Chapter – 25
“Unni, I’m cold.”
Thinking back, it all started with a single, small piece of bread.
“Come here. Let’s get closer.”
On a winter day when the white snow, carried by the cold wind, piled up softly like a cotton blanket over the whole world.
Liliope and Caliona were taking shelter from a sudden snowstorm behind a shop in some part of the city.
The sisters, who had become orphans overnight and were thrown out of a comfortable greenhouse into the wild, couldn’t easily adapt to the rapidly changed environment, like flowers facing their first harsh winter.
Moreover, since it was a time when everyone found it hard to survive, people’s hearts had grown callous beyond compare.
In such a world, to survive, groups of orphaned children often stole goods from shops or robbed travelers from out of town.
Perhaps if Caliona and Liliope had joined such a group earlier, they might have adapted to their new environment a bit more easily.
But at that time, the sisters were still, to put it bluntly, untainted; they couldn’t even imagine filling their own stomachs by harming others.
Both Liliope and Caliona thought it was enough if someone occasionally took pity on them and gave them leftover food or let them sleep in a shabby shed for a night or two.
“Unni, I smell something delicious somewhere.”
“Let’s go to Aunt Sasha’s place later. Maybe she has some leftover lunch.”
“But when we went three days ago, she told us not to come back.”
At Liliope’s dispirited words, Caliona fell silent for a moment.
“…I wish we could find somewhere to work. I could do simple tasks, and even a little money would be enough.”
“That’s strange… Why does everyone say they won’t hire girls? Oh, now that I think about it, someone said last time. If we go to that big shop with the door decorated with flowers in the next neighborhood, they’ll give us delicious food and pretty clothes. If there’s work I can do too, maybe we should go there…”
“You! Don’t you dare go near that place. Just forget what you heard that time. Even if someone tries to sweet-talk you into going there when I’m not around, don’t you dare go. If they try to take you by force, you must run away. Do you understand me?”
Caliona made a terrifying face at Liliope, who had just brought it up because she remembered it.
Startled by her fierce older sister’s reaction, Liliope could only nod her head in agreement.
Caliona, her face angry, scooped up the wet mud from the ground and smeared it thickly all over Liliope’s face.
Whenever her sister deliberately made her face dirty like this, Liliope was tormented by the desire to immediately wash her body clean.
But since that was realistically impossible, she could only sadly imagine it in her heart.
Clatter!
“Dad, I’m going to give this to Ruby as a snack and come back!”
At that moment, a young child who seemed to be the shopkeeper’s daughter opened the back door and came out.
The child, wearing a warm-looking thick coat, trotted out, holding a small bowl containing food in her hand.
Bread. It was bread.
It looked old, hard, and crumbly, but in their starved state, even that was a luxury.
Without realizing it, Liliope’s eyes followed the young girl’s hand.
As if sensing the gaze, the child suddenly slowed her pace and looked back at Liliope.
The first emotion that appeared on the girl’s face upon seeing the sisters was naked contempt.
But soon, as if she had thought of something, she instead approached the sisters and thrust the bread bowl right in front of their eyes.
“This looks delicious, right?”
At the girl’s question, Liliope blankly nodded her head.
“Yes. Uh-huh.”
“Want to eat it?”
“Yes…”
“Shall I give it to you?”
“Huh? Really?”
Seeing the desperation in Liliope’s eyes, the girl burst into a clear, tinkling laugh.
“Of course I’m joking, silly! This is a snack for our family’s dog!”
Sticking out her tongue, she teased Liliope, then walked briskly to the side and placed the bowl on the ground.
“Ruby, come out! Let’s have a tasty snack.”
Then, a white dog, tied with a leash, jumped out from a small wooden box they had thought was empty.
Looking closely, a thick blanket that seemed much warmer than the clothes the sisters were wearing was spread inside it.
At that moment, Liliope unintentionally felt a surge of intense jealousy towards the dog and was startled by her own feeling.
Finding Liliope’s dazed stare at the dog, who had started eating the bread with its nose in the bowl, amusing, the young girl held her stomach and giggled again.
“What, like a beggar. You really want to eat this, huh? Hey, I’m feeling generous. I’ll give it to you, even if it’s what Ruby was eating.”
The dog’s food bowl was thrust before Liliope’s eyes once more, as if bestowing a favor.
It was bread that the dog had torn and mangled, even dirtier than before, but still, bread was bread.
Liliope gulped.
She was so captivated by the bread before her that she couldn’t even see the spite in the young girl’s eyes.
The dog, having its food taken away, barked discontentedly, “Woof! Woof!”
As if pushed from behind by that sound, Liliope reached her hand forward.
“No!”
But just before her hand touched the dog’s bowl, Caliona grabbed her arm painfully from the side.
“No. Don’t eat it.”
Turning her head, she saw her sister’s face, contorted in devastation.
“What’s all this noise?”
“Dad!”
In the midst of this, the shopkeeper, having heard the dog barking, came outside.
And then, absurdly, the young girl pointed at Liliope and shrieked sharply, as if she had been waiting.
“She tried to snatch the bread by force!”
“What? You filthy brat, how dare you lay your dirty hands on it!”
The man, his face twisted ferociously, rushed over and immediately slapped Liliope across the cheek.
“Lili!”
“I turned a blind eye letting you loiter behind my shop! How dare you steal our bread? You insolent wretch!”
Liliope was stunned, experiencing an adult’s violence for the first time in her life.
On her behalf, Caliona raised her voice, protesting Liliope’s injustice.
“No, she didn’t steal it! That girl offered it, but she didn’t take it!”
“Don’t lie! No wonder shop items have been disappearing one by one lately, it must be because of you! Today, I’ll chop those thieving hands right off!”
The man picked up a broom leaning against the wall and swung it mercilessly.
“I said we didn’t steal it! She didn’t eat it! The liar is your daughter over there!”
Caliona hugged Liliope and shouted in a voice full of indignation.
“And so what if we did steal! It’s not like you were going to do anything with it except feed it to the dog anyway…!”
The moment those careless words were shouted, Caliona’s face turned pale.
“This, this is why you shouldn’t be nice to beggar brats! Give them one, and they demand two, always resorting to robbery! Today, I’ll fix you of that wretched habit!”
The sisters huddled together and endured the harsh beating.
Through the pouring tears, they saw the white dog hurriedly gobbling up the bread.
Ah, how cruel every single moment of that time felt.
“Ptooey! Business is bad enough as it is, how unlucky! Don’t bother with such wretched things, let’s go inside!”
“Yes, Dad!”
After the storm passed, the sisters left the place with staggering steps.
They were still cold and hungry, and now the injustice of being beaten and the physical pain were added, so their tears wouldn’t stop.
“Lili, let me see your face.”
Later, when they had barely found a place to shelter from the wind and were crouching down, Caliona called Liliope softly from beside her.
Even though she was so hungry, Liliope thought she would be scolded for coveting the dog’s food, but her sister didn’t say a word about it.
Instead, she pulled out a piece of bread from inside her clothes, its origin unknown.
“You’re hungry, right? Eat this.”
It was a piece of bread that looked much more appetizing than the one in the dog’s bowl, one that made your mouth water just by looking at it.
This was the kind of bread that seemed to be sold in shops for money—large, soft, sweet, and even gleaming…
Without realizing it, Liliope lifted her head and looked at Caliona’s face.
The eyes of her sister that she met then were something Liliope still couldn’t forget.
As if a layer of their bright, clear light had been extinguished, the dark purple pupils were stained with a mix of resignation and resolve towards something.
The sisters’ parents had taught them that stealing others’ belongings was a bad thing. Both of them knew well that it was something you shouldn’t do.
But the first piece of bread they ever stole was so delicious it brought tears to their eyes.
