“Daisy, when are you going home?”
“That is…”
Grace answered honestly, wishing that her parents’ mission would never end.
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t know?”
“Yes. You?”
“I’m going to stay one more month.”
‘I don’t want you nor I to go home forever…’
An unbelievable thought lifted its head.
Leon was not a child. No matter how slowly the world was changing, love between nobles and commoners was still taboo. He knew it couldn’t be more than a dangerous game of fire during a vacation.
Still, the strange place made him a different person. He disobeyed his parents for the first time in his life and escaped. His first kiss was sweet.
Deviation always seemed so sweet.
“Would you like to meet again tomorrow?”
“Okay.”
Daisy’s pale expression brightened in an instant.
“Then…”
Leon, who was about to come to pick her up in the morning, felt troubled. If he returned, he would probably be grounded.
“Would you like to play at my villa tomorrow?”
“Is that okay?”
“Instead, it’s a headache if the adults find out, so let’s hide in my room and play.”
“Okay.”
What could they do in the room? Leon asked thoughtfully.
“Do you like movies? There’s a projector in my room, would you like to watch a movie together?”
Daisy rolled her eyes and nodded her head. She liked movies. That was a relief.
“Then, let’s meet at ten o’clock at the entrance to the villa beach.”
Daisy paused while Leon was making a route in his head on how to hide Daisy and bring her into the villa.
“You know, Leon…”
“Yes?”
“I’m actually Daisy…”
The moment Daisy was hesitant to say something, intense headlights flashed in front of the two of them. As the window of the black sedan stopped on a narrow mountain road, the man in the driver’s seat shouted.
“Kids, get out of the way.”
It was a voice he knew. The face that came out the window was also familiar. His eyes widened as if the other person recognized him.
“Leon?”
“Father?”
…Mother?
The moment her eyes met the blonde beauty sitting in the passenger seat, Grace’s face turned pale blue.
It was clear that her mother recognized Grace, too. The smile that she had given to the man in the driver’s seat disappeared in an instant.
When her eyes touched the blonde man whose eyes resembled Leon, it felt like blood was draining from her body. It was clear that the man, the soldier the adults were talking about, was a soldier named Winston.
‘…Is that person Leon’s father?’
The old villa had thin walls, so he could hear the adults’ conversations. Dirty monarchy pigs, the mad dog of the royal family, and the devil who brutally murdered the heroes of the Revolutionary Army… The grown-ups called the man Winston that way.
‘I’m going to get scolded now.’
Her brain became white. Playing with a boy until late at night was not a bad thing. However, if the boy were the enemy’s son, and if she had done a bunch of bad things she shouldn’t have done with the enemy, she would be severely punished.
She was out of breath. To Grace, her parents were just as terrifying as they were respectful. She might have been slapped like her brother by her father, who had been caught.
“It’s okay, Daisy.”
As Leon was trying to hide Daisy, who had begun to shake behind his back…
“Di, dirty pig!”
…Daisy shouted out loud and shook his hand away. Leon stared blankly at the girl’s back as she ran away into the darkness.
‘What did she just say to me now?’
He wanted to believe that he had heard it wrong though from the contemptuous eyes he had seen last, it was clear what she had said to him.
‘What did I do wrong?’
It felt like a blow to his head.
The next moment, his father shouted at him, who was staring into the darkness, and he couldn’t bear to look away, confused by the girl’s inner thoughts.
“Leon, go back to the villa now. Meeting me here is a secret to your mother.”
It was then that Leon realized that there was a strange woman with a hand covering her face sitting next to his father.
“Daisy!”
After waiting for the car to leave, he belatedly searched the mountain trail for Daisy, but the girl was nowhere to be found.
‘Why? What did I do…?’
It was a shout that woke Leon, who returned with his mind dazed while repeating only the questions with no one to answer.
“Are you crazy for breaking important promises and shooting your way all day? You already made it hard for me from the inside of the stomach now you’re trying to kill me, too.”
It wasn’t scary to shout loudly while wearing her pajamas and having a bunch of rolls on her head.
“Leon! Won’t you come right now? Where the hell did you learn that?”
Leon didn’t answer, went into his room, and slammed the door shut. His body leaned against the door and slipped. He crouched on the floor and kept asking the same questions as before.
“What did I do wrong?”
Dirty pig… No matter how much he thought about it, he didn’t do anything wrong to hear such a terrible thing. If she didn’t like kissing, she should have refused then. To have fun all day, only to treat him like a beast at the end.
…He really liked her, but the other person made fun of him.
Leon threw what was in his hand across the room. The thrown dolphin doll smiled without knowing his feelings.
He felt pathetic for picking up the doll that the child had thrown away and bringing it all the way here.
“Haa…”
He hadn’t cried since his hair grew thick, but he wanted to cry. It was unbelievably pathetic.
º º º
That night, Leon had a dream.
Warm breath. Soft feel. Sweet…
Bloody smell.
And…
‘Dirty piglet!’
He opened his eyes. Underneath was as wet as his face.
“Damn it.”
º º º
“Your father is still uncontactable. The rich are very much the same.”
Leon stood up with his mother nagging behind him. The leftover breakfast on the table was left untouched.
“Leon, you are banned from going out for a week. Even now, if you reflect on it and ask for forgiveness, it might be shortened to three days.”
As expected, a curfew was issued. Leon didn’t ask. Breaking the rules set by his parents was difficult the first time, but the second time was easy.
He stood at the beach where they were supposed to meet thirty minutes before the appointed time. Although he instinctively knew that Daisy was not coming, he couldn’t stop his foolish wait… She still didn’t come.
When the hand on his watch showed 11 o’clock, Leon started walking along the beach towards Daisy’s cottage.
‘…What did I do wrong?’
He had to ask. It was because she was the only one who knew the answer.
He was going to apologize if he did something really wrong, and if he didn’t, he would get an apology from her. It was naive to believe that he could.
Even though he searched all over the shabby villa and campsites in the lush, underdeveloped mountains, this time, the girl was nowhere to be found.
There was only someone else.
Leon, who was tumbling down the sparsely populated hillside, abruptly stopped. A broken headlight fell in the thick forest.
‘Is there a car accident?’
Leon went into the woods and walked along the trail of the wheels. Was it going to rain soon? A strong wind blew from the cloudy sky.
This fishy smell carried by the salty sea breeze was definitely…
‘…Blood?’
Upon realizing it, he found a black car abandoned in front of a secluded cliff.
It was a familiar sedan.
Ominous forebodings were always overstated. Leon looked into the broken window. There was only blood all over the body, lying in a bizarre posture in the back seat.
“…Father?”
The dead did not answer.
º º º
Every time the train shook, the skinny body hanging from the railing shook without strength. Adults smoked on the balcony of the last carriage. Grace, caught in the gap, stared at the distant horizon where the sun was slowly rising.
The sea was no longer visible. She didn’t want to see the sea anymore.
“You have the sea in your eyes.”
She hated her eyes.
“Dirty pig!”
He was not dirty…
The moment she cried out in fear of being scolded, the face she saw did not leave her eyes. She hated herself for shouting things like that. Perhaps because of that, she hated her cowardly self, who thought she was fortunate not to be scolded by her mother.
“Daisy!”
…No. That was not her name.
Grace covered her ears as she heard the hallucinations. She heard a voice calling her outside last night. Even after Leon’s voice disappeared, she turned off the lights all night, held her breath, and cried in the blanket.
She heard strange noises all night through the thin walls.
The suppressed screams, the angry voices of adults, and the sound of hitting something over and over again. When the sound stopped abruptly, Grace was forced to leave Abbington Beach as she hurriedly packed her bags and ran away.
“Damn it…. I didn’t mean to.”
“Dave, don’t blame yourself.”
Her father comforted the man standing next to him.
No one comforted the girl who felt guilty without doing anything.