No Love For The Villain - vanish into fiction

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After repeatedly wetting the cloth and wiping his body, Daniel’s fever finally broke. His breathing grew calm as well. Sierra picked up the water basin to change the water. On her way to the bathroom, she glanced toward the front door.

‘I’ll come again tomorrow, so stay home. Don’t go anywhere.’

The voice of the man who had promised this came to mind.

But the doorbell did not ring. No one came to visit. Perhaps it was still too early in the morning.

Habits are not easily broken. Waiting had become Sierra’s habit. And she had learned, while waiting for a father who never returned, that the things you wait for often never come.

She wanted to stop waiting. But as long as she stayed in that house, waiting for him would never end.

Sierra went to the bathroom and emptied the basin. Returning to her room, she changed her clothes. She took out all the clothes from her wardrobe, leaving only the man’s coat behind.

She left the Red House. Her dresses, clutched in her arms, fluttered behind her as she ran, fleeing from the endless waiting.

Her ill-fitting, loose shoes kept slipping off her heels, clinging to her like shackles. Just as a shoe was about to come off completely, she kicked it away without looking back. The other shoe soon followed. Barefoot, she ran across the cold ground. The chill rising from the soles of her feet felt more honest than the stifling warmth of the house.

I, Sierra, found myself thinking of that man. The man who had put my fallen shoe back on.

As if stamping out the memory to erase it, I hurriedly shoved my feet back into the shoes. But they still slipped off easily. The cold feel of the leather glove remained on my ankle the entire time.

Sierra stopped before a small house surrounded by a low fence in the shadow of the mountain.

That was where Miriam, the unmarried mother, lived. The village people treated a woman who got pregnant out of wedlock as if she were a ghost. No one spoke to her casually or went near her. Miriam couldn’t even set foot in the church. It was the price for her sin of impurity.

No one knew who the father of the child was, but people believed he must have been a traveler who committed adultery and fled the village. They found it impossible to believe such wickedness could have been born and raised on the soil of Stelsia.

But after her father’s death, Sierra often thought of Miriam.

As her father’s letter said, whenever she missed him, Sierra would visit Miriam and her child, unbeknownst to the pastor.

Sierra pushed open the unlocked gate of the old fence. Hearing the sound of the gate opening, the child ran out.

“Mom, the angel from the Red House is here!”

The child’s clear voice rang out brightly.

Sierra carefully embraced the child who ran into her arms. The little one seemed so fragile she was afraid to hold on too tightly. Sensing this, the child hugged her back fiercely, as if to reassure Sierra’s own anxious heart.

In the distance, Miriam stood with a faint smile. Holding the child’s hand, Sierra walked toward the mother and showed her what she had brought.

“I had many clothes I don’t wear anymore, so I brought them. Since the weather is cold, I thought you might need them…”

Sierra was lying. It had been a long time since she had bought new clothes. There weren’t many left in her wardrobe now. Like someone whose day of death was set.

The child’s mother took the clothes with a bright laugh.

“Thank you.”

Sierra felt as if that smiling face was a substitute for the laughter she herself had lost. So, even if she was left with nothing, she wanted to give it all away.

The child twirled around, swimming in the oversized clothes.

“Mom, isn’t it pretty, like a princess’s dress?”

The child laughed gleefully, spinning until she tripped over her own feet and fell. Sierra, startled, rushed over and helped the child up. The child playfully fiddled with Sierra’s golden hair.