TSSAH 19

Chapter 19

“Hahahaha! Hey, why’d you grab your sword?! Do you even know how to draw that thing?!”

“Easy now, you might cut yourself, keukkeuk.”

“You seniors all knew, didn’t you!”

When I asked Senior Jake, who was now even tearing up from laughing, he nodded while still chuckling.

“When you hear a sound from a tree in the middle of the night, of course it’s a crow! You’ve been on duty for over a year and you still don’t know that?!”

“How was I supposed to know that!”

If you hear a strange noise in the dead of night, you’re supposed to think it’s an intruder!

“Haa.”

So it wasn’t a person, just a bird.

My tension released a beat late, and a sigh escaped me.

Senior Jake, still wearing a face full of laughter, grabbed my shoulder and sat me back down in front of the campfire.

“Wow, isn’t our maknae impressive? What spirit!”

“I was deeply moved by your courage, Rookie. Keukkeuk!”

The seniors, still snickering, were an utterly unsightly bunch.

But just as there’s the law of power in back alleys, in the action squad, seniority was the law.

Naturally, my arrow of anger turned toward the most convenient target—the winged creature.

“I mean, if you’re a bird, act like a bird and sleep at night. Why are you flying around causing a ruckus in the middle of the night?”

“Crows living around Bernheim Empire, especially near Knox, are nocturnal. Didn’t you know?”

“You’re messing with me again.”

I’m not falling for that twice.

When I glared at him with suspicious eyes, Senior Jake clutched his chest as if the world had wronged him.

“Wow, this kid’s slandering me. Senior Hubert, please teach this rookie who doesn’t know how to respect his seniors a lesson.”

“Ahem. Rookie, where did you say your hometown was?”

Why are there so many people asking about Ruenelk Ains’s registered birthplace these days?

“Rovenhaven. It’s a border town near the Krollin Kingdom.”

“Then you might not know. Let me, Hubert Sour, a Knox native, explain it to you.”

Senior Hubert puffed out his chest and flicked his fingers as he spoke.

“What Jake said about the crows around here being nocturnal is true. It’s not clear why crows, which are normally diurnal, became nocturnal only in the Bernheim Empire. And though I don’t know about Rovenhaven, at least in Knox, people don’t chase crows away.”

“Even if they peck at the grain or loiter around the fruit trees?”

“That’s up to the farmers. Anyway, in Knox, crows are considered an omen of good fortune.”

“An omen of good fortune?”

Those clever thieves that caw and caw, love to mess with people, and even steal shiny jewels?

When I asked back with a dubious look, the seniors all pointed to their chests in unison.

To the spot embroidered with the Knox crest.

“Don’t you recognize this? Moon, stars, crow. They’re all symbols of Knox.”

“Moon, stars, crow…?”

I’ve heard this somewhere before.

As I scratched my head at the strange sense of déjà vu, Senior Hubert continued his lecture.

“Now, look here. This moon symbolizes our leader, His Grace the Duke of Knox, and the star floating in the middle symbolizes the seven executives.”

“I already roughly knew that much when I joined Knox.”

“Then recite all the names of the stars from the First Star onward, you brat.”

“That is…”

Of course I have them all memorized.

—

First Star Legien

Second Star Karensis

Third Star Noelrn

Fourth Star Adila

Fifth Star Oren

Sixth Star Ruena

Seventh Star Frien

—

The stars symbolizing each executive and the departments they oversee weren’t just annoyingly difficult and complicated in name.

Each star even had its own characteristics—position, brightness, color, and so on.

For example, the Fifth Star Oren, which symbolizes the merchant guild and the finance department, is the farthest from the moon among the seven stars, but at the same time, it’s the brightest.

That’s why it’s also a star that serves as a guide for merchants who lose their way during their travels.

“How am I supposed to memorize all that? No, I get the moon and stars, but what about the crow?”

Senior Hubert was flustered by my counterattack.

He cleared his throat with a *keukheum* and then tossed the mana bomb to Senior Bono.

“Bono, you explain it.”

“Me? I don’t really know either. Jake, do you know?”

“The crow is probably something like… the Knox family watching over the Empire even in the dark of night, something like that.”

“Ooh! That’s pretty smart!”

“Heuh heuh, I do have a knack for memorization, after all.”

They were praising themselves amongst themselves, but the bottom line was that no one actually knew the exact meaning.

Senior Hubert, noticing my eyes turning cold, shamelessly brought up the earlier story again.

“Anyway, Rookie, you can’t be getting scared of crows like you did earlier.”

“Crows are… a bit unsettling.”

It wasn’t just because of the nightmare I’d had during the day.

In my memories that only remained from age ten onward, I had always hated crows.

“Why?”

“They just look a bit creepy.”

“Look at this kid. Then how do you send letters?”

“Letters? I’ve never sent one.”

That would require having someone to send them to.

I don’t have any relatives to check in on from time to time, nor any close friends.

And originally, no one even knows my true identity as ‘Helena Morton.’

‘Ah, well, Edward probably knows by now.’

Writing a letter to the guy who’s searching with blazing eyes for the former friend and betrayer who killed his father—that would be too much like something Killian Knox would do, wouldn’t it?

But the surroundings were strangely quiet.

The seniors, who had been chatting noisily, had fallen silent and were looking at me with pitiful eyes.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

Is it really that pitiful that I have no one to write letters to?

Senior Bono, who was the first to return to his usual playful demeanor, pointed beyond the Knox castle wall where the guard post stood and spoke.

“Knox uses crows as messenger birds, not pigeons. If you go to the east side of the outer castle, there’s a tall tower—that’s the Crow Tower. If you ever get a lover, you’ll be going in and out of there constantly too.”

“Yeeeah.”

As if I’d ever get a lover.

At least not until I safely escape Killian Knox’s grasp—that was out of the question.

At my lukewarm response, Senior Jake, who had been thinking ‘he’s still young,’ suddenly slapped his knee.

“Rookie, since you’re not from around here, do you happen to not know that fairy tale either?”

“Fairy tale?”

“Well, every kingdom or empire always has its founding myth, right? The Duke of Knox’s house has one too.”

“Oh, I loved that story best when I was a kid too.”

Senior Hubert stroked his bristly beard and drifted off into nostalgia with a wistful look.

“Since you don’t seem to know, let this senior tell you. A long, long time ago, there was a time when only the moon existed in the sky—”

I thought it was a bit random for him to suddenly start with an old tale, but since dawn was still a long way off, I quietly listened with the intention of killing time.

But the more I listened, the more wrinkles formed between my brows.

“But one day, a darkness that was rotten to the very core had the audacity to covet the moon’s position—”

“Wait a minute, Senior Jake.”

“I was just getting to the best part, why!”

“Does that story, by any chance, end with the crow warning of the danger?”

“Eong? How’d you know?”

Right.

How would I know that?

It was a story I’d definitely heard in the nightmare I had during the day.

‘Was it not just a simple nightmare?’

I tried to distinguish between dream and real memory in the nightmare I still remembered vividly.

At the same time, my temples throbbed with a headache, but I ignored it.

It was a symptom that always followed whenever I tried to recall memories before the age of ten, when the tragedy had occurred.

‘I do remember my mother telling me an old tale before bed.’

In the hazy memory, as if shrouded in thick fog, the feeling of a warm blanket and my mother’s body heat slowly rose to mind.

‘Then that fairy tale…’

*Ding.*

“Didn’t you hear that just now, seniors?”

“Hear what? What are you talking about all of a sudden?”

“I definitely heard something like a bell.”

“Aish, don’t be so scary!”

Senior Jake flinched and curled his large body, scanning the surroundings.

These were people who had detected even the small sound of a crow in the middle of their loud chatter.

There was no way they hadn’t heard a bell sound that clear.

“You foolish brat! The maknae’s messing with you!”

“Rookie, you sneaky bastard! Is this your revenge for earlier?!”

But I had no time to calm down Senior Jake, who was fuming at me.

‘It wasn’t real—did it come from inside my head?’

I tried to recall what the bell sound signified, but only the throbbing headache grew worse.

It felt as though the door to my memories, which had briefly opened, had firmly closed again in the meantime.

“I guess I misheard. But I do remember my mother telling me that story about the crow and the moon when I was very young.”

It was a faint memory I’d barely managed to grasp before the bell sound came.

“Really? Rovenhaven is a place that’s really far from here, isn’t it? How did your mother know that story?”

“I wonder.”

I stared toward the messenger tower, hidden by the tall castle wall, and answered.

“How did my mother know Knox’s fairy tale?”