Next Time We Meet, I’ll Let You Kill Me - Chapter 3

After stepping down from the stage, Liselotte moved to Hugo’s table following a server’s guidance. On the white tablecloth, two glasses and two sets of cutlery were laid out.

“Hi, Lottie.”

He greeted her by just lifting his hand while still seated, as fresh and friendly as when he had suddenly spoken to her last night.

Maybe that sociability, acting like they had known each other for ages, was just in his nature. Liselotte also put on a pleased expression and took the seat across from him.

“I’m still on the clock though.”

“I asked the manager and he said it was fine as long as Miss Graham was okay with it.”

He leisurely explained how he had been allowed to invite the pianist to his table. From a distance, Doug kept scrunching his face and winking at Liselotte.

‘You’re being obvious, so get lost.’

Liselotte shot him a silent message with her eyes, then gave a small smile.

“I didn’t think you’d actually come here.”

“I wanted to at least have lunch together.”

In the place where the piano player had disappeared, a record now spun in its stead. The restaurant, filled with sweet music, was wrapped in a very peaceful atmosphere.

Except for the thug-like man slouched in front of her.

“Did I startle you, showing up like this?”

His question floated over, framed by a lazy grin, and Liselotte gave a slight nod.

“A little. We didn’t part after making plans, so I was worried that it might just end like that.”

“Why would I waste a chance like that?”

Only then did Hugo pull back the leg he had stretched out to the side and face her properly.

“Have you worked here long?”

“About two years.”

“Before that?”

Of course he would be curious what kind of woman followed a man around at night. She had lightly expected at least this level of background check.

A smooth answer slid out between her red lips.

“This and that. Before this, I did cutting work at a dress shop.”

It hadn’t been clothes she was cutting.

Hugo went tick, tick, picking up and putting down his knife in a meaningless hand game.

“You worked hard. I guess your parents didn’t support you.”

“They’re both dead. In the Central Station explosion ten years ago.”

She meant the times when the country had been split between East and West, locked in a tense standoff. Terror attacks had struck not only the train station but schools and hospitals as well, to the point where the number of victims was literally beyond counting.

Hugo lowered his eyes as if remembering that time, and slowly nodded.

It was true that fifteen-year-old Liselotte had lost her adoptive parents then. With so many children orphaned like her by the constant bombings, growing up without parents wasn’t exactly considered a flaw in those days.

“You must have had it rough.”

A bland pleasantry with not a grain of sincerity. Liselotte didn’t bother replying and simply took a small sip of the water in front of her.

“And you still managed to buy an awful lot of cars with your own earnings.”

Cough, cough.

The unexpected jab made her choke. Hugo snorted out a laugh and handed her a napkin.

“You okay?”

“Y-yeah, I’m fine.”

Liselotte hurriedly wiped her mouth. One wrong word here and it would be a disaster.

“My parents left me a pretty big inheritance. Collecting cars is a hobby. I just work because I get bored.”

Oh hell. It was a clear mistake. She should have batted it away without flinching.

When she cooked the main dishes, she usually used her body more than her head. Not having prepared an excuse for all the different cars she had rotated through had been a misstep.

She had glossed it over somehow, but she wasn’t sure he would fully buy it. Liselotte quickly added on.

“You can tell from listening that my playing is only so-so. When I worked as a seamstress, I never did a perfect job there either.”

“Yeah.”

“Since I tell them it’s just something I do to kill time and they can pay me a low wage, it’s pretty easy to get hired.”

“I see.”

Was he believing her or not? His reaction was so ambiguous she couldn’t read it at all.

“My baby lies well too.”

Liselotte’s eyes widened a little.

Hugo lightly caressed the back of Liselotte’s hand that was holding the water glass. The type of touch had changed, but the large hand still gloved traced along each of her fingers one by one.

He gently rubbed the glossy red nail polish with his thumb. It seemed to be a light joke, like when he toyed with his knife.

There was no clearly lewd intent in the kneading touch, but her mouth went dry and her toes tensed.

Every now and then, people with sharp noses caught the smell of gunpowder on her hands. The nail polish was nothing more than a small trick to cover the scent.

As the pulse beating at her fingertips gradually quickened, Hugo furrowed his brow as if he really couldn’t understand.

“Don’t you have a mirror at home?”

“Huh?”

“You get hired easily because you’re pretty.”

“Ah….”

I want to kill him. Screw the safe, I want to kill him right now.

Liselotte pulled her hand back, pretending to be embarrassed. She couldn’t let him notice her heart pounding in her chest. For some reason, she felt like this man would see right through that it wasn’t beating out of excitement.

“That might be part of it.”

That one had chilled her to the core. She let out a breath in her mind. Just then, the course meal they had ordered began to be served one dish at a time, and only then did Hugo slowly lean back.

Pointing with his chin at the scallop appetizer, he said, “I didn’t know what you liked, Lottie, so I just asked for the most expensive one.”

She could clearly see the shape of the waiter’s mouth silently forming, ‘Oh, Lottie….’

For the love of God, stop making it obvious and get lost.

As Liselotte straightened her posture, she kicked the waiter’s shin under the table. At the sharp shock delivered by her pointed shoe, the waiter let out a startled “Hup,” then quickly backed away.

She carried on the conversation as if nothing had happened.

“I’m not picky, and I eat most things well. I especially like seafood.”

Since this country was landlocked, fresh seafood was naturally expensive. This was exactly the time to flaunt having been born and raised in a wealthy family.

“I went on cruises every vacation. I often visited Ainos, and there were a lot of beautiful islands.”

Beautiful islands for hellish training, that is.

After finishing her line, she cut the scallops into small pieces and put one in her mouth. Liselotte dabbed at her lips, which didn’t even have any food on them, then held a sip of white wine in her mouth for a long moment.

“It’s not as good as what you get near the sea, but it’s decent enough.”

Hugo, on the other hand, stabbed the center of a scallop with his fork and shoved the whole thing into his mouth.

“Sorry, but I don’t know how to eat all elegant like that.”

He said this as he chewed noisily.

“I don’t even get what you’re supposed to enjoy about this fancy food.”

He gulped down the wine like water, then even tapped his glass with his fork to call the waiter.

“Don’t bring it out one glass at a time, just bring the whole bottle.”

At his commanding tone, the waiter blinked, then stammered, “Y-yes,” and hurried away. After draining his glass clean and sweeping the inside of his cheek with his tongue, Hugo leaned his upper body over the table.

“Disappointed?”

“…No. Not at all.”

It wasn’t like she was disappointed. She’d never expected anything in the first place, so what was there to be disappointed about?

“When I was a kid, I was dirt poor.”

He scrunched his nose in a mock-complaining way.

“Just because I got rich doesn’t mean I’m suddenly going to act like some refined young master.”

“….”

Unless you were some kind of spy, there was probably no one who didn’t know about his childhood. A thug who used to hang around back alleys had, overnight, become the Senator’s younger brother and a sudden millionaire. How perfect a story was that for people to chew on.

If there was one piece of luck on his side, it was that this was a world where money made almost anything forgivable. Especially now, with the scars of the brutal civil war still lingering everywhere.

In this era, bourgeois types who lacked even a speck of dignity or honor strutted around the streets with more swagger than actual aristocrats.

The difference was that Hugo didn’t even pretend to imitate the upper class. As his raw, unfiltered way of speaking showed, he seemed like someone who didn’t feel the need for pretense at all.

“I like that you’re honest.”

Liselotte nodded as if she understood everything perfectly and responded in agreement.

“I also think a wealthy commoner is better than a poor noble. What’s the point of being from some prestigious old family? If you don’t have a way to make a living right now, you’ll end up begging on the street.”

A heavy gaze stuck to her. She could tell that a hint of curiosity had entered his eyes as he looked at her.

“Wouldn’t it be a lot more profitable to use your bare hands to tear apart two pieces of bread in the time it takes to cut one slice neatly with a knife?”

This one was sincere. Not the opinion of heiress Liselotte Graham, but of agent Liselotte Botany.

After her adoptive parents died in an accident, her relatives stole the inheritance that should’ve gone to her and sent her back to an orphanage.

It was a place established for children orphaned by the war, one of those overcrowded homes packed with kids who had no relatives willing to take them in.

There, Liselotte was the only child who used a fork and knife during meals, and whenever she ate like she used to, the other children—who finished their food quickly with their bare hands—would immediately snatch away whatever was left on her plate.

She’d understood the law of the world more clearly then than when her inheritance was stolen. If you clung to manners in a den of beggars, you were going to starve to death.

After she stabbed the back of a child’s hand with her fork for stealing her food, and then was forced to skip meals the entire next day, she stopped using utensils too.

“….”

Did I say something too complicated? Hugo, who had been listening quietly, didn’t say anything for a long moment.

Just when she wondered if she’d made some kind of mistake….

“We get along well. Don’t we?”

He pulled up the corner of his mouth in satisfaction.

‘Thank God.’ Liselotte let out a long breath of relief inside.

The mood seemed to be flowing smoothly.

“But Lottie.”

“Yes?”

“Did you follow me around already knowing who I was?”