There was no sound from inside.

Had the woman finally died?

Erica unconsciously imagined Roderick’s back view, sunk in despair. While anger surged within her, she also felt a petty sense of glee.

She hoped Roderick had loved that woman. So he could suffer from the same sense of loss that she felt. That would feel like revenge.

But on the other hand, she felt disgusted with herself for wishing someone’s death to become her revenge.

‘Erica, don’t become such a beast.’

Erica stood in front of the door for a moment to collect herself.

‘What sin could that woman have committed?’

That woman, like herself, had probably been deceived without knowing anything. Only Roderick was the bad one.

Erica quietly prayed for the woman’s eternal rest and luck for the child who had lost her mother as soon as she was born, then brought her hand to the back of her neck. The thin chain broke instantly. What hung from the chain like a pendant was a ring wrapped in cloth.

‘What was his intention in giving this? Bait? Compensation?’

Whatever the meaning, Erica had no reason to keep this ring anymore.

Thank you. I was sad whenever I reminisced about you, but now I have no reason to be. Thank you, you trash. Thanks to you, I can forget you without any lingering attachment or guilt.

Erica pushed the ring through the gap under the door and turned away.

* * *

This was no time for this.

Roderick barely swallowed his despair and got up. He covered the woman who had passed away as if in deep sleep with a sheet and laid the baby in a basket.

Now it was time to speak to Erica before it was too late.

He paused as he was about to open the door. A thin chain with a cloth bundle had fallen at his feet. This object hadn’t been there just before.

“Erica!”

After picking up and opening the cloth bundle, he turned pale and rushed outside. She was nowhere to be found in the inn. The owner said Erica had left with her mule just moments ago.

Out into the heavy snowstorm.

He immediately went out to follow her, but her mule’s tracks were already buried in the snow. It wasn’t just the tracks that were invisible. Standing in the snowfall that was so heavy he could barely see in front of him, Roderick shouted until his voice cracked.

“Erica!”

There was no answer. Just as he took a step toward the path leading down the mountain, assuming she wouldn’t try to cross the mountain range in this weather, he heard a loud baby cry from behind him.

“Ugh……”

At that moment, Roderick clutched his left chest and fell to his knees. This freezing pain wasn’t from the snow burying him. In the pain that gripped his ankle, preventing him from getting even an inch closer to Erica, he finally acknowledged.

What he once believed to be fortune was actually a curse.

* * *

As the sun peeked over the distant mountains, the city that had been in deep sleep began to wake.

People preparing for their daily routines from early morning began to emerge one by one from every corner of the streets where sunlight spread like branches, and white smoke rose from chimneys that stood in strange shapes as if about to collapse.

In a peripheral area of the city, four-story buildings standing shoulder to shoulder on narrow land between stone paths were just beginning to be tinged with morning sunlight.

“Aack!”

A scream erupted from the third-floor bedroom of the twisted building in the middle.

“Eric!”

The owner of the scream was Erica, who greeted another refreshing morning by taking her four-year-old son’s foot to her chin.

When she sat up abruptly, she found that the child, whom she had definitely laid down straight when going to sleep, was sleeping upside down. How on earth could one toss and turn in a way that precisely reversed the positions of head and feet?

“How do you do this every day?”

The child, who was groggily getting up, laughed gleefully holding his stomach. His hair looked like a magpie’s nest.

“That’s a talent if anything is.”

“Right, people need to have talents.”

Well, well. He even repeated what Erica habitually said.

“Aigoo, you’re so good with words.”

In truth, it was fortunate that he spoke well. This child had struggled with speaking until he was two years old, causing no small amount of worry.

Then, after turning two, he suddenly started spewing words non-stop as if a motor had been installed in his mouth.

But couldn’t you tone it down a bit, son?

“This toothpaste doesn’t taste good.”

Eric grumbled as he put a lump of Erica’s homemade toothpaste on a toothbrush made of twigs and stiff animal hair.

“I reeeally liked the strawberry flavor from last time.”

“I took out the strawberry flavor because you kept swallowing it. Hurry up and brush your teeth.”

“But strawberry is so goo……”

“Talk after brushing your teeth.”

Who would have thought the day would come when she’d have to tell him not to talk?

“Chk-chk.”

“That’s right, chika-chika.”

While the child brushed his teeth, she combed his hair that stuck out in all directions. Then she changed his clothes and changed her own. She didn’t forget to put a cheap ring on the ring finger of her left hand, and preparations were complete.

These preparations were for going out to gather ingredients for breakfast.

The child, about to put on the neatly arranged shoes at the entrance, mumbled.

“The shoes are backards.”

“It’s ‘backwards’.”

“Backards.”

“Backwards.”

“Yes, that’s what I said, backwards.”

“When did you say that?”

Look at this little rascal. He laughed, holding his stomach and going “kyahaha,” perhaps deliberately trying to tease his mother. Then he switched the left and right shoes that were placed in reverse, put them together, and this time smiled proudly.

“Bread complete!”

On the inside of the shoes was an embroidered long loaf of bread. When put together, the bread connected into one.

It was a picture sewn on the inside of the shoes for Eric, who often confused left and right. Who would have thought that a parenting tip she had seen while browsing the internet in her past life would come in handy one day?

Actually, at first she had embroidered a cute puppy face, but…

“Waaah, the doggy got cut!”

There had been an unfortunate incident where she had to change it to bread because he cried loudly, saying the puppy was pitiful.

The two put on their shoes and went outside. The corridor was filled with the strong smell of food and faint voices.

This four-story building housed a total of five families, including the attic. There was another home opposite Erica’s on the third floor, but it had been empty since last month.

“Erica, are there any people looking for a room?”

The landlady, whom they met on the second floor, asked the same question today.

“As I’ve told you many times, regrettably, I don’t know anyone here.”

The landlady, still unaccustomed to the formal speech that seemed fit for a royal court, blinked her eyes for a moment.

“I mean, ask if any of your customers are looking. Tell them it’s perfect for someone raising a child alone, like you.”

“Yes, I will.”

After responding with the same lack of sincerity as always, she entered the shop on the first floor. As soon as she opened the door, a strong herbal smell poured out.

This place, with small medicine bottles and packets displayed on wall shelves, was Erica’s small apothecary.

In the countryside, Erica had done well as the only midwife, but in the big city, there were many midwives and competition was fierce. Moreover, competing with midwives who had established trust over decades, no, generations, was as impossible as breaking a rock with an egg.

If there were a new restaurant with 5 stars but only ten reviews and another with 4.5 stars but over a thousand reviews, wouldn’t most people choose the second restaurant?

For this reason, midwifery work didn’t come in easily, and Erica hadn’t been able to establish herself for several years.

So, as a desperate measure, she started making and selling medicine, but the apothecary business was also competitive and didn’t do particularly well. She barely managed to keep going because a few regular customers who had experienced the efficacy of her medicines continued to visit.

‘The herbs are running out, but if I buy herbs, I can’t pay next month’s rent, and if I pay the rent, I can’t buy herbs. If I can’t buy herbs, I can’t earn money for the following month’s rent. What am I supposed to do?’

Though she never showed it in front of her child, Erica was currently in dire straits. Raising a child alone without money in this backward place with no welfare was an excruciatingly difficult task.

‘Give me back my peaceful healing life.’

That’s not to say she wanted to go back to the time before Eric. Even if she went back to that time, she would have become someone’s mother anyway due to societal pressure, and if she had to be a mother, she wanted to be this child’s mother.

“Eggs are delicious whether you fry them, boil them, or roll them. But cracking them isn’t tasty.”

“That’s because you can’t taste them if you crack them.”

Erica stroked the head of the child who was bouncing in front of the back door of the shop, expounding on his praise for eggs, and smiled contentedly.

‘I should have given birth to him when I was a chaebol in modern Korea.’

It’s impossible, but she often thinks about it. Then Eric would have enjoyed everything in abundance, and Erica wouldn’t have needed to fry and boil eggs with her own hands every day. She wouldn’t have needed to raise chickens herself either.

“Go, egg hunter!”

When she shouted, opening the door wide, Eric shot out into the small backyard like a hunting dog. Or perhaps like a sheep that had been confined to a barn all winter and was finally let out to pasture.

Hands-off parenting. That was actually Erica’s parenting principle.

It was as if she was rebelling against her past life’s childhood, which had been shackled by the duties of an heir. If there was one good thing about this world, it was the absence of interference and competition regarding how to raise children.

“Cluck cluck. Cluck cluck cluck.”

Eric opened the chicken coop door in the backyard and greeted the chickens in ‘chicken language.’ The chickens, afraid of having their eggs stolen, sat firmly on the straw, not budging an inch, and stared at Eric with eyes full of wariness.

Whoosh.