Royal Thief

Epilogue

"You understand me, right?" the lady asked after she puffed a smoke beside the 5-year-old boy. The young thin boy who was covered with dirt nodded as he waited in front of the orphanage's rusty gate. Even though he's young he already knows what's happening in his surroundings. He is aware of almost everything, like the situation he is in right now.

He watched his pale and thin mother puff a smoke using his dark and dry lips, the mother gazed at his son who was just staring at him, dark circles, and wrinkles visible under her eyes and face. If she's just well off she won't leave his son in an orphanage, but she's sick, no customers like her anymore, he can't just leave Rufus in the brothel too, her workmates are kind to the kid but all of them are struggling to survive there. She may be a whore but the love for her son is undeniable. She's building a wall around her heart, so she could finally leave his son with courage.

Their attention was diverted when a worn-out carriage showed up in front of them, a middle-aged man waved his hand at the lady signaling her to hop on already. The woman threw his cigarette and gripped the boy's shoulders using her shaking hands, "You understand me, right?" she asked once again. The young Rufus nodded and tightened his grip on the bag he was holding.

"Very well." the woman inhaled and fished out an old envelope from her bag, "Here, some money, you need to spend this wisely, you hear me?" she asked after handing the money in Rufus' hands.

"...Yes." Rufus whispered while staring at the thick envelope on his hand.

She rubbed the boy's head and planted a kiss before walking towards her friend's carriage, she didn't look back until the carriage was completely gone in his eyes.

The boy faced the rusty gate and tried to open it, he walked towards the orphanage's door and knocked three times. A nun went to open the door and was surprised to see a dirty boy in front of her.

And Rufus spent his child up to teenage life in the orphanage with some kids his age and most are younger than him, the money his mother left to him was spent with food supplies for all of them since the allowance of the orphanage from the higher ups isn't that much. Their everyday meal cycle is bread, gruel, or vegetables that they pick from the garden. They rarely eat meat or delicious food; they can only taste some when an aristocrat or nobility is putting up a show in front of the others.

Good thing there are still kind people from the middle and lower caste who're giving some supplies. The people's life in the orphanage became easier when Rufus turned twelve, as he started to do jobs, shoveling people's roofs after a heavy snow, working at the fish port and more. He sometimes serves as a tutor to kids from the middle caste since he can be considered as a genius. He learnt a lot of things even though the school is lacking in school materials.

When he turned fifteen, he decided to work under the nobles since the pay is quite high compared to the multiple jobs he's juggling in the middle caste, besides the number of the kids in the orphanage is inflating year by year.

He spent his teenage years working under the noble, sometimes the nobleman will pass him to another, or he'll resign to go to a new place. Until he worked for the Adair household, a known family of knights that worked under the King.

There he met the young master his age, Einar Adair. A handful, noisy and full of energy boy who kept on pestering him. Months after working under the Adair, Einar started to treat him like some kind of noble, until he found out that the curious boy investigated him. And he doesn't know how a 16-year-old boy did that, so he asked, Einar answered him that he started to look like King Balder, so he spilled the truth to the young knight.

And month by month, Einar was always coming to Rufus with a report regarding the bad deeds of the king and his underlings, Rufus decided to compile them while Einar is trying to get evidences, the lad has no idea how Einar came up with the reports if you'll mind his position since a knight member is the lowest among all, he's wondering how his friend got an access but he isn't surprise the man is nosy after all. All the compiled reports they made had been sent to the emperor secretly, they did that until they turned twenty.