Lilia gripped her phone tightly and stared at the screen. The phone number listed there was only one digit short, but the boy was caught before he could finish it. In that case, Lilia could only try one by one until she found the right number!
The dizziness that had been pounding her was getting stronger, making her head throb in pain. But she ignored the headache and started trying numbers from 0 to 9.
Whenever someone picked up her call, Lilia's first sentence was always the same.
"Excuse me, have you lost your child?"
A telephone receiver called Lilia a lunatic. Another person immediately hung up the phone without listening any further. Some of the numbers she tried were not connected to anyone. Even so, Lilia didn't give up.
Finally, when Lilia called for the eighth time, the receiver gave the response she had been waiting for.
"Yes, right! Our young master has been missing for weeks! Little girl, have you seen our young master?" The interlocutor spoke hurriedly and excitedly.
Black spots began to appear at the edge of Lilia's vision. She rubbed her eyes in annoyance, but the freckles refused to disappear. The little girl tried to focus on the other person.
"Yes, I was at summer camp. I met a boy in Arum Village. He's wearing a white shirt and... "
After that incident, Lilia couldn't remember exactly what she had said on the phone. Her ears were ringing loudly and her head ached so much that she couldn't think straight. Her lips babled something, but she was unable to process her words. Lilia's mind was filled with the figure of the boy brutally beaten and whipped.
"Lilia! Here you are!"
When she heard her teacher's voice, it felt like the invisible rope holding her chest had finally broken. She intended to rise from the ground and tell her teacher about the bad guys. But instead of standing up, Lilia fell on the ground. Lilia's gaze turned dark as she lost consciousness. The cellphone in her hand was thrown not far from there.
The teacher was shocked when Lilia suddenly fainted. But when that man saw the blood staining the face of the student, the teacher immediately panicked. He picked up Lilia in his arms and rushed towards the village shouting for help. The man was completely unaware of Lilia's cellphone, which was still connected to the person on the other end of the line.
In the end, only a cellphone and a pink backpack were left behind in the bush. These two objects were silent witnesses that Lilia's meeting with a boy covered in blood and in chains was not her imagination.
That very day, Lilia was rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment. The school called her parents, prompting Robert to rush over to pick up her daughter.
When Lilia woke up, the first thing she saw was her father's face.
"Father…?" Lilia muttered in a hoarse voice. Her throat felt dry.
"Yes, Father is here with you." Robert sat his daughter in bed and helped her drink a glass of water. "Thank God you gained consciousness fast. The doctor said… "
"What about that boy?!" Lilia immediately interrupted Robert.
"That boy…?" Robert tilted his head with a confused expression.
"There is a boy there! He was beaten by bad people! And… and there is a whip too! Then he…!"
"Lilia."
Robert grabbed his daughter's shoulders, stopping the little girl's chatter.
"You must have had a nightmare because of a fever." Robert said softly. "I think you need to rest a little longer before you can go home."
"I'm not dreaming!" Lilia fiercely refuted. "It really happened, I'm not lying! That boy…!"
"There's no one but you there, Lilia." Robert interrupted, his voice tinged with faint impatience. "When your teacher found you, there was only you alone. There are neither boys nor bad people, Lilia. All of it is only in your head."
"But… that boy really does exist…" Lilia muttered, starting to doubt herself.
"I think your fever this time was bad enough to make you have nightmares like that." Robert said, touching Lilia's forehead. "I'll ask your doctor to give you something so you don't have nightmares again."
"It's all… just a dream…?" Lilia looked at her hands. She remembered gripping the boy's dirty hands tightly, but was it all part of her dream?
"Right. Be a good girl and sleep again. " Robert laid down his daughter and rubbed her head in a soothing motion. "When you get better, we can go home."
"...alright." Lilia closed her eyes and drifted back into a dream world.
As a result of the incident, Lilia spent a week in the hospital before being allowed to go home. At first, she still believed that she had really met that boy. But what her father and her class teacher said made Lilia finally change her mind. She buried the incident deep in her mind as a dream.
*****
Right now, Lilia stared at Jean while covering her mouth with both hands. She could see the figure of the boy she met at that time in him. For the first time in 14 years, Lilia finally could recall the incident. She had always thought of it as a dream, so she buried the incident deeply.
But now that Lilia found out the truth, there were many similarities between Jean and that boy. The two of them both possessed clear blue eyes and were full of determination. They never gave up on getting what they wanted. But more than that, Lilia fell in love with the two of them.
"Jean…" Lilia said slowly in a shaken voice. "That boy ... are you really that boy?"
She didn't think that the two of them had met 14 years ago. So this was what Jean meant whenever he said they had met before.
This handsome man standing beside her always looked dignified and elegant. No matter how hard Lilia tried, she couldn't imagine Jean as such a dirty, stray kid. Why was Jean kidnapped and abused in that remote village? What was the purpose of the bad guys who caught him? How could they chain and whip a child like him!
Lilia's heart ached as she thought about how Jean felt when that man was wronged. She hoped to go back 14 years and erase the painful experience from Jean's past.
Jean didn't say anything, but he just nodded his head. The man watched as tears flowed down Lilia's cheeks. Jean knew he should comfort Lilia, but the figure of his wife crying for him touched his heart. He felt as if all the hatred and darkness that had stored in his heart over the years had melted along with Lilia's tears.
Lilia looked up and met Jean's eyes. She walked step by step until she stopped right in front of the man. Lilia stretched out both hands, then hugged Jean's body without speaking. The man didn't move and let Lilia just hug him.
The atmosphere between them was heavy, like there were cloudy clouds hanging in the sky. Clifford and the other bodyguards took a step back, then turned around with an awkward expression.. They didn't know what had happened between the two people, but they knew that they shouldn't interfere with their moment.
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