thief (of my heart)

-IX-

Wandering around through the woods they reached the solid stone walls of Ungjin soon. By now the sun lit up their way and exposed the colorful slim but tall trees varieting from green to red and offering the image of a peaceful environment. How are they going to get in? Lie again?

"Can somebody tell the cavewoman to toss the stones away?" Chaeyoung rolled her eyes in annoyance, having to put up with her for the whole ride. "I still do not get why I ought to sit behind her and hold this strangely colossal bag of stones."

"Those are valuable minerals I spent a long time burrowing up." Lisa clicked her tongue and corrected. "My close relative claims they bless us with awful good fortune, therefore I had to carry them along."

"That's it!" Jisoo beamed suddenly. "From today onwards we are merchandisers." She spoke the last word as if they were supposed to hear the quotation marks decorating that term.

"You emphasized that oddly." Lisa remarked, fixing her helmet.

"Why would we be merchandisers?" Jennie inquired perplexed. "Are you not heading to Silla with me, after all?" The disappointment in her voice was hard to miss.

"No!" Jisoo denied strongly. "It's just that for merchandisers it's common to travel. It's the perfect excuse to go from city to city without picking up bizarre attention."

"And this girl has the right amount of dirt on her to pass as a merchandiser." Chaeyoung referred to Lisa.

"You are allowed to speak my name, honey." Lisa responded merely.

"I do not want to." She said stubbornly.

"I think we should use fake names anyway. Just to stay safe." Jisoo argued. Some sort of precautionary measures have to be set.

"Great then feel free to call me Aphrodite!" The miner exclaimed confidently.

"Oh please." Chaeyoung muffled her laughter with a hand. "Hades if anything."

"Shh." Jennie silenced them. The more they proceeded towards the gate, the guards were staring daggers at them. They be mistaking them for sketchy people which they were in no way. Luca squeezed himself in Jennie's neck instinctively.

"Wait what about Leo? There is no way they will let a freaking tiger enter the capital or in fact any place." Chaeyoung suddenly spoke up.

"Leave it to me." Jisoo said calmly before she hopped down from Trojan and motioned them to come gradually after her. The guard unsheathed his sword and aimed it towards Leo.

"There is no danger. He is but a tamed dog." Jisoo quickly intervened.

"Dog?" The guard raised a brow. "That is no dog." He opposed the mere idea.

"Yes he is." Jisoo disagreed. "He belongs to a very rare species of dogs. There are only a bunch of them on this planet. If you slaughter him you are partly to blame for their extinction. Do you want that sir?"

"Who the hell are you?" They positioned themselves ready to fight the intruders off.

"Good afternoon." The raven bowed without a trace of fear. "We are traveling merchandisers as you might have already noticed."

"Merchandisers huh..." One of the guards inspected them. "What do you have to offer?"

"A wide variety of minerals. Salt even."

"SALT!?"

Salt is of high value to the Chinese. This reinforced the thought Jisoo had about the Chinese already having infiltrated if not taken over Ungjin. Chaeyoung and Jennie shared a look. Since when did they have salt in their possession?