Back to the present, Brice and Ulise along with the ten or so "random" vendor stall and shop owners, are speechlessly standing right outside the entrance to the "Greens For You!" grocery shop, staring at Theron who had just walked out of the shop with blank gazes.
For three hours they searched for the young lord. For three excruciating hours they have comped and looked through every nook and cranny of the entire market district and its surrounding areas, but with no results to show for their efforts.
The pressure from their captain Brice urging them along with each of his orders was great, but not as great as what they felt by themselves from the fear of failing their Young Miss in her time of anguish.
Their loyalty and love for their young miss fueled their efforts with unreal zeal as they spread everywhere with a high purpose infused in their actions.
All of them were like rabid dogs as they barged into gangs' hideouts and crashed into black market's hidden gatherings, tossing everything upside down in search of their young lord. The lowlifes and criminals paid dearly that day; indignation and sorrow filling their black and rotten hearts because of the sudden attacks.
But with more time passing and with no sign of him anywhere they searched, their anxiousness over finding him grew more and more. At one point, it was as if illusionary charcoal ignited under their feet, burning them as they stepped on them and forcing them to hurry their feet to leave the burning ground.
In one moment, the passerby on the streets would see a flash of a figure running past them from their side, only to see another jump from behind them to disappear at a corner in front a few minutes later.
As the setting sun cast its golden light across the city, their fleeting shadows were seen everywhere as they rushed in every direction. The walls of the buildings all over the searching area, transformed into the backgrounds for short shadow plays, spooking the residents for good.
The search lasted for hours, but it wasn't before searching every known or suspicious criminal hole in the entire area, that the mad Gren Vegor with his deranged mind crossed their minds.
The first one who had the startling thought was Ulise, who immediately dispatched some of their personnel to track the madman's current location at the time.
When the reports came back that Gren Vegor was nowhere to be found either, they were shocked. In the current situation, such coincidence of both missing at the same time, with nowhere to be found, could not be taken lightly! The more they thought about it, the more probable it seemed for Gren Vegor to be responsible for the young lord's disappearance.
How could they have missed considering such wild individual?!
After perusal on the mad Gren Vegor's recorded whereabouts over the past few days, they were even more shocked to learn that the ones responsible for his surveillance had lost track of his presence around the times Theron was going to or leaving from work!
The moment Brice heard this lapse of their duties; he raged mad with fury. Such negligence on their part to report on the madman's odd disappearances was unacceptable! He was about to murder them in his wrath, when Ulise stepped up and calmed him down; reminding him that finding and rescuing the young lord was more important than punishing their subordinates for their lax attitudes at work.
They had already wasted so much time aimlessly searching around as it was; they couldn't afford to lose any more.
After raiding the madman's residence and not finding either him or Theron, Brice and Ulise quickly formed a small team with whom were closest to the next area of interest and moved towards the grocery store with haste.
And that led to the awkward moment they found themselves in right now.
No sooner than when they reached the entrance to the "Greens For You!" grocery store and were planning to break their way in, the door opened by itself and the young lord was seen unhurriedly exiting the building.
Both sides stared speechlessly at each other for a good few seconds, with even the always composed Ulise having his mouth slightly opened from the surprise.
"It's the young lord!" The first one to speak was rapid tongue Carl, who swallowed his words the moment he blurted them out after realizing he had spoken out loud what should not in front of the young lord.
He immediately received a blazing gaze of fury from Brice, and he flinched back from it, acknowledging his bladder at the same time.
The involuntary mistake was made though, and it was loud enough for Theron to hear.
'Young lord?' he thought in surprise. 'Is he talking about me?' he wondered.
Taking another look at the guy who spoke and the others with him, they were all looking towards him. With no other person present there, he indeed seemed to be the subject of this "young lord" calling.
'They are, calling me young lord! But why?'
Usually, you would call someone young lord if you were under their service or their parents' or grandparents' on that matter, but why would this stranger, who – if he remembered correctly was a vendor stall owner selling pastries a dozen or so buildings down the road - be calling him young lord?
The other strangers, along with the butchers Brice and Ulise also seemed to be here together with that person; their silence and Brice's anger-filled stare following his unintentional calling, could only point to the fact that all of them thought of him as their "young lord".
But it didn't make any sense! He and his parents were living in a small apartment house, just like so many people in this city were. All present material items and belongings in their house showed that his parents, although not poor, were not well off on the money side either.
And as far as he was aware of, none of his parents were members of a prominent family, unless.... either his mother or father had left their well-off family at some point, to live their lives with the other, relinquishing the riches and privileges they were entitled to!
'Yes, that must be it! No matter how outstretched it may sound, I can't think of any other reason for this obvious team of people to be here!' Theron finally concluded. 'Then does that mean I am some sort of heir to that family who was raised outside of it?' He mused with a passing thought.
'Well, either way, it doesn't really matter now what my place is inside that family. What matters is that I am an important member of it. Important enough for a team of previously covert agents, or whatever they are, to abandon their secret identities and come to rescue me.'
'Should I use this importance I hold for them? I mean, I would not lose anything, and it is in my best interest instead, considering what I left behind in the grocery store.'
Thinking of the dead body of one Gren Vegor lying cold on the secret room with its blood bled out, and looking at the team in front of him who seemed professional enough in their job, it wouldn't take them long to find it after they thoroughly search the inside of the grocery store for his kidnapper.
So, them finding that he killed him was inevitable. There was no way of talking his way out of this one, it was impossible.
Since that's the case, there was no point in keeping the weak and innocent child act in front of them and might as well get ahead of the situation and be spared of any suspension and questioning that would otherwise arise later.