Chapter 51 :

Chapter 51 - Fugitive (2)

Plin Feedus understood what was happening rather quickly and accurately.

What order Tollin had given Jack, what was happening in the capital right now, that Jack had started searching for street children to carry out that order, and even that the child he had barely managed to bring here had slipped away from Jack’s eyes and was now roaming around inside the mansion.

“Still, if the child is inside the mansion, we should be able to find quickly.”

When the young duke said that with a deliberately bright expression to encourage Jack, Jack lowered his head with a troubled face.

“That’s… The child is far closer to a wild animal than you are imagining, young duke. It is shameful to say, but even catching and bringing the child this far was not easy.”

“So it is like one monkey is running around inside the mansion.”

Tollin flinched at the sarcastic tone that slipped out without him realizing it, then glanced at the young duke’s expression and cleared his throat.

“First, tell the servants to seal off every hole the child might be able to escape through.”

“Yes, I have already ordered them to do so. However, the child is extremely agile and strangely strong. To be honest, I cannot guarantee that the servants will be able to catch.”

“Even though you knew that so well, you let your guard down. That was unlike you, Jack.”

This time, conscious that he was in front of the young duke, Tollin scolded Jack as carefully as he could.

Shame was added to the anxiety on Jack’s face.

“I thought it would be all right because the child’s hands and feet were tied, but they say the child had something like a sharp tree branch in hand. Where on earth did….get something like that…”

In the middle of speaking, Jack realized where the pointed tree branch in the child’s hand had come from and trailed off.

Realizing that he himself had handed over the chance to escape, Jack let out a pained groan and covered his forehead with one hand.

“Lord Tollin, please punish me. This is all my fault.”

At his powerless appearance, Tollin sighed.

“We will postpone assigning blame. The mansion is large, so the child likely has not gotten outside yet.”

To a commoner child, the mansion was certain to feel like a maze.

If being chased, it would be even harder to find the right direction.

“Where did you say you lost the child?”

The young duke, who had been silently watching Tollin and Jack’s conversation, finally opened his mouth.

“On the third floor. The was so filthy that he was in no state to be shown to Lord Tollin, so I ordered them to change clothes, but used that chance to attack the servants and run away.”

“How many servants were there, for them to lose one child?”

“Three…of them.”

Jack answered quietly.

At that answer, Tollin silently forgave Jack’s offense.

Because even he found it hard to believe that three grown men had lost one child.

While everyone was focused on the child’s unbelievable physical ability, the young duke was silently turning over one fact in his mind.

‘The third floor is where my room is.’

* * *

“Damn it.”

Seya chewed out curses again and again as she looked outside the door.

The urgent sound of running footsteps, the urging to hurry and find the child, and the certainty that all the exits outside had been locked, so they only needed to drive the child into a corner and catch her.

No matter how far removed Seya’s life was from the existence called nobles, there was no way she would not know whose mansion this was.

Seya stopped looking outside the door and took a look around the room she had entered.

There were all sorts of ornaments whose names she did not know because she had never even heard of them, bookshelves packed with so many books that Mir would not have been able to take his eyes off them, and a chandelier glittering enough to make her eyes spin.

But there was something else that caught her eye more than any of that.

Two swords embracing the moon.

Was there anyone in the empire who did not know the Feedus family?

Coincidentally, the owner of the clothes she had recently robbed together with Mir had also been a young master of this Feedus family.

Seya swallowed dryly.

‘This time, I might really die.’

She did not know why they had dragged a mere beggar brat all the way here over the back alley, but the fact that she had even stolen the clothes of a young master of the Feedus family did not seem like it would work in her favor in this situation.

Seya ignored her thundering heart as it ran wild on its own and crossed the room toward the huge window that took up half the wall.

She intended to jump down and escape if she had to.

But when Seya looked down outside the window, she felt her resolve weaken greatly.

The ground was too far away.

It was high.

Far too high.

No matter how many walls she had climbed over, what kind of building had ceilings this high? It was so high that it could not even be compared to any wall Seya had ever climbed over.

If she jumped, she was certain to break at least one part of her body.

If her leg broke, even if she got out of the mansion, she would not be able to cross the long, long garden.

If it could not be her leg, then it would have to be her arm.

Preferably her left arm.

Seya touched below her scrawny left elbow.

If it was just her left arm, that was a cheap price compared to her life.

She would suffer for a while, but once she got to Mir, surely he would do something.

He had all kinds of bizarre knowledge, after all.

Thinking something that would have made Mir fall over backward if he had heard it, Seya opened her eyes wide.

And then, the moment she placed one foot outside the window—

“Stop right there!”

* * *

The young duke had no time to be glad to see the familiar face clinging to the window of his room.

Because Seya’s left foot on the window frame looked far too dangerous for that.

“Don’t come! Don’t come near me!!!”

Seya shouted a threat that was almost a scream at Jack as he took one step toward her.

“Damn it, fine, so just move back a little. Even you won’t be all right if you fall from that height.”

Jack stepped back again to calm Seya down.

Seya knew it too.

She knew that she might break an arm, or if her luck was bad, her neck.

Even so, she did not want to go to that bearded man.

Before the young master standing beside him with round eyes opened his mouth, she would have a higher chance of surviving if she jumped down.

If it was revealed that she had stolen that young master’s coat and run away, she was certain she would not simply die, but die painfully.

It would be better for her neck to break all at once from the fall.

The moment Seya finished the simple calculation and decided to fall—

“Lord Plin!”

More than Tollin’s horrified scream, more than Jack’s belatedly outstretched hand, surprisingly, the young duke’s legs were faster.

The child had run toward Seya.

“Huh? Huh? D-Don’t come! I told you not to come!”

The leg Seya had placed on the window frame fled backward in shock at the young duke’s charge without the slightest hesitation.

Seya felt a strong force pull her body downward.

It was the worst possible fall.

The moment the thought flashed through her mind that if she fell like this, not her leg but her neck would break, a strong force grabbed Seya’s arm.

“Urgh…”

In the end, an ominous cracking sound came from the young duke’s arm.

Until Jack and Tollin pulled Seya up, Plin Feedus held tightly onto Seya’s arm like that.

Seya did not struggle.

For that brief moment, Seya quietly did not reject the helping hand.

Because no fool would save someone he intended to kill, even while tearing his own arm out.

After being pulled out safely like that, Seya let Jack’s voice, which had begun a long lecture about how foolish and dangerous what she had done was, flow in one ear and out the other as she blankly looked at the young duke, who, like her, was being nagged by Tollin.

“Young duke, please swear right now that you will never do something that reckless again! Right now!”

“Tollin, calm down. The veins on your forehead look like they are about to burst.”

“Are my veins the problem right now? Your arm nearly burst, young duke!”

The young duke, who had finally drawn a roar from the frustrated Tollin, nodded with a slightly intimidated expression.

“All right, I will never do something like that again.”

Tollin, who knew his temperament of always keeping promises he made, finally regained his composure.

The young duke patted Tollin’s shoulder as he breathed roughly, then finally turned his head and met the eyes of Seya, who could not take her eyes off him.

“It’s been a while.”

When it became clear that he remembered her theft perfectly, Seya flinched and trembled her shoulders.

“I-I have committed a crime worthy of death. Please spare my life, please, please.…”

The young duke looked down at Seya as she bowed her head and only muttered for him to spare her, then slowly opened his mouth.

“….Do you still think we are going to kill you?”

At the slow and calm question, Seya stopped reciting her broken, reflexive apology and looked at the young duke’s face.

They were clear, unwavering gray eyes.

For the first time in her life, Seya thought that gray, like a gray sky covered in gray clouds, was beautiful.

“….No.”

At the answer that came out as if she were bewitched, the corners of the eyes holding those gray pupils curved.

For the first time in her life, a smile of pure joy, not mockery or sarcasm, was directed at her.

In that instant, Seya felt something inside her move greatly.

A powerful impulse rose in her, wanting to make the noble in front of her even happier.

“I’m sorry. I know you won’t kill me. This time, I really mean it.”

A sincere apology, not one meant to get out of the situation, slipped out before she knew it.

Seya could immediately tell that her action had been the right answer.

The young duke’s eyes curved even more.

With a strong premonition that she had lost her chance to run away forever, Seya bit the inside of her mouth.

Mir is going to kill me now.

* * *

“Sniff, sob.”

Mir felt his consciousness faintly returning at the sound of sobbing ringing in his ears.

He remembered entering the food distribution line and being guided to another room by a man in the middle.

And it also seemed that, right after that, he had been hit on the back of the head.

As proof of that, Mir sat up while holding the throbbing back of his head.

Judging by the fact that his elbows and ankles were aching a little too, it seemed they had thrown people around quite roughly.

‘Maybe because they’re going to kill us anyway, they’re really rough.’

Ignoring his aching arms and legs, Mir looked around.

It was just as he had expected.

Dozens of children, or so it seemed, were locked in the narrow room with him.

Clothes so tattered it was hard to tell how long they had been worn, and dirty faces from not being able to wash.

It seemed certain they were all in the same situation.

Most of all, there was not a single child among them who looked older than twelve.

Certain that he had been caught properly, Mir slowly examined the faces of the children in the room.

‘The problem is that I don’t see Seya either.’

Mir approached the child who seemed to be the oldest among them, a child who was not crying, in other words, a child who seemed to have completely given up.

Because the probability that this child had been trapped here the longest was high.

As Mir approached and a faint shadow fell over him, the child looked up at Mir with an annoyed face.

“What are you looking at?”

Did I choose wrong?

At the prickly tone, Mir shrugged and sat down beside the child.

“How long has it been since you were caught?”

“Why are you asking that?”

At the crooked answer, Mir tilted his head.

“What’s there to be unable to answer?”

“If you waste your strength for no reason, you die quickly, that’s why.”

“If you had answered at the start, it seems like there would have been no need to waste strength in the first place.”

At Mir’s answer, the child who had been sitting first looked at him as if wondering what kind of strange guy this was, then sighed.

“….About a week.”

“Then you must have seen all the other kids who were brought here during that time, right?”

At the child’s expression that seemed to ask what he was going to do about it, Mir quickly stood up and opened his mouth again.

“Did you see one child? She’s about this much taller than me. Her name is Seya. Her personality is fiery, so if she had been caught, she would have kicked the wall first and caused a huge fuss. And….”

Mir, who had been showing the height with his hands, briefly grimaced, unsure whether saying this would help, then continued.

“….She’s a girl.”

Though it is hard to tell.