What was left in the aftermath was, just as I’d caught in my sights, a redheaded boy. His hair was short and spiky, and he had impish brown eyes. His expression was filled with an energetic vigor, as if he was enjoying the thrill of a life-or-death situation. He was like a miniature whirlwind in a young boy’s form.
Yet the blue-eyed, lordly boy parted his shapely lips and spoke without a hint of admiration. “You could be a little quieter about it.” The implication of “you noisy show-off” was clear from his tone.
The short-haired boy raised a voice of protest, as if to say that remark was uncalled for. “You kept me waiting too long, Prince Chris. I was thinking of going ahead without you.”
The other boy shot back that he was too short-tempered, and their lighthearted banter drew more ranting from the Master behind the curtain. He yelled at the guards that it was pathetic to lose to a child, ordering them to take the boy into custody this instant. A pair of clear blue eyes locked onto him in response. That glare seemed to pack a punch even through the curtain, and I sensed the man flinch like a frog before a snake.
A chill in his voice, the boy said, “Helge Trout. I hear you’re a foreign merchant...but your trade note has been revoked as of the Maritime Merchants’ Guild’s most recent meeting. You’ve also been stripped of your status as a guest. The president said we’re free to do whatever we want with you.”
“Wha—?”
The Master behind the curtain went speechless, while the boy continued to impassively state the facts. His lack of emotion was comparable to that of a commissioner. “Copper coins of inferior quality have been circulating in Kelk Harbor for the past few months. The authorities and guilds have been keeping a close eye on the situation, and it was recently revealed to be the work of a foreign merchant. The key piece of evidence was a silver coin a policeman found a few days ago. It takes quite a lot of skill and funds to remake silver coins. It’s not even comparable to copper. And after quite a bit of research, it was your name that came up—Helge Trout.”
“Impossible!” the man yelled.
At this point, the star of the scene was clearly the blue-eyed boy with a presence like no other.
“We have all the proof. When we looked into the source of the counterfeit coins, we found that they might have been coming from a certain merchant ship. However, it was officially considered a foreign passenger ship and therefore outside our jurisdiction. Still, we couldn’t turn a blind eye to fake money that has the potential to make the rounds all over Sauslind. Thus, I changed the ship’s status by way of royal decree. Oh, right... While we were there, we also discovered some of the children who had recently gone missing. The guild’s decision was made on the basis of this evidence.”
The Master behind the curtain muttered that this couldn’t be true, almost as if in mourning, but a moment later, he seemed to latch onto a part of that speech he couldn’t overlook. As his mind caught up to what was happening, he ripped the veil in front of him from the ceiling.
As expected, he had an unhealthy-looking, ashen complexion and was dressed in lavish foreign garb. With a face caked in makeup, he stared at the boy in shock. “Don’t tell me... Don’t tell me...?!”
Everyone waited with bated breath for the boy’s next words. It was one of the most reliable clichés in storytelling—displaying the ultimate crest that would bring all villains to their knees. A one-of-a-kind-item which might as well have come with its own sound effect. If he was going to flaunt it, now was the time. At that moment, the expectations of everyone in the room were aligned.
Instead, what came was a response dripping with instinctive revulsion. “What the hell am I looking at? I can’t stand to see a man in makeup outside the theater. Randy, arrest him on the charge of offending my sensibilities.”
“What?!”
The spiky-haired boy seemed shocked that he’d suggest such a flimsy reason, and it probably threw him off, as he was about to stick a hand in his breast pocket and grab the all-important you-know-what that one normally flashed in a situation like this. He’d been robbed of his chance to reenact the pivotal scene from one of the most popular dramas in the harbor.
He had encountered a setback, but he wasn’t let down in the end. The reason was that the foreign villain, who still didn’t quite understand what was going on, said his proper line. “Now that it’s come to this...”
Raring to go, the spiky-haired boy stepped forward into a fight-ready stance that screamed, I’ve been waiting for this! He might as well have come out and said, All right, my time in the limelight has come!
Alas, we would soon discover that his expectations had been betrayed for a second time.
In a typical villain fashion, the Master behind the curtain yelled at his men outside to get the intruders, stating that he didn’t care if they were nobles or not. But there was no response. Even I had to wonder what was going on. Where had the thugs stationed out front gone?
At first, the spiky-haired boy tapped his feet to the rhythm of battle, but his steps grew sluggish as his big moment failed to come. “Prince Chris. You didn’t...?”
The blue-eyed boy harrumphed and was quick to answer, “I don’t want to brawl in a smelly place like this.” The look on Spiky Hair’s face changed at that, and I likewise gave a start.
I rushed to plug my nose, but Marcus and Maurie, the first to get caught, were already unsteady on their feet. It was clear something was wrong with them.
Spiky Hair cried out in epiphany. “So that’s why you made me drink that bitter powder before we came here!”
Beside the shouting boy, one of the bodyguards cracked open the door in search of an escape route. But what awaited him was the sight of his comrades lying in heaps on the floor, visible even in the dim light.
The man called Helge drew a step back, insisting over and over again that this was impossible. Seeing this, a smile crept across the face of the blue-eyed boy who had taken command of the situation. It was the very definition of haughty.
“I do understand the beauty of clichés, I promise...but is this man really worth giving my name to, Randy?”
The spiky-haired boy named Randy ran around the room, deftly knocking out the remaining men while yelling, “Who does he think he is?!” While he was at it, he smashed what few glass windows there were to improve the air flow. It was almost like his very presence was purifying the room, I thought.
On the verge of getting purified himself, Helge let his true nature slip in his fear. “What did I do that was so wrong?! I just made good use of the trash that settled down in our harbor. Plenty of people were happy about it! That’s how I made it this far! Even the officials and the union tacitly endorsed my actions. How dare they turn on me after reaping the benefits for so long!”
Just as Helge was about to reveal even more, someone approached him without a sound or a sign and knocked the raving man unconscious. The blue-eyed boy smiled faintly, as if he’d been waiting for this.
“I was wondering when you’d reveal yourself—Master of Luwak Street.”
Next to the fainted figure of Helge was a person standing straight at attention—someone who had disguised themselves as an elderly, hunch-backed servant until that moment.