Translator: Nox

Chapter 38

But what did it matter?

The target wouldn’t stop, it wasn’t even 9:00 AM yet, and the maze-like market was only just beginning.

He wanted to die.

But the target kept moving, he couldn’t die, and he couldn’t kill her either.

Abel desperately tried to pull himself together.

This is a department store.

The floors are marble, and luxury boutiques line both sides. The woman walking ahead is a VIP client. I need to pick out a suit. And perfume to go with it… I heard Hamilton’s new fragrance with a cedarwood base is quite popular lately. No, maybe not cedarwood, since winter is coming. Speaking of winter…

“Out of the way! Move it!”

The stench of raw fish hit him.

“Move it, I said!”

“There’s nowhere to move!”

Abel Sting whipped around, his eyes flashing with murderous intent as he snapped at the merchant pulling a cart. Both the merchant and Seo-ah flinched. Abel, who had turned so fiercely toward the man, froze as well.

A rotting, dilapidated cart that looked at least a hundred years old loomed before him with an overwhelming presence.

If even a splinter of that touches my clothes, not even the god of laundry could resurrect them.

“Let people pass first, will you?”

However, the merchant, a veteran of the streets, was no pushover.

“Can’t you just press yourself against the side?”

“Where?”

“Is a young fellow like you blind? There’s plenty of room to move if you just look around!”

“You think a path magically appears just because you’re old? Where exactly am I supposed to move on this cramped excuse for a road?”

Once the insults turned toward his age, the merchant’s temper flared alongside Abel’s already depleted patience.

“Damn it! You’ve clearly got no respect for your elders just because you’ve made a little coin. Why the hell did you come here wearing such expensive rags anyway!”

As Abel, who looked ready to commit murder, began brawling with the merchant, Seo-ah grew increasingly anxious. She could see the veins bulging in his neck.

The problem was that, just as Abel said, the path was so narrow there truly seemed to be nowhere to step aside. She was just thinking she had to pull them apart somehow when—

“Come over here, miss.”

Someone pulled her from the mouth of a narrow alley.

It was inside a shop where the stacked merchandise left only enough room for one person to pass. A woman who appeared to be the owner patted her shoulder.

“You’re with that man, right? Tell him to get over here quickly. That merchant has a nasty temper; once he starts a fight, he’s known to pull a knife.”

“Thank you.”

Seo-ah gave a quick nod and gestured frantically toward Abel.

“Um… Mr. Sting! …Mr. Sting!”

Only after she called him several times did Abel finally look back.

If one were to take disillusionment and contempt and roll them into a ball, they would look exactly like Abel’s eyes at that moment.

He glanced at the sky, then at the merchant he was confronting, before approaching her with long strides, his face now eerily expressionless. As Abel, who had been standing like a boulder blocking a stream, finally moved, the merchant—who had looked ready to kill—simply went on his way as if nothing had happened. The blocked street began to flow once more.

The street moved, but Seo-ah remained stagnant.

As Abel stood tall, blocking the front of the shop, the already dim space felt even darker. She could see his soiled shoes and the hems of his trousers.

Seo-ah, who was unintentionally disrupting his peaceful daily life, could do nothing but endure the heavy, stifling silence. The weight of it pressed down on her shoulders.

Behind Abel’s back, a line of carts rattled past.

Rattle, rattle, thud.

Rattle, rattle, thud.

Without a word, he turned around. He began to walk away with huge strides, like a man determined to escape this market as fast as humanly possible.

“Thank you for your help.”

Seo-ah hurriedly thanked the shopkeeper and tried to follow Abel, but the woman caught her by the shoulder and whispered.

“Miss, you’re not from around here, are you?”

Seo-ah paused and looked back. The woman smiled.

Only then did she realize the woman was different from the others here; her skin was the color of dark jelly, and her eyes were golden. She was a wanderer.

“The ribbon in your hair is pretty.”

“…”

The hand that had held her shoulder slid down her arm, giving a firm squeeze to the back of the hand that was gripping her bag tightly.

“Hang in there.”

“…”

Abel, who had walked ahead, was watching her as if asking what she was doing. Seo-ah stepped out of the shop and hurried after him, glancing back once. The shopkeeper was nowhere to be seen.

The market was a labyrinth.

The further they went, the wider the path became, but the crowds increased proportionally.

How long had she been walking behind Abel?

A space that was too small to be called a plaza, yet relatively wide, appeared without warning. Knowing from experience that such places often had a cathedral, Seo-ah was looking around when she heard a small voice.

“Excuse me.”

Looking down instinctively, she saw a child with dark skin and golden eyes. The child stumbled as the crowd brushed past. Reflexively, Seo-ah caught him.

As she looked up, worried about losing sight of Abel, something was thrust into her hand.

It was a single, dark red flower.

While she stood there wondering what it meant, she saw the child grin past the flower.

“Thank you.”

“Huh?”

“One thousand Kerete.”

“Oh?”

“One thousand Kerete, please!”

“Wait, no. I don’t need a flower.”

Even as she tried to give it back, the child was relentless.

“One thousand Kerete, please!”

Abel was getting further away, and the child wouldn’t let go. In the end, her mistake was hurriedly pulling one thousand Kerete out of her bag.

“…!”

In an instant, children swarmed her.

It wasn’t just children. Young women holding babies, old men, even older children carrying younger ones—the wanderers flocked to her, thrusting dark red flowers forward and pleading.

“Buy mine too.”

“Miss, please, mine as well.”

She had to leave quickly.

But those golden eyes and those faces were so much like the woman who had guided her into the shop moments ago.

The look of being dropped alone into the world, of having no choice but to beg, was all too familiar to her.

“Miss, please, won’t you just buy one.”

Recalling her own past, when she’d had no choice but to plead with someone, she couldn’t easily shake off those hands.

Meanwhile, Abel Sting, who had been walking ahead because he didn’t want to see even a single hair on his target’s head, caught a sudden signal from the backup team. He scowled and looked back.

What? What now—

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

There she was, surrounded by wanderers, buying up their flowers. As word spread, more wanderers were gravitating toward her like magnets, and the backup agents were losing their minds.

Go! Get over there, Abel Sting!

Move! Move, you idiot!

Abel flipped off the agent closest to him who was gesturing wildly, then slowly approached the stranger who seemed remarkably ignorant of how the world worked.

In the short time he’d been gone, she had bought so many flowers that she couldn’t even hold them all and was now cradling a massive bundle.

Beautiful. Just beautiful.

She looked like a white lily stuck in the middle of a bunch of dark red roses.

He wasn’t even angry anymore.

“Hey.”

His voice, sharp with suppressed venom, pierced through the wanderers’ ears like an arrow.

“…”

“…”

Wasn’t the life of every wanderer a constant exercise in reading the room?

The moment they saw Abel, the nomads dispersed as if by prearranged signal. They vanished so quickly it could only be described as a blink of an eye.

Only the stranger and the heap of flowers remained on the filthy road, left all alone.

Seeing her standing there like that made him even more incredulous.

There really are people who buy these things. And why am I the one suffering because of a girl like this?

It was so absurd it was almost funny.

“You actually paid money for those?”

To hell with the seduction, to hell with everything.

“Why? Are you giving them to me?”

The lily, tucked cluelessly among the roses, blinked her large eyes.

“Well, what a shame. I absolutely loathe them. Do you want me to be cursed with bad luck?”

“…Bad luck?”

“You didn’t know?”

Ah, she really didn’t.

Even if she didn’t know, shouldn’t she have sensed it? There’s a reason nobody else buys them, isn’t there?

“Those were all stolen from the cemetery.”

“What?”

“Don’t you know what a cemetery is? A graveyard. Tombs.”

The eyes of the stranger who had been slowly draining the life out of Abel Sting for the past week grew wide enough to pop. Her pale face turned even whiter, almost blue.

Seeing her like that, the weight that had been clogging his chest finally seemed to slide away.

“They’re things stolen from the dead.”

And you bought a whole mountain of them without knowing a thing.

See? If you’d just stuck to the nice places with me from the start, would you have ended up like this?

Of this miserable, nightmare-like week, this was perhaps the most entertaining moment yet.