Try Begging - Chapter 140.2
The train arrived at the platform much earlier than its scheduled departure time. Grace entered a first-class compartment and lay down. She had no ticket, but the conductor wouldn’t kick her out.
Suddenly, she remembered calling the train she boarded yesterday the ‘express train to hell.’
What should she call a train that’s bringing hell along?
As she was about to smile at the thought, the compartment door opened. There was no need for greetings, so she was about to close her eyes when the woman handed her a large paper bag.
“Here’s your meal. Please eat it while it’s warm.”
Using honorifics meant for superiors on a rebel seemed to have made the woman realize that the relationship between her superior and Grace was no ordinary matter.
Grace sat up and took the box out of the bag, placing it on the seat next to her.
The scent of food already filled the compartment.
She opened the box marked with a hotel’s logo in gold and let out a wry smile unwittingly. Inside was roasted turkey with cranberry sauce and roasted vegetables, covered in truffle gravy, and for dessert, a mince pie sprinkled with sugar powder and a trifle layered with strawberries.
It was a meal that seemed more suited for a Christmas dinner.
“This is my first time having such luxurious combat rations.”
The woman, sitting stiffly opposite her, didn’t say a word.
Despite not having eaten all day, Grace wasn’t hungry. After barely touching the meal and putting it away, the woman started asking various questions about her and the child’s condition, attempting to check on them.
Grace, finding it bothersome, refused and laid down, causing the woman to look troubled.
It must have been that man’s doing.
Feeling unnecessarily heavy-hearted, Grace closed her eyes and listened to the noise from the platform. The train departed much later than its scheduled time.
A forced march, no less challenging than yesterday’s, awaited her.
This was her only chance to rest comfortably, yet Grace couldn’t sleep at all for over five hours. As the train approached Witherridge Station, she got up at the officer’s announcement.
Familiar landscapes flashed by the window. It had been a long time, probably the last. Recalling her first visit to this station, she turned her head towards the window facing the corridor. On the opposite platform for the down line, a few people were sporadically waiting for the train.
And between them, Grace saw a girl.
The vision of an eleven-year-old girl, excited about taking a train for the first time, going to see the ocean, and chattering away to adults, made her unknowingly turn her head away.
As the train stopped, she stepped out without hesitation.
Not many passengers got off at this rural station. Even for such a remote location, the station was bustling as Grace made her way out. She briefly surveyed the front of the station. Witherridge’s downtown hadn’t changed much in over two years. The bus stop was still right in front of the train station.
“Blackburn, one ticket please.”
While buying a bus ticket to the village from a kiosk along the roadside, her gaze landed on a chocolate bar displayed at the newsstand.
It was still there.
The chocolate she had saved her errand money to buy, treasured, and then unknowingly gave as a gift to a pretty boy she had seen for the first time.
And when she returned home, she could have bought it again but didn’t.
Ever since that day at Abbington Beach, seeing that chocolate always brought the boy’s face to mind. Today, too, she couldn’t muster the courage to buy it. Perhaps Grace would never know the taste of that chocolate in her lifetime.
And she no longer wanted to.
Because that boy died that night.
Suppressing the emotions welling up inside, she stood by the roadside. Behind her, the sound of a nursing officer buying the same ticket could be heard. She raised her head, which had been staring only at her feet, and she saw the red sunset over the low buildings.
It almost looked like blood.
She took a deep breath.
Clenching her fist, the bus ticket crumpled. Grace only shifted her eyes to glance at the black sedan parked far down the road.
That man was probably watching her now.
B*stard. But a useful b*stard.
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