City Of Witches

Chapter 403: Neglect (2)

1.

“Ugh...!”

The first thing that Siwoo felt was the soft sunlight pouring on him.

Then, he felt the fluffy pillow—filled with duck feathers—that the back of his head was resting on.

Lastly, he felt the blanket that covered his chest, and the warmth that radiated from the fireplace.

It feels comfortable...

The sunlight that seeped through the window’s bar stung his eyes—as it had been a while since it took in this much light at once—making him grumble inwardly a little.

But, that didn’t reduce the coziness and the warmth that his body felt from the sunlight.

Although, at that moment, his mind—which had been urging him to go back to sleep—was roused awake, as if someone had just splashed water on his face.

Because countless unresolved issues had suddenly resurfaced, making it difficult for him to stay in that dazed state.

“Siwoo!”

““Mr. Assistant!””

Before his eyes could adjust to the dazzling light, three different voices rang in his ears.

He felt two pairs of small hands holding on to his left hand...

And a pair of bigger hands holding on to his right.

All of them had one thing in common: they were holding his arms so tightly that it hurt him. But, he noticed how those arms trembled, making him feel like he shouldn’t tell them to let go of him.

He didn’t need to wait until his eyes adjusted to the light to know which hands these were.

In fact, he didn’t need to hear their voices to know.

The twins and Sharon.

“You could’ve at least told me before you go!”

“Mr. Assistant...! Seriously, you’re bad! Bad!”

“Right! You’re bad, Mr. Assistant! Suddenly going missing like that, and almost got yourself killed—!”

He could see the tears hanging from their eyelids.

Sharon was about to burst into tears, while the twins were holding themselves back from jumping at him to hug him.

He knew that their outbursts were out of worry for him.

So, he was about to apologize, but...

“I—cough...!”

His extremely dry throat—probably because he had been lying down here for a while—got in the way.

The moment they saw that, Sharon and the twins quickly grabbed the water bottle on the table.

Their movements reminded Siwoo of the moment when a batter tried to touch a base.

“Drink this!”

“T-Take the water!”

“Do you want me to feed you the water, Mr. Assistant?”

“T-Thank you...”

Somehow, the three of them didn’t get into a fight as they did that.

Feeling bewildered after seeing them acting so unexpectedly harmonious, Siwoo took the water from their hands.

And here I thought they’re going to start a fight again...

“That aside, you really deserve to be scolded, Siwoo!”

“Sharon unnie is right!”

“Sharon unnie is more than right!”

Siwoo didn’t know about this, obviously, but when he was still unconscious, Sharon and the twins had been guarding his bedsides like faithful guard dogs. Naturally, they developed a strange sense of camaraderie.

Since they had resolved their misunderstandings and reached some sort of agreement a while ago, this strengthened the bond between them.

After Siwoo was done drinking his water, Sharon began scolding him.

“Are you out of your mind?! You knew that you were definitely going to die if you went! So, why...! Why did you go...?! Do you think we could just live without you if you were gone...?!”

“Sharon unnie’s right! Do you know how worried we were when we watched you sleep for three days...?!”

“We couldn’t even sleep and eat properly! We just waited for you here until you woke up!”

He looked around and saw a small bed and a fairly large bed surrounding the bed that he was lying down on.

The smaller bed seemed to be Sharon’s.

While the bigger one was the twins.

From this, he could tell that they really had been going all out to take care of him while he was asleep.

“I-I’m sorry...”

“Do you think everything...”

“...Can be solved...”

“...By just apologizing?!”

They shouted at him, but that was the end of it.

Because after that, they immediately ran to him and hugged him.

The soft scent of flowers entered his nose.

Sharon held his hand tightly, while the twins were rubbing their cheeks on him.

”Promise me... Don’t ever do something this reckless again...”

“Mr. Assistant, what you did was awesome, but... Please don’t do it again...”

“Mr. Assistant, if you keep doing this, you might end up dying before we can inherit our brands...”

Their warm, heartfelt concern poured out together with their tears.

Seeing this, Siwoo’s nose became tingly.

The embrace of these people he never thought he’d ever meet again felt warmer than usual.

But, he just couldn’t indulge himself in this moment. Because there was a certain matter that he had been worried about all this time.

The reason why Siwoo went to confront Bianca in the first place was to save Takasho.

While he managed to survive through her trickery, in the end, he still failed to save Takasho.

Even though the man had gone through the worst kind of torture for him...

“Sharon... Takasho...”

He stopped.

‘Did you find his remains?’ the words failed to leave his throat.

Because if he were to ask that, he would know for sure that Takasho had died.

At that moment of his hesitation, the door to the room opened, and someone who Siwoo didn’t expect to be here walked through it.

“Yo, Shin Siwoo. Finally, you’re awake.”

Although he was walking on a crutch, both his arms were on casts, and there were bandages all over his body, Mimaya Takasho was there. The part of his tanned skin that wasn’t covered by the bandages looked perfectly healthy.

Indeed. Siwoo’s longtime friend survived that horrific encounter.

2.

After asking Sharon and the twins to leave the room for ten minutes...

Siwoo jumped out of the bed and hugged Takasho. Hot tears came out of his eyes.

Likewise, Takasho’s eyes also started turning red, marking this the first time Siwoo had ever seen him cry.

“A-Are you really alive? Are you really Takasho?”

“Can’t you tell by looking at me? Yes, I’m Takasho. The same damsel in distress who you, the prince on a white horse, came to rescue.”

Siwoo genuinely couldn’t believe this had happened.

Knowing Bianca—who regarded humans as mere insects—he had fully expected her to just kill him the moment he became useless to her.

“But she told me that she drilled holes in your body and turned you into a shark fodder...”

“Holes? Yeah, that crazy bitch made not one, but three fucking holes! Seriously, even though my bottom hole is working properly, she still went and did that!”

Takasho’s body shuddered as he remembered the horrifying experience he had gone through.

‘So, how did you survive?’ Siwoo stared at him with that look on his face. Seeing that, he just shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, so, I went to the Modern World to meet up with Ms. Periwinkle’s business partner, right? Before I departed, she lent me an artifact on the condition that I give it back to her after I come back.”

Indeed.

The sole reason why Takasho went to the Modern World in the first place was to sign a contract with one of Periwinkle’s business partners.

He then proceeded to go on a full rant about how great and thoughtful Periwinkle was.

Of course, he slipped in his crude jokes occasionally, and exaggerated his words greatly, but he genuinely felt indebted to the witch.

After all, thanks to the clover she gave him, he managed to survive even after getting three holes drilled into his body, and being drowned for more than a hour in the sea. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Periwinkle had granted him a ‘miracle’.

“Anyway, thank you again. I owe you a lot, my friend.”

“You punk, no need to thank me... I was the reason why you had to go through that in the first place...”

“What do you mean you’re the reason? It’s my body’s devilish charm that could attract even the worst of the witches is the reason why I had to go through all that, not you.”

Takasho smiled, revealing his white teeth. Siwoo smiled back at him.

“Oh, also, I have some good news.”

“What is it?”

Takasho closed his eyes, as if he was about to announce a major news.

Then, his eyes fluttered open as he announced the news with a loud and excited voice.

“It stood...!”

“What...?”

“This morning! It stood up again!”

That news might seem irrelevant, but to Takasho, it was worth the world.

After all, Bianca had crushed one of his balls, so it wouldn’t be strange if he couldn’t ejaculate, or even get erect anymore. But it turned out that wasn’t the case at all.

Hearing that, Siwoo immediately held his hands tightly, congratulating him on his actual miraculous experience.

“You are a great guy, you know that?”

“How could you just notice that?”

3.

“You surely are a magnet for trouble, Mr. Siwoo...”

After Sharon, the twins, and Takasho, Siwoo had to deal with one of his mother-in-laws, Albireo.

She was the second person in the list of the people Siwoo dreaded meeting the most.

For the record, the first one was Deneb.

“Just, how on earth does this keep on happening...? The Witch of Aquarius, the Cowardly Witch, the incident with that Homunculus in Border Town, and now the Witch of Desire...”

Albireo was so bewildered at what had happened to the point that she didn’t have the heart to scold him anymore.

After all, all the incidents she had mentioned happened in the span of two years.

It felt like when it came to him, the hand of fate was twisted two times over.

“I have no words to defend myself...”

Currently, Siwoo was sitting on a chair with his knees folded—preparing to bow for an apology.

The fact that Albireo knew that he had been fucking the twins in the ass already made the difficulty of handling her skyrocket.

And then there was also the matter of him handing Flora Arabesque his credit certificate so that she could make him a cloak.

Even until now, he hadn’t heard how much gold she had withdrawn with that credit.

However, after recalling how the usually languid Flora grinned happily back then, he knew that it definitely wasn’t a small amount, so he practically had been bracing himself for an impact.

In any case, those two things were the reason why he felt so awkward in front of Albireo right now.

“First, I’m going to tell you that your status as our family’s savior hasn’t changed. I also acknowledge your righteous reason of saving your friend for your rampage.”

“I thank you for your kind words...”

“But, I just can’t let go of one thing, Mr. Siwoo. You’ve spent twice the amount that we agreed upon.”

“T-Twice...?!”

“To be exact, it was 2.74 times the amount.”

The revelation left Siwoo dumbstruck.

They never wrote down how much money he was supposed to receive, but he knew that it should be roughly ten billions.

Which meant, Flora really hadn’t taken a small amount...

“M-May I know how much was the agreed amount exactly...?”

“Originally, it was set up to be 10 billion for every five years. It was under the condition for you to wait until our twins received their brands, but now I’m questioning whether you could keep your end of this agreement or not...”

This meant he had spent 27.4 billion on a single piece of cloak.

Siwoo’s eyes darkened instantly.

He vividly imagined himself living as a slave of the Gemini Family for the rest of his life now.

Logically speaking, she could take it as her paying him fifteen years in advance, but there was no way he could say that out loud.

Another option was to pay it back, but even half of it was an astronomical amount.

Even if he were to win the lottery ten times and more, he’d barely be able to pay that much.

“You’re in debt now, Mr. Siwoo.”

“I’ll do my best to pay it in full.”

Siwoo closed his eyes, waiting for Albireo’s reaction.

As he waited nervously for her next words to fall, he suddenly heard a snicker from her direction.

When he opened his eyes, he saw her giggling while covering her mouth with her hand.

“Just make sure that this won’t ever happen again in the future, okay? You almost made me have a heart attack, you know?”

Those words made his heart flutter, thinking that she was an angel that had descended from the heavens.

“Are you...sure...that’s okay...?”

“Of course not. One rule about being a rich person is that you should never let even a single penny go to waste.”

“Ugh...”

Seeing Siwoo lowering his head, at a loss for words, Albireo started to laugh out loud.

Siwoo knew that she was just joking, but he still couldn’t find any words to respond to her.

Albireo knew that, of course. That was why she made that joke in the first place—she just loved to see him struggle like this.

Recalling how Countess Yesod had a similar tendency made Siwoo think that all the countess was more alike than he thought.

“In return, I want you to take care of our twins properly. Not just Sharon.”

Albireo said in a soft tone.

As someone who had stolen both of her daughters, he didn’t have any words to say to that.

“I will do my best.”

“At least you’re brave enough to give me an answer, hm? Anyway, Mr. Siwoo, the reason why you fainted for three days is due to mana exhaustion, so don’t go running around for the time being. Make sure to recuperate.”

“I understand.”

After that, Albireo gestured that he may leave the room and picked up her pen.

When Siwoo first came in, she was working on something—which meant, she had spared her busy time just for him.

This made him realize once again that not anyone could become filthy rich like her.

“Ah, right. Countess, have you seen my master?”

He expected that Eloa was the first one running to him the moment she heard the news that he had collapsed.

The problem here was that, even the countess didn’t know her whereabouts.

“Duchess Tiphereth, she—”

-Bang!

Just right when Albireo was about to start talking, the door to the room burst open.

And the one who came in was none other than his master, Duchess Tiphereth herself.