After the strange middle-aged man took him in, Gibeon went to work for him, but he wasn’t the only one to do so. Scores of others the man had taken in worked under him, and they referred to him as “Leader.”
“So why do they call the leader, well, ‘Leader’?” Gibeon asked one of his comrades.
After a grueling month, Gibeon had regained enough strength to come out of the room and meet with the leader’s comrades. He was happily welcomed into the fold, perhaps because everyone else had similar circumstances as well. Not much time had passed, but Gibeon felt a comfortable sense of warmth staying with these people, like he had with his family long ago.
Gibeon was with Kiel, the one closest in age to him and the one tasked with being his educator. Kiel too was someone the leader had taken in.
“Let me ask you this. Do you know of the Reapers?” Kiel asked.
“The Reapers are that guild of assassins, right?” Gibeon guessed. He had heard rumors of them when he was still prince of his nation. They said that once the group set their sights on someone, they were as good as dead.
“So yeah, those Reapers are us,” Kiel explained.
“Are you pulling my leg?” Gibeon questioned.
“Nope. I’m dead serious.”
Gibeon looked around him, and everyone else’s lips were curled into devious smiles. “Huh? Are you seriously ‘dead serious’?”
“What did I just get finished telling you?”
Gibeon’s face twitched in panic, but who could blame him? “Then the leader is the boss of the Reapers?”
Kiel nodded. “That’s the gist of it.”
“What? Then this place is bad news, and I’m here in the thick of it!”
Maybe it was because he had worked a lot with Kiel, but Gibeon’s speech had started to take after him. That was how well he was fitting in here.
His days of being on guard and vigilant like a stray dog had come to an end, but he was fine with that given he felt so comfortable where he was. Part of that had to do with being around other displaced people with situations similar to his, but the biggest reason was because the leader was extremely accepting. He relied on instinct, was empathetic, loved people, and never abandoned a person in need. He was the definition of a good-natured individual. All the others adored him too because they owed him their lives.
It was that demeanor of his that had healed Gibeon’s ravaged heart, and while Gibeon wouldn’t admit it outright, he loved the leader. He had never seen someone so nice before in his life. Hearing that he was the boss of the Reapers wasn’t clicking for him.
“Huh? Then do you mean the reason the leader takes some of the senior members out on occasion is because...” Gibeon trailed off.
“He takes requests,” Kiel finished. “There’s no way he could feed a family this big by just working normally.”
“Requests...? Assassination requests?”
“More or less.”
“H-He kills people? The leader?” Gibeon stammered in sheer disbelief. He didn’t think the leader was capable of killing.
Kiel smiled awkwardly. “Well, yeah. On the surface, at least.”
“On the surface?” Gibeon repeated, cocking his head.
“Do you think the leader can kill someone?”
“Not at all,” replied Gibeon. It hadn’t been that long since he had started living with the leader. He might get asked what he actually knew about the leader, but he would say with certainty that the old man was incapable of harming a hair on anyone’s head.
“Yeah, I feel the same.”
“Wait, what do you mean?” Gibeon needed more clarification in order to make heads or tails of what he meant.
“This stays between us, but the leader gets paid to help people out.”
“He what? Aren’t the Reapers a guild of assassins?”
“The job he took this time was for a person trying to get his daughter out of the country by faking her death to avoid the noble who’s after her. Dealing with noblemen is so messy that if he doesn’t fake her death, they’ll come chasing after her.”
“He can’t just get her out of the country?” Gibeon questioned.
“If he were to just help her flee the country, then who knows what kind of harassment the nobles would dish out on the family she leaves behind? But if she were killed by the Reapers, then they wouldn’t want to get themselves implicated, so they won’t come messing with her family.”
“Ah, I see.” Gibeon was convinced that it was indeed an effective way of eluding noblemen. It was essentially running off in the night to leave your past life behind, but with a few extra steps.
“They’re from a pretty big merchant family,” Kiel added, “so we’re all excited about the reward.”
“Does any of that play into why he’s out killing chickens right now?” Gibeon was curious as to why he and the few others in the yard were killing chickens and draining their blood.
“It sure as heck does. He’s going to use chicken blood as a stand-in for human blood and splash it all over the room. That’ll make it look like a gruesome murder scene. This time we’re using chickens, but sometimes we use pigs.”
“Is there some kinda difference?”
“Depends on what the leader wants on the menu. Today he’s in the mood for chicken.”
“Oh, gimme a break...” Gibeon shoulders slumped in disappointment. He thought there was some special meaning, but it was ultimately meaningless. He could feel his image of the terrifying band of killers known as the Reapers crumbling into bits.
“Anyway, that’s what the ‘guild of assassins,’ the Reapers, really do,” Kiel finished.
“Yeah, I get it,” Gibeon said with a nod. “It’s so like the leader.”
“Yeah, ain’t it?”
Killing people without actually killing them in order to save them—that was very much in line with the leader’s personality, according to Gibeon. Along with that, he was relieved to hear that the leader had never killed a single person. Gibeon was sure that he wasn’t the only one who thought the leader wasn’t suited toward bloodshed either.
“Say, what is Amarna doing over there, laughing like a creep?” Gibeon asked, looking over at the young girl who the leader had taken in two months prior to himself.
“Guh hee hee hee,” she sickeningly snickered to herself, which she’d been doing for quite some time now. She was also counting in a creepy manner. “Oooone, twooo...”
“Aah, that’s the advance for the job. Leader told her to count it to see if the amount was right. And you know how much Amarna loves money.”
“Yeah, but she’s so creepy about it.”
Ching, ching. The coins jangled as Amarna placed each one in the bottle, one by one, giggling in delight at the noise. “Geh hee hee hee, I love the sound of money~!”
“Okay, I’ll admit, it is kind of creepy,” Kiel said.
“I can hear her counting money from her room in the middle of the night too. It’s chilling,” Gibeon stated, referencing the fact that his and Amarna’s rooms were right next to each other. He could hear her clear as a whistle through the thin walls, and hearing her in the dead of night was doubly scary. “I seriously want a room change. On the first day, I was about to wet myself because I thought that I was hearing ghosts.”
“Oh, yeah. I guess that would be scary at night. But we’ve got no other rooms, so buck up.”
“In that case, swap with me, Kiel.”
“Not on your life. You know how spooky that crap is.”
Gibeon gave him the stink eye, but Kiel wasn’t about to crack from something as simple as that.
“Heey, could someone go out and go shopping?!” asked the leader, coming back inside from his work out in the yard—covered head to toe in blood for some reason.
“Gyah!” Kiel shouted. “Leader, you’re drenched in blood!”
“Did you finally actually kill someone?!” cried Gibeon.
“You got it all wrong! I accidentally spilled a bucket of blood on my head. We’re short on blood because of it, so I need you guys to buy some more chickens.”
Just then, Amarna rushed over to the leader. “What are you doing, sir?! Being scatterbrained is reserved for cute children only. You’re a fully grown adult, so you should have more of a grip! You’re wasting my money!”
“C’mon, it’s everyone’s money. Don’t go pocketing any of it, now. Maybe I shouldn’t have left you to count the money.”
“Why don’t you just dissolve some red paint in water?” Amarna suggested, her face lighting up like she had a brilliant revelation.
“No, they’d catch on to that right away,” the leader said.
“Gaaaargh!” Amarna screamed, holding her head in her hands. “These needless expenses are piling uuuup!”
“Calm down. Calm down. We’re not going bankrupt over a chicken or two. I’ll file the expenses with the client later,” the leader said, trying to draw in the reins.
Amarna simply glared back at him. “You better. And don’t you lose a single coin!”
“I got it. I got it. Just go and buy me some more chickens. There. Gibeon over there looks like he’s free. Get him to do it.”
“Aww, what?” Gibeon made a sour face after he unluckily met eyes with the leader.
“No, I’ll go! Gibeon isn’t reliable enough. The owner of the butcher shop will swindle him easily!” Amarna insisted.
Gibeon liked that Amarna would go in his place, but he didn’t like her reason. “I can handle shopping! Quit looking down on me!”
“Hah! A mere child wouldn’t understand the profound depths of shopping!” Amarna said, mocking and laughing at Gibeon.
“Oh, brother. I don’t wanna hear that from a miserly cheapskate like you.”
“I am not a cheapskate. I just love money more than anything else in the world!”
“That’s what we call a cheapskate!”
As Gibeon and Amarna bickered, everyone around them walked away as if to say, “Oh boy, here they go again.” They didn’t get along with each other, and despite being close in age, they would incessantly argue whenever anything popped up.
“For crying out loud, I don’t care which of you goes, but could ya hurry and go?” the leader said.
“Aah, fine. I’ll go, sir,” said Kiel, raising his hand.