Winter Rabbit in Wonderland

It had been two weeks since Alice met Heart, and now she was hearing her first hint from White Rabbit.

“Your first hint is Shirley Howard.”

Alice looked confused.

“I don’t know who that is.”

Of course she didn’t know. Shirley Howard was the first person Alice had used her healing powers on. Until then, she had used her powers only on her family. When Alice met a hurt Shirley Howard, though, she couldn’t help but heal her. That was when people realized her powers.

There was a lot of time, and there were a lot of hints. SoYoon didn’t explain any further about Shirley Howard.

After SoYoon left, Alice sat on the sofa and hugged the cushion. Already knowing the ending of the story, the hints didn’t really matter. What was important to her now was something else entirely.

“Where are the Twins?”

In the original story, Alice had met the Twins before she heard her first hint. Having met Heart a few days earlier, it was about time that she would have met the Twins, but however much she tried, she could not find them. Alice punched the cushion.

***

It rained all day. For a spring shower, it was raining hard, almost like a hurricane. In the deep night, SoYoon was returning from work when she saw something poking out between the buildings. She went closer to take a look and found that it was a dress shoe. It seemed to belong to a tall man. She followed the long legs that were attached and found the Twins’ beautiful face.

The leather rider jacket was ripped by a knife, his shirt covered in blood, and the rain mixed with the blood as it poured down. SoYoon quietly passed him and went into her house a few steps beyond. If she had made a judgment call five seconds faster, tonight would have passed peacefully.

Long and tough fingers grabbed SoYoon’s ankle. As was expected from the upper echelons in the world of crazy, his strength was great. SoYoon kicked his arm away. The hand that held her ankle did not budge. The unconscious Twins had opened his eyes. He mumbled, gasping.

“F*ck…That hurts like a mother…”

“Let go.”

SoYoon kicked his wrist. It was not meant to hurt but to jolt him awake. But the action angered him, and he held on to her ankle harder. He was now wide awake because his eyes looked murderous.

“Hey, Blondie.”

“….You better let go before I break your arm.”

It was not a good feeling. She was stalling to adjust the timing of Alice coming to find and heal the Twins. This was the point in the story where Alice and the Twins met and where the Twins gained interest in her. It was a turning point in the novel.

SoYoon shook her leg to get the Twins off of her, but he said something that made her stop.

“This is a request. Please take me to your house and heal me and keep me safe.”

White Rabbit’s iron rule: any request a customer made could not be rejected. And currently, it happened to be the Twins she couldn’t kill. She wondered if she should just take him home and call Alice tomorrow, but another request came from his lips.

“Before I tell anyone, don’t let anyone know, not even Dum.”

Stuck in a dilemma, SoYoon eventually lifted the Twins and took him to her house. It was a judgment call based on the eventual flow of the novel and Alice’s power of seduction.

Then, that night, Alice, who had been searching for the Twins through the rainy night, believing the same thing as SoYoon, decided to give up and go home.

***

“You are but a nuisance to Dum,” the man who had been by his side for two years said as he stabbed him. The benign Tweedle Dum and the violent Tweedle Dee—two people in one who had separated from each other. But who would have known this would be the result?

They hadn’t always shared one body. A long time ago, the two had been separate. Back then, their world had been confined to only a small room. The only other entity would be their mother, who would come in to give them burnt porridge after beating them.

After their mother had left, they would split the blackened porridge. They had never been outside, so they had never realized they were being treated unfairly or they had been born into a hostile environment.

When they had turned about eight, Dum, not having eaten for two weeks, was the first to release his hold on life. He whispered these last words as he lay dying.

“Eat me to stay alive.”

Dum’s blood and flesh became one with Dee’s identity. And within Dee, Dum was reborn. The twin brothers rejoiced at their reunion. It was then that their mother returned.

Dum whispered, “I have a good idea.”

When their mother opened the door to come inside, the Twins combined their strength to topple her. The mother’s screams and cries for help echoed throughout the slum, but as no one had come to rescue the twins, no one came now either.

Instinctively, they pulled off their mother’s top and sucked at her breasts. At that moment, the energy they had lost during their childhood filled them. The Twins felt ecstatic.

Afterward, the world they faced was much different from where they had lived previously. As the Twins grew, they learned many new things: how to steal, how to threaten others, how to beat and how to kill them.

That’s when the twins realized: there are lots of ways to rule the world, but in the end, the best was to eat the other.

They were happy. It was the thing they were the best at and enjoyed most. To them, the world was easy. And they had the skills. When they split themselves completely, it became even easier. In this simple world, they grew in power, and, upholding a decent appearance, no one assumed they had crawled their way out of the slums.

“You are but a nuisance to Dum.”

It was not the first time he had heard this. This had always been Dee’s purpose. The man didn’t realize if he stabbed Dee, Dum would die also. Just as they expected the sun to rise in the morning, the twins had never believed themselves to be separate entities, even as they acted as different people to others.

Had that secret been this important? If it was, who could he have told? They could trust only each other. Even now, they didn’t know who to turn to.

The time they drifted between dream and reality, they realized that someone was touching their forehead. The small, cold palms were hard and calloused.

The Twins’ mother’s hands had felt like that. When she had grabbed and beat them, it had been hard to escape. Would this be the same? If that was the case, then they would have to eat it to make sure it could never hit or starve the brothers again.

Dee forced his heavy eyes open. In the bright light of the afternoon sun, a blurry silhouette danced in his vision. He lifted his arms and pulled at it. The small figure came forward easily and became trapped underneath him.

The shirt opened slightly, and a pale neckline showed through it. He bared his teeth. Reflexively, he salivated. However, as he reached to take a bite, Dee was tossed onto the floor.

“Ugh!” he exclaimed as pain shot through the stab wound in his side. He gasped then barely avoided the leg that approached him fast. His opponent was much stronger and faster, however. The hard kick to his side knocked the breath out of him.

“Stop overreacting. I didn’t touch the side that’s hurt.”

He coughed. “Blondie, you jerk….”

The blurry silhouette had been Wonderland’s cleanup professional, White Rabbit. Dee remembered making a request in the rain.

SoYoon approached Dee and pulled him violently up by the arm. Dee pushed her off, went back to the sofa, and covered himself with the blanket. SoYoon stood up next to him as he whimpered in pain and wiped her neck with a towel.

Dee glared at her and clenched his fist under the blanket. It was the first time he had failed to eat anyone. SoYoon, however, didn’t pay him any more attention and instead sat in the corner writing in her notebook.

She wrote something and handed it to him. Seeing the words and numbers, Dee growled angrily.

“What?”

“Rescue, treatment, lodging, and food. I have to charge this much to make this worthwhile.”

It didn’t matter how vicious he acted if the opponent didn’t flinch. He calmed down his anger and read the figure that SoYoon had written: 700,000 carols.

“That’s just for one night.”

“F*ck, you’ve become obsessed with money.”

“If you don’t like it, you can leave after paying for tonight.”

“You little punk. Let’s see if you can continue acting like this later.”

“So? Does that mean you’re only staying for the night?”

Dee kicked the blanket roughly instead of answering. Dee didn’t realize that SoYoon saw this action as equivalent to a child throwing a tantrum.

Leaving him alone, SoYoon went to the kitchen, turned on the induction, and placed a pot on it. Inside the pot was the oatmeal she had bought at Central. A few minutes later, when the oatmeal was warmed up, she moved it to a large plate and took it to Dee.

“Eat.”