"Are you crazy? This plan is so dumb! They won't believe you!" Iris whispered to her.
Ae Rin just smiled at her in response.
"Okay, fine! I'll agree this time but promise me you won't try something like this again. I don't even think they will believe us." Iris frowned. "Don't worry. They will believe."
"How are you so sure of it?"
"It's just a hunch." She smiled sheepishly.
Iris sighed and rolled her eyes. "Let's get this over with."
The guards had just arrived in the dungeon for the night's patrol when they heard a loud thud from one of the cells in the right row. Confused and cautioned about what had made the sound, they glanced at each other and made their way to the source of the sound with cautious steps.
They were surprised to see Ae Rin on the ground, unconscious, and Iris sitting at one corner of the cell, keeping her distance from Ae Rin and not caring about what had happened to her.
"Did you do something to her?!" One of the guards glared at her angrily.
"I didn't. She just fainted a moment ago." She replied calmly.
The guard threw a sharp glance at her before unlocking the cell and checking Ae Rin's pulse.
"She's alright. Just fainted. We need to take her to the meds." The guard told his comrades.
They carried her out of the cell while Iris looked at them with wide eyes.
"WHAT? It worked? Are they really that dense? Who releases a criminal like that?!" Iris thought to herself.
*At the med's room*
"When will she gain consciousness, doctor?"
"Within a few hours, I would say. She hasn't eaten or drunk for almost 2 days. She's just tired and dehydrated. I injected some herbs' extractions in her to help her get better soon so she will be just fine. She can be taken back to the dungeon once she wakes up."
Ae Rin quietly listened to their conversation and waited for them to clear out of the room.
When the voices dissipated, she slowly opened her eyes and cautiously looked around the room she was in. It was just an ordinary room but there were many chemicals and a variety of different species of plants and herbs lying on a table across from her. She had never seen those herbs before. It seemed like they were from an entirely different world and obviously it was.
"Well, the first step of my plan was successful. Now I just need to get out of here."
The moment she moved her body from the bed, a twinge of pain electrified throughout her body. She winced in pain and fell back on the bed. She glanced at her right arm and then remembered that she was injected with the herbs.
"What herbs..was I injected with? If I don't...move now, then I... can't release those two.." She tried to get up again but ended up failing.
"I have to...go. They're.. waiting... for me." She tried again with more strength and finally managed to get up from the bed. She dragged herself all the way across the room to the door while clutching her right arm tightly. She cautiously peeked outside the room and looked on her either sides.
"No one's there. Thank God." She sighed in relief.
She slowly got out of the room while using the wall to support the weight of her painful body.
"If this keeps up, then I can't fight the guards at all!" She stared at the long hallway ahead of her and lost all hope of getting out of this mess that she'd put herself into. She took a deep breath and started limping forward.
She halted in her tracks and a soft gasp escaped her lips when she heard heavy footsteps getting closer to the other end of the hallway. Her eyes hurriedly wandered across the hallway to find anywhere to hide.
Luckily, she spotted the door of a room slightly left open. Without any second thoughts, she hurried inside the room and shut the door behind her. She leaned on the door and let herself slide against it and fall on the floor.
She hugged her legs, wrapping her arms tightly around them and buried her face in her arms as she heard the footsteps slowly disappearing in the distance.
"What am I even doing here? I should have fought them...instead of hiding here like a coward. It's all because of those damn herbs!" In rage and anger, she punched the ground beside her. But instead of feeling the ground, something clanked beneath her fist when it touched that.
When she looked at her side, she could see a few silver pointed tips peeking out of a big leather covering. She quickly opened the cover and grinned widely when she saw what was inside — daggers. Daggers which were so sharp and perfectly forged that it could cut through human beings and even armors without much effort.
There were at least 15 daggers inside the cover and she decided to take 4 of them.
One for Iris to help her fight, one for Kyou to help him defend himself and two for Ae Rin since she wanted to use both of her hands while fighting.
When she was searching for other weapons in the room, she realised that these weapons did not belong to the guards or the soldiers. It belonged to the criminals of the dungeons since there were number plates of the dungeons and the criminal's name on each of the leather covering.
"Wait! If these belongs to the criminals, then it means that the knife that I'd taken from that old lady's— no, the monster's house must be here too! Come to think of it, they took away our essentials that we'd brought from our home as well. I need to find them and get out of here as soon as possible."
She started digging up for her name and finally found a leather covering with her name engraved on a metal plate and beside that, was Iris' and Kyou's names on other two leather coverings.
She opened all the leather coverings to reveal their dusty backpacks that who knows where it had been after it was taken from them and before it came to this storage room.
Ae Rin gripped the leather straps of each of their backpacks and was about to pick them up but something didn't seem right. She was sure that she had told them to take ONLY their essentials which they would be needing for a few weeks.
"Why is Kyou's bag larger and bulkier? I told him to bring essentials for a few weeks not for a month. I didn't even notice it before because I was in such a hurry back then. What did he even keep in here?" She narrowed her eyes in suspicion.
Curiosity got the best of her and she quickly opened the zip of his bag.
"What the...." She was taken aback when she saw that he had been carrying a few photo albums and a few papers that looked like letters written by him to someone.
"Why would he be carrying these with him?" She thought as she picked up one of the albums from the bag and opened it — she'd always had the habit of barging into other's privacy.
The first photo seemed like a family photo. There was a little boy with brown eyes and brown hair in a two block haircut style in the middle smiling brightly and on his left side was a sweet looking little girl who was older than the boy but young. On his right was a boy who seemed like he was in his teen years. His blue eyes reflected kindness and calmth. And their parents hovered above them with a smile plastered on their faces.
"That little boy...he resembles Kyou a lot –must be him. Then, is this his 'artificial family' after he was sent through my portal? But I've never seen anyone at his house except for him. I haven't even seen any framed picture of his family on his desk or anywhere else. Why is he living away from them?"