Something Beautiful

Chapter - 32

Lisa bites her lips as Will's words ring again in her ear. Five days... Mrs Kim has not eaten for five days. Lisa also ate very little, but she was young, healthy and strong. Lisa's attitude softened because she knew that if the grandmother could not eat meant Mingyu's disappearance brought a deep sadness that she did not want to show.

Sighing determinedly, Lisa tidied the hair on her forehead and decided the tray was an invitation to make peace. He decided so because he could not imagine the seventy-year-old woman dying.

Through the half-open blue sitting room door, Lisa saw her grandmother sitting in a high-backed chair, staring at the fire in the fireplace. Despite being sad, the old woman still looked majestic. But something in her rigid and distance-keeping attitude reminded Lisa of her mother when her father had just died, before her mother turned bitter due to the arrival of her father's other wife.

Lisa slowly walked into the room, her shadow caught the grandmother's eyes so the old woman raised her head. The woman quickly turned her face away, but Lisa had seen tears in her grandmother's pale eyes.

"Your Grace?" greet Lisa gently while stepping forward.

"I don't give you permission to bother me here" the woman's hardened, but this time Lisa wasn't fooled by her thin tone.

In a gentle tone like she used her mother, Lisa said, "No, ma'am, you didn't give me permission."

"Go there."

Struck but determined, Lisa said, "I didn't last long, but I have to apologize for what I said to you a few minutes ago. What I said was really inappropriate."

"I accept your apologies. Now go."

Ignoring her grandmother's shooting, Lisa walked forward. "I think, since we both have to eat, maybe that food can be more tolerated if we eat together. We're.."

"Maybe we can accept each other's presence,"

Anger splashed in the eyes of the woman whose orders were ignored by Lisa. "If you want company, you should have gone home to your mother, as I suggested fifteen minutes ago."

"Can't."

"Why?" ask the old woman with a brush.

"Because," Lisa whispered in a choked voice, "I want to be around people who love her, too,"

The taste of poignancy was evident on the grandmother's face before she managed to control herself again, but at that very moment Lisa could see the deep anguish hidden under the mask of the woman's rigid self-esteem.

Lisa's heart was heartbroken by pity, but she was careful not to show it. He quickly sat in the front seat of the grandmother and opened one of the trays. His stomach churned when he saw the food, but he smiled. "Do you want a slice of this delicious chicken? Or do you prefer meat?"

The grandmother hesitated for a moment, her eyes narrowed at Lisa. "My granddaughter is alive!" he said, his expression seemed to challenge Lisa to refute it.

"Of course she's still alive" Lisa asserts, knowing she'll be expelled soon if she says no. "I believe it with all my heart."

The grandmother looked at Lisa's face, judging her honesty, then she gave a small hesitant nod and raucously said, "It looks like I can eat a little chicken."

They ate in silence, only occasionally disturbed by the crackling of fire in the fireplace, when Lisa got up and said good night, the old woman spoke, and for the first time she greeted Lisa by her name.

"Lisa" whispered the raucous grandmother.

Lisa turned her body around. "Yes, Ma'am?"

"Are you.." the grandmother took a deep breath. "Do you pray often?"

Lisa swallowed with difficulty and nodded. "With all my heart, ' he whispered.

***

For the next three days, Lisa and her grandmother waited while sitting quietly in the blue sitting room, saying something unrelated, talking while whispering as usual. Two people united by fear.

One afternoon on the third day, Lisa asked her grandmother if she had called Yugyeom.

"I've written him a letter to follow us here, but he's.." The sentence was interrupted when Will suddenly appeared at the door, "Yes, Will,"

"Sir Choi has arrived, Your Grace,"

Lisa anxiously jumped to her feet so that the embroidery that her grandmother had forced her to make fell apart, falling apart, but when the sharp-eyed man walked into the room a few minutes later and Lisa saw that expressionless look on her face, her whole body immediately trembled in fear.

Next to her, the grandmother seemed to draw the same conclusion as the woman's face turned deathly pale and slowly rose up, resting on the staff she had been using ever since they arrived at this house.

"You brought news, Coups? What's the news?"

"Investigators have confirmed that a man with Mingyu-like features was seen in a tavern on the dock at exactly eleven o'clock the night he disappeared. With the help of a large bribe, the owner of the shop also remembered that the man was very tall, well about more than 180 centimeters, and dressed like a gentleman. The man bought some cigars and left. The shop was located right across the pier where their boat was leaning and we believe the man was Mingyu Kim.

S.Coups paused for a moment then sadly said, "Is it not better that you sit while listening to this?"

The thrilling proposal made Lisa clutch the edge of the chair to rest on, but she shook her head.

"Continue," Madam Kim ordered in a raucous voice.

"Two sailors on the next boat, leaning not far from the boat Mingyu was about to board, testified that a very tall and well-dressed man had left the tavern, then he was followed by two men who looked like two ordinary drunkards. The sailors on the ship did not pay much attention because they felt that they were already drunk enough. But one of them felt like he saw the tall man being hit on the head by one of the drunkards. The other sailor didn't see the incident, but he saw the man, who he suspected had fainted from drinking too much, being carried in his arms by one of the criminals and taken to the dock."

"And they didn't do anything to help him?" Lisa screaming.

"None of the sailors was in a condition ready to help, or thought to interfere in the incident, which unfortunately, often happened in the harbor."

"There's more, isn't there?" the grandmother estimated, her eyes observing the gloomy face of the man.

Sir Choi, or S.Coups, took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "We all knew from the beginning that the press gangs, the groups that forced people into the armed forces, were in action on the night of the incident, and after we had conducted further investigations, the police said, we found out that one of the gangs bought a man whose description was exactly with Mingyu. Since he didn't have any identification cards they thought he was just a man who had fainted from drunkenness, they pay the criminals to get Mingyu and send him to one of the Lancaster kingdom's warships."

"Thank God!" lisa with great joy. Without thinking for a long time he grabbed the ice-cold grandmother's hand and clasped it tightly. But the words of the next Scoups drop Lisa's spirit into a deep hole. "Four days ago" he said grimly, "Lancester was engaged in battle with a French warship. One of our ships, which was sailing home with the help of thick fog, was badly damaged thanks to the battle with the American ship. Unable to help the other ship, the captain of his ship watched the battle through his binoculars. When the battle was over, the ship from France was badly damaged.."

"And Lancester?" cetus Lisa's.

Sir Choi cleared his throat. "It is with great sadness that I inform you that the ship of the Lancester was wrecked, and that all of its crew could not be found, including His Grace, Mingyu Kim."

Lisa felt the room as if it was spinning, her chest tight wanted to scream and she pressed her hands to her mouth, her eyes frantically looking at the grieving woman. He saw the body of the grandmother loosened and he automatically wrapped his hands around the body of the crying woman, foaming her as if she were a child, stroking her back, whispering empty words of comfort, he said, while his own tears flowed profusely down his cheeks.

As if from a great distance away, he heard Sir Choi say he was going to call the doctor, and he felt like someone was gently but firmly pulling the weeping Mingyu grandmother out of his arms, will held her hand and guided her upwards.