"Ugh, we've already been doing this for four hours Grey, the sun is rising as well." Elena complained.
I stopped shoveling and properly stood up in a while. My body was harassed by the sudden sunlight and my eyes instinctively closed while my hands also blocked the sunlight.
To be honest, this gravedigging expedition came to be a complete waste of time, who knew that these nobles wouldn't even spare a lick of gold in their graves. Not even a wealthy watch, ring or something. But I refuse to give up now.
"C'mon Elena just 2 more and we'll be finished with the whole thing." I said with a tone that sounded more tired than comforting.
As we finished that grave, we moved onto the next one. To be honest digging out graves was more tiring than I thought. The shoveling itself was such a pain, but who knew the phrase "being buried 6 feet under" was in a literal sense. And we, well I should say, Elena had to cast a magic spell after every grave we dug out. The magic spell reversed everything that we did and completely covered our traces, heck I even think it looked better than before. And we did this process for.. well.. I think I lost count but a lot of times.
With the grave coming up, we slowed down a little bit. With shovels in our hands we began digging. Digging a grave takes anywhere from ten to twenty minutes, depending on our luck. Some of these graves had different materials that protected it from our shovels so it took longer to dig through.
After about thirteen minutes, we were done. I sat down and took a few deep breaths to recover my stamina while Elena jumped down in the hole where the coffin was. Shortly after a slight tremor ran through, probably due to the coffin's top falling off when Elena opened it.
"Hey Grey! Come down here." She shouted with a weird excitement.
"Argh fine,"
I stood up and began walking towards the hole but in the corner of my eye, I saw it, guards. Why were they here I thought, I tried to come up with multiple explanations until I realized that the tremor probably alerted them. I quickly sped up and jumped down the hole and grabbed Elena by her wrist. In her hands was a old dusty tome with no title and she had an expression of slight pain but mostly shock due to the grab.
"Guards!" I exclaimed quietly.
Knowing what this meant, she nodded and held me around my waist and in a swift jump we were out of the hole. I looked around to locate the guards and when I saw them, it was obvious that they saw us too. They were shouting at us but I couldn't really make out what it was nor did I pay attention to it.
Although the stealth barrier still surrounded us, it's efficiency decreased by a substantial amount due to the sun poking it's head out.
We began sprinting. Sprinting towards the nearest wall. I couldn't help but feel stupid. I managed to talk Elena into doing this with me and after digging for hours straight, all we managed to get was a old book, and we also got caught in doing so.
The wall neared and I got ready to start my spell.
'Gather in my legs, I command the mana to give me the jumping power of a human frog, and order.' Maybe because I was in a stressful situation, I casted the spell even faster than Elena. I landed outside on the sidewalk with a thud and Elena followed me shortly after. She was looking at me a shocked gaze but I wasn't really paying attention, afterall our escape isn't over yet.
We ran for what seemed like hours, going through alleyways and turning corners so we could lose the guards. Although I didn't even see the guards following us after we jumped out of the graveyard, we could never be too sure.
"Huff, huff, huu.."
"That.. huff.. was stressful." I huffed out in a exasperated tone as we came to a stop now that we were at the front porch of the orphanage. The orphanage itself was in tip top shape and with a brown exterior it looked like a mansion house. It was one story tall and had a sign out front that said "Ms. Clare's Orphanage". The orphanage was pretty sizable and looked to be around 2000 square feet, mainly due to the goverment funding this place.
All or most orphanages were being funded by the government and they were given a monthly allowance to feed the children as well as taking care of them. While the caretaker uses the allowance to feed themselves as well.
I looked at Elena and she was in a miserable state. Sweat covered her entire face as she hunched over with her arms on her thighs, it looked like she was in a state of over exhaustion and it probably didn't help that she was wearing that oversized hoodie.
Even though she was a magical prodigy her body was pretty much just flesh and bones, barely any muscles. She didn't have much stamina. The only reason she was able to stay with me was due to her magic, making herself go faster, while I'm just naturally sporty.
We locked eyes and understood what we had to do. Afterall getting out of the graveyard was probably the warm up compared to what we would have to experience next, tricking Ms. Clare.
As if mentally communicating with each other, she took off the sweater which left her just her bare skin and bra while I took off my shirt which was just a plain white shirt, except for the fact it was stained in my sweat. We traded the clothing and wore it as we began to walk up to the door.
The plan was to trick Ms. Clare into thinking that me and Elena had.. a.. well.. night date with each other and we came home after a long.. experience you could say.
But before I could even touch the door handle, the door flew open and standing in the doorway was Ms. Clare. She was staring at us with furious eyes and a broom in her hands. She, who once was in her early twenties was now in her thirties. Her wrinkles were apparent but it didn't mask her beauty and her hair was much longer than shoulder length, they were at her waist now.
"H-Hey Ms. Clare.." I said with a slightly guilty tone while my face was forcing a smile. Elena averted her eyes while her face was flustered, mainly due to the chase but partly due to the sudden appearance of the caretaker. Her arms were wrapped around my shoulders as I helped her stand up, the old tome was still in her limp hands but she was gripping it tightly still as it was the only fruit of our efforts.
'Shit, we're totally caught.' I inwardly thought with a wry smile. If she was waiting for us this whole time, she most definitely saw us exchange clothing, which made us look guilty as hell.
Ms. Clare gestured for us to come inside. Once we were in the building she began to walk towards her office while we followed silently. I was thinking of a plausible excuse to say to her but I couldn't while Elena was so tired that she passed out on me so I had to carry her with me.
Ms. Clare stopped in front of her office and as I was about to step in as well, she turned around looked at me with a stern gaze and shut the door on me, but not before saying, "For now, get some rest I want answers after you wake up."
Looking at her gaze I swiftly averted my eyes and nodded shamefully. I walked towards my room, well, our room as Elena and I share a room together. I threw her on her bed as she let out a groan, she probably woke up from the sudden action but I didn't care as I was also tired from today.
The room itself was pretty standard with a bunk bed on the left most side and a small table on the floor at the middle of the room. It had two small mats where you sat on to use the table to compliment it. There were also dressers with our clothing's to the right of the room and a door at the end of the room that led to a bathroom.
We shared a room together as we were the two oldest orphans still in the orphanage. This was mainly due to how me and Elena were known as rebel children. Back then when we were young and naive we wouldn't accept getting adopted without each other, meaning the parent had to adopt us both.
But now as we grew older our main life style became more as an assistant to Ms. Clare. We would help take care of the orphanage and the children whenever Ms. Clare had to go on errands and we also agreed to not get adopted as we both felt like it was too late anyways.
As I climbed up the ladders of the bunkbed, I started to reminisce about the day I just experienced and as I got to the part where we got caught, I remembered something.
'Ah.. right the book..' Shortly after that thought, I fell asleep, vulnerable to the embrace of tiredness.
***
Ms. Clare
'Those troublesome kids, why can't they just stay home and live peacefully? I swear these wrinkles of mine are due to them, ugh.' As I thought of this I couldn't help but think back to what I saw when I heard some noise at the front porch.
At first I thought another incident like Grey would happen and I was determined to reject it but when I looked through the peephole.. Elena didn't even have a shirt on and her bra was loosely on while her whole body was sweating. Not to mention Grey.. since when did he had muscles like that? No wonder Elena never let her grip over him go..
'Hehehe.. looks like I'll have some grandchildren soon, my baby Elena and Grey are finally together!' I inwardly thought as a smile crept up on my face. To think that the two troublesome kids would finally admit their feelings for each other, it made me she'd a tear.. sniff sniff.
Tomorrow, I'll make sure to inquire all of the details I won't let them survive if even one second is left out.