Winter Rabbit in Wonderland

Chapter 82

Despite Li’s warning to stay locked in her room, Dor could feel that something was not right in the living room. She opened the door.

When she stepped back out, the first thing she saw was a large flame. The fire spread quickly through the sofa, cushions, and the old carpet. And near it, Li was lying unconscious. The inferno looked close to swallowing Li at any moment, so Dor ran over and pulled her by her legs away from the flames.

“Li! Wake up! Li!”

Fortunately, Li woke up. By the time she did, however, the flames had already surrounded them. Li hugged Dor tightly and trembled at the thought of Alice. Angrily, she thought how unfair it would be to die this way. Besides, she was not alone. But what could she do?

She suddenly remembered the power she had harnessed to get rid of the sedatives in her body. It was different from her healing powers. She had never felt anything like it in her 18 years of life. Li thought that this had to be magic.

She knew the way to release her magical powers. The magic circulating in her body had to be summoned by her will. Her desire to command it had to combine with the surroundings to create its power. And finally, she had to ignite the magic to release it.

What they needed now was water. Li collected all her will and strength to release that power outside her body. In the least, she had to stop the licking flames from coming any closer to them.

After failing several times, Li finally succeeded in doing what she wanted. The magic of water and her urgency combined fluidly. Li’s instincts told this was the perfect time to release it.

“Give me water. Enough to shower everything around us.”

Dor, who had her head buried in Li’s embrace, lifted her head when she felt something on her neck. It was raining inside.

“Huh? It’s rain.”

The magic circulating inside Li’s body listened to her request. The cold and wet rain was sprinkling around the room, slowly taking out the flames.

Later that day, when March returned home from finishing his requests, he found his house burnt to black. He jumped in surprise and ran inside, but what met him was a bright voice calling out to him.

“Brother, here!”

“Dor! Are you okay...? Li?”

He turned toward the sound and quickly spun around. What he saw was the white face of Dor with smeared black ash and Li, who was asleep on her shoulder. March ran toward them.

“What happened? Why is the house like this?”

“Uh, so what happened was...”

Alice’s visit, the sudden chaos, fire, Li, who had fainted, and raindrops—Dor recited the story excitedly in fascination, but March was not fully paying attention to her words. He clenched his fists.

“And the other people helped us, and we stopped the fire...Brother?”

“...Let’s ask White Rabbit to let us sleep at her place today,” Dor added.

The sun was going down. March carried Li on his back, but Dor gripped the end of his shirt.

“Are you mad, Brother? I’m sorry. I couldn’t bring anything from inside...”

Only then did March realize that his face had frozen like stone. He tried with all his might to change it to a softer expression as he petted Dor’s hair.

“I’m not mad at you or Li. Here, hold your brother’s hand.”

Dor held his hand. It was not easy to lift Li with one arm, but he did not let go of his sister’s hand. His heart sank as he imagined how close he had come to losing her.

“I’m so glad both of you are safe.”

He muttered. There was a surprising desperation in his voice. Hearing this, Dor burst out laughing.

***

The people who lived in Wonderland had nowhere else to go. To these people, fire was a sensitive issue. The buildings were so close together that there was a high chance of flames spreading. Everyone had helped quell the fire, and March’s house did not suffer much damage except for some scorch marks on the exterior.

The next afternoon after they all had dealt with the fiasco, Dor and Li were fast asleep as SoYoon came over to help March examine the interior for damages.

The first must have started in the living room because only remnants of the sofa, carpet, and curtain were left. As March checked the bedrooms, SoYoon checked the round piece of carpet left in the living room. Although the thought occurred to SoYoon, who was aware that Li was originally from Outhouse and assumed she probably had magical powers, this idea never crossed the minds of any of their neighbors.

March came out after checking the bedrooms. “The inside looks to be okay.”

He glanced at SoYoon nervously after telling her this. He wore an expression on his face that he didn’t have even when he messed up on a request.

“I have something to tell you. It’s about Alice.” He repeated word for word what he had heard from Dor yesterday to SoYoon.

SoYoon blinked repetitively under her white hair. The Alice she knew would never do such a thing. After seeing the rage in March’s eyes, however, she came to a realization. Even though so many things had already changed, she was reading the situation as if it was the Alice from the original story.

“And...there is also another strange story I recently heard.”

His lips started to recite the tale even he could not understand.

***

Right now, Li dreamed someone was pushing her up the stairs.

“Stay hidden like you always have. Do you understand? Then Mom and Dad will come get you.”

Mom! Li wanted to turn around and look at her. But her body would not listen and refused to move. She ran up the stairs and saw the second story. She realized she was currently in the house where she had lived with her parents.

Soon, Li was in her room, hiding in the secret place within it. She pushed the door closed easily, and darkness overtook her. The door had been sealed so that only she could open it from the inside. And unless her parents’ blood or several strong spells overpowered it, she would remain safe until her parents came to get her.

This was a familiar situation. Li knew this was a dream because ever since that day, she had never again hid inside the secret location. And on that day...It was when she had thought that far that she heard a voice from nearby.

“She’s not in this room either!”

“Jekyll, where are you?”

“If we come back with nothing, we’re dead.”

Li froze as she held her breath. She remembered when she had first heard this conversation.

It was that day—the day she had lost everything, which meant that downstairs, her parents were being killed. Go back down! Go and save your parents! Li cried to herself, but her body refused to move.

When she had exhausted herself from crying, Alice started to move. She opened the door, looked around her surroundings and walked toward the stairs. Li, getting closer to the first floor, closed her eyes. She didn’t want to see anything.

Alice moved diligently. She was shocked at the sight of her parents’ corpses, but she didn’t forget the words that were engraved into her head.

She gathered a couple of her things and headed toward her father’s friend’s house, the home of a man she trusted. But she had to leave that place also because she had overheard him calling someone to hand her over to them.

Her parents were gone, and there was nowhere left to go. Her parents had repeatedly told her that if she had ended up in such a situation, she should never go anywhere that had a connection with the government. They told her that she should be more careful of the people she knew because the people who killed her parents and tried to kidnap her would already have contacted those who were close to her. Maybe, they were the ones who...

She had thought that far when she stopped herself. Because if this was true, then there was nothing more she would be able to do.

Even if she had stopped herself, it was impossible to completely rid herself of the thought once it manifested in her head. This was the reason that Alice had chosen to come to Wonderland. It was the one place no one, not even the government, could control. She had thought that if she could just get inside that place, even the murderers wouldn’t dare touch her there. Although she knew that it was a dangerous place, she thought that it couldn’t be worse than this place.

Even though she had been trained to fear the place since she was young, she headed over to it anyway.

And when she finally arrived in front of the flamboyant Wonderland entrance sign, she collapsed from fatigue and blacked out. She had probably thought that it would be better to die. Maybe this was her punishment. When Alice opened her eyes again, her body was occupied by someone else.

The person who took over her body was a girl with a strange name. Alice was able to catch only glimpses of the girl’s thoughts or memories from time to time because the girl had shoved Alice’s identity deep into her consciousness. She was able to come to only in the rarest of times.

Surprisingly, that girl was not of this world. Alice had never once thought that another universe could have existed, and so she thought the girl was crazy. But when she caught glimpses of her memories, she had to admit to herself that this other place existed.

That may have been the reason that this girl was both ignorant and yet had extensive knowledge of Wonderland. Her ignorance gave the girl the courage to strut around Wonderland without even the slightest of the trepidation that Alice had of the place. Soon, Alice, more afraid of forever losing her body, forgot all about her fears of Wonderland.

But it didn’t matter how fearful she was; there was nothing that she could do. One night, Alice was banished from her own body.

She had thought that she had died. In the dark space, she floated around lazily until she saw a light emanating from far away. She was suddenly reminded of something from the other girl’s memory. That girl had moved toward that same light and had then come to occupy Alice’s body.

Then would it be possible for her also? With a last grasp at hope, she swam through the darkness.

Unlike the scene from the other girl’s memory, she moved through the darkness with great difficulty. Next to the light, she saw something that caught her eye. It wasn’t bright or beautiful, but the more she looked at it, the more it continued to hold her attention.

And suddenly, she intuitively knew: this thing would receive her. When she realized it, Alice quickly swam toward it and got sucked inside.

It was this moment that she left her life as Alice and started her life as Li.