Chapter 7
“That damn woman!”
After Ivan left saying he was going to meet his friends, I stopped by the bathhouse alone to wash up and was on my way back.
At the sudden shouting, I turned my head.
An old woman had fallen on the street, her cane dropped, angrily waving her arms.
Following where she pointed, I saw a woman just entering a building.
The woman ignored the old lady completely and went into a teahouse.
That teahouse, like always, had its doors shut tight even though the sun was already high.
The old woman, still furious, suddenly turned and looked at me.
“…Are you okay?”
“Did you see that rude wench?! She knocked me over and didn’t even apologize!”
Even though I reached out my hand, the old woman kept cursing the woman who had already disappeared.
“Let me help you up first.”
“…Alright, thank you.”
After I helped her up and picked up her cane, she finally seemed to calm down.
“Tch. I shouldn’t walk this way again. You be careful too.”
Then, with irritation still in her voice, she gave me a warning and spat on the ground.
“You’ll catch a disease wandering around a brothel district.”
“…A brothel?”
“Yeah, those places.”
Her finger quickly pointed across several buildings.
“Ah…”
“This alley wasn’t like this before. But at some point, those kinds of women started crawling in one by one and ruined the whole neighborhood.”
After grumbling, the old woman quickly left the street, as if afraid of catching something.
I thought the shops were closed because business was bad…
I looked at the buildings again, stunned by what I had just learned.
At that moment, a curtain shifted slightly.
It felt like someone behind it had made eye contact with me.
“…What was that?”
A chill ran down the back of my neck.
Like the old woman, I hurried out of the street.
By the time I reached home, I was almost running.
It wasn’t because of what Ivan had said about murders happening nearby.
It was because…
I was afraid someone from those buildings might recognize me.
Even as I told myself it couldn’t be, I couldn’t shake the unease.
As soon as I got home, I opened a drawer.
And took out the clothes I had already checked while cleaning.
Dresses and blouses with deeply cut necklines.
Tight skirts. Flashy underwear.
Bright makeup, a lot of perfume, and high heels.
At first, I thought this person just liked flashy things…
But now, that didn’t seem to be the case.
At the laundry area, the market, the bathhouse—
Everywhere I went, people wore loose shirts and skirts.
“…Even though she has a child…”
I wanted to deny it, but the clothes were too similar to what that woman at the teahouse wore.
Yes… that woman, the one being called a prostitute, also wore high heels and bright, revealing clothes.
“…Sigh.”
I let out a sigh without realizing it.
I knew it was too early to judge everything from just these clothes…
But I couldn’t shake the thought that this body belonged to a bar woman.
It was also strange that someone living in a house about to collapse had so much cash.
And maybe…
The reason no one approached me in town—
Was because they didn’t want to get involved, just like that old woman.
“…She worked at a bar… even with a child?”
I swallowed another sigh and closed the drawer.
If that was true, this situation was far worse than I had thought.
Until now, I thought I was just a poor, neglectful parent.
But if not…
There were several things I needed to reconsider.
No matter how thoroughly I cleaned the house, I hadn’t found a single coin.
All the money she had was in that pouch in her coat.
And she had taken that pouch all the way to the capital.
“Why would someone carry their entire fortune like that?!”
This didn’t feel right.
What if the original owner of this body had been involved in something dangerous?
“What kind of genre is this…?”
Was that pouch even hers?
I took out the pouch and poured it onto the table.
It was filled entirely with 100-lork coins.
Even if it was all her savings, it was a large amount.
Especially for someone living in a house like this.
Judging by prices I saw yesterday, it was enough to live for two years without working.
“…What if we were running away from home?”
Now that I thought about it, she had gone all the way to the capital with no belongings.
Just money.
Maybe she had been running away in a hurry.
“But what if some idiot who got possessed came back home with the child…”
The more I thought about it, the colder my spine felt.
“…Or what if this money isn’t even hers?”
I looked around the shabby house again.
Why hadn’t I thought of this before?
I had been too careless.
“…No, but no one has come looking for me yet…”
Of course that doesn’t mean it’s safe!
Ivan’s words from this morning came back to me.
Someone nearby had been strangled to death.
“I need to leave. As soon as possible.”
For both my sake and Ivan’s, we had to leave this place quickly.
I wanted to find Ivan right now and leave town immediately.
But moving recklessly could put him in danger.
I didn’t even know who we might be running from.
…And running away required caution.
At the very least, we needed an excuse.
A reason that wouldn’t make it look like we were fleeing if we got caught.
“…”
I gathered the coins back into the pouch.
I didn’t want to make Ivan anxious by telling him.
Even if there was a problem, it was mine to deal with—not his.
Think.
What excuse would make sense if someone saw a woman leaving town with a child and money?
“….”
But for someone like me—who didn’t even know her own name—
Coming up with a believable excuse was extremely difficult.
* * *
“Ivan, where have you been? Why is your hair all wet again?”
Something felt off.
Her voice was slightly higher than usual… and a bit anxious.
“…I just washed.”
“…I see. So you went to play first, then washed?”
But soon, her tone returned to normal.
She locked the door tightly and hurried across the room to grab a towel.
“It’s cold. If you walk around like this, you’ll catch a cold.”
Ivan quietly looked up at her worried face as she touched his hair.
Then he followed her and sat on the edge of the bed.
She used a soft towel, warm from the sunlight, to dry his hair.
“Nothing happened, right?”
She bent slightly to meet his eyes, clearly concerned.
Ivan just nodded.
“Good. And Ivan, it’s getting colder now, so you shouldn’t wander around like this. The days are getting shorter too, so come home earlier. Okay?”
There was no way this house originally had towels like this.
She must have done the laundry too.
“…Okay.”
Ivan answered briefly and held her hand.
“But Mom, did anything happen today?”
For a moment, her eyes wavered.
“…No. Nothing.”
Then she shook her head.
“More importantly, did you eat something good with your friends?”
Ivan nodded, pretending the coins were still in his pocket.
“I made tomato stew. Can you eat it?”
Ivan nodded quickly.
Soon, they sat together and ate warm stew with soft bread.
“….”
But Ivan’s thoughts were tangled.
If she kept going in and out of the house like this, the old women who always watched from their windows would definitely start interfering.
They might ask directly who she was.
What her relationship with Ivan was.
And if she found out she had been deceived—
…
Even though he had been starving for a long time,
Ivan didn’t even notice that all the red stew on his plate had already disappeared into the bread.
