Chapter 114
Aurora's city tour continued.
Since nearly getting ripped off at the start, nothing else had happened.
Kal was still diligently playing the role of guide.
Because of that, Aurora's gaze toward Kal was still uncertain.
'Could he not be a bad person?'
His manner was a bit frivolous, but he did seem to be trying to mind his manners. Judging by his behavior alone, he didn't seem like a villain.
'What should I do if this guy isn't the culprit?'
She hadn't thought that far ahead.
For now, I needed to meet up with Leon and rethink the plan…….
“Lora.”
“Yes?”
“Someone's following us.”
“What?”
Aurora was about to reflexively turn around.
“Don't turn around. They'll know we noticed them.”
Startled by the urgent whisper, she froze and stopped herself.
Someone was following them.
Could it really be the true culprits in this case?
“What do we do?”
“I'll give the signal, and then we run. We need to sprint before they react.”
“Okay.”
Aurora fixed her eyes straight ahead and tried hard not to give anything away.
Tension entered her fingertips.
The surrounding noise seemed to recede.
The more she focused only on the front, the more aware she became of what was behind her.
Was someone really following them?
She couldn't know.
A brief moment passed.
Aurora's mouth was parched. She kept watching Kal's face, waiting for him to give the signal.
At last, the moment the two of them turned the corner.
“Now! Run!”
Kal caught Aurora's wrist and took off running full tilt.
“Ah……!”
She couldn't even get a proper scream out.
Aurora was dragged through the crowd by Kal.
Bumping into this person and that.
She pushed through the people without any time to collect herself.
“Wait……!”
“Don't stop!”
Kal's grip was firm.
It wasn't painful enough to hurt her wrist, but it was hard to pull free.
Aurora followed him, almost being dragged along.
Her vision shook.
A stall canopy.
A passerby jumping aside in shock.
Fruit rolling on the ground.
Curses bursting out from somewhere.
All of it mixed together and flashed by in a blur.
“Hey! Watch where you're going!”
Someone shouted after bumping shoulders with her.
Aurora reflexively tried to apologize, but no words came out.
Having never been naturally inclined toward exercise, she'd already been gasping after barely running at all.
Was someone really following them?
Or was Kal imagining it alone?
She didn't even have time to check.
“This way!”
Kal suddenly changed direction. Aurora almost twisted her ankle.
As her body was shoved sideways, Kal yanked hard on her wrist.
She barely managed not to fall.
“Keep it together!”
“I am keeping it together……!”
She wasn't keeping it together at all, but if she didn't answer like that, she'd feel cheated.
They kept running.
The cobblestone road beneath her feet was rougher than expected. One wrong step and she'd go down.
Once they left the main street, the number of people dropped noticeably. The noisy clamor faded behind them.
One.
Two.
Three.
Every time they turned a corner, Aurora's sense of direction blurred a little more.
Where they'd come from.
Where they were going.
It gradually became impossible to tell.
The sunlight dimmed, and the air turned damp.
“Haa, haa…… Kal, wait a second…… I can't run anymore……”
Aurora's voice shook hard. Her legs had long since stopped obeying.
She was practically being dragged by Kal already.
Only then did Kal stop.
He let go of Aurora's wrist.
“Haa…… Haa……”
Aurora collapsed onto the ground, shoulders rising and falling as she panted heavily.
'So this is…… what running away feels like.'
Escape scenes were romantic in novels.
Reality was different.
She was out of breath.
Her ankles hurt.
Every time she bumped into people, her shoulders throbbed.
It was far from a pleasant experience.
“Did we manage to shake them off?”
“Who knows? If they aren't chasing us, I guess so.”
Then that's a relief.
The run had been worth it.
“More importantly, where are we……?”
Aurora lifted her head and belatedly looked around.
The place where the two of them had stopped was a narrow alley.
Between high walls, only a thin shaft of sunlight fell, and on one side old wooden crates and trash were piled up haphazardly.
It was the complete opposite of the lively street from before.
'We ran too far.'
Aurora herself didn't know where this was or how they'd gotten here, and she worried whether Leon had managed to keep up properly.
They needed to get back to the city center as soon as possible.
“Let's go back. By now, those people probably gave up and left.”
Just as Aurora forced her trembling legs to stand and hurried to leave the alley.
“Hah, you've come quite far.”
An unfamiliar voice rang out.
Three silhouettes stood at the mouth of the alley.
Two men and one woman.
Every one of them had a rough, menacing look.
Aurora could easily tell that they were the ones who'd been chasing her.
They slowly walked toward Aurora.
Aurora instinctively backed away, but before she knew it, people had emerged on the opposite side and blocked that way too.
“What do we do, Kal? We're surrounded front and back. Where are we supposed to run……?”
Aurora looked back at Kal while warily watching the people before her.
Kal didn't move at all.
He had a hand over his face.
“Kal?”
Kal lowered his hand.
The friendly expression he'd barely managed to keep up until just now was gone.
A smile curved his lips.
A strange, unpleasant smile.
“Sorry.”
Kal said.
With a face that looked anything but sorry.
“I've got to make a living too.”
At those words, Aurora's suspicion turned into certainty.
They hadn't escaped.
They'd been made to escape.
He'd said someone was following them, grabbed her wrist, and ran.
He'd led her off the main street, away from the crowds, and dragged her to a deserted alley like this.
Everything had been planned from the start.
“So it was you after all. You were the one who took the recently missing young ladies.”
For a moment, startled, Kal's eyes went wide. Then he burst out laughing.
“Wow. This young lady is pretty sharp, huh? The other young ladies still hadn't figured out the situation at all, even at this point.”
Kal's mocking grin made Aurora's expression harden.
The other young ladies.
That one phrase was enough.
There was no longer any need to doubt that they were connected to the missing young ladies.
“Still, don't misunderstand. Since the other side came along obediently, from our point of view it's more like escorting than kidnapping.”
“How shameless.”
“Shameless? Shameless, you say? Us? Haha! Hahahahaha!”
Kal burst out laughing.
He actually grabbed his stomach and laughed.
“What's so funny?”
“The shameless ones aren't us, it's you people. To think a story from a novel would exist in real life.”
Kal didn't bother hiding his sneer.
“A poor boy who grew up in the back alleys falls at first sight for a young lady who doesn't know the world and risks his life to protect her?”
Heh.
The corner of Kal's mouth twisted as he looked at Aurora.
“Do you really think something like that would happen in real life? Just how sheltered have you lived?”
“So you've read the novel too.”
“The Princess Hides Her Identity? Of course. Who in the capital wouldn't know it these days?”
It's a novel popular with men and women of all ages.
Not only the young ladies of high society, but even street riffraff knew the rough outline of the story.
“A young lady who comes out without a single escort, wandering around in shabby clothes while hiding her status. Stop one rip-off attempt, warn her it's dangerous, and show her around the city a bit.”
“......”
“Scare her by saying someone's following her, grab her wrist, and run, and she'll follow on her own. They think they're the protagonist of some novel.”
The woman blocking the alley entrance snickered.
“Rich young ladies really do have it easy. Show them even a little kindness and their eyes start sparkling.”
“Guess they think it's some kind of fated encounter.”
“Did they think they'd really met a real Kyle?”
Kal looked down at Aurora, his smile never fading.
“Well, thanks to that, it was easy for us. The young ladies came to us defenseless. Just like you now.”
“......”
“What? Your name is Lora? Then what princess are you? If you're Lora, then I'm Kyle.”
“Kyle or Kal, what's the difference?”
“Besides, Kal is a fake name to begin with.”
Kal, who had been chatting trivial nonsense with his accomplices, fixed his gaze on Aurora again.
It was a contemptuous look.
“Anyway, your heads really are full of flowers.”
“......”
Aurora said nothing.
The moment she heard their mockery, anger surged before fear did.
Young ladies who had read novels and stepped out into the streets.
There was no denying that they were foolish. They knew too little about the world and took danger too lightly.
But that didn't give these people the right to laugh at them.
What those girls had dreamed of was freedom.
It was romance.
It was someone who would see them for who they were.
'And you turned that innocent longing into a trap.'
Aurora bit her lip tightly.
To use her own novel as a trap.
She could never forgive that.
“Where are they?”
“Why do you care?”
“Because I came to find them.”
In an instant, the alley went silent.
Kal blinked, then burst out laughing again.
“Came to find them? You? To catch us?”
“Yes.”
“Hah.”
Kal's expression turned cold.
“Looks like you still don't understand the situation.”
He slowly reached out a hand.
“The one who's been caught is you, not us, stupid young lady.”
The moment he reached for Aurora.
“-Slash.”
A slicing sound split the alley.
Kal's hand froze in midair. No, it had no choice but to freeze.
Because the right hand he'd stretched out was gone cleanly from the wrist down.
As if it had never been there in the first place.
“-Thud.”
The severed hand hit the ground.
“H, huh?”
A stupid sound slipped from Kal's mouth. His eyes trembled wildly as he looked back and forth between his arm and the ground.
His brain couldn't keep up with what the hell was happening.
Then, one beat late, pain surged in and shoved reality into his head.
“Aaaaaaagh!”
A rending scream shook the alley. Kal stumbled backward.
Blood only gushed from the severed stump a moment later, spraying crimson across the alley floor.
“W-what?!”
“A sneak attack? Who's attacking?”
More than a dozen thugs quickly drew their weapons.
But they couldn't even make sense of the situation, let alone respond.
While they were in utter chaos.
“......”
Aurora stared blankly into the air.
Before her eyes floated a tiny knife folded from paper.
“This is……”
A familiar piece of paper.
It was the wrapping paper that had wrapped the bread Aurora had left beneath the wall.
Which meant that if it had appeared here now...
'You were watching... all along.'
Leon had, as promised, never once left her side.
No matter what situation arose, he would protect her.
The moment she realized that, her trembling heart quickly returned to calm.
“You, you! Who are you? What's your identity?!”
No matter how they looked around, Aurora was the only one in the alley. In their eyes, the culprit could only be her.
The blade floating before Aurora pointed at the attackers.
As if telling her to swing it however she wanted.
A thin smile curved Aurora's lips.
Suddenly, a line from the novel came to mind. It was definitely a similar situation.
“Who am I, you ask?”
Aurora raised her hand.
Her breathing was still ragged.
Her legs were a little shaky.
But her voice was strangely calm.
“A commoner.”
“......What?”
The thugs blinked blankly.
Aurora continued calmly.
“A very ordinary commoner.”