Because I promised to come back (1)
Marcella quickly wiped away her flowing tears, frowned, and looked at the boy in front of her.
It was definitely a face I missed, but it was also a face that shouldn’t be here.
“······Get out quickly. hurry.”
Marcella speaks with all her might, desperately tightening her lips.
“······I told you to get out quickly!”
There was urgency conveyed in her quietly whispering tone.
The tears that could not be wiped away were still hanging on Marcella’s cheeks.
Vlad lowered his head as he looked at her like that.
Yes, it was here.
The place that was my nest.
A woman who speaks with her eyes, holding back tears under the vulgar lighting.
“······.”
Something shiny is falling over there.
Above the mud of desire created by the men, Vlad gazed at the starlight flowing pitifully.
Even if a flower falls to the ground and is trampled, if it still has a scent, it is still a flower.
The boy slowly stood up, smelling the scent of roses for the first time in a long time.
Now it’s time to wipe away her tears.
※※※※
“······.”
Madame sensed that the atmosphere between the blonde man and Marcella was unusual.
However, she is also a survivor in the back alleys.
Madame, who was accustomed to such unexpected situations, silently signaled to the men sitting at the table far away with a hand gesture.
‘Get it out!’
The men, receiving Madam’s signal, began to stand up one by one.
There seemed to be at least ten people.
They were all Jack’s subordinates who had been dispatched here.
“······I guess I’ll have to pay for it.”
However, despite the unusual atmosphere, the blond man just stood up calmly and looked at Madam.
Bright red veins trembled in the bright blue eyes.
“Before I give 100 gold to Madam, there are calculations I need to make in advance.”
Madame was surprised.
The man who looked like a noble young man just a moment ago now looked like a hungry wolf.
“······What calculation?”
Madame swallowed her saliva and carefully opened her mouth.
The men, stained with lust, began to step back little by little due to the breathtaking force emitted by the blond man.
Jack’s men, who saw this, quietly brought out their teeth and approached.
In a situation like the calm before the storm.
“One-armed Jack.”
The man slowly raised his head and opened his mouth.
“I have something I need to receive from him.”
Madame was taken aback when the name of a completely unexpected person came out, and she wanted to ask what it meant.
Sigh-
He suddenly felt the blood on his face and had no choice but to keep his mouth shut.
One of Jack’s men, who was trying to sneak up behind the man, was falling down helplessly.
“You just wait here.”
A trickle of blood was flowing from Vlad’s unadorned sword.
“If I don’t get enough from these guys, I’ll get it from you too.”
A wolf released from its cage was drooling hungrily.
Because there were things in front of him that he had endured for a long time and that he had to do.
“Move! Get out of the way!”
“What is that bastard!”
Changkwan suddenly becomes a scene of slaughter from a place where one expresses one’s desires.
The guests who saw this were scared and started screaming.
“Go in now!”
“Where did you learn such nonsense!”
Desires running away.
Struggling beasts.
Vlad smiled faintly as he watched Jack’s men running towards him with all their might.
“······I think I missed something like this.”
Vlad felt his toes sinking into the dirty mud again.
But it didn’t matter.
Because the star that the boy dreamed of all those years ago was now held in his hands, not high up in the blacksmith shop.
“You bastard! “Who sent you!”
“······Who sent it?”
Vlad smiled without realizing it at a line he hadn’t heard in a long time.
So I answered.
The name of someone I have had in my heart for a long time.
“Jorge.”
“what?”
With those words, Vlad pulled out a dagger from his waist.
It was a dagger that the man who picked it up told him to always wear.
“Jorge sent me.”
Jorge’s dagger, along with the unadorned sword, entered the men’s necks.
Although I ran away holding my breath that day, not today.
The boy harmed many rivers to shout out his name.
So today, here.
He returned with the right to call his own name.
“The Vlad you were looking for is here!”
Marcela covered her mouth with her hand to suppress the exclamation that came out.
She remembered.
The boy who was crying behind the turning knight of blue moonlight.
“Come kill me like you did that day!”
Vlad was hitting without stopping.
The shackles wrapped around her ankles.
“It was that bastard Vlad!”
“You managed to survive!”
The animals heard the boy’s cries and rushed at him, their sharp teeth flashing.
“Come on you bastards!”
The man running from the front with red streaks of blood was being cut down by the boy’s world.
One sword, one scream.
One scream, one life.
Vlad was cutting down Jack’s men with red eyes.
I will not leave a single person alive.
Even for the sake of Marcela, who was shedding tears.
Vlad dodged those who were running at him using the steps instructed by the knight, and bit off their ears as he had learned in the back alley.
Although it was messy, it was a movement that only pursued efficiency.
Something that was neither a knight nor a beast was rampaging here now.
“Hey!”
There were some who turned away from the boy’s ferocious spirit, but there was no need for consideration for them.
Vlad struck the back of the man who tried to run away, pulled his hair as he was lying down, and slit his throat with a dagger.
Blood pouring like a fountain was coldly soaking the floor of the coffin.
“no! “Not us!”
“Help me! please!”
Those who had come here, driven by desire, were clinging to the wall and crying.
Even though the anger wasn’t directed at them, it wasn’t something they could bear.
“Kwaaaak!”
Vlad, who brought out Jack’s subordinate hidden among the men, plunged Jorge’s dagger into his temple without hesitation.
The man’s eyes rolled around.
“Ugh! “Huh!”
The man who survived until the end and reached the door.
I continued to turn the handle with shaky hands, but the door would not open.
As if someone was blocking it from outside.
“······If you start a fight, you have to pay a price.”
Quaaaaang-!
The door burst open with a violent kick from the boy.
“Gagging! Cough!”
Although he rolled badly, he was the last remaining Jack’s henchman who finally got out where he wanted to be.
With the instinct to survive, he grabbed his chest and tried to stand up, but what was actually waiting for him were Shoara’s guards surrounding Chang Gwan.
“It would have been better for both of us if we had just finished it inside.”
Vlad’s voice came from behind me.
It was a strangely calm voice, but the man who heard it actually got goosebumps.
“······Save me, save me.”
“no.”
Vlad trampled Jack’s subordinate, who was rolling on the ground, and then held a dagger to his neck and cut it off mercilessly.
The man was clutching the wound on his neck to stop the ceaseless flow of blood, but it was just a meaningless struggle.
“If you had caught me that day, you wouldn’t have saved me.”
It must have been so.
One of the rules of the back alley was that if you couldn’t kill it, you would die.
“Keuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu)
In a back alley filled with only silence, Jorge’s dagger swallowed up someone’s last scream.
※※※※
The smile of a rose.
A man was drinking alcohol in a place that used to be one of the symbols of the back alleys of Shoara, but has now become a den of money-grubbers.
“······One more drink.”
He broke the ice with the hook on his left arm and pushed the cold lump into the glass of alcohol in front of him.
“boss. “I drank too much.”
“······.”
The subordinate next to him carefully advised him to stop drinking, but one-armed Jack just looked down at his glass without saying a word.
Jorge, the knight of the whores.
After he disappeared, the back alleys of Shoara became his own, but One-Armed Jack was not happy.
Rather, as each day passed, I became more and more addicted to alcohol.
As it was becoming more and more broken, the physiology of the back alley was also breaking down.
“Is there anything else I can do as I wish? “Stop chatting and just pour yourself a drink.”
“······Yes, boss.”
As the alcohol fell like rain, One-Armed Jack quietly turned his head and looked at his men below.
These guys are talking loudly without knowing anything.
Do those guys know?
That our lives are simply determined by those above us.
“Life like a dog.”
Even though he lived in a miserable back alley, One-Armed Jack was an ambitious man.
I will climb to a higher place.
I am someone who will not stop here.
Therefore, he did not hesitate to take what belonged to others, and he willingly built stairs to the top using the corpses of his enemies as stepping stones.
Winners on top, losers on the bottom.
It was a life in which I firmly believed that everything can be achieved only by winning, but even though I was defeated, I was here now.
That day, he lost to Jorge.
But in the end, it was Jorge who died.
“Fuck you world.”
Someday I will be like that too.
Someone up there will decide my fate.
Like Jorge, who died in vain that day.
“In the end, it means nothing.”
One-armed Jack took a gulp of bitter liquor and shivered from the boiling intoxication.
Because it was a night where I couldn’t fall asleep without getting drunk.
bang-!
“boss! boss!”
At that moment, there was a man who opened the door so harshly that everyone here turned around.
“boss! “We’re in big trouble!”
“what?”
“what’s the matter? “Did something happen?”
Jack’s subordinates asked a question one by one as they saw the man gasping and running up to the fourth floor, but the man who suddenly appeared just ran up the stairs until he was out of breath.
“boss!”
“what.”
The man, who was out of breath with Jack in front of him, was barely able to utter a single word under his breath.
“We are surrounded!”
“······what?”
Jack’s eyebrows furrowed at the man’s unexpected words.
“here?”
“Not only here…”
The man who was reporting swallowed his saliva and opened his mouth quietly.
“The whole back alley was surrounded. “Soldiers surrounded us.”
“······Get out of the way.”
One-armed Jack, who had finally put down his drink in response to the unusual report, roughly pushed the man in front of him and stood up.
“boss!”
“Are you okay?”
The men come to support Jack, who is staggering down the stairs.
“······this.”
Jack was looking out the window with a hazy gaze as he went down the stairs.
The back alleys of Shoara in the darkness.
Because it was night, lights of different types were surrounding the street where lights to attract customers should have been hung.
“Open the door!”
The subordinates hurriedly open the door at the shout of Jack, who finally arrived on the first floor.
“······this.”
“what’s this.”
What was waiting for them when they went outside were numerous torches.
There were images of soldiers standing in an orderly manner under the torches.
“under.”
One-armed Jack, who was watching this, let out a sound that could be either a sigh or an exclamation.
“Boss, surrounded, surrounded.”
“I know.”
However, even in the face of a threatening sight, One-Armed Jack remained calm.
“······I guess a guest is coming.”
“yes?”
“Stop acting like this here and get ready to receive guests.”
Leaving behind the lights that would bring the end, One-Armed Jack sighed in relief.
Because the sight of destruction right in front of me was more reassuring than the anxiety of not knowing when it would come.
