Victoria, Londinium.
Clear skies.
As citizens gathered before the notice board to read the latest posting about Kjerag offering high-paying government clerical jobs to university graduates, the reaction was immediate and unanimous: shock.
“What even is Kjerag?”
That was the first question on everyone’s mind.
And when it came to the recruitment notice, skepticism quickly followed.
“Government civil service, and they’re openly recruiting?
Since when does something that good just fall into your lap?”
“I’ve never even heard of Kjerag.
Where is it?
Is it far from Londinium?
Is it bigger than Victoria?”
“Oh, come on.
Where do you think something like this comes from?
Probably another shady factory scam, trying to lure people into illegal labor.”
“Exactly!
Let me tell you, my cousin’s classmate just graduated recently.
Said he got an offer to work as an electronics engineer somewhere in Tara.
Great pay, too.
He went without a second thought.
And guess what happened?”
“What?”
The Feline man smacked his lips, looking deeply regretful.
“The moment he got there, he lost all contact with his family.
When they finally tracked him down… both his kidneys were gone.”
“Ugh!
Figures.
Tara’s always been a lawless place.
Full of troublemakers.”
“Well, that’s what makes us in Londinium the real deal.
Back when my ancestors followed the Aslan Pasha into the capital, they already did all the hard work for me in this lifetime!”
Before he could say more, the Feline across from him quickly covered his mouth, raising a finger to his lips and glancing around cautiously.
“Careful.
The man blinked, then nodded in realization.
“Right, right.
My bad.”
The two of them looked around nervously to make sure no one had overheard, then lowered their hats and hurried off the square.
They didn’t notice the golden-haired figure sitting on a bench at the far end of the plaza, quietly watching them leave before rising and heading toward the notice board.
Ever since the last Aslan king had been hanged in Parliament Square, the atmosphere in Londinium had changed like this.
The nobles of the city council had seized control, issuing decrees forbidding any grand duke from entering the city without permission.
Then they shut themselves in and turned Londinium into their own little kingdom.
Ruling was never easy.
Whether out of guilt or a desire to erase the king’s influence as quickly as possible, the council spread informants throughout the city, monitoring every word and action, especially anything related to “the king.”
In a short time, a word once spoken daily by countless people had become forbidden.
Vina found it both tragic and confusing.
When the nobles rebelled and the king was imprisoned, she, as a descendant of the Aslan bloodline, had been secretly smuggled out of the palace by loyalists and hidden among the common people.
What followed was the indiscriminate massacre of all Aslans within the palace.
Still a child at the time, she became, perhaps, the last surviving heir of the Aslan line.
She abandoned her true name, Alexandria Victoria, and lived under the alias Vina, becoming an unremarkable drifter in the streets of Londinium.
There were countless people like her in the slums.
No one paid her any attention, and so she grew up quietly, unnoticed, until now.
The district she had been staying in was recently overrun by a neighboring gang.
The resulting conflict escalated into a fire that burned down her makeshift shelter, forcing her to relocate.
She had planned to try her luck in the territory controlled by the Glasgow gang in the East End.
But as she passed through the square, she happened to overhear the conversation by the notice board.
“Clerical staff wanted.
Literacy required.
Familiarity with government work and literary ability strongly preferred.
Recent university graduates welcome.
Guaranteed salary, generous benefits…”
Vina silently read the notice to herself and couldn’t help but smile faintly.
Even without ever having held a proper job, whether in the past or now, she could still tell something about this recruitment was… off.
By the standards of government service, requiring only basic literacy was absurdly low.
In her memory, back when her father was still alive, every official she had seen was a middle-aged man, balding, slightly overweight, with sharp, calculating eyes and a tongue that could spin endless lies.
Which part of that matched a university graduate?
Still, “priority given to large numbers”… it sounded less like recruitment and more like wholesale produce.
Vina shook her head.
No wonder those two Felines had been pointing and whispering at the notice earlier.
Looking at it now, they weren’t wrong.
This thing looked exactly like one of those schemes that either lured people into black factories or tricked them into losing a kidney.
But when she glanced again at the recruiting organization, her brows knit slightly.
“Kjerag?”
Unlike those two Victorians who had outright asked where Kjerag even was, Vina felt a faint sense of familiarity with the name.
Kjerag… it wasn’t part of Victoria, was it?
If she remembered correctly, it was another country, somewhere to the northwest of Victoria, a place where the entire population followed a relatively obscure religion.
She pressed her fingers to her temple, trying to squeeze out more from memory, but nothing came.
It couldn’t be helped.
Everything she knew about Kjerag came from a geography lesson her royal tutor had given her as a child.
And back then, she had zero interest in geography.
She had either skipped the lesson or slept through it.
At this moment, she suddenly felt a strange sense of empathy for certain students during exams.
The good news: the teacher had covered this question.
The bad news: she had been asleep during that class.
Just as Vina was racking her brain, a voice called out from not far away.
“Hey, miss over there, what are you doing?”
She snapped back to reality and tilted her head slightly, glancing behind her from the corner of her eye.
A young woman in mounted police uniform was walking toward her.
There was no need to think further.
Whether the officer had seen through her disguise and recognized her as an Aslan, or was investigating the gang clash and fire from a few days ago, there was no way Vina could let herself be caught, let alone taken back to the Londinium police station.
Once she got inside, getting out again would be a nightmare.
With no time to hesitate, she reached out, tore the recruitment notice from the wall, and bolted.
Behind her, the mounted officer’s voice gradually faded into the distance.
Stopping in front of the notice board, the officer—Grani—stood there, baffled.
She clicked her tongue and muttered,
“Am I really that scary?
I was just trying to do some anti-fraud outreach, and she ran off like that?”