They descended from the roof and decided to leave the area for now. On their way out, Rock grabbed Krister’s ledger from his apartment. She thought it might still have some clue to his whereabouts.
“I feel sort of guilty looking at someone else’s ledger, though.”
“Kinda late for that, isn’t it?” Phoebe laughed, then glared at the door he’d broken down. “We should probably seal this place up.” He turned to Rock and Ebel next. “Go on home first. I’ll take care of things here.”
“Will you be all right alone, Phoebe?”
Phoebe even laughed at Rock’s concern. “Who do you think you’re talking to? Besides, we have to return this guy,” he said, holding up the extinguished lantern. The streetlight still stood as just a post without any light behind the hovel.
“You don’t mind if we leave it to you?” Ebel asked.
“Not at all,” Phoebe snorted. “Make sure you safely escort my daughter back home too, Your Excellency.”
“You needn’t worry about that. Her safety is guaranteed with me.”
No sooner did Rock see Ebel stand up tall and confident than he pulled her close again. He launched himself off the ground with her in his arms faster than she could react. They landed softly on top of the roof.
“Ready to head back, Rock?”
“What? B-By rooftop?!” Rock cried out despite herself.
Ebel didn’t seem to mind as he answered mid-run. “It’s safer than by ground.”
“That may be true, but— UWAAAAAAAAAH!” Rock’s protests melted into screams that were swallowed by the night wind.
Ebel bounded under the night sky with frightening agility with her tucked under one arm.
A single cold drop hit Rock’s cheek as she listened to the roaring night breeze while being carried. Startled, she lifted her head and saw gray clouds hanging in the sky. Meanwhile, drop after drop of rain pelted her face.
“Ebel, it seems to be raining!”
He noticed it without her telling him. He slowed down and looked up at the sky.
“There’s still some distance to your place, but…I wonder if it will get much stronger than this.”
They temporarily dropped down from the roof and took shelter in the shadow of a nearby building.
Rain was rare in the imperial capital. There was little rainfall throughout the year, and ladies exclusively used umbrellas as parasols.
The rain poured down on the slums, making quiet noise after its long absence.
“I hope Phoebe’s all right…” Rock’s thoughts went straight to her father and then to the hovel. “The bloodstains will be washed away, won’t they?”
Ebel cast down his eyes, understanding what that meant.
“In the end, we might’ve been the only ones to have discovered it.”
“That’s likely… We have to do whatever we can to find Krister.”
I want to find him for Nisha’s sake, not his own.
Rock was completely on Nisha’s side. The reason for that didn’t need explaining.
She stole a glance at the man standing beside her. Ebel was looking up at the sky from under the eaves, trying to get a feel for when the rain would let up. Raindrops glistened on his burnt sienna hair, some of the locks sticking to his handsome face. His melancholy expression brightened when he noticed Rock’s gaze.
“Doesn’t look like it’ll let up any time soon. Care to put your trust in me?”
“What do you mean?”
“I shall carry you to your rooms without letting a drop touch you.”
No sooner did he finish speaking than he scooped Rock up without warning again. This time he held her sideways in front of his chest with both arms. When he looked down at her, Rock was flustered by how he was carrying her and how close his face was.
“U-Um, you needn’t go this far for me!”
“Your father instructed me to safely escort you home.”
“But this is embarrassing…”
“You mustn’t move. Please hold on to my neck.”
At his request, Rock timidly wrapped both arms around his neck.
“Perfect.”
He flashed her a blinding smile.
Then he rushed out from under the eaves and leaped onto the rain-soaked rooftop. Leaning forward, he sheltered Rock from the rain as he ran.
As the one being protected, Rock was tormented by feelings of guilt and embarrassment. Even so, she never took her eyes off of Ebel’s determined face as he raced through the downpour.
♚♚♚
EBEL was soaked to the bone by the time they’d arrived at Rock’s apartment. And yet he succeeded in protecting Rock up to her doorstep, where he gently lowered her to the ground.
“See? I brought you home without getting you wet.”
He winked triumphantly as water dripped from his burnt sienna hair. Rock pulled out her handkerchief and wiped away the droplets on her tippy-toes.
“You’re soaked, though… You’ll catch a cold like this.”
“This is nothing.” Ebel roughly raked back his dripping locks. “I’m content as long as you are safe. Now then, I shall excuse myself for the evening.”
He smiled once to placate her, then turned to leave.
“Please wait!” Rock hastily called him to a halt. “Let me grab something to dry you with!”
Ebel turned back around with a wry smile. “I’m thrilled by your concern, but I’ll have to go right back out into the rain. I doubt drying off first will make things much better for me.”
The rain was still pelting the makeshift roofs of the slums. Clouds still blanketed the night sky and seemed unlikely to clear any time soon.
“But…”
Rock gazed up at Ebel standing in front of her.
Not only did his hair change color from having absorbed water, but so did his clothes. Droplet after droplet dripped down in streaks on his face as he stared back into Rock’s eyes.
Meanwhile, only Rock’s sleeves were a little wet thanks to him covering her. Krister’s ledger was dry as well.
She knew Ebel only did it because he wanted to, but she just couldn’t forgive herself if she sent him home without thanking him.
So she worked up the courage to say, “In that case, I’ll brew you a pot of hot tea.” Despite realizing how desperate she was coming across, she quickly added, “Why don’t you warm up before you leave? I’ll prepare it real fast.”
Ebel seemed torn on how to answer her. His golden eyes drifted away for a moment before returning to her with a troubled smile.
“I don’t know how to put this, Roxy…”
“What is it?”
“You may be dressed as a man, but you don’t seem to understand a man’s heart.”
Rock blinked. She didn’t expect him to say that of all things.
“I don’t?”
“You don’t.”
“I wonder about that… I guess the only heart I can say I know for sure is my own.”
Rock enjoyed dressing and living as a man but wasn’t confident she was pulling it off right. On the other hand, she did succeed at acting the part of a weak and fragile man.
“I would’ve happily accepted your offer the other day, but your father entrusted your safety with me tonight. If I come inside, this escort will stop being safe.”
He didn’t come right out and say it, but Rock knew what he was getting at. She still persisted despite the heat rising to her cheeks.
“Oh, come on, it’s just tea.” After Rock said that, she suddenly realized how much that sounded like a different kind of invitation and panicked. “I-It’s not like I’m trying to keep you here— ah, I guess I am keeping you, but…um…I really don’t mean anything weird by this. I j-just want to do something for you…”
The more excuses she made, the more she mumbled and tripped over her words.
Ebel watched her with a faint smile. He chuckled softly after a moment and then said, “I can’t very well turn you down when you put it like that. Would you l
ike me to come in for a bit?”
“Just for a bit…?”
“Yes, a very short bit. I only want you to let me into your room while we are still talking.”
Rock unlocked the door and invited Ebel inside. The water droplets falling off him quickly formed a puddle on the floor, and he apologetically looked at his feet.
“Sorry, I got your floor dirty.”
“Don’t worry. I can just wipe it up later,” Rock laughed it off.
“Your clothes will probably get wet. Please change after I leave.”
“Wha…?”
Ebel caught Rock in his arms faster than she could ask him what he meant. Embraced by his drenched chest, Rock’s clothes began to absorb some of the rainwater. The water gradually sank in and spread like an infection. Even so, she felt Ebel’s warmth through her cold clothes, leaving her more comfortable than not.
“I kind of feel like I pushed you into this,” Rock bashfully whispered into his chest. Ebel rubbed gentle, soothing circles into her back.
“You can ask this of me anytime.”
“Thank you.”
Rock closed her eyes, wrapped up in pure bliss. At the same time, the anxiety she never realized she had nestling in her chest disappeared. Apparently, sympathizing with Nisha had bred unnecessary unease within her.
“I kept thinking about what I’d do…if you disappeared,” she confessed in a breathless whisper. “I never want that to happen, so please don’t go anywhere.”
“I would never go anywhere without you,” Ebel declared without hesitation. “Besides, all hell would break loose if I vanished, even if I didn’t want it to.”
Unlike the people of the slums, Ebel was a bona fide citizen of the imperial capital and a count at that. Someone would notice if he suddenly went missing, and a search would be conducted right away, especially when he had servants like Johanna and Ludovicus who’d immediately report his absence.
“I’m more worried about you.”
“I’ll be fine. I have Phoebe.”
“You do, but…we still don’t know a thing about Krister’s case,” Ebel said, rubbing his cheek against Rock’s. “Please don’t disappear on me, Roxy.”
He hugged her tightly, as if she were his most precious and irreplaceable treasure.
Rock relished every moment of their embrace.
She mustn’t keep him too long, which was why she silently enjoyed the time they had.
Through their wet clothes, she felt every aspect of the body she’d measured that day. And she also caught a whiff of his smell. It was the faint, pleasant scent of soap on human skin rather than the doglike smell of his werewolf form.
Now that she thought about it, Phoebe had scrunched up his nose and asked her if she’d brought home a stray the day after Ebel had first visited her shop. It was kind of strange to think the werewolf curse even changed a person’s scent, but it was a little late to be surprised by that when it already changed their physique and mass.
As Rock was becoming better acquainted with his human scent, she suddenly remembered the sweet fragrance hanging thick in Krister’s apartment. She couldn’t shake the feeling she was intimately familiar with the fragrant wood smell.
She’d smelled that same scent while being embraced, just as she was right now.
“My mother smelled like that fragrant wood incense once,” Rock said as the memory came to her.
The smell had come from her mother’s apron pocket when they’d hugged. That was the same day a thief had broken into her mother’s shop and stolen all her proceeds. No one could find the thief in the sparsely populated mountain village, and that’s when Rock’s mother comforted her with these words:
“Don’t worry about the money. We’ll manage.”
“Mother had the incense on her…” Rock furrowed her brow as the memory grew clearer.
“If I’m not mistaken, your mother was also a tailor, right? Did she like incense?”
“No. She just had it on her. I never saw her burn it.”
Expensive incense wasn’t the kind of thing a poor mountain tailor would freely carry on them. But why she had it made more sense after Rock learned about her mother’s family history.
How did Vale Floria feel when she traded her treasured incense for money?
“My father says Mother was the daughter of a low-ranking imperial nobleman,” Rock confided in Ebel, lifting her head to look into his eyes. He was naturally taken by surprise and gasped.
“Really?”
“Yes… Although it seems like she fled home and had nothing to do with her family after that.”
But when she thought back on it now, there were various things throughout her childhood that attested to her mother’s noble upbringing.
“What was your mother’s maiden name?”
“Valencia Alexis…or so Father says.”
Ebel’s expression changed as soon as she shared that information. He released her from his embrace and placed his hands on her shoulders. Then he peered down at her face and grimly asked, “Who else knows this?”
“I’m the only one Father told,” Rock replied, feeling overwhelmed. “And you’re the only one I’ve told, Ebel.”
“…Then I suggest you don’t tell another soul,” Ebel instructed her in an unusually hard voice.
“I haven’t had any direct contact with the Alexis family, but I’ve heard the rumors. It seems the youngest sister left the family, and the parents died one after another right after. The remaining sister lost the will to protect the family name and was forced to take a husband to who she entrusted headship. But then they were unable to have any children and are currently looking into adopting an heir, but are hesitant to pass on the title to someone who isn’t at least distantly related.”
Rock struggled to wrap her head around the flood of information he presented her.
Seeing her expression, Ebel kindly simplified the issue. “All that is to say they might seek you out as an heir if news of your relationship gets out.”
“They’d want me?!”
Rock was stunned.
An even more unbelievable reality had just been added to the already surreal story of her mother’s family.
But there’s no way some fancy nobles would want a tailor from the slums as their heir…
“But Father said Mother no longer has any connection to her family…”
“That probably has more to do with what your parents wanted.”
Ebel was the picture of calm after he got over his initial shock. He staidly advised Rock.
“We don’t know if the Alexis family feels the same. Keep your connection a secret if you don’t want to get roped into anything.”
Rock never planned on sharing this secret from the start. Phoebe likely divulged the information to his daughter with that intention too, and Rock had only told Ebel because she trusted him fully.
While she was curious about her mother’s past, she didn’t want anything to do with it. There was no reason for her to deliberately go after what her mother had tossed aside.
“I won’t tell anyone else,” Rock vowed as she stared into his golden eyes. Ebel’s features finally softened and he nodded.
“That’s for the best. I’ll keep your secret too.”
“I trust you.”
“I’m honored, Roxy.”
His eyes lingered on her face, studying her in earnest as his still wet hair stuck to his cheeks.
“…I must admit, you remain a mystery to me,” he whispered in a velvety voice. “You dress as a man, yet you aren’t one. I met you in the slums, but you have noble blood running through you. It’s been quite a while since we first met, and it seems I’ll need much more time to learn about you.”
“I don’t have any other secrets…probably,” Rock said bashfully.
“Probably, eh?” Ebel grinned. “I’d love the opportunity to uncover everything there is to know about you.”
“Everything?” Rock repeated, catching on to the double meaning j
ust as his lips pressed against hers.
“I won’t take a thing from you,” he vowed after their fleeting kiss. “I’ve decided to only receive what you give.”
“What are you talking about, Ebel…?”
“I want to share our future together.” Ebel didn’t give Rock a second to process his sudden proposal. “I’d love to introduce you to my father in the near future. Well, I’d like to bring you to his grave, to be precise…” He intertwined his fingers with hers and whispered almost pleadingly into her ear. “Won’t you consider it, Roxy?”
♚♚♚
ROCK stripped out of her wet clothes after Ebel left. She felt like his warmth was leaving her too as she slipped her arms through clean sleeves. But staying wet would only lead to a cold, so she changed despite the loneliness it brought.
His proposal lingered in her thoughts.
“Share our future together, huh…?”
Rock was delighted he felt that way about her, and she wanted the same thing. But she felt insecure. Not because of Ebel, but because of the things she didn’t know about her mother’s family.
I want to decide my future for myself. And I have to keep my lineage a secret to do that.
Rock firmly made up her mind to keep her secret that way for good.
♚Chapter 3: The Hunter and the Hunted
THE rain stopped overnight in the imperial capital. But it lasted long enough to wash off the missing person posters posted around the slums.
The same held true of the poster Rock had put out in front of her shop. She saw it on the ground when she came to work the next morning and rehung it after laying it out in the sun to dry. The drawing of Krister’s face had become too blurred to make out, and the letters were just barely legible.
Missing: Krister Gionet
28-year-old male
Slender, silver hair, charcoal-black eyes
His whereabouts remained a mystery.
Meanwhile, Rock’s life had changed slightly. She moved into Phoebe’s apartment the day after they’d visited Krister’s hovel.
“I just think things are getting dangerous.”
Phoebe seemed even more worried about his daughter after searching Krister’s house. As it was, they’d already discussed moving in together. They just didn’t have the time to look for a new place after the chaos caused by the whole Krister ordeal.
The Werewolf Count and the Trickster Tailor, Volume 2 Page 6