Chapter 5
“Stir it well so the honey blends properly with the powder.”
Sophia’s voice was thick with irritation.
Although Sophia effectively ran the orphanage, the property itself belonged to Shiloh. She knew all too well that if she failed to produce results impressive enough to catch his eye, she would soon be stripped of her position. Dark bruises marred the area between her eyelids and cheekbones—likely from being beaten by Shiloh the night before.
“You need to cover the bruises around your eyes properly.”
As Sophia began chewing on her long fingernails, Freya grew anxious as well.
If I mess up, I might get beaten.
At times like this, Sophia was exceptionally sensitive and unforgiving of even the smallest mistake. With trembling hands, Freya applied the powder, then painted Sophia’s lips with a mixture of honey and pigment. Reflected in the mirror was a boy crouched in the corner of the bedroom—the very child Freya had saved. He was reading something written on thick paper, occasionally jotting something down.
So this is what ‘helping Sophia’ means…
There was nothing enviable about it.
From what she could tell, the boy spent most of his days like this. He didn’t mingle with anyone and rarely spoke. Watching him, Freya was reminded of a cat that used to live near the storage shed in the courtyard. The yellow cat’s fur glowed reddish in the sunlight. At first, it never let her come close. When Freya—who had nothing—occasionally brought bones or scraps of fish she’d found on the road, the cat would primly appear, snatch them up, and vanish again.
“Come here.”
At Sophia’s command, the boy crawled weakly toward her. Sophia tossed several sheets of paper at him.
“Finish all of this before I get back.”
Sophia treated the boy like an animal rather than a human being. He ate off the floor and slept curled up in a corner.
This makes me uncomfortable.
If he’d been left in the courtyard, he would surely have died—but living like this in Sophia’s bedroom didn’t seem much better. Once Sophia hurried out on urgent business, the boy crawled back into the corner. His already pale face looked even more bloodless from never seeing the light.
Perhaps it was a sense of responsibility toward someone she had saved. Maybe it was just pointless meddling—but Freya couldn’t simply ignore him.
“Hey. Come here.”
She spoke, but he didn’t respond. Freya wanted to get the boy out of this room, which reeked of Sophia’s perfume and poisonous words. When she raised her voice a little, the boy finally lifted his head from the documents. His eyes were unfocused, dull.
“……”
“Let’s go to the attic.”
Something about the word attic seemed to appeal to him; the boy stood up. The two of them carefully looked around and slipped into the attic unnoticed. Once seated, Freya pulled out the paper she had wrapped cookies in. A few days earlier, Sophia—unusually cheerful—had given them to her. The paper, soaked with cookie grease, released a sweet smell the moment she unfolded it. Freya broke it in half and offered one piece to the boy.
“Eat this.”
But the boy didn’t reach out easily, his face filled with wariness. Freya understood his reaction perfectly. There were no people here who showed kindness without reason. Perhaps she herself was no different from the others in the orphanage.
“You don’t have to worry.”
She decided to be honest.
“I’m the one who saved you in the courtyard. So it’s okay to eat the cookie.”
She kept to herself the thought that she wasn’t sure whether that had really been the right thing to do. When she offered the cookie again, the boy crept closer and slowly reached out his hand.
“Ah… so you’re my benefactor.”
His voice sounded slightly different from before, but Freya dismissed it as her imagination.
“Yeah. I guess so. If you want to call it that.”
“Your name is Freya?”
The boy, whom she thought was quiet, showed noticeable curiosity toward her.
“Yeah. What’s your name?”
“…Call me Luss.”
Freya thought the name suited him perfectly—it matched the boy, who reminded her of a cat she had once seen. From the day they exchanged names, the two slowly grew closer.
“This is your name.”
Luss could read—where he’d learned, she didn’t know—and whenever he had time, he taught Freya little by little.
“Luss, how do you write your name?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
Through Luss, Freya heard stories of the outside world. There had been many wars, he said. And in the Morsiani Empire, there was an aging king and two princes.
“So the crown prince becomes the next king, right?”
When Freya tilted her head and asked, Luss clenched his fist and made a strange expression.
“That’s how it’s supposed to be… but no one really knows yet.”
“Oh… I see.”
Truthfully, Freya couldn’t care less whether the first prince or the second would wear the crown. All she could see was Luss in front of her, pale and soft like cake.
“Even if I don’t know much, I bet you’re prettier than either prince, Luss.”
Freya’s sparkling eyes reflected fully in Luss’s gaze.
Even to Freya—who barely understood what beauty meant—Luss was undeniably beautiful. She even wondered if that was why even Sophia hesitated to strike him. But the compliment didn’t seem to please him. His delicate face twisted into a frown, and he spoke seriously.
“Being called ‘pretty’ isn’t a compliment for a boy, is it?”
“A boy? You?”
For the first time in ages, Freya clutched her stomach and rolled on the floor laughing. Luss looked no older than eight. More than anything, he was just too cute and lovable.
“Luss, your noona is almost thirteen.”
Luss looked deeply troubled and let out a long sigh.
“Freya… actually, there’s something about me.”
He seemed like he had something to say, but soon dropped his head.
Finding this far too amusing, Freya decided to tease him further.
“Sure, sure. Let’s say you’re actually a hundred years old and under a spell. That works, right?”
“Freya. How did you know?”
When Luss lifted his head with a surprisingly serious expression, she burst into laughter again.
“What is it, Luss? You still believe things like that? You’re adorable.”
Freya thought that although Luss could read, he was still just a child like Lottie. When he got angry, he looked like a cat with its fur standing on end. The child she once shared a piece of bread with had the same golden-colored hair. A cat that always appeared somewhere the moment she heard Freya’s footsteps.
“So soft.”
Lost in that image, Freya unconsciously reached out and patted Luss’s head.
Luss is really strange.
Even dressed in tattered orphanage clothes, he carried an air of refinement. His blond hair gleamed even in the dark, and his large, clear eyes added to his presence. Gazing into his mysterious eyes, Freya nodded to herself.
“Freya. What’s with that look?”
“Hm. You’re just really cat-like.”
“Like a delicate, beautiful cat?”
Though his voice was very quiet, it was clear he wasn’t pleased. Freya quickly withdrew her hand and apologized.
“I’m sorry. If that was rude.”
“With you, it’s fine. It feels… cleansing.”
“Cleansing…?”
The word was too difficult; Freya tilted her head in confusion. Through the dim light, Luss smiled gently.
At some point, the youngest children in the orphanage began disappearing one by one. Each morning at breakfast, the growing number of empty seats made Freya uneasy.
…What on earth is happening?
Come to think of it, she hadn’t seen Lottie for days either. The child who used to hover around her incessantly was gone, and that absence weighed on her mind. Though Freya rarely asked Sophia anything, she gathered her courage.
“Aunt… do you know where Lottie is?”
At Freya’s question, asked while she fastened a necklace around Sophia’s neck, Sophia snapped her fan against the back of Freya’s hand.
“How would I know?”
Freya lowered her head and silently finished dressing her. In the end, there was nothing she could do.
“After breakfast, the girls gather by the wall.”
At Sophia’s command, the remaining children lined up along one wall. Sophia slowly inspected them, eyes sharp as she passed the malnourished girls. She examined facial structures, ran her hands along waists, even grabbed at chests. It was humiliating—but no one dared speak.
“They’re all so scrawny. What use are they?”
When it was Freya’s turn, Sophia frowned. Though Freya was handy and useful for her personal care, she was never a favored child. A girl with eyes that looked mysterious and already carried hints of womanhood was simply unpleasant to her.
“Have you started menstruating yet?”
“…Pardon?”
Freya didn’t know what that meant and simply echoed the word. Sophia scoffed and brushed past her, ordering several girls to be taken away by a man.
Something terrible is going to happen.
Freya would bet everything she had that it wasn’t anything good. Watching a girl slightly older than herself leave through the orphanage gates, her body trembled. The dining hall—once filled with children crowding a long table—was now eerily empty.
If I stay still like this… will I end up going to the capital too?
Having lived only here since birth, the outside world terrified Freya. Most people she’d encountered while begging had not been kind.
But Sophia and Shiloh are no better. Not at all.
When all the children were gone and the heavy doors closed, Freya was left standing alone between the orphanage dining hall and the door.
