Try Begging

Episode 208

"Huh? How many times has Mom told you that?"

The smile that had spread across his pale face disappeared. The child, who looked back at the man with bewildered eyes, sucked his thumb and whispered to Grace.

"But this is Ellie's dad."

At that moment, Grace was speechless. She had never been told not to follow the person who called her father. She followed him obediently just because he said "father," not candy or a toy. She was dumbfounded because she thought it meant she wanted a father.

"It's my fault, don't do that to the child."

Leon stood up and approached the mother and daughter. A pair of turquoise eyes glared at him as if to kill him, while another pair of turquoise eyes wavered between the two in confusion. The child's eyes, looking up at Leon, trembled anxiously, then suddenly widened.

"...Not your dad?"

As soon as the child took a deep breath, tears burst out.

"Whoaang!"

"Ellie, it's dad."

Leon was rejected as soon as he bent down to hug her.

"Sir, Sir!"

The child shook off his hand and clung only to his mother.

"Mom! Ellie, you surprised me. Hug me. Hug me."

All it took was a single word from her father saying that she was right. But Grace didn't even say that, let alone hug the child who was clinging to her.

"If you're angry, take it out on me. Do you really think you'd feel better if you made a kid who doesn't know anything cry over something like this?"

"Who are you to scold me? If you did something wrong, then just keep your mouth shut."

"Mom, Ellie, I feel sick. Hold me."

Only when the child began to kick her feet did Grace stand up and pick her up. When her mother patted her back, the child stopped crying, but she continued to hiccup.

"Ellie, don't ever follow strangers without your permission again."

Ellie nodded, rubbing her eyes against her mother's blouse collar. Leon picked up the stuffed rabbit that had fallen from her mother's neck, and the child snatched it away. The child, who had said this morning that she wanted to live with her father when her mother came home, glared at him. With eyes just like her own mother's.

It felt like my blood was drying up.

I thought I gave affection too easily. I didn't know that taking it back would be as easy as giving it.

"You called me a kidnapper, but you were the one who kidnapped me."

As the child became quiet, burying his face in her shoulder, Grace turned to face the man and lowered her voice to question him.

"Do you know how dangerous something you did today?"

"No, I don't agree with that."

Leon bent his head down enough to feel Grace's body heat and breath, then whispered so the child couldn't hear.

"There is no human being in the world who would kidnap a child just by saying 'dad.' Children usually don't follow along when they hear 'I am your dad.'"

He placed his hand on the child's head, which occasionally stirred and sobbed.

"This child also knows that I am his father. It also means that he wants his father. You don't have the right to take his father away from him just because you don't want me."