Weiss And Leopin (4)

The next day, Sunday.

Leopin left home before the sun rose and headed for the slums in one corner of town.

“Today is the day that girl comes to the chapel. She was crying yesterday, so I want to somehow make her smile.

That’s it. If we climb a tall tree and look out over the town, it might clear her mood.”

Leopin loved that girl’s smile.

Just thinking of her smile naturally made his steps lighter.

Suddenly, he noticed flowers blooming by the roadside.

“That’s right, she said she liked flowers. I’ll take a little detour and pick some pretty flowers.”

Leopin went down the opposite way at the fork in the road and headed toward a distant riverbank.

He walked back and forth along the still dim riverside, searching for blooming flowers.

The boy at this time knew nothing at all about flowers, so he picked whatever he found at random.

When he saw flowers he had never seen before on the opposite bank, he took off his shoes and crossed the river without caring that his pants got wet.

A little while later, Leopin was heading toward the chapel with both arms full of flowers.

“Maybe I picked a little too many. But I hope she’ll be happy.”

The boy’s heart was floating lightly, just like his steps.

When he saw the old chapel across the street, he unintentionally quickened his pace.

Just a little farther, and he would see that girl…!

The moment he thought that, a small girl jumped out from the bushes.

“Big Brother Leopin!”

The girl, who wore a dull white robe full of patches over her small body, clung tightly to Leopin like a lost child who had found her parent.

Leopin nearly dropped the flowers without thinking, and hurriedly steadied himself.

“Oh, it’s you, Corone. Even if I’m late, you don’t have to play a prank like this…”

However, the girl called Corone was acting strangely.

Still clinging to Leopin, she was sobbing.

“Hey, hey, what happened?”

“Big Sister, Big Sister…!”

“Huh, did something happen?”

Corone suddenly raised her face, which was a mess of tears and snot.

“Big Sister protected Corone…! From kidnappers…! Big Sister is going to be taken away!”

“What did you say!?”

The flowers spilled from Leopin’s hands.

The next moment, as though driven by something, he started running.

He stopped Corone, who tried to follow him, with his voice.

“Corone, get away from the chapel right now! If someone you don’t know comes near you, run, no matter who it is!”

The chapel was in an unpopular area even within the slums.

Leopin shouted and tried calling for help, but immediately realized it was useless.

In front of the chapel’s main gate, he slid to a stop with a skid.

Beyond the decayed, crumbling gate, a carriage was stopped in the courtyard.

Near the chapel entrance, there was the figure of a girl with a burlap sack over her head, being dragged away by men.

Perhaps she had been gagged, because her voice came out muffled as “Mmm, mmm.”

That cloudless pure-white robe was none other than that girl’s.

Leopin felt anger so intense that all the hair on his body stood on end, and kicked off the ground.

“St… stop iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!!”

The men kidnapping the girl had trained bodies, and were dressed exactly like bandits, in beast-leather jackets and pants.

The glint in their eyes visible through their ski masks was as savage as boars.

Leopin punched at the bandit who was gripping the girl’s hand, but was lightly countered with a slap.

As the boy went flying like a scrap of paper, the bandits burst into laughter, going “Gwahaha!”

Leopin was slammed into the ground and slid as though being dragged.

However, he stood up with almost no delay and once again went to punch the men.

“G… give her baaaaaaaaaack!”

“What the hell, I thought it was a guard, but it’s just a brat. Don’t scare me like that!”

Smack! With a light swat, Leopin flew back along the path he had come with a “Gwah!”

“What a strange brat, coming to a chapel on the outskirts of town like this!”

Slap! “Uwaaah!”

“Gwahahaha! He must have come for Sunday prayers! Here, have a fist instead of candy!”

Thud! “Guhah!”

“Hahaha, this guy’s funny! He gets up again no matter how many times we knock him down! This won’t get boring!”

Thump! “Gufuh!”

“Jeez, how can he be this desperate? Take this!”

Wham! “Agh!”

“Actually, isn’t he after this little bitch? Ora!”

Bam! “Gefuh!”

“Ah, so that’s it! This little bitch looks like she’ll grow up into a beauty, after all! …Hey, enough already, you damn brat!”

A forceful front kick stabbed into him, and Leopin went flying all the way to the main gate.

His body struck the gate wall hard, and he slid down, leaving a trail of blood behind.

Leopin’s face was so red that its original shape could no longer be recognized, and with his swollen eyelids, he could no longer even see in front of him.

His clothes were tattered and his body was covered in wounds, and it looked as though he could no longer even stand on his own.

“Heh, finally quieted down, huh! We’ll make sure to love this girl properly for your share too, so sleep tight!”

“Ugh… ugaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!”

However, the next moment, Leopin charged like a lion whose cub had been killed.

The bandits unintentionally stepped back, shocked by where such power was coming from and overwhelmed by his sheer spirit.

He leapt at one of them and grabbed his ski mask with a firm grip.

“S-stop it, you damn brat! Let go!”

When he was shaken off by brute force, Leopin rolled away like a discarded empty can, still clutching the ski mask.

The bandit whose face had been scratched was enraged.

“Y-you… damn braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat!!”

The bandit, whose bare face had been exposed, ran over to Leopin and trampled him in anger.

Leopin’s body caved in like a crushed empty can.

One of the bandits, unable to keep watching, stepped in to stop him.

“Hey, stop! If you do more than that, you’ll kill him!”

“He saw my face. We’ve got no choice but to kill him now!”

“Even if this is the slums, killing is bad! If it’s just kidnapping, the guards won’t bother with it!”

“But what if, by some chance…!”

“Then use this!”

The bandit took a purple mushroom out of his pocket.

“If we make him eat this, it’ll all be wiped clean!”

“Ah, right, we had this!”

The bare-faced bandit accepted the mushroom, then grabbed Leopin’s hair where he lay at his feet and forced his face upward.

Leopin tried to close his mouth, but his cheeks were gripped hard, and the mushroom was forcibly shoved into his mouth.

Within his fading consciousness, what the boy heard was…

A vulgar laugh that seemed to stick to his ears.

“Hey, kid, this mushroom makes you forget what you’ve seen and heard. Not that it matters even if I tell you, since the next time you wake up, you’ll have forgotten eeeeverything! Gwahahahaha!”