Chapter 31 – Accidental Discovery

Several days had gone by since that bizarre episode with Elizabeth. She awoke just as dawn was creeping into the sky. From a distance, the birds’ chirps echoed from their nests. It was time to water the crops and start about the day.

Levisia stretched her limbs and draped a cloth over her body. She walked out of the room and a blast of cold air attacked her. Ignoring the chill, she picked up the watering can. Soon, she arrived at the field, only to be greeted with dismay. 

“Oh dear.” She murmured softly, careful not to disrupt the still atmosphere. The ground was already wet, but there was another problem: the rainstorm that had raged yesterday had damaged some of the support rods. She attempted to fix the broken rods but finished with not a hint of success. Instead, her only accomplishment was staining her shoes with mud.

“I should ask Pel if there are any extra support rods,” she wondered aloud. Even though it was still early in the day, Pel would already be awake. She shook the dirt from her shoes as she reached the threshold of her tiny palace and made her way to Pel’s room.

“Pel,” she called out to him as I knocked on the door, but there was no answer.

There was no way he was sleeping. He should be awake by now. She tapped the door with her fist once more and stated firmly, “I’m coming in.” The door opened wide and her eyes swept an empty room. The blanket was neatly folded on the bed; it was the only sign of life.

He must already be awake. Where could he have gone? As she glanced around Pel’s room, she flinched when she noticed something on the table. With slow steps, she approached the table and squinted at the foreign object. This bushy, stringy, golden thing of awkward length was…

“Hair?”

It was a bunch of hair. More accurately, a wig. Or what she thought was Pel’s hair all this time.

“Why a wig…” Startled, she thinned her lips into a line and set the wig down. She felt as though she stumbled upon Pel’s secret that he wanted to keep hidden. She hurriedly turned around to leave the room, but her head collided into someone’s chest right away.

“Ow.”

A long shadow cast over her as she withdrew a few steps, clutching her sore forehead. When she looked up, she saw a pair of golden eyes, wide open, and damp hair, its color reminiscent of wine.

“What are you…” he trailed off slowly. The strange yet familiar voice was most definitely Pel’s.

“Pel?”

This man before me looked so different from how he normally looked when he stood with his back hunched. All that was changed was merely his hair color and his posture and yet he seemed an entirely different person. How could it be this different? What wide shoulders and upright fit body!

Pel had a towel draped around his neck as if he had just taken a bath. Seeing his full head of hair on top, Levisia realized the purpose of the wig. It was to hide his actual hair color and not because he was balding. She thought she had actually discovered a painful secret.

She paused and scrutinized his face before it hit her. Hair with the color of wine and golden eyes… She quickly shut her mouth before it dropped in surprise. Before Pel could say anything, she whispered in haste, “Everybody has a secret, right?”

He stared at her in absolute silence as she spoke. “That’s what I’ll consider what I saw.” Pel was one of those people with too many secrets. She had overlooked them for this long and she would continue to do so. Levisia tried to walk away from his domineering shadow but he blocked her path and surveyed her with calm eyes.  

“What did you see in there?”

She stared into his golden orbs as her words flirted with silence. All she saw was Pel’s bushy wig.

“Wig… I only saw the wig.”

He only stared down at her. 

“So, I thought you were bald… but now I see that you’re not.” She pointed at his hair, trying so hard to stop her hand from quivering. “Hair. It is indeed precious. Take good care of it.”

A bewildered silence captured the room as she continued rambling, spewing out utter nonsense in a panic. “You do miss it when it’s not there anymore.” She looked down to avoid Pel’s gaze. “I won’t ask why you wear a wig,” she reassured, and her words caressed like a gentle breeze. “I also have a secret I didn’t tell you.”

“A secret?” A puzzled expression danced across his face.

“Let’s leave them in the dark. You know what I mean, right?”

The day she made her plan to leave the royal grounds after coming back from the brink of death known, Pel persistently asked for the reason. It was only overlooked after she roughly made up an answer.