I didn’t go to et Cornelia like so dog waiting for his owner. Instead, I sat in bed naked as Madison got dressed. She gave one more kiss before leaving the room. I then proceeded to sit in the dark, my feet hanging over the edge. I was curious how long it would take Cornelia to co to . Would she stubbornly wait hours? Would she just leave the mansion and expect to beg for a ride ho?
A slight knock on the door sounded only a few minutes later. Only a few minutes? I was surprised. I didn’t bother to answer. As if waiting to be welcod was sothing an agent would care about. A mont of silence was all I got before she turned the knob and walked in. The light in the hallway was enough that I covered my eyes, but she closed it a mont later.
“I will leave when I want to leave,” I said simply.
“Okay,” she responded after a few seconds.
“Okay?” I let out a sneer.
She let out a low sigh, readjusting herself and lying against the wall. “Whatever you may be thinking, Clyburn, I’m not the bad guy.”
I snorted, but after another mont of silence, I glanced up at her. “You’re not my ally either.”
“No…” She responded. “I suppose I’m not. However, I’m about the only advocate you have, so if you don’t utilize , then you’re going to end up locked in an apartnt in the male district with caras watching your every move.”
“You say that like the caras could stop .”
“You’re… more capable than I originally thought,” she said hesitantly. “Shit… I’m not sure how you do half the things you do.”
“I use magic… plain and simple.”
“Magic doesn’t work that way. It requires calculations and a great deal of chakra.”
“I do the calculations in my head… as for the chakra, I have no limits on that anymore,” I responded, feeling a bit tired.
She nodded, but despite my words, she looked completely unconvinced. It had been like this in the MPA education center as well. This was a world where magic existed, but they truly had a strict understanding of how magic worked. Most magic seen in the movies, the flashy stuff where people leaped into the air, cast fireballs at each other, or transported to other locations were purely fictional. It was like cars exploding or people shooting from a gun without concern for bullets in my old world.
So, any ti I exuded my magical ability, most skeptics believed I had done so trick. There was a ti I had teleported in front of a woman, and she had been convinced I had rely used light to distract her while disappearing like a street magician in a puff of smoke. It didn’t help that this world had street magicians who combined magic with optical illusions and could truly pull off spectacular feats when actual magic was mixed into it.
It looked like Cornelia was the sa. She had convinced herself I was using smoke and mirrors to trick people. Although she had seen the sound trick, part of it had been prepared ahead of ti so she could at least accept the possibility. However, when it ca to leaving the apartnt through teleportation, that was sothing she couldn’t accept. She also hadn’t seen leap up to that building. She probably assud I used the ladder that the girls had used, or maybe parkour if she was desperate for a reason.
“I can make an appointnt for you to see your sister.” Cornelia’s words caused to glance in her direction once again. “I still have enough pull that I can manage sothing like that.”
My excitent diminished nearly as quickly as it began, and I lowered my head with a sigh. “Don’t bother.”
She seed surprised, her eyebrows raising questioningly. “You don’t want to see your sister?”
“Do you think she did it?”
“This murder… things would point to that being the case. As for the previous murders, it’s hard to say. Naturally, it isn’t easy getting permission for you to go see her, especially since it’s possible that you were her target from the beginning.”
“She didn’t kill anyone,” I responded. “She’s innocent.”
“She was covered in his blood.”
“She had her reason for being there. I don’t know what’s going on, but I know it was her plan, and she won’t tell because she thinks she’s keeping safe. They all are. There is sothing bigger going on. I can feel it. After I… died… I think they’re afraid I’ll put my life in danger, so they’re cutting out of it.”
“There are several things off about what you just said, but I think you’re becoming paranoid. There may be a certain murderer who has so obsession with you, but it might be soone who has nothing to do with you. You were very famous a few years ago. So people beco infatuated with soone they see in the news all the ti and then do awful things. Nothing indicates it’s a conspiracy.
“I saw the person who shot Dia.”
She jerked for a second and then sighed. “I suppose you won’t tell who?”
I stared at her, carefully looking at her eyes. “Can I trust you?”
“Yes,” she responded imdiately, but when I narrowed my eyes she blushed. “Clyburn, I swear I will not tell anyone what you tell here. E-even if I think it puts your life at risk.”
“You’d risk my life?” I smirked.
“I will put my life on the line to make sure that happens. This doesn’t an we won’t still use security and I won’t try to advise you to be safe. However, I will keep this secret, and any others you wish to share.”
I leaned back, letting out a long sigh as I put my hands on my bed. “Even if I did tell you, I could always deny it to the police later. If this conspiracy goes as deep as I think, even if the cops know the na of the person who did it, this probably won’t change anything. She’s a ghost anyway.”
“Who?” She took a step forward.
“In that case, the person on that rooftop was Brooke.”
“Brooke…” She scrunched her brow for a second. “You an, the security guard?”
“Yeah… her.”
Her eyes stared at widely for a minute, but she finally managed to calm down and look away. “Your… secret is safe with .”
“That sounded almost painful.”
“Shut up.”
“If she had been aiming for , she would have killed on that rooftop. She has the ability. She had so other goal, and it wasn’t to kill Dia either.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, as in you believe ?”
“Okay, as in I believe that you believe it.”
I gave a dry chuckle. “Well, whatever is going on, I’m not going to stand on the sidelines and let it happen. I think it’s all connected and I want to get to the bottom of it.”
“What are you saying?” She asked, still distinctly looking away.
“I need to get to the bottom of this,” I said. “It’d be a lot easier if you worked with , rather than worked against .”
She let out a light snort. “I’ve been trying to work with you from the beginning.”
“Not to do what I need to do.”
She shook her head slowly. “What you’re asking to do… it violates everything I stand for. I’d be letting you walk into danger.”
“How much danger have you successfully kept from so far?”
“…”
“Ever since I ca to… for my entire life on Gaia, I have been protected and coddled. Even before the MPA act, I had a mother who kept at ho for the majority of my life, and sisters who felt the need to push away, lie to or wear masks to hide what they thought was too dangerous. I’m done sitting back and letting things happen. I’m done watching them put their lives on the line and doing nothing. I was there the Day of Wrath. I was there at the world consort. I’ve survived plenty. It’s ti I take my life into my own hands.”
“It sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself more than .”
“Will you help ?”
She bit her lip, finally looking back. “If I don’t help you, you’ll just run away and do it anyway, right?”
I nodded.
“Even if I wasn’t your agent, you’d be running so other poor girl through the wringer. She’d underestimate you even more than I did.”
“At least you admit it,” I muttered.
She closed her eyes, took a breath, and then nodded. “Fine. I will help you get to the bottom of this. But, there will be rules.”
“What kind of rules?”
“You will listen to my advice, and if we can do sothing safer, we will do it safer.”
“That’s simple.”
“You won’t run off on , or hide things from anymore.”
“…”
“I demand it!”
I sighed and nodded. “Very well. Anything else?”
Most of the things I was hiding from her were things she wouldn’t believe even if I told her. Besides, she wanted to not hide any more things from her. That didn’t an I had to tell her the things that had already happened.
“Yes, one last thing.” She paused for a second. “Once we find proof one way or the other… once the mystery is solved, even if it’s proof that you’re just overreacting… then you’ll drop it and start producing offspring as you should.”
“That’s fine…”
She walked over and grabbed my arm. “I an it. They need to be your offspring.”
The look she gave seed to glance right through my secrets. Did she know I was impregnating won with soone else’s offspring? The look in her eyes seed to suggest that, but I wasn’t going to confirm her suspicions by speaking. What? This was sothing that had already happened. It didn’t count regarding things being kept from her.
“I will,” I promised.
Only then did she let go of my arm and take a step back, patting off her pants. “Okay, in that case, where are we going then?”
“I do have soone I want to talk to,” I responded after a mont of thought. “Soone who might know what is going on.”
“Who is it?”
“The only girl who can’t tell no.”
She looked slightly confused, but when I explained who I was talking about, she gave a subtle nod. “I had heard that you ended up having a relationship with her. There are a lot of rumors going on about you two.”
“Mostly lies,” I responded.
I went and bid my children goodbye, although most of them were asleep and it was just a kiss on the forehead. I kissed Madison too and then left the mansion that felt both too empty and too full with all of those babies.
Sylph and Brianna were waiting at the entrance. When they saw , they both lowered their heads. At so point, I’d have to apologize to them. I likely had gotten them in a lot of trouble since they had started working for . I was a bit guilty that I couldn’t be an easier client. However, I wasn’t dead yet, so at least they didn’t have sothing like that to tarnish their records.
When I left the mansion, I encountered two other familiar faces. “Charlene, Grace… you’re part of my guard now as well.”
“Master Bonholdt, I was told that you requested ,” Charlene spoke in her typical no-nonsense voice.
Grace put on a big smile and waved excitedly, her breasts bouncing slightly despite being contained in her police uniform.
“Hey, Clyburn! You know! You shouldn’t have taken off like that! If I reported that to the detective, she’d be furious!”
“You didn’t report it though?” I smirked.
She puffed out her cheeks and turned away. “Ooo… you’re a bad influence. This one ti, I decided to keep it a secret.”
“Watch it, I’ll think you have a crush on .”
Her face turned completely red. “That’s not… I an… if I applied for a baby and Clyburn excepted, I’d be quite… but…”
“I’ll be taking charge of your detail.” Charlene stepped over the flustered Grace. “She’s rely here as an advisor and deterrent.”
“You think she can deter a serial killer from striking?” I raised an eyebrow of disbelief.
“C-Clyburn! I’m a trained policewoman! If there is anyone you’re safe by, it’d be .”
“Where are the other two guards?” I asked, noticing it was just the four of them.
“They were… reassigned,” Charlene responded, hesitating slightly.
“They asked to be transferred.” Brianna snorted. “Said you were too much trouble-ow! Don’t pinch , Syph!”
Charlene shot both girls a severe look, but otherwise remained silent and left it at that. I ended up with Charlene as my driver, Syph in the back with and Cornelia, while Grace and Brianna followed behind in her cop car. I suppose the appearance of a police vehicle was a bit more intimidating than a nondescript SUV.
“Oh, and one more request,” Cornelia suddenly spoke up.
“What’s that?”
“Let’s try to keep our encounters with the police to a minimum. I don’t want to have any more confrontations with that woman.”
I instantly understood who that woman was. She had a history with Roxanne and seed to not want to relive that history. Roxanne, on the other hand, seed almost critical and hostile in everything that Cornelia did, only creating even more tension. I could understand that much, but I still gave her a dubious look.
“That’s going to be difficult with Grace following us, isn’t it? She’ll be reporting anything she sees to the good detective.”
“You have my permission,” she said quietly, almost sounding like a pout.
“Permission.” I blinked.
She looked irritated. “You know… do… what you do… to her.”
“What I do?” At that mont, I was genuinely lost and had no clue what she was talking about.
“You know…” She leaned closer, even though Brianna could still hear us while pretending she didn’t. “Seduce her.”
I smiled helplessly. “I’m not really…”
“Oh, don’t act coy now. I’ve seen how you flirt with other won. I’ve even seen the effect you have. That woman you played with last night wouldn’t stop raving about you. She even had delusions of staying in the morning and cooking you breakfast. Like so actor who hasn’t had to make a al for herself in a decade could make a suitable al. I had to kick her out.”
“…”
“Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that if you make Grace yours, then she won’t report anything to Roxanne. What? What’s with that look?”
“It’s just… I can’t believe that I’m hearing this from you of all people.”
“What? This is simply a ans of self-preservation. You have my permission to diddle her on your knee. You can play with her as much as possible, as long as pregnancy doesn’t happen.”
“I can’t just make any won fall in love with ,” I responded after realizing she was being serious and wasn’t just trying to tease .
“That’s not what I’ve heard.”
“There are plenty of won my relationship is completely platonic toward.”
“Who?” She demanded.
“You.”
“Well, obviously, but I’m the exception that proves the rule.”
“Well, also…” My eyes darted to Syph, whose back straightened as her cheeks grew red. “Um… the bodyguards who switched.”
“They left because they felt compromised with you. Besides, that had only been a day or two. Who knows how they would have felt in a week?”
“I… can’t believe you’re even suggesting this,” I replied. “I an… Charlene. She has no feelings for and she used to work for for years.”
She rolled her eyes as if she was convinced, but I crossed my arms like I had won the argunt and put a nail in it. It wasn’t like I couldn’t seduce Grace. She was a beautiful woman, and she looked great in a uniform. I’d love to peel it off of her. However, when it ca to seducing won, I always used the fact they wanted sothing from . Grace didn’t appear to want anything except to do her job. Plus, by doing it, I’d jeopardize that job, which put a bad taste in my mouth. I tried to make it a habit of not ruining too many won’s lives.
I had grown up being told that my dad had died by playing with the wrong woman, so I had tried to be a bit careful picking won who weren’t likely to kill , my imdiate family not included. Well, it wasn’t like Mom would ever hurt , and Hannah wasn’t guilty, I was certain of that! Alright, maybe my taste in won wasn’t the best, but I stood fast on trying to leave won I took on as lovers happier after we part. For so reason, I didn’t see a relationship with Grace and I going in a direction that would lead to that, although that could have just been my imagination.
“Why do you think I left my previous job and took this one after all these years…” A voice muttered in front so quietly that I probably wouldn’t have heard if we weren’t quiet.
“What was that? Charlene?” I said loudly, hoping that Cornelia across from didn’t hear those words.
“M-master! N-nothing!”
For the first ti, the straight-laced Charlene was acting flustered. I decided I would take what she ant as mutual respect and love, like that for a distant family mber. I’d say any family mber, but considering the relationships I had with my family in this world, it was best if we kept it distant. It was the love for a friend, nothing more. She liked guarding . There were no monts in our lives where we had any kind of closeness that could grow anymore. She was just a friend, like Brooke.
AnnouncentPlease click /the-world-of-won/ to read ahead.
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