Chapter 62
Her hair was coiled high and pinned in place with something resembling a thick nail, her top fell to just below her chest, and her skirt reached her ankles.
The woman spoke, but the words were entirely unintelligible.
“…What is she saying?”
Even as he muttered with a furrowed brow, she continued to chatter away, circling him several times.
Was she another lackey of the Wolves sent to kill him? No. He had killed every last one of them, save for one.
“…….”
Peter’s eyes narrowed.
Right. He had killed them all.
He had escaped from the ship that was dragging him to Luxen. He killed them all, took a lifeboat, and rowed through the surging waves of the open sea….
“The key.”
His hand instinctively went to his chest. He had definitely been wearing a jacket, and he had tucked the key into a pocket sewn inside.
He frantically checked his body. He was dressed in unfamiliar white clothes. It was a top similar in shape to the woman’s and loose-fitting trousers, but there were no pockets to be found anywhere. A sense of crisis surged to the very tips of his hair. He was about to move to ransack the room immediately.
The middle-aged woman spoke more unintelligible words and gestured for him to sit or wait. Then, she pointed at the clothes she was wearing and then at herself.
“You have my clothes?”
There was no way she could have understood him, yet she smiled and nodded repeatedly. Then, she actually fetched his clothes from a wooden chest in the corner of the room. He couldn’t understand a single word she was saying.
Peter snatched the clothes away and searched the inner pocket of the jacket.
“…….”
He squeezed the pocket tightly. The sensation of hard metal against his palm made the tension drain from his body in an instant.
Just then, someone poked their head through the open door. It was a man with a strange hairstyle, his hair pulled up and tied at the crown. The two exchanged words. When the man looked behind him and hurried out, the woman who had been in the room followed him at a run.
Peter stared past the wide-open door and followed them out. Beyond the door was the outdoors. However, it didn’t lead straight to the ground; there was a wooden floor elevated from the earth. The man and woman had already put on shoes, stepped down to the ground, and were bowing in greeting to someone.
His gaze naturally shifted to the person receiving their greeting.
It was a man.
A middle-aged man with blue robes falling to his knees, a uniquely shaped black hat, and a black beard stood with his chest and shoulders squared, staring quietly at him.
He seemed to be of a different status than the man and woman who had entered his room. It wasn’t just the clothes; the aura radiating from him was extraordinary.
Then, another man standing beside the blue-robed man began to bark angrily at Peter. The woman who had entered the room glanced at him and said something. Since they didn’t speak the same language, he couldn’t understand why the man was angry or what the woman was reporting. Frustrated, he was about to try gesturing when the man spoke.
“Do you understand this tongue?”
“……!”
The pronunciation and accent were unnatural, but it was unmistakably the Nopuk Common Tongue.
Peter nodded urgently toward the man in blue.
“I understand.”
Now that he had met someone he could communicate with, the question he wanted to ask most burst out.
“What happened? Where am I?”
“I should be the one asking you what happened. This is Danguk.”
“…Danguk?”
“A place called Yongcheon, in Danguk.”
“Yongcheon, Danguk….”
“A week ago, the servants of my household went out to sea and rescued you. I have kept your clothes and belongings exactly as they were, so see that you take care of them.”
“…….”
“Now, I shall ask.”
“…….”
“Who are you, and where are you from?”
An intense energy radiated from the man. Peter naturally spoke the name of the last Wolf he had killed.
“…James Bitkenstein. I come from the Kingdom of Luxen.”
“…….”
A brief silence followed. The one who broke it was the man who had been angry earlier. He barked something again, and Peter pointed at him and asked.
“What is he saying?”
“He says you should come down and stand. You are a guest and I am the master of this house, so according to the etiquette here, it is proper for you to come down and stand on the ground.”
However, as if he had no desire to force his etiquette on a foreigner, the man turned away and said, “Stay here until you have recovered your strength.”
Just then, the woman spoke again, and Peter asked about that as well.
“What is that woman saying?”
The man stopped for a moment, glanced at the middle-aged woman, then at Peter, and spoke.
“She says the man is quite handsome.”
“…….”
“Do not take offense; she means no harm. She is the one who will be providing your meals while you are here, so treat her with respect.”
With those final words, he walked away. Peter’s gaze followed his footsteps.
Only then did Peter get a good look at the wooden gate, which rose higher than the walls, and realized someone was hiding behind it. A pale green hem of a skirt poked out past the doorframe, and a shadow stretched long toward the opposite side.
At that moment, the man in blue passed through the gate. He paused and looked to his right.
In that instant, Peter sensed that whoever was beyond the doorframe was someone very important to the man.
The side of his face, turned to the right, softened into a gentle curve. It was only his profile, yet the atmosphere surrounding him had completely changed. He spoke a few words to the person behind the doorframe, then turned to his left and resumed his walk.
The square doorframe was like the border of a canvas. The man in blue disappeared from the canvas in just a few steps. And in that empty space, a woman in a pale green skirt appeared.
He saw the pale green skirt and pale yellow top first, followed by a fair face turned toward him. Despite the distance, Peter could read the curiosity in the woman’s expression.
“Ahem!”
The middle-aged woman standing in the yard cleared her throat loudly, and the woman who had been staring at Peter from behind the gate quickly turned her head away. As she did, he saw her black hair braided down her back, with a red ribbon tied at the end.
***
A red ribbon.
Its name was a danggi.
“A woman wearing a danggi is by Reinhardt’s side….”
Tap, tap, tap.
Peter, who had been tapping the desk with his fingertips, folded the paper with the drawing on it, tucked it into his coat, and stood up. Leaving the dim secret room, he climbed the stairs leading to the surface. Passing through the pitch-black garden where not a single ray of light reached, he entered a door that no one else used and neatly tucked away his cloak. After lightly straightening his clothes, he opened the door on the opposite side.
Unlike the place without a single ray of light, the world beyond that door was brilliant and beautiful.
Click, click, click.
The steady, measured sound of his heels echoed against the walls of the magnificent Royal Palace of Luxen. The palace servants passing through the hallway bowed politely to him, and he passed them with practiced ease.
Finally entering his room, he pulled a fairly large box out of the wardrobe. Without hesitation, he opened the lid.
Peter stared into the box for a long time.
Inside were the remains of the man his subordinates had brought back instead of the key they couldn’t find.
“Since you were the one who drove me to the brink of death, I can’t say I have no hard feelings. But would you believe me if I said I didn’t want it to come to this?”
A weary breath escaped him.
“If only you had just played nice and returned my property, things would have been better. Would you have been broken into such a mess then?”
If that had happened, he wouldn’t have been reduced to the status of collateral.
Things were a bit chaotic now, but he intended to send someone to that household next year using the remains as leverage.
Return the key, and I will return the remains. So, if you want the remains back, bring the key.
That was the plan.
Peter took out the paper. Then, he stared for a long time at the woman with the braided hair and the danggi, shown only from behind.
What were the odds that a woman wearing a danggi would be in Luxen, and at the Marquis of Lichtenhardt’s estate at that?
“What… on earth are you?”
The dead man gave no answer.
Thinking that he wanted to smoke just one cigarette—a habit he had quit long ago—Peter dropped the paper into the ossuary as if throwing it away.
“Well, I suppose I’ll find out in due time.”
As he closed the ossuary, his cold, heartless eyes glinted in the darkness.
