You’ve Got The Wrong House, Villain

attle…

After getting into the carriage, Kalian stared out the window. It was dark outside, and the streets were only lit up occasionally by the lights leaking from nearby buildings.

There were a lot of things he had to worry about lately, so he had a slight headache.

As Kalian closed his eyes, his mind flew back to Genos Sheldon whom he was coming back from meeting earlier.

~

“Hey, I heard everything. So you warned Ms. Yuri to be careful, huh?”

Hearing that, Kalian couldn’t help but frown a little.

“You went to the coffeehouse already.”

“After telling me to act like I don’t know anything; you’re funny, you know.”

He spoke like he was condemning Kalian for having different sides but despite the scowl on Genos’ face, his expression was clearly brighter than yesterday.

Kalian opened his mouth to say that she wasn’t a complete stranger anyways and that he felt that pretending to know nothing when it concerned an acquaintance was not the humane thing to do so he simply mentioned it.

But for some reason, he felt like he was making excuses for his actions to Genos and decided to just forget.

“Like you said, I’ve already warned her so don’t pay it anymore attention.”

“This guy is acting like this again. You’re paying attention to it so why are you only telling me not to?”

“When your foresight becomes a reality, you’re the one who will be hit the hardest, that’s why I’m saying this.”

“You’re talking like you’re not going to be affected at all.”

“Why would I be affected? We don’t know each other that well and I only know her because I’ve seen her face a few times by chance.”

But in fact, if Kalian really didn’t care whether the coffeehouse clerk, Yuri, died or not, he would have not go out of his way to warn her. However, he was purposefully ignoring that fact.

A bitter smile appeared on Genos’ face when he heard what Kalian said.

“You already assume I will fail.”

“…”

“Alright, sure. Even if I agree with what you say, did you not consider that I might be hit even harder if I sit around doing nothing?”

“Genos.”

Kalian’s brows furrowed with displeasure. But Genos was determined.

“I know you’re worried because you don’t believe me. I’m thankful for that but this is my own problem, so I’ll handle it myself.”

After saying that, Genos smiled.

In the end, Kalian didn’t say anything else and turned around.

~

“…”

A while later, Kalian who was leaning against the carriage and recalling what happened earlier, opened his eyes.

He knock on the wall of the carriage.

Tok-tok.

“Yes, young master!”

“Turn the carriage around.”

The coachman followed Kalian’s instructions without another word.

Neigh!

The carriage dashing down the streets turned around and began running back on the road it had just passed.

Kalian gazed at the night scenery outside the window from within the shaking carriage.

* * *

It wasn’t really difficult for Yuri to sneak into the building that Kalian visited. Even if the security was strict in the first place, there were always gaps and for Yuri, aiming for such a gap wasn’t that hard.

However, there were less people guarding the building than expected so Yuri didn’t have to go through as much trouble as she anticipated.

‘Looks like there’s a total of six people in the building.’

Using the faint presences she could sense, she located the number of people moving around the building.

Yuri moved silently, her steps not making a sound. In order to avoid Kalian’s men, she made use of the path where she couldn’t sense any presence.

‘This disgusting smell.’

As she did so, Yuri’s face was leveled in a frown.

The inside of the building was filled with the vivid stench of blood and it was much clearer than when she was feeling it from outside. On top of that, the smell of something decaying was also piercing her nostrils.

Due to her many years of experience, Yuri easily realized that this was the smell of a corpse. Although she somewhat expected it after seeing Kalian enter this place, this place seemed to be the site of another incident. And a particularly severe incident at that.

The building felt like it could be the hideout of a serial killer.

Yuri still felt uncomfortable and uneasy, but she did not stop. Since she was already inside, she planned on checking things out before leaving.

As she moved towards the area that felt like the center of the incident, she naturally drew close to where people were gathered.

Step, Step.

After a while, Yuri finally saw two people walking down the hallway.

“Lord Sheldon hasn’t moved for an hour.”

“I heard he even went to the site of the explosion downtown.”

“Looks like he’ll be staying all night again, right?”

“Well, we can change shifts with the other guys, but Lord Sheldon can’t do that so…”

Unlike other people who were moving around the building from time to time, one person hasn’t moved for a while now so she was wondering about it but it seemed that person was Genos.

Sssk.

After the two of them went by, Yuri quietly descended from the ceiling on her spider web. She was curious about the area Genos was in, but she could go there in the later half. For now, she decided to go into another room which was giving off a pretty thick smell of blood.

As a matter of fact, there were more than a few rooms which smelled like blood and since no one was guarding the door, Yuri stepped inside.

Soon after, her red eyes narrowed.

The room’s light was off, leaving the room dark but the scene inside the room was clear in her eyes without any filter.

Suspicious tools scattered all over the place.

A temporary bed covered with crumpled sheets that was smeared with blackened dried blood.

A revolting fishy smell that was thick in the room.

It was similar to the scenes she had seen during her time in the research institute. This was obviously an experimental site.

‘Except for one thing, there is no ruin fragment.’

This must be the cause of the discomfort she felt even when she was outside the building.

With her footsteps muffled, Yuri entered the room completely. Just when her hand was about to touch an experiment tool, she heard a noise downstairs that she couldn’t ignore.

“Lord Crawford?”

Yuri’s attention shifted towards it.

“We thought you left earlier? Is there a reason you came back…”

Yuri had already noticed that a new person entered the building earlier. But she thought it was one of Kalian’s men who came to take a shift…

Who would have thought Kalian himself came back.

“Was there any suspicious entry while I was gone?”

“Did you notice a suspicious movement, sir?”

“It’s just a feeling.”

It seemed Kalian couldn’t forget the brief moment he sensed Yuri’s presence, so he suddenly came back to check the site one more time.

Yuri stepped out of the room while thinking his senses were stupidly sharp and he was really annoying. As she did that, she felt Kalian’s presence moving as well.

In addition, Genos who had been staying in the same room the entire time began moving too.

“Genos.”

“Eh, Kalian?”

Yuri confirmed that the two of them met each other at the end of the hallway.

“What the, did you come back to check if I was doing my job well?”

“You’re not wrong.”

“What?”

At Kalian’s words which were spoken half-jokingly, Genos grumbled.

“Anyway, it’s a good thing you’re here. I wanted to tell you something just now, and I thought it would have been nice if you went back a little later. Going to the Crawford mansion this late isn’t really on my plate.”

“What is it?”

“I saw something just now…”

Genos whispered in a volume much lower than before.

Yuri was currently at a safe distance, quite far away from them. But her ears could still pick up on the small whisper.

“It was a strange object; it looked like a stone. But somehow, it felt a little similar to the jewel that alchemists use for refining, I think…”

“Maybe you saw the explosive device made from alchemy?”

“No. It’s different from that.”

Kalian asked in a doubtful tone.

“Another crime scene similar to this one will be found in the future. In it, I saw children being experimented on with small pieces of that stone.”

Genos’ voice was solemn and grave.

Yuri’s face also turned icy cold as she hung from the ceiling on her spider web.

Stone fragments and experiments using children.

There was probably no one in this building who knew what that meant better than Yuri.

“And there’s one more thing I should say.”

Somehow, Genos seemed to hesitate a little this time then he spoke again.

“This incident seems to be related to your family and the Salvatores somehow.”

Squeak.

Right then, an open window close to Yuri shook due to the wind and made a sharp noise. Even though the noise was very small, the conversation going on downstairs stopped.

Yuri clicked her tongue under her breath. She hadn’t touched the window but she was unlucky.

Feeling the footsteps approaching her rapidly, Yuri removed the thread she was hanging from and erased her traces. Then she stepped on the frame of the opened window and shot her thread upwards.

Yuri’s body was taken straight to the roof.

When Kalian arrived a while later, Yuri was already gone without a trace.

“See? Didn’t I say it was nothing?”

Genos who followed after Kalian said, while clicking his tongue like he knew this would happen.

“This building is so old, many of the windows are coming apart. It closes and opens on its own even when you’re not here. Isn’t this what I said?”

“Is that so.”

Kalian’s sharp gaze swept outside the window. However, he couldn’t sense anything different there; there was only the moonlight sending down its rays silently.

Despite that, it was only after he ordered his men to search the surroundings that Kalian finally put away the faint suspicious he had left.