Ura and Edgar’s Plan
“Hey, Ura Bro. This is gonna be alright, right? I’ve got nowhere left to run.”
“Don’t worry, Edgar. That noble said they’d reward us if we pull it off. As long as we don’t get caught.”
“Yeah… that Kai Chair thing, was it? Messing with it like this doesn’t sit right with me. I don’t like the idea of some kid getting hurt, but we’ve got no choice. Gotta do it. The higher-ups don’t care what happens to thugs like us, but we’ve got families too. Your wife and kid got taken, Ura… and me, they took my only little sister and my sick mother. Even if we don’t want to, we have to do it. Damn it.”
“Still, it’s messed up. Buy it, then mess with it so no one can tell, and then complain it broke right away.”
“Yeah. Don’t return the broken chair, just show it’s broken, for ‘confirmation.’ Then don’t hand it over, say we’ll dispose of it ourselves. That way they won’t figure out we tampered with it, right?”
“Yeah. That’s how it is. The only time we hesitated was the first two or three jobs. We’d bring along some kid, two or three years old, with a head injury already, and tell ’em, ‘Stay quiet in front of the adults and you’ll get bread.’ They’d follow us for that. Feed ’em bread so they don’t say anything weird. Then we say the kid sat on their chair, it tipped over, it’s defective, they got hurt, so pay medical fees.”
“Yeah. Just make a scene and get paid. Easy job.”
“The kid getting hurt… that’s on purpose too, right?”
“Yeah. We give bread to some other kid, have ’em trip a smaller one on purpose.”
“That kind of injury? Medical fees are nothing. But if word gets around that they’re selling fragile chairs…?”
“Then they stop selling. The shop’s reputation tanks. And more than anything… the master craftsman who makes those Kai Chairs, his reputation takes a hit.”
“… We owe that master so much. He raised us… and now we’re turning him into the bad guy.”
“That’s in the past. We were broke, so we stole the master’s money. Got found out, lost our place as his apprentices, got kicked out of his home. After that, it was all downhill, straight into the abyss. We ended up as thugs robbing wagons. No matter what we do now, we’re never going back to the world in the sunlight.”
“Our families didn’t do anything wrong. If it’s to save mine… I’d even kill someone. Compared to that, this is just a scam. Pretty mild, no?”
“Yeah… tomorrow’s another job, huh. Same as always, bring a kid, claim the chair broke, and make a scene. For something that simple, they even give us decent-looking clothes for us and the kid playing the injured part. Even make us change disguises every time. I don’t get what rich nobles are thinking.”
“We’ll never understand what the higher-ups are thinking. We just do the job.”
“Hey, Ura… your old man still not back?”
“Yeah. Probably off with that woman he’s been into lately. Living it up all by himself…”
“Yeah… but we can’t go against him. If we do, those hostages, and us, will be killed right away.”
“Yeah. Best not to go against them.”
—----------
“Captain Luke, there are at least ten guards outside.”
“I see.”
“Watch for now. Someone might come or go. For the moment, we stay quiet and observe.”
“Understood!”
What do you think about this chapter?
