"Hmph... wait, am I an idiot?" Kiana ruffled the bangs she had just smoothed out, feeling a little frustrated.
Wasn't the whole reason she had decided to come back alone to "pack her things" because she was worried about the "Kaslana" surname, afraid that Mei and Michael would see objects related to the Kaslana family while she was packing?
So, now that she had confessed her last name to Mei, did this action have any meaning anymore?
Nope, none whatsoever. Perhaps it was just that she wanted to take one last look at this snail-sized room.
Kiana gently stroked the somewhat blurry mirror, took half a step back, and her knee bumped into the toilet.
The entire rental was so small. Naturally, the space left for the bathroom wouldn't be much. The showerhead for showering was on the wall beside her. She had complained about this often, but now she smiled—she was about to leave anyway. The complaints of the past had settled into nostalgia and reluctance.
Although the space was small and she hadn't lived here for long, it was, after all, her first stable foothold after arriving in the Far East. If she could leave without hesitation, it would be somewhat... of course, it wouldn't be that it was unworthy of the surname she was trying to hide, but... some things deeply ingrained in the blood couldn't be changed.
Not to mention this small rental. She also missed the leaky wooden house where she had lived with her old man in Siberia, the one that was drafty in the summer and snowy in the winter. She remembered every day and night she had spent in that house.
"That's it, I'll rest here for one last night. I'll go downstairs to the convenience store later to buy a bento, then settle the rent with the landlady, and then it's goodbye..." Kiana's mood brightened again. Being nostalgic didn't mean she had to get stuck in the past.
After all, people had to move forward, they couldn't help but move forward. As long as a person was still alive, the traces left by the past wouldn't disappear—the current Kiana couldn't fully understand these words yet, but as long as there were enough partings, then...
She roughly combed her hair, picked up a chameleon-shaped badge, and thought about how she could live with Mei from tomorrow onwards, so her tightly pressed lips split into a smile. She started humming a light and out-of-tune song and walked out of the bathroom.
Tap, tap tap tap tap, tap tap tap tap, tap, tap—
Thud!
The back of her neck stung, and darkness fell before her eyes—this was Kiana's last sensation before she lost consciousness.
"That was a little too easy." Bronya rubbed her wrist. She had to admit, her luck today was so good she was a little scared...
But thinking about it, it was normal. After all, the target was just an ordinary female student. Just doing that... yes, perhaps the panic she felt at times was just because she was unwilling to do this.
She didn't immediately deal with the unconscious Kiana. Instead, she went back to the entrance and closed the door tightly. It didn't matter that the lock was broken. She took out a leather cord from her pocket, made a knot on the doorknob, then pulled the two ends of the cord to the wall on the side and fixed them in place with a nail gun. The entire process was exceptionally skilled, showing that this wasn't the first time she had done this.
After doing all this, she walked back to Kiana, wrapped her arms around her armpits, and dragged her into the bedroom.
"Wow, this room is too..." Bronya had only taken two steps back when the back of her head hit the wall. She couldn't help but reassess the bedroom. No, this wasn't a bedroom at all. The entire room could only fit a desk and a chair. The bed was suspended in the air, and she had to open a folding ladder to climb up.
"You've had it rough, haven't you?" Bronya curled her lips at the unconscious white-haired girl.
It wasn't as if she hadn't lived in more run-down places, but this was the first time she had seen a house that made such use of the small space.
She put the ladder down, used the back of her foot to pull the chair out from under the desk, and kicked it in front of the ladder. Then, she awkwardly turned around, switched her position with Kiana, and spent a lot of effort putting her on the chair.
Then came the enjoyable binding stage. Bronya lifted the thick sweater she wore over her shirt and untied a strong woven rope from her waist. She first tied the two legs of the bare round stool to the ladder, then used the ladder as a backrest, binding Kiana up tightly.
"Done!" She didn't rush to wake Kiana up. Instead, she went back to the entrance, picked up the bag that had been casually thrown on the ground, and searched for Kiana's phone.
"Hmm? It's out of battery?" She sighed. After a desperate search through the trash-like bag, she came to a rather hopeless conclusion—the charger wasn't here.
That's right, this guy had been taken away by Michael in the middle of the day yesterday, so she probably hadn't had time to come back and get this.
But how had she managed to use up all the battery? What exactly had she done with Raiden Mei yesterday? Speechless, helpless, yet also very curious, these complex emotions were something that had never appeared in Bronya's life before.
She forced down this strange feeling and returned to Kiana's desk. She opened the drawer, which, as expected, was as messy as the bag. Thinking about the earlier analogy, she looked at the trash can next to the desk—well, saying the bag and the drawer were as messy as the trash can was insulting the trash can. It seemed like she had just emptied the trash this morning before going to school. It was empty, without even a trash bag.
She pulled the charging cable out of the drawer's clutter like peeling silk from a cocoon and spent a lot of effort finding the plug. When the phone screen lit up with the charging animation, she impatiently pressed the power button.
The phone's start-up animation was slow and choppy. It was easy to imagine that the owner of the phone usually didn't clean up the system junk. This was consistent with her observation of Kiana's personality.
Well, good, at least it means I probably didn't take the wrong phone. Bronya thought with dry humor and couldn't help but chuckle softly.
But after laughing, she didn't feel much relief. In fact, as with many previous times, Cocolia had only given her one mission objective: bring Raiden Mei, who had the Gem of Conquest implanted in her body, to the base.
As for how to accomplish this mission objective? Cocolia wouldn't interfere too much with the details. This was the experience she had gained while serving in the army.
In the past, Natasha and she would probably have discussed a plan of action. At first, Natasha would mainly formulate the plan, but then she got tired of it, and the responsibility gradually fell on Bronya. So, even today, with Natasha injured and unavailable, Bronya could formulate a plan and complete the mission on her own without any problems.
Everything should have been that way.
But, alas...
Bronya sighed heavily. "To avoid Michael, I came up with this plan to kidnap Kiana and lure out Raiden Mei. What's the difference between me and Cocolia? What right do I have to feel unwilling to obey her orders?"
Bronya felt a little ridiculous. This wasn't the first time she had kidnapped the relatives and friends of her target to complete a mission. No, even if it were the first time, she wouldn't have felt the slightest regret or guilt.
Was it because the environment was different from before, or was it because of something else?
"Heh!" Bronya laughed self-deprecatingly. What other reason could there be? Surely no one had altered her mind?
How could that be possible? There shouldn't be anyone in this world who could do that.
If she set aside this impossible guess, then what caused this change?
This wasn't a question that had to be answered, but there were no questions in the world that had to be answered, right?
Bronya lifted her skirt, took out the dagger strapped to her thigh, tossed it casually a couple of times, and then, as she had done countless times before, carefully examined her old comrade in arms, who had been with her all the way from Siberia.
The blade had been pointlessly polished into a mirror, but long-term use had added a lot of scratches. It looked ugly from a distance, but that still didn't stop Bronya from using it as a mirror.
The face reflected on the blade was no different from before. Although Natasha always said things like "Bronya is growing up and getting more beautiful," Bronya always treated it as nonsense to coax a child. She never felt that her appearance had changed at all, it was as always...
People have a hard time noticing slow changes. If someone looked in the mirror every day for a year, they might not be able to see that they had gained tens of pounds.
Perhaps if she directly flipped through photos from two or three years ago, Bronya would be able to clearly sense her changes. But unfortunately, things like photos didn't exist.
In fact, after so many years, how could time not leave its mark on a person? How could the person she was today be exactly the same as the person she was years ago?
So, the differences she felt today, these thoughts that probably wouldn't have occurred to her before, were perhaps just because she had changed. Whether she admitted it or not, she was no longer the Ural Silver Wolf whose only purpose was to complete missions. She was a normal girl named Bronya—only her past experiences were a bit special.
"Ugh... what a pain!" While her mind had been running wild, Kiana's phone screen had slowly lit up. But that wasn't enough. She waited another two and a half minutes before the system junk-filled phone finally finished starting up.
"So slow, it's like an elephant getting out of bed!" Aside from a few photos, Bronya had never seen an elephant, let alone an elephant getting out of bed. She had seen a brown bear in the Siberian forest right after it woke up. Although she knew it was a ferocious beast, its slow movements added a bit of cuteness.
Would an elephant, which was ten times bigger than a brown bear and wasn't strictly speaking a ferocious beast, only get up more slowly?
In the end, all of this was just her own fantasy. What was the truth? What was it like for an elephant to get up? She didn't know and had no interest in knowing... well, actually, she wanted to know, but it seemed impossible to realize in the short term.
But what did it matter? As long as she felt happy.
"Next, I just need to find Raiden Mei's contact information." She first opened the SMS list, which only contained bank transfer records and a bunch of junk ads.
She then opened the phone's contacts, which only had two entries: "Landlady" and "Mr. Kuzuki." The call history was also pitifully sparse. The last call was three days ago at 8:33 AM, ringing fifteen times, and the call lasted eleven seconds. The caller was none other than Mr. Kuzuki.
"Pfft!" Bronya almost died laughing.
Although there was no direct evidence, Bronya could almost piece together the truth based on these few numbers—Kiana had probably overslept, and then Mr. Kuzuki, as her homeroom teacher, had called to wake her up for school...
She could imagine that even after the phone rang, Kiana still hadn't woken up right away. She probably just moaned and tossed around in bed, finally reaching for the phone to turn off the sound, only to see the screen—Mr. Kuzuki calling.
Her mood at the time was probably one of despair? Well, maybe she didn't care at all.
Bronya stretched lazily. Two minor failures weren't anything to her. They couldn't even be called failures, because she had expected them all along.
People of different age groups have different behavioral preferences. For example, when it comes to using mobile phones to communicate, middle-aged people are more likely to call or send text messages, while young people... naturally use messaging apps!
She had known long ago that searching through contacts and text messages would likely yield nothing. The reason she still opened those first was purely because it was her usual procedure.
"Let me see... what? No way?" Bronya rummaged through Kiana's phone's home screen, but couldn't find a single mainstream social media app.
"No way... what is this guy... does she not have anyone she cares about in this world?" There was nothing else she could do. It seemed her good luck had run out for today.
"Damn it, what should I do now?" Bronya had carried out similar operations no less than ten times, but this was the first time she had felt so speechless. However, having reached this point, she wasn't entirely without responsibility herself.
"I was careless. Have I been living too comfortably lately? The prior intelligence work was completely insufficient! If this Kiana and Raiden Mei are really so close, how come there's not even a contact number in her phone?"
But it wasn't as if she had no other options.
"Looks like I have to use Plan B." She walked to the still-unconscious Kiana and patted her shoulder lightly. "Looks like you'll have to suffer being tied up here until tomorrow."
She planned to wait until Michael left the next day and then directly find Raiden Mei at school, using Kiana as leverage. But since Kiana's phone didn't even have her contact information, Bronya highly doubted whether their relationship was close enough to be leveraged.
"Beep beep beep!!!"
"Eh? Mama Cocolia?" Bronya took out her phone. Unexpectedly, the caller was Cocolia.
"Hello—"
"Hello! Bronya? Where are you?"
"Me? I'm executing..."
"Is Seele with you?"
"Ah... huh? No, I've been acting alone since school let out. Seele should have gone back to the orphanage with Sin Mal, Rozaliya, and Liliya, right?"
"..." A long silence came from the other end of the line. No, not silence, but heavy breathing. From this, it wasn't hard to sense the anxiety and helplessness in the person on the other side. Bronya had known Cocolia for three years, and this was the first time she had seen her like this. She was completely different from the cold, calculating Cocolia she knew. She seemed like a real "mom."
But she didn't have time to pay attention to that. If she wasn't a fool, she should understand what Cocolia's seemingly disjointed words meant.
"Mama Cocolia, Seele... what happened to her?" Cocolia didn't answer right away. The breathing stopped, as if she had regained her composure and was weighing the pros and cons.
For no reason, Bronya started to panic. But before she could say anything, Cocolia's voice rang out: "Alright, Bronya, this has nothing to do with you. I'll send Natasha to look for Seele. Aren't you carrying out the mission to kidnap the Gem of Conquest? Don't get distracted!"
"But... okay, I understand, Mama Cocolia." Bronya said this and hung up the phone directly.