Chapter 3 : Chapter 3
Chapter 3. Eve Must Have Her Reasons
The night wind howled past her ears, wildly teasing her silver-white hair. It tangled with the delicate lace trim of her maid headdress and the black ribbon bow.
The steam train continued racing forward. At such a speed, if an ordinary person jumped out, it would be little different from suicide.
But Eve merely adjusted her posture in midair. The laws of physics had not completely failed yet—at the very least, before she landed, the hem of her skirt still flipped upward.
A glimpse of mature black fabric flashed by in an instant. She bent her knees slightly and landed with the lightness of a dragonfly touching water, effortlessly ignoring inertia.
Her boots stepped firmly onto the gravel beside the railway tracks, producing a series of crisp cracking sounds.
I have exited the cabin. Status is good.
The moment her figure stabilized—
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Urgent gunshots tore through the night. Bullets slammed into the gravel where she had just landed, blasting up sparks and scattered stone fragments.
Through the carriage windows, the furious faces of bodyguards could be seen, along with the muzzle flashes of guns still searching for their target.
But it was already too late. Eve did not even bother to glance back. She had already vanished like a shadow dissolving into the night.
...
After walking a little farther along a forest path almost swallowed by wild grass, she finally stopped and brushed the dust off her maid outfit.
“Tsk... it still got dirty.”
Eve shook her head helplessly. She thought to herself that she had indeed grown a little rusty, though it was nothing that mattered.
She straightened her clothes as if nothing had happened.
The mission was complete.
From a pocket in the hem of her skirt, Eve took out a yellowed black-and-white photograph. In it was a scene of Klein Master standing at a podium, giving a speech during his lifetime.
She loosened her fingers, letting the photograph drift away on the night wind. The breeze lifted her silver-white hair and skirt as moonlight spilled from behind the clouds, illuminating a pair of crimson eyes that did not seem human.
She stepped forward again.
The black-and-white figure gradually blurred, eventually disappearing completely into the forest path.
...
Two kilometers away, an abandoned farm stood in silence. A nondescript black car was parked there, and beside it stood a middle-aged man wearing a dark, worn trench coat, pacing back and forth.
Using the moonlight, he glanced repeatedly at an old-fashioned pocket watch in his hand. His brows were tightly knit as he anxiously looked toward the forest.
The chill of the night made him rub his hands together and breathe warm air into them from time to time.
Then, when he saw the white-haired figure approaching in the distance, he visibly let out a long sigh of relief.
“Did it go smoothly?” he asked, opening the rear door of the car for Eve.
Eve could not help rolling her eyes. The professional composure she had shown earlier as a maid vanished completely, even though she was still wearing the maid outfit.
She slid neatly into the car and rested her head against the window.
“Please do not direct that kind of question toward me next time.”
“Well, the organization values you, you know,” the man replied with a teasing smile. “If something went wrong with you, I would be the one getting beaten when I go back.”
He quickly returned to the driver’s seat, started the engine, and drove toward the city.
In the end, it was still for his own sake.
This man served as Eve’s logistics support for missions—responsible for information transmission and extraction.
Almost every time, he appeared in the most unexpected places. Sometimes in a sewer. Sometimes in the backyard of an old woman’s house.
Eve could never figure it out. Without any prior notice, he could always predict her exact location. She had long suspected that the man possessed some sort of uncanny perception.
He glanced at Eve through the rearview mirror.
“You did not leave any traces behind, did you?”
Eve pulled a dining knife from beneath her skirt. The knife had not been used and remained perfectly clean.
“No,” she replied calmly.
Then she added in a complaining tone, “Lynn, I have carried out missions at least a hundred times by now, if not a thousand. Why do you always worry about meaningless things?”
Before he could answer, she irritably added,
“Do not answer me. I want some peace and quiet.”
Honestly...
Out of the entire organization, they could not find a second handler with abilities like his.
Eve had long wanted to replace him with someone quieter, but it was obvious that this man was still the most useful one available.
The man called Lynn opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, but ultimately chose to remain silent.
He understood Eve’s style—clean and decisive.
That was precisely why she had become one of the organization’s top assassins in just three years, even though her origins remained a mystery.
Perhaps only the leader knew.
Meanwhile, Eve leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes to rest.
Yet in her mind, the faces of those girls appeared again.
Twenty young faces.
Twenty futures that had been taken away.
She had requested to see that information herself, even though the organization usually advised its “Blades” not to learn too much about their targets.
“Emotion will affect judgment.”
Her mentor had once warned her with those words.
But Eve could only ask less and do more. Learning these things only made her question whether what she was doing was right—even in a world where the law could not reach every dark corner.
When the car entered the industrial district at the edge of the city, it passed through streets filled with drifting smoke.
Outside the window, white steam was still being vented from pipes atop factory buildings.
Even at such a late hour, the capitalists were still at work, carefully maintaining a life of twelve-hour shifts.
Workers were changing shifts, dragging their exhausted bodies toward cheap rental housing.
This country was in the midst of rapid technological and industrial development.
Yet beneath the surface prosperity of civilization, people like Klein Master were far from rare.
However, Eve herself did not stand in the light either.
Her hands were already stained with countless lives.
All she knew was that she had to carry out the organization’s missions.
As for everything else...
She did not dare think too deeply about it.
“We are here,” Lynn said, stopping the car in front of an unremarkable apartment building. “If there is another mission later, I will pick you up here.”
Eve woke from her brief rest and lazily stretched. Before getting out of the car, she added one final remark.
“The bounty share will be handled the same as always. It does not need to pass through me.”
Lynn naturally knew what “the same as always” meant, but he could not understand it.
“What is the point of doing that? Do you have too much money with nowhere to spend it?”
“Actually, yes,” Eve replied. “Compared to me, those children in orphanages who cannot even get enough to eat might make better use of this dirty money.”
With that, she closed the car door, shutting off his complicated gaze.
She watched the car slowly drive away.
Standing in front of the apartment building, she looked into the darkness within. She touched the dining knife hidden in her sleeve; the cold metal kept her mind sharp.
Then she turned and walked in the opposite direction of where the car had gone.
Because this was not her real destination.
It was merely a habit used to mislead others. An assassin must always conceal her tracks.
And besides...
Eve had another long-term assignment location.
That was also the reason she wore a maid outfit.
Setting aside her other identity, she really was a professional maid.
Before dawn arrived, she had to return there.
Back to the Morninglight Manor owned by the Hessein family.
Thinking of that place, Eve’s crimson eyes dimmed slightly in the dark streets. She deliberately kept her figure outside the range of the streetlights.
“So next time, could they at least give me a bicycle...”