Chapter 20
By then Hunt had crossed over to my side and grabbed hold of the umbrella. He was gripping it so tightly that the frame of the umbrella bent under the strain—my heart nearly dropped at the sight.
“Don’t break it! Do you know how hard it was to make this?”
I couldn’t just yank it free too roughly for fear it would snap, but I also couldn’t throw away this rare item—it was too hard to get the materials.
More than anything, with my boots already worn out, if I lost this umbrella, how was I supposed to escape?
“Let go!”
“If you surrender quietly.”
“Ha, what, you think I’m crazy enough to give up my life for one umbrella?”
“Then just leave it behind.”
“……”
“Not leaving, are you?”
“…I said, let go!”
Now that Hunt had figured out the umbrella was my weakness, he ignored me and kept targeting it instead.
‘Should I just kick him off like before?’
But when I glanced down, there was no way. If he kicked me off from this steep rooftop edge, a fall from the fifth floor was guaranteed.
‘Damn it… what else do I have in my inventory?’
While I struggled against Hunt and racked my brain for a way out—
Clatter!
The window beside us banged open, and Chase poked his head out.
Talk about one disaster piling onto another. And then something in the hand he extended into the moonlight gleamed.
A pistol.
‘That’s right! I can’t throw my life away for an umbrella!’
I let go to dodge just as the pistol flared.
Bang!
“No!”
But the one who let go of the umbrella first was Hunt. He shoved me back and leapt into the line of fire.
Without a moment’s hesitation.
Thud.
“Ugh…”
I couldn’t believe my eyes, even as I saw Hunt collapse in front of me.
‘…Did he just protect me?’
Hunt tried to push himself up, then collapsed facedown, completely still.
“Gasp—no!”
His limbs slackened, and just as his body began to slip, I snapped out of it and lunged to grab his hand.
“Ughhh!”
But Hunt was a grown man, built like someone who could easily deadlift over 500 pounds at the gym.
I couldn’t withstand his weight and slid with him toward the edge of the roof.
Scrraaape.
My feet and hips scraped against the flat, overlapping roof tiles like fish scales until, at last, my foot snagged on the ridge at the very edge. That was the only thing that stopped me.
“Phew… that was way too close.”
But the real danger wasn’t over yet. I had stopped on the roof—but Hunt was dangling helplessly below it.
I peered down into the pitch-black darkness beneath my feet, and my vision nearly went black too. Because I remembered what I’d seen on the way into the mansion earlier.
Withered, gnarled old trees. And grotesque statues.
‘Weren’t some of them holding spears?’
The thought that Hunt might be impaled if he fell made the darkness in front of my eyes feel absolute.
“Ungh… please…”
Straining with all my strength, I cried out as I tried to pull Hunt up.
“Stay awake!”
I couldn’t see where he had been shot in the darkness, but the way he clung tightly to my hand told me he hadn’t lost consciousness completely.
“Ha, come on! There’s a limit to this ‘shield of the people’ stuff! Why throw your life away for a thief?”
If he had just let Chase fire, they could’ve caught me easily. Then goodbye to the days of getting scolded from above, hello to promotions and honors—a red-carpet career.
But instead, he threw it all away and risked his life? What an idiot of a man.
“Ugh, my arm’s going to pop out.”
Hunt didn’t budge an inch. And now that he seemed to have fainted, his body felt even heavier.
Even with my Level 9 stamina, it was impossible. If I leveled up to 10—the max—I’d have monstrous strength, but the problem was I didn’t have enough skill points. Which meant…
“Don’t just stand there—get over here and help!”
I shouted at Chase, who stood frozen with a panicked face, pointing his gun at me.
“If you shoot me, Hunt dies too.”
That bastard… even after my warning, he looked like he was still weighing whether to pull the trigger.
Judging from the way Hunt had leapt in front of me, Chase must’ve fired without permission. That alone was grounds for disciplinary action.
But if he shot me with an unauthorized firearm and ended up killing a fellow officer? That’d be a career-ending disaster.
If he wanted his punishment lightened even a little, then more than anything he needed to catch me. Which meant he was probably leaning toward abandoning the dying Hunt and going after me instead.
I was a fool to expect help from someone like him.
“Don’t forget—if I die, the Scarlet Queen’s Heart is gone forever.”
I threw that out as a threat to keep Chase from shooting me, then turned and shouted toward the other windows where the officers chasing me would be.
“Inspector Hunt’s been shot! Somebody help—gah!”
That was when Hunt’s hand slipped right out of my grasp.
“No!”
My body moved before my head could think. I threw myself after him as he plummeted.
I barely managed to catch his arm, and with my other hand I snapped the umbrella open.
Pop!
The umbrella opened, and for a moment we were yanked upward—but only for a moment.
It couldn’t bear the weight of two people. We began falling again.
‘Well… at least with the umbrella, we’ll fall slower, so the injuries won’t be as bad, right?’
Or so I thought—until, as if to mock me, the umbrella’s frame suddenly flipped inside out. Clearly broken because of Hunt.
“Uwaaaaah!”
We plummeted faster and faster, our weight pulling us upside down so that we were about to crash headfirst.
Startled, I instinctively let go of Hunt. That was when huge hands suddenly wrapped around my waist and head. I found myself pulled into Hunt’s arms, bewildered.
‘Why is he shielding my head? He should be protecting his own! Wait—did he regain consciousness? But… uwaaah!’
My question didn’t last long.
Whoosh!
Our bodies sank straight into the ground.
Not thud—whoosh?
We’d slammed into the ground, but both my body and mind were perfectly fine. The only thing sore was where I’d collided with Hunt.
‘What the hell just happened?’
Dazed, I lifted my head into the darkness.
Clink.
Clink?
A cold metal sensation closed around my wrist.
“Got you.”
Hunt’s voice whispered in my ear—steady, uninjured.
Only then did I realize.
‘So this was all a staged trap too?’
Before I could even process my anger at being tricked, a barrage of system messages appeared.
[Mission Failed! 300,000 Infamy Points deducted.]
No…
[You have been arrested. Entering the Bad Ending Route.]
No!
[Mission failed. The “Master of Disguise” skill and “Face-Blindness Effect” are now disabled.]
Nooooooo!
And the moment the effects vanished…
Click!
A searchlight flared on, flooding everything before me with daylight. At that instant, my eyes locked with Hunt’s, who was pinned beneath me, staring up.
“…You.”
Two years of seeing Hunt almost every single day—yet never had I seen him wear such a stunned expression.
“Claire Kent?”
* * *
“The Thieving Crow Is Caged!”
That was the headline splashed across the front page of the newspaper, right above a giant image: a drawing of a birdcage over the photo of the Thieving Crow.
But despite it being a photo, the thief’s face could not be seen. Not because the bars of the cage were hiding it, but because the police had only released a censored photograph in the first place.
Last night, the Thieving Crow who broke into the Hopeless estate was apprehended by Inspector Raven Hunt, head of the Eden City Police Special Investigations Unit…
Below the article, the woman was still referred to only as “the Thieving Crow.” The police had not revealed her name.
Normally, when a notorious wanted criminal is captured, the police immediately reveal their identity and face. But in this case, they were concealing the culprit entirely.
Because of this highly unusual behavior, conspiracy theories sprang up in less than a single day.
The true identity of the Thieving Crow is… find out at your own risk?
“It’s Gemma Steel!”
An old woman shouted her answer straight at the newspaper.
