As it continued, the man’s swearing grew longer. At some point, the whimpering heard from Leon’s side had turned into an exclamation.
“Wow, that’s really cool.”
Leon never thought the shooting skills he had honed so far would shine here.
“This will come in handy someday when you find a girl you like.”
He suddenly remembered what his father had said while teaching him how to shoot. It was not about hunting women, and it was not about killing rivals to claim possession. Perhaps, his father meant this when he said it would be helpful?
In the end, with 125 points, he even won a doll and a voucher for the candy stand.
“Here.”
Leon took the dolphin doll from the grumbling owner and placed it in Daisy’s arms.
“How amazing! Neither my brother nor Jimmy ever made it.”
When the girl looked up at him and admired him, he felt like a god.
At the candy stand, Daisy chose a candy apple. Then, she held out a stick with an apple dipped in red sugar syrup.
“You eat, too.”
“I don’t really like sweets…”
“Ah…”
When Daisy brought the apple back to her mouth, Leon couldn’t finish what he was saying. With a bright red candy apple in her mouth, the girl raised her round eyes and gazed up at him.
Enchanted by that appearance, Leon lowered his head.
Crunch.
He bit off the other side of the candy apple. The taste of fresh apple and sweet sugar entwined his tongue.
Did kisses taste like this?
Their eyes met with an apple the size of a fist between them. It was the first time Grace knew that light in the sky could be as hot as fireworks. Meanwhile, Leon was embarrassed and wanted to take off his lips, but he couldn’t. His lips had stuck to the sticky syrup and didn’t come off.
…Perhaps, it was a very deceptive excuse.
As he tilted his head, the gently closed eyelids lifted gently before he gazed at Grace again.
Leon reached out his hand to her cheek, who forgot to eat the apple and just stared blankly at him. The moment the silky soft skin touched her, Grace’s heart sank. She felt like she was about to pass out when all he did was take the hair off her cheek.
‘It feels like we’re kissing.’
The two shared the same idea and shared an apple with a face redder than the apple.
From then on, they held hands and walked with the excuse of losing each other because there were a lot of people. As they walked, they escaped the crowded carnival and entered a quiet shopping district, but the two did not let go of their hands.
Both of them snooped around a jewelry store that they wouldn’t normally go into. The girl’s eyes did not fall from the glass bead bracelet containing the refreshing sea light.
“I think it will suit you well.”
Daisy shook her hand as Leon pulled out his wallet.
“No. No.”
“Why? If you don’t like it, something else…”
“My mother told me not to dress pretty.”
Leon was bewildered.
Where in the world would a mother tell her daughter not to dress up pretty? As if it was not just an excuse, Daisy really looked plain without a necklace or hair bow. He thought it was because she was poor, but it was because she shouldn’t dress up?
“Why?”
“I don’t know. But my mother is really, really pretty.”
“You are really pretty, too. You have the sea in your eyes.”
Again, Grace’s heart thumped.
“There is a sea… in my eyes?”
The pretty boy spoke beautifully. The sea she saw for the first time in her life was so beautiful. However, the more beautiful scenery is in her eyes.
She kept wanting to smile like an idiot.
“Me… Pretty?”
Muttered the girl, raising her collar to hide her red face. Leon picked up the straw hat from the wall and put it on Daisy’s head, laughing.
“Then, we can do it with this.”
He didn’t want to part. Leon didn’t let go of Daisy’s hand all day, even though he knew it was polite to send her to her accommodation before it was too late.
‘I’m going to get scolded when I go back to the villa.’
…Even as he thought, his eyes did not leave Daisy’s red lips.
After watching the sunset on the beach, they had dinner at a seafood restaurant. As the children who entered puberty in the time of adulthood wandered around without a guardian, curious gazes followed them. However, the two children’s eyes did not see the eyes of others.
Jazz bars opened one by one, and jazz melodies mixed with the sound of the waves. The two walked along the blackened sea and returned to the carnival.
The carnival, which was about to close, was quiet.
One by one, the rides stopped, turning off the loud lights and music. The time for the two to part was also approaching. Leon, not wanting to part, led Daisy to the Ferris wheel, which was still lit.
“Today is over. Come back tomorrow.”
After paying five times the price of the ticket, the staff politely opened the door of the Ferris wheel like a servant opening a carriage door.
The Ferris wheel carrying only the two of them slowly began to turn.
“Wow…”
As the stark contrast of light and darkness unfolded beneath her feet, Grace marveled. Brilliantly lit shopping streets and dark beaches were separated along the coastal road.
While looking at the black sea dotted with a ray of moonlight and the lights of cruise ships, for some reason, the Ferris wheel that reached the top stopped. Even if it wasn’t, the faded jazz music started to be inaudible because of the sound of the sea breeze.
As the windowless Ferris wheel swayed in the wind, she was terrified.
Taking her eyes off the night view, Grace hugged Leon’s arm even tighter and looked up at him.
‘What’s wrong?’
Leon was staring at Grace.
Come to think of it, he had been like this for several hours. When he glanced at the sunset, he only stared at her face. Even at the restaurant, he didn’t touch the delicious lobster dish and kept looking at Grace.
For some reason, as nervous as when looking down, Grace unknowingly bit her lower lip.
“Daisy, you’re bleeding.”
“Oh…”
She bit her thin lips too hard.
“Ah, a handkerchief…”
Leon, who was rummaging through his pockets, looked puzzled. The strawberry-dyed handkerchief was already discarded during the day. He should have bought a new one.
“Wait.”
Daisy stuck out her tongue to lick her lower lip, but Leon grabbed the tip of her chin. As he ducked his head down the slanted brim of the straw hat, the tip of their noses hit.
The moment he tilted his head slightly, her lips parted.
It was something he had done before he even thought about whether it was okay or not. He could use an excuse that he was just doing what the nanny used to do as a child when he cut his hand. Of course, there was no excuse for doing this, even though he knew it was on the lips.
All day he wondered what her lips would feel like. Like Daisy, who wondered what his hair would feel like.
It was soft and warm. Leon gently pressed her soft flesh with his lips and carefully licked the bleeding wound with the tip of his tongue.
Daisy’s body shook.
He had done countless bad things that would get him scolded when caught, but his heart never beat as it did now. As he licked her wounds, their lips parted slightly, and the girl whispered in surprise.
“This is a kiss. My first kiss…”
Leon, who had expected Daisy to feel the same way, was quite taken aback.
“So you hate that…?”
“…Like it.”
Candid words escaped from between her lips in a shy smile. Leon liked her untainted honesty.
“Shall I… do it again?”
As soon as Daisy nodded, the smiling lips joined again.
It was not wrong to say that a kiss feels like flying.
The kiss secretly shared with the world at their feet in a Ferris wheel suspended high in the sky was thrilling. When a strong wind blew, Leon pressed Daisy’s face closer with one hand to the straw hat that was about to be blown away by the wind.
The Ferris wheel swayed in the wind again.
Fearing she might fall, Daisy hugged Leon’s arm even tighter. Their lips pressed more closer, and her body became hot—the refreshing scent of candy apple, the sticky texture of toffee, the mild taste of a milkshake, and blood oozed from her lips that tasted like a carnival.
Blood was sweet.
Leon thought while being immersed in a barrage of senses that stupefied his mind. He might start to like sweets from today.
Daisy’s villa was on a remote mountain.
It was good that he came out with a bike with an oil lamp. Leon climbed the dark mountain path, lit only by dim lamplight, holding Daisy in one hand and a bicycle in the other.
“It’s quite far from my villa here.”
Leon muttered with a sigh as he climbed the steep slope. By the side of the mountain road, he could hear the rough waves lapping against the coastal cliffs pretty close.
“Did you walk every day?”
Daisy nodded her head.
‘I should have talked to you earlier…’
The moment when both regret and sorry came together, Leon realized that he hadn’t asked a really important question yet.
“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.
‘The boy’s father died?’
Grace was confused. What should she do? What should she feel? No action, no emotion, was right in this situation.
While holding on to the balcony railing until her hands hurt, the conversation between adults continued.
“By the way, didn’t his son say he saw Angie?”
When uncle Dave asked her mother, Grace was taken aback. Had her mother told the other adults that she had played with the boy? Was she getting scolded now?
“I should have dealt with that guy as well…”
When she thought she might get scolded, her nervous heart sank this time.
‘…Leon is nice. Don’t kill him, uncle.’
However, the words did not come off the tip of her tongue. Her mother glanced down at Grace, who was looking up at the adults with frightened eyes, then shook her head at uncle Dave.
“He couldn’t see my face. Besides, he’s still a kid.”
Second-class passengers didn’t get suspected of killing people.
Returning to the rented sleeper, where her father sighed as it was over budget, Grace lay upstairs, staring blankly at the ceiling. Her mother, who shared the same compartment, suddenly reached her hand up.
“If you don’t have an appetite, eat this at least.”
Saying so, in her hand was a box of expensive chocolates.
She saw her mother buy it on the way past the dining car a moment ago though Grace didn’t know her mother was going to give it to her. When she came to Abbington Beach, she was excited about the train journey and waited only for the time to go to the dining car, but today she skipped breakfast.
Grace took the box of chocolates, stared at them, then stood up.
“Mo, mother.”
“What’s wrong?”
“When I grow up…”
“Yes.”
“Do I have to kill that boy with my own hands?”
Grace was still confused. She didn’t understand the situation at all. She didn’t even know what emotions she was supposed to feel.
However, one thing was clear.
…I don’t want to kill him.
“Grace… .”
Her mother called her name instead of answering her and got herself up to the bed. It was the first time Grace had ever seen a person who had always been omnipotent, like a god, look like she was about to cry.
“Come here.”
Besides, it was her first time hugging her. It was awkward. Lying next to her mother in the same bed, Grace held her breath.
She smelled of perfume, which she had always faintly smelled.
‘My mother’s smell…’
Soon, it felt cozy rather than awkward. Her mother, who was hard on Grace, even embraced her and gave her chocolate… Birthdays and Christmas weren’t as happy as it is now.
Aren’t you going to sleep?
Her mother muttered as she patted Grace on the back affectionately.
“I should have sent her to the orphanage…”
Her world collapsed.
She knew that when a person was in extreme shock, they didn’t even cry. Sometimes at night, when her parents were arguing, she pulled the covers over herself in the room next to her and heard her mother cry out.
“That’s why I said to send her to an orphanage!”
She still didn’t know it was about her… No, perhaps she tried to deny it. Little Grace subconsciously felt that neither her father nor her mother loved me. Nonetheless, from that day on, she could no longer deny that she was a being who could be abandoned at any time.
As soon as she returned home, she caught a bad summer cold.
“I will kill him… Don’t throw me away…”
Her parents left home right away for another mission. Her brother was the only person who stayed by Grace, who babbled nonsense while suffering from a high fever.
“What happened there? Huh? Grace, tell me.”
Her brother asked in frustration, but Grace kept her mouth shut.
‘They say I’m hesitant to kill the enemy and want to throw me away because I’m a lousy revolutionary army.’
If she said such a thing, even her brother might abandon her as well. The magazine Jimmy gave her to help her get better wasn’t helpful at all.
[ Major Richard Winston’s funeral held amid national mourning ]
Tragedy in the Winston family. The execution of key rebel figures coincided with the funeral. The eldest son of Major Winston, who follows in the footsteps of his father, who died an honorable death, carried on the fight to wipe out rebels.
Flipping through the text that made her head spin, she threw down the magazine. As the magazine fell to the floor and opened, Grace screamed. In the black-and-white photo that took up a page, the boy was staring straight at Grace.
‘…You tricked me. You killed my father. I liked you, how could you do this to me?’
“No. It’s not my fault. Don’t look at me like that!”
That boy’s father deserved to die… He must be a bad boy, too. All the dirty monarchy pigs are the same.
If she didn’t believe that the boy was bad, she had to believe that her parents were bad instead.
To Grace, her parents were gods. Hell was the only place for souls abandoned by God to go.
“We promise to make everyone’s life equal and prosperous… for the sake of the cause… for the sake of the cause… That utopia feeds on the blood of the revolutionary army and grows and bears fruit…fruit…”
The teachings of the village elders greatly helped Grace deceive herself.
They had lived as a devoted revolutionary army in line with the cause they speak of. Her mother, who wanted to abandon her, couldn’t help but be proud of her. And, to hide past mistakes of falling in love with an enemy…
It was a secret she hadn’t told anyone until she was ordered to infiltrate Winston.
“A new maid?”
“Yes. Nice to meet you, Captain. My name is Sally Bristol. I was assigned to the annex this time.”
The boy she met again as an adult was a very different person.
“Now we have one more person, I can turn the torture chamber into a sea of blood to my heart’s content.”
…A bloodthirsty demon.
She no longer had to fool herself. It was easy to hate the boy who had become a bad person, just like the words she had memorized, like a mantra.
The boy, like the girl, had risen from hatred.
“Everyone will….going to die…”
The day he fell in love for the first time and the day he lost his heart, he lost his father, who was the only one on his side, terribly. It was a tragedy that even an adult could not handle thuogh now, in a house without his side, no one was interested in the shock the boy received.
“Since you are the eldest son, you will follow in your father’s footsteps…”
“You have to take revenge on behalf of your father…”
The boy, like the girl, suffered from guilt that was not supposed to be his part. Perhaps, he could have prevented his father’s death. At that time, he should have stopped his father and gone home with him…
That woman in the passenger seat was a rebel. After learning the woman’s identity, Leon developed a habit of observing blonde women closely.
‘If caught, I will kill you. I’ll have you pay the same for what you did to father.’
Eventually, he came to hate all blonde women. And that hatred soon spread to all women.
…All women were beasts. They were cunning snakes and greedy sows.
“You looked like a prince just a moment ago.”
“Dirty pig!”
Whispering sweet words to seduce men, and when the men were no longer useful, they suddenly change and pour out cruel words.
His mother was no less abominable.
“My husband lost his life while being loyal to the royal family. Still, the price is only a posthumous promotion to lieutenant colonel… How bitter he must be in heaven, how pitiful Leon, who lost his father at a young age and became the head of the household,?huhuu…”
Even his father’s death was only a means to obtain a title for his mother.
She pretended to love and respect his father in front of others. After asking for favors here and there, she finally failed to obtain a title and sobbed in front of the nobles and military officials gathered at the funeral.
The tears she had at his father’s death were not a tear shed in sorrow… they were tears of mourning for her, who had been reduced to the titleless ‘Widowed Lady Winston.’
‘…Did my father die for this?’
As he stabbed the awl, red liquid spurted out and soaked his hand. He was strangely not disgusted.
Leon took a deep breath.
It felt like the sharp smell of his blood filled his lungs and penetrated his brain. Strangely, when he smelled his blood, the anxiety that had plagued him all day disappeared. The more this happened, the more his father’s cruel last look, which did not disappear even if he closed his eyes or opened his eyes, became more and more dull.
Soon, birds and rats began to be found dead every day in miserable conditions in Winston’s residence, Mrs. Winston sent her eldest son to the military academy several years early.
It was fortunate that he attended the military academy where cruelty was a virtue. Despite committing countless things that would have made him feel expelled at a normal school, Leon graduated at the top of his class.
The “Vampire of Camden,” a notoriety reserved for serial killers, was an honor for a military officer.
People said he was a born soldier, but Leon knew it… He knew he was a monster. Not only that but people didn’t know this either…
The fact that Captain Winston, who seemed to have nothing to fear, suffered from nightmares.
“Dirty pig!”
The devil that appeared in each of his nightmares gleamed with blue contempt and smelled of blood.
