Chapter 41
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 41
“Young Lady, I’m coming in.”
The door opened the moment she finished speaking. I jolted upright in surprise, only to see Lady Barbara pause in the doorway.
“Would you like to sleep a little longer?”
If I said yes, I had a feeling she would take the food away, just as she had last night. She probably wouldn’t have cared if I’d wanted to sleep all day, not just the morning.
“No, that’s alright, my lady.”
I hastily pulled a coat over my clothes, my eyes fixed on the door to the room across the hall, visible behind Lady Barbara.
Clutching the coat with one hand, I drew the curtains, and the dim room was flooded with light. Sleep had eluded me when I’d desperately wanted it, but it seemed the brief moment I’d closed my eyes had stretched on for quite some time.
“You must have been terribly exhausted,” Lady Barbara said, pushing a cart toward the table as she entered.
Embarrassed by the untouched meal, I approached the table, but there was no hiding it. Lady Barbara stared quietly at last night’s dinner, left exactly as it was, before asking, “Are you feeling unwell?”
“No.”
“It seems you didn’t sleep.”
“No, I slept well.”
Lady Barbara didn’t look convinced. The intensity of her sharp, navy-blue gaze was so overwhelming that I had to look away.
“How about you rest for the day?” she suggested.
For a moment, the Outsider and the seasoned wolf sized each other up, their gazes meeting in the silent room.
In truth, Barbara very much wanted Seo-ah to stay in the manor today.
Fortunately, the backup agents all agreed that while Abel had surely had a rough time, yesterday must have been hell for the target as well. And just as they’d predicted, the Seo-ah who appeared this morning had the distinct look of someone who hadn’t slept a wink.
No matter how fun it is to see a foreign country, is she really in any state to go sightseeing?
“Surely you don’t intend to go to the market again today?”
Seo-ah sensed the unspoken question hanging in the air. A thought flashed through her mind: it would be a bad idea to say she wanted to go to the market again.
As she averted her gaze, Lady Barbara cleared the uneaten food from the night before onto her cart. Then, from the fresh, warm meal she had brought, she began setting out a few dishes that looked easy to digest.
Perhaps it would be better to rest for a day, just as Lady Barbara suggested. If this were her home, or if she were on vacation, she might have done just that. But she couldn’t afford to waste a single day.
It was a stroke of luck that she suddenly remembered Abel’s ruined clothes.
“Um, Lady Barbara.”
“?”
“Mr. Abel Sting’s clothes… where can I buy them?”
Barbara, who had been silently pouring a glass of water, set the pitcher down and turned to look at her.
“Abel’s clothes?”
For the first time, a hint of a question entered her voice, which was usually as flat and dry as a desert.
The naive Outsider and the seasoned wolf looked at each other, each hiding their own intentions, as the morning sun seeped into the room.
*
Back when he first started as an intelligence agent, Abel Sting had hoped his targets would be his type. Preferably around his age, with big breasts or a nice ass.
But his seniors had laughed at him and told him bluntly: a rich target is the best target.
Type? They said he wouldn’t even notice things like that when his life was on the line. A rich target was, by all means, the best.
At first, he didn’t get it. If your life was on the line, wouldn’t money be the last thing on your mind? Even if you died tomorrow, wasn’t it better to spend your last moments with a target who was at least a good kisser?
But as the missions piled up, Abel found himself agreeing with them.
One’s type could change at any moment. He couldn’t remember what kind of sex he’d had a year ago or how satisfying it had been, but a target’s money always left a trace.
Because it leaves behind spoils of war.
His voice was tight, caked in exhaustion.
The ridiculously expensive suit and shoes he’d acquired from a certain countess had met their end yesterday. No matter what he did, the smell wouldn’t come out, and they were so caked in mud that they were probably only good for combat gear now.
“And to think how much they were worth…”
In the pale morning light, Abel, having woken up as always, began his day with a lament, like some fool who couldn’t get over an ex.
The miserable part was that he was moving out of sheer inertia. The habit, formed over the past week, didn’t just command his body. Even as he muttered curses, he was already worrying about which market they would go to today.
Standing naked in front of the bathroom, having dodged the liquor bottles rolling on the floor, a thought occurred to him.
Wouldn’t she say she’s resting at the manor for just one day?
Right. She was human, too. Wouldn’t she be sick in bed today?
“Sir.”
She had to be, didn’t she?
“The target is at the Annex, looking for you.”
The junior agent who had come to wake him clicked his tongue softly at the sight of his senior, stark naked, burying his face in his hands. He discreetly turned his gaze out the window to the grounds below.
There stood the woman who was the talk of the manor’s agents.
Since they were a group with not a sentimental bone in their bodies, their descriptions of her were mostly clichéd. The one that earned the most nods was “cosmos flower.”
The ideal beauty in East Norfolk was a woman with honey-blonde hair and a voluptuous figure. Abel’s target was the exact opposite. Plain and simple. But perhaps because she was so foreign, that very quality drew the eye.
The agents were split into two camps.
“Better to follow that woman around all day than see blood!”
“Fuck you, you try it then.”
The latter, of course, was Abel, and the former was everyone else. The junior agent, belonging to the “everyone else” camp, moved away from the thoroughly fed-up Abel and headed for the first floor, a quiet sense of anticipation building within him. He wondered what fun the strangely captivating Outsider would bring today.
Meanwhile, Seo-ah, who had been pacing in front of the Annex entrance, shivered in the noticeably colder weather. It had been like this when they arrived at the cemetery yesterday, and she could definitely feel the drop in the morning temperature. The leaves on the trees along the path, as well as those in the manor gardens, were visibly changing color.
As she folded her cold hands together, she felt amused gazes on her from all directions. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves.
Everyone, that is, except for one person.
Seo-ah took a deep breath.
The approaching presence felt far more savage and frightening than usual.
She clutched her bag, her feet wanting to take a hesitant step back. She forced herself to stay put just as a pair of long, slender legs strode into her field of vision.
“Haaah.”
The sigh, laden with resignation and irritation, felt like a hard frost.
Watching her already pale face turn even whiter, Abel roughly scrubbed a hand over his own.
Judging by Oscar’s reaction last night, he probably wouldn’t be killed for failing to secure the target, but a penalty like demotion seemed unavoidable. And on top of that, he had to keep following her around regardless of his success or failure.
In the end, he had two choices.
Either trail after her and get demoted, or somehow sweet-talk her and get the post he wanted.
No matter how he looked at it, the latter was the better deal.
But the resolve he had desperately clung to while coming down the stairs shattered the moment he saw her. It was truly bizarre how he couldn’t get a grip on himself. Where had the Abel Sting gone who was confident he could handle any target, even a man?
From the look on her face, she had clearly been crying all night without a wink of sleep. So why the hell was she trying to go to the market at this hour? It wasn’t like he could crack open her pretty little head to see what was inside and then seamlessly glue it back together.
Abel pictured Oscar’s face and mustered every ounce of his professionalism.
I can seduce this woman. She will fall for me. I love this woman.
He had delivered enough morning greetings to his targets to fill a dictionary. For targets who loved a gentleman, a gentlemanly greeting. For those who preferred something a little cruder, a greeting perfectly suited to their taste. The right words for the target’s preference would just instinctively pop out of his mouth.
“Curious about the market again today?”
Fuck, seriously…
Abel wished he could just drop dead. The professionalism he had struggled to maintain drained away like an ebbing tide, revealing the muck of his true feelings beneath.
He thought he could hear the younger agents snickering behind him, and something inside him came crashing down.
“Are you curious about the market?”
“Um…”
“What are you so curious about that you wander around like that? Even people who live here don’t wander through the markets that way. The Central Market, fine. But Pal Pien?”
“Well…”
“The goods are all pretty much the same. Everything sold at a market is more or less the same.”
“Today…”
“It’s not like you’re buying anything. You barely even buy food these days, let alone trinkets. So what market are you planning to go to at this ungodly hour…?”
“…to go.”
Abel, who had been rapidly losing control, stopped short.
“What?”
The woman with the swollen eyes blinked, then cautiously lifted her gaze before lowering it again.
“You ruined your favorite clothes because of me,” she said. “I was thinking of buying you a new set…”
Hearing that, Abel’s eyes moved to the bag Seo-ah was holding.
The clothes she wore were high-quality, a gift from Oscar, but the bag she had bought for herself was utterly shoddy. And that wasn’t all. Following her around, he had learned that she only spent money on the barest necessities.