[143]
Please, please work!
The shoemaker prayed desperately.
The gaze slowly scanning him was so heavy that it was difficult to breathe.
Sweat suddenly drenched his back, making his clothes stick to him. Tom struggled to calm his rapidly rising and falling chest.
“…You know?”
Yuri finally spoke, repeating Tom’s last words.
Realizing his mistake, Tom changed to a more formal speech.
“I’ve heard that Baekyah has completely taken over the Winter Continent. Now you’re trying to expand in earnest to the Spring Continent, right?”
Otherwise, they wouldn’t have established territory in Babel City for the past few years.
“Something like that.”
Yuri’s voice was chilling.
Tom didn’t know Susanna’s identity, so he was unaware that Godrin Family’s underboss had been conducting periodic “cleanups” after settling in Babel City.
It had started for Miya Luciano’s safety. The Luciano Family and Godrin Family wouldn’t have let Miya and Susanna, who were insiders, go peacefully. Even after their destruction, remnants harboring grudges needed to be filtered out.
Thus, Susanna had been unable to completely withdraw from the underworld.
Yuri was exploiting her established presence to deceive Tom, making him believe that Baekyah had been laying groundwork in the Spring Continent for several years already.
“I-it won’t be easy to open new trade channels and move goods here. So even for Baekyah, expansion will be slow! But I know how to solve that problem!”
Tom spoke with such intensity that he nearly spat. He was desperate.
Now that he knew what the other wanted, he just needed to exchange it for the information he held.
“A solution…”
Yuri slowly moved his lips. The shoemaker’s patience was wearing thin.
“I’ll tell you the smuggling routes. Who buys, where to go!”
“If it’s through the Barrel Society, it’s useless anyway.”
Baekyah’s boss wore an indifferent expression.
“That side has already fallen. If those in the Barrel Society aren’t stupid, they’ll assign your duties to someone else and abandon the existing routes.”
The shoemaker swallowed hard. Honestly, Tom knew this much.
Why would they leave anything of a traitor’s intact?
He had only hoped to exploit the gap in Baekyah boss’s understanding of Spring Continent affairs.
‘In that case… I’ll have to give him the real thing.’
“It’s… not through the Barrel Society.”
“Ha.”
Susanna laughed as if dumbfounded. Yuri continued to stare at Tom with an expressionless face, without looking back.
“Indeed, you haven’t been digging just one hole.”
“When would I ever do something that might leave me with nothing?”
Tom muttered in a voice drained of hostility.
“I’ll tell you about the customers and routes. So please, just spare my life.”
“Let’s receive the information first.”
“How can I trust you?”
At those words, Yuri sighed as if to say ‘there you go again.’
“You people always ask the same question. As if you have other options if you don’t trust me.”
He looked down at Tom with a detached expression.
“…”
“It’s funny how you try to sell without showing the product… but do I really look like someone who would cheat you out of your payment?”
His attitude of weariness actually made him more convincing.
Tom, anxiously biting his lower lip, squeezed his eyes shut.
Since he wasn’t confident he could keep the other’s attention for long, his deliberation wasn’t lengthy.
“I’ll tell you!”
Yuri turned his head and nodded at Susanna.
Meeting her gaze, he silently moved his lips.
‘Untie him.’
***
Chris stretched out his hand and struck the enemy. Then he slammed the opponent’s body against the wall.
“Argh!”
The man, pushed back by an overwhelming force, rolled on the ground.
Someone who had approached, looking for an opening, swung a knife. Although it had been painted black to prevent light reflection, Chris detected the attack just by the sound of the wind being cut.
He slightly tilted his body to avoid the knife’s trajectory while kicking the back of the opponent’s knee to make him lose balance. After striking the staggering person’s forearm, he twisted his wrist and took the knife.
Then, without even looking, he stabbed the knife into the eye of someone approaching from behind.
“Gaaah!”
While despising the person who couldn’t even properly swallow a scream, Chris backed away to avoid getting blood on himself and walked past those groaning on the floor.
Chase approached, stepping on each of the men he had dealt with one by one.
“Ugh!”
“Ack!”
“Grrr…”
They let out irregular groans like wrongly pressed piano keys as they rolled around.
“Your combat skills alone are quite clean.”
The yellow eyes of the man who whistled frivolously curved narrowly.
Chris was deliberately not using telekinesis. Partly because the situation could be resolved with just an Esper’s enhanced physical abilities, but there was a bigger reason.
‘The Captain.’
Someone with multiple abilities including telekinesis. Having drawn in both the baker and the shoemaker, he probably knew that Yuri and Chris had visited the Spring Continent.
However, Chris had deliberately set up the situation to make it appear as if he had ‘returned.’
He even prepared fake itineraries to seem like he was trying to hide the real means of transportation.
One was leaked information suggesting he had taken Northern Light’s airship to the Summer Continent. It would sound quite plausible if it were said that Baekyah and the Esper Alliance had met for secret negotiations. Another was pretending to have returned to the Winter Continent on a Barrel Society’s smuggling ship.
The Thorns Order had recently carried out a terrorist attack. Given the circumstances, it wouldn’t be strange for Chris and Yuri to hurry back to Babel City.
Having put so much effort into painting this picture, it would be problematic if it was discovered that Chris remained in the Spring Continent. Though less noticeable than fire, water, or lightning, the opponent was also a telekinesis user. An Esper of Chris’s level shaking and twisting people might be detectable.
“You’re not Logan, but you handled it quite flashily.”
“We spar together occasionally.”
When Logan, unrivaled in hand-to-hand combat throughout Baekyah, was mentioned, Chris responded bluntly.
He was a decent sparring partner.
“It seems the guy really did tell us about a proper route.”
Chase muttered.
“Shoemaker or whatever he is. He’s good. Making deals with the Thorns Order that even Northern Light couldn’t find. And regularly at that!”
Mid-sentence, he kicked the head of someone trying to get up.
The body of the person who fainted again slumped miserably.
“…And finding trading points too.”
“They probably needed manpower to move goods too.”
Chris muttered. He operated his terminal.
About five minutes later, a door opened in the wall where Chase and Chris were standing guard.
Peter appeared.
“Already finished?”
He stuck out his tongue.
Yuri, who had taken the shoemaker, had squeezed out information about smuggling routes and trading partners.
Then, after investigating those trading partners, Yuri sent Chase and Chris to clean up places suspected to be Thorns Order bases.
Peter’s role was to collect the humans they subdued. They were dragged to an ice prison created by Susanna.
There was no intention to treat them humanely. Once all the desired information was extracted, they would be handed over to Northern Light.
“Where to next?”
“This is the third place, aren’t you tired?”
To Peter’s seemingly astonished words, Chris replied with a calm face.
“Not really.”
While Chase’s face and sleeves at least showed traces of splattered blood, Chris showed no sign of having been in a physical altercation except for slightly disheveled clothes.
“Back when the Godrin Family and Luciano Family were fighting, we went around without even sleeping, so…”
Chase said with a shrug.
Being naturally sociable, he easily talked to Peter, whom he had only met a few times.
It wasn’t particularly out of friendliness that he acted this way.
“Above all, there’s no travel time.”
Chris added, brushing back his hair. He tidied his rumpled collar.
“Shall we go directly to the fourth location?”
Peter tactfully asked.
“Let’s go right away.”
It was past midnight when Chris returned to Yuri.
Assuming Yuri would be asleep, Chris entered the room stealthily.
Suppressing his breath, Chris scanned the darkness. He could see someone lying on the bed.
‘As expected.’
As Chris was about to head to the sofa, worried he might wake the sensitive Yuri, he was stopped by a voice from behind him.
“…Come here, Chris.”
It was a voice tinged with languidness.
“Did I wake you?”
“No.”
Yuri muttered with his eyes closed.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
Somehow, falling asleep alone had become unfamiliar.
It felt cool, as if winter had replaced the warmth that had disappeared from beside him.
Yuri thought for the first time that this might be loneliness.
The more he pondered it, the more foreign and unfamiliar the feeling became.
“I thought your insomnia had improved…”
Chris became serious. Yuri, being naturally sensitive, had gone through a period where he couldn’t sleep for a while.
During those times, Chris stayed up all night by Yuri’s side. It didn’t seem to have helped much. Yuri’s insomnia naturally disappeared after they took care of the other families in Orum City.
Still, if Yuri, alone awake while everyone else was asleep, needed someone, Chris had hoped it would be him.
Looking back now, it was an emotion closer to possessiveness than loyalty.
“Well. It feels different from back then.”
Chris became serious.
“Is it because your sleeping environment has changed too much?”
Yuri looked at him quietly. There was a hint of incredulity in his purple eyes.
But the moment he faced the concern deeply set in Chris’s blue eyes, his lips softly melted.
“Perhaps. I guess I was worried since my dog went out for a walk alone.”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
