Chapter 226. A Glimmer Of Hope

Translator: Lili

Weekly Chapter 6/6

Shushu had been spending her days with unrelenting effort. It felt as if even having four bodies wouldn’t be enough to handle how busy she was. However, with no real clues to go on, no matter how tirelessly she moved, there were no tangible results. Slowly but surely, the exhaustion began to wear her down.

‘Maybe the person I saw wasn’t even Elma. Maybe I just imagined it…’

Even after painstaking efforts to track down Elma’s parents’ address, all she was met with was the devastating news that they had moved away. Her frustration and despair reached their peak.

‘They moved?’

According to the rumors, they had emigrated overseas entirely. If that were true, then this truly was the end. If they had left the country, Shushu had no means of tracking them down any further.

The house she had worked up so much courage to visit was empty—not with Elma’s parents, but a real estate agent preparing it for sale. Shushu trudged back home, her steps heavy and her spirit utterly defeated.

The house was quiet.

Lately, Henriad had been going out during the day and returning only in the evening, always busy with something. Yet he never failed to keep the house spotless, diligently cleaning and doing the laundry. Sometimes, Shushu wondered in half-jest if he was living in some alternate timeline where his day had 36 hours instead of 24.

Looking around at the perfectly tidy house, Shushu sank into the sofa with a long sigh. She had risked so much just to visit Elma’s house, only to come back with nothing but an immigration promotional pamphlet salvaged from a pile of trash near the empty house.

‘A new life! Safe and secure days in an allied country!’

The words were written in green across the smiling faces of models in the pamphlet. The pages were filled with descriptions of how exciting it was to start a new life in a foreign country and emphasized the safety of allied nations. One page featured a picturesque beach with detailed information about the country it belonged to.

If only this pamphlet had been in the house earlier, when she knew Elma’s parents’ address. At least she would’ve had a chance to talk to them.

Regret filled Shushu’s eyes as she scanned the pamphlet. The information about foreign countries was interesting, but it only deepened her sense of despair. She didn’t know anyone abroad…

‘Thank you.’

Shushu’s head snapped up, her eyes wide, as a realization hit her like lightning. The beautiful beach photo in the pamphlet—it wasn’t entirely unfamiliar to her.

Shushu had never visited this beach in person, but she had seen it before.

Back in the Augwell workshop, she had spent hours stamping that very beach onto postcards and stamps. The memory wasn’t exactly pleasant—far from evoking the salty sea breeze or the warmth of summer sunshine. Still, what she had gained from that mundane task of stamping postcards was more valuable than any vacation.

‘I’ll send one over.’

She remembered handing a stamp to Bluebird, who had accepted it with a curt expression. That connection, forged through those simple stamps, was one of the precious things she had taken from her time in Augwell.

Now frantic, Shushu flipped through the pamphlet again and again. Buried within the pages of information about allied nations and their political figures, she finally found something familiar.

It was Bluebird’s father.

What she had dismissed as just a promotional brochure turned out to be a treasure trove of useful information. It didn’t take long for her to find the name of Bluebird’s home country and her father’s name.

‘Though recently faced with the arrest of his daughter in Logwin, he has turned the crisis into an opportunity to further solidify his country’s position as a trusted ally.’

Next to the text was a photo of a man with slicked-back blue hair, wearing a pristine suit and shaking hands with a Logwin official. His hair color was an exact match for Bluebird’s. Given how infamous his daughter’s crimes had been, it seemed they had decided it was impossible to hide her entirely and opted to address the situation head-on.

‘Bluebird!’

The moment Shushu remembered the only foreigner she knew from an allied nation, she shouted her name.

Her heart raced like mad as she bolted for the phone and quickly dialed Augwell’s number. Ever since she heard that Mini Cat was no longer there, Shushu had avoided calling. But now, her desperation was so great that even the dial tone felt excruciatingly slow as she waited for someone to answer.

‘Hurry! Hurry!’

Shushu thought, slamming her fist against the desk in agitation, her imagination spinning scenarios of Elma’s parents slipping further and further away from her reach.

— Hello, this is the Augwell private prison administrative office.

Finally, the dial tone ended, and a bright, clear voice answered. It wasn’t the same staff member she had spoken to the first time, but that hardly mattered to Shushu. If the person had been standing in front of her, she might have grabbed them by the collar and shaken them.

“Get me Bluebird!”

— …Excuse me?”

“I need to talk to Bluebird! Put her on the line!”

The staff member sounded startled by her abrupt request, but Shushu had no time for apologies. Normally, she was polite and reserved, but at this moment, such considerations were out of the question. She was so anxious that her vision blurred—whether from sweat or tears, she couldn’t tell.