Trying to contain her excitement, Liz decided it was prudent to survey the newcomer first. He was human. He had black hair and an aloof air about him. And he seemed strangely familiar.
Turning her gaze to the wall, Liz spotted a black cloak hanging there. Huh? Wait a second. A dark-haired man in a black cloak! That was Gaion’s exact description of the mastermind! Finally! My perseverance paid off!
A surprise encounter with the mastermind himself! His face was kinder than she’d anticipated, which had momentarily thrown her off, but this had to be him. The only other person here was the torturer elf. The girl had to be capable as a close associate of the ruler, but this didn’t mean Liz couldn’t find an opening to get closer to the mastermind. All it’d take was a slight scratch on his skin and a drop of her blood and he wouldn’t be able to resist her.
“How do you feel?” the mastermind, Zenos, asked as he stepped closer.
“U-Um, I’m fine.” Just a little closer. If he came just a little closer, he’d be within reach. Her index fingernail grew sharper and extended slightly within her lightly closed fist.
But then the mastermind stopped and stared at Liz’s face.
Did he catch on that I’m planning to attack? she wondered, stiffening.
“Hey, uh, just wondering, but...” the mastermind began, tilting his head several times back and forth as if to check something. “Are you Liz?”
“Huh?” Liz’s jaw dropped open and she stared at him with wide eyes.
The name Zenos had felt familiar. And Gaion’s description hadn’t been the reason she’d recognized this man’s features. No, she knew this man. He’d grown taller, yes, but his face was familiar to her, from back when they’d faced hardships together.
She covered her mouth with her hand, then tentatively asked, “Wait... Zenos? From the orphanage? That Zenos?”
Chapter 4: My Childhood Friend, the Mastermind
Many people benefited from what happened in the orphanages of the slums—the children, however, weren’t among them. They were seen as little more than laborers, fed minimal meals, and crammed into small rooms with iron-barred doors and walls stripped down to rough stone.
In one such cramped space, several children had been sleeping, curled up against one another. Surrounded by darkness and with no room to even stretch their limbs, the children were chilled to the bone with nothing more than the cold stone to sleep on. The sounds of a child’s sobs echoed from the back.
Zenos, wrapped in a paper-thin blanket, turned to the sound. The crying came from Gina, a girl still far too small for the harsh environment of the orphanage.
“Is someone crying?” another child by the wall asked.
“It’s Gina,” Zenos replied.
“They’re gonna get mad at us for making noise.”
“I know that, Velitra. Are you okay, Gina?” he whispered, but Gina only carried on sobbing softly.
“Maybe she’s cold. Here, use my blanket,” a child further back suggested.
“Maybe,” Zenos agreed, wrapping two blankets around Gina. “She can have mine too.”
With the warmth from the extra blankets, Gina finally calmed down, and her breaths steadied as she fell asleep. But...
“Who was making noise?!”
One of the adult supervisors roughly yanked the metallic door open and slammed his club against the wall. The twisted object, used for nothing but domination and punishment, sent a dull sound echoing throughout the room. “Rule number fifteen of the Dalitz Institute! Private conversations are forbidden! Violators will be punished!”
In the face of the supervisor’s menacing presence, the room fell completely silent.
“Who was talking?! Give me names!”
“Um, there must be some sort of mistake, instructor,” said a girl with purple hair, timidly, as she stood up. The children were expected to address the adults at the orphanage as “instructors.”
“Liz, yeah? You’re the leader of these brats?” the instructor replied. “What’s this ‘mistake,’ huh?”
“They were just talking in their sleep.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. When we’re tired, we tend to talk in our sleep more often. But that’s only because of how hard we work during the day.”
The instructor flipped through a stack of papers and snorted in disdain. “I guess this group’s work isn’t bad.”
“And we’ll do even better tomorrow.”
“Be more mindful of sleep talking in the future.” With that completely unreasonable warning, the instructor left the room.
Once the adult was gone, Zenos whispered quietly to the purple-haired girl, “Thanks, Liz.” He appreciated that Liz, their leader, was always covering for them.
“No, no. As her older sister, I should be the one taking care of Gina, but I was worried that talking to her would get us all in trouble. Thank you, Zenos, and Velitra too.”
Her gentle voice was so soothing.
***
And today, lying on the bed at the clinic, was that same purple-haired girl. Well, more woman than girl now.
“Zenos,” she said, her eyes wide open in surprise. “You’re really that same Zenos?”
“Yeah. And you have a different air about you now, so I wasn’t sure I had the right person, but you’re definitely that same Liz, huh?” Zenos replied happily. The Liz he remembered had a more demure, gentle aura; now there was a certain allure about her.
His old acquaintance, frozen, opened her mouth with a puzzled look. “You’re the mastermind?”
“Mastermind? What do you mean?”
“Oh, um, nothing,” she replied, somewhat perplexed, before shaking her head. “I mean, he does operate from the shadows, so of course he wouldn’t just admit to it. But...that little boy, an evil overlord, womanizer, and deviant experimenting on humans...”
Aaand now she’s babbling nonsense. Well, she had experienced a shock powerful enough that she’d fainted, so some confusion was to be expected. Zenos gazed at her familiar features and said, “So, Liz, I hear you collapsed on the roadside in the ruined city? What happened?”
“Um, so, about that...” she murmured hesitantly.
The healer smiled gently at her. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. For now, you seem healthy, so you should be able to go home without any issue.”
Liz looked even more surprised at that. “What? You finally have me in your grasp, and you’re letting me go?”
“Huh?”
“No, don’t tell me... I failed?”
