episode_0039

“Mmm…”

A cold wind blows in through the window, caressing my shoulders and urging me to get up now. I reject the chilly touch and turn my head here and there, looking for a warm embrace.

After finding a comfortable position, I tried to fall back to sleep using the chirping of sparrows as a lullaby, but the chirping of sparrows mixed with the sounds of merchants bargaining outside the window became a discordant sound.

“…Oh really…”

As I wake up complaining about the annoying sound, something flows down from my shoulder.

I picked it up with my hand and looked at it with sad eyes. This is the blanket that Elisias received from the library earlier.

“Did he come and go…?”

Looking around, the closed window must have been left open for ventilation, and a cold breeze blew in through the window frame, and strong sunlight illuminated the bed, helping me guess what time it was.

“I guess I fell asleep without realizing it…”

When I looked down, other notes caught my eye, along with a cross section covered in saliva and smeared ink.

I collected the notes and read them one by one.

[I will go collect materials with Illisha. I thought it would take a few days, so I wanted to stop by to say hello to you, but when I saw your sleeping face, I couldn’t wake you up. It’s good to work hard, but it would be better to take care of your health.]

It seems to be a note written by Elisias. I chuckled and flipped through another note.

[Kid, I asked the innkeeper here for a meal, so make sure you have a good stomach. You have to have stamina to do anything, so it will probably take 2-3 days. Also, give me some news from Laboille. I don’t know what task I entrusted you with, but it will take a few days. Even if you pass by, your face is not illuminated, so I hope…]

Come to think of it, I didn’t tell Illisha that LaBoille was working as a spy for the Red Two-Headed Snake organization.

You’ll find out when you raid that den anyway, and since you promised me something, I think it’s okay to tell you the truth.

I looked at the one remaining note.

[Brother, I’m leaving you a letter because it looks like you’re sleeping…I can’t take my younger siblings to the black market in the slums, so I told them to stay in their rooms…I know you’re busy, but if it’s okay, could you take care of Louis and Lia? I will come back in the evening]

As I instructed, each person is busy completing their assigned task.

I stood up, stretched, lifted my sore body, and prepared to do my work.

“Are you guys there?”

As I knocked and shouted, I could feel something like a startled, noisy crowd coming from Asha’s room.

The crunching noise became quiet, and the sound of toddling footsteps was heard in front of the door.

“Oh, there’s no one!”

That answer, which sounds like an echo and says there is no one, makes me chuckle.

“Louis? Lia?”

In response to my question, I hear a voice whispering from across the door.

“It’s the boss’s hyung’s voice…?”

“You never know…what if it’s a monster disguised as the voice of the boss’s brother?”

Although his innocent, childish ideas were cute, I think he probably mistook debt collectors for monsters. Because a gunman attacked the house last time too.

Yes, being cautious is a good thing in this world. I trimmed his neck in the hope of giving him some trouble.

“Hmm, hmm! You’ll have to open this door…or else!”

“Ah, he’s the boss type.”

“Yes, anyone can see that he is the president’s oppa”

With no sign of my prank, the locked door was carefully opened and the kids stuck their heads out through the crack in the door to look at me.

“What’s going on, boss?”

When the children looked brightly at me with round eyes, I felt something tickling, so I scratched my cheek and bent down to be at the children’s eye level.

“If you have time, would you like to go out with me?”

Louis and Lia are, at first glance, toddlers, only 8 or 9 years old.

I couldn’t leave these children unattended at the inn, so I thought it would be better to take them with me.

“Want to hang out?”

The children’s blue eyes, full of wonder, sparkled like the sea on a summer day, then they opened the door wide and started climbing onto my back.

“Now, wait a minute, guys!”

“Where? Where?”

Louis and Lia, who were on either side of me, tapped my shoulders excitedly.

“Um…should we go to the library first?”

My schedule today is to head to the library and collect information on medicinal herbs. It will be much safer than what Asha, Elisias, and Illisha are doing.

“Eeeee~ I hate libraries…”

“Oppa! Asha said you must read books!”

When Louis started to droop and get off my shoulder, Lia patted his back with her small hand.

“Still~”

“Hmm… Then, should we go to the library and then have a picnic together?”

““P~Knick!””

The kids got excited at the word picnic and grabbed my head and shoulders, shaking me back and forth and wagging their tails in anticipation as to what was so good about it.

“Still, it might be dangerous, so you have to listen to me carefully?”

““Yes!””

The children answer at the same time and nod their heads. I’m a little worried, but I think it’ll be okay.

The forest where you gather herbs is a place where monsters appear, but to begin with, there are only weak monsters such as fallen fairies, old tarantulas, and remnant goblins.

If you are worried about that too, you can rest assured because you can just spray the monster repellent perfume you sprayed yesterday. But I think it would be a good idea to prepare to some extent.

We left the dorm and walked towards the library, and I felt something strange when I saw Louis and Lia with excited expressions on their shoulders.

Cats are territorial animals and don’t often go out of the house, right?

“Aren’t you scared of coming out of the house?”

In response to my question, Louis and Lia look at each other in turn and then tilt their heads.

“No? Rather, it’s nice to be outside, isn’t it?”

“ That’s right, my sister told me to stay home all the time because it was dangerous outside. How frustrating it was… I don’t know about you, but you say prisoners like us like to go outside?”

I was embarrassed when he suddenly treated me informally instead of politely before, but I decided to ignore it because it meant that he thought of me a little closer.

“I like going outside…”

Well, I nodded, thinking that since I was a beast with mixed human blood, my characteristics might be slightly different.

“Then you can just take a walk outside with Asha, right?”

“That’s…”

“It’s probably going to be difficult, bro…”

It was only by looking at their dark expressions that I realized that my question was wrong.

Asha is currently being chased by debt collectors. If Asha is alone, she may be able to escape quickly, but if her younger siblings are with her, it will probably be difficult.

I think that’s probably why he entrusted his younger siblings to me.

Even if you get caught by those debt collectors in the black market, you will be able to escape quickly, and by being with me, your younger siblings’ safety will be guaranteed.

“Now that I think about it, why is Asha being chased by debt collectors?”

Being chased by a debt collector is obviously due to not paying back the money, but I was curious about the original reason.

In response to my question, Louis squeezed my shoulder and let his tail hang. When I looked up, he had a pensive expression and looked like he didn’t want to answer.

“It’s because of mom and dad”

“Mom and Dad?”

Unlike the mature-looking Louis, Lia, who looked unexpectedly young, spoke up.

Lia rested her chin on my shoulder and sighed, with an expression and behavior that was inappropriate for her young age.

“Business? I borrowed a huge amount of money to do something like this, but it ended up going bankrupt, right? What a pathetic mom and dad…”

“Lia! You can’t say things like that!”

When Louis scolded Lia for shrugging her shoulders, Lia stuck out her tongue.

“Be! It’s true! Because of that, Asha is the only one suffering!”

“Then…where are mom and dad now?”

I wondered if they had made an extreme choice by taking on a huge amount of debt, and I was worried that the same trauma might have been engraved on these kids like me, so I turned around and asked.

“I don’t know, I haven’t seen those monster-looking men since they took my dad and mom away, hmm! It’s better than anything.”

Lia snorted and turned her head.

I think they might have been sold or become slaves because they couldn’t pay off their debt. At least I felt fortunate that I didn’t make a drastic choice.

As long as we don’t die, we can definitely meet sometime. But Lia had a stern expression on her face, as if it didn’t seem right, and I cautiously opened my mouth.

“Well…it went well?”

Louis grabbed Lia’s shoulder and shook his head as if telling her not to say that, but Lia didn’t care and shook off Louis’ hand.

“There’s no need for mom and dad who passed everything on to my sister and disappeared because of their own greed in the first place, right?”

“Lia you!”

“Ah!”

When Louis got angry and blew honey at her little forehead, Lia’s white forehead turned red and her glazed eyes became distorted and it looked like she was about to burst into tears.

“Why are you hitting me, you idiot!”

“But they’re still my mom and dad! It’s bad to say that!”

I can’t move forward because these two little kids are fighting with each other’s short arms on my shoulder. I bent down to break up the fight and dropped the kids off.

“Mr…Louis, I hate you the most in the world!”

“I hate you too! It’s fun!”

The kids who got angry showed their fangs and puffed up their tails. Between these two sharp glares, I couldn’t help but flounder.

“Now, let’s calm down, guys…”

““The boss hyung (oppa) is out!””

They say shrimp’s backs will explode in a whale fight, but when sparks flew at me for no reason, I was even more embarrassed and quickly looked around to see if there was anything I could do to relieve the cold atmosphere.

A street restaurant that caught my eye, apparently the kids liked meat.

I moved my body around, thinking it might be okay if I shifted my gaze a bit to the food.

“Now! ruler! Guys, check this out! Delicious chicken wing skewers! If you make up, I’ll give you this!”

I’m not good at dealing with children, so I’m not sure if this is the right answer, but I bought the snacks that looked the most delicious and gave them to the kids.

Louis and Lia reacted in shock, looked at the skewers I was carrying, puffed out their cheeks, and turned their heads as if they thought my method was wrong.

“I’m sorry, Lia…”

“I’m sorry too…”

They glanced at each other, and Louis apologized to Lia first, and Lia hesitated for a moment and then accepted the apology, fiddling with her hands.

As I look at this with joy, the two kids look at me at the same time.

““We made up!””

“This was the purpose…”

Unable to resist their bright eyes, I handed the chicken wing skewers to Louis and Lia, and we moved to a bench across from us for a while.

“Is it delicious?”

“Yes! It’s my first time eating it!”

Louis is frantically tearing off chicken wings, and Lia nods, filling her mouth with sauce.

I took out a handkerchief and diligently wiped the sauce from around his mouth.

Although I am currently the guardian of these two, I feel like I have become a real father.

“What does it mean that your parents passed everything on to you because of their own greed?”

“Literally, actually…the business was going well in the beginning.”

I thought Lia would answer, but this time Louis answered after wiping the sauce from his mouth.

“My older sister must have been born with the talent to be an entrepreneur, so she quickly started helping mom and dad expand the scale of the business.”

I nodded as if I agreed with that. Being active in the information industry also means that you are quite intelligent.

In the first place, the job of an information merchant requires not only excellent memory and action skills, but also judgment and prediction skills.

I thought that the judgment to determine whether information is right or wrong, the ability to anticipate the next event and move quickly in advance, and the ability to act would be the same as those of businessmen.

“Asha was strongly against it at first, saying that if we recklessly increased the size, we would go bankrupt, and that we had to take our time and go slowly…”

“But…you didn’t listen?”

In response to my answer, Louis quietly nodded and tore off the remaining chicken wings in one go.

“I had high hopes that Asha would do well because she is smart…but in the end, this is the result.”

“Louis… Then you don’t hate your dad and mom?”

I asked him if he was acting strong on purpose to appear dignified because he was Lia’s older brother, but fortunately that wasn’t the case.

Because that smile was similar to the smile I had when I first saw Elisias.

“Yes! But our mom and dad always thought of us, right? Of course…I sometimes hate Asha when I see her struggling every day…”

“Great…”

I gently stroked Louis’ head.

Even though he looks like he’s only 9 years old, I feel like he’s a cooler guy than me because he’s got the right thoughts. They say there is no up or down in learning, and I guess that is true.

“Lia… My brother agrees with what Louis said.

“Huh? What?”

The words I wanted to say quickly disappeared as he spoke as if he had forgotten what had just happened with a skewer of chicken wings, but I cleared my throat in the hope that my words would change the child’s perception.

“My brother’s mother was too greedy and ran away alone…”

“Then are you in debt like my sister?”

“Well, it’s not that, but…”

Faith is stopped by Lia’s innocent question.

“I really hate that person who ran away, but I’m glad he’s gone! I’ve thought about this countless times…but what?”

As I unconsciously lost my voice, Lia suddenly looked at me with distant eyes.

“Is your boss crying?”

“Huh? no! Don’t cry! I decided to stop crying now.”

Seeing Lia worrying about me, I stroked her little head.

“But… I miss you even more now that I can’t see you… Even if you were a terrible mother or father, in the end, you share the same blood… I thought you were someone I couldn’t live without. So no need! You can’t say things like that, okay?”

Lia’s ears twitched as if she was tickled, and she looked closely at the skewer of chicken wings in her hand before holding them out to me.

“Now! This!”

“Huh? Why is this?”

“I hope you laugh after eating this too!”

The child speaks with a smile that is purer than snow and warmer than the sunlight of an early spring day. When I saw that, I got emotional.

“And if you look at me with such sad eyes, Lia won’t say anything like that again! Promise!”

As I look at the little finger that the little child holds out, my eyes fill with tears. Even though I decided not to cry.

I hung that little finger very carefully.