No Love For The Villain - Chapter 47
“Stay still.”
She was already staying still, and yet he told her to stay still.
Sierra felt wronged—but she stayed still anyway, until Eli finished applying the ointment and sticking on the bandage.
He had put on too much ointment, so the bandage wouldn’t stick properly and hung loose.
“You used too much.”
“That’s because your knees are too small.”
“Isn’t it because your hands are too big?”
As they blamed each other, Sierra noticed that Eli’s hands were slick with ointment.
He rubbed his fingertips together, as if unfamiliar with the sensation.
Has he never applied ointment before?
In any case, he was a strange person.
Treating someone was unfamiliar to him, just as being treated was unfamiliar to Sierra.
After hesitating, Sierra held out her hand to him.
When she revealed the wound she had wanted to hide, he applied ointment to her palm as well.
As his slick fingers touched her, it already felt as though the wound had healed.
With a careful, almost serious expression, Eli placed a bandage on her palm.
No matter how meticulously he applied it, the bandage lifted each time she clenched and opened her hand.
Sierra quietly looked down at her palm.
She thought the bandage felt like his mark—
as if, even after he was gone, whenever she looked at the bandage, she would remember the man who had applied ointment to her wounds.
She hoped it would stay on for a long time.
Sierra pressed the bandage firmly into place.
While watching Eli put the disinfectant and ointment back into the first-aid kit, she secretly took one of the bandages that had fallen onto the blanket.
Before Eli, unaware that a bandage had been stolen, could close the kit, she grabbed his hand.
Sierra placed the bandage on the back of his hand.
Eli looked down at it, narrowing his eyes slightly.
“I’m not hurt.”
“Just… keep it on.”
She wanted him, too, to think of her whenever he saw the bandage on his hand.
Instead of saying that out loud, Sierra pressed it down firmly.
Eli stared at the bandage stuck to the back of his hand.
His expression was the same as when he looked at Twinkie—as if wondering what exactly this was supposed to be. Sierra had learned how to read the expressions of a man who was usually indifferent.
Bothered by the thing dangling from his hand, Eli touched the edge of it with his fingertips.
Before he could peel it off, Sierra pressed it down again.
“Don’t take it off.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s pretty.”
“The bandage?”
“Your hand.”
A nonsensical exchange passed between them.
Eli still looked like he didn’t quite understand, but without removing the bandage, he closed the first-aid kit.
Sierra imagined her trace remaining on his beautiful hand for a long time.
Even after he left Stelgia, even after he went far away to Newland—her mark would still remain.
It was a sad and yet happy thought.
So he mustn’t take it off.
Even if he couldn’t understand why.
Eli wiped the remaining ointment from his hands with the towel.
Sierra kept watching the man who seemed as though he might leave far, far away.
“Hey…”
“What.”
Even in that indifferent, almost bothered tone, he answered her every time.
“That drawing… can I draw it?”
The man, who had been frowning at the ointment that wouldn’t wipe off, lifted his head.
His gaze struck sharply for an instant.
Even if that sharpness was meant for the ointment, it still made her shrink.
Sierra avoided his eyes and only fidgeted with the bandage on her palm.
“You. I want to draw you.”
Sierra corrected the lie she had told about not wanting to draw. A brief silence filled the room.
“Should I take off my clothes?”
The low voice broke the silence. Sierra, hurriedly answering before the passionate nude model could be exposed, said,
“No. I’ll keep my clothes on.”
Then she heard a soft, exhaled laugh. She looked up and realized once again that it was a playful joke, a mischievous tease.
Ah, that smile.
Sierra wanted to hold onto that smile before it disappeared. She picked up her sketchbook and pencil and began drawing the face she had etched in her mind onto the blank page.
The fear given by the man with those terrifying eyes acted like a veil, masking what was beautiful. But if she didn’t avert her gaze, the veil lifted.
Sierra could see things that those who had fled could not. The lines capturing the upward tilt of his eyes flowed smoothly like water.
His lips were the color of ripe pomegranate—red as the fruit that had bound Persephone to the underworld for the sin of a single bite.
The black lines, once aimless and chaotic, gradually formed a beautiful face. Eyes sharp yet softening, a graceful jawline, lips curling into a dangerously playful smile.
The sorrow that had nowhere to go became him, and the aching loneliness became him.
The destinations she had wanted to leave in life, and the dangerous hopes that made her want to stay in life—they all took the shape of him.
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