The Commoner Town [Part 2] “We can still make it! Let’s chase after him.” That’s what she said, but the boy has already run somewhere out of their sight. When George looks at Emma resignedly, Emma smiles back full of confidence. Emma slightly lifts her hat that is hiding her hair and gives George a look. ” “Ah-” “ Not only George, but William also exclaims. There’s a huge purple spider inside Emma’s hat. It’s Violet. Only the spider realized the pickpocket and attached a transparent thread to the boy the moment he bumped into George. Feeling the spider in her head suddenly moved, Emma hurriedly looked up and saw a glistening spider thread following the running boy.
There’s no way Violet did it for no reason. The thread Violet wrapped around the boy without him and even George noticing is probably still attached to him even now. They have to look closely… If they look closely, they probably can find the boy by tracing the transparent thread. “Nice, Emma! Thank you, Violet! Alright, let’s chase after him!” George regains his hope thanks to the spider’s assistance and grabs the transparent thread cautiously. “Nii-sama, this thread is strong, so maybe if we pull on it, we can fish the boy, you know?” While touching the thread stretching above her head, Emma suggests an easy, fast, but a little rough way to catch the boy.
“No, no, that’s dangerous, alright? Wouldn’t it be pitiful if the boy got hurt!” If they suddenly pull on it without knowing where the boy is, it will certainly be dangerous. George, who is worried about the boy who has pickpocketed him, is kind. “Well… We didn’t find the ink, so let’s find the monster karuta first.”
They have pinpointed several plausible stores and searched for the ink, but they haven’t found any red ink. Rather than the unfindable ink, the traceable monster karuta has a higher priority… And so, the siblings trace the hard-to-see thread carefully and chase after the boy. They turn to the corner where the boy disappeared, pass through a drugstore, and walk deeper to a narrow alley. As they walk further, the buildings gradually become denser and tighter together, and they see more unbalanced extension buildings built on top of each other disorganizedly. The three Stuart siblings, who were born in earthquake-prone Japan and held the memory of how the Tanaka family died in an earthquake, can only think of this place as extremely dangerous. But even in such a place, they can feel signs of people living everywhere. “This place… It’s too dangerous, isn’t it? If a fire breaks out, it will directly burn the neighboring buildings because the road is narrow, and extinguishing the fire will also be hard. So are earthquakes.” William looks up timidly. Because Palace has a large land with a small population, there’s no place where the buildings are clustered together. Even after they arrived in the royal capital, their sphere of activities had been centered around the nobles district, the shopping district, the academy, and the royal castle, those luxurious places. So they didn’t feel the risk if a disaster were to happen. However, the tall constructions that seem very likely to collapse being jam-packed in this narrow road make the siblings feel anxious. The siblings haven’t noticed yet, but they have already reached the most corner location in the commoner town where the public order is the worst in the royal capital, the slums.
They have unknowingly stepped into this place while tracing the spider thread. The three siblings didn’t realize that they should’ve cared more about their own safety rather than in case of earthquakes or fire. The thread brings the siblings further to the center of the slum, where the buildings are taller and denser. It leads them to a place with dim lighting even though it’s still noontime.