Only Realized After Losing You

25. Desperately Hoping for Someone’s Help

My father furrowed his brows.

His face became angry in an instant.

He didn’t wait for my answer.

He began to approach me with long strides.

My legs and fingertips trembled like aspen trees.

I knew I should make a run for it.

But my whole body did not move, as if paralyzed.

It was just like the strange paralysis I experienced in my dream last night.

I instinctively recalled the resonance I felt in my dream.

‘I have to run away.’

That echoey voice lingered in my ears.

“Ellie!”

My father called my name loudly.

That was my wake up call.

My father’s angry voice broke my paralysis.

Only then did I manage to move my stiff legs.

I turned around and started running down the long street.

I bumped into the shoulders of people walking on the street, stepped on someone’s feet, and knocked off one of my shoes, but I couldn’t stop running.

I could still hear my father’s voice behind me.

“Ellie! Can’t you stop right now?”

What would happen to me if I stopped running right now, if my father caught me?

I recalled the words I overheard last night from my father.

‘Is it possible to have surgery to remove the eye as soon as tomorrow?’

Wouldn’t he do what he planned to do yesterday, today?

That would be terrible.

If I got caught today, I would never have another chance to escape my father.

I ran as fast as I could.

It was the first time in my life that I ran with all my might.

But I was soon out of breath. My lungs felt like they would burst from the exertion.

I felt like my lungs were going to burst before my father caught me and killed me.

Still, I couldn’t stop moving forward.

However, my pace was significantly slowing down.

I was clearly exhausted.

I realized that if I continued like this, I might collapse on the ground.

There were rental wagons parked next to me, but I couldn’t catch them.

Even if I were to catch a wagon here, my father would definitely catch me right away.

I could hear my father’s heavy breathing and the sound of his angry footsteps a short distance away.

Did I take the wrong opportunity? Will he catch me now?

Will I become a puppet who can do nothing but listen?

This was my limit.

I felt like I couldn’t run anymore.

My breathing was so ragged that I felt like I was going to vomit.

As a last resort, I quickly hid myself in a narrow, dark alley.

Since the crowd was quite large, my father might not have noticed that I was hiding.

No, he shouldn’t have noticed.

I took a deep breath and tried to catch my breath.

I hoped my father would go somewhere else, but…

My father’s voice, breathing heavily, echoed my own as it came closer and closer.

“… Ellie.”

Soon, my father’s shoes came fully into my sight.

“If you run away like that… It’s hard for your old father to keep up.”

Soon, even my father’s face was fully revealed.

“… … !”

A gloomy shadow began to creep across his sun-kissed face.

He was slowly stepping into the dark alley, one step at a time, as if he were slowly tightening his grip

I hesitantly stepped back.

What should I do now?

How do I avoid my father’s cruel touch?

How…

That was when my back bumped into someone.

Was there someone else besides me in the dark alley?

As soon as I realized that fact, a hope of unknown origin arose.

If only this person could help me.

I quickly glanced back.

Then I saw someone who was about the same height as me, wearing a robe.

Because they were wearing a deep hood, their gender and age were unknown.

That person looked very suspicious, but I had no other choice.

I didn’t have the strength to resist my father’s evil touch, not that I ever did.

I pleaded, holding tightly to the stranger’s robe.

“… … .”

Help.

Please help me.

Please, just make a sound, a word, like this morning.

Sweat, or maybe tears, were streaming down my cheeks.

The tip of the stranger’s chin, visible beneath a deep hood, looked sharp.

“Ellie! Come here quickly! We have to go home. You shouldn’t cause trouble for people you don’t know.”

My father said as if admonishing me.

But at his words, my heart started beating faster.

It wasn’t a heartbeat that got faster because I had been running for a long time.

As the gap between my father and I narrowed, my heartbeat was getting faster and faster.

My father was slowly approaching me, one step at a time.

He walked cautiously, as if he was wary of the stranger.

I shook the stranger’s robe over and over again.

Thanks to the hood, all I could see was the stranger’s chin, but I also gave him a pleading look.

Please help me, please help me, please help me.

A desperation like never before.

The greatest desperation of my entire life.

Maybe my desperation paid off.

Something I thought would never happen suddenly happened.

“…No… no…”

A word slipped out between my lips.

The words were very garbled and not pronounced properly.

But in the end, I spat out something.

Getting the words out the first time is the hard part, but once you get it out the rest is easy.

I will be able to regain the words I lost so long ago.

I was sure of that.

The person wearing the robe answered slowly.

“You want help?”

The voice was strangely androgynous.

I couldn’t quite tell whether the person wearing the robe was a man or a woman.

But gender didn’t matter.

It would be enough if my garbled message had gotten through to someone.

And this person seemed to have correctly understood my message for help.

The person wearing the robe raised their slightly lowered head to look at me.

The stranger spoke to my father while looking directly at me.

“Are you this woman’s father?”

My father responded coldly.

“Yes, I am the child’s father. There was just a brief argument, so I don’t want any strangers to interfere… ”

I shook my head violently from side to side.

You can’t fall for what my father says.

Please don’t ignore me.

If you turn away from me, I might never see the light of day.

I have been a mute for most of my life.

And now I finally managed to get a word out.

If you ignore me, I might never be able to utter even a word again.

“… … .”

Thoughts did not become sounds.

The message that could not be conveyed to anyone remained only in my head.

What I felt was an overwhelming sense of frustration.

‘You have to express yourself. Whatever it is. Even if it’s just saying, ‘I’m sleepy.’ Only then will it have meaning. If you just suffer inside, your heart will become sick.’

Lennon’s words resonated deeply with me.

I felt as if my thoughts and wishes had gone unspoken, as if they had disappeared into thin air.

Perhaps I already had an illness of the heart, I realized in hindsight.

The person wearing the robe did not reply .

They just looked between my face and my father’s face back and forth.

It seemed like they were trying to figure out whose words were right and whose side they should take.

There was a brief lull.

Faced with an unexpected obstacle, my father seemed to be weighing the situation as well.

I couldn’t get out of the alley because my father blocked the entrance to the alley.

Behind me was a dead end.

One second felt like 10 minutes.

I was holding onto the hem of a stranger’s robe tightly, as if it were a lifeline.

The person who broke the lull was my father.

After a moment’s hesitation, he suddenly lunged at us-or, more accurately, at me.

He grabbed my silver hair, which was disheveled and matted.

In his frustration, he seemed to have decided that he could handle this somewhat short stranger.

“Ugh… ”

I let out a strange sound that could have been a groan or a meaningful word, as I was dragged slightly toward him.

At the same time, I vaguely remembered my older sister who got into an unfamiliar carriage because of my father.

Did you feel this way too that day?

Did you feel this devastated too?

Even though I was being dragged little by little, I did not let go of the robe I was holding on to.

Please help me, please help me…

No matter how much I opened my lips, no sound came out.

The more words I could not convey, the more my heart ached.

I became aware of how painful it was to not be able to speak.

Tears flowed from the corners of my eyes but I didn’t even have the energy to wipe it away.

I thought I was the one who could save myself.

Ironically, I was now desperately hoping for someone’s help.

It was at that moment that the stranger’s tightly closed lips parted.