After riding by horse for about an hour after leaving the town of Chedas, the Capital finally started to enter my line of sight.
For some reason, despite having visited the castle that towered over the middle of the town several times, this was the first time I had ever seen the town spread out in its surroundings.
On the outskirts of town, there seemed to be a lot of small houses with orange and red-tiled roofs and white walls, but I could also see elegant mansions in the centre of it.
Overall, the town gave a gorgeous and refined feel to it.
Soon after entering the town, the black-cloaked men split into two groups.
âDo it as planned.â
âAlright.â
After the serious-looking person spoke, the large-nosed person and the person with bags under their eyes remained seated on their horses and galloped towards a larger street where carriages could pass through.
On the other hand, the remaining three people dismounted and led their horses to a narrower side road.
Here, there were old brick apartment-like buildings lined up, blocking off the sunlight and leaving the road dimly lit.
It had a back alley feel to it, and the ambience wasnât great either. It was the sort of place where you wouldnât want to be alone at night.
The black-cloaked men did not show any timidness at such an atmosphere, and quickly advanced deeper and deeper, eventually stopping in front of a vacant house that looked like it had once been some kind of store.
Leaving their horses outside, they opened the broken door and the serious-looking person went inside.
Kugalg and I, who had been riding on the horseâs back, were placed onto the ground by the hooded person.
âFollow me. Thereâs something good inside.â
The simple-minded me followed after the hooded person, excited as I wondered what the âgood thingâ was.
Kugalg wasnât particularly interested in what the âgood thingâ was, but since I was going he came together with me.
The serious-looking person seemed to have lit a lampâwhile it was still daytime, the inside of the building was dimâilluminating the trash scattered over the ground with the light from the candle.
There were dust balls, dead leaves that appeared to have gotten inside from the broken window, small glass shardsâŚâŚ
When I frowned, imagining how it would feel if glass stabbed into my paw pads, the three black-cloaked people also looked at the floor and spoke.
âItâll be dangerous like this.â
âI think there was a broom somewhere insideâŚâŚâ
As Kugalg and I stood at the entrance, the three people started to diligently clean the floor.
It was novel seeing bad guys doing their best to clean.
Perhaps because they were accustomed to cleaning on a regular basis, the three quickly gathered all the trash that was on the floor and cleaned it up.
âOnce you start cleaning, it makes you want to clean everything up.â
âI feel the same, but letâs stop at just the floor.â
The meek-looking person said to the serious-looking person.
I wonder if they all have a love of cleanliness?
Incidentally, where is the âgood thingâ?
When I looked up at the hooded person with a pressing gaze, he said, âWait a momentâ and then entered a room further in the building.
I gave the inside of the room another look over while waiting for him to return.
While there was a fireplace that was covered in soot, there wasnât any furniture like tables or chairs, and it was otherwise empty.
I looked up at a portion of the ceiling where one of the wooden planks had come off and scratched my head with my hind leg.
Perhaps because it had gotten stuffy from being covered by a hood this whole time, the base of my ears were itchy.
But because of the hood, I couldnât scratch it very well.
Scratch scratch, scratch scratch. After I continued to scratch it for a while, the serious-looking person noticed and helped me take off the hood.
While he was at it, he asked, âIs it itchy?â and helped me scratch my head, but his positioning was slightly off, which made it even itchier somehow.
Escaping from his hand, I started to rub my head against the floor to make the itching go away, but I was stopped with a, âYouâll get dirtyâ.
Then, he took a handkerchief out of his bag and wiped my fur for me. His handkerchief didnât have a single wrinkle, so he seemed to be a clean freak as expected.
In comparison, the guys at the Northern Fort â with the exception of Branch Captain-san and Tina-san â didnât even have a single handkerchief between them, so they usually just used the sleeves of their uniforms to wipe dirt awayâŚâŚ
Everyone seemed to think that the sleeves of their uniforms were some kind of universal cleaning cloth.
As I had such thoughts, the hooded person returned from the depths of the building with a small paper bundle in his hands.
Noticing the scent arising from that bundle, my tail quickly started to wag back and forth.
Thatâs food!
âI heard rumours that the child of the spirit of snow likes sweet things.â
It was probably because I was always happily eating the sweets that the King and his family gave me that such rumours started to circulate.
Apparently they prepared some sweets beforehand to make sure that we would stay here obediently.
Inside the paper bundle were several round biscuits.
I bit onto the biscuit that was presented to me with a crunch, but it was fairly large, so I couldnât fit it all in my mouth with a single bite.
As a result, bits and pieces of the biscuit fell onto the ground in large chunks. Every time I ate another piece, the floor that they had taken great pains to clean got dirtier and dirtier from the crumbs that were scattering about.
When I slowly looked up at the three clean freaks with upturned eyes-
âWhy did you choose such large biscuits? Biscuits and cookies that you canât eat with a single bite are our enemies.â
âMy bad.â
-such an exchange was made.
Kugalg didnât eat any biscuits, so in the end all the biscuits ended up in my stomach as I continued to leave crumbs all over the floor.
Meanwhile, the three black-cloaked men disappeared into one of the inner rooms after confirming that I was preoccupied with the biscuits. It was around the time that I had finished eating that they returned.
However, when they returned, their outfits had changed.
It seems that they had changed in the inner rooms, as they transformed from suspicious black-cloaked men to splendid knights.
Although their knightâs uniform had the same design as the One-Eyed Knightâs and everyone elseâs, the colour was different. It was white instead of a deep navy blue. Now that I think of it, Commander-sanâs uniform was also white.
The three of them had an atmosphere that greatly resembled that of the Royal Guards that were in the castle.
They werenât nearly as sparkly, but they had a sort of clean feel to them. Maybe it was because their uniforms were worn properly.
Iâve also been thinking this since they were wearing those black cloaks, but compared to everyone at the Northern Fort, these three were definitely on the slender side.
They also werenât very tall, and the meek-looking man actually had a pretty small build.
âHeâs arrived.â
The serious-looking person brushed off my chest fur that was sticking out from the sheep costume and said.
It was because there was a mountain of biscuit crumbs stuck on it.
âAny time now.â
âYeah.â
The meek-looking person and the hooded person exchanged such words as they looked at the door.
It when I was also lured in by their gazes and turned around that-
âHere it is!â
I heard a voice from outside, together with the noisy sound of footsteps approaching.
Eventually the door of this building was opened vigorously, and three men wearing white knightâs uniforms entered while gasping for breath.
Two of them appeared to be the black-cloaked men who had separated from us upon entering the Capital. Though they currently didnât have a single suspicious bit about them and were dressed as virtuous knights, one of them had bags underneath his eyes while the other had a big nose.
And the last one to enter was a scrawny-looking man wearing round glasses with black hair that was combed down into a 7:3 hair parting ratio, with 7 on the right and 3 on the left.
He was probably in his late 30s. His glowing eyes underneath his glasses were single-lidded, and his constantly furrowed brow gave off an ill-natured atmosphere.