[138]
“Is the baker coming here to wait?”
Chris, sitting on the terrace of an open-air café, asked Yuri who was sitting across from him.
“He got the message from the warehouse keeper, so he should come.”
Through Peter, Victoire had delivered a letter each to the baker and the shoemaker.
It was a confession about having secured evidence of the mayor’s weakness, just in case.
However, he wrote a lengthy explanation that he was currently under surveillance and couldn’t use it directly, and concluded with a request for the recipient to negotiate with Martha Chafnil on his behalf.
Of course, the meeting places and times were different. The baker was supposed to come to where Chris and Yuri were waiting, while Peter and Chase were waiting at the location where the shoemaker was sent.
“Will it work?”
“Definitely.”
Yuri laughed softly.
“Either way, they must be feeling a sense of crisis. Public opinion within the Barrel Society isn’t good, and the mayor is being hostile. And now Victoire has played a new card.”
“Wasn’t that card meant to be used as a bargaining chip to smooth over the flea market incident?”
Yuri looked at him with cold cynicism, as if dumbfounded.
“Oh, Chris. You know they’re people who live for themselves rather than the group.”
“So they’ll use it to ensure their own safety by presenting it to the mayor.”
“Yes.”
He quietly confirmed.
“There’s no guarantee that weakness is real, is there?”
“The baker and the shoemaker will believe it. People like that always prepare a few escape routes for themselves. So they wouldn’t find it strange that the warehouse keeper had secured the mayor’s weakness separately.”
That type of person tends to make the critical error of assuming others are just like them.
“I’m surprised that Victoire, who sent us to the Spring Continent, had been working with the mayor of Babel.”
“It’s unfortunate, but it ended up benefiting us.”
Yuri responded indifferently to Chris’s sentiment.
After all, the aftermath of that incident led to sending the locksmith to Yuri and Chris.
Just considering the recent Colosseum incident, without Peter, Chris would have completely destroyed that illegal gambling den.
Yuri wasn’t opposed to taking action when necessary.
But he didn’t prefer methods that killed unnecessarily many people. Death is usually followed by grief and anger, which become powerful motivations.
It was always better to eliminate the possibility of a vengeful third party intervening in a plan that was otherwise going smoothly.
“I don’t blame the warehouse keeper. I’m just like him after all.”
Chris gave Yuri a puzzled look at his words.
“I don’t understand in what way you’re the same…”
“If one is weak, one has no choice but to use external forces, don’t you think?”
Yuri answered as if it were an obvious question.
“Just as I used you.”
“Is Yuri weak?”
Chris’s face showed that he didn’t really agree with that statement.
“I’m talking about physical strength. Just as I couldn’t suddenly draw a picture if asked to. Just as you couldn’t suddenly cook if asked to.”
Chris tightly closed his mouth at those words.
“What I needed at the time was pure force. But I couldn’t exercise it myself.”
How could a Guide who wasn’t even an Esper have survived the resistance period when ability users were running wild everywhere?
Even with excellent shooting skills, it’s over if your neck gets cut before you kill your target. Chris possessed reverse-guiding abilities that could even subdue others, but he experienced many trials and errors before developing it. He was able to return alive after standing on the battlefield so many times because Chris was there.
This was an assessment that could only be made in hindsight. Things that weren’t visible during those days when they were just desperately trying to survive moment to moment.
Yuri put aside his reminiscing and continued.
“But Victoire was stupid. If he was going to borrow the hands of outsiders, he should have properly secured the other party’s weakness, or prepared means to eliminate them if they might turn against him…”
One must abandon the illusion that others are good.
Even he himself wasn’t virtuous and sometimes ‘chose’ means for his ends. What great expectations could he have for others?
In that sense, the warehouse keeper of the Barrel Society was indeed stupid. If he were merely stupid, that would be one thing, but he had quite a few dependents on his back.
“Will he come himself?”
“Why? You think he’ll send a subordinate?”
“Well… wouldn’t it be safer to send someone below him?”
“I think he’ll come in person.”
Yuri fiddled with the newspaper spread on the table as a disguise.
It had printed articles like “The Shocking True Face of Illegal Residents!” and “Is Our City Safe With Rampant Black Market Dealings?”
“Want to bet?”
Chris furrowed his brows with a troubled face.
“I have… nothing to bet.”
“Are you saying I should investigate the finance manager as soon as we return to Baekyah?”
“What?”
“I don’t remember being stingy with you, yet you say you have nothing to bet… Are you saying he’s embezzling?”
“No!”
Though he knew Yuri was joking, Chris hurriedly denied it.
“Then, perhaps you’re having some fun behind my back without my knowledge?”
“…I’ve never done that. It’s just that.”
Chris paused briefly before speaking.
“Since everything I have belongs to you anyway, there’s no point in betting.”
If Yuri asked for anything, he would give it willingly, so what was the point of betting it? Since everything Chris had originated from Yuri, he wouldn’t even feel regret giving back what he had received. It would just feel like things returning to where they belonged.
Chris treated himself like a temporary storage, somewhat like a sturdy safe.
After all, people wouldn’t steal an Esper’s money, would they?
“It’s hard to scold you. Boring fellow.”
The phrase “boring fellow” carried a certain flat affection that wasn’t entirely critical.
A feeling of fondness that was neither too passionate nor too cold.
“I’m sorry.”
Yuri let out a half-laugh at the sincere apology.
“I’m the one who feeds, clothes, and houses you anyway. Don’t take it as if I was seriously trying to get your pocket money.”
Chris looked a bit embarrassed. Yuri muttered “boring fellow” again and was about to pull Chris’s chin but stopped.
There were many eyes watching. There was no benefit in drawing attention with such behavior.
But he could still cause a bit of embarrassment without moving a finger.
“Let’s see…”
With narrowed eyes, Yuri spoke as if measuring something.
“Chris, if you’re wrong, how about showing me you doing it alone?”
It was a suggestive sentence.
“W-what.”
Chris instinctively looked around. The customers at other tables farther away hadn’t noticed their conversation at all.
But he was on high alert, wondering if there might be an Esper somewhere eavesdropping on their conversation.
Regardless of whether Chris was flustered, Yuri quietly added.
“Without touching the front.”
His serene face and deeply sunken purple eyes were so calm it was hard to believe he had just said something so lewd.
It felt strange that Chris was the only one alarmed.
“You can do it well, can’t you? Right?”
At his voice tinged with gentle laughter, Chris hung his head low.
“Let’s forget about the bet…”
Just as he was making the suggestion in a shrinking voice.
“Of course, there should be an equal reward in return.”
Yuri dangled bait that Chris would find difficult to refuse.
“If I’m wrong, I’ll give you the mountain lodge my parents and I visited when I was young.”
As Rosenhauser was revealed to be a criminal, the inheritance left by Yuri’s parents that he had unjustly acquired returned to him.
That mountain lodge was one of them.
“There was a half-collapsed cottage on land acquired for research. My father apparently cut the wood himself to raise the roof. I used to sit in front of the fireplace there and listen to old stories.”
Yuri quietly unfolded memories from his childhood. His words greatly moved Chris.
More than anything else, Chris became covetous of the fact that Yuri had gone to that villa with his parents “when he was young.”
“Alright.”
“It was a very nice place. It’s in the Autumn Continent, but because of the high altitude, it snows quite a lot. Maybe those memories helped me adapt quickly to the Winter Continent.”
Chris himself couldn’t remember anything from his childhood, so he listened intently to Yuri’s words.
The memories Yuri spread out were like soft silk.
It seemed as if one could feel the smooth texture by tracing over that shimmering surface.
Just as he was lifting a hot coffee cup to wet his lips, feeling thirsty.
“Hmm. It seems our baker was more anxious than I thought.”
At Yuri’s words, Chris almost burned his mouth.
He hastily put down the slightly overflowing cup and checked toward the café entrance.
Sure enough, someone wearing clothes unsuitable for the season was entering.
‘It’s the baker.’
He matched perfectly with the description Peter had provided.
He really came in person.
Chris turned to look at Yuri with a somewhat pale face.
He realized why this man, who wasn’t particularly sentimental, had been laying out childhood memories.
It was to completely distract Chris in case he noticed the baker’s arrival first and tried to interfere with the bet to win.
“Yuri…”
Chris swallowed hard.
“I’m… not someone who would sabotage our work.”
He rubbed his face dry in self-reproach.
“A predator should go all out even when catching a rabbit. And you, Chris, are a wolf with fur, so what use is there in being careless?”
Yuri folded the newspaper into a neat square, pretending to be indifferent.
But his eyes were shining with some kind of implication.
“After we deal with this fellow and return, we can have quite an enjoyable time.”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
