No Love For The Villain - Chapter 31
“Do you think that man is some prince on a white horse? That man came to ruin your life. He’s just looking for a good time. How do you think he’ll dump you? He’ll leave you behind like a bare branch after the grapes have been stripped off.”
Daniel poured out cruel words.
“How lonely and miserable will you be, all alone? What could you possibly do on your own?”
He filled her chest with anxiety and her mind with the fear of being left alone.
“Stay by my side, Sierra.”
Daniel’s whispering voice wound around her ear like a spider’s web. Leaving this heavenly home would be hell. He made her believe that. He made her fear being alone.
But.
‘Speak, Sierra.’
She wanted to hear the voice from the other end of the phone again. If she could reconnect the severed call, like piecing together his torn face.
Again, just once more.
As Daniel pulled her toward him, Sierra twisted her body. The more she struggled against the arm wrapped around her waist, the tighter it squeezed.
“Let go of me. Let me go. Please, stop it, Daniel. Me…!”
Her voice cut off, choked for air. The more she tried to tear away, the tighter he clung, as if they were one body.
Daniel’s arm wrapped around her body was like an inescapable spider’s leg. The insect that fed on the fear of being alone was biting the girl long trapped in the spiderweb called ‘family.’
“If I let you go, you’ll just run to that man, won’t you? Father told me to watch over you carefully. He said your mind is fragile. I’m trying to help you, Sierra! Don’t make me tell Father everything.”
Daniel’s ragged breathing stuck to her neck, clammy. Sierra flailed, like a final struggle to break the spiderweb.
Shattered glass crunched under her shoe. The sharp edges gleamed threateningly. Threatening as if it could cut through anything, even the tough strands of the web.
Instead, Sierra pulled Daniel down with her as she fell to the floor. The two, stuck together as one body, collapsed simultaneously.
Glass pierced and skin was scraped. Sierra was accustomed to pain. It even felt less painful than the Pastor’s whippings.
“Ahh!”
But Daniel, who had never been beaten, screamed as he was cut by the glass.
Freed from Daniel’s grip, Sierra endured the pain in her injured knee and got up. Glass deeply embedded in the palm pushing off the floor dug in and then pulled out. Her palm was torn, like a wound from a nail being pulled out.
Daniel, still flailing, grabbed Sierra’s coat. Sierra, clutching her wounded palm, frantically pulled her arms out of the old coat. She shed the coat and ran out the door.
“Sierra!”
Daniel, left clinging to the ownerless coat, shouted, but Sierra didn’t look back as she ran.
She burst out of the church like someone fleeing the jaws of a beast about to be devoured. She ran through the emptied streets, with everyone still inside the church.
There is a moment when, if you run fast enough, you get the illusion your body becomes light.
A moment when you’re not out of breath, you forget the pain in your legs, a moment when your chest feels like it might burst and you die, a moment of freedom.
Faster, more, even more…
At the moment when death seemed within reach, a light speeding toward the church from the other end of the road stabbed her eyes.
It was a car’s headlights. The car, which had been speeding as if to collide, stopped with the sharp sound of tires scraping against the ground.
The winter air was cold, and her legs, having run as if to die, lost the strength to hold on. Staggering, Sierra collapsed.
Her vision was entirely white light, and she couldn’t see her surroundings. She only heard the sound of a car door opening and footsteps. A man approached, cutting through the light.
Jet-black hair fluttered vividly before the headlights.
〈Angels wear the faces of the weak, and demons arrive wearing the faces of angels.>
She thought of her father’s words. A beautiful man arrives wearing the face of an angel, so he must be evil. But since both saviors and villains come at your weakest moment, you can’t tell them apart.
Sierra looked up at Eli, who had stopped before her.
“How… did you get here?”
“Easily.”
The low voice that had been cut off on the other end of the line now reached her again.
“The hymn.”
At his single word, Sierra recalled the hymn echoing before the call was cut.
“Angels would be in heaven, or in a church.”
The Angel of the Red House. He remembered Isaac’s drawing.
Eli slid his arms under Sierra’s knees and lifted her up.
“Where were you so desperate to go that you ran out here without a coat?”
No matter how fast she ran, her feet, which had always been bound to the ground, now floated in the air. Sierra rested her fallen head on Eli’s shoulder.
“I wanted to go to you…”
The embrace that wrapped around her shoulders, shivering from the cold, felt as tender as a painless death.
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