Chapter 60 :

Chapter 60 - Pretext

Mir slowly walked around the damp, cold room that did not have a single window.

The only things lighting the dark and narrow room were the flames of the candlesticks placed at each corner of the wall.

If even those had not been there, the children would have had to shiver not only from the cold, but also in fear inside the dark room.

They had been captured without knowing the reason, and were being eaten away by the fear of seeing the friends around them disappear one by one.

Thinking that those precarious candle flames were like the lives of the gathered children, Mir looked around at the children sitting weakly or lying collapsed.

Some of the children were holding small cups filled with water and a lump of bread that looked old.

‘Seeing that they are providing food and water, it does not seem like they intend to kill us yet…’

They had brought children who had nothing but their bodies.

In other words, what they wanted was the children themselves.

Mir recalled the faces of the two companions who had gone missing and later returned, and his body trembled faintly.

It was a sight he never wanted to see again.

They said no one similar to Seya had come in.

‘If I came in before Seya, should I wait a little longer?’

If Seya was not here, he did not want to stay in a place like this for even a moment longer, but if Seya was dragged in late by any chance…

“Why are you so calm? Were you really captured and brought here?”

The child who had been glancing at Mir walking around quietly approached and spoke to him.

“What does it matter?”

Thinking that he could not understand why the guy who had said earlier that he did not even want to talk was suddenly showing interest, Mir answered roughly.

“You really came in on purpose?! Why? Don’t tell me it was to find that kid named Seya from earlier?”

Mir did not bother answering this question.

Because the guy had already decided on the answer before asking, and Mir did not feel any need to answer either.

It was not hard to predict the reaction that would come back.

“Really? You are not sane either, are you?”

It is always this kind of reaction.

In an environment where everyone was busy feeding only themselves, moving in a group was done to increase the chance of getting food and lower the chance of dying.

When stealing, the chance of success increased if they did it together.

When running away, the chance of being caught decreased if there were several of them rather than one.

But that also meant that even if someone else was caught, they were the kind of relationship where they would abandon them without looking back.

Most groups formed by street children had this kind of nature.

It was just that the children gathered in the secret hideout in the back alley had an unusually strong bond with each other.

But to Mir, Seya was especially precious even among them.

If someone like that guy asked why, he did not have much to say.

Because she was Seya.

“Just because.”

Not wanting to explain at length, he answered roughly and turned around.

Bang!

What interrupted Mir’s thoughts was the sound of the door opening roughly without any consideration for the people inside.

The locked door opened, and a man in black entered.

Though in the sense that he was more tattered, he was different from the other bastards who had been coming in and out of this place.

Mir quickly hid himself among the children.

“This damn vagrant brat!”

He irritably threw the child he had been carrying over his shoulder onto the floor.

Small drops of blood splattered.

A few children standing in front of Mir screamed quietly.

“This brat is giving people trouble!”

“Ugh. Isn’t it enough that you took out this much anger? What more do you want? Because you are so narrow-minded, you are only a lackey in a group that captures weak kids.”

At the voice that did not lose its active defiance even at the moment of being captured, Mir, who had been hiding among the children, flinched.

“You really!”

The furious man grabbed the fallen child by the nape and forcibly pulled her up.

Her hair, smeared with dirt and blood, fell aside, revealing her face.

Mir drew in a breath.

It was Seya.

Facing the huffing man with a glare, Seya roughly struck away the rough hand gripping her neck.

“Really what? From what I heard earlier, you still can’t kill me yet, can you? So why don’t you stop wasting your strength for no reason? Huh?”

That sight of her not being cowed even in this situation was unmistakably Seya.

‘What should I do?’

Since there was nothing more meaningless than rushing out right away and getting between the two of them, Mir clenched his fist and watched the situation.

Seya was growling at the man who was about to raise his hand again.

“Are you okay with it? This time, your finger might really get cut off.”

That threat was clearly intimidating enough that the man unconsciously pulled his hand back.

Seeing that his hand was full of bite marks, it seemed he had already confirmed with his own body that those words were not mere talk.

At that pathetic sight, a sneer hung on Seya’s face, which was covered with dried blood.

The man’s face crumpled for a moment, then he gave a vile smile.

“You damn brat. ‘Yet’ means that if you are judged unsuitable, we can kill you right away. Just wait a little. Once the selection is over, I will deal with you myself.”

At the cruel words, all the children around them sucked in their breath.

Among them, some even had tears in their eyes.

But it was not enough to break Seya’s spirit.

“You watch your fingers too. Before I die, I will make sure to tear off at least your index finger.”

“You little…”

“Hey! That’s enough. Come here. She can’t bleed too much either.”

The man, who was reaching for Seya again, clicked his tongue at the voice of his companion calling him from outside.

“Just you wait.”

With those words, he kicked Seya once in the shin and went out the door.

Mir, who had jumped to his feet and was preparing to run out from the moment the man’s hand was about to move, no longer waited and ran to his friend.

“Seya!”

The child, who had been rubbing the shin the man had kicked, snapped her head up at the voice of her friend calling her.

“Mir!”

Mir’s face gradually clouded as he approached the friend who greeted him gladly.

The closer he came, the clearer the wounds that did not match her bright expression became.

Swollen eyes, hair clumped with dirt and blood, and blood was trickling in drops from the long wound on her forearm.

“I’m glad I found you! I was worried something really terrible had happened to you.”

It seemed like nothing could be more terrible than this, but in front of Seya, who was purely delighted at reuniting with her friend, Mir merely nodded.

“I have so much to say. If you hear what happened to me today, even you will be surprised.”

In front of Seya, who was chattering excitedly, Mir grinned.

Because she looked so full of vitality that it seemed ridiculous he had thought Seya had disappeared from the world.

“Oh, right. And this.”

Seya rummaged through her back pocket for a moment and took out something wrapped in a paper bag.

“Damn it, it got all squashed because of that bastard.”

What was in Seya’s hand as she glared at the closed door was cold street food.

Because she had been beaten so violently by the man, it had been pressed this way and that, and now its shape was hard to recognize.

“It looks like this, but it is all meat anyway, so just eat it. You haven’t eaten anything since morning, right? Ah, I brought this too. They said it was honey.”

Seya scratched her head awkwardly and also took out a small bottle she had secretly taken from the ducal residence from another pocket.

At that sight, Mir pressed his lips tightly together, then picked up the skewer and put it in his mouth.

The cheap meat, cold as it was, felt warm, and the corners of his mouth rose.

See, Seya is Seya.

My friend, who needs no explanation beyond that.

* * *

As soon as the young duke came out of his father’s bedroom, he changed under Tollin’s instructions into the neatest and cleanest clothes.

“Do not forget to put a brooch on his chest. Not something too flashy, but something as plain as possible and yet expensive. It must not be too heavy either.”

For the young duke as well, putting on and taking off all kinds of ornaments he would normally never wear was quite exhausting.

Pale, who knew that the young duke was not the type to complain simply because he was tired, stood anxiously behind Tollin.

“Lord Tollin, please calm down. If someone saw this, they would think the young duke was getting married. Rather than dressing up the young duke, there are more urgent matters…”

In the end, Pale carefully opened his mouth.

“What are you saying right now?”

Though he quickly closed his mouth at Tollin’s murderous gaze.

“If it were a wedding, of course it would have to be a hundred times, a thousand times more splendid than this.”

While Pale lost the words to respond to his serious nonsense, Tollin continued speaking.

“In whatever form it takes, it is an event that happens only once in a lifetime, and the day one comes closest to God Abiran until the day of death. It cannot be done carelessly.”

There was nothing wrong in his words, so Pale tucked his tail and stepped back again.

“Just leave him be. Lord Tollin must be troubled at heart too. The temple will not rashly harm the young duke, but it is still unmistakably a warning.”

Jack, who had been watching Pale, lowered his voice and said.

Pale, who had been about to say something more, confirmed that Jack’s face as he said that was also miserable and closed his mouth tightly.

Tollin had said this was a kind of warning.

A warning not to think about interfering any further in the affairs of the capital.

The young duke did not even know that the street child who had turned the ducal residence upside down had been captured.

Until the ritual ended, no, perhaps even after the ritual ended, the young duke would not know what happened to the child.

Someday, he would realize that all the trusted adults around him had kept secrets from him, but he would be forced to understand.

And that day would be the day the child’s infinite trust toward the adults of the Feedus mansion broke.

With a bitter taste in his mouth, Pale furrowed his brow and silently watched the young duke being adorned by Tollin.

At last, Tollin’s delicate, or in other words, fussy, inspection ended.

The young duke, who looked as if money had been applied all over his body without being flashy, boarded the carriage with a somewhat awkward step.

This time, Tollin also boarded the same carriage as the young duke.

The rare offerings to be given to the temple were with them as well.

Pale, who knew how sensitive Tollin had become about this matter after the last accident, saw them off without raising any questions.

“I will be back. Please take care of the mansion while I am gone.”

At the dignified answer, Pale showed a gentle smile.

“Do not worry. I am not quite as experienced as Lord Tollin, but I am also one of those who have worked at the mansion for quite a long time.”

At his words, Tollin gave a bitter smile, but no one noticed him.

With Pale smiling gently behind them, seeing them off, the carriage set out.

Pale watched the back of the carriage growing distant as it crossed the garden for quite a long time.

With the wish that the crisis of the House of Feedus would stop here, he prayed earnestly in his heart.

But if earnest prayers could make the affairs of the world unfold as one wished, all the hardships of the world would have disappeared long ago.

Not long after the carriage carrying the young duke and Tollin left, one more letter arrived at the House of Feedus.

It was marked by hurried handwriting that looked as if it had been scribbled.

After reading it, Pale had to send the news to Tollin at the temple just as urgently as the handwriting.

The letter was concise.

It said that the fifth young master of the Selby family had gone missing.

At the same time, the two princes in the imperial castle who received the news both gave fishy smiles.