Chapter 59

Meanwhile, in Aisha’s bedroom.

“Uuung.”

Curled up inside the blanket steeped in Aisha’s scent, the little fluffball mumbled contentedly.

Lately, Kyle had been overcome with sleep during the day, as if he were passing out. Especially on the occasional days when he drank the blood of the spies who came by, the drowsiness hit even harder.

Almost like a child going through a growth spurt.

“Mmmnya.”

Even in his sleep, his little rear wiggled vigorously as he tried to burrow into Aisha’s arms.

But.

“......?”

Aisha’s arms were gone.

Normally, a warm body should have wrapped around him.

“?”

The lukewarm situation chased away his sleep, and when he opened his eyes, he looked around.

This was Aisha’s bedroom.

And yet the owner of the bedroom was nowhere to be seen.

Aisha?

The fluffball stretched out both front paws and shook his head.

After roughly finishing his cat wash, he hopped lightly down from the bed and checked underneath it.

Not here either.

Aisha was gone.

Strange. She’s always with me lately.

Ever since that mister had given permission, she had been.

Kyle was, by nature, the type who preferred staying home. So of course it was only natural for him to spend his time in his home—her arms.

“Mya? (Aisha?)”

He pressed his nose to the floor and sniffed.

Her scent trailed faintly beyond the castle, as clear to him as footprints.

Without hesitation, he left the castle.

Because what was lost ought to be found.

***

On the surface, this place looked like an ordinary, slightly shabby shopping street.

In truth, it was an alley where illegal trade flourished—an alley of darkness.

Everyone visible on the street either wore a robe...

“Little kid, looks like you took a wrong turn.”

“Yes.”

“If you’ve lost your parents, why don’t you follow this mister?”

...or was openly the kind of bad person who committed bad deeds.

“Receive the needle of justice.”

“...What?”

Pft—

When I shot a needle into the bareheaded man’s forehead, he flinched, trembled, and collapsed.

This place was lawless territory.

Which also made it a suitable place for the Pose family’s spies to reside.

Jingle—

I stepped into an old shop with a sign that read Perkus’s Bookshop.

“Welco—huh? Little kid?”

A man who had been greeting me in a rough, lazy voice recognized me and stood up.

A man with a large scar across one eye.

A spy.

Dolly.

“I heard you were adopted as a young lady, so why do you still look like a beggar?”

No, why was a spy talking so loudly?

I glanced around and whispered,

“Excuse me. Is it okay for you to act like you know me like this?”

“Why? Now that you’re some high noble family’s young lady, you embarrassed to be seen knowing someone like me?”

“No, that’s not it!”

Being fellow spies did not mean we were friends.

As I had seen with Dorothy before, spies did not contact one another unless it was for joint operations or necessary work. Usually, they were jealous and envious of each other.

I did not know why, exactly.

Maybe because they had been trained since childhood and were used to competing.

The man spread open a newspaper and asked,

“Anyway, have you seen that guy?”

“Who?”

“Some guy named Latter.”

The man narrowed his eyes into slits.

“The one who always walks around with eyes like this.”

A narrow-eyed character?

A narrow-eyed character... hmm... ah!

Someone came to mind.

A faint memory surfaced.

During the heir selection trial, when Marquis Lilith used the potion to drive the monster into a frenzy.

At that time, there had been a mysterious narrow-eyed man watching everything.

I quickly told Dolly.

“I think I saw him during the heir selection trial...”

“I saw him then too. But I don’t think I’ve seen him since.”

Huh.

“I haven’t seen him since then either.”

“Is that so?”

A brief silence passed.

When a spy whose face was known suddenly disappeared, there were only two possibilities.

Dead.

Or close to dead.

Hmm.

This got awkward all of a sudden.

But I had not come here to make small talk anyway.

Rising onto my tiptoes, I planted both hands on the desk.

“Anyway, about the madness enhancer. You sell it here, right?”

“Why? We recently sent out a huge amount to spread it near the end of the world. Did it pay off?”

I was asking because I needed to clean up the mess from that.

Honestly, I wanted to flick the man who sold it right on the forehead.

“Not enough. I need more.”

“See the red spine on that bookshelf over there? Press it and go into the room.”

The man barely looked away from his newspaper as he jerked his chin lazily.

For a spy storing illegal drugs, he was shockingly careless.

Well, it was lucky he did not suspect me.

“Yes, sir.”

I stood in front of the shelves and pressed the red book spine tucked among countless books.

Rummmmble.

The ground vibrated, and a gap opened between the bookshelves, revealing another room.

The moment I stepped inside, the temperature plunged as if I had entered a freezer.

All kinds of medicines were arranged on pantry-like wooden shelves, each one sealed behind glass so no one could touch them carelessly.

These were the real products sold by Perkus’s Bookshop.

I busily pattered around, searching through the medicines, until I found a potion the exact same color as the one I had seen during the heir lessons.

“Found it. Madness enhancer.”

I rose onto my tiptoes and tapped the glass.

Tap.

The glass slid open automatically.

Because of this, part of the ice barrier collapsed.

Just thinking about it gave me chills.

Brrr—

My cheeks trembled from the shiver.

They said they needed a large quantity... so I’ll just take everything here.

That was when—

“What’s that?”

I had risen onto my tiptoes to take out only the madness enhancer, but something touched the tip of my index finger.

“...An ice crystal?”

After pulling out the madness enhancer, I spotted something else.

This mysterious potion looked different from the others.

Inside the potion, an ice crystal shimmered and glowed like sunlight reflected on river water.

Pretty.

Before I knew it, my mouth had fallen open.

I looked around, then took that potion too.

If there were side effects, there should have been a small skull mark on the back, but when I checked, there was none.

It was a potion that reminded me of the power of ice.

It’s pretty, so I’ll take one.

Once the Pose family was exposed as the culprit behind the monster frenzy incident, this bookshop would disappear anyway.

That’s what you get for doing bad things.

Hehe.

I laughed quietly and slipped the potion into my bunny backpack.

Then I left the room and was just about to press the red book spine again.

“Like father, like daughter. You don’t even blink while stealing.”

“Eeeeek!”

Suddenly, my feet lifted into the air as someone roughly grabbed me by the back of the neck.

The cause was the man sitting by the desk.

Without warning, he had seized my nape. Then he threw me, still flailing, onto the floor.

“Ow!” 𝘧𝓇ℯℴ𝓂

I must have hit my knee against the rough wooden floor when I fell.

It hurt.

I could not even touch my scraped knee before I tried to stand, limping.

Then—

“You’d better watch how you behave these days.”

A look of contempt, colder than the gaze one might give an insect, stared down at me from right in front of my face.

A chill ran up my spine, and my shoulders trembled.

The man and I might both be official spies, but in terms of sheer strength and experience, he was overwhelmingly stronger.

“Little kid. About Latter. Do you know what he told me right before he disappeared?”

An ominous question.

Dolly dug at his ear with his little finger, blew on it, and tilted his head.

“He said you and the Kreutz people looked awfully close. Then he said he was going to follow you, and after that, all contact was lost.”

The more threatening his voice became, the closer Dolly’s scarred face drew to mine.

At this distance...

he would be able to tell whether I was shaken just from the way I breathed.

“Awfully close? I must be really good at acting, huh? Hehe.”

I hid the trembling inside me and smiled cutely.

But my opponent was a spy.

“You’d better choose the target of your acting carefully.”

I had not expected him to fall for it, and sure enough, Dolly’s mouth curled into a thin smile.

“You knew we’ve been sending spies to the Kreutz family regularly even after Dorothy died, didn’t you?”

...What?

At this information I had never heard before, my expression twisted for the first time.

“And of course you must know every spy we sent died.”

“......?”

That was also the first I had heard of it.

“How many spies did you send? I didn’t know.”

“How many? Did you just say ‘how many’? This is insane. Hahaha!”

He covered his face with one hand and burst out laughing.

Then, in the next instant, his mouth dropped flat, and his contemptuous gaze pierced me.

“...Well, His Grace will like you no matter what you do. Thanks to her, you’ve become an amusing toy that must never be disposed of, no matter what happens.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

The things he was saying were starting to scare me, and I tried to ask properly.

But then—

“You went to the ducal estate and came back having made something very interesting.”

“......”

Something came back to me.

It was definitely when I had passed out at Ahili’s Circus.

“Don’t dispose of her. This should become quite entertaining later.”

Two lines I had remembered vividly, even though I thought it was a dream.

“......?”

My mouth, which had stopped mid-sentence, trembled open.

It wasn’t a nightmare?

Could this be a memory of my lost past?

“Hahahahaha! I’m losing my mind, seriously!”

Watching the change in my expression, Dolly burst into laughter and rose from his seat.

“Anyway, the better you get along with the Ice Duke, the harder he’ll fall in the end. You’re carrying out your mission perfectly.”

“......”

Calypse would fall?

Because I’m getting along well with Calypse?

Come to think of it, he was right.

From the very beginning, Duke Pose’s order to me had been to become the young lady of the Kreutz family.

To become the duke’s beloved daughter.

I had declared that I would break free from being a spy and refuse the mission.

And yet I had truly become his beloved daughter.

By doing so, I had taken one step closer to Duke Pose’s ambition.

But if the truth came out—

if Calypse learned that becoming his daughter had been my original mission—

how deep would his sense of betrayal be?