Chapter 134

“…….”
“…….”
The reunion was enveloped in a complex atmosphere that was hard to describe. Instead of hugging each other in emotion, they could only glare at Roscoe.
Roscoe was acutely aware that the odds were stacked against him, and the look in the two men’s eyes could only mean one thing: What are we going to do with him?
I had to cut a path.
“Hmmm! Hmmm!”
I started by opening my wallet.
“Come on, come on, what are you doing? Come on.”
“The restaurant is classy.”
“It’s a bit pricey, ma’am, but don’t worry about it. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other, so let’s have a big shot, and if it looks good to you, order it all!”
There was no need to order more. The table was already piled high with dozens of dishes. If it weren’t for the room service, it would have been a bit overwhelming.
Fresh seafood that’s hard to find in Kilikia. Gnocchi tossed in a smooth creamy sauce. A plate that has no practical use, but looks pretty.
At first glance, it’s a tightly packed table of expensive food. It’s Asterike’s favorite way to eat after living in poverty for so long-but this time, she can’t help but look pouty.
“I must have made a lot of money selling myself.”
“Kek! Kuck, kuck!”
Roscoe stopped by Sareh to quench his thirst with sparkling water. He wiped the sweat from his face with a towel and smiled awkwardly.
“Oh, you’re making me feel bad. No, I didn’t mean to. You were very popular, and there were a lot of fans who missed you. I felt bad for you. ….”
“Hmmm.”
Roscoe’s body shuddered at the sound of the snort. His eyes were like saw blades spinning at high speed. But there was no avoiding their gaze. He had to make a statement.
Asterike’s eyes finally softened.
“Ha. Never mind.”
“Forgive me for…?”
“I don’t like it, but it’s not like I haven’t been worried about Roscoe, so I’m glad he seems to be doing well.”
“Huh,” I let out an unnecessary gasp of surprise. Asterike’s answer was a surprise.
“You’ve grown up, young lady.”
“I thought I was supposed to be an adult?”
“A grown man in body? A man in mind….”
“Well, what did I do. How was that.”
“…it means you’re more mature, haha!”
“Are you saying I’m old?”
Whatever.
I grumbled to myself, but Asterike laughed mischievously. It must have been a joke. This was unusual for her, as she was usually tense when talking to anyone other than Kim.
“Hmmm. You must have raised him well.”
“That’s weird. And the opposite.”
“Ying? How is that opposite of what?”
“I learned as I went along.”
Roscoe’s gaze dropped at the word child. The child sits between Kim and Asterique. He sticks his snout into the table and gets a peck on the lips from Asterique.
“You were bothering me earlier, who?”
“Arya is Arya. Stinking Ajo.”
“My, smell?”
Sniff.
“Hmmm. I don’t know.”
The sense of smell is inherently so sensitive that it’s easy to dull it. Roscoe couldn’t smell the stench of alcohol and nicotine that clung to my body like flesh.
That’s why I was shocked. I wondered if he was starting to smell like a widower. To Roscoe, the youthfulness of the teens and twentysomethings in front of him was as bright as the morning sun.
“Who, anyway? He probably didn’t even have a kid.”
“You’re not going to have a kid this big, common sense.”
“That’s ridiculous, that’s why you left it out.”
Asterike’s oddly shy demeanor is something I deliberately don’t point out.
“It was just a situation. Think of it as my brother.”
“Squeak, squeak, squeak. If you keep blocking her, I’ll have to spill the table.”
“Oh, you’ve improved your speech. You can eat. Use a fork.”
As soon as he’s given the green light, Arya reverses his fork. She stabs down at the pasta, but only catches a strand or two at best. She drops it as she brings it to her mouth.
Then, as if on cue, she picks up a bowl and starts eating. Kim smirked and Asterike sighed. Roscoe couldn’t understand the connection.
“He seems to be doing well, too, but, um.”
This time, Roscoe’s eyes shifted to the seat next to me. There was another stranger besides the animal-eared teenager named Arya.
Blonde hair and red eyes. A posture that makes her look graceful even when she’s just sitting still. A beauty that stands out even in the bustle of Kilikia. And an unmistakable aura of danger.
“Is there another one over here?”
“Mafia.”
“Ma, Mafia?”
The woman’s brow furrowed in confusion.
“Don’t call me that. Not anymore.”
“So how should I introduce you?”
“You can call him your subordinate.”
The nonchalant answer left Kim puzzled.
“Why are you following me again today?”
“I don’t want to be alone in a city I don’t know well.”
“Edwin’s been doing well.”
“Why is that weirdo the standard?”
He’s a weird one.
“Anyway, it’s okay, we cooperated this time.”
“Well, okay. Do whatever you want.”
I couldn’t figure out why Ekidna had suddenly become so stoic. She didn’t even seem to care about Asterike’s wary glare. She gives a small smile as she munches on her gnocchi.
“Maybe I’ve cleared my mind.
Hagiya Ekidna is not a weakling; she can get back on her feet if given the chance. There’s no telling what she’ll become now that she’s not a mafioso.
Hopefully this will be as helpful as it was for you.
It was after we finished eating.
Two men, a woman, and a mentally challenged child walked out, and Roscoe was about to scream at the amount on the bill. Ekidna, who had been acting all wolfish, came to Roscoe’s side.
“I ate well.”
“What? Oh, that’s good.”
“What was his name again? Roscoe, right?”
What is it? I don’t know what it’s trying to do.
At this point, Rothko was more nervous than excited. Liquor makes life happy in moderation- but too many beauties and pills ruin a man.
It was a time I had been trying to avoid, as per Giron.
“These are my contacts.”
Ekidna slipped the folded paper into Roscoe’s jacket pocket. She held it up as if to say no. Roscoe’s eyes, which had been mocked as a child for having buttonholes, grew as big as Chapter’s.
“Hey, why the contact?”
“I really want you to get back to me.”
Wary. At the same time, a sense of anticipation was building.
Spring has finally sprung in my dreary life…?
“I want to hear what he has to say.”
No, the reality was cold and hard.
Ekidna’s gaze was fixed on the outside of the restaurant. She watched as Kim wiped the corner of Arya’s mouth with a frown, a moment of routine she hadn’t seen in Banzar.
“I don’t know what kind of human being he is.”
Neither Ekid nor I were quite sure what it was. The day she unravels the tangled threads of her emotions. Then, and only then, would she realize.
Whether it’s affection, friendship, jealousy, or hatred.
Whatever the answer, I was going to stick with it.
“……Okay.”
Roscoe frowned.
* * *
Closed Area Logania.
Clack, clack, clack!
The sound of armor clashing was mechanical and steady. Heavy footsteps pounded the broken, cracked asphalt. Thud, thud, thud, the earth rumbled like a drum.
A girl peeked her head out from a telephone pole in an alleyway. Her outfit was scruffy. Her hair was worn haphazardly and she hadn’t washed in a long time. A typical tramp.
“Wow…….”
Still, the girl’s eyes held the innocence and longing of her age, and she wasn’t the only one peeking out onto the boulevard.
Bam!
The unusually bright moonlight made the bronze and silver armor even bluer. A sprawling ruin that could hardly be called a city. In this cursed land, she felt beauty for the first time.
It wasn’t the landscape that caught my eye. It was them. The knights marching in formation, unbroken and unruffled. They were anachronistic, which is why they shone.
Albatross.
It’s a name every bum knows. Or, more accurately, a tramp. There is a famous anecdote about a boy who spent his life scavenging through garbage and became a member of the Albatross.
The Independent Knights. The Albatrosses have long maintained their autonomy, untethered to any nation. Those whose lives have been saved by them have paid their own way.
It was the stuff of dreams for hobos. She was surrounded by kids who were all shouting about how they wanted to be part of the Albatross one day.
It was a chance that would never come again. A straw to get out of this hell.
Still, no one stepped up to the plate.
I didn’t dare to stop their march.
“Oh, here it comes!”
She was less than ten meters from the leading knight. The girl shuddered and ducked into a telephone pole. She was ashamed to show her ugliness.
But I couldn’t stop looking – my body moved involuntarily. I didn’t dare to leave the alley, but I watched the knights march by.
Thump, thump!
Their faces were hidden by their helmets. Their weapons, strapped to their waists, slung over their backs, shouldered, and clutched in their hands, cast a strange, ecstatic glow under the night sky.
The girl could only stare.
Who was the boy who was in his situation, the old bum that the older guys used to look down on, saying, “I’m better than that kid!” Was he just as lucky as he was told?
“I don’t know.
At least the girl couldn’t tell the difference. There wasn’t a single sloppy-looking person in the group. They had different body types and different vibes, even in the same outfit.
If he hadn’t died, the boy would be there, which meant that in a few short years he had become a man who wouldn’t be embarrassed to walk among them. He had truly become a knight.
The last column of articles has passed.
The girl eventually emerged from the alley. She stared blankly into the distance. The footsteps grew fainter and fainter, and the pounding of her heart took their place.
Squeak.
The girl clasped her hands to her chest. Though she was not saved, though she was not emboldened, though she was still a tramp, it was enough for her decaying innocence to sparkle again.
* * *
The imperial palace of the Xuran Empire.
The Emperor’s eyes narrowed as he read the report from Intelligence. His gaze remained glued to the words for some time after he set the paper down on his desk.
“I don’t remember sending an invitation.”
“I see you still have that habit of not knowing when to wear something and when not to wear something.”
Heinrich the Protector chuckled. Contrary to the usual meaning of the title, he only defends the emperor. But when it came to defense, he was incredibly sincere.
An emperor lives only for his empire. He breathes for the empire. Defending the emperor, then, is the same as defending the empire.
It was a belief that bordered on obsession for Heinrich.
“And this bizarre tradition.”
Tap.
Tapping his index finger on the report, the Emperor smirked.
“I don’t know why you’re walking around if you’re not a barbarian. No, even savages drive cars these days. They’ve been riding horses for a thousand years, after all, but these.”
In the eyes of the Emperor, the Albatrosses were an eccentric bunch: a traveling counter-terrorist organization with no permanent home. They travel on foot, cross continents, and wield swords.
Slay the beast and slay the wicked.
Thoroughly to their standards.
“It’s kind of a tradition.”
“It was meaningful once upon a time, now it’s just a gimmick.”
“That’s how rigorous Rachel’s education must have been.”
“So much so that it’s hard to forget, even though you’ve been dead for a long time.”
The emperor shuffled through his papers.
“Well, that’s great as it is. I don’t know how many generations it’s been since Laclain, but I’m sure you still smell the stink of that stuck-up bastard, and tradition is pretty pointless.”
“Isn’t it amazing?”
“What?”
Heinrich searched his memory before answering. The human brain was indeed a mystery. You can forget the contents of a paper you read ten minutes ago, but you have memories that last forever.
“Markus is a broken man, and Heinz is a shadow of his former self, for the beliefs of the long-graved Raklein remain as close to the original as possible.”
“Are we different?”
“It won’t be the same.”
At this vague answer, the emperor fell silent. For a moment, his expression was stripped of emotion, as if a spotlight had been drawn on it. As if his humanity had been weathered and worn by years and accumulated experience.
It was a brief moment, lasting less than 10 seconds.
A soft smile curved the Emperor’s lips.
“Enough with the small talk. Get ready.”
“That’s a bit annoying, I should have opened it in the Empire after all.”
“It’s overwhelming. Think of it as a trip.”
The talks will be held in the Commonwealth of Lucerne, not the Shran Empire. A historic neutral nation, it was the site of a peace agreement at the beginning of the catastrophe.
“I’m going to see an old friend.”
The end of July.
The great Emperor of the Millennium Empire, the young Chancellor of Salares who lost his capital and his parents in a catastrophe, the Chancellor of Floria who clings to past glories, and the Regent of Cadillac who has turned millions of his people into beggars.
The parliament of Kilikia, which has abandoned its homeland, the royal family of Bastitera, which has been ostracized and ostracized, the knights of Bastitera, who are trying to cut away the cancer that has infected the world with their spears…
The doomed ghost of Shalem.
It brings together representatives of many nations and peoples suffering from a vicious disease.
And on July 25th.
Kim stepped on the soil of Lucerne.