Chapter. Rio
STEP STEP. DADADADA—!
STEP STEP. DADADADA—!
HALT!
“Ow!”
“......”
Camilla stared blankly at the child rubbing his own nose.
Today, she had come back to the orphanage run by Heman. She was here to ask him to be a little more careful with the adoption procedures.
To the puzzled Director Heman, she roughly glossed it over by saying there had been a lot of child abduction cases lately.
Up to that point, everything had gone smoothly—until she suddenly picked up a tail.
“What are you doing?”
The little kid who had been toddling along in her wake all this time looked up at Camilla and beamed.
“Hehe.”
It was the same child who had burst into tears after getting candy from Petro last time.
His name was Rio. After she had stuffed his hands full of candy in Petro’s place back then, he had been particularly attached to her.
‘Did I give him feed instead of candy?’
The way the child trailed after her looked just like a baby bird chasing after its mother for food.
Slide.
“Waaah!”
Camilla handed him one of the big lollipops she had with her.
She quietly watched as a huge grin instantly blossomed across the boy’s face. There was something strangely hard to describe about watching a child smile so brightly over a single piece of candy.
“This!”
“Hm?”
After happily hopping around with the lollipop in hand, the boy soon fished something out of his pocket and held it out to her.
“Luri taught me how.”
It was a bracelet made of thread.
“You made this?”
“Yeah!”
The bracelet, twisted out of threads the way you would braid hair, was clumsy to the extreme. Bits stuck out everywhere, the shape not uniform in the slightest.
*****
“I’ll give it to you!”
Camilla stared for a moment at the boy’s face, puffed up with pride as he held out the bracelet, then took it and fastened it around her wrist.
“How is it?”
“Pretty!”
“Of course it is. I look pretty no matter what I put on.”
As she lightly ruffled the child’s hair, a small laugh sounded nearby.
When she turned around, Arsian and Petro were standing there.
“You don’t feel even a little embarrassed saying stuff like that about yourself?”
“Why would I be embarrassed? It’s true.”
Ignoring Petro bursting out laughing and Arsian looking dumbfounded, she went right back to patting the boy’s head.
“Hehe.”
“......”
POKE.
Huh?
Camilla’s eyes widened a little as, without thinking, she poked the cheek of the boy who only smiled even more brightly under her touch.
Then POKE POKE, and she gently tugged at his cheeks as well.
SQUISH SQUISH.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to find inner peace.”
“What?”
“Now I get why kids walk around with those squishy toys in their hands.”
“What are you even talking about?”
Why are his cheeks this soft? It feels like touching a giant marshmallow.
The boy beamed again under her hand.
‘I really do hate kids.’
She hated crying, hated whining, and when they threw tantrums, it made her want to smack them.
“Hehe.”
But this little guy was strangely cute.
POKE POKE.
SQUISH SQUISH.
“Uh... huh?”
My squishy!
In that instant, the boy was suddenly hoisted into the air.
“What are you doing?”
It was Arsian. He had grabbed the boy by the back of the neck and lifted him, putting as much distance between him and Camilla as he could.
“Why are you all over a kid like that.”
“All over him? Me? Are you sure you understand what that word means?”
When did I ever get all over a kid! I just poked his cheeks a little... okay, a lot!
“......”
...Yeah, I was all over him.
“I like it when she pets me, though.”
When Rio struggled to get back to Camilla, Arsian promptly lifted him up again and pulled him away.
Watching him glare down at the child, Petro let out a disbelieving laugh.
Naturally, Arsian’s sharp gaze swung toward him.
“It’s just funny seeing a certain someone jealous of a kid now.”
“Shut up.”
“Should I give you one too?”
“What?”
“I’ll give you one!”
With a proud look on his face, the boy handed Arsian a bracelet identical to the one he’d given Camilla.
“......”
When the child pressed the bracelet into his hand with his small fingers and beamed up at him, Arsian was struck speechless for a long moment. For once, he looked completely thrown off.
Watching him, Camilla and Petro both showed faint smiles.
*****
“Huh? Isn’t that Lady Camilla over there?”
“Looks like her, yeah.”
A few male students, having spotted Camilla sitting under the shade of a tree at the edge of the garden, couldn’t just pass by and stopped in their tracks.
“Is she asleep?”
“Looks that way.”
Their eyes gleamed as they took in the sight of her leaning against the tree with her eyes closed.
“Should we go over and at least try talking to her?”
“Should we?”
These days, getting a proper conversation with her was no easy feat—her, Camilla.
It was rare to stumble across someone who dragged around as many talking points as she did, sitting around at leisure in a spot where no one else was around.
“But is it okay to wake someone up from a nap?”
“So what? My father’s been on my case to get closer to Lady Camilla anyway.”
“Mine too.”
After a brief hesitation, they started toward her.
But then, all at once, a chill washed over them, and they flinched and stopped in their tracks.
“Ugh!”
They turned their heads in confusion—then quickly swallowed hard.
Someone was staring straight at them. With a gaze as flat as it was indifferent.
But there wasn’t a single one of them who could meet those eyes properly. Because the man on the other end of that gaze was Arsian.
Without anyone needing to say a word, they all sped up their pace and fled the spot.
Only after every last one of the male students had disappeared did Arsian walk closer to where Camilla was sleeping.
“Tsk.”
Even with a person getting this close, she showed no sign of waking, and Arsian clicked his tongue lightly.
What on earth was she trusting to sleep in a place like this.
Letting out a short sigh, he sat down beside her. Keeping watch so no other flies could come buzzing around.
“...Huh?”
He didn’t know how much time passed like that before Camilla finally opened her eyes.
“Arsian?”
Her eyes rounded when she saw him sitting next to her. There had been no one there when she’d fallen asleep; when had he arrived?
“You can really sleep anywhere, can’t you.”
“I’ve always been able to sleep anywhere.”
Try living a long time as a busy celebrity. Anywhere you can rest your head becomes a bed, a warm, blanket-covered place to sleep.
Camilla twisted and stretched her body this way and that, shaking off the last of her drowsiness.
‘My body’s stiff. I must’ve slept for quite a while. How long was I out?’
She’d only meant to rest for a bit under the cool shade of the tree, but it seemed she’d fallen asleep too deeply.
“I’m thirsty.”
Had she sweated in her sleep? Her throat felt a little dry.
“...? Where are you going?”
As Arsian rose to his feet, Camilla hurriedly grabbed him.
“You said you were thirsty.”
“Huh?”
“I’ll go buy a drink or something. Wait here.”
She blinked blankly for a moment, then a smile curled at the corner of her lips.
“It’s fine.”
Catching his arm again, Camilla gently shook her head.
“You don’t even like juice.”
“......”
At her words, a faint smile formed at Arsian’s lips as well, memories of the fake calmly handing him fruit juice not long ago rising up.
“Camilla.”
Just as they were enjoying this brief bit of calm, she spotted Laila in the distance. Laila must have seen them too, because she trudged over in their direction.
“Something wrong?”
But when she came closer, Laila’s expression was anything but good. Her eyes were a little red as well, as if something had happened.
“Well, it’s...”
At Camilla’s question, tears welled up in Laila’s eyes.
“It’s Rio...”
“Rio?”
“That kid, why?”
At the mention of Rio—a boy she had seen just a few days ago—Camilla’s expression subtly hardened.
Arsian’s interest was piqued as well. Had something happened to the child?
“The club president just got word a little while ago. He was adopted yesterday morning.”
“What?”
“It’s a good thing, but it was so sudden...”
As she said, it was an incredibly sudden piece of news. Of course, it wasn’t like adoptions happened on a fixed schedule, so she knew something like this could happen.
‘I know that, but...’
The moment she heard that it was Rio, though, her chest grew strangely heavy.
“It is a good thing...right?”
Watching Laila struggle to swallow back her tears, Camilla silently nodded.
A child from an orphanage meeting new parents and forming a family was, without question, a good thing.
Sticking around the orphanage until you were grown, like she had back in her old life, was far more suffocating than people might think.
‘It won’t be that, right?’
It was obviously something to congratulate, but she couldn’t stop the wave of anxiety.
It hadn’t been that long since she’d personally seen what had happened to Water Ghost Beth’s son after he’d been adopted out of an orphanage.
But Camilla soon gave a small shake of her head.
She had already warned Director Heman when she visited the orphanage last time. Asked him to be more thorough in checking the identities of anyone who wanted to adopt.
“This.”
Just as she was barely holding that mounting anxiety down, Laila carefully held out a crumpled piece of paper.
“What’s this?”
“Rio said to give it to you.”
There was a very short line written on the paper.
Camilla! See you again!
The letters were crooked and messy, scrawled so clumsily they were hard to read.
“......”
A kid who couldn’t even write his own name yet—that kind of child had written her name out, one letter at a time, and sent her a note.
SPRING.
“Camilla?”
After staring at that short sentence for a long time, Camilla suddenly shot to her feet.
“Where are you going?”
“Home.”
Use this time to find the kid! Instead of sitting here stewing in anxiety, she would track down the people who had taken him and see for herself if they were really decent people.
“Why home all of a sudden? Classes aren’t even over yet...”
Leaving a bewildered Laila behind, Camilla all but ran off.
*****
“What?”
“We can’t find the child’s whereabouts.”
Why was it that bad hunches never missed.
The moment she heard about Rio’s adoption, Camilla went straight to Butler Rube—no, to the head of BLACK SHADOW—and asked him. To find out where that boy, Rio, had been taken.
Under normal circumstances, he would have peppered her with questions about what was going on, but when Rube saw how stiff her face was, he went straight to tracking Rio’s movements.
And in just a day, he finished investigating the people who had adopted Rio and brought back a report.
“They were using fake identities. When we went to the address they gave, someone else was living there.”
To begin with, outside of checking IDs stamped with the seal of the empire, there wasn’t really any way to verify someone’s identity.
If they’d gone so far as to forge imperial IDs, then no matter how meticulous Director Heman was in checking, there would have been nothing he could do.
“Then Rio is...”
“We’re still following the trail of the people who took the child, so please wait a little longer. The director remembers their faces, so we should be able to find them soon.”
We’re mobilizing all the eyes BLACK SHADOW has spread across the empire, after all.
But not a word of Rube’s was any comfort. People who had taken a child with a clear purpose wouldn’t be moving around in any way that «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» drew attention.
“The Duke is also very invested in this.”
“I know.”
When he heard that a child close to Camilla had disappeared, the Duke of Sorpel had stepped in himself. On top of BLACK SHADOW, the full strength of the ducal house was being poured into finding the child’s trail.
“So please get some rest. It seems you didn’t sleep at all last night.”
Rube was right; she hadn’t slept a wink.
Even someone like her, who could sleep anywhere and under any circumstances, couldn’t rest easy right now.
KNOCK KNOCK.
“Miss.”
Just then, the door opened and Dorman stepped inside.
What is that tactless idiot grinning about?
“What is it?”
“Lord Arsian is here.”
