Chapter: 08
The boy approached the mercenaries with a leisurely stride, his hat pulled low over his head.
“Hey.”
One of the mercenaries watching him raised an eyebrow and tilted his head threateningly.
“Your gray-haired friend is already down. Don’t put up any pointless resistance and just give up.”
“Chenny? He’s not my friend.”
The boy stopped in the middle of the corridor as he answered.
“He was being dragged around because you threatened him. You could’ve gone easy on him, couldn’t you?”
Then he drew a dagger from his waist, as though he really intended to fight them.
‘He’s certainly got guts.’
But they had no intention of going easy on him.
The mercenary quietly watched the boy before signaling to his companion.
After a brief silence filled with faint tension, the two mercenaries at the front pushed off the ground and charged forward.
“Begging us to go easy on you won’t do you any good!”
Bang!
Just as the mercenaries charged forward with confidence, a tremendous noise erupted from the side, and one of the boards covering a window flew through the air and slammed into the head of one of the charging mercenaries.
“Ugh!”
The other mercenary rushing toward the boy hurriedly stopped and turned his head.
“What the hell are you…… Argh!”
A man flew in through the window against the backdrop of a brilliant red sunset and drove his knee into the mercenary’s face.
Thud.
Two grown men collapsed in an instant.
As the wooden board shattered and sent a cloud of dust into the air, the refreshing scent of the outside breeze drifted in.
“I don’t know what’s going on.”
A low voice, tinged with annoyance, echoed through the quiet corridor.
“But ganging up on one person isn’t exactly fair, is it?”
“W-what?”
The bearded man frowned as he watched the man slowly rise from atop the fallen mercenary.
‘What the hell is that guy……?’
There was something unusual about the way he carried himself.
His eyes were hidden by hair covering half his face, and his large build only made him seem more suspicious. He gave off such a strange aura that no one could recklessly attack him.
‘Is he that kid’s companion?’
But even that seemed uncertain.
The boy stood frozen with his mouth open, looking just as surprised as they were.
“But…….”
Breaking the tense standoff, the shaggy-haired man suddenly spoke.
“Where’s Richard?”
“What? Who the hell is that…….”
“I’m here!”
Just then, hurried footsteps could be heard, and someone came rushing out from behind the man.
“I’m going ahead first, so hurry and run away!”
After shouting that, he hurriedly climbed through the wide-open window and fled.
It was the fake Hayden North whom the mercenaries had captured.
“……What’s with that guy?”
The mercenaries, whose tension had instantly evaporated, stared blankly out the window without even thinking to chase him.
“Ha.”
Only after they heard a sigh from in front of them did their attention return.
Thud.
The man, who had roughly ruffled the back of his head, threw a heavy sack he hadn’t even seemed to be carrying in front of the mercenaries.
“That’s all I have right now. I’ll pay back the rest, too, so don’t touch my uncle again.”
Uncle?
The bearded man stared at the sack with a puzzled expression before belatedly understanding the man’s words.
Apparently, the fake Hayden was his uncle.
The mercenaries exchanged glances before turning their eyes back toward the man.
“Sorry, but because of what you just did, the debt has increased.”
Four of their companions had been taken down, so there was no way they could simply let him go.
“We’ll have to collect the interest in another way.”
Seeing the mercenaries clench their fists, the man tilted his head slightly.
When his parted bangs revealed blue eyes, the bearded man involuntarily flinched.
The sunset was blazing behind him, yet the man standing within it radiated an ominous aura.
He stared at the mercenaries with a cold gaze that revealed nothing of his thoughts before muttering quietly,
“……Then I can’t help it.”
Almost the instant he finished speaking—
Bang!
He kicked a piece of wood toward the mercenaries, then hoisted the boy over his shoulder and leaped through the window in a single motion.
The buildings rapidly receded before her eyes.
The mercenaries’ bewildered faces disappeared beyond her swaying field of vision.
Eloise, who was equally bewildered, was being carried around like a sack with her body draped over the man’s shoulder.
‘I didn’t expect we’d meet like this.’
She hadn’t been able to see his face, but Eloise had recognized the man instantly.
Even before hearing his voice.
From his broad back that completely filled her field of vision, his straight and long neck…….
Anyway, she knew him from things like that.
But this was no time to be happy about seeing him.
“……Put me down.”
“What?”
“Put me down, I said.”
She was getting motion sick and couldn’t take it anymore.
Eloise kicked the man’s chest hard with her knee.
“Wait……!”
At the same moment he stopped, Eloise forcefully raised her upper body.
She had intended to escape from him and land on her own, but the man, having lost his balance, didn’t release the arm wrapped around her waist, causing both of them to topple over together.
“……!”
Eloise instinctively wrapped her arms around his neck.
She squeezed her eyes shut in preparation for the pain that was about to come, but the body that had been falling toward the ground suddenly stopped in midair.
“Hey…….”
Then she heard his voice.
“You okay?”
Was she okay?
She had nearly cracked the back of her head open, and Eloise’s eyes snapped wide.
“I told you to let me go……!”
But she couldn’t finish her sentence.
The moment she saw the blue eyes so close to her, Eloise stopped breathing.
That face was right before her eyes.
The face of Hayden North, whom she had thought she would never see again.
The face she was finally seeing was much younger than she remembered, but the atmosphere that made him unmistakably Hayden remained unchanged.
His delicate features contrasted with his firm expression.
At first glance, he looked like a ferocious wild dog, but if one looked closely, his eyes were as clear as ripples spreading across the surface of water.
Eloise had forgotten that she was still clinging to Hayden’s neck and simply stared at him in a daze.
Looking at that face suddenly brought back an old memory.
The day she first met him.
It had been at a swordsmanship tournament she entered one year before her death.
Since no one could defeat Eloise in a one-on-one tournament where swordsmanship, rather than brute strength, was tested, whenever she heard rumors that one of the young heirs from a family that had tormented her was participating, she would enter the tournament and laugh at their pathetic skills to her heart’s content.
There had been only one time when she failed to win.
Because of Hayden North.
Her carelessness had been a major reason.
No one at the arena had expected that a face like that would be hidden beneath the crude helmet she had knocked flying.
「The winner is……! Hayden North!」
Hayden hadn’t missed that brief moment when Eloise froze.
He swung his sword, and when he claimed the championship, cheers erupted from the crowd—cheers Eloise had never heard before.
The blue-eyed man who had defeated Grinnell.
To the people watching, it must have looked as though the poisoned Crown Prince had returned from the dead to take revenge on Grinnell.
At least, that was how it appeared to the Emperor.
The Emperor took a liking to Hayden and tried to keep him by offering him whatever he wanted, whether it was an official position or a noble title.
「Forget everything else and just give me more money.」
Hayden’s indifferent response drew another wave of cheers, and from that day onward, Hayden was more or less forced to remain in the Imperial Palace.
‘And on top of that, he was the true bloodline of Marie Loxton.’
A blue-eyed man with a face resembling Marie, who was said to have been so beautiful that even the Evil God’s Eye had been obscured by her beauty.
The fact that he couldn’t manifest the Goddess’s blessing didn’t matter.
Not to the Emperor.
And not to Eloise.
“Hayden!”
At the sudden shout, Eloise abruptly came to her senses.
“Get away from that child immediately!”
The two of them noticed the man running toward them and the object in his hand, then hurriedly separated.
Whoosh—
Hayden’s uncle, Richard, swung a wooden stick and stepped in front of Eloise.
“H-Hayden isn’t going anywhere!”
Eloise frowned as she narrowly dodged the stick.
He had managed to run away perfectly well on his own earlier, so why was he suddenly acting like this?
As Eloise stared at Richard as though he were insane, Hayden stepped forward to calm the agitated man.
“Uncle, it’s okay now. They didn’t follow us this far.”
“They didn’t follow us?! She’s the leader of those bastards!”
Silence fell.
“……She is?”
“That’s right! This kid ordered the mercenaries to capture you! And when they brought me in by mistake, she scolded them for getting the wrong person!”
Richard panted as he shouted and pointed at Eloise.
“I heard her demanding to know whether my face was handsome, too!”
“Tch.”
Eloise clicked her tongue.
So that’s what he had been talking about.
Apparently, he had pretended to be unconscious while listening to their conversation.
Aside from the part about her demanding to know whether his face was handsome, everything he had said was wrong, so Eloise explained the situation again.
“You misunderstood.”
She sharply knocked away Richard’s finger, which was pointed at her.
“More precisely, I thought Hayden had been captured, so I went to rescue him. Then I found out it wasn’t you and started asking where you were.”
“Me?”
“Yes. If I were on their side, why would those mercenaries have tried to beat me up?”
“Hah! You shouldn’t believe a word she says. I saw those mercenaries trembling before her…….”
“Anyway, you were looking for me. Have we met before?”
Hayden cut Richard off and asked, his hands tucked into his pockets.
“Obviously, another noble lord is trying to pull some kind of stupid stunt……!”
“We’ve never met, but I know a little about you.”
Ignoring Richard, who interrupted again, Eloise approached Hayden.
“You hate nobles. What you need is money. And…….”
Then she suddenly opened the collar of Hayden’s shirt.
The moment the cord holding his chest closed came loose, Hayden grabbed her hand.
But Eloise had already seen it.
The crescent-shaped scar on his shoulder.
“What are you suddenly doing……?”
“The scar the Evil God supposedly left on Marie. They say it only appears on her direct descendants, right?”
At Eloise’s words, Hayden froze.
“……What are you?”
There was hostility in Hayden’s voice.
Eloise smiled kindly, like someone offering food to a wary beast, and said,
“I’m the person who will return the throne to you.”
