[AFYC] Chapter 76
“Excuse me.”
Looking down, she saw a child with dark skin and golden eyes. The child stumbled, bumped by the passing crowd, and Seo Ah instinctively reached out to steady them.
She glanced up, worried about losing sight of Abel, but something was shoved into her hand.
It was a single dark red flower.
Puzzled, she stood there holding the flower, unsure of its meaning. Then, she saw the child flash a wide grin through the petals.
“Thank you!”
“What?”
“One thousand Kertes, please.”
“Huh?”
“Just a thousand sketches!”
“No, wait, I don’t need a flower.”
Seo Ah tried to return it, but the child was insistent.
“Just one thousand sketches!”
Abel seemed to be moving further away, and the child wouldn’t let go. In a rush, Seo Ah pulled a thousand sketches from her bag. That was her mistake.
In an instant, children swarmed her.
And it wasn’t just children. Women holding babies, old men, and even larger children with smaller ones in tow all rushed toward her, thrusting dark red flowers at her and pleading.
“Buy mine too!”
“Please, miss, buy one from me!”
She needed to get out of there quickly.
But those golden eyes… that face… they looked so much like the woman who had briefly led her into the shop earlier.
The faces of people who seemed to have no other choice but to beg, who seemed to have no other means of survival, looked so familiar.
“Please, miss, just buy one more.”
And so, she couldn’t bring herself to brush away their desperate pleas.
Meanwhile, Abel Sting, who had been walking ahead, swore as a backup team signalled to him. He turned around, scowling.
What now? What’s the problem this time?
“Why is she always doing this?”
There she was, surrounded by wandering nomads, buying flowers from them. Word must have spread quickly, as more and more people gathered around her, like iron filings drawn to a magnet. The backup team was in chaos.
Go! Go, Abel Sting!
Move! Get moving, you idiot!
Abel flipped off the backup agent nearest to him with a scowl, then slowly made his way over to the foreigner, wondering how anyone could be this naïve.
She had bought so many flowers that she couldn’t even hold them all in her hands; she was practically cradling them.
Lovely. She looks lovely.
Like a single white lily placed among dark red roses.
He didn’t even feel angry anymore.
“Hey.”
His voice, thick with frustration, cut through the air like a blade.
“....”
“....”
Perhaps every foreigner’s life is a constant series of guesses. The wandering nomads scattered the moment they saw Abel as if they had rehearsed it. The swiftness of their retreat could only be described as lightning fast.
In the end, all that remained were Seo Ah and her pile of flowers, stranded on the dirty path.
Abel stood there, dumbfounded by the sight.
Seriously, someone buys this stuff…? And why am I the one suffering because of her?
His incredulity soon gave way to a bitter laugh.
“You paid for those?”
To hell with seduction or anything else. Screw it all.
“What? Are you going to give them to me?”
The wide-eyed lily blinked up at him from between the roses.
“Well, I’m not taking them. I hate stuff like that. You expect me to take something that brings bad luck?”
“Bad luck?”
“You didn’t know?”
Ah, of course, she didn’t.
Even if she didn’t, shouldn’t she have sensed something was off? There’s a reason nobody else buys those flowers.
“They’re all stolen from cemeteries.”
“What?”
“You know what a cemetery is, right? Graves.”
For the first time in a week, the foreigner who had been slowly wearing Abel down looked utterly shocked. Her pale face turned ashen.
Seeing her reaction lifted the weight that had been pressing on Abel’s chest.
“Those flowers were stolen from graves.”
You bought a whole armful of them, not knowing.
Wouldn’t it have been better if you’d just visited the nice places I suggested?
This awful, nightmarish week was the first time Abel had found something amusing.
He grinned darkly while the foreigner’s face crumpled in horror as though she might burst into tears any second.
