Between Your Letter and My Reply

Chapter 35

[Translation By Divinity]

“Why did you bring so much money with you?!”

“Oh, well… I got some allowance from my aunt, and I wanted to have fun without worrying about money.”

She had been planning to let it slide if it were just a few tens or hundreds of Hirks, but a thousand Hirks was too much to ignore. Damian looked around, noting that the souvenir vendor had disappeared, and clicked his tongue.

“Did you see the pickpocket’s face?”

“I didn’t see his face, just a small guy wearing a straw hat.”

Upon hearing this, Damian took off running. He sternly instructed Lilliana,

“Lilliana, stay here! I’ll be back soon!”

“Damian! Where are you going?!”

“Where else would I be going?! To catch those bastards!”

“Hey! Don’t overdo it! You’re a patient!”

Lilliana started running after Damian. He hurriedly shook his head.

“You have a heart condition too, Lilliana! Don’t follow me and stay there! Don’t run!”

“But…”

Ignoring Lilliana’s words, Damian disappeared in an instant, running at a speed she couldn’t match.

Left alone, Lilliana looked around and spotted a bicycle parked by a street vendor’s stall. Someone must have left it there while buying ice cream.

She ran towards it, grabbed the bicycle, and said hurriedly to its owner,

“Excuse me, sir! I’m borrowing this for a moment!”

“What?! Hey! Hey?!”

The bicycle owner called out to Lilliana in surprise, but she ignored him and rode off in the direction Damian had disappeared.

Meanwhile, Damian, after searching through the crowd, spotted the small man in the straw hat that Lilliana had described. He picked up his pace and started chasing him.

“You pickpocket! Stop right there!”

He shouted at the man in the straw hat, who glanced back and then panicked at the sight of Damian running towards him with a furious expression. He turned and started pushing people aside as he ran. He was quite fast, as if he had years of experience as a pickpocket.

The pickpocket used his small stature to weave through the crowd, forcing Damian to navigate between people as he chased him.

“Damn it, this is killing me.”

Damian grumbled involuntarily. This kind of running would have been nothing while he was in the military, but his body wasn’t in good shape, and he was already out of breath even though he hadn’t run that far.

But his determination to get the thousand Hirks back surpassed his physical limitations.

“Damian!”

He turned around at the familiar voice from the road and was shocked. Lilliana was chasing him on a bicycle.

“I told you not to follow me!”

“You said not to run, not not to ride a bike! I can move faster with less effort this way.”

“Don’t be ridiculous! Where did you even get that bicycle?!”

“I borrowed it!”

While they were bickering, the pickpocket turned into a narrow alley. Damian and Lilliana, as if they had planned it, simultaneously followed him into the alley.

The narrow alley between buildings was dark and damp even in the daytime. It was a place ordinary people would never enter unless they had a reason to. But Damian and Lilliana, driven by their determination to catch the pickpocket, ventured deeper into the alley.

Then they stopped when they encountered a group of people. The man in the straw hat was among them.

Besides the small man in the straw hat, there was a large, burly man, a muscular man who was slightly smaller than the first, and a man with half his teeth missing. There were four of them in total. The souvenir vendor was nowhere to be seen. He was probably operating separately.

Damian wiped his sweat, gasped for breath, and said to them,

“Huff, huff… You… You bastards…”

He was short of breath and couldn’t speak properly, but Damian slowly calmed his breathing and glared at them with wide eyes.

“Are you all in this together?”

The muscular man sneered and said,

“So what if we are?”

Even while bending over and gasping for air, Damian held out his hand and beckoned them.

“Hand over the wallet.”

The four men chuckled among themselves.

“Wallet? I don’t know what wallet you’re talking about.”

“Maybe you’re mistaken about something?”

But Damian showed them a moment of generosity.

“The guy with the hat pickpocketed my companion’s wallet. Hand it over nicely while I’m still asking.”

The pickpockets chuckled again, mocking Damian.

“What’s a one-armed guy gonna do? You’re not even worth a punch.”

“Yeah, what are you gonna do with only one arm? You better leave if you don’t want to get hurt.”

Damian took a deep breath, facing the men who were mocking his disability, and motioned for Lilliana to step back.

“I’ll handle this. Lilliana, call the police.”

“D-Damian.”

“It’s okay.”

“But how can I leave you alone?”

Lilliana looked terrified, glancing back and forth between the pickpockets and Damian, tugging at his sleeve.

“L-Let’s just call the police. It’s four against one! And you’re injured… We don’t need the money, okay?”

Despite Lilliana’s concern, Damian released her hand and took a step forward.

“How are you going to hurt me?”

Lilliana was going crazy watching Damian provoke the pickpockets. She couldn’t understand what he was thinking, acting so recklessly despite his injuries. She clung to his arm, worried he might get hurt.

“Calm down, Damian! Let’s just calm down!”

“Lilliana, it’s dangerous. Stay back.”

“You’re in more danger than me!”

“That’s why…”

While Damian was trying to calm Lilliana down, the pickpockets exchanged glances. Then, the muscular man suddenly threw a punch at Damian.

Lilliana saw it too late and screamed involuntarily, but Damian quickly pulled Lilliana’s head down, ducking to avoid the punch himself.

The large fist whizzed past their heads with a whooshing sound.

“Oh? You dodged that?”

The muscular man said, amused. Damian quickly shielded Lilliana and said in a calm voice,

“Can’t you see we’re in the middle of a conversation?”

His tone was calm, but his expression was anything but. Damian narrowed his eyes and took a step towards the man.

“I clearly warned you, and you attacked first.”

He cracked his neck threateningly, and a cracking sound echoed.

“Huh… This bastard dodged one punch and now he’s acting tough.”

The pickpockets snickered amongst themselves, and Damian muttered with a bitter smile,

“I wish I had the guts.”

“What did you say, you punk?”

The muscular man lunged at Damian again. But Damian dodged the punch by sidestepping, grabbed the man from behind, and kicked his back. The muscular man stumbled forward with a grunt.

But Damian didn’t give him time to recover. He immediately struck the back of the man’s neck with his elbow, knocking him down. The muscular man collapsed to the ground, unconscious, without even a groan.

A chilling silence fell over the alley.

The pickpockets seemed unable to comprehend what had just happened. Then, the large man, after belatedly looking back and forth between his fallen comrade and Damian, who was still standing, roared and charged at him.

“You bastard!”

The man was twice Damian’s size and looked ready to crush him. But Damian calmly and swiftly slipped into the man’s embrace and punched him in the solar plexus.

“You’re nothing special.”

The man, who had relied solely on his size, also collapsed from a single punch from Damian, convulsing on the ground. Lilliana’s voice, filled with admiration, could be heard from behind.