By Zephyria In this slum where illegal extensions were stacked layer upon layer, the existence of a baby was by no means common.
The common belief that the poorer the population, the more limited the access to doctors and the concept of raising children, leading to a surge in birth rates, did not hold true here. It was not an environment suitable for raising a baby, and they would quickly die from malnutrition or disease. Or they would suddenly disappear at some point before that.
According to their partner Andrew’s information network, people here tended to leave for other places the moment they decided to raise a baby. It was an understandable choice, as they couldn’t take care of a child in the lights of the entertainment district. On the other hand, there were also cases where parents directly sold their children to black market dealers.
There were those who abandoned their humanity simply because they wanted money, but because so many lives with no future flowed in, they sent their children away, hoping that they would be adopted by wealthy families.
Of course, no one knew what would become of those babies. It would be fortunate if they wandered around orphanages.
Regardless of the harsh reality of Libertas, Judy really liked babies.
“There’s a baby living here too, that’s amazing. I guess there are a lot of people in the residential area, so they give birth and raise babies.”
“……”
“But does it not have a mother? What if it’s home alone? It might get kidnapped….”
Leonardo speculated that he didn’t know exactly why she liked babies, but perhaps it was because she was projecting her own childhood or because she thought of them as beings she could never have. Judy was once a lively girl who wanted to build a small, cute family like his. She was skilled at distinguishing medicinal herbs and had a great ambition to learn medicine in earnest because she was interested in their uses. Until she chose to take a self-made medicine that made it difficult for life to take root in her body.
Fortunately, the baby soon stopped crying, as if someone had soothed it. Judy seemed relieved, but she didn’t come down from the railing for a while. She continued to peer through the scattering steam, searching for the presence of the infant that might be somewhere.
In addition, Leonardo’s gaze lingered for a longer time on her calves, which were revealed under the pulled-up dress.
Her skin was already full of scratches because she was clumsy. In between, there were scars that she had tried to erase but couldn’t, remaining clearly. The traces of punishment that crossed her slender calves, which could be grasped with one hand, and the flesh that had repeatedly burst and healed, were unevenly and unnaturally swollen.
Even more severe scars and brands hidden by tattoos would be revealed on her thighs, which were as slender as her calves. The shape of the brand resembled eyes that would never close, containing the intention of monitoring those who were secretly oppressed by a certain family. The reason for branding the legs was obvious. A slave trying to escape would never be able to cut off their legs.
Leonardo knew that pattern very well. Whenever Judy encountered the eyes of the brand, she would almost have a seizure, scratching and digging at her own flesh with her fingernails.
After covering it with black ink, the symptoms subsided, but it seemed that she had not covered the scars left in her heart. Leonardo, who had a particularly deep connection with Judy compared to the other partners, had to watch her suffer from time to time.
“Judy.”
“Yeah?”
Judy, her eyes wide at the quiet call, turned around.
She was unusually short, and her arms and legs were so thin that she resembled a fragile little animal. No one would ever guess that this chick-like girl, who looked like she would break if you touched her, was older than him, had been sold as a maidservant after wandering around the slave market, and had unwillingly conceived a child due to all kinds of violence and abuse.
Nor would they guess that she had mixed chemicals used to remove stains from laundry into alcohol to kill her master’s family, and then, horrified by what she had done, tried to kill herself by drinking the same alcohol.
The truth of what happened that day belonged solely to Leonardo and Judy. Leonardo remembered the moment when he, as a young child who was the first to witness the scene, became an accomplice by dragging out the woman who was trembling like an aspen tree.
The woman, whose eyes were festering from crying so much, had stepped barefoot on the snowy road and said to him:
“Don’t you want to make a family? You said you wanted to live happily cultivating a vegetable garden in the yard.”
“…Huh?”
“The moment we go to Zodiac together, that dream will never come true. Is that okay with you?”
At Leonardo’s sudden question, Judy’s eyelids blinked rapidly. It was a story she had forgotten for so long that a shadow briefly crossed her cheerful eyes.
Gold Eyes waited for her answer with a calm gaze. He didn’t even know what answer he was hoping for.
Then Judy’s eyes went down to Leonardo’s hand, which was holding onto her skirt.
She stared at the stubborn force that had led her out of the gates of hell and into the world. She gazed at the intervention of God, who had pulled the thread of her life taut and made her set foot on the ground.
Judy’s expression went blank for a moment. Her mind suddenly became complicated. Then she met Leonardo’s eyes again. Soon, a bright smile appeared on her lips. As if nothing had happened, the darkness was quickly hidden.
Judy said.
“My dream is you. I’ll do anything if it can help Leo. My life has been Leo’s since that day.”
Unlike her cheerful voice, it was a very sincere confession.
Leonardo’s lips moved. He couldn’t answer easily.
Another person’s life was so heavy. It was so overwhelming and suffocating that it pressed down on his whole body. That’s why he couldn’t rashly abandon it. No matter what kind of relationship he would have with the leader of the Imperial Faction in the future, he could not stop or dare to give up what he was trying to do now.
Leonardo stared at Judy’s face for a moment, then gave her what he thought was the gentlest smile.
He let go of her swaying skirt, stood up, wrapped his arms around her waist, and pulled her back. Her two feet, barely off the ground, flailed under her long skirt. Then, they brushed against the edge of the railing and touched the safe floor.
“Then come down now. You can’t even fly, yet you’re not afraid.”
“I can’t fly, but I’m not stupid enough to misstep! …Ah!”
Judy, belatedly reminded of the laundry, hurriedly ran to the basket.
“Ugh, I have to hang it up quickly so it doesn’t smell!”
She grabbed the handle and dragged it near the railing, hanging the clothes one by one on the remaining space on the line. Leonardo grabbed the rope that was hanging on the floor a little longer and jumped over to the roof of the building across the street. Then, he tied the end firmly to another corner of the rebar.
The height of the rope became much higher, and Judy groaned, but she was used to it, so she jumped up and down and hung it up well.
Leonardo chuckled and stared at her, lost in thought. It must not have been a coincidence that the voice of the owner of the general store, who had become a star in the sky, brushed past his ears.
‘I already have so many lives to take care of, but my own life is in someone else’s hands.’
He rubbed his dry lips and naturally looked up at the sky. He muttered to himself.
“How much did you see, old man?”
“Huh?”
Judy, who was working diligently, reacted to the small whisper and turned around. Leonardo was about to shake his head as if it was nothing, but suddenly stopped and opened his mouth.
“Judy, we have that… contact network that relays internal news from the Council, right? Has anything been coming in from there recently?”
“Council news?”
Unlike the incorruptible Legion Commander, there were quite a variety of human types within the Council. As is the case everywhere, some of them made profits by selling small pieces of information about the organization to the outside. Of course, high-level information was hard to obtain, and even contacting a position that held that level of information was dangerous.
So it was hard to get very helpful news. However, it was reasonably helpful in checking recent issues or the direction of investigations they were focusing on.
Leonardo and his partners had been collecting information on the Council’s movements in this way for quite some time. And since Leonardo was released, they had been continuously buying information for a large sum of money, but rather, from around that time, they could barely get trivial information such as who was dating who in the organization.
Judy, who had been searching her memory for a moment, replied in a calm tone.
“There probably won’t be anything special. The security has become stricter since then. We’ve agreed to be careful among ourselves, too.”
Leonardo thought that this was the result of Legion Commander Agrizendro’s influence. He probably took internal measures to prevent information or rumors about ‘Leonardo Blaine’ from leaking out. Because of that, he mostly only received news about the explosion incident through official Council press releases, and he did not know the detailed process of how it was concluded as an ‘accident’.
“Hmm, I guess so.”
Furthermore, there was no way he could identify the subordinate who had wronged him. But it was a good choice not to hear the truth about the incident directly from His Excellency.
He had to personally confirm that there was no information coming in on his side so that even if one of his subordinates suddenly died, he would not suspect him.