Chapter 67.2
The odds are high he was dragged away by force.
I looked at the director, and she nodded with a dark expression. Just as I’d expected.
“The children were so happy yesterday when they heard you and Damian were coming to visit. They even worked hard cleaning to welcome you both. But Damian arrived much later than the promised time.”
And he was alone.
At first, the director had simply thought our paths had crossed, but she said Damian’s demeanor was a little different.
“He said a problem had come up.”
“…A problem?”
She slowly nodded and continued.
“He didn’t say what the problem was exactly, but he apologized for dragging us into it.”
So while I had been waiting for Damian, he hadn’t even arrived at the orphanage yet.
“Damian said that if anyone came with demands, we should give them everything they wanted. He told us not to do anything foolish. And then, in the evening, they came.”
“…‘They’?”
“They were knights in uniform.”
My fingertips twitched. Something was pricking at my nerves.
Knights, showing up at an orphanage on the outskirts of the capital after dark.
“Were those knights, by any chance…”
“They said they were the Crown Prince’s personal knight order.”
I bit my lip. The knights who appeared here were the Crow Knights.
And their leader would have been the vice-captain, Ricardo Div.
Ricardo couldn’t have known he would run into Damian here.
He must have only learned that he was supposed to apprehend Damian upon his arrival. When I parted with Ricardo in front of the Div exhibition hall, he had looked completely clueless. He had even seemed puzzled when I mentioned Damian was running late. None of it felt like an act.
“Why did they take Damian?”
“…They said he was using this place to trade illegal goods.”
Now I understood what the villagers had been whispering about.
“There’s no way Damian would…” I muttered under my breath.
Of course, he was an inscrutable man. And sometimes his behavior was so odd I wondered if he was an alcoholic, and I had seen him with a strange-smelling cigarette…
“Could he have…?”
The more I thought about Damian, the less certain I became.
[Kyu!]
Suddenly, from inside my bag, Snowy nudged my side with his head. The small jolt brought me back to my senses.
“Did you hear something just now?” the director asked, her eyes wide as she looked around.
“Really? I didn’t hear anything.”
Damian was certainly strange, but if he was going to do something illegal, he would have done it openly. He was more than capable of doing so without using this place.
“But don’t they need proof? They can’t just take Damian away on suspicion alone…”
The director avoided my gaze. It seemed the Crows hadn’t taken Damian without evidence.
“Director?”
“…A ledger.”
“A ledger?”
“They found a ledger documenting the trade of illegal goods.”
“…You mean, they found it here?”
She pressed her lips together and slowly shook her head.
After Damian had arrived late and spoken briefly with the director, the first thing he did was search the entire orphanage, she added, as if he was looking for something.
“And he found something in one of the children’s rooms.”
“And that was…”
The ledger detailing the transactions.
“It seems one of the children was paid by someone to hold onto an item for a while. Right under our noses.”
The culprit was one of the older children at the orphanage—the very same one who had been particularly hostile to Damian during our last visit. They said they did it to earn money for when they were old enough to leave.
“Thank you for telling me, Director.”
I felt like I had a rough idea of what had happened.
Someone must have approached a child in need of money and tempted them. The child probably had no idea they were holding illegal goods.
The target was Damian from the start.
The fact that they took Damian and not the child made it clear. This was all a setup, engineered by someone to have him caught using the orphanage.
But how did they find out about the connection between Damian and this place? I couldn’t imagine Damian being that careless.
And why are they targeting Damian?
More thinking wouldn’t give me the answer. The fastest way would be to hear it from the man himself.
I had to go see Damian.
[Are you going to see Ricardo?]
The moment I left the orphanage and got into the carriage, Slinky slithered up and asked.
Since the Crow Knights had taken Damian, he would now be held in a prison under the Crown Prince’s jurisdiction.
“Even so, I can’t ask Ricardo to let me see Damian.”
Even if Ricardo had that authority, it could cause trouble for him.
[Then how will you see him?]
“I was given something to use for a time just like this…”
“Hm?”
Slinky tilted his head at my murmur. I smiled and gently tapped his head.
“There’s something you need to do. As soon as we arrive, can you get the children moving for me?”
[Okay. What should I do?]
Though his eyes were still full of questions, Slinky immediately nodded at my request.
“Find out how the rumors about Damian are spreading in the capital right now.”
I had to find out if the goal was simply to ruin Damian, or if there was another, real target.
“And…”
[Yes?]
“Slinky, can you find Ronen on your own?”
When it came to this sort of work, Ronen was the perfect fit.
There was no guarantee I could meet him today, but I had to at least check.
[Of course!] Slinky replied with a loud hiss.
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