When the Serial Killer Next Door Gained Harem System

Chapter 135: First Her Daughter, and Now Her

Since our window faced the back, I left the room at once and stepped into the corridor, then leaned out through the nearest window to see what was going on. A guard was standing in the rain outside, one hand holding the reins of a horse while the other kept a torch raised at shoulder height. The light from the flame cut through the drizzle in short, wavering streaks, and the man’s posture made it clear he was not here for anything casual.

Shit. That looked serious.

I headed back into the room and sat down while reaching for my boots.

"What is it?" Ken asked.

"I don’t know," I said, pulling my school uniform straight and getting my boots on. "We’ll see."

Maybe the Queen had finally decided I had outlived my usefulness and ordered someone to hang me. That thought crossed my mind for a second, but if that had been the case, they would have come up to the room, dragged me out, and handled it directly. This felt different. Important, maybe.

I hurried out of the dormitory and made my way downstairs. Outside, two boys were standing watch near our side of the street, one of them sitting on a bench with a book in his hands while the other looked half asleep on the bench beside him. The girls’ side was the same, with two girls standing guard near their dormitory. The circular street was empty apart from the four of them and the guard waiting for me.

"What’s the problem?" I asked as I walked toward him.

"Hop up," the guard said. "We’re leaving."

I stopped beside the horse. "Leaving for where?"

"Meida."

I frowned and looked at the animal, then at the saddle, and immediately realized I had no idea how to get on properly. I tried once, then again, and failed both times. The guard let out an annoyed grunt, reached out an arm, and I grabbed it so he could pull me up behind him. Once I was seated, he steered the horse out of the circular street and onto the empty roads of Bildirweight, and that only made me wonder harder what the hell was going on.

"Who got killed?" I asked.

"Hatche," he said. "Jelda’s mother."

"Oh..." I muttered, my stomach sinking. "Fuck."

"Yeah. And it’s bad."

I went still for a moment. Hatche was dead too? Fuck. So that bastard had not stopped at Jelda. If Cadence’d gone after her mother as well, then he really was unhinged. I was too late. Maybe if I’d moved faster, she would still have been at home grieving instead of ending up like this. But why now? I’d already gotten information from her, so what changed? Maybe he assumed I wouldn’t survive the Circle and decided to cover his tracks while he still could. That would mean he’d gone after the one person who knew enough to connect him to Jelda, the same man who had tried to marry a twelve-year-old girl while he was already in his twenties.

"Is Sora there?"

"Captain Sora to you," the guard corrected, the torch in his hand flickering in the rain. "And yes, she’s at the scene. She specifically requested you."

"Do we know how she was killed? Or when?"

"Still investigating," he said. "Gods. Poor woman. Poor family."

"Any witnesses?"

"I don’t know. I was sent to get you as quickly as possible."

The horse turned the corner, its hooves clopping against the wet road as we moved deeper into the district. I looked up at the dark sky and let out a slow breath.

"This is going to be a very long night..."

ꨄ︎ꨄ︎ꨄ︎

The horse made the last turn, and Hatche’s house finally came into view. Guards were posted at both entrances of the street, and a small crowd had already gathered in front of them, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever was happening inside. It looked like Meida had been hit somewhere out of sight, because the street outside the house was still clean and quiet, almost annoyingly normal compared to the scene inside.

The guard stopped the horse and climbed down first. I swung my body awkwardly to the side and got off after him, nearly losing my balance before a nearby wall caught me. I straightened up, dusted myself off, and followed him forward.

"Come."

"Yes, sir."

We moved through the crowd and passed the rest they had set up without much trouble. After turning left, I stepped through the open doorway and immediately understood what he had meant. The whole thing was bad.

Hatche was lying on the floor, pale as death, her eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling. Captain Sora was already beside her body, one hand resting against her chin as she studied the scene, clearly trying to piece together what had happened. She did not know about the third suspect the way Ken and I did, so this probably looked like some random murder to her for now.

She looked up when I came in.

"Ace."

"Captain," I muttered back.

She nodded toward the body. "Look at this. First her daughter, and now her."

"Hmm."

I walked closer and crouched beside Hatche. She was wearing cheap, ragged clothes, and there were dried bloodstains in her hair and across her shirt. When I took her hand and looked closer at her fingernails, I saw that several of them had broken during the struggle, which told me she had fought back as hard as she could. Whoever killed her, she did not go down quietly.

I let her hand fall back to the floor and studied the wound on her throat. It had been sliced open, but not deep enough to look like an execution. It was the kind of cut that bled badly and kept bleeding, which meant she had likely died from blood loss rather than the wound itself. The dark stain pooling beneath her made that pretty obvious too.

"She fought," I said. "Then she got her throat cut and collapsed here."

A guard came in through the doorway and spoke up. "Captain, I talked to a few witnesses. No one saw anything."

"Gods." Sora shook her head. "All right."

"Anything stolen?" I asked while looking back at her.

"No," she said. "Nothing worth taking, really. She wasn’t doing well financially."

"Hmm."