(Part 9)

The bed was made.

It was empty.

The two statements burned their way into Louise's mind as she stared at the made, empty bed that Kyrano had been sleeping on for the past week. No, he hadn't been 'sleeping' there. Kyrano had been unconscious.

And now he was gone.

"Louise?" Brandon's tight voice betrayed his shock and trepidation behind her. He had undoubtedly come to the same conclusion as his fiancée, and it was now clear to the both of them that Kyrano was gone.

Dead. Gone. Passed on. Six feet under. Lifeless.

The words flew through Louise's head, but she could not believe it. A few months ago, Louise had been to visit the Reyes House with Kyrano, and they had been talking easily and smiling. Just a little over a week ago, she still had Kyrano attending to her every needs. Even though he had been weak and emotionally unstable, Louise still had Kyrano beside her a week ago.

Now, she would never...

"I'd like to be alone for now." Louise heard herself say from afar, and her body moved as if controlled by a robot.

Stiffly, Louise turned her back onto the clean, perfect room. A room so clean and welcoming never disgusted Louise more than it did now. A neat, made bed had never made her sick before, but now she could feel her nausea roiling in her stomach. The men, as if sensing the deep denial and disbelief that she was in, parted to allow her a path back to the hallway, watching her progress but not bearing to call for her.

Maiko considered following after his mistress, but Keyron's hand on his arm grabbed his attention, and he turned to find Kyrano's twin brother shaking his head subtly. What shocked Maiko was the fact that there was no sorrow in Keyron's eyes. None at all. A complete lack of grief, or even sadness, shone in Keyron's black eyes.

But Louise could see none of it, as her legs mechanically brought her walking away from the room numbly. She wasn't sure where she was walking to, but all she knew was that she was walking away from the room that had been Kyrano's ward. Louise managed to reach the end of the hallway, where it opened up to another path towards the other wards and the elevator that would bring her down the building and out of the hospital.

But her legs could not manage more.

Louise's legs finally gave way underneath the pressure of her emotions, and for the briefest of moments, she felt weightless.

Warm arms closed around her and she found herself pressed to a comfortable warm body. A coldness that ran along the back of her shins told her that she was still on the floor, but her upper body was being propped up by something hot –by someone.

"Miss Louise!" The voice was so familiar that it hurt. "Miss Louise, are you fine? Do you need a seat?"

"Don't." Louise wiped the tears that had gathered at the corners of her eyes. Kyrano wouldn't want her to cry, no matter what. "Keyron, just don't. I'm sorry, but you look too much like him now."

"I don't understand, Miss Louise." He replied, looking down with concern and confusion glittering in his black eyes.

"I am sorry that I have to do this, but please. Leave me be."

"I cannot, Miss Louise. You are obviously in some form of emotional pain that I cannot conceive. Even if you cannot tell me the cause of it, let me be your strength."

"My strength was Kyrano, but now that he is gone... I have no strength." Louise held back another wave of emotions, wiping once more at her eyes.

"But why would you say that? I am not gone. You must be strong, Miss Louise." The arms around her tightened and wrapped her in a warmth that she had been needing since a week ago.

"It's not the same with you, Keyron. You're just not the same as Kyrano..."

"Damn sure I'm not." The reply that came this time was of the same voice, but the face that peered worriedly at her had not even moved his mouth. "I'll be damned if I become like Kyrano. Brandon will sell me away for cutting my perfect flawless skin."

It took a long moment for Louise to realize that the man staring at her had one eye that was cloudy in a faded grey. It had not registered because her vision had been fuzzy with tears, but now that she had wiped off the tears once more, she saw the one perfect eye peering at her carefully, while the other was just... dead.

"Miss Louise, I don't understand what has happened, but I am here with you. You must be strong, because I was able to pull through due to your strength." The man who now held her spoke, his voice sounding exactly the same, but closer. The voice was the same, but the quality was different. Louise didn't know how to describe it, but it was just... different.

Trembling hands reached up and touched warm cheeks. Louise ran the pad of her fingers over skin, making sure that it was a human that she touched.

"Miss Louise?"

"Kyrano?" Louise whispered, a little scared at the answer that would be given from this man. What if he said 'no'? What if he apologised?

"Yes, Miss Louise?"

"Oh, by the way, Brandon," Keyron said, sounding as if he were still standing a safe distance away, "did I forget to tell you that Kyrano is awake and moved out of the ICU when the hospital called me?"

Kyrano looked up to his brother at the words, apprehension written across his face.

"What is this about, Keyron?" He asked in his business-like tone, and Louise's heart somehow found its glue instantly. "What weird things have you fed my mistress's mind with?"

My mistress. The words spoken by her butler had never sounded so sweet before, and Louise immediately understood what she had been trying so hard to refuse. This was exactly what Brandon knew and had asked her to address with Kyrano.

This was her love. Her foolish, uncontrollable and intense love for her butler.

____________________________________________________________________________________

"I apologise for the troubles that you had to go through, Miss Louise." Kyrano expressed sincerely as he sat on his bed. "I do hope that Butler Maiko has served you well in my place."

"You are irreplaceable." Louise expressed immediately with a relieved sigh. There was no one who made her feel safe and comforted than Kyrano. Even if the man in question was the one sitting on the hospital bed, still recovering from a mild fever and in questionable need of counselling. "Maiko isn't the same as you."

"He gave his best effort, Miss Louise." Kyrano said, passing a short look to the butler waiting outside the ward beside the chatting pair of Brandon and Keyron.

"I have high expectations of my butler, Kyrano. Maiko did his best, but it wasn't what I wanted." Louise answered honestly, still holding on to her butler's hand to remind herself that he was real, alive and conscious. The person talking to her was Kyrano, her Kyrano.

"I apologize. I must not have met those high expectations, even as your butler."

"Don't be stupid." The woman chided so suddenly that it surprised the both of them. "You have surpassed my expectations time and again, Kyrano. I want you to keep doing that."

"But... I was weak. The cause of this hospital scare; it is all my fault."

"Nonsense." Louise let one hand go from Kyrano's hand, lighting trailing her forefinger over Kyrano's bandages. Beneath the bandage were scars and wounds of cuts. Her butler must have suffered so much in silence, been so brave and strong despite all that he was suffering on the inside. "This is as much my fault as it is yours. Don't try to keep everything to yourself again, Kyrano."

"But I, as a butler, cannot burden my mistress with my problems, Miss Louise. I cannot possibly ask you to solve my problems, given your own."

"Don't you understand, Kyrano?" Louise's hand came up to cradle her man's cheek daringly. Brandon's words from a week ago echoed in her head, and she decided to take her fiancé's advice. Anything would be better than their situation now; Louise struggling to get her point across, Kyrano floundering and hurting himself.

She had always been scared that if she told Kyrano the truth, the butler would take it in his stride to leave her side. She was scared that Kyrano viewed being a butler more important than being Louise's butler; that he would leave her to stop encouraging the feelings that Louise could not resist. More than loving him, Louise needed him beside her.

But her feelings were getting unbearable, and she needed to clear things up once and for all.

"Kyrano, seeing you in pain worries me. Seeing you in sadness, in sorrow, in troubles –they all make me sad and troubled as well. You think you are just my butler, but you are more than that. You are the man who has been with me this whole while, my support, my lifeline. If one day, my lifeline gets weak, I become weak as well. You swear constantly that my happiness is yours, Kyrano. If that is true, then my happiness is you." Louise's words were soft, but the both of them could hear it easily as blue eyes met black ones.

The soft smile that hung on Louise's face was beautiful like an angel, and Kyrano's mind hit a rut, blanking out quickly.

"The truth is; I had been meeting Keyron in secrecy this whole while because I was trying to solve his hatred against your mother and father. I knew that Keyron's problem with your family troubled you, and I wanted to solve it for your sake. I knew you would protest against it, that you would find your way to stop me from helping you. But I wanted to, Kyrano. You have helped me for fourteen years; it was right that I tried my best to help you back. But I never realized what all this secrecy led you to believe... I never realized that you lost faith in me. I never realized that you would think that I had lost trust in you, that I preferred your brother to you. They are all untrue, Kyrano."

It was silent for a long time in which Kyrano took to understand all that his mistress was trying to say. The truth was clear in her eyes now, and even with his fever, Kyrano could feel the heat rising to his face.

How could he be so... completely senseless? Of course Louise still believed in him. Of course his mistress still trusted in him. He had served her for fourteen years. Keyron and Brandon had met his mistress for only months. He had known his mistress to be an extremely careful person. Of course Louise wouldn't open her arms and welcome strangers so easily into her secrets...

"I am so sorry, Miss Louise." Kyrano could no longer bear to look at his mistress in the eye now that the truth was out. "I am so sorry that I jumped to conclusions. I am so sorry that I lost faith in you. I don't know what I was thinking at the time. All I knew was that I was always irritated and angry, and I couldn't think straight. I couldn't afford to leave your side, but I couldn't deal with the emotions as well without doing something inane. I had to release those feelings to become the butler you needed. But I..."

"Don't blame yourself, Kyrano." Louise's both hands cradled her butler's cheeks, forcing him to look back up at her, at the blue of her eyes, reading everything that was written there. "Because if you blame yourself, you will be akin to blaming me."

"But, Miss Louise..."

"Listen to me clearly, and don't speak until I am done, Kyrano." Louise said, holding her butler's face firmly, making sure that he couldn't look anywhere else. With their faces inches apart, Louise could see everything clearly –her butler's flawless skin, his handsome face, his blind eye. She could see the struggle in his eyes as he fought to reconcile with himself over all that had happened.

"Kyrano, I love you. I love you as a man, and not only as my butler. I have been trying my best to hide these feelings because a lady cannot love her butler. I understand this rule as well as you do, but nobody can stop a beating heart. This confession will change the very dynamics of how we work together in the future, Kyrano, but I can no longer hide my feelings without bringing misunderstandings. But I beg of you, Kyrano. Don't leave me because you think you want to help me get over my feelings for you. Don't leave my side, because I promise you that I will not do anything foolish as a Crawford woman. I will not try to break traditions just to be your lover, Kyrano. Simply stay beside me and serve me, and I will want nothing else from you."

The anticipation rose with the seconds of silence that ticked past as Kyrano's black irises trembled against the white of his eyes, struggling hard to understand, to comprehend, and to think straight.

His mistress was in love with him as a man.

It was exactly the way he had imagined it in his fevered sleep. His love to his mistress answered and requited.

But it could never happen. Not between them. They would never be anything more than butler-and-mistress, because Kyrano would never allow it, and Louise understood it. His mistress was only asking that he stayed beside her, that he served her. Nothing else. Louise had promised that she would do nothing to act on her feelings.

"Miss Louise, do you love Brandon?"

It was the first time Kyrano had addressed the man by name.

"I don't-" Louise paused, thinking over all that had happened in the past week. She had admitted to herself that if it had not been for Brandon and Keyron, she would not have survived the week. She had admitted that it felt strange but pleasant to trust Brandon almost as whole-heartedly as she trusted Kyrano. "I don't know."

"Then, I understand." Kyrano gently removed his mistress's hands from his cheek, letting them fall to rest on the blanket pulled over his legs. "But in exchange for staying beside you, Miss Louise, you must promise me something."

"I will fulfil anything you ask of me, Kyrano."

"When you love Brandon, and when you marry him, you will let Keyron serve the both of you as the Head Butler of the joined family. I will leave when you marry Brandon, so please don't beg me or force me to stay when it happens. I don't want you to delay your marriage with your fiancé because you want me to stay as well."

"But, Kyrano..."

"Please let me go when you marry Brandon, Miss Louise. I cannot bear to be around you when you marry a man you love. I cannot be your lover, but I am not strong enough to watch you marry your lover. Forgive me for my weakness, but I simply cannot." Kyrano closed his eyes, the briefest expression of pain running across his face.

But the moment was brief, because when Kyrano opened his eyes again, set and determined black eyes met Louise again. It was as if a decision had been made in a split second, and Louise was not part of the decision process that Kyrano had concluded on his own.

"I'm sorry, Miss Louise, but I am feeling rather tired from the medication. Please excuse me; I need to rest." Kyrano continued, clearly bringing an end to their conversation without even allowing his mistress time to speak. It was for the best, because if Louise spoke now, Kyrano's determination would waver.

Then, for the first time since he had served her, Kyrano laid down and turned his back on his seated mistress, pulling the covers over himself.

It was done. He had finally denied his heart in favour of his duty.

That was a butler's duty, and the expected behaviour of a butler.

But nobody had taught him about how much it hurt to deny his own feelings.

And it hurt very much.