Chapter 9

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Translated by Sylph

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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The girl collapsed to the ground from a single swing of the man’s hand.

Her white cheek swelled up in an instant.

“You thieving bitch! Where did you hide my wallet! Hand it over right now!”

The man was shouting as if he were about to start kicking her.

“You can’t……!”

Without realizing it, Tie shook off the grandmother’s hand, ran over, and wedged herself between the two of them.

The grandmother had told her to stay right by her side, but her feet moved on their own.

Tie looked up at the man with a frightened face, fidgeting.

“You can’t hit people……?”

Over the girl’s figure overlapped the lady from unit 203, who used to buy her ice cream sometimes.

The day after there was shouting upstairs, the lady from unit 203 was always in pain.

And Tie vaguely understood why the lady was in pain.

“Hitting people is bad!”

At the sight of Tie on the verge of tears, the man’s face turned vicious.

“What the hell is this damned brat now?”

“S-stop already!”

“Yeah. Just go away already! She said she didn’t steal it!”

At that moment the merchants who had been watching stepped in.

Passersby also started joining one by one.

The man’s eyebrows twitched menacingly.

“Do you people know who I-!”

At that moment, one person who had appeared blocked Tie from the front.

Tie looked up in surprise at the back in front of her eyes.

It was the owner grandmother.

“Young man.”

The grandmother looked at the man steadily and warned him in a low voice.

“Think carefully. The back alleys behind the checkpoint office are where people with nothing left to lose gather and live, aren’t they?”

“What?”

“I’m saying that whether you’re a noble or rich, it’s of no use here.”

“……”

“Aren’t you afraid of dark roads at night and deserted alleys?”

At the somehow chilling voice, the man flinched.

Only then did he hesitate and look around him.

Merchants and passersby alike were all looking at him with cold expressions.

“K-khm!”

The man gave a forced cough and eventually stepped back falteringly.

Then, as if fleeing, he disappeared into the crowd.

The grandmother slowly turned around and said to the girl who was sitting collapsed on the ground,

“Room at the end of the second floor. Right?”

Tie’s eyes went round.

“You haven’t been coming in for a few days, it seems. What on earth have you been doing out here?”

Tie had not known it, but it seemed the girl was a guest at the inn just like Tie and Basto.

But the girl only replied coldly.

“Mind your own business, old woman.”

“What rotten manners. Do you know what your face looks like right now when you say that?”

The girl flinched, then got up from where she was.

She headed to a general store a few steps away.

Then, after seeing one side of her cheek red and swollen in the mirror, she spat out a curse.

“Ha, damn it……”

Tie swallowed.

Beside her, she could hear the grandmother let out a sigh.

The grandmother clicked her tongue while looking at the girl, then said,

“Come along for now.”

* * *

Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

On the first floor, where only the sound of the clock filled the space.

Tie sat in a chair and fidgeted with her fingers.

She had not wanted to, but her attention kept going toward the girl sitting in the chair next to her, next to her.

‘I think that unni doesn’t like talking.’

For quite a while now, the girl had been keeping silent.

She had not even said one word of greeting when the owner grandfather went out in the grandmother’s place to shop.

And that was not all.

‘He totally glared at Mister Basto.’

The girl had even looked at Basto as he left the inn a little earlier as if he found him contemptible somehow.

She had even muttered, “Why does a person look like such a beast.”

“End room! Put this on for now.”

At that moment the grandmother appeared from the kitchen.

In her hand she held some strange thing, a clean cloth thickly smeared with something green.

The girl’s face crumpled.

“Forget it, okay? Who asked for something like th……”

“Should I just slam it right into your face!”

But at the grandmother’s shout that followed, even the girl closed her mouth.

Tie glanced sidelong at the girl grumbling as she held the cloth to her cheek.

Then the grandmother looked at Tie.

“Child, let’s feed you first. If I let you go hungry, I don’t know what that fellow Basto will say to me.”

Basto had gone back to the checkpoint office to find a way to restore his identification number.

“If you wait just a little, I’ll make astonishingly good carrot soup……”

“N-no!”

The moment she answered without realizing it, Tie’s eyes grew big.

“Tie already had a lot of carrot soup? In the forest……”

The grandmother’s eyes went round, then she nodded as if granting a favor.

“Fine. Then let’s do spinach soup.”

“Spinach is……!”

Tie’s face quickly went blank in despair after she shouted.

Because without even listening to the answer, the grandmother had already disappeared into the kitchen like the wind.

“Pfft.”

At that moment, obvious snickering came from beside her.

When she turned her head, the girl, holding one hand in her pocket and resting her head crookedly on top of it, was looking at Tie.

“Serves you right. Idiot, don’t be picky and just eat what you’re given. You’re no bigger than a bean and you’re already being picky.”

A huge shock spread across Tie’s expression.

She had been thinking it since earlier, but this girl really, really……

“S-so mean.”

The girl’s eyebrow twitched, but Tie clenched her fists tightly and added,

“If you’re mean, a tiger will carry you off!”

A snort escaped the girl’s swollen lips.

“What?”

“Later tonight, a tiger will carry unni off!”

“Who are you calling unni?!”

At that moment, the girl took off the hood she had been wearing the whole time.

Above the red eyes, thick, dark eyebrows that were heavy for a girl were revealed.

“That pig earlier too, why does everybody keep thinking I’m a girl?”

Tie only blinked blankly in bewilderment.

“I’m a guy. A guy! You little squirt!”

The girl made as if to knock Tie on the head.

Even while shrinking her neck like a turtle, Tie stared fixedly at the girl, no, unni, no, oppa…… anyway, the person opposite her.

The skin was white and the eyelashes were long, but now that he said he was a boy, it somehow looked like that was true too.

“……Ti-Tie, it’s my first time.”

“What are you talking about? First time for what.”

“It’s my first time seeing an oppa who looks like an unni like this.”

A Hah! burst out of the other person’s mouth again.

The boy put down the cloth, then leaned her body toward Tie.

“Hey, you. Do you even know who I am?”

Tie tilted her head.

“A boy who looks like a girl……?”

“You little-!”

Lowering her voice, the boy lightly pushed Tie’s forehead.

“I’m an assassin, punk. Do you even know what an assassin is? Huh?”

Tie’s expression grew serious.

An assassin?

Did that oppa just say he was an assassin?

In the place where she had lived before, there had once been an uncle who thought he was a mouse.

That uncle always hurriedly ran away whenever he saw a cat on the street.

Once she had worried about her and tried to follow, but Grandma in unit 107 had blocked Tie.

Then she had explained that the uncle needed time alone, that she was like that because her heart hurt, so Tie must not follow her.

Which meant this oppa too, just like that……

“How about it, scary, right. You get the feeling you shouldn’t mess with me, right?”

“Mm-hm……”

The boy lifted his chin as if satisfied.

“Only now do I kind of like your look. Remember this, I let that guy hit me on purpose too.”

As he said that, the boy pulled something from his clothes and waved it.

“Why? Because no matter what happened, I had to get my hands on this.”

What the boy was holding was a wallet.

That wallet the man had been screaming at the top of his lungs that he had lost!

“Y-you really stole it, oppa?!”

“Yeah. I stole it. No, is it really called stealing when you take back money that was mine in the first place?”

Tie’s eyes grew wide.

“He said he’d look into two people to help me make a mercenary company together, then after taking the payment he just wiped his mouth clean?”

“A mercenary company……?”

“Yeah! If you want to kill monsters and make money, becoming a mercenary is the only way. It’s not like a commoner like me can receive a knighthood.”

Tie’s mouth fell open.

Something in her head flashed and disappeared.

“Oppa, if you become a mercenary, can you get an identification number?”

“Well, probably. You’d have to pass the mercenary exam first, though.”

“Then let’s do it with Tie!”

The boy flinched.

“What?”

“Let’s do it with Tie and Mister Basto! Mister Basto has a hammer, and Tie has……!”

Tie was not as strong as Mister Basto.

But at least there was the legendary Puppetmon she could trust.

Kkamangi was there.