Chapter 101
How much time had passed as they leaned into each other’s warmth?
Though the pain had subsided long ago, Riina didn’t push Einar away.
Just a little, just a little longer.
It was a thin selfishness, a shameless greed.
Einar likewise didn’t release Riina.
He had no reason to let go.
As long as she didn’t push him away, he never wanted to release the person in his arms.
But a moment cannot be eternal.
Riina slowly, excessively slowly, removed her hands from his back and slipped out of his firm embrace.
Watching the bright red hair receding like the ebbing tide of warmth, Einar gazed with dazed eyes.
How much more time passed like that?
Riina, still tinged with purple, touched the corner of her now parched lips.
“I’m sorry.”
Though her voice was so small it would be inaudible without careful listening, Einar didn’t miss her words, as always.
Looking down at her white forehead as she avoided meeting his eyes, he soon shrugged his shoulders.
“No, I was the one who pulled you in.”
Einar added in a light, incredibly casual voice:
“For a moment, I thought ‘Isn’t this a good opportunity?’ but that would be too underhanded, wouldn’t it?”
Is there a better opportunity than taking advantage of someone’s moment of weakness to comfort them, to keep the person you want by your side?
Einar, a hunter with innate luck and self-denied skill, couldn’t be unaware of this fact.
And to mention such a fact so explicitly, so lightly…
Riina lowered the corners of her eyebrows and laughed as if she might cry.
“That’s… true. Such a thing would be underhanded.”
Einar, who had unconsciously been about to reach toward her, clenched his fist in her blind spot and smiled slightly.
“Though I could become as obnoxious as necessary for your sake, I don’t want to be underhanded as well. Besides.”
Einar completely changed the subject.
Of course, his primary wish was for Riina’s mood to improve even slightly.
Her still-pale cheeks and lips tinged with purple.
Looking at her current state, he wanted nothing more than to return immediately to the Bolshevik estate.
But she had mentioned wanting to investigate the “illness” Max had spoken of.
She was Bolshevik, and that Bolshevik never stopped what she had decided to do, so even if he suggested returning like this…
“Riina.”
“Yes?”
Einar smiled slightly and asked:
“You came out to clear your head, right?”
At this, Riina’s brow furrowed.
His words weren’t wrong.
When he had suggested going out, the qualifier “to clear my head as well” had been attached.
But in reality, wasn’t this an outing to investigate the suspicious groups disrupting the Empire?
Yet, his question now had a nuance…
“Right?”
As Einar asked again, as if confirming a kill, Riina nodded.
“Yes. It’s true that I came out to clear my head. Additionally, you mentioned you had found some clues.”
Watching Riina as she precisely articulated the current situation without falling for his suspicious nuance, Einar soon slumped his shoulders dejectedly.
“I really can’t get past you.”
At his demeanor, Riina’s brow furrowed even more.
So he was trying to say something else.
“I was planning to suggest we stop working and go have fun.”
Having confessed that he had quite blatantly tried to lead her astray, Einar appeared thoroughly deflated.
By this point, most people would have pretended to give in and suggested stopping work to go have fun together.
Even if Einar weren’t in the position of Second Prince, his appearance…
Though it shouldn’t be possible, his large ears and tail seemed visibly drooping.
But Riina smiled faintly and began walking.
“Just being away from documents is already clearing my head. And you felt it too when Max finished his story, didn’t you?”
“‘Felt’? That sounds strange, too ambiguous.”
Seeing Einar genuinely grimace, Riina burst into brief laughter.
Thanks to this, her pallid cheeks flushed slightly, and her lips began to regain their color.
“But you’re right. I felt a chill run down my spine the moment that fellow mentioned illness.”
As Einar’s brow furrowed, the smile also disappeared from Riina’s face.
“He said more than one hand’s worth of people had fallen ill.”
“Yes. And the symptoms weren’t ordinary.”
If it had been food poisoning or a cold typically contracted by people who had been in the same space, doing the same work at the same time, Max wouldn’t have bothered to mention it.
But even Max didn’t have much information, not enough to warrant Einar’s detailed questioning.
He had merely vaguely thought it was a bit strange, without feeling that this “illness” was particularly important.
‘I thought you were capable, but you’re incapable. Magician.’
As Riina looked down at him with cold eyes, Max indignantly pounded his chest.
‘Ah, I’m not a magician right now! I’m just an efficient, ordinary merchant!’
Einar placed his hand on the shoulder of the genuinely aggrieved Max and whispered:
‘Yes. Ordinary merchant, what work did those fellows make the sick people do?’
‘Why are you leaving out the “efficient” part?!’
‘Be quiet. If you want to be called capable, actually do something capable.’
At Riina’s simple but clear words, Max seemed to have much to say, but soon sighed deeply and answered:
‘What work did they make them do? I didn’t look into that, but it’s bound to be difficult, dirty, and dangerous work, isn’t it?’
Jobs that anyone could do, but no one wants to do.
Such tasks ultimately fall to the most desperate and struggling people, those busy just trying to put food in their mouths.
And such work wouldn’t be a secret.
“The fastest and most accurate way would be to go and ask directly.”
“That’s right. We can obtain the most information when they haven’t realized that we’ve sensed something strange and begun investigating.”
After carefully examining Riina, whose complexion had improved considerably, Einar nodded, and the two walked side by side.
As they passed through streets overflowing with all kinds of noise and the heat of people, Riina suddenly realized.
She wasn’t bumping into people. No, she wasn’t even brushing against them.
She knew that there wouldn’t be various minor accidents when she was with Einar.
Incidents like tripping over a stone and cutting her temple, or bumping shoulders with someone who wasn’t looking for trouble but actually dislocating her shoulder.
But not even brushing against people?
Riina looked up at Einar, who was barely visible under his deeply drawn hood, with renewed interest.
They were walking side by side.
Her stride couldn’t possibly match his.
Yet he was walking with exactly the same step length and pace as hers, without any sense of dissonance.
He must be matching his steps to hers.
It was a minor action, something anyone with manners might do.
In the past, she would have simply noted it and moved on.
But now?
She clenched her fist so tightly that her veins bulged.
If she didn’t do this, she felt she might grab his hand swaying beside her.
The next moment, a much larger hand enveloped Riina’s hand with its prominent blue veins.
Soon, Einar took her clenched fist in one hand and skillfully manipulated it.
While Riina’s eyes widened in surprise, he had somehow interlaced his fingers with hers and whispered:
“The place we’re entering now is crowded.”
There was no lie in his words.
While Riina had been distracted by him, they had entered the entrance to a back alley.
In a place as tangled as an ant colony, where anything could happen, merely following his back wouldn’t be enough to avoid losing him.
But…
Unlike before, when he would approach without hesitation or caress her cheek, since the engagement ceremony, he had been someone who would reach out to her but ultimately withdraw after a moment’s hesitation.
Moreover, this wasn’t the first time she had held his hand, so she could tell.
His hand felt colder than usual, and his thick knuckles between her fingers hesitated.
He’s… nervous.
The moment she realized this, Riina’s heart plummeted from the blue sky to the ashen earth.
The next moment, as if by magic, her heartbeat seemed to transfer to where they touched, beginning to thump in her palm.
Don’t notice.
Though she knew it was a futile wish given how completely they were connected, Riina hoped.
Hoped that this overwhelming sincerity, which inevitably overflowed despite merely holding hands, wouldn’t reach him.
As Riina wished, Einar didn’t even offer a joke.
He simply gripped her hand a little more firmly.
After walking for a while, holding hands tightly without saying anything, the two eventually reached their destination.
Max, who had been huffing indignantly after being called incapable, said:
‘Please wait a moment!’
At his words, which were even resolute, Einar and Riina glanced at each other and nodded simultaneously, and Max rushed off somewhere.
After enough time had passed to drink a cup of tea, Max returned looking somewhat more gaunt than before, but he had brought useful information in that short time.
‘Here it is. The place where people who worked for those fellows and fell ill live together.’
