$ perl -MEncode -le'print length encode "utf8", decode "UTF-16le", "\xFE\x00"'
2

##</code><code>##

$ perl -MDevel::Peek -MEncode -le'Dump decode "UTF-16le", "\xFE\x00"'
...
  PV = 0x8172e78 "\303\276"\0 [UTF8 "\x{fe}"]
  CUR = 2
...