Chapter 12
The woman stared at me for a long time, then asked,
“But… to protect something, you need power, don’t you? If my uncle takes it from me, then none of this means anything.”
“As I said, I can’t sell this for you.”
I cleared my throat.
“But I can take it as collateral and lend you money, ma’am.”
“You mean… you’ll keep it for me?”
“No, no—keep it for you? We don’t offer storage services here. We absolutely do not keep customers’ valuables safe for them.”
No matter who came asking later, I planned to keep pretending that was the case.
Well, with that meaning in mind, I gave her a calm little wink.
The woman seemed to understand.
“Then I’ll borrow money with this as collateral. How much can I borrow?”
It was an elaborately made ornament, a holy relic, and possibly a treasure from an influential family.
It was the kind of jewel that could easily be worth tens of millions of gold.
But the customer in front of me would never trade this jewel away, no matter how much money I offered.
Right now, she was only acting impulsively because of her grief.
‘A jewel that can’t be given a price.’
So what I held out was 1 gold.
To mean: It has no price.
“The term is three months, and the interest rate is ten percent. If you go past the deadline, the interest will increase—but since the amount is only this much, I won’t charge you any interest.”
The woman accepted the 1 gold coin like it was something precious.
“So please come back for it. You absolutely must.”
As she rolled the coin around in her fingers, the colorless corners of her lips lifted slightly.
“Yes. I will. Three months… I’ll definitely come back and repay it within that time.”
“Yes. Since this is a pawn loan, I need to write it in the ledger too. What is your name, ma’am?”
The woman hesitated, but her voice was clearer than when she had first walked in.
“…Rina. My name is Rina.”
“Yes, Rina. See you again.”
“Yes. See you again.”
I watched her walking away, then rubbed the stiff back of my neck.
‘She looked about my age at most. And someone is actually trying to threaten a girl like that and steal her inheritance.’
Listening to Rina’s story made me angry as if it were my own problem.
No—how was it any different from my own?
It brought back memories of my previous life, when I had only been helplessly robbed by my relatives.
Maybe the reason I had wanted to listen to Rina at all was because I instinctively felt that we were in the same situation.
Because she seemed just like me in my previous life, desperately needing help.
‘What would it have been like if someone had helped me in my last life…? No, what’s the point of thinking about that now.’
I had just finished putting away the pendant and was fanning myself to calm down when I noticed a familiar figure.
Huh. Isn’t that Hugo?
Hugo, with an ugly scowl on his face, and his exhausted-looking aide were walking toward the shop. They even had a long sword hanging at the aide’s waist.
No matter how I looked at it, they were clearly trying to intimidate me.
‘Coming with a sword just to threaten one girl—what a fine thing to do. Still, I suppose I can praise him for one thing. He came at just the right time.’
It seemed that, after spying around to see whether Grandfather was here or not, Hugo had deliberately chosen to come at night after closing time.
Well, I had expected Hugo to show up sooner or later. That was why I had hired protection magic too.
Actually, I had even hoped he would come at night. No special reason—I just did not want customers getting scared.
But I liked very much that Hugo had chosen this particular night.
‘You came at just the right time, you bastard.’
Because right now, I was in a very bad mood.
Crack, crack.
I rolled my stiff neck and smiled.
Mixed in among people in robes, Rina walked along the night street and then stopped for a moment.
She looked down at her hands.
In one hand she held a crumpled bundle of tissues, and in the other, a 1 gold coin.
“She said… there’s no one who would cherish it more than I do…”
As she repeated those words to herself, her steps somehow felt lighter.
Was it because she had left the pendant behind in the shop?
Or because she had left behind the worry that had been weighing heavily on her heart?
Rina slowly turned back to look.
Far away, the light of the pawnshop was still shining brightly.
It almost felt like the kind owner, who had smiled warmly and seen her off, was still sending her a gentle farewell.
‘She helped me. Even though she didn’t even know who I was.’
Rina had cried herself to sleep after being threatened by her uncle.
Then, when she came to her senses, she had found herself on this street.
She did not even remember how she had gotten there.
She must have been so exhausted that she had fallen into the extreme thought that if she could not keep it from someone she hated, then she would rather sell it entirely.
But when the pawnshop owner spoke firmly to her, it felt like cold water had been poured over her head and cleared her mind.
‘And even then, she didn’t ask for anything in return.’
If the owner had simply accepted it and sold it, she could have earned an enormous amount of money.
But that woman had not done that.
More than that—she had reached out a hand without hesitation.
Remembering those clear, pale purple eyes, Rina repeated the woman’s words like a spell.
“There’s no one who would cherish it more than I do. So… I have to protect it. I will protect it.”
Rina moved toward a deserted corner.
Once she reached a place where no one was around, she turned the gemstone set in the blue ring on the ring finger of her right hand.
Katarina Presleyfe
Rina looked back and forth between the name engraved on the ring and the distant Imperial Palace, then closed her eyes.
It happened in an instant.
A blue light flashed.
As if swallowed by that light, she disappeared.
‘Uncle really isn’t here, right?’
Even after hearing the answer from his aide, Hugo still could not relax, so he quickly looked around the pawnshop.
It was after closing time. If his uncle had been here, he normally would have been counting money—but the counter was empty.
‘Then where’s the pink-haired girl?’
She was humming to herself and spraying air freshener around. She clearly had no idea I was coming!
Hugo intended to take control before she could react.
With confidence, he kicked at the door.
Bang!
He had expected the wooden door to splinter.
“Aaaagh!”
But the thing that cracked was him.
Hugo hopped around clutching his shin, and then met eyes with Elisha, who was holding a spray bottle of air freshener.
What are you looking at?
Feeling strangely guilty, Hugo exploded in anger.
“You must have put protection magic on it, right? Do you think something like that can stop me? Open the door right now!”
“Huh? Magic?”
Elisha pointed at the door with a puzzled look.
[Pull]
There was a sticker on it.
Right next to the [No Smoking] sticker.
“They say the hardest word for people in the Empire to read is ‘Pull’…”
At her muttering, Hugo’s face turned red, and he yanked the door open.
It opened so easily it was almost pathetic. The gap in the doorway even let out a nice fresh fragrance, which only made him angrier.
‘Damn it!’
His attempt to dominate the situation had failed.
Still, at least there was one small comfort. Even with all this noise, Uncle was not coming out, which meant he really was not here.
And judging by the way Elisha had echoed, “Magic?” she did not seem to know much about protection magic anyway.
In other words, there was nothing stopping him from threatening that girl however he pleased.
“Go outside and guard the door. Make sure that girl doesn’t run away like she did last time.”
After ordering the aide, Hugo sat down in a chair in a deliberately arrogant pose.
At just the right angle for the long sword at his waist to be clearly visible.
Just as he expected—the moment she saw the sword, Elisha’s face turned pale.
“You know why I came, don’t you? You little fraud.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Don’t pretend not to know! Are you planning to act like you don’t know what you did?”
“I think there may be some misunderstanding. Why don’t you have some tea and we can talk about it slowly—”
“Quiet! Do you think I don’t know you’re trying to stall for time? Stop lying!”
Elisha, who had been about to bring out a tea set, paused.
That innocent-looking face. That expression that made her look completely blameless, as if she knew nothing at all.
But if he got fooled again this time, then he was a complete idiot.
And on top of that, she was suddenly preparing tea like she had expected him?
‘As if I would drink something like that.’
Thinking that, Hugo smiled nastily.
“Drink that tea first.”
