Winter Rabbit in Wonderland

Chapter 69

Dee walked in large strides with SoYoon strapped to his back. Her house slippers were dangling from her feet, dangerously close to falling.

“Let me down,” SoYoon said, tapping his back. But Dee paid her no attention.

“Tweedle Dee?”

He stopped for just a second. She elbowed him in the back.

The sudden attack loosened his grip, and she jumped off, but he grabbed her wrist.

“Who’s that punk? Heart and now him?”

SoYoon released herself from his grip and turned away. She had planned to return home after wasting an hour or two when Mad Hatter would have left.

“I have, for you...”

Remembering Mad Hatter’s words shocked her. He might already know her motive. She quietly took in the scenery.

“Is there nothing of value here...?” At his question, the faces of the two men popped into her head. What Heart had asked her a few days back rang in her ear.

“Do you want to leave this place?”

At that moment, her eyes widened.

Then her body was turned around hard. Had he not left yet? she thought as she looked into Dee’s angry and annoyed face. His blue eyes burned like fireworks.

“It’s a request.”

“What?”

“F*ck, it’s a request. What I’ve been saying every day—that request.”

“A few days ago, you lied about another request.”

“Look at you talk! You’re the one who made the wrong assumption, and you’re dumping it on me? Check your message to see if it says it was a request.”

Luckily, what she had just said he had strategically mulled over last night. At Dee’s defensive reaction, SoYoon thought back to his message. Dum had not mentioned the word “request.”

Most requests she received were written out like that, however. Getting to the point of business was enough to understand it, so what was the purpose of specifying if it was a request?

“Anyway, I don’t know anything about it. If you have a problem with it, bring it up with Dum.”

With that statement, he pulled SoYoon along as he walked.

“I didn’t bring anything with me.”

“This request doesn’t require any of that stuff.”

Because the opposition was Twins, she would easily be able to stop them with the knife she had strapped to her leg, but she decided she should still say something.

“Someone lied about a request to me recently. Of course, he got his deserved punishment. If you are planning to trick me, I would give it up now.”

“Did you live all your life being tricked? Why are you so untrusting?”

“You fooled me once already.”

“I did not!”

Dee pulled hard at her wrist. He had already been holding it, but now it showed a red mark in the shape of a hand. She pulled herself out of his grip and massaged her wrist.

“Lead the way.”

Dee looked down at his now-empty hand then looked back up.

“How can I trust you?”

He grabbed her wrist again and started to walk. SoYoon gave up, and he dragged her along.

With a height difference of over 20 centimeters, their walking strides differed greatly. As he was walking even faster with wide strides, it was hard for her to keep up with him, and she eventually lost her slipper. She followed Dee a few steps barefoot then put strength into her wrist.

“What the—! I’m letting you know now, if you try anything funny...”

Instead of answering, SoYoon pointed to her slipper. He took turns looking at the abandoned slipper and her bare feet and started to curse. He lifted her and walked her to her slipper. She had expected him to put her down, but instead, he crouched down with her propped against her thigh and picked up the slipper.

“F*ck, you call those feet?” Dee muttered as he wiped the dirt from her feet. Her feet were smaller than the palm of his hand. “How do you even manage to walk around with these?”

His eyes scanned from her thin ankles to her bony feet to her small toes. Her feet were as pale as if they had never seen sunlight, and blue veins lined their skin. She wiggled her toes.

“How interesting,” he said in a dreamy voice. Dee wrapped his hand around her foot and rubbed at it with his finger. SoYoon interrupted him.

“Give me the slipper.”

“Huh?”

Dee jumped in surprise. He saw the brown eyes observing him. Only then did he realize that she did not have her mask on, and she had pinned her hair back so that he could see her entire face. She was pretty. Dum, who had been watching from inside, mumbled in a trance. Dee couldn’t help but agree.

SoYoon stole the slipper from his hand, placed it back on her foot, and jumped down. She looked so frail in the midday sunlight.

Up until now, they had thought that she was not worthy of their attention, but as they looked at her body, a thought they’d never had before popped into their head: with looks like that, no wonder those guys were all over her.

Dee took out the pin that held back her hair. Her hair slid down and hid half her face. Feeling strangely content, he held on to her wrist and started to walk again. He didn’t realize that he had cut his strides in half.

***

He finally arrived home with SoYoon. He sat her down on his sofa and sat across from her.

“This is my request. Stay here in this house.”

“How long?”

“Please! If I say to stay, just stay!”

Having come here with nothing, SoYoon thought of the things she needed the most. She had changed out her patch before breakfast, so she was okay for the rest of the day. The next important thing was her smartphone. She remembered she had removed it from her bag last night and left it on the table.

“I want to go home and bring some things I need.”

“No! I’ll bring them to you, so don’t leave. What do you need?”

“My bag, smar—cellphone, and sword. My bag and sword are on the sofa, and my cellphone is on the table in front of it.”

SoYoon, thinking that Dee might not understand, told him it was a cellphone instead of a smartphone. Dee had seen her use it before, so she knew he would know what it looked like. But even though she had told him everything she needed, he still didn’t move.

“Aren’t you going?” she asked. But he stood abruptly and headed to the kitchen.

“I’m going to go after eating lunch!”

SoYoon looked up at the wall clock. 11:37. He was sensitive when it came to eating, so she figured it made sense.

Having gone into the kitchen, Dee moved diligently and continued to glance over at SoYoon. She was sitting quietly on the sofa. She was now in their space with them. A sense of pride welled up inside his heart.

Dee placed the food that his chef had made this morning on the dining table: clam chowder with huge chunks of clams and potatoes, a turkey sandwich with cranberry sauce, and cucumber and thinly sliced salmon salad. He warmed up the clam chowder in a bowl and called out to SoYoon.

“Hey, Blondie. Come eat.”

They reversed roles from the last time they had spent a week together.

During the meal, Dee observed the food laid out in front of SoYoon. She ate everything except the clam chowder. SoYoon put down her fork after finishing the sandwich and salad.

“Are you being a picky eater?”

“What are you planning to ask me to do while I stay here?”

There was only one thing they wanted her to do. As they thought this, they started to become aroused and had a hard time pushing down the feeling. That girl had not yet eaten the most important thing.

SoYoon lifted her spoon. They pretended to poke at their salad as they watched her. Her spoon got closer to the clam chowder bowl. They pretended to be eating their food and swallowed. However, her spoon never went into the bowl. Clang! The sound of metal hitting ceramic chimed.

“What are you planning to do after feeding me a sedative?”

She caught us, they thought.

But how? After failing last time with the hot chocolate, they had gone to visit Duke. The scaredy-cat Duke told them everything he knew after they kicked him around a bit.

The research facility in Outhouse had created a body with a high tolerance for drugs and the ability to sense any drug mixed in with food.

Duke had recently invented a sleeping gas with good results, but thanks to Heart, the product and the recipe were destroyed and banned. However, Twins were not interested in his dirty work, so Duke’s words went in one ear and out the other.

The only way to decipher a drug before tasting it would be through scent. And so they purchased Duke’s sedative and dumped a large portion of it into the soup so that he would pass out with just one sip.