3. The Girl
Florna slowly massaged the muscles around her weary eyes with her fingertips. Yena, Stunel's sub-madam, had stressed that the delicate skin under the eyes wrinkled easily, so one must never rub too hard—but pressing firmly with her fingertips chased away some of the fatigue. Above all else in a place where beauty was paramount, Yena had taught her never to scrub the facial skin harshly or press and drag it repeatedly in one direction. Rub too hard and wrinkles formed; keep it up, and they'd deepen, making a girl look aged and worthless as merchandise. She would have been horrified if she'd seen Florna doing this.
Just before entering her room, she'd run into Yena in the hallway, who congratulated her warmly. No girl had ever paid off her bond and left the Castle of Atonement in just three weeks since her debut, Yena had exclaimed—loud enough for the girls in thin gowns trailing behind her from Lily Hall to hear, making a deliberate fuss as they headed back to the dorms. Florna had merely curtsied politely with a slight bend of her knees and passed by, but Yena praised her loudly, saying even her manners befitted a fifteen-thousand-gold prize.
Yena's blatant, excessive flattery only fueled resentment among Stunel's girls. Some had succeeded on their first auction in Lily Hall, but most had to wait for the next, leaving nerves frayed—and Yena had just poured oil on the fire.
"That half-decent face, and she's acting all high and mighty?"
"We all have looks just as good."
"She just got lucky with a client. One tough break."
"I don't get why she's a special item."
"It's just the hair color."
"Don't worry. A face like that'll fade fast. She'll shrivel up like a raisin soon enough."
They whispered it loud enough to be heard—no pretense of lowering their voices—and it reached Florna's ears plain as day. Though she feigned composure, her back prickled as she passed them.
The girls' open hostility toward Florna had its reasons. From day one at Stunel, when she'd met Anika and signed her contract, she'd been given a private room. It was a stark difference from the other girls crammed into dorms until their first contract, and soon enough, she'd noticed their sidelong glares and sour expressions creating an invisible rift.
She hadn't planned to befriend them anyway, but she hadn't expected outright enmity from the start. She'd thought it was just separate quarters, but that was naive.
Mealtimes in the dining hall, chance encounters in corridors or the fourth-floor terrace—any shared space brought covert stares laced with jealousy, envy, spite, and anger that left her unsettled. Was it because she was an only child? She was used to solitude, felt no need to approach others first, and had little experience doing so. She just couldn't blend in naturally here.
Amid the girls' cliques, Florna was overwhelmed just adapting to her suddenly changed world and processing the emotions it stirred. Anxiety, doubt, tension—and intermittent spasms of inner torment like seizures. In her confusion, she kept her mouth shut and moved carefully to avoid giving offense, but that only earned her a reputation for arrogance and haughtiness.
A few girls' blatant antagonism had isolated her before she could even settle in. The apathetic majority swiftly sided with the vocal few. What started as subtle exclusion had escalated to overt aggression.
If Mom had gotten her wish and I'd had a sibling, would I be more sociable? People say only children lack consideration, act selfishly and egotistically. Maybe it'd be different with brothers or sisters.
Florna dragged her heavy body to the bed. The cramped space—barely room for a bed, small table, and chair—felt cozy and secure, her own private sanctuary free of intrusion. Over the past three weeks, she'd realized how disastrous dorm life would have been. Unlike green newcomers like her, the girls prepping for auction had been here up to five years, and their seniority was fierce.
Even in the communal dining hall, some claimed assigned seats; they pre-occupied spots on the fourth-floor terrace and elsewhere. Sit in the wrong one by accident, and you'd "accidentally" get scalded in the showers or have hot soup dumped on your head with a slippery-hand excuse.
Florna buried her face in the pillow as she lay on the bed. The tension from her Lily Hall debut and the day's events had strung her body taut; at last, sleep pressed in. In her drowsy haze, a swamp of swirling thoughts pulled her under.
Even now, she knew she'd been lucky this time. It was a gamble into an unknown future, but life here was a cliff's edge anyway—stumble wrong, and you'd plummet no matter what. Stunel's growing hostility and isolation had worn her down, and even without that man, tonight she'd have been thoroughly used as a pleasure tool, her mind and body plundered by some other buyer.
Sleep overtook her; her eyes closed. Her hazy mind sank into chaotic thoughts.
In dreamlike drift, a low, gentle voice called her name from somewhere.
"……Emily……."
Ah, it's Dad. That beloved voice I'll never hear again.
Life in Exangciras, a small mining village a day's ride southwest of Eliyum, was monotonously simple. A fifteen-minute walk from the hamlet brought you to the village hall and central hub; another fifteen minutes beyond that lay the Scren Mine where Dad worked.
Exangciras was thirty years old now, they said. A count named Mercier from the eastern continent had appeared out of nowhere on the barren wasteland—save for cave-like pits hinting at the mine entrance—and begun developing it, excavating ancient tunnels and shafts buried by time. It started with a handful of workers for the count, but as the operation grew and minerals poured out from the third year on, miners flocked in, spawning the village to meet their needs.
Like any miner's family, Emily's home was ordinary. When the sun set, Dad didn't linger at the village inn-cum-tavern knocking back drinks with the others—he came straight home diligently. Young Emily, devoted to her handsome blond father, waited at the mine entrance and walked back with him.
Street aunties showered him with admiring glances; his fellow miners sometimes grumbled about it on the way home.
Dad always laughed it off cheerfully. "If you skipped the tavern and went straight home too, your wives would love it."
Then the uncles would nudge his chest playfully with an elbow and murmur slyly, "No matter how I look, you're the pretty one. Marie's no catch outside the dark, honestly. Must be some killer bedroom skills keeping her stuck to you like honey. Eh? Every night, right?"
"Hey, the kid's listening."
Dad's scolding tone drew group laughter from the uncles.
"What's she gonna do, hear it? If you and Em put in the work day and night, you might get a sibling—and she'd love that. Right, Emily?"
Neighbor Mark tousled Emily's hair as she held Dad's hand. "Why do you always call her Emily? It's Em."
"Em, when you grow up, work the mine with Uncle."
"Bring the new baby brother tonight too. Haha."
The others laughed, eyeing Emily. As a child, with her pale skin, scrawny build, platinum hair cropped boyishly short, villagers called her by the masculine "Em" instead of Emily.
But Uncle Mark always petted her head with his big hand and said Emily. Mom often voiced her wish for a son, so Emily nodded at their teasing.
"I'd like a little brother too."
The uncles got excited. "See? Em wants it. Step it up day and night with Marie, Chris."
"Strike while the iron's hot—tonight?"
"We'll watch Em; go run to Marie. Haha."
"Tell Marie to make meat for dinner—gotta build strength all night. Yours is the sturdiest I've seen; no results yet means not enough meat."
Dad said nothing to their ribbing, just gazed tenderly at Emily's gray eyes and pulled her close by the shoulders. The sunset's red glow to the west—daily backdrop to their homeward trek with the uncles—was beautiful, peaceful.
One day, as usual, Emily sat on a stone stump at the mine entrance, watching the sunset while waiting for Chris. The entrance was emptier than normal; workers had gone back inside to wrap up.
Absorbed in the brilliant crimson sky, she suddenly felt her whole body constrict—a strange squeezing sensation. The air underground seemed to compress and shrink in an instant. She looked around, but the barren mine mouth showed no change.
The pressure intensified; she clutched her chest in agony. Her heart was strangled, breath failing. Sweat beaded on her brow, eyes narrowing—she thought she couldn't bear it. Barely lifting her lids took Herculean effort; through blurring vision, something caught her eye.
The landscape twisted like a whirlpool. A fiercer pain surged; she gripped her chest harder.
Then—the air split like paper sliced by a knife. Faint figures materialized before her.