Chapter 40 :

Chapter 40

“Se, Seya, I’m hurt.......”

Jin, who was being carried on Seya’s back, whined.

“Will you not be quiet? Is being hurt the problem right now?!”

Seya spoke fiercely in a lowered voice.

Normally, she would not have been this sharp, but right now, this was not a situation where he could indulge Jin’s childish whining while carrying him.

Seya squeezed herself into a small gap between the shanties and checked the situation.

The big hairy man was as persistent as he looked, and was still searching for Seya and Jin.

What a persistent old man.

Seya clicked her tongue.

“Kids! Come out! I told you I am trying to help!”

Perhaps frightened by his booming voice, Jin finally began sniffling.

“Ah, seriously! Jin, do not cry. Crying here will not help with anything.”

Covering Jin’s mouth as he sniffled and sobbed, Seya warned him in a low voice.

Even while she did so, Jack’s shouting, coming from not far away, did not stop.

From Jack’s perspective, it was an effort to quickly find the children, but from Seya and Jin’s perspective, it looked like nothing more than creating fear.

Jin, who had been watching that sight while trembling in fear, carefully opened his mouth while gauging Seya’s reaction.

“B-but he keeps chasing us while saying he will help us. Running away is scarier, so can we not just ask him to h-help?”

At the stammering words of the small child, the child’s brow immediately crumpled.

At that sight, Jin, who knew Seya’s temper, flinched.

“Jin, did you forget what the adults who said they would help us did to us until now?”

Jin closed his mouth and blindly nodded.

At that blank reaction, Seya lightly knocked Jin on the head.

“You must not forget. You must not trust any adults. Got it?”

“......Yes.”

Even while sniffling and swallowing his runny nose, Jin held back his tears.

After confirming that sight, Seya anxiously looked around.

The other party was a hairy brute, but he was not easy.

He was the fastest and most persistent adult Seya had ever seen.

Even when Seya had chased him away while he was loitering in front of Jill and Jin’s house, she remembered running around until she was nearly dead.

When she thought she had shaken him off to some extent, the man caught up right behind her, and when she thought there was no way he could follow this far, the man somehow barged in. That sight still chilled Seya’s liver.

That day, because she had wasted all her stamina running around for nothing, she had to lie down all day the next day.

In other words, he was not an opponent Seya could shake off while carrying Jin.

After thinking for a moment, Seya put down the small child who was trembling quietly on her back.

To Jin, who made a puzzled expression, Seya lowered her voice and spoke quickly.

“Now, Jin. Listen to me carefully. You keep hiding here, and when it seems like I have drawn that old geezer some distance away, you run like mad in the opposite direction. Then go back to where Jill is.”

The small eyes trembled anxiously.

“Uh, th-then what about you, Seya?”

“I will shake him off quickly and follow you.”

Seya answered roughly and rolled up his outer clothes, then tied them to her back.

Since what the child was wearing and what Jin had been wearing were both no different from filthy pieces of cloth dripping with grime, at a glance, a fairly plausible small child’s doll was made.

“Am I really going alone?”

Jin, who had been watching that sight anxiously, asked.

“If I carry you, I cannot run fast. Why? Are you scared?”

“Of course I’m scared. I’m not fast like you, Seya.......”

Jin mumbled and glanced up at Seya.

“What kind of obvious thing are you saying? If you were as fast as me, that would be even scarier.”

Seya, who laughed as if she had heard something absurd, placed her hand on Jin’s head.

“If you had the guts to come all the way here alone today, there is nothing to be scared of about going back. Besides, you are not exactly in a position to worry about the road right now, are you? You should worry more about Jill than that mister. When you go back, it will not end with just a scolding.”

Seya tapped Jin’s forehead, who had an unconfident expression, and deliberately spoke brightly.

“Now, I am going. When you go back, tell Jill that from now on, if there is food, she should give it all to me. Do not tell Mir what happened today!”

As if showing confidence that she would naturally be able to escape, Seya quickly sprang out from between the wooden boards where they had been hiding.

Before long, the sound of a man shouting could be heard from far away.

“Huh? Huh? Huh? Hey! Wait a moment!”

“Would you wait if you were me?!”

Seya’s voice was also no less loud.

Listening to the two shouting voices flowing through the hands tightly covering his ears, Jin curled up his body.

* * *

‘She really runs damn well.’

Jack thought while looking at the back of the filthy child’s head, which seemed as if it would be caught but never was.

Her speed was one thing, but that ability to change directions was truly amazing.

Suddenly slipping to the right in an alley, or running well before suddenly climbing up a wall.

Whenever Jack felt he had almost caught up, the child disappeared from sight with a mysterious trick, leaving him unable to collect himself.

But if Jack slowed down even a little, the distance instantly widened, so he had no time to figure out this winding alleyway.

‘If our men’s legs were this fast, there would be nothing to fear.’

Clicking his tongue, Jack shook off his meaningless idle thoughts and put strength into the leg kicking off the ground.

The distance narrowed a little again.

What strength does a kid who looks like he has not even eaten thin gruel have?

And she is not even running alone, but carrying a young child like that.

As Jack felt admiration that was not quite admiration toward the child running at that speed while even carrying another child, he narrowed his eyes for a moment.

No, is that really a child?

It is equally black and small, but.

The moment he thought that far, the child changed direction again in the alley.

One of the legs dangling from her back hit the wall with a dull thud.

Jack stopped his feet.

“Damn it.”

How stupid.

Although the child had been so fast that he had been dazed, he could not believe he had failed to notice that.

Whatever that was, the thing on her back was not the little brat who had appeared at the blue-roofed house.

Otherwise, there was no way that tearful-looking kid would get a leg hit like that and not make a sound.

He immediately turned around and headed back to the place where that quick-footed brat had popped out from.

When he deliberately made his footsteps loud, he felt the child glance this way.

“Huh? Huh? Where are you going?!”

The situation had reversed.

Seya, who had been confidently smiling because she thought Jack had finally given up the chase and was returning, checked the direction Jack was running and shouted in panic.

With the certainty that he had guessed right, Jack raised the corner of his mouth and smiled.

“I asked where you are going, you old man!!”

Even the rude words coming from behind became pleasant, and Jack ran powerfully.

* * *

This feels truly amazing.

Ego Crisa, who had stopped functioning again like a robot whose power had gone out, could not even tell whether there was a squirrel or a person in front of him, and simply stared blankly into the air.

Several hours had passed since Mentil Abiran placed a suggestion on Ego Crisa and left.

Outside, the dawn sun was probably slowly revealing itself.

—One week. Find the book within one week.

I recalled her voice, firm and gentle.

A soft voice, despite threatening that she would bring in everyone from the Crisa family if he did not find it within one week.

Yes, it was Mentil Abiran without a single doubt.

The problem was why that threat had to target Ego Crisa.

“Why you, of all people? In the original, there was no reason to go this far with you.”

Even if I spoke while looking into his unfocused eyes, there was no way he could answer.

She had said someone from the Crisa family.

Who could be confident that it would not be the one person from the Crisa family remaining in the Feedus ducal house?

* * *

Between the edge of the shantytown and the collapsing pillar beside the filthy sewer, if one squeezed their body through a small gap, a long path with an unbearable stench appeared.

On these harsh streets, there were not many people who would deliberately squeeze through a path that, at a glance, seemed blocked.

If one endured the stench and went deeper and deeper inside, there was a rock as tall as an adult blocking the path.

Usually, adults thought this was the end of the road.

But if one pushed a small body into the gap and entered, a large space soon welcomed the visitor.

In this wide space, there were shanties that about a dozen children had clumsily built with awkward hands.

They were ragged houses that made it embarrassing to say people lived there, but for children who had originally lived in the shantytown, the environment was not very different.

Jin burst into tears out of relief at the fact that he had finally returned.

“Hic, ugh, Sister! Sister!”

And the child searched for the older sister he relied on the most.

Jin walking around crying was not particularly rare here, so the children did not stop what they were doing and look back.

What they were doing here mainly meant eating stolen food before it spoiled, or lying still to avoid wasting strength on useless things.

“Jill! Your crybaby little brother is wandering around loudly again!”

One of the children who found Jin’s crying annoying shouted loudly.

“I told you not to call my brother that?!”

Soon, Jill, wearing a worn brown dress, came over angrily.

Though Jin, relieved at finally seeing his sister, burst into even louder tears like the crybaby he was.

“What is it? Jin, what is wrong? Did someone bully you again? Or are you hungry?”

“Si, Sister, Seya! Seya!”

To Jill, who was examining him here and there with rough hand movements, Jin stammered.

“What about Seya?”

At the voice that cut between the two, Jin swallowed his breath.

“Mir!”

Jill happily called Mir, who was approaching them.

When Jin saw the face of Mir, who was closest to Seya, his chest tightened and grew cold as if he had swallowed a pile of cold snowballs.

Others said Seya, who was like a mad dog, was the scariest, but Jin found Mir, who was always with Seya, scarier than anyone else here.

In front of Mir, who spoke gently and quietly, it felt like all lies would be exposed, so Jin could not even meet his eyes properly.

“Jin, did something happen to Seya?”

“Ah, right. Jin, where did you go for you to look so pale.......”

Jill’s complexion changed as she spoke.

“Where did you go? Did you go home?”

Jin thought that if he spoke, only sobbing sounds would come out again, so he nodded.

“This is driving me crazy. I told you that place is dangerous now!”

Jill and Jin had moved their residence here because of the big man who had come all the way to their house not long ago.

She had been uneasy ever since young Jin anxiously asked what they would do if their father returned when they were not there.

Jill wanted to hit her past self, who had vaguely dodged the question because she could not bear to tell him that their father would never return no matter how long they waited.

He really caused trouble.

Even while the child roughly scratched her twin-braided hair and pressed him, Mir remained calm.

“Jin, I asked what happened to Seya.”

“She, she was caught by the mister. The one who came to our house that time....”

Remembering Seya’s last moment, when she had been lifted by the nape of her neck by a man as large as a mountain, Jin’s throat stung.

“Because of me, because of me, Seya!”

“That is why I asked why you went there again! Damn it, if she really got caught, Mir! Where are you going?!”

As Jill roughly swept her hair up and scolded Jin, she shouted toward the small back of Mir’s head disappearing far away.

But Mir did not turn around.

Jin noticed that Mir’s cold gaze toward him at the final moment contained enough reproach, so he lowered his head.

Unable to raise his head because of guilt, the child could only stammer answers to Jill’s questions as she asked him this and that.