Chapter 219: A Firefly in the Middle of Winter [2]
Chapter 219: A Firefly in the Middle of Winter [2]
"Cassian...?"
This single word tumbling from Iris’s lips was trembling and fragile. The tears pooling in her eyes now streamed freely down her cheeks to her chin, mingling with the cold snowflakes hitting her skin.
She was looking at Cassian, who had dropped to one knee in front of her, extending his hand toward her.
She didn’t blink for even a second.
She was afraid.
She was so terrified that if she reached out and tried to touch his fingers, this moment would scatter like a cloud of mist, that Cassian would vanish again... Her body was completely frozen.
Cassian looked at his hand suspended in the air, and then at Iris, who was trembling in tears before him.
His mind tried to analyze the situation with its own logic.
’Why isn’t she taking it?’ Cassian thought. A slight confusion appeared in his red eyes. ’Is she going into shock because I suddenly appeared in front of her?’
Tilting his head slightly to the side, he examined the girl a bit more carefully. When he saw the timidity in Iris’s eyes and her trembling shoulders, another possibility came to his mind.
’Could it be...’ he thought to himself.
’Did she get scared thinking I’m actually a ghost, a phantom from the past?’
’I guess... I shouldn’t have appeared in front of her so suddenly in the evening, at this hour when darkness falls...’
To avoid making the situation any harder, to pull the girl out of this state of shock and give her space, he decided to slowly pull back his suspended hand. The moment he curled his fingers and moved his arm back...
The moment Iris saw Cassian pulling his hand back, the fear of that illusion slipping through her fingers made her throw all the doubts in her mind aside. With an instinctive, desperate leap, she lunged forward.
Her body tackled Cassian directly.
*THUD!*
Her slender arms wrapped around Cassian’s neck. She buried her face tightly in his chest.
Cassian collapsed flat on his back onto the thick blanket of snow with a loud crash.
Snow flew into the air, raining down on both of them like a cloud of white dust.
Even when his back met the cold snow, Cassian didn’t break the dull expression on his face.
He was just... surprised. He looked at this trembling girl piled on top of him, squeezing his neck like a vise, collapsed against his chest. Iris didn’t say anything; she just stayed there, on top of him, her shoulders shaking as she tried to suppress her sobs.
For a moment, Cassian’s hands hung in the air, not knowing where to put them.
He slowly lowered his hand and slipped it through her flame-red hair, which cascaded over her shoulders and was damp with snowflakes.
His fingers began to gently stroke her soft hair in slow rhythms.
"I..." Iris whispered, her voice mingling with a muffled sob against Cassian’s chest. "I missed you so much..."
Cassian fixed his eyes on the snow falling from the sky.
"Me too," Cassian said, his voice carrying in the wind.
For a few minutes, they just lay there in the snow. Iris listened to the steady, calm heartbeat in Cassian’s chest; Cassian simply stroked the girl’s hair.
Finally, Iris slowly lifted her head. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes swollen from crying, but there was a shy smile on her face. She hurriedly tried to wipe away her tears with her hand.
Looking at the girl in this state, Cassian felt a strange, unsettling emptiness inside him.
His mind searched for words but couldn’t find them. He didn’t know what to talk about. What was someone supposed to say in this situation?
What do you say when you see someone you haven’t seen in years? Always lacking when it came to social norms and emotional responses, Cassian felt weird, almost like a broken machine.
The situation wasn’t much different for Iris. With all her heart, with all her soul, she was happy to see Cassian in the flesh, to feel his cold but reassuring hands.
However, words were practically caught in her throat. Thousands of questions fluttered in her mind, but she couldn’t voice any of them.
Amidst the silence of the snow, both of them remained quiet for a long time, looking into each other’s eyes.
However, this silence was shattered by a sudden epiphany flashing in Iris’s mind. When her gaze drifted downward... she realized she was sitting right on top of Cassian.
Iris’s cheeks instantly turned as red as a tomato. In a great panic, as if she had touched fire, she leaped up and stumbled backward in the snow.
After watching the girl’s sudden panic, Cassian stood up from the snow with a calm, fluid motion, as if nothing had happened. He didn’t even bother to brush the snow off himself.
A weird, sweet, yet tense silence settled between them once again.
As Iris clasped her hands behind her back and kicked at the snow around her feet, she slowly raised her gaze and examined Cassian’s face.
"You’ve changed," Iris said, a hint of a smile and surprise in her voice. "You’ve gotten so tall... And your face... You used to have rounder features, but now they’re much sharper. Now... you look much more like a man."
Cassian just looked at her, offering no reaction.
Iris giggled with the confidence of old memories. "Do you remember? The first day we met in the forest..."
"Actually, when I first saw you, I thought you were a girl. Your face was so cute, so pretty, that it didn’t even cross my mind you could be a boy."
There was nothing in Cassian’s mind regarding this memory. The forest, their first meeting... It was all just a void. But to avoid ruining the moment, to keep up appearances with the character of Iris from that notebook, he tried to play along.
"You are still the same," Cassian said in a flat tone.
Iris tilted her head slightly to the side, her eyes sparkling. "The same?"
"Yes."
"How am I the same?" Iris asked, leaning forward slightly. She wanted to hear that classic *"You’re still as pretty and sweet as before"* answer that girls expected; she wanted to be pampered just a little.
Cassian wanted to say "Sweet and pretty." However, those words simply wouldn’t come out of his throat.
"Uhhhhhhh..."
The only thing that came out of Cassian’s mouth was a meaningless, drawn-out sound resembling a short-circuiting device.
He had failed.
Following this disastrous failure, in a sudden decision to salvage the situation and change the subject completely, Cassian reached out his right hand and tightly grasped Iris’s hand, which was slightly reddened from the cold.
"Cassian?" Iris flinched at this sudden touch and looked at him in surprise.
"It’s cold out," Cassian said, looking into her eyes. "Let’s go to my room."
Iris’s already red cheeks practically caught fire after that sentence. Her eyes widened in shock. "Y-your room?" she stammered. Her gaze darted around. "B-but..."
Cassian frowned. "Do you not want to?"
"It’s not that!" Iris replied quickly, waving her hands. "It’s just... It’s very late. And for me, a girl, to go to the boys’ dormitory at this hour is a bit... Well... If people see us, they might get the wrong idea. We could face disciplinary action."
"Don’t worry," Cassian said. Completely ignoring her objections, he gripped her hand even tighter and started walking toward the dormitories, pulling her along behind him.
Faced with Cassian’s confident demeanor, Iris stopped protesting. As she stepped through the snow behind him, her gaze drifted to their tightly interlocked hands.
In her mind, innocent memories of the past came to life. They used to run around holding hands like this when they were kids too.
But now... They had both grown up. Cassian’s hand completely enveloped hers, and this feeling was much different, much more intense, and dizzying compared to before.
As Iris looked at their hands, she involuntarily pursed her lips and then giggled in a sweet, cheerful way.
Without slowing his steps, Cassian turned his head slightly over his shoulder. "What are you laughing at?" he asked.
Iris, with her red cheeks, smiled warmly and brightly as she replied: "I just... remembered how much I missed you."
Cassian couldn’t understand in the slightest how looking at their hands and laughing connected to that, or what was funny or cheerful about it.
He gave up trying to figure it out, turned his head forward, and continued walking.
They entered through the large wooden doors of the boys’ dormitory.
The common area was quite crowded. There were many male students around, chatting, playing chess, or warming themselves by the fireplace. Iris held her breath the moment they stepped inside and tried to hide her head behind Cassian’s arm so as not to be seen.
However, even though they walked the entire length of the corridor, and even when three students walked right past them, no one turned to look. They just continued on their way as if they weren’t there, as if they would walk right through them.
Iris whispered in astonishment: "Cassian... Why can’t they see us?"
"I just concealed our presence," Cassian said in an indifferent tone.
They reached a room at the end of a long corridor on the second floor. Cassian opened the door, ushered Iris inside, and locked it behind them.
Iris stepped in curiously and began to examine the room.
Cassian’s room was, in the truest sense of the word... empty.
Apart from a large window, a single bed in the corner, a wooden desk, and a small wardrobe, there was nothing in the room.
Not a single poster, book, or personal item. It was cold and bare, as if no one actually lived there, like a temporary shelter used only for sleeping.
Despite this lonely-looking scene, Iris smiled. She walked toward the middle of the room, then suddenly, with great joy, she hopped onto the soft bed in the corner.
She sat cross-legged on the bed, grabbed the thick pillow from the headboard, and hugged it tightly against her chest.
As Cassian slowly took off his jacket and hung it over the back of the chair, he approached the bed where Iris was sitting. Just as he was bending down to sit right next to her...
Iris suddenly plopped the white pillow from her arms right between them, like a wall separating her from Cassian.
"Hey, hey!" Iris said, narrowing her eyes and playfully waving her index finger at him. "This is my bed now. You have to ask my permission before you sit down!"
Cassian looked at the pillow and then at Iris’s face, which was grinning as if she had won a victory.
Then, two porcelain mugs appeared out of thin air, floating in the middle of the room.
Iris stared at these flying objects with wide eyes. The mugs slowly glided toward them, and one stopped right at Iris’s eye level.
A wonderful, sweet, and rich scent of chocolate wafted up from the mug, with thin steam rising from it. Hot chocolate.
Cassian calmly grabbed the mug floating in front of him out of the air and held it.
Unable to resist the tempting scent, Iris eagerly reached out her hands and made a move to grab the hot chocolate in front of her.
But the moment her fingers were about to touch the mug... the mug suddenly pulled back, as if it had a mind of its own.
"Huh?"
Iris blinked in confusion. Reaching her hand out a bit further, she tried to catch it again.
This time, the mug drew a nimble arc to the right, dodging her hand once more.
"Ehhh... Why aren’t you coming?" Iris whined, pouting. She couldn’t make sense of this annoying game the mug was playing.
Cassian took a slow, calm sip of the hot chocolate in his hand. Then, he fixed his eyes on Iris.
"In exchange for half of the bed..." Cassian said, his voice flat but harboring a hidden victory. "I will let you have that mug."
Iris narrowed her eyes at this blackmail. Puffing out one cheek, she looked at him with a cute but angry expression.
"Cassian!" Iris said in a complaining tone. "You really are a bad boy! Blackmail, huh?"
She exhaled, deflating her puffed cheek, and slowly pulled the pillow barrier between them aside, offering him the other half of the bed. "Fine, whatever. Come sit."
Cassian moved to the emptied part of the bed and sat right next to Iris. The moment he sat down, the hot chocolate mug that had been dodging her in the air gently glided down into Iris’s lap, right between her hands.
Iris smiled when she grasped the warm mug. Holding it with both hands, she took a small, sweet sip from the edge.
When the warmth and taste of the chocolate spread across her face, she closed her eyes in delight, and an extremely innocent, sweet expression appeared on her lips.
Cassian just sat there with his mug in hand, looking at this girl next to him.
As he watched her take small sips, watched the pure joy on her face, something stirred in the dark, silent abyss inside him.
Unconsciously, completely against his own will, something happened. On his dull face... the corners of his lips curled upwards slightly, very subtly.
He was smiling without even realizing it.
When Iris opened her eyes, she saw Cassian looking directly at her, locked onto her with a smile on his lips.
Her heart skipped a beat. Her cheeks flushed bright red, heating up even more than the hot chocolate. Averting her eyes quickly, she buried her face in her mug.
When Cassian noticed the girl’s shy demeanor, he instantly realized the change in his own facial expression. He quickly straightened his lips, reverting back to his old soulless and stern self. Pulling his gaze away from the girl, he stared at the opposite wall.
Inside the room, that sweet, warm, and strange silence—this time far from tense, where hearts beat fast and words were rendered unnecessary—settled once again.