I Am the 5-Year-Old Spy Who Kidnapped the Villain - Chapter 10

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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【Chapter 10】

“The princess is missing? What do you mean by that?”

The dining room that had been filled with the sounds of clinking dishes was suddenly enveloped in silence.

Realizing something was wrong with the situation, the lady frowned and asked.

“…We searched all around the Pose Duke’s Domain, but the princess was nowhere to be found. They’ve withdrawn for now…”

“The Duke. Is the Duke alright?”

“I only received a telegram saying he’s currently arrived at the entrance of the ducal palace, so I don’t know much either.”

…The princess wasn’t there?

My complexion began to grow pale as I listened to the conversation between the three people.

According to the original story, she should definitely have been at the orphanage near the swampland within the Pose Duke’s Domain.

There’s no way the original story could be wrong.

That’s when it happened. My trembling gaze was floating through the air when I met someone’s eyes.

“You said for certain that the princess would be there…”

It was the maid’s eyes filled with reproach.

At that moment, I realized.

That all that awaited me now was abandonment.

“…”

When even the viscount couple, who had naturally followed the maid’s gaze, began to look at me, it suddenly felt like sharp arrows were piercing through my heart.

The hands I had placed on the table began to tremble violently.

There was only one reason the Duke had covered up the fact that I was a spy.

‘The contract is still valid, kid.’

Because I had told him the princess’s location.

‘But if the princess wasn’t there…?’

My frozen heart began pounding with fear.

If they couldn’t find the princess, the contract was meaningless. Callipus had no reason to keep me alive.

I was a spy from the Pose Duke’s Family, and a worthless foreign orphan.

“We need to see His Grace first, Aisha!”

Crash-!

The startled viscountess shouted, but not even noticing the chair falling over, I jumped up and ran straight out of the room.

Thump thump thump-

My heart, beating louder than my footsteps, pounded painfully as if nails had been driven into it.

I might die.

No, I have no choice but to die now.

“Aisha?”

A familiar knight standing across the corridor greeted me, but I roughly wiped the tears forming in my eyes and passed by him.

Even he, who had always been friendly, would surely hate me and call me a liar once he heard that the direct princess had disappeared.

Click-

I entered the storage room and closed the door.

From the moment my infiltration into the Croste Ducal Family was scheduled, I had memorized the internal structure of the ducal palace in advance.

I had to escape.

I stood on my tiptoes and raised my arms.

“Please, reach. Just reach…”

I wanted to climb onto the chest of drawers, but my hands couldn’t reach.

Looking around, I saw there was a chair.

Thud-

Using the chair as a stepping stone, I first climbed onto the desk, then lightly landed on the chest of drawers next to it.

My flying squirrel-like movements were unmistakably those of a spy.

Someone who shouldn’t be in the Croste Ducal Family,

An unmistakable target for elimination.

I clung to the pillar next to the chest of drawers like a cicada and clumsily climbed up to the ceiling.

When I pushed against the ceiling wall with the top of my head.

‘…As expected, there’s a circulation passage.’

There was a dark and damp passage without a single light. It was a circulation passage leading to the garden.

I crouched down as much as possible and crawled inside.

Since it wasn’t meant for human movement, even someone as small as me could barely move through it.

‘People won’t think to look for me here.’

After barely crawling into the passage, a secret passage leading to the garden was revealed.

I crouched down as much as possible in that spot.

But I couldn’t control my body trembling like an aspen tree.

I had to calm down. After all, my goal in this life was to survive.

Alright, good. I escaped.

Now people won’t be able to find me.

After crawling for a while, when I felt I had gotten far enough from the entrance, I stopped.

I lay down and placed my trembling hands folded on my chest, and the overwhelming fear began to gradually subside.

I’ll endure here until night falls, then escape outside the mansion.

But after 5 minutes passed like that.

“…”

And then an hour passed.

‘Do I have to keep running away like this from now on?’

Such a thought suddenly occurred to me.

With my mouth closed, I stared at the passage stretching in a straight line.

The dark passage was so long that I couldn’t even guess where it led or where it ended.

‘I have to keep living like this, running away?’

Suddenly, memories from my previous life overwhelmed me.

My parents died early. When I was a minor, I somehow squeezed myself among relatives who weren’t even like family, living like I didn’t exist.

Because of that, my only goal was independence.

I worked hard and succeeded in getting a job. But what came back were rent and utility bills. And just enough living expenses to barely get by.

‘…Is this the end?’

It was a thought I had while eating cup noodles at home.

Do I have to keep living like this?

In a room smaller than 5 pyeong, barely scraping together enough money for daily meals?

Without family or friends?

“…”

And now.

Looking at the endless passage, I was feeling the same loneliness in this life that I had felt in my previous life.

“…Sniff, sob…”

I tried not to cry.

I know well that crying when alone is a loss.

But through my tightly clenched teeth, sorrowful tears finally began to flow.

Since I was reincarnated anyway, I tried to do well this time.

I knew the original story, and I thought I could live like a human being this time since I received some reincarnator buffs.

But there was no such thing.

Even born into a different life, I was still me.

“…Sob.”

Swallowing my tears, I rummaged through my pocket and pulled out a potion.

[Potion of Death]

It was a potion that spies took before being tortured when their identity was discovered.

“…”

I popped open the cork stopper of the potion.

If I’m going to die anyway.

Perhaps in this life, I could die with a little less pain.

* * *

“This is all?”

In Callipus’s large hand was a single small sock.

“Yes. There’s nothing else.”

The orphanage they reached after a week’s journey was far more desolate than he had imagined.

A swampland that made one question whether humans could even survive there.

A single shack sitting forlornly among vines tangled like spider webs.

Even after deploying knights to search the surrounding area, as he had expected, they found no children, not even any living creatures.

A knight who arrived late held out what was presumed to be a child’s sock, but that was all.

‘Could this be Eve’s sock?’

Callipus slowly closed his eyes.

Though it was called the Pose Duke’s domain, this was a place untouched by human hands.

After the war, it had become barren land where no one could survive.

If the princess had lived here as Aisha claimed, there was no possibility she could still be alive.

The torn and worn sock was proof of that.

‘I never even got to call her name properly.’

How am I supposed to miss you?

As he struggled to move his finger joints and gripped the sock, the tiny sock disappeared instantly in his hand.

The small hope he had felt after hearing Aisha’s words seemed to vanish along with it.

“Let’s withdraw.”

“Yes!”

Roughly stuffing the sock into his pocket, he entered the carriage.

The Croste Ducal Family left the Kingdom of Odtia without even greeting the Pose Duke and headed for the Frozen Kingdom.

Clatter-

Though the carriage moved over the rough dirt road, the mountain-like figure of the man showed no sign of being startled.

He couldn’t even feel sadness.

He had simply returned to how things were before.

To before he had heard Aisha’s claim that she knew the whereabouts of the direct princess.

He had simply returned to that time when he had no reason to live.

‘…Now completely,’

He closed the slightly open window curtain.

‘I have no reason to live.’

He had no right to live.

That was the only way for Callipus, who had failed to protect his family, to atone.

‘The succession of the Croste Ducal Family can be left to the collateral Marquis of Frisia.’

The day he met Aisha. Having resolved to die, he imagined the situation after his disappearance.

If he died, the Croste Ducal Family would be in turmoil for a while.

But the Marquis of Frisia, a collateral branch of Croste, had always been prepared to take over the Croste succession since his direct family members went missing.

They had been eagerly waiting for the opportunity.

Though he didn’t like it, the House of Frisia would be able to handle it well.

Unlike Callipus, they had always been an ambitious family.

After spending several days lost in these cascading thoughts, the Croste Knight Order finally arrived at the ducal palace.

“Your Grace, we have arrived.”

Callipus listlessly put on his mask and opened the carriage door.

The butler who had been waiting approached with a dark expression and bowed his head.

“I heard the news. I think it would be best for you to rest first.”

“I suppose so.”

When he readily agreed and passed by, the butler looked at him with some surprise.

The butler seemed not to have expected the duke, heartbroken over failing to find his daughter, to accept his suggestion so easily.

Nothing mattered anymore.

The head of the Croste Ducal Family would be replaced soon anyway.

Now the bright, lively people around him wouldn’t have to walk on eggshells because of him.

Perhaps the young heir of the Marquis of Frisia would create laughter, and that sound would fill the castle.

This was right.

He had no reason to live.

“Y-Your Grace.”

Just then, one of the knights guarding the castle entrance came running over.

Something had clearly happened, but Callipus didn’t want to hear it.

“If it’s not urgent, first…”

“T-That little brat seems to have escaped.”

It was then that Callipus’s footsteps stopped.

Suddenly, Aisha’s face, which he had forgotten, came to mind.

Golden twin tails sprouting like fountains.

Blue eyes that took up half her face.

Her bold way of speaking and expressions.

That child had disappeared?

“Find her first.”

“Yes!”

His heart, which had been facing death, began to pound.

Callipus, who had been about to return to his bedroom, threw off the thick fur coat he was wearing and entered the castle.

The butler following him asked with a bewildered expression.

“Wh-what are you trying to do…”

“I need to find that little brat first.”

“What? We’ll find her. Your Grace should…”

“No. It’ll be hard to find her.”

That kid is a spy, after all.

“Your Grace!”

Just then.

A knight who had been coming out of the storehouse approached with a tense face and handed something to Callipus.

It was a death potion.

“The potion was dropped inside the storehouse. So we searched the storehouse, but that little brat…”

A potion that would allow a spy to take their own life before being tortured.

Could it be that…

“Y-Your Grace!”

Suddenly pushing past the knight, Callipus commanded.

“I’ll be resting in my bedroom, so keep searching. Don’t let anyone into the bedroom!”

There was no time.

Quickly removing his mask and wrapping himself in a robe, he disguised himself as a gardener and ran outside the castle.

“Aisha! If you’re there, answer me!”

His deep voice, which had always seemed so quiet, cracked in two.

“Aisha, come out if you’re there! There’s no one but me!”

Aisha probably hadn’t made it outside the castle yet.

The entrance of the Croste Duke’s Mansion without its master had stricter security than anywhere else.

“Aisha!”

She was just a little kid.

Yet the fact that this child had run away made him feel a fear greater than death, one that overwhelmed his entire body.

“Aisha! It’s the gardener uncle!”

But no matter how much he wandered around outside the castle, he couldn’t find even a blonde head, let alone a small child.

Could it be.

His legs, which had been walking frantically, came to an abrupt halt.

What if she had already taken the death potion?

No. That little brat wouldn’t do that. She was the one who had been desperately struggling to live.

“…Aisha, please…”

That’s when it happened.

“Ah, mister….”

He had been covering his face with both hands, overwhelmed by despair. From somewhere, he heard the sound of sniffling.

Callipus, who wouldn’t miss such a sound, quickly raised his head.

Deep inside the Garden.

Somewhere in a secluded corner.

Without hesitation, he ran toward the sound and saw a Sewer Passage beyond a pile of fertilizer and soil.

And inside that damp sewer.

“Ah, mister… I tried to die because I did so many wrong things….”

Aisha was crouched there, crying.

“Aisha.”

“…I want to live.”

At her quiet response, Callipus heard something collapse inside his body.

It seemed like he had found a reason to live.

Though there were too many reasons to die, with just the single thought that he had to save that little brat.

Callipus desperately wanted to live.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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