LWRF 104

CHAPTER 104……………………………………………………

 Same Bed, Different Dreams

Something was wrong. Heat crept through her body, and her vision blurred.

Get a grip! If you let your guard down here, it’s over.

Anje forced her fading consciousness into focus and crawled closer to the driver’s seat. Then she held her breath and listened.

Perhaps because it was night, the carriage was moving slowly. Thanks to that, it wasn’t hard to overhear the hushed conversation coming from the driver’s bench.

“Count Algernon was the late emperor’s eldest son?”

“So they say. Supposedly, according to the former emperor’s will, the Duke of Side’s family went to great lengths to smuggle him abroad. But for some reason, he came back.”

“For what reason? I don’t even need to hear it. Isn’t it obvious? You said he was the late emperor’s eldest son. Of course he’d want to reclaim his place.”

“Shh! Are you trying to get yourself arrested and killed? You can’t talk about things like that so casually.”

“Arrested and killed? If I were scared of that, do you think I’d be doing this job? Honestly…. And am I wrong? Then why else would he have come back?”

“He probably had business to take care of. Or maybe he got homesick.”

“Ha! Give me a break.”

After the sigh came a short click of the tongue.

“You’re saying he risked his life and came back just because he couldn’t stand a bit of homesickness? Do you think the emperor would let that slide? According to the rumors….”

The man suddenly lowered his voice, forcing Anje to press her ear right up against the canvas.

“They say the emperor sent countless assassins even while Grand Duke Algernon was abroad. If you think about it, that’s what’s impressive—Algernon wasn’t all that famous, nor did he hold any great power. He barely escaped with his life, but even that was something the emperor couldn’t tolerate.”

“That’s why power is terrifying, isn’t it? Show even the smallest opening, and it can come back to bite you.”

“When you think about it, they’re half-brothers. It feels a bit cruel. Anyway, despite all that, for some reason the emperor couldn’t kill Count Algernon. I heard our side sent plenty of top-notch men too, but they all failed.”

“How is that possible? Is Count Algernon some kind of sword master?”

“A sword master?”

A short, rough laugh rang out. For some reason, Anje felt like she understood exactly what that laugh meant.

Count Algernon, a sword master? Anje shook her head quietly as she imagined his slender, delicate arms wielding a massive longsword.

“A sword master, my foot. You’ve never actually seen Count Algernon, have you?”

At that, the man who’d been listening snapped back angrily.

“Are you looking down on me too, just because I always end up cleaning up after others?”

“No, it’s not like that. I just figured if you’d seen him, you wouldn’t say something like that.”

“As if someone like me would ever get to meet a noble lord. Hmph! So you are looking down on me. That’s just rotten.”

The angry man clamped his mouth shut, and the conversation stalled.

Just then, an owl passing by let out an eerie hoot. Startled, the man quickly scanned their surroundings. The one holding the reins let out a mocking snort.

“You get scared by a passing bird, and you wonder why, after years in this line of work, you’re still stuck cleaning up after others.”

“Who says I’m scared? Anyway, keep going with what you were saying.”

“What more is there to say? When has the emperor ever been kind to his own blood? Think about it—does His Majesty even have any siblings left? Siblings, hell. I hear there aren’t many royal relatives left at all.”

“So you mean he plans to kill Count—no, His Grace the Grand Duke.”

“Shh! Watch your mouth. They say mice hear words spoken at night.”

The man warned him in a low voice.

“Got it. By the way, is she coming to check the corpse in the back?”

“She?”

“You know, the young mistress—the one who pretended to die along with the captain.”

As if explaining, the man gestured behind him and lightly tapped the canvas. Sitting pressed right up against it, Anje jolted in shock and recoiled. In her haste, her foot struck the wooden floor, making a noise.

Heart pounding, Anje clapped a hand over her mouth and held her breath.

“Wait. Didn’t you hear something just now?”

“What sound? There’s no way there’d be a sound. Why are you being so jumpy?”

“No, I’m sure I heard something.”

The carriage slowly came to a stop. Panicking, unsure what to do, Anje quickly pulled the sheet over herself and lay back down where she’d been, as if nothing had happened.

A moment later, the canvas was yanked open, and faint moonlight spilled inside.

“See? Nothing there. But doesn’t the smell seem to be getting worse? Close it and let’s go. I want to get at least a bit of sleep.”

Despite the urging, the man kept tilting his head in suspicion, then finally climbed up onto the cargo bed. With a doubtful look, he nudged Anje here and there with his foot.

Each time the man’s thick leather boot struck her, it hurt terribly, but Anje bit her lip and made no sound.

“Did I imagine it?”

“Hey, at this rate we’ll be up all night. Let’s go already!”

“Yeah, fine.”

The man seemed ready to turn back and climb down. As the sound of his footsteps faded, Anje finally relaxed the tension she’d been holding in her body.

And then—

Thud!

“Ugh!”

Caught off guard, Anje let out an involuntary groan as a sudden kick slammed into her side.

Stars exploded in her vision, and the kicks kept coming. Once the man confirmed she’d made a sound, he showed no mercy. The other man, who’d been standing there dumbfounded, quickly grasped the situation and joined in, kicking her as well.

“She’s not dead?”

“Did we even check the body earlier?”

With no resistance coming from her, the men paused their kicking and tried to retrace what had happened.

“When would we have had time? And with that smell, of course we thought she was dead.”

“What? So you’re saying we didn’t check at all?”

“What? Why would I be the one to check? Sounds like you’re trying to dump all the blame on me, but you didn’t check either. You hated even touching her, so I was the one who tied her up in the end.”

“Even so, you should’ve at least checked her face.”

“And what would that have told us? We were just ordered to bring back a corpse. We weren’t told who it was.”

A faint groan leaked out from beneath the sheet. The two men, who’d been bickering, exchanged looks and frowned. Cold sweat soaked their backs in fear. Had the dead come back to life? The stench of decay filled the air—none of this made any sense.

“Pull the sheet off!”

At the driver’s command, the other man flinched backward.

“No! You do it!”

“Damn it!”

Clicking his tongue in irritation, the man knelt down and pulled back the sheet.

“Hey. She still looks alive.”

“No! That can’t be. Then how do you explain this smell?”

“The smell isn’t what matters—”

The man grabbed Anje by the hair. He tilted her small face this way and that in the moonlight, then suddenly furrowed his brow.

“Was this one from the royal palace?”

“What are you talking about all of a sudden? I never heard anything like that. Even if she was, do you really think they’d tell me all those details?”

He was nothing more than someone who handled the cleanup. From earlier on, things had been going wrong. And the guy he was working with seemed intent on pinning all the blame on him. Even someone stuck doing the most menial work could sense that much.

“I’ve always just been the errand boy! Stuff like that was your responsibility!”

“What did you say?”

A dangerous tension crackled between the two men.

Meanwhile, sprawled on the floor and listening to their argument, Anje was dumbfounded.

People who did this kind of work were usually short-sighted and selfish. Otherwise, how could they go on with their lives after so casually taking someone else’s?

Sure enough, even in the pitch-black darkness, Anje could see the ominous gleam of the two men’s fate charts.

When a destiny chart is filled with Gyeong, Sin, Sin, and Yu (庚·辛·申·酉), it’s like being surrounded by weapons. If there are also malignant stars or clashes and breaks, it means a vicious bandit has taken root—and the owner of that fate is vicious as well.

Always violent in word, deed, and thought, fond of blades—destined either to kill others or be killed themselves.

Reading the fate that seemed to spur them toward death, Anje clicked her tongue.

Not that I’m in any position to judge others right now, but figures—birds of a feather. Even their fates are nearly identical.

“So in the end, this is all my fault, huh?”

“Of course it is. Like always, I just did what you told me.”

“You just did what I told you…? Then if I told you to die, you’d do that too?”

The dagger the man drew from his belt flashed coldly in the darkness.

Watching him, Anje grew desperate. What had she endured all this for? She couldn’t just let the two of them kill each other.

“Wait—cough!”