There’s Something Special About Her Chapter 19

“Hahaha! Hey, why’d you grab your sword?! Do you even know how to draw it?!”

“Stop it, you’ll cut your hand. Heh heh.”

“You all knew, didn’t you, seniors!”

When I asked Senior Jake, who was now even wiping tears from his eyes, he nodded while still snickering.

“If you hear a sound from a tree in the middle of the night, of course it’s a crow! You’ve been working here for over a year and you still didn’t know that?”

“How does that make any sense?!”

If you hear a strange sound in the middle of the night, of course you’re supposed to think it’s an intruder!

“Haah.”

So it wasn’t a person. It was a bird.

A beat later, the tension finally left my body, and a sigh escaped me.

Senior Jake, still grinning from ear to ear, grabbed my shoulder and made me sit back down in front of the campfire.

“Wow, isn’t our youngest amazing? What spirit!”

“I’m deeply moved by your courage, Rookie. Heh heh!”

The seniors were still snickering, and they looked extremely annoying.

But just as the back alleys had their own law of strength, seniority was the law among the action squad.

Naturally, my anger turned toward the easiest target: the flying beast that had caused all this trouble.

“I mean, if you’re a bird, you should be sleeping at night like a proper bird. Why are you flying around in the middle of the night?”

“Crows around the Bernheim Empire, especially around Knox, are nocturnal. Didn’t you know?”

“You’re teasing me again, aren’t you?”

I wasn’t falling for it twice.

When I glared at him suspiciously, Senior Jake thumped his chest as if he were the most wronged person in the world.

“Wow, this kid is accusing an innocent man. Senior Hubert, please teach this Rookie some respect for his elders.”

“Ahem. Rookie, where did you say you were from?”

Why were so many people asking about Runelke Ains’s official place of origin lately?

“Rovenhaven. It’s a border village near the Kingdom of Krollin.”

“Then I guess you might not know. Hubert Sauer, a true Knox native, will explain it to you.”

Senior Hubert puffed himself up proudly, then crooked a finger as he began to explain.

“What Jake said is true. The crows around here are nocturnal. No one knows for sure why crows, which are normally active during the day, became nocturnal only in the Bernheim Empire. And I don’t know about Rovenhaven, but at least here in Knox, we don’t just chase crows away.”

“Even if they peck at grain or hang around fruit trees?”

“That would be up to the farmers. Anyway, in Knox, crows are considered a good omen. That’s what I’m saying.”

“A good omen?”

Those sly thieves who caw just to annoy people and even steal shiny jewels?

When I asked skeptically, the seniors all pointed at their chests.

That was where the Knox crest was embroidered.

“You don’t know just by looking at this? The moon, the stars, and the crow. They’re all symbols of Knox.”

“The moon, the stars, and the crow…?”

I’ve heard that somewhere before.

As I scratched my head at the strange sense of déjà vu, Senior Hubert continued his speech.

“Look. This moon represents our leader, His Grace the Duke of Knox, and the star floating in the middle represents the seven executives.”

“I know that much. They told us about it when I joined Knox.”

“Then recite all the names of the stars, starting with the First Star, you brat.”

“That’s…”

Of course I had memorized them all.

First Star, Legien.

Second Star, Karensis.

Third Star, Noelrn.

Fourth Star, Adila.

Fifth Star, Oren.

Sixth Star, Ruena.

Seventh Star, Frien.

The stars representing each executive and the departments they oversaw weren’t just difficult and complicated in name.

Each star even had its own characteristics, such as its position, brightness, and color.

For example, the Fifth Star, Oren, which represented the merchant guild and the treasury, was the farthest from the moon among the seven stars, yet it was also the brightest.

That was why it sometimes served as a guide for merchants who lost their way while traveling for business.

“How am I supposed to memorize all that? Fine, let’s say I understand the moon and stars. But what about the crow?”

My counterattack caught Senior Hubert off guard.

He cleared his throat, then passed the mana bomb to Senior Bono.

“Bono, you explain it.”

“Me? I don’t really know either. Jake, do you?”

“The crow probably means something like… the Knox family watching over the empire even on the darkest nights?”

“Ooh! That’s pretty clever!”

“Heh heh, I am pretty good when it comes to memorization.”

They were praising themselves, but in the end, it seemed none of them actually knew the exact meaning.

Senior Hubert noticed my cold stare and unfairly brought up what had happened earlier.

“Anyway, Rookie, don’t get scared by a crow like you did earlier.”

“Crows are… kind of creepy.”

It wasn’t just because of the nightmare I had during the day.

In the memories I had left from after I turned ten, I had always hated crows.

“Why?”

“They just look kind of gross.”

“Look at this kid. Then how are you supposed to send messages?”

“Messages? I’ve never sent one before.”

I mean, I’d need someone to send them to.

I had no relatives to exchange news with, or close friends.

To begin with, there was no one who knew my true identity as ‘Helena Morton.’

‘Ah, Edward probably knows by now.’

Writing a letter to a former friend who was desperately searching for the traitor who had killed his father… wouldn’t that be way too much like something Killian Knox would do?

But the surroundings had suddenly become strangely quiet.

The seniors, who had been making such a racket, had fallen silent and were looking at me with pity.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

Was having no one to send letters to really that pitiful?

At least Bono was the first to return to his usual playful self. He pointed beyond the Knox fortress wall, toward where the watch post stood.

“Knox uses crows as messenger birds instead of pigeons. There’s a tall tower on the eastern side of the outer castle. That’s the Crow Tower. Once you get a lover, you’ll probably be going there all the time too.”

“Yeah…”

As if I’d ever get a lover.

At least not until I safely escaped from Killian Knox’s grasp.

Seeing my indifferent reaction, Senior Jake muttered, “Still just a kid,” then suddenly slapped his knee.

“Rookie, if you’re not from around here, do you not know that fairy tale either?”

“Fairy tale?”

“You know how kingdoms and empires always have a founding myth? The Knox ducal family has one too.”

“Wow, I loved that story the most when I was a kid.”

Senior Hubert stroked his thick beard, his eyes growing distant with nostalgia.

“You don’t seem to know it, so let this senior tell you. Long ago, there was a time when the moon was the only thing in the sky, you see?”

I wondered why he was suddenly telling me a bedtime story, but there was still a long time until morning. So I quietly listened, figuring it would help pass the time.

But the more I listened, the more deeply my brows furrowed.

“But one day, a darkness that was rotten to the very core dared to challenge the moon for its place…”

“Wait, Senior Jake.”

“We’re just getting to the best part! Why?!”

“Does that story end with the crow warning the moon about danger?”

“Huh? How did you know?”

Yeah.

How did I know?

I had definitely heard that story in the nightmare I had during the day.

‘Was it not just a nightmare?’

I tried to distinguish between the dream and my real memories in the nightmare that was still so vivid in my mind.

At the same time, I felt a throbbing pain in my temples, but I ignored it.

It was always like this whenever I tried to recall the memories from before I turned ten, before the tragedy happened.

‘I really did hear bedtime stories from Mom before going to sleep.’

In my hazy memories, as though covered in thick fog, I slowly remembered the warmth of the blanket and my mother’s body heat.

‘Then that fairy tale…’

Jingle.

“Didn’t you guys hear that just now?”

“Hear what? What are you talking about all of a sudden?”

“I definitely heard something like a bell.”

“Hey, why are you trying to scare me!”

Senior Jake hunched his large body and looked around.

These were people who had noticed even the tiny sound made by a crow while they were busy talking.

There was no way they could have missed a bell that had sounded that clearly.

“You idiot! The youngest is just messing with you!”

“Rookie, you sneaky little brat! Is this revenge for earlier?!”

But I didn’t have the time to calm Senior Jake down as he grumbled at me.

‘Was it not real? Did the sound come from inside my own head?’

I tried to remember what the ringing of the bell meant, but the throbbing headache only grew worse.

It felt as though the door to my memories, which had briefly opened, had already slammed shut again.

“I guess I heard it wrong. But I do remember my mother telling me that story about the crow and the moon when I was very young.”

It was a faint memory I had barely managed to grasp before the bell rang.

“Really? Rovenhaven is really far from here, isn’t it? How did your mother know that story?”

“I wonder.”

I stared toward the messenger-bird tower, hidden behind the tall fortress walls, and answered.

“How did my mother know Knox’s fairy tale?”