The Whipping Maid of House Calley - Chapter 67

After arriving at the room she shared with the senior maids, Sheila lay down in her spot, hugging the doll her older sister had made.

Tears streamed down from her temples.

Sheila wiped her tears away and stared blankly at the ceiling. Like that, night quickly came.

Sheila hid the doll her older sister had made deep among her belongings. It felt like holding the doll made her cry even more.

When the night grew late, Ebony came in with a sigh after finishing work.

“Ugh, seriously, it’s so disgusting I can’t even do this.”

Sheila, who had taken her holiday and even tacked on leave and come back, hurriedly got up and greeted her.

“Ebony, you worked hard.”

Rita, who shared the room as well, also came in after finishing work and asked, “Sheila, did you have a good trip?”

“Must’ve been nice, taking two days off in a row, huh?”

Unlike Rita, Ebony’s voice, the senior maid she worked with, dripped with sarcasm.

It wasn’t even a harsh scolding, but Sheila’s eyes reddened.

“Looks like she cried after meeting her older sister.”

At Rita’s words, Ebony, who had been full of irritation, looked at Sheila’s face and said, “Ugh, this damned maid’s fate.”

Ebony, acting like a senior, often picked at Sheila, but she and Sheila shared the same misery of having to care for Judith, who had turned ten this year.

Ebony asked, “So, is your older sister doing well?”

“…Yes,” Sheila replied.

She still wasn’t ready to talk about her older sister’s death. Sheila herself still couldn’t feel it was real.

“Damn it, I should just get married too. Within three months, I’m definitely quitting, I swear!”

Like she’d suffered a lot on her own, Ebony snapped again in irritation.

But she didn’t pick a fight with Sheila anymore.

Ebony and Rita’s chatter went on late into the night.

Even after the maids’ chatter stopped, Sheila couldn’t fall asleep all night.

***

A week passed, and Sheila made up her mind to go see her older brother for a day trip.

She still had a little money left that she’d saved to give her older sister. Sheila bought a train ticket to Broden with that money.

She’d only been sending her older brother money every month, and this was the first time she’d come to see him like this.

When Sheila left on the first train and arrived at her hometown home for the first time in a year, it still wasn’t even noon.

“Oppa, I’m here.”

Even though the sun was high, for Fred it was still the middle of the night.

When she went over to wake Fred, the stench of alcohol hit her.

Should she be thankful he was at least at home?

When Sheila shook him awake, Fred spat out a curse in his sleep.

“Ahh! Fuck!”

Sheila, who got slapped every time she woke Judith, gave up on waking her older brother and went to the kitchen.

Fred had never hit her, but Sheila was more scared of her older brother than Judith.

In the year Sheila had been away, the kitchen was a mess. There weren’t even proper ingredients.

Using the remaining vegetables, like shriveled beets and potatoes, Sheila made stew.

“Oppa, get up. I made stew.”

Even with a hangover, Fred had known Sheila was back. Smelling the stew, he grumbled and pushed himself up.

“You could’ve just gone to a restaurant and bought something, being so damn pathetic….”

Fred, even though he didn’t earn a single coin, sure loved to run his mouth like he had an easy life. Of course, he was also saying it because he knew there weren’t proper ingredients in the house.

Still, his stomach was empty, so it worked out. Fred sat at the table where Sheila had set out the stew.

“The stew is fucking watery, so bland.”

Fred grumbled as he emptied the stew, which only made one bowl with the shriveled ingredients not even amounting to much.

He didn’t even care that there was nothing in front of the younger sister who had come from far away.

Despite how watery it looked, the stew tasted good.

Maybe it tasted like when their mother was still alive. Their mother’s touch passed to Fabiola, and that touch passed to Sheila, so it was only natural.

Sheila held back and held back what she wanted to say until Fred finished the bowl.

Because there was no point talking to someone who wasn’t even in his right mind.

Slurp, smack- Making loud noises as he gulped it down, Fred ate the stew and then let out a “Kuuh” as he set down the emptied bowl.

“But what brings you here?”

Before she could even bring it up, tears welled up in Sheila’s eyes.

“Oppa, did you hear anything about Unnie?”

“Fabiola? What about her? Did she have a kid or something?”

Fred, as if what he said was funny even to himself, snickered and continued, “That old bastard’s got some stamina. He got lucky, that bastard. Getting a girl like our Fabiola….”

Sheila hadn’t said anything, but Fred ran his mouth on his own.

His tone and what he was saying were disgusting.

“That’s not it!” Sheila shouted.

Fred glared at her with a grim expression, his eyes still hazy.

“Unnie… huhh, Unnie sister is dead! They said she had a hard time after getting married, and then she killed herself!”

Sheila wailed.

Fred looked blank for a while, like he didn’t understand.

Of course… Sheila also had a hard time accepting her older sister’s death at first. No, even now, in this moment of telling it, it still didn’t feel real.

For the first time, focus returned to Fred’s eyes that had been unfocused.

Fred flipped the table in front of him and exploded in anger.

“What! This fucking….”

Sheila’s crying echoed even more miserably.

No matter how much she hated him, in this world, the only person left who could grieve and rage with her over Fabiola’s death was Fred.

Sheila buried her face in her hands and cried her heart out.

“Ah, seriously!”

After pacing for a long time, Fred flopped down on the bed and clawed at his hair.

It looked like a gesture mixed with regret and grief over having married Fabiola off to a place like that.

“Fabiola, that… hah…! If you sent her off to marry, she should’ve lived well….”

Fred’s lament continued.

Sheila couldn’t even imagine that those words were him blaming her older sister. Not until what came next.

“Hah, fuck. That bastard isn’t going to demand money back, is he?”

What… What did he just say…?

Sheila, who had been crying, lifted her head.

“Sheila. You went there yourself? What did that bastard say? Did he say to cough up the money again?”

“Oppa, what are you talking about. She’s dead. Our older sister Fabiola….”

“That’s what I’m saying! That idiot did it herself…! Hah, fuck. What do I do?”

Sheila stared at Fred in disbelief.

Fred paced around the house, lost in thought, not even looking at Sheila.

Then he shoved the hem of the yellowed shirt he was wearing into his pants and said.

“This isn’t the time, shit. Don’t go anywhere, Sheila. I need to go ask how to clean this up.”

Leaving that behind, Fred hurried out of the house.

Sheila had thought her older brother would grieve and rage with her. Even if she couldn’t bring her older sister back, she felt like she’d been hit hard in the back of the head.

“Hah…!”

A sigh burst from Sheila’s mouth.

She tried not to resent her older brother over her older sister’s death.

That he hadn’t sent her off knowing it would happen, that the only family she had left now was Fred, she’d been unconsciously forcing herself down like that.

Because if she didn’t, she felt like she’d truly come to hate her older brother. Like she’d come to resent him enough to want to kill him with her own hands.

If Fred had grieved together with her and reflected, Sheila might have forgiven him.

But that didn’t seem likely. Instead, she felt like a fool for having thought it, even for a moment.

Sheila sat there blankly, with a heart full of grief.

When she first learned of her older sister’s death, deep sorrow had swallowed her whole, but this time, anger she couldn’t control surged up.

Sheila came back to herself again when she started to hear murmuring voices from outside the house.

“So you’re saying I should go after them and argue with them first?”

“Yeah. There’s nothing you can do here.”

At Fred’s words, someone agreed and gave advice.

“But if that bitch really did kill herself on her own, won’t I be the one getting screwed instead?”

“You’ve got to grab onto something. If they had nothing to be ashamed of, why would they have stayed quiet all this time?”

“Right. Those fucking bastards.”

Fred spat out a curse.

“Fuck, if I’d known it’d be like this, I should’ve gotten that bitch in as a maid too, like Sheila.”

Fred kept going on without caring at all that Sheila was inside the house. He might not even realize how clearly the conversation carried.

“Things don’t go however you want. You took a lump sum back then, used it well, and now you’re saying something else.”

“Ah, fuck.”

At the other person’s rebuttal, Fred shut his mouth.

The reason Sheila had been able to become a maid was because she worked diligently at the general store and got introduced through an acquaintance of an acquaintance. It wasn’t like positions opened up whenever you wanted, so she’d also been lucky.

Hearing Fred talk like he’d gotten her into it, Sheila was so dumbfounded she couldn’t even force out a hollow laugh.

Then, the next moment, their continued conversation made the hair on Sheila’s neck stand up.

“If you’re planning to sell off the second one too, let me know. I’ll introduce her to a better place.”

At that offer, Fred fell silent for a moment, like he was thinking.

And of course he would. In life, there were times you needed a lump sum of money, but basically, you needed regular income.

After finishing his calculations, Fred said, “No. For now, leave her alone.”

For now…?

It seemed he still needed Sheila, who sent money every month without fail.

Then after that…?

A sense of crisis flooded Sheila.

She’d been working hard for a year and sending money, and she’d been content with her life in her own way.

Even though her older brother took most of her money, the estate provided food, clothing, and shelter, so she didn’t need big money.

If she could just save enough for carriage fare to visit her older sister sometimes, she was content.

But only now did Sheila clearly understand her situation.

That Fred was only leaving her alone, and if he set his mind to it, she, too, could be sold off like her older sister at any time.

Now she could see that Fred only thought of his younger sisters as money. He was a beast who wouldn’t shed a single tear even if he suddenly heard news they’d died.

Sheila’s anger surged at her older brother Fred, who shared her blood but treated them like livestock, more than at Duker, who was a complete stranger.