Hypocrites
"Sorry, I'm just going to go feed Tia real quick."
"Why not bring her down and feed her here? I'll share my food with her!"
"She can't have greasy or salty food yet······."
You couldn't exactly feed bar snacks to a baby who'd only just learned to crawl.
Granted, Tia's iron stomach could probably digest them and then some, but better safe than sorry — I was sticking to properly made baby food.
"Hahaha! Go on then, hurry back!"
Apparently the customer had only been joking, because he soon cleared a path for me.
Everyone turned into a fool the moment Tia came up in conversation, and I took full advantage of it. Whenever the mood in the tavern turned ugly, I'd bring Tia down and carry her around for a while.
Even the customers who'd been swinging fists at each other would go slack-jawed in front of her, or contort their already-homely faces into ridiculous shapes, trying their absolute hardest to make her laugh.
"Hey, Yulia! Answer one question before you go!"
"What is it?"
"Who's the kid's father?"
"Ah."
"······."
"······."
At that one drunken remark, the whole room went silent in an instant.
Unable to answer, I just stood there, and I could feel the chill spreading through the air on my skin.
Everyone was glaring at the drunk, giving him warning looks — but they kept sneaking glances at my face too. So they were curious after all.
They just hadn't been able to bring themselves to ask me directly, I suppose.
"W-well, you see······"
"Come on now! Drunks go home! And Yulia, hurry up! Tia's about to start wailing again!"
The Boss shoved me toward the back of the bar.
Come to think of it, how was I supposed to answer a question like that?
If I told them I'd picked her up off the street, would anyone actually believe me?
They might pretend to on the surface, but not one of them would believe it in their hearts.
Most likely they all believed Tia was my own flesh and blood — which happened to be the truth anyway.
So I'd decided not to actively explain or deny anything.
"Mummaa! Mummaa!"
"Okay, okay. I figured you were about to start pitching a fit, so I made you food."
When I came back with a bowl of potato porridge, Tia was teetering right on the edge of the bed, waving her arms around wildly.
She still looked full of energy, but I needed to feed her before things went downhill.
Because if I left her alone until she started crying for food, there were people in the next room who'd file complaints about the noise.
Most of the patrons here were men who'd abandoned wife and kids for a brief escape, after all. If a baby's cries interrupted their dalliance mid-act, they'd have every reason to be furious.
"Sit still. I have to let it cool first."
"Mumma! Mumma milk······!"
"That's not what this is."
She kept trying to bury her face in my chest, and I had to struggle with everything I had to pull her away.
She'd gotten so strong that I was exhausted before we even started.
When I held firm, Tia's face crumpled and she began to whimper.
This was her ultimate technique, as far as she was concerned. Whenever she pulled it, the male customers gave her whatever she wanted.
But there was no way that was going to work on me.
The moment she realized her fake crying wasn't working, Tia swallowed it back down and stuck out her lips in a pout.
"No. Time to be weaned."
It felt absurd to wean a baby at three weeks old, but I had no choice.
If she smiled with that wide-open grin of hers, the damage was agony — her teeth had grown in enough now to be clearly visible.
When she merely suckled, it hurt only a little, but whenever I tried to pull away and she bit down desperately to keep from letting go, I'd nearly screamed from the pain more than once.
After that, I made up my mind completely: weaning it was.
"Mmmmm······."
Her mouth apparently idle, Tia kept smacking her lips and chewing at nothing.
Just watching her made the tips of my chest ache.
No. Absolutely not.
However desperately she stared, the answer was no.
Unless I wanted to grit my teeth through the sensation of my nipples being torn off again, I had to stand firm.
"Hot-hot······!"
"Oops. Too hot, is it? And here I said I'd let it cool. Hoo. Whew. There, try again."
"Mmm······."
Scooping porridge with a tiny teaspoon, blowing on it to cool it, then feeding her — the whole process took ages.
But that meant I got to rest for exactly that long, so I wasn't in any particular hurry.
Watching Tia gobble everything down like she was about to swallow the teaspoon along with the porridge, I found myself thinking she'd grown again overnight.
Her horns looked a little bigger too.
Was I imagining it?
"Don't cry now. Be good, and I'll bring you down to see the customers when it's less busy."
I picked up the empty bowl and left the room.
Come to think of it, if she kept growing at this pace, showing Tia to people might soon become impossible.
If someone noticed that the baby they'd seen just a few weeks ago had suddenly shot up in size, or glimpsed something sharp trying to poke through her hat, they'd figure it out sooner or later.
Which gave me a new goal: leave this tavern before Tia's growth gave us away.
That was the plan for now.
Since I needed to save money, I'd naturally quit drinking. Not that I could get drunk in this body anyway — quitting had done me no harm.
"Oof, my back."
When I tried to stand, a sudden ache ran through my hips and I had to pause for a moment.
It had been like this since morning. Why?
But I had infinite recovery ability, so I brushed it off as nothing.
"Yulia. Come here a second."
"Huh? Now?"
"What, should I ask you to come in an hour? Hurry up."
"······."
I was heading down to the first floor when a voice from the restroom stopped me in my tracks.
It was the fox-eared woman everyone called Wang-eonni.
She seemed to despise me — she'd spent all this time treating me like I didn't exist — so her calling for me today was more than a little strange.
"Come closer. Don't stand way over there. I'm closing the door."
"······."
"You smoke?"
"No."
"Ah, right — you've got the baby······."
The thick door thudded shut.
Wang-eonni stuck the cigarette she'd offered me between her own lips and struck a match.
By the time the acrid smoke had risen to fill the restroom, her ears snapped fully open and she stared straight at me.
What is it this time?
Her whole demeanor was odd. It felt like she had something important to say.
"Hey. You. That······. Hah. Never mind."
After a moment of hesitation, she let out a long sigh and tried again, her face now set with resolve, as if she'd finished deliberating.
"That kid. You picked her up, didn't you?"
"What?"
"You picked her up. Tia. Am I wrong?"
"······."
Her tone was dripping with certainty.
But I couldn't fathom what she was basing that judgment on. Well — no, to be precise, there was one thing that made me suspicious.
Which made me all the more anxious.
"N-no, that's not······"
"Don't bother denying it. I saw under that kid's hat — that's why I'm telling you."
"······."
The moment I saw her faint smile, my brain simply stopped.
She'd caught Tia's horns.
For a flash of a second, I actually considered strangling her right there, grabbing Tia, and running.
But thinking it over, I realized I was no longer the body of a healthy man. I was now the body of a lowly female who went weak in the knees and whimpered at the mere brush of a chest — I'd never win a fight by choking someone.
Besides, her chest was far smaller than mine, so she'd be the more agile one.
Now what do I do?
What was there to do? Get on my knees and beg her, please don't spread it around, obviously.
I knew every second of delay would only add to my guilt — but my legs had frozen solid and refused to move.
Just as I stood there trembling, Wang-eonni turned her head and exhaled a long plume of smoke.
"What are you thinking about?"
"Huh?"
"I said, what are you thinking? You think you're some kind of saint? Taking in and raising a demon child that isn't even yours?"
"······."
She IS mine, actually.
I barely managed to choke down the words before they escaped.
"Doing that kind of thing makes you feel so noble and righteous, doesn't it? Right? You pocket your pay for letting men use your body, but it's all in the name of justice, so you get to believe your soul stays pure. Isn't that how it goes? Hm?"
"······."
"Well, you're wrong. You're fooling yourself completely. That sort of thing is for the rich and comfortable. For someone like you, it's nothing but hypocrisy — playing the good person just to sleep better at night. You're burning up your own life while throwing a child with no blood relation to you straight into hell. Do you understand, you foolish girl?"
You bitch.
So that's why she'd called me here — to lecture me.
A woman drowning in her own inferiority complex. Normally I'd just ignore her.
I knew perfectly well that the smart move was to smile through whatever she muttered at me.
But maybe it was because my body wasn't feeling its best today. Before I knew it, I'd snapped.
"You think I don't know that?"
"What?"
"You think I'm raising her without knowing? I know. I KNOW! I want to dump her and be comfortable too! I don't want to work alongside some lowlife like you! But I can't, so what am I supposed to do! The little milk-drinking brat is wailing just to survive, and how am I supposed to ignore that? I can't give her up, so what the hell do you want from me!"
"All you're doing is making you both miserable in the end. You really think she'll grow up and thank you for raising her? Dream on."
I know she'll resent me, you rotten woman.
I'd made my peace with that already.
But the sight of this filthy creature lecturing me got under my skin so badly that my hand shot out and seized her by the collar before I could stop myself.
"I know exactly what kind of woman you are. A moron who thinks she's clever. You tell yourself it's for the child, but the truth is you couldn't care less about anything but your own peace of mind. A selfish hypocrite."
"And what are YOU? Have you ever even pretended to sacrifice for someone else? Have you ever so much as dripped with the hypocrisy you sneer at?"
"I drip with it every single month. On payday, I send money to the kids I gave up for adoption while telling myself I made the right choice. Not that those kids are drowning in anything but money these days. I'm just like you. Exactly the same. A hypocrite through and through."
"······."
My grip on her collar slowly loosened.
When I stood there in silence, Wang-eonni ground the cigarette between her teeth, then tossed it into the toilet, crossed her legs, and sank down onto it heavily.
At some point her ears had drooped, folding back against her head, lifeless.
She looked — just a little, a very little — pitiable.
"You sent your children to be adopted by a noble family······?"
"Yeah. A lord who couldn't have children wanted mine. My husband died in the war, winter was coming, and I had no money to fix the collapsed roof, no money for tomorrow's meals. So I had no choice — I cut as many mouths as I could, sent the children to the lord's castle, and started desperately earning money. To bring them back. It took me years to save up enough even to send them to university, and then I ran, breathless, to the lord's castle. And that was when I saw it. The children running around the green gardens in pretty clothes, looking so utterly happy. I couldn't bring myself to go up to them with this filthy, stained body and demand they give the children back. I watched them laughing from far away — and then I quietly turned around and left."
"······."
As she spoke, Wang-eonni wore a faint smile on her lips.
But that smile looked so terribly, bitterly sad.
"I hate you, Yulia. I hate you so much. I gave up my children long ago and sold my body, and yet you — still pretending to be noble — I hate you. Looking at you and Tia feels like my whole life is being denied. It makes me want to die."
"······."
Ferocious eyes bore into me.
I bit down hard on my lip.
Maybe I was nothing but a clean-dressed woman calling the shit-covered ones dirty.
Prostitution was unquestionably lowly work — but it was not unforgivable. No one had the right to condemn a woman who had done what she truly believed was best for her own children. Least of all me.
"Still······ I want you to prove me wrong. I want you to show me that even a greedy mother who can't let go can make both parent and child happy. Because if you can do that — then maybe I can finally cut myself free from my children for good······."
"Why cut them off? If you miss them, go see them."
"Heh. If I showed up now, I'd only be a burden. They've forgotten a terrible mother like me and are living well, and if I suddenly showed up······"
"Don't make excuses. Is your whole life one big excuse? 'I had no choice, I had to cut mouths to feed'? Spare me. You just gave up. And this time, you're just a coward again. Want me to come with you and hold your hand?"
"E-excuses, my ass! They're living well with good parents — what good would it do for their prostitute birth mother to show up? It'd only make things harder for them! What am I even supposed to do if I go? It'd just be for my own satisfaction, wouldn't it?"
"And how do you know they're happy? Did you ever ask them? No, you didn't. So go ask. Go find out for yourself whether your choice was right or wrong, you coward."
"······."
Wang-eonni's head dropped.
Was I really in any position, with my own wretched life, to meddle this much in someone else's?
Her lips trembled for a moment, then she sniffled and looked back up at me.
"Y-you'll really come with me? Hold my hand and everything?"
"I'm not holding your hand."
"Ugh! That's not what I meant — will you come with me or not! Why would I hold your hand, we're both women!"
"I keep my word. If you're scared, I'll be right there beside you. So someday, come with me to see the kids. Got it?"
"Yeah······."
Her answer was so embarrassingly meek that I nearly burst out laughing right there.
So this was the woman who'd spent all this time posturing as the great Wang-eonni and treating me like garbage.
The more I looked at her, the funnier she was.
"By the way, what's your actual name? I've only ever heard you called Wang-eonni. I don't know your real name."
"Irina. That's my real name. And yours, Yulia — what's your real name?"
"That is my real name. Just Yulia."
"What? You mean that wasn't a work alias for the tavern — it's your actual name?"
"Yeah. Got a problem with that?"
"Of course I have a problem! Do you have any idea how many dangerous customers there are in this business, and you use your real name without a shred of fear? Haaah. It's not that you're fearless — you're just plain stupid."
"Sorry I don't know much about this business! There, happy?"
"Then learn from me. And······"
"And?"
"Tia. When you're busy, should I, um, watch her for you? I'm the only one besides you who knows she's demonfolk······."
Irina averted her eyes and worked her lips, forcing the words out with visible difficulty.
Well, well.
Had this woman always been this meek?
"Don't get the wrong idea! I just want to fill the empty spot left after sending my kids off for adoption — that's all! I'm satisfying my own selfish needs! I'm not doing this for you!"
"Sure, sure. Whatever you say. Shall we head down now?"
"······."
She was offering to babysit Tia for free — there was no reason to refuse.
When I held out my hand, Irina stared at it for a moment, then gently took hold of it and rose to her feet.
We came out separately afterward, descending to the first floor at staggered intervals.
Too awkward to face each other, the two of us couldn't manage so much as a single glance for the rest of the day.