By Zephyria The T-shirt and pants in the third drawer fit Leonardo perfectly, as if they had been measured. The material seemed to be cotton, but it felt soft and the fit was moderately loose, making it good for activity.
However, Leonardo’s mind, who had changed his clothes, was full of Nero’s Artifact, so the thoughtfulness of the person who had prepared the clothes was beyond redemption. Only after thoroughly examining the room for surveillance sensors did he look towards the door and take a seat on the sofa.
It was to prepare for someone suddenly coming in.
“That stupid, crazy bastard. How could you leave this behind—.”
While cursing the careless Nero with a grim expression, his hand sent Magic Power into the Artifact. The red demon mark, recognizing another owner, savagely opened its mouth and opened the Subspace. Leonardo turned the Artifact upside down and began to pull out the contents.
Agrizendro said he hadn’t seen the contents, but it was dangerous to believe those words as they were. He was afraid that something that could infer Nero’s identity would spill out. At that moment, a heavy silver ring fell onto the messy junk.
The blood drained from Leonardo’s face.
“What is this.”
There was no need to examine it, the engraving ‘NERO’ was clearly visible on the inside of the ring. He was going crazy as to why he had put this here.
If someone else had opened it, wouldn’t the game be over from the start?
“What if this was discovered, ha—.”
Leonardo, whose complexion had turned pale, grabbed the unwelcome token of Dark Silver as if hiding it.
He bit his lip, wondering what to do with this idiot. Then, a note fell onto the back of his hand belatedly.
“……?”
The note was sealed with what looked like a fingerprint in red ink or blood. Even though that guy was sloppy, he wasn’t the type to put something like this in for no reason. Leonardo picked up the suspicious note and hurriedly unfolded it.
It was written in a hurry, or rather, burned. Blackened marks rippled on the paper.
Don’t worry
Leonardo’s eyelashes fluttered for a moment.
As soon as he scanned the bottom, two simple lines followed.
Take your medicine
Meet in front of Ian
The short note ended there. He looked at the back just in case, but unfortunately, it was empty.
Leonardo, looking at the front again, stared at the letters with a blank expression. As if he had foreseen this situation, the Nero of the past was comforting him. He didn’t write down what he shouldn’t worry about, but he seemed to know his heart to some extent as if they were communicating telepathically.
“…Tch.”
Thanks to that, about half of the anxiety that had been creeping up until just now disappeared. And he was convinced. This Artifact was intentionally left behind by Nero.
‘Then, is it true that Agrizendro didn’t see it?’
He seemed to have left it in a hurry before leaving, but he wouldn’t have deliberately left his own belongings with a clumsy lock on them.
He was often an idiot, but he was quite wise in moments of crisis. Just like when he saved him twice from falling and knew when to leave.
So, he must have left this behind with some calculation… He was a pro at making people’s hearts flutter, then and now. Shouldn’t he think about his position of receiving a comrade’s Artifact from the Legion Commander of the Council?
“You’re doing unnecessary things.”
Leonardo twisted his lips, uttering words he didn’t mean. Even so, he kept touching the cold surface of the ring with his fingertips.
He was worried that the Legion Commander might be suspicious, but seeing the traces of his comrade that he hadn’t expected, the overwhelming feeling came first.
He thought he had almost sorted out his longing for him, but when he faced it on a day like this, he just wanted to see him more. Leonardo unconsciously buried his lips on the back of his hand holding the ring. The ring emitted a warm energy as if responding to it.
‘By the way, he told me to take medicine?’
As he mulled over the contents of the note with a complicated heart and scanned the table, a flat iron case with a red cross was seen among the junk. As if possessed, he reached out and opened the lid, and the scent of dry grass spread gently. Those ‘medicines’ that Nero had written down were rolled up in strips and neatly arranged.
It was similar to what he had forced him to eat in the Peninsula before. They were all valuable, precious medicinal herbs. Of course, he quickly closed the lid because he felt nauseous, but even so, the scent of his concern lingered for a long time.
“…….”
Leonardo looked down at the lid of the iron case with an increasingly bitter expression. Then he turned his eyes back to the last phrase of the note.
Ian
Soon, he put strength into his finger and pressed down on the rough handwriting. A main voice leaked out from between his moving lips.
“That bastard, he’s talking informally to his hyung.”
The words were not polite at all, but they were full of affection. The eyes between the wrinkled eyes were clearly happy.
Leonardo read the scorched sentences several times, and when he felt that they were engraved in his head, he completely burned the note.
Jun/28/999
It rained, so I pitched the tent early. B’s seat is the innermost.
It’s a cold war, so it’s hard to talk. We even ate dinner separately. Went into the tent.
~
B is smoking, A is telling him to come back. He says he’s uneasy because he listens so well? Sound of walking outside.
Both are outside.
A smokes a lot these days.
B will reduce personal actions. A, that’s not what I mean
The last part of the sparsely written memo was cut off as if there was something urgent.
Hugo knew better than anyone what would be said after this. It was none other than what he had said.
The faint voice coming from the speaker connected to the recorder vividly recreated the situation once again.
—You seem to be smoking a lot these days.
—I’ll reduce my personal actions if you need me to.
—That’s not what I mean, Leonardo.
Chijijik—
As he listened to the voice, which was sparsely covered by the sound of rain, the air in the room became noticeably colder. The recorder emitted a noise as if the fabric was rubbing, as if it had been stuffed into a pocket. The sound that followed was muffled as if it had been buried somewhere, but it was heard from very close.
—Um, excuse me.
—What?
—Ah…. When I fell into the lake and lost consciousness…….
As if he had been waiting to say thank you for saving him. Kenneth had completely deceived himself and Leonardo.
He was monitoring, recording, and taking notes of every move. And the main focus of the record was on his and Leonardo’s conversations.
Hugo turned to Kenneth with a fearsome expression. He was still kneeling, head bowed low, his shoulders heaving as if sobbing. Cold blue eyes stared intently at the figure. His hands alternated between pressing the buttons on a large printer and a recorder, both taken from the Artifact, no bigger than the palm of his hand.
Each time the recording was played, voices from various moments flowed from the speaker. Hugo kept pressing the button, wondering if it might contain the period when Leonardo and Kenneth had gone missing together. But whether it hadn’t been recorded or had been deliberately erased, no situation presumed to be from that time was played.
He flipped through the stack of papers several times, but the memos also conspicuously lacked that period.
Before long, the recorded audio ended completely, and the printer fell silent along with it.
Silence returned to the Legion Commander’s office. Only Kenneth’s occasional sniffling could be heard.
Hugo clasped his hands together, lowered his head, and asked in a stern voice.
“Who ordered you to do it?”
As the chilling cold wave washed over him, Kenneth, his face stained with tears, flinched and raised his head.
He blinked his reddened eyes and barely moved his lips. As the hesitation grew longer, Hugo asked again, his voice sounding like he was suppressing his anger.
“I’m asking who it was.”
“I, well…”
Kenneth, startled by the Legion Commander’s forceful voice, hiccuped and placed his hand on the carpet.
“You might not believe me, but—”
He fidgeted as if to grab the hem of his pants, then sat back on his knees in a proper posture.
“I, I really don’t know…”
He gripped his pants with trembling hands and opened his mouth with difficulty. Hugo’s eyebrows shot up sharply at the anticlimactic answer.
He rubbed his forehead, realizing it was no use, and stood up. At that moment, the already chilly temperature of the room turned icy in an instant, and Kenneth reflexively looked up, flinching.
Soon, his trembling breath stopped. It was as if he was seeing the inside story of the rumors right before his eyes.
“Are you trying to play mind games with me?”
Kajard of the Council, this man really could kill someone with just the light in his eyes. Feeling as if his skin was being cut, Kenneth waved his hands and explained.
“No, absolutely not! It’s not that… I really don’t know, that’s why I came. I came to ask for the Commander’s help.”
“Help?”
“Yes, I know I’ve committed a crime worthy of death. But… Blaine is innocent, so I thought I should tell you, for Blaine’s sake, and for my family’s sake.”
How desperate he was, Kenneth, who had been stuttering all along, didn’t falter this time. Hugo, who had been looking down at him with a look of disgust, narrowed his eyes, sensing something strange at the word ‘family.’
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t really know who ordered me to do this. Really. The people who came to my house hid their faces… and I received the order to monitor Blaine in writing, not by meeting them face-to-face or hearing it directly. But I’ll tell you everything, everything I know. Just promise me one thing. That the fact that I revealed this will remain a secret—”
“Wait.”
Hugo raised his hand in front of Kenneth, who was spitting out words like a machine gun as if he was about to run out of breath. Kenneth, who had been babbling in a frantic manner, stopped, closing his mouth.
Hugo looked down at the dense memos for a moment, then turned his head again and asked.
“You were told to monitor Leonardo?”
“Yes?”
“Not me or the 1st royal guard?”
Kenneth widened his tear-reddened eyes, shedding tears like raindrops, and answered in a dazed manner.
“Ah… yes. Blaine… no, to be exact, I was told to monitor everything related to Blaine…”
“……”
Hugo’s mind went blank for a moment.
‘Leonardo? Why?’
The circumstances didn’t add up.
If Kenneth Weaver was a spy from the 3rd royal guard sent by Meterion, he should be monitoring his or the 1st royal guard’s movements. That way, the illegal mining team could move in and out of the peninsula without being detected, and Meterion himself could act accordingly.
But the goal was everything related to Leonardo?
He had been wondering why he occupied such a large part of all the recorded audio and memos. But he was a key force, and the main person he talked to was him. So he thought he was caught up in the process of recording every little detail…
Hugo realized that he had only been looking at things from a fragmented perspective. The realization then turned into an unknown anxiety, and he went back to the very first memo he had seen.
As if he had known about Leonardo’s smoking habits for a long time, the sentence that had bothered him strangely. If he applied the purpose of Leonardo to it, the question was neatly resolved.
Hugo gripped the paper tightly and stepped back, sitting back down on the sofa.
His blue eyes wandered in the air for a moment.
“When did you join the 1st royal guard?”