漫画大王

Chapter 139

After all the other guys had gone in, I stopped Ellen, who was the last one to enter.

“... Yeah?”

“Let’s talk for a moment.”

I felt like I needed to have a word with her.

***

I took Ellen to the park in front of the dormitory. She followed a short distance behind me.

Once I made sure there were no people around, I turned to face her.

Ellen looked puzzled as to why I had suddenly called her over.

“Why have you been so wary of me lately?”

Since the kidnapping incident, she had been notably wary of me. She had even talked about going to the Dark Land suddenly, and seemed determined to follow through with it.

I didn’t want her to go to such a dangerous place, so I’d told her not to.

I expected her to at least be stubborn about it, yet she had immediately agreed not to go, which felt rather strange to me

It was unusual for her to be so accommodating toward me all of a sudden.

And I thought I knew the reason why. We had decided to keep our distance from each other, but then, suddenly, the bizarre incident of me being kidnapped arose.

She must have been shocked to suddenly lose me for real, even when she thought that it wouldn’t matter if I was gone. Moreover, she had regretted what she’d said to me and felt sorry, to the extent that she believed my kidnapping was somehow her fault. Of course, it wasn’t her fault at all.

She had told me that she disliked me because I reminded her of her brother, who had many secrets.

However, she realized she couldn’t push me away and believed that the things she had said were a mistake, leading her to feel guilty towards me.

That’s why she was being so cautious around me. She was afraid of making another mistake.

“You haven’t done anything wrong to me. What you did was right, and you had every right to feel that way. This unfortunate kidnapping incident happened, but my being kidnapped should not change how you felt about me before. You even went searching for me. If anything, I should be thankful to you. What reason do you have to feel sorry towards me?”

Ellen remained silent, looking down at the ground.

“... I don’t know,” she replied.

Ellen’s head was still bowed. She couldn’t even look me in the eyes.

“What don’t you know?”

“I don’t want to make a mistake like the last time, but I don’t know how to prevent that.”

It seemed she still regretted her actions from last time.

“I don’t know how... and that’s why it keeps happening,” she continued.

Ellen did not want to do or say something she would regret, like before. However, it seemed she was worried that whatever she said or did might turn out to be a mistake.

That was why she’d become so passive and cautious around me. That was why she had acquiesced so readily when I told her not to go to the Dark Land.

She was afraid that I might become angry or feel hurt if she insisted on going even after I told her not to.

Ellen had seemed okay so far because she didn’t really care about others. She just did what she wanted to do, without paying any attention to anyone else’s opinion.

In the end, though, she was inexperienced in dealing with people. That was why she didn’t know how to interact with those who weren’t okay with her decisions. She never paid attention to her words and actions before, but she had just started to.

“Is it okay to do this? Is it okay to say this?”

Filled with such doubts, Ellen ended up being wary of me. Since she had already made a mistake once, she had grown even more cautious because she did not want to make another.

She just didn’t know how to treat me.

While it was nice to be considered an important friend by her, I didn’t want to see her this way.

This wasn’t like her.

I didn’t want her to start becoming cautious just because of me.

“Let’s sit down.”

I motioned for Ellen to sit on a bench and sat next to her.

Even though she was someone with top-tier talents in this universe, when it came to interpersonal relationships, she was nothing but awkward.

I knew this because I was the first real “friend” she’d ever had.

After experiencing what it was like to lose me, she had probably seriously considered what I meant to her.

In the end, she thought she should treat me well while I was around.

That was why she wanted to treat me well but didn’t know how, leading her to act this way.

“You know I lied, right?”

“About the kidnapping?”

“Yes.”

She nodded silently.

Ellen said that she was no longer curious about my secrets. All that mattered to her was that I was safe.

But that couldn’t be true. She had to be curious and struggling because she didn’t really know me. It was inevitable that she would notice more and more similarities between her brother’s situation and my own, and grow increasingly stressed internally.

Ellen knew I’d lied about the kidnapping incident. However, she didn’t know the truth. It was possible that she thought it had something to do with what Loyar had done.

“Actually, I was kidnapped by the Thieves’ Guild.”

“The Thieves’ Guild?”

I wondered if Ellen knew about the Thieves’ Guild. She probably didn’t, since it was unlikely that she would be interested in the criminal organizations within the imperial city.

“Yes. Remember our big sister, the boss, that you went to see?”

“... Yes.”

“Our organization is kind of like a subcontractor for the Thieves’ Guild. There are lots of beggars there, and they pick up rumors and information from the streets. They offer this information to the Thieves’ Guild and get paid for it. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Subcontractor...?”

Ellen seemed to be hearing the term “subcontractor” for the first time in her life.

Indeed, it was a word she didn’t need to know.

“Like minions.”

“Ah... Yes.”

I could tell Ellen the truth.

She wasn’t one to blab, and she had run around for my sake, so there was nothing I couldn’t tell her.

Honestly, it was touching. After all, she was acting this way because I was important to her.

I planned to tell her everything.

It seemed better to lay it all out.

Ellen’s eyes widened as I began to divulge everything. Her expression told me that she hadn’t expected me to actually tell this to her.

“As you know, our organization is essentially a gathering of beggars, and it’s not easy for such an organization to send a student to the Temple. The tuition for the Temple is exorbitantly high.”

“... Yes.”

“You know I’m a little unique, right?”

It was odd how much I knew, given my age. If you considered my origins, it was even more strange.

“That’s why the organization wanted to raise me as a successor. That’s why they sent me to the Temple in the first place. After graduating, the plan was to somehow live with those people. Well... although the club isn’t a group centered around crime, technically, I was being raised to be a successor of a criminal organization.”

“... Oh.”

“But when I actually got to the Temple, it turned out I had some kind of infinite aptitude or something, and I ended up enrolling in the Royal Class.”

Ellen nodded dumbly. “I see.”

“Anyway, my hope is that our organization can escape the influence of the Thieves’ Guild. As you know, I initially intended to attend the Temple quietly, but I ended up in the Royal Class. There are too many prominent people here. If my situation came to light, it would only cause trouble.”

The Royal class was overflowing with princes and princesses, not to mention the children of powerful families. That was why, to avoid being caught in the crossfire of titans, I wanted to sever any ties with the criminal organization.

Of course, not all of this was true.

“In any case, I hoped that our organization could completely cut ties with the Thieves’ Guild, so I pulled off a few stunts, but it seems like that rubbed them the wrong way. They were plotting to eliminate our big sister. On that rainy day, unbeknownst to me, I wandered into the back alleys of Wenster Market and got caught by members of the Thieves’ Guild. They didn’t know it was me when they kidnapped me, and only realized it afterward. Anyway, after kidnapping me, they planned to lure our big sister out and kill her.”

Ellen was listening to my story, intertwined with the affairs of the underworld, as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

She might have thought that there was something unusual about Loyar and that group of beggars, but hearing about the power struggle between the Thieves’ Guild and other underworld organizations from me must have bordered on the unbelievable.

She seemed shocked to learn that I was involved in such a world. She also appeared surprised that I could speak so casually about matters of life and death.

Of course, I was not the successor to some grand organization.

But to Ellen, an absolute outsider, it seemed like I was living within the grand schemes of major criminal organizations. To her, I seemed like someone living an entirely different life.

‘No... that’s not it... it’s not what you’re thinking...’

“How... did things turn out the way they did?” Ellen asked, picturing a terrifying criminal organization. After all, I had been kidnapped by the Thieves’ Guild, an organization far more formidable than Loyar’s.

“How in the world did you end up safe and alive?”

That was what Ellen wanted to know.

“It wasn’t my organization that mattered, but rather my affiliation. I’m a student of the Royal Class. Plus, we have a prince and a princess in our year. Kidnapping me was a mistake from the start.”

Indeed, the moment the guild master realized who I was, he realized that he had stepped in it big time, and mentally collapsed.

“The guild master was terrified as soon as he saw me and recognized who I was. It’s complicated to explain fully, but Vertus and Charlotte figured out those guys were the culprits pretty early on, around Wednesday.”

“Wednesday?”

I had returned on Saturday. If the culprits had been found out on Wednesday, why had I only returned on Saturday? Ellen would be curious about this.

“I relayed my request to them not to tell anyone that they had found me because I had some unfinished business with the Thieves’ Guild.”

Ellen seemed increasingly confused by my explanation.

“You see, the situation had already blown up in such a huge way that I thought I might as well take over the Thieves’ Guild while I was at it,” I continued.

Ellen seemed on the verge of giving up trying to understand it.

“You said you didn’t want to get involved with criminal organizations, though,” Ellen commented.

“I did say that, but...”

I didn’t want to be caught with my connection to a criminal organization, but Charlotte and Vertus had known about it already for a while so it was no use hiding it.

“You know... thoughts change as the situation changes. So, anyway, I failed to take over the Thieves’ Guild, but in return for burying this incident, they owe me a favor that I will get to claim from them someday.”

I wasn’t going around claiming to be the king of the underworld or anything. I wasn’t even sure if I could actually do it. Even if I could, ultimately, I’d just be playing into Vertus’s hands.

Besides, I didn’t know whether I’d even be good at that sort of thing.

In any case, I told Ellen almost everything about my rough background and the truth behind the disappearance.

Ellen nodded dumbly. “Is that... so...”

The heir to a criminal organization, and the audacious spirit aiming to devour the Thieves’ Guild after being kidnapped... While not everything had been explained clearly, Ellen nodded as if she had a rough understanding of it all. She seemed shocked that I was a more incredible person than she had imagined. There was definitely a lot of misunderstanding mixed in.

She looked at me as if I was not only incredibly dangerous, but also an impressive figure.

No. There was no way she was convinced just yet.

“Actually, though, this is all a cover.”

“... What?”

I still had more to say.

“In fact, I’m the last heir of the Demon Realm.”

Ellen looked surprised.

“But honestly, I’m not interested in war or anything like that. I just infiltrated the human world because I wanted to live comfortably.”

Ellen’s expression twisted slightly, and I could read her thoughts. “What kind of nonsense did you just say? Why is he acting like this all of a sudden?”

I could almost see the question marks forming in Ellen’s eyes.

The Demon Realm?

“Is he playing a joke in front of me? Is he crazy?”

That was the look she had.

Oh, dear.

It was too early for her to be surprised.

“But actually, that too is a disguise.”

“...?”

A disguise on top of a disguise on top of a disguise.

‘I’ll tell you the real truth.’

“In fact, I’m what you can consider the god who created this world, and am currently possessing a human body as a form of punishment.”

“...”

Ellen’s gaze shifted from perplexed astonishment to the perfect calm of a deep lake. Her bafflement had crossed the threshold into tranquility.

Her gaze had become colder than I had ever seen before. It was akin to the dangerous glint that occasionally appeared in the eyes of both Charlotte and Vertus.

However, with Ellen, it felt different.

It didn’t just give off a strong pressure; it felt genuinely lethal.

I began to fear that I might actually be murdered on the spot.

‘Yeah, maybe mentioning stuff about the Demon Realm in front of Ellen was a bit too much...? Then again... you’re the one who said you wanted to know about me, though... This is the real truth...’

“If you don’t want to tell me about it...”—her tone was icy—“Just say you don’t want to.”

Smack!

“Ouch!”

For the first time, Ellen put some force into it as she smacked the back of my head.

Ellen got up abruptly and stormed back into the dormitory, apparently fuming.

“Ugh. Damn! Wow that really hurt.”

Yeah...

Who would believe that anyway?

It seemed my mention of the Demon Realm had really pissed her off, but maybe we were good now since I’d managed to get her to quit feeling sorry for me.

“How could you say that kind of thing, knowing who my brother is? Are you out of your mind?” Ellen said.

She must have really been mad at me.

‘Hard as it may be to believe, though, that’s the real truth that you wanted to know.’

Perhaps because I managed to infuriate her, from the next day on, Ellen treated me like usual.