The Princess’s Splendid Abduction
Chapter 039The sky was clear and deep blue without a single cloud.
The playground looked bustling and lively under the bright daylight.
If only it weren’t for the somewhat suspicious adults lurking nearby, it would have been a perfectly peaceful scene.
“Are you feeling a bit better?”
Nina lowered her gaze from the sky to look back at Mercy.
Thanks to the fresh air, Mercy seemed clearer-headed than before, but a sudden wave of embarrassment hit her.
“Yeah, sorry. You got scared, huh?”
“What’s there to be sorry about? I was a bit startled when you suddenly collapsed.”
Mercy was leaning her arms on the back of the bench.
She looked at Nina with drowsy eyes and smiled, but then suddenly let out a heavy sigh.
“Can’t you be less obvious about it?”
“Yeah, seriously.”
Their reluctant gazes both shifted toward a man loitering near the trash bin across the way.
He was pretending to be a civilian tossing out garbage, but kept glancing around nervously — and wearing an unnecessarily flashy leather mask.
No one could mistake him for an ordinary person.
They worried that his suspicious behavior might cause misunderstandings.
“If only he’d take off that mask.”
“Looks like he has a strong belief in his own fashion sense.”
“Sounds like the head of the guards…”
Nina muttered unknowingly, and Mercy chuckled softly.
“So you’ve already met him? What’s he like?”
“Hmm, he seemed like a really cheerful guy. Do you know much about the head of the guards?”
“To some extent. He’s trustworthy — except when it comes to fashion advice.”
Nina stared quietly at Mercy’s bright eyes as she joked.
Inevitably, Mercy, or rather the Mercy from my dream, came to mind.
The image of those golden eyes turning pitch black…
‘Why did Hameln move so fast?’
Thinking of the article about Hameln gave Nina a splitting headache again.
Her mind was still in chaos after all the major changes that had hit since morning, but she desperately tried to retrace her thoughts.
‘Just as I’ve changed, it’s not impossible other things would be affected too. Even so…’
She could accept the incident from last night.
Even if the timing had been moved up a bit, it was still something that could be prevented.
Besides, it was a matter between criminal organizations.
Conflicts could have erupted at any small trigger.
But this case was completely different.
The timeline was way too early.
And it wasn’t just the timeline that had changed by several months.
In the Hameln incident Nina remembered, six children had gone missing.
Of those, only two survived.
The first child found, Prince Daute, was one of the four who had returned as cold corpses.
But…
‘The first child came back alive.’
According to today’s article, Prince Daute was alive.
Though he had lost all his fingernails and suffered memory confusion, he had returned home alive.
‘Could it all just be caprice, since the timeline’s changed?’
Even Nina was unsure about the standards Hameln used to decide the children’s fate.
She wasn’t even sure if any real criteria existed.
Honestly, it wouldn’t be surprising if it was decided by drawing lots.
‘That lunatic could definitely do that.’
What made Nina unable to feel completely relieved by Daute’s survival wasn’t just worry over the fate of the other children.
It was because of the future actions of the two children who survived before.
The two children found in the same condition as current Prince Daute were reportedly never met each other before or after the incident.
Apart from age, they barely had anything in common.
Yet both had committed similar crimes years later.
They each killed their entire family.
“Is it because Lavian’s not here?”
Nina, clutching her aching head, suddenly looked up.
Mercy gave a knowing smile toward Nina.
“You’ve been looking gloomy since earlier. Is it because of Lavian?”
“…That’s not it.”
Nina’s cheeks flushed red as she half-denied it.
In truth, she longed for Lavian more than ever, but was trying hard not to think about it.
“Nina, don’t worry about that knight. There’s no pervert like him here.”
Mercy seemed to misunderstand that Nina had gotten scared because of the article about that knight.
“Even if there was, no one would dare do anything to you, so don’t worry.”
Her voice was kind but strong.
Suddenly, Nina felt the urge to tell Mercy everything.
She knew it was too risky, but dealing alone with all these variables was overwhelming.
Her head felt like it might explode.
‘First, I’ll clear my head. Then I’ll think it through carefully.’
Determined, Nina looked around to distract herself and soon asked curiously:
“Mercy, what are those kids doing now?”
“Hm? Ah, looks like they’re playing hide-and-seek.”
“Hide-and-seek…?”
Nina’s mouth dropped open.
Since she only knew hide-and-seek from books, seeing kids actually play it felt strange.
At that moment, Mercy suddenly suggested:
“Shall we play too?”
“Huh? Now…?”
“Yeah, now.”
“But there are only two of us.”
“Well… wait a minute.”
Mercy abruptly stopped talking and turned around.
Nina followed without knowing why.
“What’s wrong?”
“I feel like something’s over here…”
They reached a flowerbed on one side of the playground.
Just as Mercy pointed beyond the low fence, the bushes in the middle suddenly started to wiggle.
And then—
“Whoa…!”
A head popped out of the bushes, startling Nina, her eyes wide like a rabbit’s.
“Ah, I thought you might come. Good, you really did.”
“Katya…?!”
The person who suddenly jumped out of the bushes was none other than Katya.
Nobody knew how long she had been hiding there.
While Nina was stunned into silence by surprise and happiness, Mercy reacted as if she had expected this all along.
“So it was you.”
“What? What do you mean by ‘expected’?”
“I could only think of one person who’d hide somewhere useless like this.”
Katya shot Mercy a sideways glance and shook off the leaves and dirt covering her skirt with a crisp sound.
Somehow it felt upbeat.
“Katya, what are you doing here? Why were you hiding?”
Katya glanced around as if checking her surroundings, then sighed deeply.
“Because those Anubis guys have been lurking since earlier. They’re bound to try and chase me away if they see me. I was just waiting for the right time. What are you all doing here?”
Katya apparently had immediately figured out who the suspicious people loitering around the playground were.
“They’re just here to escort us. They said a playground with only kids might be dangerous.”
“But right now, those guys look the most dangerous here.”
Katya’s deadpan comment made Nina and Mercy exchange awkward looks.
Maybe it would have been better if Kiss and Smoky had come along.
But with their current looks, they’d only scare the innocent kids in the playground.
The two had stubbornly insisted they couldn’t be left alone, so finally they had agreed to bring lower-ranked members instead for that reason.
Though Nina wondered what good that would do.
The organization members pretending to be civilians were now openly sneaking glances toward Nina and the others.
They were supposedly being cautious because of Katya’s sudden appearance, but to innocent bystanders, they looked so suspicious that calling the guards seemed justified.
