As the heavy stone in her heart was lifted, her appetite improved. Even when she smelled the fishy smell of the meat pudding again, she didn't feel as nauseous.
The so-called meat pudding was more like a steamed bun that had been cooked until soft. When you cut into the dough, there were tender chunks of rabbit meat and lamb kidneys inside, and a layer of butter sauce had been brushed on both the inside and outside, giving off a strong buttery aroma. If dipped in some vinegar, soy sauce, and chili peppers, the taste might be even better.
Unfortunately, there was only one block of butter on the table, and who knows how many people had dug into it.
Towards the end of the party, a man approached Emily and tried to lift her skirt to see if she had two—
They let the word linger in their mouths, twirling it with their tongues, and burst into vulgar laughter.
Emily sat up straight in her wheelchair. Her face was always as pale as if it were sealed with wax, and she remained silent.
The manager was drinking. Seeing that the situation was getting uglier, he finally mildly reprimanded them.
Leona witnessed the whole process and couldn't express her feelings.
Having traveled through time, she always dressed like a boy, with very short hair, and her chest tightly bound with cloth. No one looked at her with the eyes of evaluating an object.
But at the party, many men did look at women with the eyes of evaluating an object.
Now, this body was still young and malnourished, and she could temporarily deceive the people around her—but in the long run?
The girl's body was changing every day, and perhaps tomorrow would be a different story.
What would the people around her think then?
Leona shivered all over and dared not think too much.
Even in modern times, there are not many men who truly respect women from the bottom of their hearts, let alone men more than a hundred years ago.
She thought she had enough time to plan how to leave this place.
Not anymore.
A cold wind blew, and Leona suddenly shivered all over, her hair standing on end. She remembered one particularly important thing—her period.
She didn't know how the original owner dealt with her period. Maybe due to lack of nutrition, she simply hadn't had it.
But the human hormonal system is very complex. If her hormone levels had undergone subtle changes after traveling through time, and her period suddenly started?
Leona became increasingly afraid, her heart beating wildly, almost drumming in her ears.
She had to leave here immediately.
There was no time to waste.
That night, Leona woke up intermittently, either scared by her own heartbeat or awakened by the howling of coyotes in the woods.
She woke up many times, even having the illusion that she was still lying in her bed at home, and could reach out to grab her charging phone with a flip of her body.
However, after fumbling for a while, she only felt the damp soil.
No need to be discouraged.
Leona closed her eyes and told herself over and over again: You are a strong person, and you will definitely leave this place.
What you need to do now is sleep.
People who are sleep-deprived cannot think or escape.
With that thought, she finally forced herself to fall asleep.
Maybe because the party the previous night went on until the early hours of the morning, everyone got up late the next day.
When Leona got up, she felt a dragging pain in her abdomen.
She stiffened and kept praying, please don't let it be her period, please don't let it be her period.
The result was contrary to her prayer. It really came.
Leona's face showed no expression.
She didn't feel ashamed, just depressed.
But since it had come, it couldn't flow back by turning upside down.
She used the gauze in the first aid kit to make do, put on her clothes, and walked out of the tent.
Leona endured the abdominal pain. She wanted to discuss running away with Eric, but he didn't appear the entire morning.
He was always so elusive. She had no choice but to put it aside for now and wait for him to show up when he figured it out.
There were two performances at the circus that evening, but they had nothing to do with her—she, the little boy John, and another group of older kids, none of them were qualified to perform on stage.
Their task was to steal things under the stage—wallets, binoculars, pocket watches, rings, thimbles, necklaces, coats, hats. Steal whatever they could, including food, but they couldn't get caught.
So, before each performance, the mammy would gather them and have them warm their hands with each other.
When it was time to "warm their hands," Eric still didn't show up.
Leona couldn't help but ask John, "Where's Eric?"
"He's injured," John said absentmindedly, "The manager gave him a month off."
He curled his lips: "Even if he wasn't injured, he wouldn't stay with us... We spend a month learning something, and he learns it just by looking at it once. The mammy gave him special permission not to take classes with us!"
When the other kids heard "Eric's" name, they all let out disgusted whistles.
No wonder Eric, as the most talented person in the circus, was isolated and ostracized by those around him.
—Giving preferential treatment to top students doesn't encourage others to become top students; it only makes others band together to exclude him.
Leona wanted to ask more, but John tugged hard at her clothes—the mammy was coming.
She was a middle-aged woman with sharp eyes, graying temples, a small round bun on her head, wearing a gray dress with a padded skirt underneath, creating an exaggerated curve at the lower back, and holding a long rattan in her hand.
Her authority was so great that as she walked, whistles, conversations, murmurs, and even breathing sounds disappeared.
"Take out your tools," the mammy swept her gaze around and spoke calmly, "I'll check if your hand skills have improved."
Then she began to inspect their pickpocketing techniques one by one.
Leona's heart sank.
Even though she hadn't stolen anything, she knew that this required a lot of practice to deceive others' eyes and couldn't be mastered in a short time.
Sure enough, when it was her turn, her movements while fumbling with the wallet were full of flaws.
Leona swallowed and was about to explain herself when the mammy raised the rattan and ordered sternly, "Stick out your hand."
"I'm sorry, mammy..." Before she could finish her sentence, her palm was already being pulled out, and with a "snap," the rattan struck heavily on the back of her hand.
Almost immediately, a red, swollen bruise appeared on the back of her hand.
Originally, she was only supposed to get five strikes, but because she talked back, five more were added.
During those ten strikes, the only two words Leona could think of were calm—stay calm, don't scream, don't curse, don't grab the rattan and hit back, stay calm—
After ten strikes, even if she wanted to curse, she was in too much pain to speak, her back was covered in cold sweat, and her palm was as red and swollen as if scalded by boiling water, with blood oozing out.
The mammy put away the rattan, threw her a small jar of ointment, and punished her to stay in the tent, not allowed to eat dinner, not allowed to wander around, "Don't come out tonight to embarrass yourself."
Leona took the ointment, swallowed a pill of ibuprofen, and applied iodine to the wound.
She didn't have any anti-swelling ointment and didn't dare use the mammy's ointment, so she could only lie in bed, staring blankly and counting the time for the medicine to take effect.
...
Some time later, Leona was awakened by rustling noises.
Someone was dragging something heavy into her tent.
He seemed to be limping, walking unevenly, one step light and one step heavy, and the thing he was dragging was struggling, making "whimpering" sounds.
Eric?
Leona was fully awake.
She didn't dare to get up, afraid of misjudging, so she half-closed her eyes and peeked through the sl*t of her eyelashes.
It was indeed Eric.
The heavy object he was dragging was actually the mammy.
The mammy's mouth was stuffed with a rag, and her hands were tied behind her back with ropes. She wasn't a slender figure; she was a solid and strong middle-aged woman, otherwise, she couldn't manage so many big kids in the circus.
Yet Eric held her collar with one hand, easily lifting her up and dragging her into the tent.
He not only had an inhuman recovery ability but also astonishing strength.
Everything was like a scene from a horror movie—he was the protagonist of the horror movie himself.
The air was filled with the smell of sweat and urine. The mammy was terrified, sweating profusely and wetting herself.
Eric, however, seemed to have no sense of smell or hearing, ignoring the mammy's body odor and her muffled pleas for mercy, throwing her into a chair and tying her up tightly.
From Leona's angle, she could only see his rough movements and the creaking chair.
After finishing all this, he turned around and walked towards her.
Leona's head was a bit confused. What was he doing? Was he avenging her, or was he venting his pent-up murderous desires?
The footsteps stopped.
Eric stood in front of her, seemingly sizing up the swollen and purple palm of her hand.
Although he was young and thin, his skeleton was tall and wide, completely blocking the light from outside the tent.
His breathing sounded above her.
Heavy, dull, echoing in the white mask.
Horror movies always have such breathing sounds, slow and powerful, symbolizing the beastliness within the killer, gradually approaching the victim's death knell.
But he didn't intend to kill her; he even seemed to want to protect her.
Why?
Leona listened to his breathing, not daring to move, frozen from head to toe like a stone statue.
His gaze was even more present than his breathing, slowly moving across the palm of her hand, like a precise ruler, measuring the length of the wound, assessing its depth.
Time ticked by.
Leona's heart pounded, and she felt numb all over from his stare.
Several dozen seconds passed, and he seemed to finish assessing. He turned around, grabbed the mammy's collar, and dragged the chair with her to her bed.
Leona couldn't see the specific scene, only imagining based on the sounds and smells—the creaking of chair legs, the muffled pleas for help, and the increasingly heavy smell of sweat and urine.
Suddenly, a pungent smell of blood filled the tent.
Leona was startled and could no longer pretend, sitting up and opening her eyes.
What she saw was even more terrifying than she had imagined.
Eric stood in front of her, facing away from her, pressing down on the mammy like a butcher handling livestock, while holding a dagger in his other hand, mercilessly stabbing into her palm.
Seeing her wake up, he turned to look at her, with a hint of remaining ferocity in his eyes behind the white mask.
The mammy, like seeing a savior, desperately shook the chair for help.
For a moment, the only sounds in the tent were the creaking of the chair legs.
At the same time, Eric pulled out the dagger, casually flicked off the blood on it, and seemed ready to leave.
For some reason, he was confident she would save the mammy, rather than being grateful for his "an eye for an eye" behavior.
...Leona indeed didn't want to be grateful.
This wasn't a reasonable act of revenge.
It felt good today, but what about tomorrow?
Who would clean up the mess?
He stabbed such a big hole in the mammy's hand; she would have to tell a hundred lies tomorrow to cover it up.
However, it had to be admitted that his actions gave her a strange, burning sense of security.
This was something she hadn't felt since traveling through time.
Ever since she came to this world, she had been constantly uneasy, always forcing herself to calm down and discard emotions she shouldn't have—fear, nervousness, anger.
Even when she was being caned, her first reaction was to stay calm and not fight back. No one would help her. She was alone in this world and couldn't let anger cloud her judgment; she had to stay clear-headed at all times.
But that didn't mean she wasn't angry or didn't want revenge at the time.
Admittedly, Eric's retaliatory actions were very inappropriate and caused her no small trouble.
But today, she had suppressed too many emotions and didn't need to suppress them anymore.
Tomorrow's problems could be dealt with tomorrow.
With that in mind, Leona ignored the mammy's pleading expression, threw off the blanket, looked up at Eric, and sincerely said:
"...I'm sleepy, can you stay and sleep with me for a while?"