It was a pitch-black night, and Raul was on his way to his house in District 8.
He returned here and had not a moment's rest.
Meetings were scheduled all day to eradicate the pirates, and preparations for battle were immense. Although they had fought pirates before, leading an army was a different matter entirely, and there were countless factors to consider.
Raul drank a little too much at the late welcome party held today.
"...It's difficult."
Due to the intoxication, Raul suffered from a mild headache and soon became lost in thought.
In his childhood, he was driven by hatred for Marquis Calix and resentment toward his mother. However, when his mother and the Marquis he hated so much passed away one after another, Raul felt lost.
"...Shit!"
Raul spoke roughly at the needlessly weak sentiment.
Now was the time to focus on wiping out the pirate gangs that were eating away at the Urcheka Sea.
"...Ha."
As Raul let out a long sigh, he could feel a small shadow following behind him.
'He is flimsy for an assassin.'
Being unable to conceal one's presence certainly did not make one a professional assassin.
'Who would dare send such a distant fellow to me?'
Raul deliberately staggered, showing a weakness.
And the moment the moon hid behind the clouds, the assassin rushed in.
As the opponent approached him from behind, Raul pressed his body against him. Then, he subdued the assassin in an instant and snatched the dagger.
"Which rat bastard ruined the mood that had finally picked up?"
Raul grabbed both of the opponent's wrists at once with one hand and removed the assassin's mask.
However, it was so dark that it was difficult to see the face properly.
A short while later, the moon began to emerge from behind the clouds, and only then did Raul realize that the other person was a woman.
Moreover, she had definitely seen silver hair and blue eyes a long time ago. Extremely flustered, Raul frowned and opened his mouth softly.
"...You."
As the woman held by Raul struggled, her short hair, which had been carelessly cut, swayed.
"You devil! Let me go right now!"
"...Ha."
Raul had endured countless assassination attempts. It was not that there were no women among the assassins, but this was the first time he had recognized their faces like this.
'...They said she was Marion.'
The last time he saw her was probably about five years ago, and he remembered her as an ordinary girl.
"With that kind of skill, you wouldn't even be able to kill anyone; you'd be the one getting killed immediately."
"What does it matter!"
When Raul sneered, the woman snapped back roughly. Raul was dumbfounded by the reaction of someone more than ten years his junior and scoffed.
"Little kid! Don't you know I'm much more grown up than you?"
"I'm an adult too, so stop talking nonsense!"
As the woman, holding her chin high, continued to act fiercely, Raul sheathed his dagger and let out a deep sigh.
At that time, a soldier on night patrol discovered him.
"No! Aren't you Marquis Calix?"
"You're working hard late at night."
Raul, having hidden Marion behind his back, raised his hand in response to the soldier.
"Are you on your way back home now?"
"I ended up staying late because I was catching up with friends for the first time in a while."
"Shall we escort you? Some guys commit crimes against drunks sometimes."
"I won't budge even if a hundred people attack me, so don't worry."
“Take a look inside!”
“Make it hard!”
As the soldier returned to his place, Raul sighed again.
"What am I going to do about this?'
Raul, looking alternately at the dark night sky and Marion wearing thin clothes, held her hand tightly.
"Where are you taking me?"
Marion resisted in a low voice, perhaps afraid that the soldier would come again. However, without a word in response, Raul took her to Calix Manor.
"Sir, have you come?"
The butler, who received his master and a stranger in the middle of the night, looked surprised, but quickly regained his composure.
"...Ha."
Raul took his seat on the sofa near the blazing fireplace, took off his cloak, and tossed it aside. Then he ordered Marion to sit across from him.
"Butler, bring me a glass of water and go to sleep."
"Do you need anything else?"
"No."
"All right."
The butler prepared the water and then quickly left the drawing room.
Marion, sitting in the corner of the sofa, trembled and looked around cautiously.
Raul, who had been watching the scene, took a sip of water. He had sobered up long ago from being so shocked, but the sheer absurdity of it all made him let out a wry laugh.
'You're going to act like a cat with its fur standing on end, yet you're so arrogant as to try to kill me?'
Raul tossed the blanket on the sofa to Marion across from him. Marion, who had been fiddling with the corner of her ear and unable to pick it up in one go, then spoke.
"Why didn't you report me?"
Raul ran his hand across his face at Marion's question, which broke the silence.
"So you know that what you did was wrong?"
If she hadn't attacked with a rusty knife that couldn't even cut paper, and if her hands hadn't been trembling so severely, she might have been thrown in jail.
'Yeah, if it weren't for you.'
"Shall I hear the reason you tried to kill me?"
As Raul leaned back on the sofa and asked leisurely, Marion, who had been biting her nails fiercely, raised her voice.
"Because you destroyed our family!"
"...?"
"If it weren't for you, we would have lived well. Mother wouldn't have passed away like that, and I wouldn't have had to go to a distant place and suffer. And Father, too..."
Upon hearing Marion's words, Raul easily recalled the past.
The envoy who ran a usury business had so many people borrowing money from him that he couldn't even remember them all. However, he could not forget some of the worst offenders among them.
He was exactly the same kind of person as Marion's father.
'He squandered his entire fortune on gambling, and then he came back to borrow money again.'
Because of this, Raul did not lend him any more money. With the situation turning out this way, Marion's father borrowed money from elsewhere and gambled again.
'In the end, that crazy bastard sold his daughter to another company.'
However, Marion was completely unaware of this fact. At that time, Raul judged that she was too young to know the ugly truth.
'I wonder if it's time to know by now.'
It would be quite a nuisance if she came back with a rusty sword and threatened to kill him.
"...Ha."
Raul clicked his tongue, stood up, rummaged through the documents packed tightly on the bookshelf in a corner of the drawing room, and pulled one out. After tossing it toward Marion, Raul opened his mouth.
"It’s too much trouble to explain, so you read it yourself."
"..."
Marion, without averting her fierce gaze, began to read it carefully.
Marion's father was a dockworker, and her mother helped out at a restaurant.
Although her drunken father occasionally caused a commotion, Marion had a happy family.
Her ordinary life was shattered when her father mentioned someone's name.
'Raul! Even hell would reject that bastard's soul! Damn it!'
Father, who used to curse at Raul whenever he drank, smashed all the household items and eventually started beating Mother. Marion, who tried to stop him, was also beaten and suffered a serious injury.
When he woke up the next day, her father regretted what had happened the previous day and complained that it was all the fault of a man named Raul.
Marion had also heard plenty of the notoriety of a man named Raul. He was said to be a devil who practiced usury.
Then, her mother fell ill and passed away without ever receiving proper treatment.
The situation worsened, so Father and Marion had to leave their home. And after the funeral, Father stopped speaking.
Marion, who was fifteen, was enduring fear and hunger alone when she discovered a menacing-looking man loitering around the house.
Out of fear, Marion sometimes covered the windows with curtains and lived as if no one were home.
And it was around that time that she met Raul, the Emperor of District 8.
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