try begging

"There was a grain silo with peeling red paint visible from the window."

"Come on in."

"And behind it, a big river..."

Grace entered the bathroom at the man's urging and was momentarily speechless at the sight before her. This place was exactly as she remembered it from when it was the man's bedroom. Except for one thing. Why hadn't he replaced the broken mirror, which was now covered in rust? She gave him a questioning look, but he avoided her gaze and simply took her trench coat off her shoulders. Grace continued as if nothing was wrong.

"Judging by the street and direction, it must be the Stoke River."

She had roughly remembered the travel time and direction when she was first thrown into the back of the truck. The farm was about a two-hour drive from the slums near the docks. She told him that first, and then rambled on about the scenery she had seen out the window during her torture and the characteristics of the farm.

"And on the bread bag..."

Her memory dug deeper, and she thought of the paper bag she had put over Ellie's head. Fear crept up on her, and she spoke with difficulty, her teeth chattering. "It said 'Henson'. It must be the name of a nearby bakery." 

"..."

"Are you listening?"

The man didn't say anything. Following his gaze, she realized why he was standing there, frozen, with her coat in his hand. Her blouse, skirt, and stockings were all stained with dried blood.

"The doctor first..."

Grace grabbed the man who was about to leave.

"It's not my blood." Perhaps a few drops might have been hers.

"And it's not Ellie's blood either."

The madness in the man's eyes subsided for a moment. But it didn't last long."Whose doing is this?" He asked, gritting his teeth as he unwrapped the crudely wrapped bandage around his little finger. His hand, which was supporting Grace's ragged fingertips, was noticeably trembling.

"Doesn't it hurt?"

Due to the pain in her heart, she couldn't feel the pain in her body. When she shook her head, his expression twisted even more. The man alternated his gaze between Grace's dazed face and her finger, where a dried clot of blood replaced her nail. He closed his eyes tightly, buried his face in one hand, and let out a groan as if his neck was being strangled.

"How did you endure this? How can this not hurt?" Staring silently at him in agony, Grace asked herself inwardly:Didn't you once want to pull out my nails? But the man before her was not the monster who deserved her reproach.

"Ellie..."

"You first."

The man took a deep breath and began to undress Grace. As her clothes, soiled with dirt and blood, were removed, her bruised and injured body was revealed.

"How did you get here in this state? No one stopped you?"

Maybe someone had."...I don't remember."

She told him she had chased after Uncle Bobby and fell, and when she came to, he was pointing a gun at her. The image of the man in Grace's vision, which was already distorted, suddenly blurred.

"...What was I trying to do?"

"What in the world happened to you?"

It was just as shocking to Leon as it was to Grace. The strong woman who had endured everything he had done to her had lost herself and gone mad.

"Tell me everything from start to finish. What those guys did."

As he listened to Grace, a list of tortures to inflict on Nancy Wilkins and Robert Fisher grew in his mind. After showering, a doctor he had never seen before was waiting for her. He examined Grace, asking her various questions, and gave a relatively benign diagnosis.

"It's mostly abrasions and bruises, and thankfully no fractures."

"I told you so, didn't I? So this is a waste of time. Go find Ellie."

But the man standing beside her, with a stiff expression, ordered the doctor.

"She says she has no memory for about 12 hours. Is there any brain damage?"

"It's too early to tell. It could be temporary confusion and amnesia due to a concussion."

"That man, nothing's happened to him."

He asked about the precautions and treatment methods, then emptied the doctor's bag of its medicine and dismissed him. When he tried to open the bottle of morphine, Grace stopped him.

"I might be able to remember more clues. I want to stay awake with a clear head."

He looked down at her disapprovingly and sighed, putting down the bottle.

"Hand."

The man opened a bottle of antiseptic and gestured for her to place her hand on the table.

"Leave it. Nails grow back."

"Are you going to say the same thing if Ellie gets hurt?"

Grace looked up at his face and quietly offered her hand.

"Ouch!"

The wound stung from the antiseptic. The man wiped away the antiseptic and applied ointment, wrapping it with gauze, muttering to himself.

"I need to call a specialist."

"It's Ellie who needs a doctor, not me."

Although her fever had subsided, her cold wasn't completely gone. It was maddening to be stuck here receiving unnecessary treatment while her sick child was in the hands of those monsters.

"Go to the office."

The man sat Grace back down as she was about to get up, her fingers roughly bandaged.

"Why?"

"Campbell is in charge of searching the farm."

"So we're just going to sit here? What if they can't find the farm? Even if they do find it, she'll probably not be there. So we need to think about the next step..."

Grace shut her mouth when she met his cold gaze. He must have already thought of hundreds of possibilities from the moment he realized his child had been kidnapped. How dare she push such a man.

"It's my fault. I shouldn't have..."

She was blaming 'us' for it, but it was all her fault. Grace, who was about to get up again, slumped back down.

"I released Uncle Bobby and Nancy."

Self-loathing was evident in her voice as she confessed her crime. But the man sitting opposite her didn't look at her, simply wiping the scrape on his shin with a gauze soaked in antiseptic. He must be angry at me.

"I'm sorry." The man slightly frowned, as if displeased with her apology.

"If you apologize, I have to apologize too. If you say you were wrong for doing what you did, then I was wrong for not doing what I should have."

Since capturing the rebels was his duty, Leon saw no point in arguing about who was right or wrong regarding Ellie's kidnapping.

He applied ointment to the wounds on her shins and covered the larger ones with gauze and bandages. It was strange that she didn't feel any pain despite being so badly beaten. The more he thought about it, the more disheartened he became.

This woman was no longer his. In fact, she had never truly been his. Yet, he still hated the idea of another man touching Grace, so he took it upon himself to treat her wounds.

He checked the rest of her body and started applying ointment to her face. Under bright lights, her condition looked even worse. Just a moment ago, he had calmly resolved to shatter into a hundred pieces the hands that had done this to her. But now, the woman, who was looking at him as if he were a stranger, asked,

"Don't you hate me?"

"I do."

"Then why..."

"I hate you, but I can't blame you because I know why you made that choice."You're not bad. The situation was bad.

He added these words in her defense and resumed applying the ointment. The woman, quietly receiving his touch, murmured,

"I... I can't understand you."

Her discomfort was evident on her face.

"You don't understand me, you understand yourself."

It's not me who makes you uncomfortable, it's you.

Leon stared directly at her face, on which her discomfort was becoming more pronounced, and asked a question with a predetermined answer.

"Why can't you say what you really think, like I can? Isn't that right?"

Grace was just pondering the words the man had spoken to her a moment ago.

I hate you, but I can't blame you because I know why you made that choice. You're not bad. The situation was bad.

That's right. You freely take the words I want and need to say. I can't bring myself to say them.

"You'll probably find it unpleasant that I'm reading your mind right now. You're angry, aren't you?"

Leon watched the woman avoid his gaze, just like when he had forcibly undressed her, and chuckled.

"Actually, you're not angry at me, you're angry at yourself. I wonder what I have to do for you to admit that."

No, this man doesn't need to do anything. Grace already knew that. She began to reflect on the past three years she had spent being angry at a man who wasn't even there. She had thought about him all day, every day. She couldn't stop thinking about him even in her sleep. And then she blamed him.

You're terrible. You're really terrible. You always do this whenever I decide to leave. You've been swirling around in my head for three years, never leaving, and you're still doing it.

In fact, this was a reproach she should have directed at herself. She was angry at herself for becoming entangled with him emotionally, even though she had physically separated herself from Leon Winston.

"Do you remember? You asked me if I made you innocent because someone who has committed a sin cannot love openly. To be honest, there was a part of me that did."

"..."

"But now I can say it confidently. I love you, even though you're sinful."

Why on earth? Grace stared at the man with wary eyes, wondering why he so easily said that he loved a sinner.

"Uncomfortable? That I say I love you no matter what you do to me? As if I were a saint. I feel that you're narrow-minded because you can't boldly say that you love me, a sinful me.""I don't..."

She was about to say, "I don't love you," but stopped.

Refuting him would only strengthen his argument. The man smiled, as if he already knew her thoughts.

"How can you forgive a man who caused you pain? How can you love him? Your conscience must be tormenting you like that."

"..."

"I'm not sure whose conscience it is, though."

The man stared at Grace, who was silent, and gave a bitter smile.

"How do I know your feelings so well? Well, I've been there too."

"..."

"You think everything I do makes you feel worthless. Even the things I do for you. Believe me when I say this as someone who's been there. I felt the same way when I couldn't admit that I loved you."

"..."

"But when you lose everything, you realize. Listening to your conscience is pointless."

As he applied ointment to various parts of her face, he started rambling about his philosophy on conscience. Conscience is a restraint. A newborn baby has no conscience. What we call conscience is simply a collective term for the acquired brainwashing imposed by society under the guise of morality. Conscience is nothing more than a lazy and ingenious tool of human domination by the powerful. 

The fact that the powerful don't uphold their conscience is proof of that. Those who are dominated by the whip of conscience wielded by the rulers blindly worship it, not knowing that it is merely a means of maintaining order. Conscience is ultimately a lie.

"So, it's best to discard your conscience early on."

He came to that conclusion and met Grace's eyes. There was no smile on his face.

"Grace, believe me. No matter what you do, I love you. You need someone like that."

It would be a lie to say that such a tempting statement didn't sway her heart. Who wouldn't want someone who loves them no matter what they do? But I don't want you. She averted her gaze and lowered her head. The man lifted her chin with his fingertips. Thinking he was going to kiss her, she lowered her head again. But it wasn't. 

His sticky fingertips slid along her lips and rolled over the plump flesh in the middle. The man who had injured her lips applied ointment and met her eyes, twisting his lips in a strange way.

"I was about to kiss you. But I gave up because there's nowhere on your face that won't hurt."

His gaze turned cold as he thought of the person who had disfigured her face.

"Although, when have my kisses ever not hurt you?"

Grace looked up at the man who closed the ointment container and stood up. Seeing him still made her head spin.

"Don't worry about me saying I love you. You came back because you needed me, not because you wanted to. I know our relationship hasn't changed."

The man threw the handkerchief he had used to wipe his ointment-stained hands onto the table and turned around.

"I've lifted the travel ban and won't issue it again. My promise to let you and Ellie go still stands. Of course, I'll have to get Ellie back first."

Grace tried to say something she hadn't said yet, but the man didn't give her a chance and left. It's up to you now. His final words rang in her head like a gunshot.

"There was a grain silo with peeling red paint visible from the window."

"Come on in."

"And behind it, a big river..."

Grace entered the bathroom at the man's urging and was momentarily speechless at the sight before her. This place was exactly as she remembered it from when it was the man's bedroom. Except for one thing. Why hadn't he replaced the broken mirror, which was now covered in rust? She gave him a questioning look, but he avoided her gaze and simply took her trench coat off her shoulders. Grace continued as if nothing was wrong.

"Judging by the street and direction, it must be the Stoke River."

She had roughly remembered the travel time and direction when she was first thrown into the back of the truck. The farm was about a two-hour drive from the slums near the docks. She told him that first, and then rambled on about the scenery she had seen out the window during her torture and the characteristics of the farm.

"And on the bread bag..."

Her memory dug deeper, and she thought of the paper bag she had put over Ellie's head. Fear crept up on her, and she spoke with difficulty, her teeth chattering. "It said 'Henson'. It must be the name of a nearby bakery." 

"..."

"Are you listening?"

The man didn't say anything. Following his gaze, she realized why he was standing there, frozen, with her coat in his hand. Her blouse, skirt, and stockings were all stained with dried blood.

"The doctor first..."

Grace grabbed the man who was about to leave.

"It's not my blood." Perhaps a few drops might have been hers.

"And it's not Ellie's blood either."

The madness in the man's eyes subsided for a moment. But it didn't last long."Whose doing is this?" He asked, gritting his teeth as he unwrapped the crudely wrapped bandage around his little finger. His hand, which was supporting Grace's ragged fingertips, was noticeably trembling.

"Doesn't it hurt?"

Due to the pain in her heart, she couldn't feel the pain in her body. When she shook her head, his expression twisted even more. The man alternated his gaze between Grace's dazed face and her finger, where a dried clot of blood replaced her nail. He closed his eyes tightly, buried his face in one hand, and let out a groan as if his neck was being strangled.

"How did you endure this? How can this not hurt?" Staring silently at him in agony, Grace asked herself inwardly:Didn't you once want to pull out my nails? But the man before her was not the monster who deserved her reproach.

"Ellie..."

"You first."

The man took a deep breath and began to undress Grace. As her clothes, soiled with dirt and blood, were removed, her bruised and injured body was revealed.

"How did you get here in this state? No one stopped you?"

Maybe someone had."...I don't remember."

She told him she had chased after Uncle Bobby and fell, and when she came to, he was pointing a gun at her. The image of the man in Grace's vision, which was already distorted, suddenly blurred.

"...What was I trying to do?"

"What in the world happened to you?"

It was just as shocking to Leon as it was to Grace. The strong woman who had endured everything he had done to her had lost herself and gone mad.

"Tell me everything from start to finish. What those guys did."

As he listened to Grace, a list of tortures to inflict on Nancy Wilkins and Robert Fisher grew in his mind. After showering, a doctor he had never seen before was waiting for her. He examined Grace, asking her various questions, and gave a relatively benign diagnosis.

"It's mostly abrasions and bruises, and thankfully no fractures."

"I told you so, didn't I? So this is a waste of time. Go find Ellie."

But the man standing beside her, with a stiff expression, ordered the doctor.

"She says she has no memory for about 12 hours. Is there any brain damage?"

"It's too early to tell. It could be temporary confusion and amnesia due to a concussion."

"That man, nothing's happened to him."

He asked about the precautions and treatment methods, then emptied the doctor's bag of its medicine and dismissed him. When he tried to open the bottle of morphine, Grace stopped him.

"I might be able to remember more clues. I want to stay awake with a clear head."

He looked down at her disapprovingly and sighed, putting down the bottle.

"Hand."

The man opened a bottle of antiseptic and gestured for her to place her hand on the table.

"Leave it. Nails grow back."

"Are you going to say the same thing if Ellie gets hurt?"

Grace looked up at his face and quietly offered her hand.

"Ouch!"

The wound stung from the antiseptic. The man wiped away the antiseptic and applied ointment, wrapping it with gauze, muttering to himself.

"I need to call a specialist."

"It's Ellie who needs a doctor, not me."

Although her fever had subsided, her cold wasn't completely gone. It was maddening to be stuck here receiving unnecessary treatment while her sick child was in the hands of those monsters.

"Go to the office."

The man sat Grace back down as she was about to get up, her fingers roughly bandaged.

"Why?"

"Campbell is in charge of searching the farm."

"So we're just going to sit here? What if they can't find the farm? Even if they do find it, she'll probably not be there. So we need to think about the next step..."

Grace shut her mouth when she met his cold gaze. He must have already thought of hundreds of possibilities from the moment he realized his child had been kidnapped. How dare she push such a man.

"It's my fault. I shouldn't have..."

She was blaming 'us' for it, but it was all her fault. Grace, who was about to get up again, slumped back down.

"I released Uncle Bobby and Nancy."

Self-loathing was evident in her voice as she confessed her crime. But the man sitting opposite her didn't look at her, simply wiping the scrape on his shin with a gauze soaked in antiseptic. He must be angry at me.

"I'm sorry." The man slightly frowned, as if displeased with her apology.

"If you apologize, I have to apologize too. If you say you were wrong for doing what you did, then I was wrong for not doing what I should have."

Since capturing the rebels was his duty, Leon saw no point in arguing about who was right or wrong regarding Ellie's kidnapping.

He applied ointment to the wounds on her shins and covered the larger ones with gauze and bandages. It was strange that she didn't feel any pain despite being so badly beaten. The more he thought about it, the more disheartened he became.

This woman was no longer his. In fact, she had never truly been his. Yet, he still hated the idea of another man touching Grace, so he took it upon himself to treat her wounds.

He checked the rest of her body and started applying ointment to her face. Under bright lights, her condition looked even worse. Just a moment ago, he had calmly resolved to shatter into a hundred pieces the hands that had done this to her. But now, the woman, who was looking at him as if he were a stranger, asked,

"Don't you hate me?"

"I do."

"Then why..."

"I hate you, but I can't blame you because I know why you made that choice."You're not bad. The situation was bad.

He added these words in her defense and resumed applying the ointment. The woman, quietly receiving his touch, murmured,

"I... I can't understand you."

Her discomfort was evident on her face.

"You don't understand me, you understand yourself."

It's not me who makes you uncomfortable, it's you.

Leon stared directly at her face, on which her discomfort was becoming more pronounced, and asked a question with a predetermined answer.

"Why can't you say what you really think, like I can? Isn't that right?"

Grace was just pondering the words the man had spoken to her a moment ago.

I hate you, but I can't blame you because I know why you made that choice. You're not bad. The situation was bad.

That's right. You freely take the words I want and need to say. I can't bring myself to say them.

"You'll probably find it unpleasant that I'm reading your mind right now. You're angry, aren't you?"

Leon watched the woman avoid his gaze, just like when he had forcibly undressed her, and chuckled.

"Actually, you're not angry at me, you're angry at yourself. I wonder what I have to do for you to admit that."

No, this man doesn't need to do anything. Grace already knew that. She began to reflect on the past three years she had spent being angry at a man who wasn't even there. She had thought about him all day, every day. She couldn't stop thinking about him even in her sleep. And then she blamed him.

You're terrible. You're really terrible. You always do this whenever I decide to leave. You've been swirling around in my head for three years, never leaving, and you're still doing it.

In fact, this was a reproach she should have directed at herself. She was angry at herself for becoming entangled with him emotionally, even though she had physically separated herself from Leon Winston.

"Do you remember? You asked me if I made you innocent because someone who has committed a sin cannot love openly. To be honest, there was a part of me that did."

"..."

"But now I can say it confidently. I love you, even though you're sinful."

Why on earth? Grace stared at the man with wary eyes, wondering why he so easily said that he loved a sinner.

"Uncomfortable? That I say I love you no matter what you do to me? As if I were a saint. I feel that you're narrow-minded because you can't boldly say that you love me, a sinful me.""I don't..."

She was about to say, "I don't love you," but stopped.

Refuting him would only strengthen his argument. The man smiled, as if he already knew her thoughts.

"How can you forgive a man who caused you pain? How can you love him? Your conscience must be tormenting you like that."

"..."

"I'm not sure whose conscience it is, though."

The man stared at Grace, who was silent, and gave a bitter smile.

"How do I know your feelings so well? Well, I've been there too."

"..."

"You think everything I do makes you feel worthless. Even the things I do for you. Believe me when I say this as someone who's been there. I felt the same way when I couldn't admit that I loved you."

"..."

"But when you lose everything, you realize. Listening to your conscience is pointless."

As he applied ointment to various parts of her face, he started rambling about his philosophy on conscience. Conscience is a restraint. A newborn baby has no conscience. What we call conscience is simply a collective term for the acquired brainwashing imposed by society under the guise of morality. Conscience is nothing more than a lazy and ingenious tool of human domination by the powerful. 

The fact that the powerful don't uphold their conscience is proof of that. Those who are dominated by the whip of conscience wielded by the rulers blindly worship it, not knowing that it is merely a means of maintaining order. Conscience is ultimately a lie.

"So, it's best to discard your conscience early on."

He came to that conclusion and met Grace's eyes. There was no smile on his face.

"Grace, believe me. No matter what you do, I love you. You need someone like that."

It would be a lie to say that such a tempting statement didn't sway her heart. Who wouldn't want someone who loves them no matter what they do? But I don't want you. She averted her gaze and lowered her head. The man lifted her chin with his fingertips. Thinking he was going to kiss her, she lowered her head again. But it wasn't. 

His sticky fingertips slid along her lips and rolled over the plump flesh in the middle. The man who had injured her lips applied ointment and met her eyes, twisting his lips in a strange way.

"I was about to kiss you. But I gave up because there's nowhere on your face that won't hurt."

His gaze turned cold as he thought of the person who had disfigured her face.

"Although, when have my kisses ever not hurt you?"

Grace looked up at the man who closed the ointment container and stood up. Seeing him still made her head spin.

"Don't worry about me saying I love you. You came back because you needed me, not because you wanted to. I know our relationship hasn't changed."

The man threw the handkerchief he had used to wipe his ointment-stained hands onto the table and turned around.

"I've lifted the travel ban and won't issue it again. My promise to let you and Ellie go still stands. Of course, I'll have to get Ellie back first."

Grace tried to say something she hadn't said yet, but the man didn't give her a chance and left. It's up to you now. His final words rang in her head like a gunshot.