Chapter 35

The Earl, faced with the daughter he was seeing for the first time, did nothing but smoke his cigar as though troubled. He did not care even when his young daughter broke into coughs from the acrid smoke. Rather, the sight only made him frown more deeply.

Just as Yvonne was about to ask whether she was now going with her father, another man asked the Earl.

“What shall we do with this child.”

“Here, clean up every trace of this filthy mess and take her.”

“You mean to bring her to the Earldom?”

“Have you gone mad. If I took that thing there, my wife and daughter would raise hell.”

At the sudden bark, Yvonne flinched. The man called her father shouting like that was frightening, but the words wife and daughter rang inside her head.

Does Father have another family.

“Find some suitable house, have her taught a little there. In a few years, I’ll choose some decent man with money and sell her off.”

The Earl, puffing on his cigar as though sighing, took in the face of the daughter he was seeing for the first time in eight years after siring her.

“She takes after her mother, so at least her face is pretty enough.”

With a look of deep annoyance, the Earl came to his conclusion without the slightest hesitation.

The instant she heard that, fear seized her all at once.

To be sold off was a phrase used very commonly in Operen. Rachel had repeatedly warned her never to go out alone, saying there were vile groups who seized street children and made them do labor, and others who sold them as slaves to foreign countries.

Remembering that, Yvonne thought it was certain that her father intended to sell her to such a place, and she stepped back.

“I don’t want to go.”

“And what if a brat like you doesn’t want to! What are you doing? Grab her already.”

The rough hand of the man who had received the Earl’s order clamped hard around Yvonne’s wrist. When she resisted with all her strength to shake him off, the man simply hoisted her up. It was no use kicking and struggling or pinching the arm holding her.

Mother.

Over the Earl’s shoulder, she saw white cloth being drawn over her mother’s face. The tears she had been holding back burst out all at once.

The Earl looked over the things inside with utter disgust in his eyes, then gave a cold order.

“Deal with it somehow, or burn it all.”

Watching the paintings her mother had made, the canvases, and the brushes being stuffed into boxes in bunches like garbage, Yvonne cried and cried.

“I’m leaving first, so deal with the rest yourselves.”

As though he could not bear to stay here another moment, the Earl climbed into the carriage and left. Even at that young age, the sorrow she felt from the coldness of the man called her father only made tears pour endlessly.

It was then that the man carrying Yvonne turned his head toward his companions, who had roughly finished tidying up.

‘Remember this. When someone lets their guard down because you have no strength, you have to gather enough strength to run as if your life depends on it.’

Rachel had been a wise woman, and in such a rough neighborhood, she knew well by instinct what a woman had to beware of and prepare for in order to survive.

It was an era when nobles mad for pleasure, using their wealth, did not hesitate to do things far beyond the bounds of common sense. Among them were those who bought children to satisfy vile desires or to t*rture them in search of grotesque thrills. In Operen alone, there were several groups that regularly kidnapped children and sold them to such rich nobles whose lives had become dull.

So while Rachel had held her young daughter close, she had not raised her by shielding her from everything. She had taught her what to do if she got lost, and how to act if a stranger tried to take her away by force.

At some point, Yvonne had stopped crying completely. The instant the man stretched out his arm to load her into the cart, she bit down hard on the back of his hand.

“Aagh! Has this little b*tch gone mad?”

The startled man jumped, and the strength left the hand gripping Yvonne’s waist.

In that gap, Yvonne slipped free and ran without thinking. She heard shouting behind her, but she covered her ears with both hands and kept running.

* * *

For several days, Yvonne wandered the streets without eating a proper meal. Looking back now, it had been extremely dangerous, but whether by luck or not, she was never caught by the frightening men said to take little children.

During that time, Yvonne used her small body to hide only in narrow alleys and abandoned houses. When she was hungry, she lingered near shops and ate the hard bread she sometimes managed to get. When there was a loud noise, she fled that place at once.

At that time, there was only one thought in her mind.

“I absolutely must not get caught.”

Operen was a place where it was common for parents themselves to sell their own young children for money. In a place where there was no moral sense that parents should not sell their children, Yvonne understood the Earl’s words about selling her in exactly that way.

Even while running and hiding like that, at night she would sit in a corner by a wall, cover her mouth with both hands, and cry.

She wanted to go to her mother right away. But where could she even look?

Still holding onto that faint hope, she could not go far and just kept circling that neighborhood.

One day, after wandering for about two weeks with no one to care for her. That day too, just as always, the frightening men sent by the Earl found Yvonne and rushed at her.

“Hey! She’s over there.”

Recognizing the face of the man whose hand she had bitten, Yvonne darted quickly deeper into the alley. But where she reached was a dead end.

“D*mn it. Where did she go this time!”

Terrified by the adults’ shouting behind her, Yvonne looked around, then secretly crawled into a house with a broken window.

Then she drew her knees up and crouched in the shadow cast by the corner of the wall, holding her breath. Her heart pounded wildly at the sound of the men’s footsteps searching for her.

She waited without even breathing too loudly until full darkness had fallen. At some point, it seemed she had dozed off. When she opened her eyes, some boy was looking down at her.

“Huh, boss! There’s some little squirt here.”

At the voice, similar to the son of Madam Verona next door, Yvonne slightly raised her head, and at the many shadows visible behind the boy, she jumped to her feet.

Just as she tried to run away through the window, a strong hand suddenly seized her shoulder and dragged her back. By the time Yvonne landed hard on the floor and looked up, several children were standing in front of her.

They were Operen orphans. In Operen there were many children who had drifted in because of war, or who had been abandoned by their parents. Such children usually lived together to avoid being seized by gangs, and she vaguely remembered having heard that they managed to survive somehow even without adult help.

When Yvonne stared at them with wary eyes, the tallest boy, the one they called boss, asked,

“Hey, are you an orphan?”

“I’m not an orphan!”

When she shouted back, the children frowned and covered their ears.

“How can someone so tiny be this loud?”

“You barged into someone else’s house, and now you’re the one yelling!”

While all the children, girls and boys alike, grumbled in irritation, the boy called boss snickered as if something amused him.

“For a little squirt, you’ve got quite the temper. Hey, you got no home?”

“……”

“You alone?”

“……”

When she pressed her lips shut, the boy folded his arms, looking as though he were thinking something over. One of the children beside him tugged at his sleeve.

“Boss. She’s too young. She won’t be able to do proper work.”

“That’s true, but…. With that size, even if chimneys are too hard, wouldn’t she be able to move around sewers well?”

“She looks more like she’d get lost than move around cleverly. If you mean the sewer in front of Uncle Tom’s bakery, then no way. She’d get swept right through to the outlet.”

“Then what about having her clean here? There are more chores now that we’ve got another mouth.”

The children discussed it among themselves for a long while with Yvonne right in front of them. The glances they kept sneaking at her made her uncomfortable, but perhaps because they were not large adults, they were not frightening enough for her to bolt at once.

Only after quite some time had passed did the boy called boss come over and abruptly ask,

“If you’ve got nowhere to go, want to live here with us?”

She hated the idea. All she wanted was to go to her mother right away. But she did not even know where to go. And besides, after days of exhaustion and hunger, her body no longer had the strength left to run.

At the very least, would it not be better to stay with these children than to be caught by those frightening men and sold off somewhere strange.

After thinking for a long while, Yvonne finally nodded. Then the children, who had been curt only moments before, cheered that they had a new member.

After that, Yvonne lived with twenty children in an abandoned house with holes all through the walls. Broken bricks lay scattered everywhere and only half the roof remained, but the two-story building was quite large, so even with that many people living there together, there was no real problem.

When rainwater dripped through the cracks in the walls, the very first task Yvonne was given was to bring buckets and collect the water.

The children, mostly between ten and sixteen years old, survived by begging outside or pooling together the money they earned from shining shoes and relying on one another.

At first, Yvonne kept her lips sealed and only did the things she was told, but little by little, as she began speaking with the other children, she came to exchange all sorts of conversations with them.

“Your mom? You said she didn’t move for several days. Then she’s dead.”

When, in answer to the question of how she had ended up here, Yvonne said that someday she was going to go find her mother, the boy called boss said that.

That night, Yvonne flew into a rage and rushed at him, and cried all through the night as if wailing her heart out. And the next day, it suddenly struck her.

That from now on, she truly had to live alone.

Even so, she had no desire to go to the man called her father. The very fact that that man, who had not shown even the slightest grief for her mother, was her father was horrifying enough.

Every day was full of news of war from neighboring countries. She was poor and life was hard, but it was still livable.

Even Yvonne, who had hovered at the edge for a while, gradually came to blend into the communal life of the group of about twenty children.