The Last Dahlia

003

The man who had fainted finally came to half an hour later, only to find himself being stared at by two strangers whose faces were a little too close for comfort. He blinked. And then he opened his mouth and let out an ear piercing scream that was enough to make blood curdle.

Yuehwa and Shoya both took a couple of steps backwards, stuffing their fingers into their ears to stop themselves from going deaf.

"Shut up!" Yuehwa exclaimed, before grabbing around for something to stuff into the man's mouth. When she finally found something (a smelly sock from the awful smell of it), she quickly plugged it into the fellow's open mouth and the horrendous screeching finally came to a halt. "Much better," she said, heaving a sigh of relief.

The man looked at them in fear, as though they would slit his throat within the next minute.

Pulling a chair to sit herself down, Yuehwa looked down at him and said, "We're not with those guys who tried to kill you. I'm not sure how much you remember of what happened before you passed out, but we're the good guys." For once. "If not for us, you'd be the dead one, not him." She pointed at the shrivelled body of the assassin that was still lying on the ground not far from where he was.

The man immediately recoiled back into his corner, wanting to put as much distance between him and the dead body as possible. He looked up at Yuehwa, horrified. With the sock still stuck in his mouth, he tried to say something in response, but it came out as a muffled mess.

"Who are you? Why were those men trying to kill you?" Yuehwa asked, putting on her best interrogation voice.

Still, all the man could respond with were muffled sounds.

"If you don't remove the sock from his mouth, how is he supposed to give you a reply?" Shoya remarked. He had returned to his favourite position, lying along the wooden beams above. Yuehwa decided that she hated it when he adopted that position, because he was obviously just showing off that he could balance on a beam.

As much as she hated admitting that Shoya was right, there was no two ways about the matter. Reaching over, she said to the man, "If I remove this sock, you are not to continue screaming, is that clear? Or else..." She drew a line across her own neck with the index finger of her left hand, before removing the sock with her right.

The minute the sock came out, the man started on a coughing fit, desperately trying to get rid of the stench that still remained as an aftertaste.

"Alright, let's start again. Who are you and why were those men trying to kill you?" Yuehwa folded her arms, waiting.

The man looked at her timidly, then up at the fellow who was lying on the roof beam, before he finally opened his mouth and said, "My name is Park Maroo and I am just a traveller on the way to Dahai. I don't know why those men were after me..."

The man's speaking voice was nothing like his screeching voice. It had a deep baritone that actually sounded rather soothing to the ears. That said, it didn't change the fact that this man was lying to her, and she didn't like it when people did that. Moving her chair a little closer, Yuehwa leaned over and placed one hand on his shoulder, saying, "Now, I really don't like it when people don't tell me the truth. It makes me feel like they don't trust me, and look at this face, how is this face an untrustworthy face?" Leaning back in her chair, she sighed. "I guess I should have just let those men get to you, since you obviously don't appreciate what I've done."

The man looked a little worried for a moment, wondering whether or not his rescuers would suddenly do an about turn and decide to do away with him after all. In that split second, he made up his mind.

"I'm actually the adviser to the crown prince of Gi," he said quickly. "Those men thought that I was the crown prince so they were trying to kill me, but the crown prince is actually on a separate ship heading for Dahai. I'm just the decoy."