There’s Something Special About Her – Chapter 30

Author: Asternkm

It didn’t surprise me anymore.

I was even starting to feel stubborn enough to want to poke at every landmark and feature I could find throughout Knox, just to see how many hidden secret passages there were.

Because you never knew—if I kept poking around, something else might suddenly go whoosh and reveal another one of Knox’s secrets.

“What are you doing? I told you to follow me.”

“Yes, yes. I’m coming!”

A long hallway was connected to the back of the bookshelf.

And the moment I stepped into the hallway, I knew.

‘This is where the real Nest begins.’

The spaces I had been coming and going through until now must have been a kind of disguise.

Even that ridiculously comfortable devil’s couch.

The hallway had a cozy atmosphere, with dim mana lamps installed along the walls, and it felt much more lived-in.

Coats and robes of unknown owners hung along the walls, and there was even an umbrella stand in one corner.

There was also a well-used chest of drawers with a mirror sitting on top.

It was completely different from the disguised area, which was luxurious but always kept in exactly the same condition, as if no one actually used it.

“You registered your blood, right? Ah, of course. Since you did, you were able to come in normally today too.”

Gisella Lott answered her own question as she took off her boots and changed into more comfortable shoes.

“If you mean the blood registration, you mean that dragon head?”

“It is kind of ugly.”

She chuckled, nodded, and pointed toward the door at the end of the hallway.

“There’s one here too, though it’s a little smaller.”

“…Being smaller doesn’t make it any less ugly.”

Just as Gisella Lott had said, a miniature version of the grotesque dragon statue was attached to the door in place of a handle.

Its eyes were gleaming gold, making it look so much like Killian Knox that I wanted to jab them.

“Want to try opening it?”

“Am I supposed to twist the dragon’s neck?”

I curled my hand and mimed twisting it as if I were turning an ordinary doorknob, and Gisella Lott burst into another fit of laughter.

“Pfft! No! You just have to put any finger inside its mouth!”

“So I’m supposed to poke the dragon in the throat.”

I kind of liked that.

I nodded readily and approached the door.

Up close, the dragon was even uglier.

I was about to casually stick my index finger into its open mouth, but I quickly changed my mind.

…What if it got cut off?

I chose the little finger on my left hand, which wouldn’t cause too much trouble in daily life even if I didn’t have it.

Then, imagining that I was poking Killian Knox right in the throat, I shoved it in.

The small satisfaction I felt from taking out my frustration on an innocent statue lasted only a moment.

Click!

A heavy metallic sound rang out, and the door swung open by itself.

“This one doesn’t bite?”

“If it drew blood every time someone came in and out, wouldn’t everyone be missing fingers? The one guarding the reception room didn’t bite you today either, did it?”

“Come to think of it, it didn’t. So are both of them just disguises meant to scare people?”

“Of course not. I don’t know exactly how they work either. I’ve heard they use mana engineering. Anyway, only people whose blood has been registered by a method known only to the captain can open the doors.”

“What happens to people whose blood isn’t registered?”

“Who knows?”

Gisella Lott tilted her head, saying that she had never encountered an intruder herself either.

“Either way, I doubt they’d get a peaceful death. Let’s go inside and talk about the rest.”

****

The ‘real Nest’ was extremely bright.

There were large windows scattered throughout the place, and parts of the roof that were exposed without a ceiling had been replaced with glass, allowing the light from outside to reach all the way inside.

‘How did they hide this?’

The main building was definitely five stories tall.

Yet not only was there an additional hidden floor, there were also several large windows that openly let in plenty of sunlight.

They had clearly done something to make sure none of this could be seen from outside, but I couldn’t even begin to guess how it worked.

‘The inside just looks like an ordinary office.’

There were twelve large desks spaced out across the wide room, with piles of various documents on top of them. At first glance, it looked much like an ordinary workplace.

There were so many random objects lying around that it felt a little messy, but either way, it was a place worthy of the name ‘Nest.’

It smelled strongly of well-dried paper, while the sunlight made it warm and cozy. More than anything, the fact that ordinary people couldn’t easily enter made it an even more comfortable home for the crows.

I stepped inside.

“I’m back!”

When Gisella Lott shouted loudly, a small reply came from a place I had thought was empty.

“Welcome back…”

There wasn’t the slightest bit of energy in the young man’s voice.

“What the heck? Noah, where are you?”

“I’m here…”

A blanket on top of a desk in the farthest corner, where no sunlight reached, shifted.

I had thought someone had piled up some unused clothes or blankets, but apparently there was a person underneath them.

The first thing to emerge from beneath the thick blanket was a pale hand covered in small scars.

The hand had been raised to show where he was, but it drooped just as weakly as his voice.

Gisella Lott’s eyebrows furrowed when she spotted the hand swaying like a flag limply fluttering in the wind.

I quietly followed behind her as she strode toward him.

“Noah Benton, I told you to go sleep at the dorm. Or use the sleeping room.”

“I can’t… Once I lie down, I can’t get back up…”

The lump beneath the blanket wriggled again, and finally the face of a man named Noah Benton appeared.

Dark olive-colored hair fell around a face as pale as his hand, with faint freckles scattered across the bridge of his nose.

His light brown eyes suited his delicate features surprisingly well for a man, but they were cloudy, like the eyes of an old fish.

The dark shadows beneath his eyes made him look like the perfect example of an exhausted worker ant.

“Weren’t you happy that your disguised duty ended in the evening this week? So why are you doing this here?”

“Yeah. I’m wondering about that myself. Could you ask Senior Konrad for me…?”

“Konrad?”

At Gisella Lott’s questioning tone, Noah Benton, still sprawled across the desk, pointed in one direction with his finger.

I followed the direction of his finger and saw a long sofa beneath the window where the sunlight came in most strongly, with a man lying on it.

He was using an open book as a sunshade, so I couldn’t see his face, but judging by his completely motionless body and steadily rising and falling chest, he seemed to be asleep.

His feet, still wearing worn-out boots, stretched well past the armrest of the sofa, while his firm, broad shoulders sticking out beyond the seat showed just how large and sturdy he was.

“Why is he doing that over there again? Wait, don’t tell me he dumped the report on you?”

“Have you ever seen Senior Konrad write a report himself…?”

“Ugh, seriously! And that guy is supposed to be your mentor!”

Gisella Lott stomped toward the window and kicked the sofa before shouting.

“Hey! Wake up!”

“Mm.”

But the man named Konrad shifted a few times, then turned over completely and buried his face against the backrest, waving his hand dismissively.

It seemed to mean, Get lost.

“Oh, you idiot!”

After kicking the legs of the sofa a few more times to vent her frustration, Gisella Lott started scolding Noah Benton instead.

“I told you not to give in every time he acts unreasonable!”

“But… He said he was exhausted after coming back from a long-term mission…”