SPRFG 24

Chapter 24

The Runaway Lady and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2)

“Watch out!”

Juaiye grabbed a child who looked about four years old, the one standing closest to her, and moved to the side of the empty lot.

The moment she pressed herself against the side of the building, a carriage rushed in.

The game board where the children had been playing after drawing lines with chalk was covered in an instant.

Thankfully, none of the children were run over by the carriage or kicked by the horses.

“Hey! There are people here! Those children almost got hit!”

Juaiye shouted.

She did not know where she got that much energy from when she had not eaten anything.

Her sharp voice echoed against the wall of the building beside her, making it sound even louder.

Passersby began peeking over to see what was happening, while the two horses pulling the carriage became startled and neighed.

The coachman hurriedly pulled on the reins, but the carriage had already shaken violently.

The wheel tracks dug even deeper into the ground.

The person inside the carriage angrily threw open the window.

Juaiye’s eyes met the passenger’s.

It was a face she had seen somewhere before.

Of course, there was no way Huh Hwanhee would know many people from the Ilgentavita Empire, so this person must have been someone Aiolia had met.

Juaiye flinched.

Ordinary nobles grew up memorizing the names, symbols, histories, and family trees of other noble families from a young age.

Aiolia was the same.

If Juaiye simply searched through Aiolia’s well-organized memories, arranged almost like an index, she could easily tell whether someone was a noble or not.

A covered carriage with silver decorations around its edges.

Looking at the coat of arms attached to the carriage door, there was a standing puma inside an oval-shaped grapevine.

‘His title is Count. The specialties of his territory are wine and oranges. The family name is Esholtadamore. But he is far too young to be the count himself.’

Aiolia’s mouth followed Juaiye’s reasoning.

“You’re the fifth son of Count Esholtadamore, aren’t you? The… good-for-nothing one.”

That was right.

The man who had suddenly come to Koreatown and deliberately ordered his carriage to be parked in the empty lot where children were playing was the fifth son of the count’s family, a notorious wastrel.

He drank all day and all night, and used being drunk as an excuse to harass young commoner girls.

Of course, he had never made even one mistake with women older than himself, ladies of noble families, or wives of high-ranking men.

He held illegal gambling games despite the country’s ban and dragged the people around him into gambling and opium.

Whenever someone felt sorry for him and tried to give him advice, he would constantly challenge them to duels.

Good teachers and true friends had left his side long ago.

He spent his wealth and youth while hanging around with other wastrels just like himself.

Since he could never become the heir unless all of his older brothers died suddenly, perhaps he had given up on life early and decided to live only as a wastrel.

Juaiye stared at the fifth son, the fifth son of Count Esholtadamore.

“How do you know our family’s coat of arms?”

If they had not met like this, with one looking up and the other looking down at her on this dirt ground, she might even have felt a little human sympathy for him.

She had plenty of pity for people who had neither the means nor the courage to make their own fate.

To Juaiye, it was almost like pitying herself.

‘But why would the count’s fifth son come all the way here? Could he be Korean too?’

She decided to test him.

She opened her mouth.

“Okay, what comes next?”

“What?”

“The monkey’s butt is red, if it’s red, it’s an apple, if it’s an apple, it’s delicious, if it’s delicious…”

Slap!

One of the fifth son’s servants got out of the carriage and slapped her across the cheek.

Juaiye was still too confused to understand what was happening, so she simply stared upward.

When she finally came to her senses, she was kneeling on the ground, the fifth son was looking down at her arrogantly, and the children were crying.

The shop owner rushed out to settle the situation.

“Ah, I’m sorry. Welcome. Please come inside, come insi—”

Whether he bowed and apologized or not, the fifth son and his servant did not care.

The servant spoke.

“Lord Esholtadamore intends to park his carriage here. Do you understand now? Move.”

“Uh… I already moved?”

Juaiye answered.

She was slapped again.

Slap!

The first one had been her right cheek, and this time it was her left.

Should she thank him for hitting both sides evenly?

But it was ridiculous.

She was slowly starting to get angry.

Without losing her patience, Juaiye recited something else that every Korean should know.

“○○ Cola is delicious… If it’s delicious, you drink it again… If you drink it again, you’ll get a stomachache… What comes next?”

There was no sound of, “Let’s ask the genius doctor about the next part—ding dong dang dong, Do Re Mi Fa Sol La—.”

The fifth son’s servant was about to hit her again when the fifth son stopped him.

“Wait.”

This guy wasn’t Korean.

He was a genuine wastrel.

Juaiye, who had once eagerly read fantasy novels where Koreans possessed the bodies of noble-family wastrels, could not yet decide whether she should be disappointed or relieved.

And while Juaiye was figuring out that the fifth son was simply an unusually terrible noble, the fifth son was also observing Juaiye.

‘Ah, damn it. She must have met Aiolia, the daughter of Duke Almadelcore too. This is crazy! What if she recognizes me? Please don’t recognize me! I’m not that girl! And it doesn’t seem like we’re close enough to greet each other here!’

The high noble society was extremely small, so almost everyone knew each other’s faces.

Aiolia and the fifth son had probably exchanged greetings a few times.

Besides, pink hair was such a distinctive feature that he did not even need to remember her face perfectly.

‘What if this girl tells the Duke’s family that she saw me here? What if that duke and Adriano come looking for me? No! If the duke’s family catches me, they might really force me to get married!’

At that moment, the children began crying even more sadly.

Juaiye had been about to turn around and run away, but without realizing it, she hugged the children and gently patted them.

The children clung to the hem of Juaiye’s skirt.

The people around them merely stood there watching, as if they had been given some interesting entertainment.

The young children thought they had committed some great crime against an important person, so they were frightened and cried even louder.

‘I should say, “Take care of your own business! I’m busy, so I’m leaving!”’

But somehow, her thoughts and words switched places.

“Seriously, what do children know? That was actually dangerous! Can’t you park the carriage somewhere else? Or at least drive more slowly! Don’t you people have anything like noblesse oblige here?”

“Who are you?”

“Gasp!”

The fifth son narrowed his eyes and asked.

Oh, no.

He was trying to figure out who she was.

Juaiye quickly turned her head away.

It was useless.

The fifth son grabbed Juaiye’s chin and turned her face toward him.

“You’re the first woman who has ever treated me like—”

‘No! This is a romance flag! I don’t want a romance flag with someone like him!’

One second?

No, maybe it was only half a second.

For that brief moment, Juaiye screamed inside her head.

Fortunately, he could not finish his sentence.

Someone suddenly appeared and twisted the fifth son’s arm.

“You’re going too far.”

The ‘someone’ said.

“AAAAAAAAAAARGH!”

The fifth son screamed.

The two servants surrounding him pulled out iron rods and clubs.

Just because they were servants of a noble family did not mean they only did refined work.

It would be unreasonable to expect servants who followed a wastrel to be gentle pacifists.

‘Thank goodness! I avoided the romance flag!’

Thinking that, Juaiye looked up at the person who had suddenly appeared in front of her.

He really had appeared out of nowhere.

It was as if some supernatural being had used cut and paste to tear through space and time and simply placed him there.

He had not walked over.

He had not run over.

He had not fallen from the sky or risen from the ground.

But could a living person really appear like a mirage like this?

Unless he had used some kind of teleportation magic…

“Are you all right?”

The man asked Juaiye after throwing the fifth son aside.

Juaiye nodded without thinking.

The man smiled broadly.

She did not have the time to carefully examine what he looked like.

There were only two things she could think about.

First, the man was hiding a boiling anger deep beneath his kind and gentle voice.

Second, this man seemed to have an unbelievable lack of fear.

Juaiye desperately thought.

Was this man a noble too?

Was that why he could step forward so boldly?

She felt horrified that she had first tried to find the reason for his courageous action in his social status rather than in his own character.

She had lived as Juaiye for a year without realizing it, but the class-based society was beginning to seep into her very skin.

She was shocked deep inside and shrank back.

She watched the situation carefully and stepped away.

‘Am I becoming a dog of the class system?’

‘But if that man isn’t a noble, he wouldn’t dare to pick a fight with a noble, would he?’

‘Who is he to step into someone else’s business so boldly?’

‘I’m grateful, but isn’t he going to get into serious trouble because of this?’

‘If he gets punished, will it be my fault?’

She did not even realize that her hands were trembling until the man quietly took one of them.

He carefully lifted her palm, handling it as gently as if it were an egg.

“Um… you don’t look all right at all. The palm of your hand is scraped.”

Only then did she realize that her hand was trembling badly.

When she lowered her head slightly, something suddenly flashed past in front of her.

When she looked up, the man was no longer there.

One of the servants had grabbed him by the collar and thrown him toward the wall.

Fortunately, the man did not hit his head, but he collapsed helplessly.

As if he wasn’t hurt at all, he quickly stood back up.

Juaiye did not know how the servant and his master had realized it, but apparently this man was not a noble.

The angry fifth son of Count Esholtadamore shouted at the top of his lungs.

“You lowly commoner!”

The man did not seem particularly shaken.

He casually wiped his lips with his sleeve and shot back with eyes full of laughter.

“Then how about I assume that all nobles are a bunch of people who bully innocent children, threaten innocent women, and beat anyone who dares to protest against them?”