With her stomach full from the food and aromatic coffee, SoYoon headed to Mad Hatter"s house. SoYoon knocked on the door for a long time before Mad Hatter popped his head out the second-story window. On his head was a yellow sleeping cap with a chick"s eyes and beak on it.
Then, as if in disbelief, he muttered, "White Rabbit?"
The door opened a few moments later, and she walked inside. Mad Hatter was standing at the stairs. He wore the same outfit as yesterday, other than the jacket, which she realized because dark-red stains of blood dyed his s.h.i.+rt and pants.
"I thought you wouldn"t come today."
He headed upstairs to his lab, and SoYoon followed.
Mad Hatter asked about smartphones then, as usual, went back to experimenting. And as usual, she fell unconscious.
"Stubborn."
Mad Hatter picked up a thin blanket next to the bed and covered her with it. Still, he watched SoYoon as she slept and felt his headache disappearing. He mumbled at no one in particular.
A few minutes later, SoYoon blinked awake under the thin blanket. Mad Hatter had littered the bed with things for the experiments, so there was no way she had grabbed the blanket on her own—which meant there was only one person who would have placed this over her.
Getting up, she straightened and went to look for the Mad Hatter. He was in the kitchen, staring happily at the new gla.s.sware he had collected from last night. His eyes met with SoYoon"s, and he looked at her as if asking why she was still here.
"See you the day after tomorrow."
"All right."
SoYoon headed to her house in the neutral zone after leaving Mad Hatter"s house. Because she had eaten so much at Heart"s house at a strange hour, she didn"t feel the need to eat dinner. Challengers again attacked her today, but because of what Heart had told her, she felt a bit more comfortable.
When she neared the neutral zone, a boy blocked her path. The dirty and ragged teen grabbed her wrist and pushed her into a sketchy alleyway. Normally, she would have pulled out her sword, but unlike her usual self, she watched him as he cornered her into a wall and pulled a knife to her neck.
"...."
This was all because Heart had made her coffee and Mad Hatter put a blanket over her. She lifted her head off the wall. Due to the movement, a slight cut ran across her neck, and the boy"s hands started to tremble.
"Don"t move!"
SoYoon watched the boy in interest. The boy"s brown eyes were wavering as well. They were showing her that he"d never hurt anyone before. She observed his eyes lose and gain focus several times.
"If you don"t want to get stabbed, then give me everything you have."
Even if he was a child hesitating, once he found the resolution to hurt someone, that meant he was an adult in Wonderland. SoYoon grabbed his wrist hard.
"Ow!"
The boy screamed and dropped his knife. SoYoon kicked the knife until it was far away and pushed the boy into the opposing wall. He hit his back hard and flinched.
"You shouldn"t judge a book by its cover."
He didn"t ask if she was White Rabbit, and he only asked for her valuable possessions. He didn"t know who she was and only targeted her because she was small and weak looking.
"If you want to live a long life, you need to open your ears."
White hair and black mask, a unique and large sword—if you paid even a small amount of attention to the rumors, you would have been able to figure it out. SoYoon let go of the boy. Behind her, she heard him cursing and his moans of pain, but she was no longer interested. However, those brown eyes kept flas.h.i.+ng in front of her in the mirror.
SoYoon shook her head. It was just a bad day. If I see him again, I"m sure any other day, I would not have remembered him.
However, a few days later, she saw the boy again.
SoYoon was eating dinner at a Central restaurant. She had now fully become accustomed to Wonderland and could enjoy the bland sandwich while she breathed in the peaceful air of freedom.
"You little punk! What do you think you"re doing?"
"They"ve been saying there"s a thief around here these days, and it must have been you!"
"Wait, you"re not from the slums, are you?"
A crowd formed not far from where SoYoon was sitting. The ruckus was coming from its center. SoYoon finished eating, paid, and left the restaurant.
Up to then, she had no intention of watching or getting involved—until she noticed the face as she happened to pa.s.s by.
The brown-eyed boy was surrounded by the crowd. They had beaten him so badly that his mouth was dripping blood. The boy looked menacingly at the crowd. To a violent crowd, it was not the best expression to have. One man pulled out a knife.
"Slum trash, how dare you! I"ll show you. Everyone get out of the way!"
The man who entered the center of the crowd grabbed the boy and pressed his wrist around his back. The boy screamed. The boy"s wrists were already bruised and swollen. That was the same wrist she had grabbed the last time she saw him. She had not been in great condition, so she wasn"t able to control her strength.
The knife was lifted high. It looked like he was about to chop his wrist off. SoYoon threw the knife she had behind her back. Whizzing through the air, the knife hit the man"s knife and stuck behind the wall.
"Ah! Who is it?"
The man who had suddenly lost his knife and simultaneously sprained his wrist yelled in anger. SoYoon raised her hand.
"Here."
"Oh…! White—White Rabbit?"
SoYoon walked to where the people stood. As she got closer, the people slowly started to retreat. As she pulled out the knife from the wall, she heard them gulp in fear, but when she placed it back into her pocket, they all sighed in relief.
A man at the back of the crowd asked, "Oh, do you know this kid?"
"No."
"Then why…?"
SoYoon looked down at the boy. The boy, who was kneeling, looked up at her. His shaking pupils were real. She sighed.
"This is the neutral zone. Let"s not have the smell of blood here, all right?"
"But this punk has been stealing people"s wallets…"
"There"s no proof that he did all of it. And it looks like you"ve punished him enough. Don"t you see his broken wrist? If he fears for his life, then he probably won"t steal again. Now, won"t you go home?"
The crowd muttered but dissipated. It wasn"t so much that she persuaded them; it was more the fact that she was White Rabbit with a giant sword on her back. Where the ruckus had been, now only SoYoon and the boy stood. She was about to leave when the boy called her.
"Wa—wait!"
Of course, SoYoon didn"t listen to him. The boy yelled at her back.
"Take responsibility!"
This ungrateful punk. SoYoon stopped. The boy, taking his chance, hung on to the end of her s.h.i.+rt.
"My wrist! You"re the one who broke it! That"s why I couldn"t earn money today, and now I can"t even work over here!"
"And why was your wrist broken?"
"Well, that…"
The boy mumbled then stayed quiet. SoYoon snorted.
"That"s your problem, not mine."
SoYoon started walking again. SoYoon turned around at the sound of someone following. The boy was limping toward her but stopped and looked somewhere else once caught. SoYoon walked again. One, two, three—at three, she ran as fast as she could. It was a speed that the boy, who had hurt his leg, couldn"t possibly follow. The boy tried to keep up but failed and kicked at a stone in frustration.
SoYoon watched the boy hidden in an alley as he cursed while grabbing his hurt leg. His small back looked tired.
Stop it, Ye SoYoon. He is not a SoHa.
Ye SoHa was her one and only baby brother. The last memory she had of her brother was his smiling face and crew cut hair as he entered the army. All the times they fought and hated each other—she couldn"t remember any of it. All she could remember were those brown eyes that looked like hers. Just because his eyes were brown, and he looked like him didn"t mean it was SoHa.
The boy limped back to the slum. The slum always smelled of rotting. The boy thought the smell was of rotting people. Living in the slum, he knew that if he got lost in the cycle of depression, fear of tomorrow, and hopelessness, he too would soon rot.
He couldn"t do that. There was a reason he could not give up. But wouldn"t it be okay for him to cry on a day like this—maybe just a little? The boy rubbed his eyes forcefully.
The boy lived in the inner parts of the slum. It was where a person was born and raised then had children of their own to repeat the cycle. He opened the decrepit door and stepped inside.
"Brother"s here, Dor!"
There was no response when he went into the only room in the house. A young girl was lying on the old bed. It was his little sister, three to four years younger.
Light brown hair, long and curly—she had the same brown eyes as the boy. Never having been outside, her skin was white, but Dor was like a dream, a most lovable child. And as such, she spent the majority of her time in the dreamworld herself.
I wonder when she will wake up. The boy waited for that time while was.h.i.+ng and feeding her.
"Just wait until you wake up. All the hards.h.i.+ps I endured, I"m going to get payback," the boy muttered while heading to the kitchen. And in the dark room, he met an intruder.
"Wha—what! Who is it? Oh! You?"
White Rabbit—the girl who had stopped the crowd from chopping off his wrist was standing in front of him with her glowing white hair.