Chapter 41
Yulia kept glancing at the empty seat beside her. Emily still hadn’t come back, and she was starting to worry that Emily might have gotten lost somewhere.
“Did she go to the bathroom and get locked in or something? Why is she taking so long?”
Her anxiety grew as the auction kept going with no sign of ending. When would they ever reach the final lot?
“This won’t do. I’ll go look for her.”
She’d shout bravely and step outside — but if the doorman said, “Once you leave, you can’t re-enter,” she would have to come back looking dejected.
All the items up for auction were wildly eccentric, and it was odd that they were selling for astronomical amounts.
“Well, now that I think about it, it’s strange someone would buy a dark grimoire at auction. Why would they? They’re not even a dark mage.”
Of course, we buy it because we have a dark mage…. Yulia mentally justified it that way.
Tired of thinking, she zoned out and stared blankly.
“Hmm? Uh—breaking news just in: something urgent has come up, so the item that was meant to be the final lot will be presented early!”
“Huh?”
“This is an object that returned to us after—get this—over three hundred years! Its state of preservation is excellent! If you collect odd antiques or items related to seers, this will be a covetable piece for your collection!”
The description sounded unusually dramatic. Edmond woke Isaac, who had dozed off.
Dum-dum-dum-dum!
With a raucous drumroll, a white, smoke-like haze spread ominously across the stage. As the band laid down an eerie background, the atmosphere heated up.
“And now—Lot 183, the black grimoire Lemegeton!!”
Pop!
Dozens of lights illuminated the dark stage.
Revealed by that flood of light was….
“…Why is she coming out from there?!”
Yulia sprang to her feet and shouted.
There, standing on the stage in a staff uniform, was her twin sister whom she’d assumed had gone to the bathroom.
And she was with a suspicious-looking man!
Everyone was momentarily stunned by the sudden commotion, then the organizers immediately called for security.
“Guards!”
They had prepared for suspicious people who might try to snatch auction lots.
Clang-clang!
Tall shields and armored men surrounded Claude.
“Hmm?”
As Claude tilted his head smugly, the guards, thinking I was staff, grabbed me and pulled me back. Suddenly I was separated from Claude.
“Here, here!”
Isaac, who had somehow run up to the very front of the stage, reached out his hand toward me.
With that help I dove under the stage and Yulia and Edmond caught me as if they had been waiting.
‘Everyone’s distracted by Claude; none of them seem to care about me.’
Not a single person suspected I wasn’t an auction staff member. I was immensely relieved.
“You—! Where on earth have you been?!”
“I’ll explain later. For now, let’s get out of here. Those people don’t look like they’ll hold out long—”
Before I could finish, there was a sudden bang! from the rear. Judging by the screams that followed, it was best not to look back.
“Aaaah!”
“Run!”
“Sa-save meee!”
Even people who had treated it as a minor incident finally realized the seriousness of the situation.
“Move aside! What are you doing?!”
“T-the bodies are blocking the way…!”
“Guards! Guards!”
As the crowd surged toward the exits, the interior rapidly descended into chaos.
“Isaac, oppa.”
When I called him, Isaac stepped forward as if on cue.
“Okay. If there’s no path, we’ll make one!”
Slash!
He swung his sword and a section of the wall collapsed with a roar. His skill was still as sharp as ever.
“Oof. Don’t struggle~.”
“?!”
Not stopping there, Isaac slung me over one side and Yulia over the other.
“This is faster than the two of you trying to run. Stay still, alright? Can’t you run on your own, brother?”
“Right. Better to get out of here for now.”
When Edmond nodded, Isaac wasted no time.
Whoosh!
“You’re so fast!”
The wind howled like thunder. My shouts were drowned out by it, so Isaac, running on, raised his voice.
“What did you say?!”
“Too fast!”
“I can’t hear you!”
If you can’t hear me, stop running! I poked his side in protest.
“Ha ha! Ticklish! What are you doing tickling me now!”
He stumbled; without thinking I grabbed his collar hard.
Gasp!
“C-cough! I’m—can’t breathe…!”
“Ah, sorry.”
Still, I didn’t let go. If I fell now, I might actually die….
Phew. Better now?
I squeezed my eyes shut and waited until Isaac announced we had arrived.
My legs trembled from holding too much tension.
“Like a newborn fawn.”
“Please shut that mouth of yours…”
When I muttered under my breath, Isaac seemed to catch on and quieted down.
A little later, Edmond followed us.
“Isaac, you… your physical ability seems greatly recovered.”
“Yeah. I ran full-out for the first time in a while. Still short of before, though.”
Right — I’d forgotten because Isaac’s body had been like paper, but he was a knight with talent worthy of being named the next commander of the royal order.
And the root of that talent was the birthright blessing of House Walker.
‘Monstrous strength…’
For the original Isaac, carrying both me and Yulia while running would have been nothing. He could probably have carried Edmond too without breaking a sweat.
Truly a monstrous physique.
‘Do I even need to train if I have that much? Hmm.’
Huh-huh-huh…!
A sound like an explosion echoed again from the auction hall. It sounded far enough away that the commotion probably wouldn’t reach where we were.
“With that kind of commotion… the crown will investigate personally. Good thing we got out. If we stayed and got caught up, it would be a mess.”
Let’s keep the fact that Duke Walker is pretending to be the kingdom’s mafia a secret among ourselves. That’s for the best.
“So. Who was that man earlier? He looked really suspicious.”
“The leader of the dark mage group. Probably.”
“What?!”
Yulia straightened from her slump. She looked like she could grab my collar.
“Why were you facing such a dangerous guy on your own?!”
“Well, he seemed to hold off on taking out Walker for now. So he didn’t try to kill me.”
“Is that supposed to be reassuring…?!”
As Yulia fussed, Isaac stepped between us.
“Now, now. Calm down. Emily didn’t go to meet him, did she?”
“He accidentally thought I was a new staff member and sent me to the storage. Since it was already like that, I wanted to check whether the dark grimoire was real. I never dreamed I’d run into that man there… again.”
“Again?”
Oops.
Edmond caught my slip and seized on the tail of my words. I glanced away, but Edmond showed no sign of letting it go.
“Tell me, Emily. When did you meet that man before?”
Sigh. “It wasn’t anything. On the day I ran into Donald, I briefly got separated from you in the street. That was the only time I saw him in passing.”
“How can you remember someone you saw in passing? Emily, I didn’t know you had the same ability as me.”
My memory is fairly ordinary, but hearing Edmond say it like that didn’t feel good.
“…Yes, that’s the man. He wore a black robe.”
Edmond seemed to have conjured Claude in his mind without me saying anything.
For someone who could pluck a suspicious figure out of vividly remembered scenes like recorded crystal orbs, this was an effortless task for him.
“Nothing happened.”
“Alright, if you say so.”
For some reason Edmond accepted that quickly, but then his expression hardened.
“But this time there actually was something. I’ll hear everything, every single bit.”
No one could stop Edmond once he became that resolute. I wilted, and behind me Yulia and Isaac nodded vigorously.
“Fine. I’ll tell you everything once we get home. For now, let’s go back.”
“Can we just go back? Our purpose was the dark grimoire, right?”
“What can we do? The auction’s a mess.”
From a distance, we could clearly see the auction hall ablaze. Yeah—looks irrecoverable.
“If we go back and get tangled up again, it’ll raise suspicion. They might want us examined by a physician for injuries, which would be a huge problem. So for now…”
Edmond’s explanation started to get long, so I took out what I’d been hiding in my coat.
“Oh, that grimoire? I took it with me.”
“…W-what?”
“You took it?!”
The moving stage had allowed Claude to break through only four of the five glass boxes — he hadn’t shattered the innermost one.
“You can’t just walk out with auction items, so I brought a pocket of subspace. I slipped it inside.”
I pulled it out; inside the transparent glass box shone the black grimoire with a radiant gleam.
Just by looking at it you could tell it was no ordinary item.
“They might have noticed by now.”
That’s why I’d said we needed to get far away from the auction. If it were Claude, he’d chase me the moment he realized he’d been robbed.
But even Claude wouldn’t dare storm where the crown prince was staying. If a saint were nearby, even less so.
This time it felt reassuring that the crown prince and the saint were close by.
“Emily, you really…”
Isaac couldn’t even finish his sentence and just gaped.
“She’s Walker too, you know.”
“Indeed.”
Yulia and Edmond muttered in disbelief.
Well, when you think you might die, you still take what you can. Isn’t that what everyone does? I tilted my head and smiled faintly.
