Helping Histori close the thin wooden door, Amir did not hurry to leave.
She stood in the somewhat dim corridor, gently lowering her eyelids, silently staring at the faint light seeping through the crack of the door.
‘…A world where a black-haired, black-eyed human would become a common sight?’
She repeated in her mind the sentence Histori had just said.
‘Hopefully, Histori hadn’t just made that up on the spot to comfort me.’
When she spoke of her hometown, her casual, unthinking manner of blurting things out really didn’t seem like a facade.
Moreover, her description was too specific and too fragmentary, not like a pre-prepared lie.
And besides, she had no reason to deceive her in this regard.
‘So, that world must really exist?’
As she thought about it, Amir’s mood lightened a bit.
And, for some reason, she now very much wanted to see Histori’s sleeping face.
In fact, ever since the night she first met Histori, Amir had felt this way.
No matter when Histori fell asleep, no matter what happened before sleeping, once she truly entered slumber, the expression on her face would always become so serene and peaceful, like a carefree princess.
‘I’d really like to see with my own eyes the world that could raise someone like Histori.’
It was getting late.
Amir gently shook her head, setting aside the thought that had just arisen of stealing a glance at Histori’s sleeping face, then took a step toward the thick shadow at the other end of the corridor.
Her body began to slowly become lighter upon contact with the shadow, and the outlines around her gradually blurred into a mass, as if something was gently pulling her away from this world.
Bang—!
However, at that moment, a loud noise suddenly came from behind Amir without warning, as if something heavy had slammed hard onto the ground.
Amir’s step came to an abrupt halt.
She turned around, her sharp black eyes fixed on the tightly closed wooden door behind her.
It was Histori’s room.
Amir instinctively placed her hand on the greatsword at her back, but before she could make a judgment, another even louder sound came.
The wooden door was violently kicked open from the inside.
Immediately after, a figure wrapped in a gray-white cloak stumbled out of the room, not even bothering to close the door, and quickly disappeared in the direction of the staircase.
“…Histori?”
Staring at the familiar back, Amir frowned slightly.
‘Where is she going at this late hour?’
‘And her expression was so agitated. Did she suddenly notice something wrong?’
After hesitating for a few seconds in the empty corridor, Amir’s figure silently merged back into the shadow in the corner.
‘For now, I’ll follow Histori and see where she’s going.’
And so, Amir followed Histori through the shabby lobby on the first floor of the tavern, through the door gently swaying in the night breeze, and out onto the deserted streets in the early hours.
Although she was a bit hesitant in choosing the direction, her general forward direction was definitely toward the slums.
Amir thought to herself as she followed Histori unhurriedly, her body gliding silently through the shadows on both sides of the dark alley.
‘Is she… looking for me?’
‘In the middle of the night, leaving a clean and comfortable room unslept in, running back to the slums to find me for what?’
Histori’s usual way of doing things was to avoid hardship whenever possible. This completely didn’t match my understanding of her.
But Histori’s steps continued forward.
She passed through the dark alley reeking of sour rot, all the way to the foot of that tavern building. She spread her wings, and after searching for me through the skylight without success, she landed back on the ground.
‘It seems there’s no other reason.’
Histori was indeed looking for me.
Amir shook her head, just about to pretend she had just returned and pass by in front of Histori.
But in the blink of an eye, Histori ran over to a group of drunks lying on the muddy ground in front of the tavern, then crouched down and pulled a silver coin from her pocket.
Amir recognized at a glance that affected gesture of pinning the silver coin between her fingers.
‘She’s mimicking me.’
When Amir saw the drunks forming a circle around Histori, she shook her head and leaped out from the shadows…
“…Really, this idiot.”
Don’t flaunt your wealth.
In a dark alley at this hour, a seemingly helpless girl pulling out a silver coin was no different from a lamb walking into a pack of wolves.
When Amir saw the drunks forming a circle around Histori, she shook her head and leaped out from the shadows…
…
“Why are you, in the middle of the night, leaving a clean room unslept in to run back to the slums?”
‘Wh-What do I do?’
‘How should I answer?’
‘I can’t say it’s because of the Blood Contract, and I can’t say it’s because I’m afraid of the guards’ search. I should try not to lie to Amir, but I can’t tell her the whole truth either…’
‘But other than that, what else can I say?’
‘The reason for rushing out of the room that Amir spent a whole silver coin to book for me, not even lying down for a few minutes, then running all over half the Royal Capital to find her…’
Histori hesitated for nearly a dozen seconds, then took a deep breath and looked up, meeting Amir’s calm and indifferent black eyes.
She shrugged lightly, forcing a faint smile onto her face, and said ambiguously—
“Because I missed you, Lady Aimier.”
‘Right, just fudge it with this kind of teasing.’
‘After hearing such an offhand remark, Amir probably won’t dig deeper into the reason I came back.’
‘And these past several days, I really haven’t slept away from her, so it’s normal to be a bit unaccustomed…’
However, things didn’t seem to develop the way Histori imagined.
The world fell silent like this.
Occasionally, a dog bark or two came from afar, quickly swallowed by the night.
The entire street seemed to have been paused by Histori’s words.
Amir’s ears reddened at a visible speed, almost instantly burning bright red.
She suddenly averted her gaze.
“…”
‘Why did she suddenly dare not look at me?’
‘Um, Lady Aimier, I was just… saying words?’
‘Why did she suddenly look away?’
‘Wh-Why?’
‘Forget it, I’ll just explain again…’
“Histori, it’s not that I’m rejecting you.”
The clouds parted a little, and the cold moonlight spilled onto the rooftops, illuminating the faint red barely noticeable on Amir’s face.
“It’s just that, before this, no one has ever said something like that to me.”
“…Ah, is, is that so?”
“Mm.”
‘Damn it!!’
‘What’s with this inexplicable feeling of guilt!?’
‘Did I say something really weird?’
‘I was just…’
At a loss for words, Histori had to pat her forehead, then quickly pointed to the top of her head.
“I-I, we… anyway, Lady Aimier, it’s already so late, let’s hurry upstairs and rest?”