“You brats, go stand by that wall after you get done with breakfast,” Sophia instructed.
After eating their measly breakfast, the remaining kids at the orphanage lined up in a row against the high brick wall. Sophia studied the skinny, malnourished children as she walked past them one by one. She ran her hands across their bony faces and hips and grabbed at their bare chests. It was a shameful act, but no one said a word.
“How can I use you when you’re all skin and bones?” Sophia frowned when it was Freya’s turn. The girl had crafty hands, so she helped Sophia with her jewelry, but the woman had never liked her from the beginning. Her mysterious eyes made her look like a grown woman, and that alone annoyed Sophia, and she said out of the blue, “You still haven’t had your period?”
“What?” Freya didn’t know what else to say because she didn’t know what that was. Sophia brushed past her with an evil look on her face and then ordered a man to take a few of the kids away.
I think something awful is going to happen. Freya would bet all she had that this was not a good thing. She trembled as she watched a girl, who was a little bit taller than her, leave the orphanage. The long table in the dining room where all the children had filled would now be empty.
If I stay here like this, I’ll be sent to the capital too. Freya was afraid of the outside world because this was the only place she’d been in since she was born. And most of the people she came across while begging in the streets were not that friendly. But she most certainly didn’t like Sophia or Shiloh because they weren’t kind either.
Later, when all the children left, the heavy door closed in the dining hall, and Freya was left alone with her thoughts. She sat between the orphanage restaurant and the closed door to the long, cold hallway, pondering her fate.
It was only thanks to Ruth’s presence that she was able to endure such a hard day. He was thin in size but still had a decent physique, so Freya didn’t feel nervous around him. If Lotty was like a younger sister she needed to take care of, Ruth felt like a friend who comforted her.
In the dimly lit attic, the two kids sat face to face playing a game and having fun. “So I am the father, and you be the mother,” Freya said as she giggled.
“But doesn’t a man have to be the father?” Ruth frowned as he was dissatisfied with Freya’s selection of roles.
“It doesn’t matter who’s the father. We’re doing it together.”
“Together?”
“Yes. So let’s get the mud together and make a cake.” Freya made a lump out of some mud and made candles out of short branches that she’d collected in the garden. Ruth blushed for some reason as he watched Freya’s hands work with the mud.
“Ruth, have you ever seen a cake?”
“Is that…” Ruth stopped speaking because he was unsure of what a real cake looked like.
When he made a confused face, Freya said, “There is sugar snow on top of a cake.” She then sprinkled fine sand gently over the mud, and in no time, the homemade cake was complete.
“Ruth, will I ever get to eat a cake on my birthday again?”
“When is your birthday?”
“Oh, when is it? In February, I believe!” She tried to remember when she and Lotty had been given the delicious bread from the bakery.
“On what day?”
“Hmm, when will be a good day? How about the thirteenth, since I am thirteen years old?”
“Alright. For your next birthday, there will be a cake stacked so high you won’t be able to finish it!”
Freya loved hearing Ruth’s childlike imagination, but it also worried her. How could he live in this heartless world with no sense of reality?
“Ruth, don’t worry. I’ll take care of you when I become super strong.”
“Huh?” His eyes widened in shock at her sudden resolution.
Chewing her fingernails, Freya murmured to herself, “We’ll probably end up in the capital soon, too.” Freya had been feeling anxious lately when she thought about what she was going to do in the capital and if she could stay with Ruth forever. Nothing was certain anymore, and this scared her.
“Freya, what do you want for your birthday?”
Ruth sometimes asked random questions, but it allowed her the freedom to dream of another world. “There is nothing I want,” she replied.
Ruth blinked his green eyes and smiled, “Would you choose to have a room full of gold or me?”
Freya had the vision in her head of Ruth standing in a room full of shiny gold coins and jewelry. She loved gold things, but Ruth’s fine blond hair caught her eye more.
“I will choose you. I can earn a lot of gold later on.”
Ruth blushed at her answer, and then he reached out and gently touched Freya’s cheek. “Freya, you’re really…”
She smiled at Ruth’s deep breathing and his inability to finish his sentence. No doubt he was probably embarrassed, and she couldn’t help but smile at how cute he was. “Think of me as your sister, Ruth.” In her heart, she knew that she would do anything for him.
The place where Ruth was now was quite far away from the capital. Heading up to the attic, he took off the mask he was wearing and yawned, “I’m so tired.”
Freya couldn’t find the usual pure energy in his face as he crouched down, and his eyes were full of darkness as he stared at the dusty window.
I’d be better off losing my memory. It was painful to have to hide in this state. What am I doing trying to save myself? His original end goal had been the capital, not this place. Things had gone wrong with his plans, and he’d ended up in the orphanage, which was far from what he had thought an institution to protect underprivileged children was meant to be. It was more like an orphanage for child abuse. And it was also a place where all kinds of irregularities and corruption were prevalent; it seemed as if devils were everywhere.