Sunset.
Moya slowly flapped her wings back to the mansion from the royal capital and dove straight into her velvet bed.
‘I still can’t figure out how Aide knew she could work while sleepwalking.’
‘At most, I’ve only let a few hints slip, but those were nowhere near enough to prove I have this ability.’
‘And for that matter, does Aide really know I have it?’
Aide’s words clung to Moya’s mind like bone-gnawing maggots.
The entire conversation earlier had been strange from the start.
Moya could be certain that Aide’s initial question was definitely asked with a probing intent.
And it was an unabashedly obvious probe.
But right after Moya chose to lie in order to slack off and shirk work, Aide casually dropped the issue and didn’t press further.
What’s more, just as Moya had casually brushed off Aide’s question about herself, Aide had also casually brushed off an explanation for why he asked that question in the first place.
It was as if he wanted her to see through his evasion.
Why was that?
Completely baffled, Moya got up from the bed, walked into the bathroom, and used a hot shower to restore her composure, letting the warm water wash over her fair skin and flush away all the fatigue accumulated today.
‘If Aide only wanted me to participate actively in finding the circus, he could have just directly proposed the final condition—making this the second of the five jobs—instead of asking me out of the blue whether I’m good at dreams, which only exposed how much he knows about me, a superfluous detail.’
After her shower, Moya wrapped herself in a towel and sipped her milkshake in small bites, but her mind couldn’t stop thinking about Aide’s question.
‘I feel like I’m trapped in a maze of Aide’s construction—the more I think, the more lost I get.’
‘Forget it. When in doubt, sleep it off. That’s my style.’
Having no leads even after finishing her milkshake, Moya shook her head, collapsed onto the bed, and prepared to sleep, ready to start a new round of work.
But Aide’s face and his question still kept popping into her mind.
‘Annoying. My OCD is about to kick in.’
‘This feeling of having a secret spied on without being able to confirm how much the other person knows about it is especially unpleasant.’
‘If Aide really does know about my sleepwalking, then social suicide is social suicide—at least if I’m dead, I can still try for a comeback.’
‘But with this development, I don’t even know if I’ve embarrassed myself or not. It’s basically a suspended death sentence.’
‘No, I need to find a chance to probe his background properly.’
Just before drifting off to sleep, Moya let out a long sigh, completely unaware that she had spent the entire night thinking about Aide’s question.
‘How many of my secrets does he know?’
…
On the other side, in the royal guesthouse, Aide was organizing his work report for the day.
As a Hero commissioned by the royal family, Aide was required to report to the king regularly.
Although, given his status as the son of a prominent noble from a foreign country, the king of the capital wasn’t too strict with him—
As long as the commission results were guaranteed, paperwork was usually overlooked.
But Aide didn’t intend to skip the paperwork.
‘Speaking of which, how will Miss Moya react to my probing?’
While writing, Aide couldn’t help but direct his attention to the grand mansion in the suburbs of the capital.
Moya wasn’t entirely wrong—Aide had his own reasons for asking that question.
But the motive was hardly complicated; it was actually quite simple.
He just wanted to make Moya think more about him.
Getting Moya, that lazy worm, to move was hard enough;
Getting her to take an interest in others was even harder.
A little trick should ensure she stays interested in him.
Tapping his index finger lightly on the desk, Aide continued to ponder the wording he would use when meeting the king tomorrow morning.
Tomorrow’s meeting with the king wasn’t just about reporting on this commission.
Based on Moya’s information and his own analysis, Aide believed there was more than one person behind the “body swap” incident.
According to the statements from the Fake Lord and the Qigai Nühai, both had completed their body swaps at a huge circus ground.
However, neither could name the circus, and it was their first time there—also in a dream, where they had seen other staff besides the Cloaked Figure.
In other words, although the body swap was carried out by the Cloaked Figure in one of the circus tents, the rest of the staff at the circus ground were also suspicious.
Aide didn’t think that he and Moya would just stand around while other staff members watched when they chased the Cloaked Figure.
Optimistically speaking, maybe the Cloaked Figure had little to do with this dream circus—he might just be a criminal who snuck in.
After all, the Qigai Nühai and the Fake Lord had seen many attractions and only ran into trouble when they met the Cloaked Figure.
But unfortunately, things rarely go the optimistic way.
From the worst perspective, the entire dream circus was a den of thieves.
If he and Moya finally tracked down the Cloaked Figure, they might face resistance from everyone in the circus.
Even if it came to that, given their combined strength, they’d probably still manage to handle it.
But the process would be much more troublesome—like an increase in the number of fights and the uncertainty of the Cloaked Figure escaping.
Every single one of those outcomes was something Moya would hate most.
Aide could imagine how reluctant and annoyed Moya’s expression would be if it really came down to the two of them having to wipe out the entire circus.
So to avoid that, Aide decided to make a small request when he reported to the king tomorrow.
‘Better to have more backup plans—it never hurts to be prepared.’
……
Late at night, specks of holy light drifted out from Moya’s sleeping body, coalescing once more into a pure form made of holy light energy.
Opening her eyes, it was the image of Moya that Aide was most familiar with in the dream—small in stature, yet exuding a gentle, loving maternal aura.
After tucking her sleeping body under the blankets, Moya took a deep breath and connected her consciousness to the divine power network of the Church of the Holy Light.
She hadn’t finished her daily routine of listening to the prayers of the faithful.
But Moya wasn’t in a rush to finish her routine.
During the daytime investigation, she had deeply felt the impact of the body-swap incident on its victims.
Even though in reality she was a slacker, right now she wasn’t.
‘Some matters are urgent, others trivial. Handle the urgent first, then the trivial.’
The top priority was clearly investigating the circus; listening to the faithful’s prayers came second.
Moya understood that if she didn’t finish listening to the prayers today, this month’s perfect attendance target would be out of reach, and she would no longer be the top-performing guardian angel among all guardians.
Most importantly, she would lose this month’s performance bonus and allowance, which would only worsen her already debt-ridden financial situation.
But saving people came first.
Even if she would cry her eyes out when she woke up.
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