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The weather had begun to look more and more threatening. The people passing through the streets no longer took account of their surroundings, trying their all to finish their errands hastily. The crowded gate was as chaotic as it could be due to the weather and eventually, it led to the situation where the carriage couldn’t move a single inch forward.

“Hey, how long are you going to be this slow!”

One of the short-tempered attendants stuck their face out of the window and shouted angrily at the coachman who bowed repeatedly with a fragile demeanor.

“… I’m extremely sorry. There’s too much traffic that I’m not finding a way to move, Sir… if we take the back lane… It would be quicker……”
“Tsk,” that attendant clicked their tongue and asked Revan, “What should we do?”
“It doesn’t seem like the situation here will calm down anytime soon. We can’t be any more late. 一Take the back lane route.”

When Revan instructed the coachmen through the window,

“Yes, sir. It’s just, the roads are a bit bad so the carriage might shake a bit. Please hold on tightly.” The coachman replied so.

He must have been keeping an eye on the crowd from the beginning as he immediately turned the carriage to 90° as soon as the flow of the crowd broke momentarily and drove the carriage into a narrow alley.

“Ooops……”

The rattan basket which ‘Teeny-weeny Hiyuki’ was carrying all along and had been placed beside her feet slipped onto the carriage floor due to the sudden jolt.

Flustered, Hiyuki quickly stretched out her hand to grab the handle without considering her current size and as result, was thrown off balance by the weight and rolled onto the carriage’s floor together with the basket.

“一There.”

Revan promptly lifted the ‘Teeny-weeny Hiyuki’ alongside the basket with both his hands onto his knees. As he did so, a sweet smell tickled his nose. It was the smell of Teeny-weeny Hiyuki’s perfume since the sweet odor she usually had was missing for it was a doll.

“Oh, thanks. I almost tripped myself there.”

Hiyuki smiled innocently.

Revan found the doll’s smile overlapping with the real Hiyuki’s smile, causing his heart to beat an octave louder for some reason.

He felt a strange sense of guilt over this and faked his usual attitude and asked.

“I-It’s fine, it wasn’t anything troublesome. Anyway, what’s this thing you’re carrying?”

The alleys were smaller than the main street and just as the coachman had said, the carriage was shaking due to unpaved roads.

Revan, who eventually ended up carrying the doll Hiyuki in his arms to keep her from tumbling in this shaking carriage, inquired about the basket while feeling embarrassed from the lukewarm gaze people around him were giving him.

“This? This is a pet I have been raising recently, Lil’ Shin.”

A light brown animal showed his face outside when doll Hiyuki opened the basket’s lid from one side while explaining.

“…Is this some sort of sarcasm?”

Revan, the young chief of the lion tribe, looked at the animal, or a young male lion cub to be more precise, with a deadpan expression.

“No, don’t overthink things. You see, this kid is quite intelligent. Lil’ Shin, raise your hand.”

The lion cub first quizzically stared at Doll Hiyuki’s held-out hand that was shaped like a maple leaf. He then opened his mouth wide, and bit onto it, trying to chew on it, but realizing it was not edible, he spat it out.

“…Amazing, he’s so dumb.”
“No-No, that’s actually the wonderful thing about Lil’ Shin, his ability to play it by ear around me immediately! This is his brilliance that others can’t hope to catch!”

‘Maybe, isn’t it because he’s just plain stupid?’ Or such was everyone’s thoughts inside the carriage but they knew better than to say it out loud.

And just at that moment, their carriage suddenly came to halt, throwing away the entourage from their seats and causing them to bump into each other or the seat in front of them as they groaned in pain.

Revan, too, was about to be thrown off balance due to inertia but somehow managed to save himself, a doll, and an animal in his arm from following the same fate by tightly sticking out his legs.

“What the hell are you doing!!”

The same attendant who had yelled at the coachman a while ago scowled in pain and once again stuck his face out of the window to shout at him.

“I’m extremely sorry, a merchant has suddenly appeared in the middle of the road. Oi, get out of the way!”

The coachman yelled.

“…A merchant, you say?”

Reacting to that word, Hiyuki’s urgency-filled voice resounded from Revan’s arm.

“That merchant, is that a man with black hair and narrow eyes?”
“Huh? Ahh, yes……”

Hiyuki’s eyes widened to their limit when the attendant who had stuck his face out of the window answered.

“Run away! Immediately leave the carriage and escape or you will die!!”

The attendants were seized by confusion at Hiyuki’s desperate voice that echoed inside the carriage and looked at each other’s faces.

“I’m sorry, I don’t get what you mean…”

Revan asked back, representing his entourage who were unable to keep up with the situation. Hiyuki replied with an expression tinged with urgency and despair.

“…Late. It’s already… too late.”

But before Revan could ask any more questions to Hiyuki who was biting on her lip, someone knocked on the door and then opened it.

“It’s a dark time, my friends~. Today’s such unpleasant weather, it has even begun to rain, yo.”

Saying that, the young boy in merchant’s attire peeked inside the carriage in such a friendly way as if he was visiting his close friends while sweeping the raindrops off his body.

He should be a human, however, that young boy had such a strange presence that an encounter or talk will hardly leave any mark on their memory. He glanced at everyone who was shocked by his sudden intrusion and lightly tipped his hat.

“Please excuse me for intruding without permission. Today, my business happened to be with you guys so I have to visit.”
“Who the hell are you…?”
“…Kagerou.”

The young man’s squinted eyes slightly widened when he saw «Teeny-Weeny Hiyuki» that Revan was holding in his arms.

“Perchance, is it you, Young Miss? What’s with that awfully cu一 I mean, you’re always the cutest but are you perhaps trying a makeover?”
“…Is he your acquaintance?”
“He’s the assassin I had talked about before.”
“““Wha一!?”””

Kagerou nodded, beaming, at the face of everyone’s anger.

“How do you do? My main business is usually being a merchant who sings, dances, and paints but I also work as an assassin on the sideline. I’m on my side business today so this may be a fleeting meeting but still, nice to meetcha.”

一Shudder!

Feeling the instinctual fear, Revan immediately bashed his back against the opposite door, breaking it apart while carrying Hiyuki (and the lion cub), and jumped out of the carriage.

He saw the coachman collapse at the muddy road in the corner of his vision just as he jumped out and right at that moment, rustling and breaking sound echoed from inside the carriage… Needless to say, everyone inside must have suffered the same fate as a spray of blood blossomed for a moment amidst the rain.

“Watch out for his thread and needle.”

He didn’t even get the time to scream when Hiyuki’s warning rang out. He squinted his eyes to focus and narrowly managed to see several things like diagonal lines in the air coming at him.

“一Kuh.”

The wall of a private house was cleanly cut apart and crumbled down behind him just as he managed to dodge the attack in the nick of time.

“My lady, please don’t expose my skills too much. Or wait, the rain seemed to be my bane~. It’s making the threads easy to see.”

Kagerou grumbled while freely deploying threads far thinner than hair.

Steel wires could be seen floating and forming an arc shape for a moment when the raindrops were sliced in the air as if forming a circle around Kagerou. But even so, that too was visible only for a faint moment. It was because the person was Revan that he could somehow react to them, such was the lethality of Kagerou’s attack.

“Oh well, the needles aren’t standing out amidst the raindrop on the brighter side.”
“…Kuh.”

As if reacting to his words, Revan pulled a bunch of needles that had pierced his left shoulder. His body became hot and he even felt numbness running in his body. The needles must have been smeared with poison.

“!! Hey! Don’t worry about us, hurry up and escape.”
“Wishful thinking~ and you’re slow~.”

By the time they noticed, Kagerou was just right before Revan. He was holding a dagger in his left hand and pointed the tip straight at Revan’s heart.

“If I…… have to… esc… cape…….”

However, just before Kagerou could swing the dagger一

“Shinya!”

Hiyuki shouted. The lion cub 一as if responding to her shout一 roared, and at the same time released a rainbow-colored light.

“W, what is it?”

Kagerou immediately distanced himself from the scene with multiple backsteps and protected his eyes. The vivid light soon vanished, but not before taking Revan who had been crouching there just a moment ago with it. He had disappeared from the place alongside Doll Hiyuki and the lion cub like a puff of smoke.

“Teleportation stone? No, only players can use them… I don’t know what exactly happened but it must be the work of Young Miss.”

Then he sighed as he stared at the tip of the bloodstained dagger.

“I did feel the response of giving a grave injury and he’s poisoned too but it’s hard to tell if he’s dead or alive without a corpse. Oh man, I sure am going to get an earful for this.”

◆◇◆◇

The place appeared to be woods, or probably a small forest.

Revan, who was lying in the thicket there, opened his eyes hazily while feeling the rough sensation and tepid liquid different from rain on his cheek as if someone was licking him.

He saw the lion cub Hiyuki called ‘Lil’ Shin’ sitting in front of him.

“…are we… saved?”

He tried to get up but he couldn’t move, maybe poison was affecting him.

“…I guess I can’t say we’re saved yet.”

After mumbling that, he suddenly remembered the ‘Teeny-Weeny Hiyuki’ in his arms.

“Your Majesty… do you know… What happe…ned after that……”

However, ‘Teeny-Weeny Hiyuki’ didn’t move, just like the doll it was. Revan sighed after confirming no response even as he waited for a while and rocked it.

“No one huh…… all alone and deserted…”

Maybe because the thread of tension was cut off, his eyelids suddenly became heavy.

The lion cub roared hurriedly as if telling him to not close his eyes but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t keep them open and just before they were about to be closed, he felt like a light was shining on him for a moment.