Chapter 47
<Chapter 49>
“I’m sorry.”
Aisha took a step toward him and tapped his shoulder lightly.
“Are you still gloomy?”
Gloomy? It seemed to be a feeling similar to sadness.
Come to think of it, he hadn’t felt gloomy ever since Aisha tied his hair back with that hair tie.
The boy shrugged.
“No. I’m not gloomy anymore. You’re actually pretty good at apologizing, aren’t you?”
“Hmph. Of course I am.”
The corners of Aisha’s mouth curled up confidently.
Regardless, the boy was already completely captivated by the hair tie.
“I’ll give you an apology someday, too. Anyway, the hair tie. So this is what a hair tie is.”
“Yeah.”
When his hair was tied back, he could see clearly.
Good. His vision used to be blocked whenever his hair fell over his eyes, but with this hair tie, he would be able to see well.
“…It’s very useful.”
“You know how to use words like that?”
“Yeah. I learned from listening to humans. I can speak human, too.”
The cat, answering primly, pulled his lips into a slight pout.
“Humans? Why do you refer to people like that?”
He thought he heard her mumble something like that, but he didn’t bother to explain.
At any rate, the hair tie was useful.
Like a primitive human discovering fire for the first time, he cautiously fiddled with the hair tie tied around his forehead.
But then.
Snap—
“Huh?!”
Suddenly, Aisha snapped the hair tie and tossed it away.
“What are you doing?!”
Startled, the boy flared up in anger.
If he had ears and a tail, his fur would have stood on end with rage.
“What are you going to do about it?”
Instead of apologizing, Aisha tilted her head back boldly, crossing her arms and sticking her stomach out.
“The hair tie died.”
“The hair tie didn’t die!”
“According to what you said, it disappeared, so doesn’t that mean it’s dead?”
The cat was left speechless.
But the hair tie wasn’t dead. It had just disappeared.
‘It’s mine, so I can find it.’
With fire in his eyes, he whipped his head around to scan the area. Fortunately, the hair tie was lying on the ground nearby.
“I found it!”
He scurried over and grabbed the hair tie—
Clap, clap, clap.
Aisha gave him a round of applause, nodding with a thumbs-up.
“That’s what you call losing something.”
“Huh?”
“You lost it, but then you found it again. Because it wasn’t dead.”
“…Whoa.”
Lost, but found again. If you find it again, it’s not dead.
He fell into deep thought as he stared at the hair tie clutched in his hand.
In that case—
“Then you can find your memories again, too?”
“That’s right. Anyway, once I get my memories back, I’ll tell you why I saved you and why I looked at you like that.”
“Oh.”
C-cool.
The boy looked at Aisha with sparkling eyes.
Unfazed, Aisha was dusting off her knees and looking around.
“Hmm. Regardless, I think it’s about time to head back.”
Go back? If they went back, would they go under the warm blankets where Aisha had been?
“By the way, where do you live?”
As Aisha asked while walking, he hurriedly followed her like a little chick.
“Home? Under the blankets.”
“Huh? Whose blankets?”
“Your blankets.”
“?”
“Under your blankets. It’s warm.”
Gulp—
Blinking with innocent and nonchalant eyes, he drank the water from the bottle he had found after killing the man earlier.
Aisha, who had stood with her mouth agape as if she’d momentarily broken at his words, suddenly got angry.
“Stop joking! Tell me where you were born!”
Ah. Where he was born. She should have said so in the first place.
He shrugged and gave a different answer.
“The North.”
“The North?”
“Yeah. The cold snowfields.”
He didn’t remember it well, but it was a place where the ground was white and the sky was blue.
“Gasp. I live in the North too. You can just wait and come with me.”
“If you say so.”
In truth, the boy had nowhere to go.
He hadn’t particularly wanted to live, but Aisha was the one who had brought him under the blankets.
It was then.
“H-here! I’ve found a corpse… It’s a bloodstain! It looks like the culprit who killed the man passed through here.”
The voices of adult men echoed from a distance.
“Oh? The knight mister?”
Aisha turned her head at the sound and was about to wave happily, but.
“There’s blood on that boy’s mouth and hands… It looks like that boy killed the man!”
A knight, faster than her, pushed through the bushes and shouted upon seeing the boy.
Startled by the knight’s intense reaction, Aisha called out to him.
“Hey.”
“Yeah.”
“That knight mister says you killed the man. Is that true?”
“Yeah.”
He was hitting you, so I killed him.
And I drank some blood so I could turn into a human.
Gulp—
Swallowing the words he wanted to say because of the water bottle, he tossed the empty bottle onto the ground.
‘The expression on that mister who called me the culprit looks a bit like the employees at the Ahili Circus….’
He had a bad feeling.
For now, it seemed he had to run.
At that time.
It had been two hours since the search for Aisha began.
“We’ve found the Lady!”
“…Oh, thank God.”
Knox felt his legs nearly give out at the words of the knight running from afar.
What a relief.
He hadn’t thought she would leave the massive Royal Palace, but the Lady had caused trouble more than once or twice.
Knox took off his monocle and approached the knight.
“Where is the Lady?”
However.
“The thing is, she ran away so fast… We are pursuing them now, but….”
She ran away? Why would Aisha do that?
At the knight’s words, Knox’s eyebrows twitched upward.
“Why would the Lady run away?”
“Actually, a man presumed to be a servant of the House of Pose was found dead, and she is fleeing with the boy who killed him.”
“…What?”
Knox stood there dazed, looking as if he’d been struck on the back of the head.
As expected of the former spy Lady. She was in the middle of a disaster.
It was then.
“The Lady is over there!”
A commotion broke out beyond the corner of the castle.
Hurrying toward the source of the noise, he found the knights buzzing in front of a massive blue portal.
“Lady! Please do not move!”
“Come down at once!”
Surely not.
Knox pushed through the knights and ran toward the portal entrance.
Portals within the Royal Palace were dangerous.
Because the moment one entered the palace, their identity was guaranteed, meaning the portal would activate simply by stepping inside without any separate device.
‘Please. Please.’
Knox didn’t care how much Aisha had worried him up until now.
He could forgive everything, so he just prayed that the portal wouldn’t activate and lead to the worst-case scenario.
He just wanted the Lady to be safe within his reach.
Just as he was about to reach the portal entrance, shoving past the knights’ shoulders.
“Lady!”
“…K-Knox?”
He heard the young, high-pitched voice he had been waiting for.
But.
—The portal has been activated.
The moment he reached the entrance, following the cold announcement of the portal, the figures of the two children were enveloped in blue light and vanished.
It was a disaster.
Now things had truly spiraled out of control.
“…….”
Knox, staring blankly into the empty portal with a look of utter despair, slowly covered his face with his hands.
Then.
“…Where does that portal lead?”
“T-the North… near the End of the World.”
“Damn it. Of all the dangerous places.”
Spitting out a curse, he hurriedly stepped into the portal.
I’ll say it again, this isn’t my fault.
I didn’t even know I had stepped onto a portal!
I was just running away in a dither with a boy who had shyly confessed to being a murderer, and it just so happened that the place the knights couldn’t reach was a blue floor.
And I didn’t know that the portal would just activate without any separate controls.
“Aaah!”
With a slight dizziness, the surroundings turned black. Then, something cold touched the tip of my nose.
Oh.
It was snow.
“…This is….”
When I opened my eyes, snowflakes were falling from a pale sky.
Coniferous forests visible in the distance. A dirt path turned slightly dark from the melting snow.
Could this place be…
“Don’t tell me the portal destination is… Ugh.”
The moment I tried to speak.
Whoosh— The biting wind of the North swept over me.
“Whoa.”
Thanks to that, the short-sleeved dress May had dressed me in fluttered like a curtain.
As the razor-sharp chill seeped into my entire body—
“Ugh. I’m going to catch a cold.”
Shivering, I wrapped my arms around myself as tightly as I could.
“Are you cold?”
It was then.
Whether he had come through the portal with me or not, a familiar, beautiful voice asked me.