"Miss Cassandra, where you used live before here?" Robert asked, sipping his pink drink with a delighted expression.
"Why do you care?" she replied, her face blank, eyes darting around the room.
Robert frowned, feeling a bit offended. "Well, you did say to keep talking, so that's what I'm doing..."
"Yeah, you're doing great. Ask me another question..." she replied, sounding uninterested.
Meanwhile, Cassian followed her gaze, trying to figure out who she was looking for. Robert, still a bit confused, asked, "So, how did you end up living in Magisteria City? Any special reason?"
"No special reason, I just liked it," she replied simply, then added, "So, you were born here, and as for him, he's an outsider like me, right?"
Both nodded, and Cassian spoke up. "Yeah, I was born in Veldora. Lost my parents and somehow ended up here, landing this job with the help of a friend."
"You were born in the capital city of Andharta Kingdom?" Robert asked, his voice rising in surprise. Even Cassandra looked intrigued.
Cassian nodded as he took a sip of his drink, prompting Robert to ask again, "That's so far from here—why did you come all this way?"
"Well, I had a friend who used to live here—the one who got me this job. We met while he was traveling around the kingdom, and he told me about this city. I was intrigued and thought I'd come here if I ever got the chance," Cassian said, offering a small smile as he placed his glass down. "And here I am, after getting that chance."
It wasn't a complete lie—he was born in Veldora, and he did have someone who used to live here before, Lady Katherine, who had helped him secure the job. But Cassian hadn't put much thought into crafting this story, believing it wouldn't cause any trouble.
The reason he was putting even this much effort into this was that he realized he needed to be more cautious. If those after Katherine found out he was her servant, things could get perilous. He knew they wouldn't bother using him for blackmail—Katherine would never give in, and her enemies would understand that a servant's life held little value. Cassian couldn't argue with that perspective either.
But it wasn't as if they would leave him unscathed just because of that. Unlike what he had thought before, they could control his mind or do something horrific, like implant an Eidolon spawn inside his body to use him against her. He wasn't sure which of those fates he'd prefer if it came down to it, but for now, he hoped that moment never arrived.
"Well, you should explore the world while you're young..." Cassandra said with a nostalgic look in her eyes.
Cassian, puzzled, asked, "But, Miss, I thought you were also young—no older than twenty..."
"You think so?" Cassandra replied with a smile.
"Yeah, I do. Your skin is flawless—there's no sign of age at all. How could you be over twenty?" Cassian said confidently, and he genuinely didn't seem to be lying.
Robert, however, thought otherwise. He stared at Cassian in shock, then at Cassandra's smile as he flattered her. That's why he gets more action than I do...
"Thanks for the compliment, but I'm much older than you think..." Cassandra said, leaning back in her chair. "I'm turning 38 this year." She looked at their faces with a smug expression.
Both of them were taken aback, and Robert blurted out, "So old?"
Cassandra's smug smile turned into a forced one as Cassian noticed veins popping in her neck from anger. 'Nice going, Robert,' he thought, looking around as he heard a pained but muffled voice from the seat next to them.
Ignoring the commotion, Cassian focused on the newcomers entering the second floor. His brow tightened as he spotted someone, not because he couldn't see the person's face, but because of their eyes—one was normal, while the other was completely white.
As he stared, he recalled where he had seen this person before: on the first day he and Katherine arrived in the city, this same individual had delivered their food.
Confused about why a delivery person would be in a bar on the outskirts of the city—especially one known as a den of criminals—he turned to Cassandra with a puzzled expression. "Miss Cassandra, there's someone here I recognized from back in the city."
Cassandra, who had just knocked Robert out, leaving one of his eyes comically swollen and black, looked surprised as she asked, "Are you sure? No sane, law-abiding citizen would want to be seen here."
"I'm sure..." Cassian said, his gaze fixed on the table behind them. "See that table with the fat man sitting at it?" Cassandra turned around, confused, while Robert, curious but discreet, didn't look back to avoid appearing like he was checking them out. "The one with the white eye... I saw that man when I arrived in the city.
He's a food delivery guy, and I get a weird feeling when I look into his eye..."
As Cassandra's eyes landed on the man, she looked shocked. "He was the one Sir Killian asked me to keep an eye on..." she said, leaving them both stunned. This meant he was a follower of the cult. "So, what do you say now? He's a food delivery guy?"
"Yeah..." Cassian nodded, noticing Cassandra deep in thought for a moment before she said, "Let's go back. I have to tell Sir Killian about this."
"But what about our case?" Cassian asked, reminding them that the original reason for coming here was to gather information about the attacker.
"You can worry about that later. We need to tell Sir Killian about this—this white-eyed man might really be a follower of the cult," she replied, paying for their drinks. Reluctantly, Cassian and Robert followed her with tired sighs.
Outside, Cassian was still mulling over the man and, feeling a bit confused, asked, "But why did Detective Killian think he might be a member of the cult?"
Cassandra shrugged and replied, "He didn't tell me. He just said I might see him here and find where he live, work things like that."
Cassian remained puzzled and questioned again, "If he knows this much, he must know the guy lives in the city and works as a delivery man. Then why send you here to waste your time?"
Robert nodded in agreement, but Cassandra didn't have an answer. "I don't know. He just told me to find out some things about him. I found a few leads, and now I'm going to tell him what I've got and collect my pay. That's it."
"He's paying you to do this?" Robert asked in shock.
"Yeah, you think I'm like you two, wasting my day off on this useless tiring work?" she said with a smirk.