My boss's obsession

4

Rose liked Koray instantly. After I finished reading the fairytale, I changed into a nice yellow dress and made my way to the library. I didn’t like the silent hallways at all, and I was glad that Rose was there with me. When I came to the big Canzudrop doors, I did what I always did and ran my fingers over them before entering.

Koray was sitting in the biggest chair, his glasses on the end of his nose and a giant book in his hands. He didn’t notice me at first. I started to walk towards him, and I sat down at his feet before he looked up and smiled at me. I automatically smiled back; partly because I was happy and partly because I just couldn’t help it.

“I see that you saw your present,” he said as Rose climbed up into his lap and purred softly. Koray hesitated for a second, and then began to stroke him. “You’re right, he’s very soft,” he told me. Then he looked deeply into my eyes, and I was frozen stiff. “Happy birthday, Canzu.”

“Thank you,” I whispered.

Rose was a new part of our friendship from then on. We fell into a habitual pattern; Koray would always come and wake me up with some hot breakfast, then he would wait patiently outside as I got dressed. Rose would climb up onto Koray’s shoulders, and we would all just walk. Koray liked to show me new rooms of the castle, and he always laughed at how astonished I would be. It seemed like the castle got more and more grand each day.

On warm days, we would go and sit out in the garden. Rose liked chasing the birds. I liked staring at the angel fountain, and Koray always liked to give me a flower; never forgetting to check it for thorns first. When days got cooler, we would often stay in the library and read all day. My favorite part of those days was when Koray would read something that really excited him, and then he would hurriedly share it with me, and his voice would be an octave higher than usual and so fast that sometimes I could barely understand him.

His eyes twinkled when he was really happy.

We never fought. I mean, we had an occasional disagreement, but Koray tried very hard to control his temper. He would usually just walk away for a few minutes, and then come back and apologize to me. I hated to see him angry, and so I would always just tell him that it was fine, and we would drop the issue.

One day, however, Koray made me so upset that I wouldn’t just let it go. We were in the dining room at the time. It had just begun to snow for the first time that winter and there was one wall that was almost entirely made up of an enormous window. The window looked out over the garden, and Koray had woke me up telling me that it would be the most gorgeous thing that I had ever seen. When we first walked into the room and I saw the snowflakes covering the ground, I knew that he was right.

I stood there breathless for about an hour. Koray was sitting at the table, eating some oatmeal and bacon. He had offered me some, but I told him that I wasn’t hungry. When I couldn’t see any ground that wasn’t blanketed in white, my mind began to drift back to my family, and the times it would snow at the village. One year my mother had just made me a new warm coat, and my parents told me that I could go to the big hill and play with the other kids. I was ecstatic. By the time I finally reached the top of the hill, I was so out of breath that I just plopped down in the snow.

A little girl had come up to me. “You’re going to get wet,” she said matter-of-factly.

“I know,” I told her. “But I’m really tired.”

She looked at me suspiciously, and then shrugged and walked away. A few minutes later, I was up and throwing snow balls at all the boys who had bragged that they could never lose to a bunch of girls. I was giggling when the girl found me again. “Come this way,” she said, grabbing my hand. She led me to a little fort that she had made out of snow, and we had the perfect position to see the last boy who hadn’t been hit. She put a snow ball in my hand and gave me a look that seemed to say “You can do it.” I nodded to her, pulled my arm back, and launched the ball. It sailed perfectly, and hit the boy right in the middle of his back.

All of the girls whooped and hollered for me, and then the girl beside me grabbed me and gave me a warm hug. I hugged her back, but then after that day I never saw her again.

I must have been frowning, because Koray came up behind me and put his arm around me. “What’s wrong, Canzu?”

“Nothing…” I said.

He turned me around so that I had to face him, and slightly scolded me. “I know you well enough to know that something is wrong. Now tell me what it is.”

I turned my head back to the window, careful to avoid his eyes. I always felt like he could tell what I was thinking whenever he looked into my eyes. “I was just thinking about one time when I met this girl, and we played in the snow.”

“You want to go out and play in the snow?”

“No. Not really.”

“Then I don’t understand why that memory made you sad.”

I pulled away from him. I knew that this would upset him, but I couldn’t stand there with his arms holding me anymore. I took a few steps away.

“Canzu, don’t do that,” he said, and I could sense the slight anger in his voice.

“I can do what I want, Koray,” I told him, surprised at the tone of my own voice. “Or is my free will gone, as well?”

I glanced over at him enough to see him clench his fists, but then I turned away, because I knew what would happen next. His body would begin to shake slightly, but it was only noticeable because his fur would shake. It made the light reflect off in different directions. When he laughed, it did it too, and it was always pretty. But when he was angry, it was something that I couldn’t bear to see. “What do you mean, ‘as well?’” he asked me. “What have I taken away from you? I give you everything that you ask for.” He was trying to control his voice. It made it sound deeper and older.

“Yes, you do,” I told him. “But you took away everything that I had before. My family, my home, my friends-.”

“You told me that you didn’t have friends before you came here.” It was a low blow, and I think that he knew it. I spun around to face him and took a few steps towards him.

“I could’ve made some. I was almost about to start doing jobs for people to earn some extra money for my family. I probably would’ve met a lot of girls who would’ve been my friends.”

He came a few steps closer to me, too, and I saw the blue of his eyes darken. I had never seen that before, and it scared me. I trembled a little bit as he spoke. “I became your friend. Have I not been a good friend to you?”

“Yes,” I said, surprised that he still didn’t understand. “But people usually have more than one friend, Koray.”

I shouldn’t have said that. I knew as soon as the words rolled off my tongue that I shouldn’t have said them. He would run away now, and I would sit here feeling horrible until he came back and I could apologize. I waited for him to leave. He didn’t. I began counting in my head, still waiting for him to turn away. One, two, three, four, all the way to ten I counted before he spoke again.

“Not everyone is that privileged, Canzu,” was all he said. But it was enough. With those few words, and the way his voice sounded when he said them, I knew how completely upset at me he was. I thought that I would give up, that I would tell him that I was sorry, but instead I felt it bubbling up inside me.

“Just because you’re different doesn’t mean that I had to be! You did it to yourself, and you know it! Now you’re just making me suffer because you were a spoiled brat!”

He didn’t control it this time. He started towards me and the only thing I could do was back up, and up, and up, until finally my back was to a wall. The way his eyes flashed scared me, and tears began to fall quietly out of my eyes. His palms were pressed to the wall on either side of my head, and his body was pinning me there. I looked down at his feet, but I could still feel his angry, rasping breath.

I was able to count all the way to twenty before he spoke this time. Through his clenched teeth he said to me, “I’m trying. I might not have been good back then, but I am trying as hard as I can to change that. I thought that you would be able to help me; that you cared about me. But if you aren’t mature enough to handle it, walk out the door. Go home. If you aren’t able to help me then I don’t want you here.” As soon as he got done talking, he jerked himself away from me, and slammed the door behind him as he left the room.

I slid down the wall and curled myself into a little ball before I let myself sob as hard as I wanted to. His words kept ringing through my mind, and I struggled to erase them. It was like they were permanently attached there.

The thing that I kept remembering most was the way his body had gotten more rigid when he said, “I don’t want you here.” My tears flowed heavier at the very thought of leaving him.

But isn’t that what I wanted? To be able to go back to my family and make friends? To get away from the way the castle felt so small and restricting, even though it was huge?

No, I told myself. Because it didn’t matter how many friends I made out there, I would always long for the friend I had here. I would never be able to look at anyone else without seeing Koray’s blue eyes. I couldn’t be in the arms of anyone else without missing the way Koray would hold me and keep me warm.

I couldn’t leave him, because I needed him. And he needed me.

I knew that I needed to go after him, to tell him how sorry I was for not controlling myself. I needed to beg him to let me stay. But I had to gain my composure first. I sat there on the floor for several minutes, wiping the tears from my eyes. When I finally felt like my nose wasn’t entirely red anymore, I stood up and straightened my skirt. I walked over to the door and pushed it open.

How was I supposed to find him in this place? There were countless rooms that he could be hiding in and even if I tried to search them all, I knew that I would only get lost. I took a deep breath and started down the hallway to my right. I checked every room that I came to, but Koray wasn’t in any of them. I was just about to turn around and work in the other direction when I heard a loud thump.

I made my way into the ballroom. It was the first time I had actually been in this end of the castle since the dance. Most of the places Koray took me weren’t around here. The thump sounded again, and I walked across the long room to the window that looked out into the front courtyard. I could see Koray standing there outside with nothing on but his average pair of trousers. He was leaning against the biggest tree at the whole castle, and even though it’s leaves were gone, it was still magnificent and looming. I watched as Koray took a couple of steps away from it, then pull his fist back and punch the tree as hard as he could. Thump.

I couldn’t watch this anymore. I opened the door that led outside and ran through the inches of snow to where Koray was standing. Not knowing what to say, I just stood there beside him for a moment. The tension between us was almost unbearable, and then he glanced over at me. “What do you want?” he asked. “Have you come to tell me goodbye?”

“No,” I told him. “I’m not leaving.” I had planned on asking him if I could stay, but it just hadn’t come out that way. He looked over at me questioningly.

“Why not? It’s what you want.”

“No, it’s not. I miss my family, but I can’t go back.”

“Don’t stay here for me. I’m allowing you to leave, with no repercussions.”

“You’re wrong,” I whispered. “If I left, it would cost me.”

He whipped around to face me. “Are you saying that I’m a liar?”

I looked him straight in the eyes. “I’m saying that even if you let me leave right now, it would break my heart. I can’t leave you, Koray.”

My words registered in his mind, and his eyes softened. I saw one corner of his mouth turn up slightly, and I longed to run into his arms and never let him go. He seemed to have the same idea, and he took a few steps toward me. “I’m glad,” he whispered.

Then he leaned down and kissed me.

It was a sweet kiss; my first kiss. I knew that he was being careful, because I was so fragile compared to him. I had thought of this moment several times, and I was always terrified that when it happened, it wouldn’t feel right. I had been wrong.

It felt perfect, like there was nothing better in the whole world. My mind shut down, and all I could think about was his warm lips, and how they were pressed up against mine. I lost all track of time. His hand was twisted in my hair.

Finally, I had to take a breath. I pulled away from him and looked down to keep myself from getting dizzy. It was then that I noticed the red snow.

“Koray, your hand…” I took his hand in my own. The knuckles were bleeding quite a lot, and the fur was starting to mat up.

“It’s nothing,” he assured me. “It will heal up fine.”

“But…” I tried to argue. He stopped me by shaking his head and reaching his other hand up to brush my arm. As soon as he touched me, his brow narrowed and all of a sudden he whisked me into his arms and ran back inside the house. I tried to ask him what was wrong, but my jaw was clamped shut. I hadn’t realized how cold I was. I shivered deeper into his arms, but even he wasn’t warming me up enough. My eyelids began to droop.

“Stupid,” I heard him mutter. “I didn’t think about it… no fur… can’t keep warm…” He seemed to be angry, but I knew it wasn’t at me.

“Koray,” I tried to say, but I never really made a noise. He laid me down on my bed and immediately threw every blanket that he could find on top of me. I felt a hand on my forehead, a smooth hand, but I couldn’t open my eyes.

“She’s very cold,” I heard Calv say. “She needs to get warm as soon as possible. It’s freezing outside. How long was she out there?”

I could hear Koray pacing. “Uhm… five, ten, fifteen minutes? I don’t know…”

“With nothing but that robe on?”

“Yes,” Koray said, pained.

“She might be ill. I won’t know until she’s warm.”

I didn’t hear Koray’s response, but I felt the bed move as he forced himself under the blankets and pulled me toward him. I shivered some more, but he wrapped his arms around me. He was so soft. I buried my face into his chest.

“Don’t worry, Canzu,” he whispered into my hair. “I’ll take care of you.”

That was the last thing I heard before I fell asleep.