The Orphan from the Temple
“Waaaaah.”
At Everett’s low voice, the child who had been stubbornly holding back finally burst into tears.
The little boy, skinny as a dried twig, cried so hard that snot and tears poured down his face in rivers. It was hard to believe such a frail body could produce that much liquid.
He clutched his wrist tightly, clearly terrified.
I shot Everett a glare.
‘Is this what you call appropriate? You went too far.’
Everett avoided my sharp gaze, looking slightly sheepish. Still, overall he seemed quite confident.
‘He’s thinking, “You told me to scold him, so I scolded him.”’
I let out an exaggerated sigh in Everett’s direction before crouching down in front of the still-sobbing child.
‘How do I calm him down?’
I had three younger siblings, but the kids in my family weren’t big criers. When they did cry, a bit of sugar usually fixed everything right away. Parenting difficulty: easy mode.
‘Suddenly needing something sweet… Oh, wait. I do have some.’
I wiped my hands on my clothes.
I’d been petting the horses for quite a while before the child appeared.
‘Those horses were bathed not long ago. Probably.’
After securing the bare minimum of hygiene, I gently pulled the pouch from the child’s hand.
“Here, kiddo. Want to see this?”
I took out a sugar cube and moved it through the air like an acrobatic bird doing loops, drawing a complicated path before bringing it to the child’s lips.
The boy’s crying had already started to taper off the moment I pulled out the sugar cube.
After circling the air about three times and finally touching it to his mouth, he instinctively accepted it.
He rolled it around on his tongue in a daze, then seemed to register the sweetness a beat later.
The child began carefully sucking on the sugar cube.
He ate it slowly, as if savoring a rare treat he hadn’t had in a very long time.
“What that uncle said earlier was assuming you’d grow up to be a bad adult.”
With his mouth full of overwhelming sweetness, he probably couldn’t even hear my voice.
The sugar cube, no bigger than a Cooper coin, melted away in no time despite the boy’s earnest efforts.
He licked his lips and made a pitiful face.
I’ve always been especially soft on small children and animals.
“Want some more?”
I turned my pocket inside out, shook out all the remaining sugar cubes, and placed them in his hands.
Feeding a child that much sugar wasn’t exactly recommended, but the boy in front of me looked severely malnourished.
‘At least he’ll get some calories.’
The child kept glancing back and forth between the sugar cubes filling his small palms and the street beyond.
Then he squeezed his eyes shut and dumped every last cube into his mouth.
“Drink some water too.”
I handed him my canteen.
Whether from all the crying or dehydration, the boy nearly drained half of the large traveler’s canteen.
After consuming a ridiculous amount of sugar and plain water, a bit of color finally returned to his face.
The tears and snot had completely stopped.
‘This should be enough.’
Now it was time for the scolding.
I used the same tone I always took when disciplining my troublemaking younger siblings and asked for the child’s name.
“Little one, what’s your name?”
“Robin. I’m seven years old.”
The boy glanced around nervously before mumbling his name.
Just like most children when asked to introduce themselves, he included his age.
His voice was stuffy from all the crying, but it was still easy enough to understand.
“Alright. Robin, who is seven years old. You know you’re not supposed to steal other people’s things, right?”
“Yes.”
Robin had become surprisingly obedient, probably riding a massive sugar high.
“Then why did you do it?”
“I thought it was a pouch with money in it. They say you need money to buy bread.”
The child was brutally honest.
“Even so, Robin.”
I had called out the name of the little pickpocket with great momentum, but then I hesitated.
‘I need to give him a proper warning.’
Of course stealing was wrong.
But lecturing this child—who clearly hadn’t had a proper full meal in a very long time—made me feel incredibly guilty.
‘After all, I grew up in a middle-class family where I never lacked for anything.’
I’d just let Everett take credit for the scolding.
I swallowed the complicated mix of emotions swirling inside me and changed the subject.
“Where is your guardian?”
I was thinking of sending the child off with enough food to last him a few days.
I’d asked as gently as I could, but Robin avoided my eyes and shook his head vigorously.
“No, I don’t have one. After my parents died, I’ve been living alone on these streets.”
‘Does he think I’m going to demand compensation from his guardian or something?’
He probably thought he’d given a pretty good excuse, but he was still just a child.
‘How many adults would actually believe a seven-year-old lives alone?’
There was one more reason I suspected Robin was lying.
The clothes he wore were old and had clearly been mended many times. The stitching was far too neat and precise for a seven-year-old to have done himself.
“I’m not looking for your guardian to get angry at them.”
Even after I explained calmly, Robin still looked completely unconvinced.
He kept repeating things like “It’s true,” and “I’m not lying,” stubbornly trying to maintain his story.
“Really? Then the temple here runs an orphanage, doesn’t it? I’ll take you there.”
I brought up the orphanage to get Robin to tell the truth.
The temple was the kind of place that claimed half of all donations and imperial relief supplies as “belonging to the gods.”
They did perform charity work to keep up appearances in front of the believers, but it was nothing more than a token gesture.
Except for the few conscientious priests who actually ran them, the orphanages were always desperately poor despite the generous support from the imperial family.
Still, even that would be better than the child’s current situation.
At least they could fill his stomach with hard black bread and thin soup.
And if Robin was somehow telling the truth, then taking him to the orphanage was the right thing to do.
“But if you really do have a guardian, will you tell me honestly? I’m not trying to do anything bad. I just feel bad leaving a young child like you on the street.”
When I spoke to him in a coaxing tone, Robin seemed to hesitate.
“Well…”
For such a small boy, he sure had a lot to think about. He opened and closed his mouth several times without speaking.
“I can’t tell you. I’m sorry.”
Robin squeezed his eyes shut and shouted, then turned around and tried to run away.
“What a slippery little eel.”
He only made it about ten steps before Everett caught him again.
“Let me go!”
Everett lifted the violently struggling Robin high into the air. The boy was thrashing even harder than before.
Their eyes met.
Everett twisted his lips and said with a mischievous smirk.
“No.”
Robin, who had been dangling from Everett’s grip and flailing for a while, finally exhausted himself. With a heartbroken expression, he started crying again.
“I was wrong. Please send me home.”
“Oh dear.”
Everett set the child down with an awkward look on his face.
“I’ll take you home, so tell me where it is.”
Everett tried to soothe the boy in the gentlest tone he could manage.
At the words “take you home,” Robin’s hiccupping sobs calmed down a little and he opened his mouth.
“You’ll really send me if I tell you?”
He widened his eyes, trying to look as serious as possible.
Tears that had been pooling finally spilled down his cheeks.
‘What a clever little rascal.’
I answered honestly.
“Of course.”
Only then did Robin seem relieved. He finally confessed that he actually lived at the orphanage.
“So you really don’t need to take me there.”
“You live at the orphanage?”
I was genuinely shocked to hear Robin’s answer.
‘I knew the temple’s corruption was worse than people realized, but this…’
Robin’s terrible condition made me half doubt his words.
‘I thought maybe his guardian had some problem and couldn’t take proper care of him.’
Everett also seemed surprised by Robin’s answer. One of his eyebrows shot up in clear displeasure.
His lips were pressed into a hard line. He looked furious.
My own face probably didn’t show it as much because of my naturally soft features, but I was just as angry.
‘If this child is telling the truth, then the temple has crossed the line.’
The relationship between the emperor and the temple had never been good to begin with.
‘But when it comes to helping the poor, they’ve had a sort of “enemy of my enemy” cooperation.’
While the emperor focused all his efforts on the war, the temple had taken on the minimum role of providing relief to the poor. In return, the emperor paid them for that service. It was a symbiotic relationship.
‘Though really the emperor was just getting extorted.’
It wasn’t as if the emperor was unaware of the temple’s corruption.