was gently awaken by a bright flicker of sunlight, piercing my eyes through the small gap where my bedroom curtains meet. I rolled away to avoid the light and resumed my sleep again, but the presence of the sun made me curious about the time. So then, I opened my eyes again and glanced towards the clock on my bedside table.

Oh, okay. It’s only six forty-five a.m. - I could still go back to sleep, because it’s Saturday; I have no reason to get up so early on weekends anymore since I’ve left Japan.

I pulled up my blanket and embraced my pillow, letting myself to melt between the warm and comfy bed. When you’re always rushed and constrained within hectic schedules in your daily life, moments where the time seemed to tick very slowly made your life felt like a bliss.

...Happiness is simple after all, huh?

And when I thought I could just enjoy this moment for a bit longer, my body’s telling me otherwise. I couldn’t even shut my eyes for more than a few seconds anymore.

Argh! Dammit!

Disgruntled, I kicked away my blanket and sat up on the bed. Stretching out my stiffed muscles as I yawned, I tried to remember what time I went to bed last night. It was…just after I got home and took a shower; around eight p.m, I guess - way too early for a weekend night, but I guess it was because I didn’t go straight home right after school was over - the guys from the Dungeon asked me to hang out at an empty field near the parking lot join a game of dodgeball. After a few rounds, we all went to Marc’s place for snacks and sodas. Things were okay until someone decided to play table tennis. It started off as a casual game, but somehow ended up as a game full of intensity that put our dignities at stake, more than enough ball jokes for a whole year, and hating green ping-pong balls forever thanks to this one terrible joke told by this Singaporean guy who happened to be a friend of Marc’s older brother.

Yeah, no wonder I went to sleep so early.

I spent a few minutes lying on the bed again, wondering what I should do since my energy bar was obviously full. I looked around the room, which mostly still covered in piles of cardboard boxes. But hey, it’s getting less like a storage room than when I first arrived.

The tiny sparks of sunlight between the curtains somehow beckoned me to look outside, so I reached my arms towards the bedside table and pressed one of the buttons on the built-in panel. The curtains slowly glided open, letting the warm morning sunlight of Anglova filled my bedroom. The sky was so bright and fair, beckoning me to get out of bed even more. So then, I placed my feet on the floor and padded towards the balcony. I slid the glass door open, and exposed myself to the morning air. It sure jolted me a bit, because I slept without a top on and I was quite unprepared for the autumn chill. I rested my arms on the railings as I glanced over the amazing view of the lush green hills of Valenfields, with lines of pine trees stretching down from the distance. The peaceful scenery, along with the faint sounds of nature in the morning, slowly drifted me away into my own thoughts...

I can’t believe that it’s almost been a week since I’ve returned to Anglova, and I survived much better than I thought. Though there were some things that ticks me off - like in school, for example; there are still some teachers who treated me differently because I’m a Bellrose, but the most annoying part would be guys who just dissed me for no reason, and girls who were beyond creepy – most of the time, they’d stare at me intensely from a distance, but quickly ran away when they caught me noticing them. And then, when they think I’m gone, they’ll start screeching like red foxes during mating season. And there was also this incident during Thursday’s lunchtime; I was on my way to The Dungeon with the others when all of a sudden a girl dashed towards me, screeching out my name on top of her lungs. When she was just mere inches away from me, I swiftly stepped away and she ended up crashing on a garbage can. I felt kinda bad for her, but I thought it wasn’t a good idea to offer her a helping hand. Rob and the others couldn’t stop laughing until the end of lunch.

Geez, what the heck is wrong with saying hello nicely if they just wanna get to know me? I don’t bite like Bree, you know...

Well, school’s just one thing - another thing that made me really uneasy is this house. Here in Bellrose Estate, everything is served; when I leave for school in the morning, a servant would carry my backpack to the car, and later when I reached home, another servant would carry it back to my room; whenever I wanted to leave the house, a chauffeured car would always be available to take me anywhere I want; when I wanted to eat, I just need to call someone in the kitchen through my intercom; when I wanted to dip in the Jacuzzi, someone would run the bath and prepare all the stuffs I needed - a glass of screwdriver, or a lemonade if I’m not in the mood for booze, along with my towel, and my gameboy - fully charged. 

Sure, it may seem so practical and pleasant to have everything served and provided for you, but this kind of treatment is just too much for me. During the eight years I stayed in Japan, Uncle Masato and Auntie Kaede always taught me to be independent. They don’t care about my nobility status, and as a member of Ishidate household I am expected to be helpful around the house - be it helping my auntie with the dishes, helping my uncle tend his cars, taking out the trash, walking the dog, or picking up my youngest niece from the daycare.

But in this estate, the servants won’t let me do anything - not even the smallest things. For example, a few days ago I accidentally spilled a can of soda in the dining room. I quickly grabbed a napkin from the table and cleaned off the mess - I thought that it wasn’t such a big deal until two maids walked in and saw me, and their faces turned white as sheets. They hastily approached me, snatched the napkin off my hands and told me to get up and let them do the rest as they apologized over and over. I tried to tell them that it wasn’t something to fuss over, but somehow the argument turned so intense that they begged on their knees hysterically, asking me to stop cleaning the floor and let them do their job. Reluctantly, I handed the napkin to them and left the dining room with my stomach turning like a washing machine. Later on, I told this to Vierro and he said that they were just trying their best to do their work - a few days after Her Majesty mandated me to return to Anglova, my father made a brief return to this estate before he departed to his business trip to Milan just to personally speak to all the servants about my return - he specifically told them to attend all my personal needs with care, and they should make me feel welcomed in this estate. I wasn’t aware of this, because I had left Dusseldorf by then to wrap up everything in Japan.

As loyal servants, I guess over-pampering is their way of welcoming. Honestly? I felt more like being ridiculed rather than being welcomed. I told this to Vierro, and he told me to cut some slack on them. “I’ll try,” I told him. It’s not like I could do anything about it anyway - many of the servants have been working in this estate for a very long time, way before I was born. They still thought of me as that mischievous little boy like Prince Abdullah from Tintin, despite the fact that I have grown so much taller and I don’t play those practical jokes anymore. I just hoped that nobody in school found out that the servants still mentioned me ‘Little Master’ - geez, I’m way too old already to be called like that! And-

My mind was diverted when I suddenly felt something rough brushing through one of my cheeks. I thought it was an insect, but then I noticed a dried maple leaf landed near my feet. I kneeled down and picked it up. As I glanced upon the autumn-colored leaf, the gentle wind softly fluttered over me, carrying a faint, yet familiar scent of morning dew and dried leaves.

The scent of the Enchanted Woods.

A few minutes later, I finished putting on my jogging gear and tiptoed my way out of the house not wanting to freak out the servants if they found out that I woke up earlier than them. Once I was outdoors, I walked through the outdoor pool and the back garden, and went straight towards the hills where the Enchanted Woods was.

I never knew if the place really had a name, since it was actually a nature trail built around the back forested area of my estate for jogging and cycling. Elle had always mentioned it as the Enchanted Woods and everyone just went along with it somehow. Bree, Elle, and I used to spend a lot of time in there as a knight saving a princess from an evil witch, adventurers looking for lost treasures, or a little girl trying to deliver lunch to her granny and got attacked by the big bad wolf. Of course, Bree would always play as the evil witch, evil dragon, or the big bad wolf – probably because it’s the only chance she gets to bully her little sister as much as she wanted without getting scolded by our parents afterwards.

When I finally reached the entrance, I stopped for a few seconds to take a deep breath before dashing in as fast as I could.

Even after so many years, the Enchanted Woods looked exactly what it looked like back in my childhood days; the rejuvenating scent of morning dew and pinewood brushed my face as I ran through the trail between the neatly planted trees that formed a seemingly endless line. The sky above me coated with the colors of gold and red from the leaves of overgrowing tree branches, gleaming beautifully from the sunlight seeking its way through the small shifts between the branches and the leaves. And every time my feet hits the ground, the dried leaves resonated in crisp, crackling sounds.

I didn’t stop until I reached a drinking fountain and a wooden bench underneath a large pine tree. This is the checkpoint that indicates I’m halfway through the nature trail. I glanced at my wristwatch, and it’s only been twenty minutes since I left my bedroom. Whoa! Usually, it took more than half an hour for me to reach the checkpoint from the entrance - I guess I had overgrown this nature trail, or all those hellish training with the Marinos really paid off.

Feeling a little parched, I decided to take a drink. Despite the sharp, freezing taste prodding my tongue, I still gobbled the water like no tomorrow. After I’m done, I wiped my mouth with my sleeves and dropped myself on the bench.

As I leaned back to catch some breath, I craned my neck all the way back and saw some cranberry bushes located a few meters away from the bench. I reversely observed the bright colored berries that dangled among the leaves until all of a sudden, a long-forgotten memory popped in my mind. Immediately, I brought myself up and walked towards the bushes. I plucked a few cranberries and munched them before I continued to walk amongst the bushes.

Although it might not have a house made of candy or an old castle inhabited by a dragon, this Enchanted Woods did kept a few secrets - one of them was something that Elle and I promised to keep as a secret between us. Vierro knew it too, actually. He accidentally found out one day, but he never told anyone; not our parents, not even Bree.

We found the place by accident one summer when we were in third grade - I was back in the country for the summer, and Elle was sent away to my house because Bree had caught chicken pox during her parents’ busiest schedule of the year. The two of us went playing in the Enchanted Woods on our own most of the time. Our parents never minded us doing so “As long as you both didn’t stray off the trails” they said, but our childhood curiosity had won over the rule most of the time - we were lucky that we never got lost long enough to make the servants worry, even though the woods beyond the nature trail spread over a few acres. I also made sure that we avoided the electric fences – as long as we don’t di anything to trip the system, we’ll never have to deal with the guards or my father.

On that day, we brought a pink-colored ball that my mother just bought for Elle to play. She threw it too far, and it got stuck beyond the cranberry bushes, which was an uncharted area for us back then. Not thinking how it could possibly be a dangerous area beyond the bushes, we still plunged ourselves in, and what we found was magnificent beyond words; an open grassy field by the edge of the cliff, where you could see a spectacular landscape that you could never see anywhere else; the horizon line between the clear blue sky and the hills of Valenfields. Like the rest of the Enchanted Woods, it still remained as I remembered how it was - this is the very view that always reminded me to never betray the land where I came from, no matter how much I resented my parents, the orders of Her Majesty The Queen, and the whole aristocracy nitty-gritties.

And Iwill never let it go. Ever.

I moved towards the center of the field and dropped myself down, letting the morning breeze rushing all over me as I stayed flat on the grass, leaving this tingly sensation of nature cleansing my soul. When was the last time I visited this place with Elle? I couldn’t remember, but this place used to be our escape whenever we needed one - be it from my dad’s stupid lectures, Elle’s music practices, language lectures, manner courses, Bree’s teasing...anything. We would hold hands together and dashed to this place, and played as much as we wanted until we forgot everything that made us came here in the first place.

And during springtime, when it’s warm and sunny, we’d lie down together on the grass like this, close our eyes, and nap together under the open sky...

I should go back here with Elle sometime...