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Chapter 5
Slaaash—
The sickening sound instantly pulled me out of my thoughts.
“If you bare your teeth at me one more time, I’ll cut something off!”
At the following shout, I turned toward the source of the noise. There was another cage there, slightly smaller than the others.
Unlike the people trapped in the other cages, who looked as though they had given up on everything, the child inside this one glared at the man whipping him as if he wanted to kill him.
The moment I saw the child, my eyes widened.
It couldn’t be helped. Though he was far smaller than I had expected, he looked exactly like the description from the novel.
“His pitch-black hair and eyes resembled a starless night sky.”
That was the mark of Noah—the man who would one day drive a blade directly into the heart of the villainess Isabella in the novel Things Unwanted.
Every character in Things Unwanted was either missing a screw somewhere or utterly obsessed with the heroine.
Drug use, illegal arms dealing, incitement to murder, even murder itself—they wouldn’t hesitate over any of it. The fact that I, the villainess, ended up dead was proof enough.
But among all those lunatics, the one I found the most unsettling was Noah.
In the story, he was merely called the Bloody Shadow of the Rosenberg family, a man who claimed to be the sword of the angelic Yurie. Compared to the other male leads, he could even seem tame.
But to me, he was different.
In front of Yurie, Noah always acted like a gentle lamb, wearing a weak smile, but there was a reason he had earned the nickname Bloody Shadow.
If anything stood in the way of Yurie’s choices, he cut off its head without hesitation.
I still vividly remembered the description that said there wasn’t even the slightest hesitation in his movements.
He had been chilling enough when I’d only read about him in text, but seeing him in person like this—even though this was still long before the beginning of the novel—his gaze was anything but ordinary.
The Duke claimed he had rescued Noah while hunting because he feared his frail young daughter would be frightened otherwise, but as I could see now, that was an absurd lie.
He was never the kind of man to save someone without profit, so thinking back on it, the excuse had been laughably insincere.
The flood of information hit me all at once, bringing on a headache. As I grabbed my head, the Duke, who had been observing Noah, finally spoke.
“He’s a better product than I heard.”
At the Duke’s words, Jeffrey’s eyes lit up and he nodded quickly.
“That’s right. Even among the Ombers, he’s top quality. He may look too small to be sixteen right now, but if he’s fed well and trained properly, I believe he’ll become a blade sharper than anyone could imagine.”
Quietly listening to Jeffrey, I tilted my head.
According to the novel, Noah would grow into a strong man with the tightly built muscles characteristic of the Ombers.
At sixteen, there should have at least been signs of it already, but it was difficult to imagine anything like that from the Noah before me now.
Lost in thought, I stared at Noah in the cage—then suddenly locked eyes with him.
Those blazing eyes, filled with fear and hatred, made my shoulders instinctively tense.
According to the story, that’s the man who’ll grow up and kill me.
It felt as though sparks were igniting inside me.
I’d wondered why I had possessed this body four years before the original story began. Maybe this was the reason.
The indifferent heavens hadn’t abandoned me completely after all.
Instinctively, I knew this was the turning point I’d been given to change my fate.
If I can just stop Duke Rosenberg from buying Noah, maybe my future can change too.
But how…?
Just then, the Duke turned around.
“Then I’ll leave him in your care until tomorrow.”
It seemed the inspection was over. The manager and the mages also looked my way, apparently finished with their checks.
“Shall we head out as well?”
Since everyone was leaving, I had no choice but to follow them out.
***
The manager, now looking entirely relieved, prepared a lavish dinner and asked us to take good care of things until tomorrow.
But after seeing Noah and Duke Rosenberg at the auction house, my thoughts refused to settle. I barely touched the food before getting up from the table.
Once I returned to my room and was alone, I collapsed onto the bed.
“What good is a fateful turning point when I have no idea what to do…?”
Duke Rosenberg was one of the people funding the slave market behind the scenes. In other words, he had played a major role in Noah’s clan being brutally kidnapped.
And Noah, after being taken in by him, wouldn’t learn the truth until much later.
“…The father of the person you love being the target of your revenge.”
I had never thought this deeply about Noah’s circumstances before, but now it struck me that his life had been just as miserable as that of the villainess Isabella.
If I kept thinking about it, I felt like I might even start pitying him—something far beyond my place—so I shook my head and moved to sit at the table.
Picking up the paper and quill prepared there, I began thinking of ways to stop the Duke from buying Noah.
“Easy to say, but the auction’s tomorrow. There’s no way I can suddenly come up with something now.”
My panic kept my thoughts from working properly. The only ideas that came to mind were simple ones, like blurting out the truth about the Duke to Noah.
But if I did that, the story would become hopelessly twisted, and before that, there was no guarantee that suspicious-by-nature Noah would even believe me.
“…How did Yurie become close to Noah in the first place?”
After losing his family and being sold off, Noah naturally had enormous emotional walls around him. I could tell that just from the look in his eyes earlier today.
Of course, part of the reason Yurie managed to open his heart was because of her heroine buff—but it was also thanks to the endless kindness she possessed as a person.
Just like its title suggested, every character in this novel except the heroine Yurie was consumed by an overwhelming desire and would stop at nothing to achieve it.
Among them, Yurie alone sacrificed herself for others, and little by little, the male leads fell for her because of it.
In a way, it was only natural that Noah fell for Yurie. Out of the few choices he had, she was probably the best one.
If he hadn’t at least loved Yurie in that Rosenberg household, he might truly have gone mad.
“……”
By the time my thoughts reached that point, I felt strangely solemn.
More importantly, that method wasn’t something I could use. Kindness without expecting anything in return—that was Yurie’s method, the heroine’s method.
Only Yurie, with her radiant smile and flower-like innocence, could pull it off.
After everything I had already done, if I suddenly acted that way, it could easily backfire on me.
At that moment, I caught sight of myself reflected in the mirror across the table. Red hair, pale skin, and eyes brimming with desire.
Isabella, the villainess standing at the opposite end from Yurie.
The moment I met Isabella’s gaze in the mirror, a smile spread across my lips.
“Right. A villainess should walk the villainess’s path.”
A rather decent idea had just occurred to me, and without realizing it, I smiled wickedly.
***
As expected of one of Midtown’s major events, a long line stretched around the auction house. Into the lively streets that resembled a festival atmosphere rolled the extravagant carriage of Monteo Garden.
The mages waiting before the still-closed auction hall swallowed nervously at the sight of it.
Soon, the carriage came to a stop, and the person who stepped out instantly put everyone on edge.
The great mage Isabella descended from the carriage with a faint frown, seemingly irritated by the pale green dress hindering her movements.
Every time she stepped down the carriage stairs, her crimson hair swayed elegantly. Even from afar, her appearance stood out overwhelmingly.
This is burdensome.
I’d never received this much attention before, so my expression stiffened unconsciously.
As a result, I looked twice as cold as usual. No one dared speak first in the icy atmosphere.
Then one mage stepped forward boldly and greeted me.
“You’ve arrived, Lady Isabella.”
At the cheerful voice, I turned to look at him. It was a face I hadn’t seen yesterday. When I simply blinked at him, he continued introducing himself.
“I arrived late at dawn, so I didn’t get the chance to introduce myself earlier. I’m Senior Mage Miller Horhen.”
On the chest of the robe worn by the man introducing himself as Miller was the emblem of a wolf overlapping a crescent moon.
The moment I saw it, my eyes widened involuntarily.
I hadn’t paid attention when the other mages introduced themselves yesterday, so I didn’t know which guild they belonged to, but the emblem on Miller’s robe told me everything.
“…Orlun.”
At my murmur, Miller replied in surprise.
“That’s right. I never expected Lady Isabella to know the name of our guild. The guildmaster would be delighted to hear that.”
“……”
There was no way I wouldn’t know.
The guildmaster of the Orlun Guild he mentioned was none other than Kinzard Ebel—one of the sub male leads.
