The cold wind whistling through the night almost froze Elmer right where he was crouched upon a shaven underbrush. But that was hardly what was making him teem with anger at this moment. It was the lady who had brought him here.

When he had asked her ‘when and where’ he had not been expecting to be brought to the outskirts of the city, where the next road could only be seen after coursing through a forest, and worse, so deep into the night. Well, she had paid for the carriage, but still…

What were they? Robbers? It seemed more like it. Now that he had seen the house she had led him to—even though it was just a silhouette the moonlight had shown him—he was no longer sure if they were at the right place.

His landlord lived in a dirty building in the slums, the same as he did, so what kind of landlord did she used to have that he lived in a mansion? And where had she wandered off to while telling him to wait here?

Elmer rubbed his arms together trying to reduce the effects the cold air was having on him. The longer he kept waiting behind this fence of exquisitely designed wrought iron, the more he felt as though he had been tricked. She was taking too long.

“Pst…” a whisper came out of the blue through the swirls of the wind. It was ostrich-lady's voice, and he wasted no time turning toward it.

There she was, close to the fence and shadowing herself beneath a cedar tree—one of the many countless ones that spread out over the whole area within the fence.

“Where have you been?” he whispered back. He was angry, but he knew better than to shout.

She huffed. It seemed the cold dealt with her in a worse way than it did to him. She was wearing a sleeveless dress, what did she expect?

“I was finding us a way in. What’s with the questions?” She outstretched her arms sideways with a shrug.

Elmer shook his head languidly. Then he adjusted his glasses with a sigh while brushing off his anger as he went over the fence a bit too nimbly—it almost felt as though he had done this before.

He disregarded that thought as his feet dropped onto the lawn grass covering the area within the fence.

“Let’s go,” ostrich-lady murmured as she swirled about on her feet and snuck away through the darkness that blanketed the whole scenery, prompting Elmer to follow.

With their silence and the breaths of the whispering wind, it did not take them much of a time before they escaped the lawn where the cedars stood, and found themselves on one-half of the pair of long roads made to curve like crescent moons.

Further in the middle of the curtilage flanked by the roads stood a ceramic water fountain, which was carved in the likeness of a goblet engraved with tendril-like patterns.

Elmer felt his memory tickle as though he had seen something of similar design before, but he brushed it off as ostrich-lady’s voice came to pull him out of his moonlight daze.

“Why are you stopping?”

“Nothing,” Elmer said with a shake of his head, then he turned around and caught a view that stiffened his shoulders and once again froze him to the spot.

Straight ahead of him stood the mansion of the silver silhouette he had seen from behind the fence, but this time closer, and it really was magnificent. There was no way it was a mere landlord who lived in this sort of place, and furthermore a landlord that slyly took the properties of his tenants. He could not in any way get himself to believe it.

The mansion was of three stories and it was trimmed decoratively with a complicated, asymmetrical shape. A front porch with complex designed woodwork wrapped around it, and on its pitched roof grew a cylindrical turret accompanied by two brick chimneys.

Elmer was no longer sure his exploit was going to be of any good. What if they got caught?

“Ostrich-lady,” with dismayed feelings, he called out to the ginger-haired lady who had almost resumed her advances toward the mansion. “Where exactly are we?”

The lady stopped and sighed frustratingly, straightening herself from her bent over position which seemed to have been helping with her sneaking.

“What’s the problem now?” She turned over to face Elmer who was now holding her with a gaze hard for answers.

Elmer pointed at the mansion standing behind her. “Your landlord lives here, ostrich-lady?” He narrowed his eyes in a query.

“It’s Patsy. Patsy Baker.”

“Huh?” What sort of answer to his question was that? Was Patsy the one who lived in the mansion?

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“It’s Patsy, not ostrich-lady. My name.” She was correcting him, but he had no longing for that right now. Mabel was all alone back at the apartment, he did not have the time to be dancing about on the palms of a degenerate—and furthermore, he could not afford to get caught.

“I don’t care,” Elmer told her bluntly, his voice tainted with a slice of harshness that made Patsy’s face scrunch slightly. “Does your landlord live here? That was the question I asked.”

“What’s wrong with you?” She brought her red, freckled face closer to him, probably to avoid both his and her voice from rising any more than it had done. “I already told you everything.”

Elmer withdrew his pointed hand. “And? You expect me to believe that the landlord of people like us lives in this kind of house?” His head tilted and joined his narrow eyes to complete his questioning demeanor.

“Ugh,” Patsy grunted and moved her head listlessly to indicate her frustration. “Do you tend to have minor mood swings or what? The more we wait here, the more time we waste. Do you want to get caught?”

“No,” Elmer said. “But…” He shook his head. “Just answer my question or I leave. Does your landlord live here?”

Patsy sighed and lowered her head briefly, before looking back up at him with forlorn deep-brown eyes as she said, “No.” And she bit her lips.

Elmer’s brows furrowed as he dropped his gaze at once.

Was it worth the risk? He pondered. There had to be another way to make the money for the elixir, surely. A mansion seemed too risky. What would happen to Mabel if he got caught? His mind swirled around like a ball being kicked across a field, and it nauseated him.

With a sharp inhale he gave no other words to Patsy, he just simply turned around. But of course she would not let him leave, he suspected as much, and he was not surprised when her hand flew to grab his.

“Wait,” she said, “I told you the truth though.”

Elmer grit his teeth and turned back sharply at her. “How much of it?” he whispered harshly as his eyebrows knitted further. “Oh, like the truth that we were meant to take back your father’s previous items from your landlord? Is your father even really dead?”

Patsy immediately let go of his hand with those words and stared at him angrily while pointing a finger. “Don’t you dare!” she voiced, even harsher than his had been.

Elmer beat his palm on his chest with a shrug. “Don’t I dare? Don’t you dare,” he shot back at her. “What makes you think you have the right to say such after you brought me all the way out here with a lie? What exactly gives you such a right? Do I just look so easy and stupid to trick?”

Patsy exasperatingly tapped her feet twice on the ground while her head weakly turned about on her neck. “I already told you I didn’t lie. What else do you want to hear?”

Elmer downturned his lips, turning his gaze up at the sky as he mimicked a wondrous expression, before he returned them back to her. “How about the truth? Your father’s supposed property doesn’t exist, right? Do you think we won’t get caught? I don’t want to get caught.”

Patsy groaned softly. “No—” she suddenly stopped herself halfway, after which she licked her lips and put her hands on her waist. “Listen, what I told you was the truth, all of it. The landlord actually took it all, but what were you expecting him to do with it? Eat it? He sold it of course.” She pointed at the mansion that stood behind her. “And this is the house of the person that bought it. Do you understand now?” She put down her finger. “So, are we doing something illegal? Maybe, I don’t know, but it was stolen from me. I’m not just going to leave it be whether you come with me or not, even though—” she stopped through her words again, but this one somehow ticked Elmer’s curiosity.

“Even though what?”

Patsy turned away from him and faced the mansion. “Even though I can’t do it alone,” she mumbled.

Elmer clenched his chin. “Are you a dolt? Did you bring me here just because you couldn’t go into a mansion alone to take back what was yours?” he growled, almost taking off his cap due to the thick fingers of frustration that now seemed to clasp his neck tight.

Patsy turned back to him, her face doing nothing to lessen Elmer’s frustration. “I’m not a dolt. I have my reasons,” she told him, but he was not bothered as to what they were.

“Then what exactly is my use here?” Elmer asked seriously. “Be your bodyguard as you steal?”

“Well,” Patsy tightened her lips, “kind of?”

Blimey…! Elmer almost freaked out. He should just leave, shouldn’t he? He really should just—

“So,” she called back to him, “are you really going to let me go at it alone?” Elmer put his eyes on her with a sharp intensity, but that did not keep her from babbling further. “You know, you’re already here, wouldn’t it be better to just see it all the way to the end? You might even see some things you like within the house, who knows?”

Elmer fell silent.

If he went back now nothing was going to change. He would wake up tomorrow and resume his frantic hustles for money as he had done for the past two days, progressing at a snail’s pace.

At such a rate when would he ever save up enough for the elixir to become an Ascender? If he took out his lucky moment with Sir Eli and used his previous earnings from carrying bags as the base for his calculations, then it was obviously going to take a while before he could even save up to a hundred mints, considering his transportation fees and meal fees deduction as well.

He looked up at Patsy who was waiting anxiously for him to say something.

If she could give him the sort of money he needed then maybe it wouldn’t be wise for him to miss out on it.

“I won’t steal,” he said shortly after, his mouth souring at the last word. The orphanage had grown him up with discipline.

“Sure, I don’t mind,” Patsy put in, then gestured at the mansion, “but let’s just go in. We’ve wasted a lot of time out here.”

Elmer inhaled the cold air deeply and heeved out a huge sigh as an incentive to calm himself and lessen his frustration—it did not work, but he would try to manage.

“Just hurry up,” he told Patsy, allowing a soft, cheeky smile to find its way onto her lips before they resumed their sneaky steps toward the mansion.