Chapter 129
While listening to the people’s conversation, Agnes’s head grew increasingly dizzy.
Why such stories were flowing out only now.
Why public opinion was suddenly leaning toward her.
Just as she held onto her doubts and tried to think, the line began to move.
“We are beginning boarding for the ship Corel heading to Marsen.”
Along with the words announcing boarding, the ticket inspectors verified tickets one by one and let people pass.
Agnes, who had pulled her hood down deep, also slowly advanced forward following Leuceviten and Kain.
When it finally became Agnes’s turn to board the ship, the ticket inspector looked intently at her sitting in a wheelchair with her face covered.
Just as the ticket inspector’s hand was about to reach toward her hood.
“Hey, let’s see your face a bit—”
“Ah! This person is my younger relative, but she has been physically weak since birth.”
Kain quickly opened his mouth and stood blocking Agnes’s front.
“Is there perhaps any problem with our tickets?”
“No, well. It is not something like that, but.”
The ticket inspector stared intently at Agnes and then gestured bluntly.
“……Board.”
Phew. Kain, who caught his breath, pushed Agnes’s wheelchair before drawing the ticket inspector’s suspicion.
In that moment when they safely stepped onto the deck like that, a strand of Agnes’s platinum-blond hair that was hidden beneath the hood flowed out riding the wind due to a sea breeze that blew suddenly.
The dazzling hair sparkled receiving the sunlight, fluttering in midair for a brief moment.
The ticket inspector’s gaze instantly followed the strand of hair.
Twitching his eyebrows greatly, he quickly pulled out a newspaper from inside his bosom and unfolded it. And he found the article where Agnes’s face was imprinted.
“Hey, aren’t you going to inspect the ship tickets?”
Pretending or not pretending to hear the passengers’ complaints bursting out, the ticket inspector looked alternately between the photo in the article and the ship bound for Marsen that Agnes had boarded.
“Hmm?”
Narrowing his brow, the ticket inspector tugged at the sleeve of his colleague who was standing beside him.
“Hey.”
As his colleague turned his head at the quite secretive call, he pointed toward the ship with his chin.
Leaning half his body, the ticket inspector continued whispering while moving only his lips as much as possible.
“That woman in the wheelchair who just passed by.”
His colleague’s eyebrows twitched very subtly.
“Doesn’t she look like this face published in the newspaper…… no matter how I look at it?”
His colleague did not answer immediately. Instead, after slyly looking toward the ship, he too lowered his gaze to the newspaper.
“Well. Her face would have to be seen accurately for one to judge anything.”
Meanwhile, the ticket inspection of passengers was progressing in the adjacent line as well.
The procession moving while each holding luggage or holding a child’s hand was ordinary beyond words on the outside.
However, within it was mixed one silhouette of a middle-aged man who pulled his hood down deep just like Agnes.
The man in quite suspicious attire stepped out of the line with footsteps far from peaceful and pushed his way through among the people.
“Agh, what is it! Keep to the order there!”
Even at the rebuke flying from behind, the man did not care.
The jawline revealed beneath the hood was firmly set, and his lips were tightly shut.
The item the man was clutching in his bosom was a bundle of letters wrapped in cloth.
Its angular shape was exposed as it was from inside his coat, and whenever he moved his footsteps, a dull sensation of papers rubbing against each other seemed to be transmitted.
As if unable to feel relieved even at the moment he finished ticket inspection and set foot on the deck, the man looked back multiple times.
The people sparsely visible on the wharf side. Or even the shadows beyond that.
It was a gaze as if being chased by something.
“Get out of the way!”
The man, who was looking around constantly, roughly shoved the shoulder of Kain, who was standing blocking the front.
Kain’s body stumbled for a moment, and several passengers nearby turned their gazes as if surprised.
However, without an apology or an explanation, the man pushed his body right inside the cabin as he was.
It was a movement almost like fleeing.
Overlapping with the sound of the cabin door closing, the ticket inspector’s secretive whispering scattered into the sea breeze.
“……No matter how I look at it, I think she looks like her.”
The ticket inspector whispered softly to his colleague once again.
Instead of answering, his colleague slowly looked toward the ship again, but Agnes’s figure was buried among other passengers and not visible.
But once doubt arose, it was not something that disappeared easily.
***
At the same time.
Lionel revealed his figure at the end of the wide road leading to the harbor.
Unlike the crowded wharf, this side was quiet.
Between the alley heading to the harbor and the wharf, Lionel stood alone on the ambiguously empty road, as if it were a space where noise paused to catch its breath.
It was then.
The sound of horse hooves striking the ground urgently gave chase behind him.
“Colonel!”
When Lionel turned around at the familiar voice, Kalt and several order knights were dismounting from their horses while catching their breath.
“Colonel! What do you mean by coming alone? Without commanding me or the other order knights to accompany you.”
Even before those words ended, Lionel’s brow furrowed deeply.
He was just about heading toward the ticket booth to find out the schedules of ship flights bound for Marsen. But it was a situation where an unexpected obstacle blocked his way.
Lionel wrapped his forehead with his large hand.
Rather than annoyance, it was a reaction closer to exhaustion that had already exceeded its limit.
“Didn’t I tell you not to interfere anymore and keep your hands off?”
“Does that make any sense? If it is the Colonel’s affair, it is our affair as well.”
At Kalt’s answer, the order knights behind him nodded their heads as well.
It was unconditional, stubborn loyalty.
Lionel looked at those faces for a moment, and then grew a headache and rummaged through his pockets.
He roughly took out headache medicine from the medicine bottle grabbed in his hand and swallowed it, but the pain spreading starting from his temples only became increasingly severe.
Lionel firmly pressed the side of his head with his palm.
“Helpless fools.”
It was a mutter close to talking to himself.
He himself knew best that squabbling like this would be a waste of time.
Lionel exhaled a short breath and finally issued an order.
“If you want to ignore my order that badly, investigate the ship flights heading to Marsen.”
He raised his gaze and pointed toward the harbor.
“And check whether there are suspicious people around the harbor as well.”
“Yes!”
As the order dropped, the order knights began to move immediately as if they had been waiting.
It was gestures of knowing their respective roles without anyone directing them.
From those heading toward the ticket booth, those sweeping the edges of the wharf, to those going to check the lists of ship flights that had already entered preparations for departure. Movements hardened by training were fast and quiet.
Like that, in an instant, only Lionel was left alone on the road again.
Unlike here, the wharf side was still noisy.
The shouts of laborers dragging luggage, the murmurs of passengers, and rough friction sounds made as ropes rubbed against wooden pillars were mixed together, filling the air.
Amid that chaotic sight, a ship was seen slowly making preparations to leave the wharf.
People were densely packed on the deck of the ship boasting its white body, and colorful coats and hats were tangled together, moving like a single mass.
It was a distance far enough that no single person could be clearly distinguished.
It was certainly so, yet. Lionel’s eyes, which were gazing intently at the deck, opened increasingly wide.
The moment the wind blew and the sail shook finely, an outline that passed by very briefly among the crowd on the deck caught in his field of vision.
Between the colors that flickered like ink spread in water, there was a color that glittered exceptionally heterogeneously.
As if a single ray of sunlight unexpectedly seeped into a dark room.
A strand of platinum-blond hair refle
cted receiving the sunlight sparkled in midair for a fleeting moment.
Even though it was too far to see clearly, that color alone stuck fully in both his eyes extraordinarily clearly.
“……Agnes?”
