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The evening sky was decorated in various colours like orange, red, pink and yellow, looking like a beautiful painting.
A small girl played with soil and a coconut shell on her own in her garden. She looked three or four years old. Her cute dress that reached her knees was covered in dust. Not only her dress, her small chubby hands too. However, she didn't seem to care about being dirty. Her entire attention was focused on the soil she used to make rice.
"Jewelleries, jewelleries! Cheap but beautiful. For your wife, sister, daughter or grandma. Buy, buy, buy. Cheap but beautiful. Jewelleries, jewelleries."
She heard a voice of a merchant which made her eyes sparkle in excitement.
"Brother, here!" She shouted as she jumped up and down, waving her hands at him.
A young merchant who looked like a teenager, glanced over and saw the chubby cutie hopping like a bunny. His heart melted as he rushed towards her.
He knew that she didn't have money. But he didn't want to break her heart. Thus, he put down the wooden box filled with jewelleries on the ground, letting her take a look and touch them.
"Do you like them?" He asked dotingly.
The girl nodded her little head like a mouse. "A lot. Fimu likes them a lot."
The merchant smiled at her. "Fimu? Your name is Fimu?"
"It's Fimila. But everyone calls me Fimu."
"Wow. You have such a beautiful name, Fimu. Can I call you that?" The young man asked softly as he rubbed her head, making her hair messy.
"Okay." Fimu took out a necklace. "Woah!" She chuckled. "Fimu wants this, Fimu wants this!"
The merchant laughed as well. "Okay, then. If you want it, you can have it."
"No." Suddenly the girl turned serious. "First tell me your name and age."
The teenager blinked his eyes a few times, looking confused. Clearly, he didn't expect her to be so straightforward despite being a kiddo.
"My name is Dylan. You can call me Dyl. I'm a jewellery merchant as you can see. As for my age, I'm sixteen this year. Why? Do you want to marry me?" He tried hard to surpass his laughter as he said the last part.
"You are too old for me." The girl wrinkled her nose in disgust. "I'm still five."
"You are already five? I thought three or maybe four. You look so small." Dylan was truly surprised.
Fimu wasn't too happy to hear that. "I'm not small!" Her face flushed in red. Probably because of anger.
"Okay, okay. Pardon me, my lady." Dylan threw his hands up in the air.
His behaviour made her chuckle. She returned to her cheerful state once again.
"By the way, D, I have an advice for you. My mother always teaches me not to get deceived by looks." Fimu spoke, wrinkling her eyebrows like an old granny.
'She never fails to amuse me.' Dylan thought incredulously. "What? Why are you telling me that?"
Fimu clicked her tongue, acting like she was the adult and he was the kid there. "Obviously, because of your stupidity. You got deceived by my charms. It's a serious damage to your business. Giving the fact that you are still sixteen, you have a long way to go. How can you survive in this kind of a society if you are so good like this?"
"Damn, Fimu! You aren't a kid, are you?" Dylan shook his head in disbelief.
Fimu opened her mouth to say something more but a middle aged woman came towards them, interrupting their moment together.
"Gosh, Fimu. How many times do I need to tell you not to talk to strangers?" The woman scolded the little girl.
"Mom." Fimu pouted her small plump lips, aggrieved. "He's not a stranger. I saw him yesterday."
"Me too," Dylan chimed in. "I've seen her playing with a bunch of kids near the lake."
"Whatever." The woman rolled her eyes and gave him a mean look. "We don't have money to buy jewelleries. You go away."
"Auntie, how can you be so cruel?" Dylan sniffed, looking sad. Then he rubbed his belly pitifully. "I'm so hungry and tired. Won't you invite me over? I'll give Fimu some jewelleries she likes. Don't worry about money. I can give her for free. Or maybe, you can think of it as a compensate for treating me well."
The woman became speechless. She took a good look at him.
Dylan looked so young. He didn't even have a proper beard yet. His blue eyes looked charming and filled with spirit. He had blonde hair. That colour wasn't an ordinary blonde. It looked closer to golden colour more than orange. His hair was tied into a ponytail. His facial features looked pretty rather than handsome or sexy. His upper body looked large compared to his lean legs and waist.
A good looking guy of course.
The woman clicked her tongue and said, "You aren't a citizen here, are you?"
Dylan admitted her words. "Yes, auntie. I'm from Phirosca. Close to Italy. Our country is quite popular for clothes."
"Aaah, yes, yes." The woman nodded as she recalled something. "I remember, I remember. Even my wedding dress is from your country. The price was affordable and the quality was good. I can still wear it after many years."
"I know right."
They went inside her small house while talking and laughing.
Dylan sat on a stool in the kitchen as he continued the conversation with that village woman. She told him about her story. Her husband left her with a kid and her life got difficult since then. However, she managed to do the house chores while fulfilling her kid's needs and going to work as a maid in the villages chief's house.
That village wasn't poor. Most of the people lived comfortably. But as a single mother, she found it difficult to survive there. She didn't have anyone else to support her. She only had her daughter by her side.
The woman wiped the corner of her eyes. "It's fine living alone. I can't bear one thing though. They talk behind my back. They ridicule me saying that I feed my family by selling my body. How can people say such horrible things?"
Dylan sighed sympathitically. "They are just envious of you, auntie. Don't pay attention to unworthy people."
"You can't understand." The woman shook her head looking heartbroken. "When I go to the river to wash the clothes, I have to endure their rude glares and dirty talks. Sometimes I feel like killing myself. But I make up my mind whenever I look at my daughter. I have to live for her. I only want her to have a better future, nothing else."
She lowered her head. The water in the pot started turbulating with a loud sound like an ocean which got irritated by a tornado.
"But as my daughter, I'm afraid she also gets mocked by others in the future... Because of me... I don't want that... To happen to my daughter... But... What can I do? God, what do you expect me to do?" She hid her face in her hands.
Dylan fell into a deep thought. "You said something about her future. What kind of plans do you have for Fimu's future?"
The woman also thought about it before saying, "Yeah. I couldn't think about it properly. How can I find a suitable partner for her when my reputation is so bad? Gosh, I don't even have a decade left till her marriage. Boy, you tell me. Will I be able to find a good man for her? I'm satisfied if he's in his thirties or fourties. But older men are okay too. As long as the person who marries her treats her well, everything will be alright."
Fimu pouted her lips, aggrieved. "Mom, I don't want to marry an old man!"
"You shut up." The woman glared at her.
Dylan felt his mouth twitching.
"Auntie, I wasn't talking about her marriage. It's about her education..."
"Edu what?" The woman sneered at his words. "How ridiculous! Women aren't allowed to learn. They are made for housework. Even men don't learn. They only know how to grow vegetables and rice."
"That's not good..."
"Ha ha," She laughed. "What's not good? Are you from another planet, young man? What's the point of learning when you only have to think about your daily meals? You grow, you eat."
Dylan sighed at her words. "Auntie, education is a must. Our country provides education to all the citizens."
"It's not the same here, boy. Don't expect too much. Live simple die simple."
Dylan looked at Fimu's round face sadly. "What a pity. Fimu's such a brave girl. She is suitable for being a scholar."
Fimu's eyes filled with hope when she heard his words. She blinked her round eyes at her mother, hoping to see her agreeing with him. Nevertheless, her mother's next words shattered her anticipation.
"What's the use of being intelligent?"
"No, auntie..." Dylan wanted to explain how important education was to a child but he didn't get the opportunity to do so. A commotion outside interrupted their conversation along with the sounds of crashing something after falling to the ground.
"What's going on?" Dylan stood up from the stool, his face showing anxiety.
The woman stopped pouring tea into the clay cups. She opened the kitchen window and looked outside. Her whole body tensed up in fear when she saw the scene not from afar.
With a shaky voice, she was able to force out three words.
"They... are back."