Click. The well-maintained door handle turned smoothly.

The eerie corridor that stretched out before her had never been so welcome a sight.

Just as Irena took a hasty step forward.

A warm heat spread across her back. A large, hot hand carefully pushed her out.

“Think only of me for the rest of today. That is the price of the information.”

She stiffly turned her head, and sky-blue eyes caught her gaze and held it.

“You……”

Before she could get even a word out, he softly curved his eyes. The sky-blue pupils, half-shadowed by the mask, were strangely transparent.

“Take care, darling.”

Thud.

The fluorescent cabbage-green door closed right in front of her face. The swaying wind chime rang out, clear and bright, as if to taunt her.

The safe distance that had never once closed in four years. Irena had believed that was entirely the result of her own caution.

* * *

The entire walk out of ‘that place’ and down Street 52, Irena paid the price of the information in full. Just as he had said, her mind was filled entirely with the proprietor’s voice.

‘Sara Johnson. That is certain. That was the name of the kitchen maid suspected of putting Haibick into the Crown Prince’s teacup. But…… she is dead?’

Since it was information that came from the proprietor’s mouth, it would be true.

Was he not the empire’s foremost information broker, who even knew the news of a fiancé who had not yet held an engagement ceremony returning after four years.

‘Haibick is a poison that has been fashionable among nobles recently. The proprietor mentioned he distributes it in small quantities as well. ‘Small quantities.”

Irena herself had once asked him to obtain the raw materials for Haibick. It was to use as an ingredient in the ‘death-feigning medicine.’

She had expected him to pull it out of storage right away, but the proprietor had spoken in vague, trailing words.

<This is one thing you are better off not touching, for the sake of your own sanity.>

That had been strange. Nobles’ hobbies always smelled of money. And wherever money was to be smelled, had he not always been there.

<Dirty money, torn money, filth-stained money, all fine by me, darling. But gold-stamped money is not something to covet.>

<Why? It is still money, and with gold on top of it, is that not even better?>

<That kind of money is a little vulgar. Swallow it wrong and you will choke.>

He remembered the chill in the proprietor’s eyes when he said that. At the time, she had simply thought he must have been badly swindled by some noble lord.

‘Can Sara Johnson’s death truly be an accident?’

In this day and age, what business did people have dying like this.

No matter how much war reigned beyond the borders and dangerous pleasures dominated the empire’s interior, murder was a different matter entirely.

Just imagining the uproar if word got out that the culprit behind the attempted assassination of the Crown Prince had died without even a proper trial was enough to give her a headache.

‘Both the duke and the Crown Prince’s aide said it was the doing of Empress Consort Siera. And in a tone that made it seem entirely obvious. As though who was behind it did not matter, which means……’

Was there anything the proprietor did that was not dangerous. On the contrary, he was a dangerous man who seemed to enjoy the precariousness of walking a tightrope.

If even someone like him would not touch it without a second glance.

‘……War?’

Irena shook her head. It was a word ill-suited to this era of peace.

‘Having gone through some rather serious things lately, both my body and mind have been worn to the bone.’

In any case, the proprietor had warned her. That a storm of blood was coming to the imperial family, and she should keep herself out of it. This was truly the kind of information one ought to pay for.

So that must be why he said it without taking payment. Their pharmaceutical business together had been quite profitable for him, after all.

‘I feel unsettled, as though I have received a favor for nothing.’

It was just as she rounded the third corner that it happened.

“……”

Step. Step.

Heavy footsteps followed at a fixed distance.

‘……What is this?’

Irena slowed her pace ever so slightly. The tail slowed by exactly the same amount.

‘Are you serious!’

The moment she noticed, Irena’s heart stopped. But fearing the one following her might realize she had noticed, she put strength back into her steps.

Irena felt for the rachichi box tucked deep inside her bag. At the same time, she spread a map of the capital in her mind.

Just ahead was an alley. The moment she turned that corner, Irena bolted like a deer.

“Ugh!”

Her upper body lurched forward.

‘I knew this would happen. I knew today would be a wretched day!’

She should not have accepted free information from that cabbage worm. When bad luck comes, it really comes!

Irena threw a quick glance over her shoulder.

‘It is real!’

A man with a menacing face was chasing after Irena. He was one of the men she had seen at the severed sheep’s head tavern, the one whose face she had thought particularly unpleasant.

“Ugh! Hah.”

Having confirmed it was real, she began to run out of breath.

‘If I am caught, they will take the rachichi. I might even die.’

It had not been the first or second time she had been in danger before. Thanks to that, her feet had grown lighter and her wariness had doubled with each passing day. And if there was one more thing to add.

“Hiyah!!”

It was shamelessness.

Irena toppled a neatly stacked pile of wooden crates and leaped over them. The movement, like a sprite of the wind, was light and utterly reckless.

With a crashing sound, a cloud of dust rose up. She burst through it, trailing the clinging dust behind her, and ran again.

It bought her some time, but it was not enough to shake off a trained man.

“Huh, hh, hah……”

Just as her breath reached the very top of her throat, the final alley finally came into view.

‘Just there, just around that corner……!’

Just a little more, just a tiny bit more……

‘For a while, I am not going anywhere. I am going to lie in bed and do nothing, absolutely, emphatically nothing!’

She tasted iron at the back of her throat. Her entire body was sending signals that it could not run any further.

“Hah, hah……!”

Beads of sweat gathered on her forehead and trickled down her temples. At the moment Irena finally threw herself toward the clear destination ahead.

Thud.

“Ugh!”

“……”

It went bright before her eyes as though a flare had gone off, and then sounds began to grow distant.

“No, no!”

The sensation of floating in midair was disorienting. Irena had crashed headfirst into what seemed to be a wall and bounced back like a spring.

“Hh, ugh!”

She had been running just moments ago, yet for some reason her palms stung.

Information that her mind had not yet processed all at once drifted through her head.

Had it been this bright? Was it sunlight? Or was it starlight spinning round and round?

Unable to gauge her swaying vision, a large hand gripped Irena’s forearm.

“Huh?”

An enormous force pulled her in.

The vision that had been bright as fireworks going off before her eyes went dark in an instant, as though she had stepped into a cave.

“Hah, hah……!”

Irena gasped for breath and tried to assess the situation. Her fear-seized hands instinctively pushed away whatever they touched.

“Ah, hh, let go of this. This……!”

But mixed into the breath she had hastily drawn in was a familiar scent.

The scent of wood dried thoroughly in the sun. A distinctive body scent she had smelled somewhere before.

The moment a red flash passed through Irena’s mind.

“Stay still.”

A low voice settled from above her head. Goosebumps rose along Irena’s arm. At the same time, a relief she could not attach a reason to washed over her.

‘Why is this man here of all places.’

She inhaled briefly and exhaled at length. It was a scent she knew with certainty.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

A heartbeat of unknown ownership struck at her ear.

It felt as though Irena’s body swayed with the rhythm. She could not tell whether she was trembling or simply catching her breath.

One thing that was certain was that when the heartbeat had been heard approximately forty-six times, another presence was added.

‘They came……!’

Beneath the man’s robe, rough leather boots paced.

They were the cheap, durable, but easily dirtied boots favored by mercenaries. They were also what Irena had seen most frequently at ‘that place’ over the past four years.

“Hh……!”

Irena swallowed her breath, suppressing the sound. It felt as though she must not even let her breathing be heard.

“……”

She pressed further inward. The man’s arm wrapped around her back stiffened briefly, then pulled her in even more firmly.

Into Irena’s tensed ears, the man’s low warning settled.

“Coming any closer than that would not be a wise choice.”

“……”

“You must think I am the sort of person who enjoys repeating himself.”

“……”

A murderous intent that seemed to pierce every inch of the body filled the alley to the brim.

‘Ugh, it stings.’

Irena could see nothing, but for that very reason, every sense except sight had grown all the more acute.

Time seemed to have stopped. It had surely been only a few seconds, yet to Irena it felt like an eternity, and after what felt like ages, the man moved.