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LEON and Hana took good care of the little seedlings Walt had sent over. The two of them often got into arguments. Even so, they would forget whatever it was they had been arguing about by the next morning and go back to tending the garden as usual. The days flowed into one another.
The garden that had been a dry patch of brown was now bursting with green. Two cotton roses stretched across the flower bed, three times the size they had been when they had been planted.
“They’re still small, but I think those are buds, don’t you?”
“Yes, definitely. Glad we didn’t fudge it up again.”
“It’s because of all your hard work, Leon. If you become our gardener, you won’t just be knowledgeable about Hylantian plants, but plants from the East, too!”
Hana had written down all she had learned about growing Eastern plants. If they could begin to grow what previously they could only import, it would greatly reduce the cost. Then, it would be easier to spread Eastern medicine to the common people. And if they increased the size of the garden, then Leon could tend that as well. That was Hana’s dream.
“At first, I hated having to babysit you, but I’m a much better writer now, so th-th-th…nks, yeah?” He tried in vain to express his gratitude. His face turned bright red, but he could only manage to mouth a “thank you” without looking Hana in the eye.
Seeing that was enough to keep Hana’s sunny smile on her face the rest of the day.
“I’m glad I came to the city,” he muttered. His regional accent was becoming less noticeable.
The first day they met, Hana had her own thoughts on why Leon might have come to the city or where he came from, but she had not yet dared to ask.
“Did you come because you wanted to be a gardener?”
Anytime she had asked, he would push her away and tell her not to pry. Hana could tell he hated talking about it, so she had made a point not to bring it up.
Hana had already told him all about her family, her tutor, and what life was like back in Hinomoto. But he said nothing about himself. Finally, Hana’s curiosity won out and she had to ask him. It wasn’t mere curiosity or even gentle teasing; she genuinely wanted to get to know him.
“I came here ’cuz a man’s gotta eat,” Leon muttered so nonchalantly he might as well have been talking about a character in a book.
“Gotta eat? What?”
Hana’s understanding of the Hylantian language was far better than that of her Hinomotoese, but she didn’t understand this expression. She’d never heard it before.
“Guess a rich girl from a well-to-do family like yours wouldn’t understand…”
Hana nodded. He was clearly being serious.
“It means I was extremely poor and cast aside by my parents.”
“What…?”
“In the worst-case scenario, some children are sold into slavery to pay off their parents’ debts, so I’m one of the lucky ones. My master is a good man and he pays me a living wage.”
Hana had assumed he had taken on a job at twelve because he was an ambitious boy. And with his strict, but benevolent master, she took it as a given that he wasn’t in a bad place in life.
But that wasn’t the case. He hadn’t chosen this.
“I didn’t know…uhm…I!”
Hana was mortified over her past behavior. She could never have imagined this was why he didn’t want to talk about his family or his past. But it was too late for regrets.
Her eyes overflowed with tears.
“I knew you would cry! That’s why I didn’t want to tell you! I mean, please, stop crying, m’lady!”
“You can’t ever see your parents? I just…”
“It’s not that I can’t, I just don’t want to! So stop crying! Be glad it’s not your family!” His anger at his parents came through in his voice.
He wasn’t angry at Hana, but to her, it felt like he was.
“I’m so sorry for being so insensitive and ignorant! I’m sorry, Leon!”
She had told him so much about her family. She’d had so few chances to leave her manor, as most daughters of well-to-do families did. But her world was so sheltered, it was suffocating. So she dumped everything on Leon: from her dream to follow in her mother’s footsteps to the expensive things Walt and her father bought her to how strict her tutor was. All of it. With no concept of how much it hurt him.
“It didn’t bother me. But I don’t want someone treating me like some little charity case,” he said, wiping away her tears as he spoke. His hands, rugged for someone so young, smelled slightly of soil.
“I really am selfish! I’m not even crying because I feel sorry for you. …I’m crying because I’m embarrassed about how ignorant I was. I don’t want you to hate me…” Hana sniffled.
She wasn’t weeping for Leon’s misfortune. She was crying because she couldn’t imagine being so poor, he had to travel to find enough work to eat. And then when she imagined what he must have thought of her, listening to all her meaningless problems while he was struggling just to survive, the tears wouldn’t stop. Even her reason for crying was childish.
“You don’t want me to hate you, eh?”
He stopped wiping her tears.
“Leon?”
Their eyes met and she realized he was smiling. It was a smile, pure and simple, bereft of his usual teasing and mischief. And it was clear that he didn’t hate her. But she suddenly started to feel nervous. Her cheek was hot under his touch and that heat spread all the way up to her ears.