Chapter 20: That Shapeshifter, Faraway

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That night, Rin slept in the side room on the maid’s futon.

She had scowled when she first put her head on the inn’s unfamiliar pillow, muttering that the assassins wouldn’t notice even if they swapped her matching silk pillow for this one. ‘I won’t be able to sleep tonight,’ she sulked.

So Reika offered to retrieve her pillow once the assassins were gone.

But when the fight in the inner room ended and Reika brought the pillow over, Rin had fallen so deeply asleep that Reika couldn’t wake her up.

Kii thought about the young mistress’s hard gaze when she ordered the death of Neko-chan as she looked at the child-like figure curled up in front of her and murmured softly, ‘She only acts her age when she sleeps.’

Yuzuru, who slept by the door in the outer room, was already sound asleep, snoring.

The next day, Rin made her way to Saga Castle in a simple black and red kimono with her hair in a single braid. She couldn’t do anything more elaborate because she refused to let Reika or Kii touch her.

The gatekeeper mistook her for an ignorant brat trying to make trouble and refused to open the castle gates until she floored him with her daimyo’s seal.

Lord Nabeshima’s thin face looked more haggard since the last time she saw him. Word of the bakeneko killings all over the city had become widespread now. He heaved a big, troubled sigh as he settled down in front of the young daimyo.

[Read the full story at novelconbini.com!]