nyslfriends Chapter 6 Mission Completed
Chapter 6 Mission Completed
but……
Margaretsa wanted to say something more, but Anna gripped her wrist tightly and pulled her to the center of the square. Margaretsa could feel Anna's hand trembling slightly.
"Come on...didn't you keep saying the pressure of performing was too much and you wanted to go out and relax?" Anna's teeth were chattering. "I didn't even go to the casino, I just came here to keep you company. Sit down, I'm doing this for your own good."
She bent down to place the picnic box on the lawn, but when she stood up, she accidentally knocked the lid over, spilling the soup and other liquids all over the ground.
That was the result of Margaret's meticulous preparations throughout the morning.
Before leaving, Anna had mentioned that she really wanted to try her friend's mushroom cream soup. Now, looking at the mess on the floor, her eyes welled up with tears, but she silently continued rummaging through her lunchbox, calling out to Margaret as she did so.
"Come here, Mary, why are you standing so far away from me?"
Margaret's lips trembled, and she couldn't speak. She looked around again, and the man with the newspaper was staring at her with a determined and burning gaze.
"Anna..." She seemed to be unable to hold back any longer, her voice trembling with a hesitant sob, but her eyes were dry. "Why?"
Anna looked up at her, her face deathly pale, a color that her blush couldn't conceal.
"Why? Why?"
Margaret, in her characteristically gentle and soft tone, asked clearly, word by word:
"Why did you bring me here to give me away?"
Anna desperately wanted to deny it: "...What are you talking about, Mary!"
Margaretia threw Anna's lunchbox in her hand.
With a "clatter," a few pitiful lettuce leaves fell out of the lunchbox.
"I'm leaving, don't stop me." She said through gritted teeth as she backed away, "You're the best friend I've met since I came to London, Anna."
"Where are you going? Mary! Come back! Didn't you say you were going out for a walk to clear your head?!"
As the three men drew closer in the garden, Anna felt a chord snap and blurted out, "They say you're a heretic, they say you're a witch!"
Mary, surrounded in the middle: "...Them?"
"We," the man who had been pretending to read the newspaper said with a grin, crumpling up the front-page headline bearing Winston's name and tossing it aside. "You're a heretic, you only got this beauty and figure by sacrificing your soul to an evil god, am I wrong?"
"That's what people say," the guy who had been talking to the tree said in a low voice. "The Golden Curtain Circus was doing poorly and was almost bankrupt, but overnight it suddenly came back to life and became very popular. This is all because their boss brought in a genius actor from the countryside."
"Everyone comes here for this performer," said the person pacing around. "Rumor has it that she can sing and dance, is stunningly beautiful, and that the circus lions are as obedient as house cats under her command. The audience is so busy admiring her face that they completely forget to examine the flaws in her magic tricks."
"What's most unusual is that you've been performing on stage for months, yet we haven't heard of any important person inviting you to their home for a night of passion!"
The man in the newsboy cap declared loudly, "It's more likely you're a witch than someone who believes those nobles are collectively taking care of their stomachs!"
"..."
Margaret was momentarily speechless.
She felt she should be trembling at this moment, so she trembled twice, looked away from the three men, clenched her fists, looked at Anna with red eyes, and persistently asked again, "Why?"
"They say I'm a witch, why do you believe them?"
"Aren't we friends?"
Anna twirled her fingers, remained silent for a long while, and then said dejectedly, "I'm short of money."
"I owe the casino three hundred pounds, and the newspaper said there's a reward for reporting members of a cult around you."
Margaretissa trembled even more violently, this time out of anger: "These people aren't Scotland Yard police!"
"They're more willing to pay than the police," Anna replied.
She lowered her head, avoiding Margaret's gaze, picked up the scattered lunchbox from the ground, and said softly, "Then I'll go first."
"I hope you get a good night's sleep!" the newsboy-hat-wearing leader said with a grin. "You get used to betraying your friends after a while!"
Anna didn't dare to argue back and carefully retreated to the edge of the park. Margaret's crying gradually faded away, and she forced herself to pretend she hadn't heard it.
Perhaps this is the end... including Margaret's life, her own life, the glory of the Gilded Circus... but at least the debt to the casino can be paid off, and maybe the remaining money can be used to gamble big, not only to win back the initial principal, but also to send some money to Marie's parents as compensation...
"Bang!"
The sudden gunshot interrupted Anna's thoughts. She turned around abruptly, looking in fear in the direction from which the sound came, but dared not delve into what had happened. Instead, she grabbed her lunchbox and ran!
She can escape, but the other three can't.
Margarita, leaning against a large tree beside the fountain, her face still streaked with tears, stared in shock at the scene before her:
Thirty seconds earlier, just as the three men were about to commit a crime against her, an old woman suddenly emerged from the bushes.
It really was an old woman. The woman in front of me was probably close to seventy years old. Her back was hunched over, and her sparse white hair was tied back with a hair tie. She was wearing a magenta coat that looked like a wrung-out rag. What was most eye-catching was that she was holding two old-fashioned single-barreled muzzle-loading shotguns in her hands!
"Which brat dares to act so recklessly in the Royal Park!"
She stared at the three men standing dumbfounded on the grass, who were still not reacting, and with a flick of her right arm, she raised the nearly meter-long hunting rifle high into the air.
"I'll break your legs!"
She interrupted him without hesitation; the old woman had barely finished speaking when she fired a shot.
"Bang!"
She herself staggered back several steps due to the recoil and almost fell to the ground, but the bullet that flew from the barrel of the gun inexplicably hit the man in the newsboy cap in the thigh!
What's the principle behind it?!
The newsboy cap man was stunned. After a couple of seconds of stunned silence, he belatedly let out a scream, reached out to cover the bleeding wound on his thigh, and hopped backward in a one-legged stance.
Margaret realized for the first time that people could walk so fast by hopping; indeed, their potential was limitless.
The other pacing man, not believing in bad luck, tried to take a shortcut from another direction to launch a surprise attack. The old woman turned her head and shot him with her left hand, and the bullet hit him squarely in the thigh!
A miracle happening once might be a coincidence, but happening twice means it's the spellcaster. The slivers of hope in the hearts of the few hooligans vanished instantly. Terrified, they scrambled out of the park, leaving behind only bloodstains, soup, and Margaret, who couldn't keep up with the pace.
The old woman with the two guns saved Margaret's life, but she didn't even glance at her. She simply put down the guns and used them as a cane, her back seemingly more hunched than it had been a few minutes earlier.
She was staring intently in one direction, as if waiting for someone.
Margaret hesitated for a moment, about to ask a question, when she saw two more men in suits slowly walk out of the garden path. One of them looked to be around seventy years old, with gray hair that was a little messy, as if he had just been pulled out of bed. The man next to him was very young, only about thirty years old, with a smile on his lips and a pair of pure black eyes curiously looking at Margaret.
Margaret's heart was pounding.
Winston glanced at it curiously for a few moments, then politely looked away and remarked with a sigh to the old man beside him:
"Your wife has excellent marksmanship; she is truly impressive."
Meanwhile, a black eagle perched on a treetop, squawking and calling out in a way that only Winston could understand:
[We originally planned to make this little brat the first homeless person MI5 picked up in the park, but before we even met her, your mission was already complete. So, should we still recruit her? If you ask me, recruiting her is fine; we're in dire need of an intern who can serve tea, pour water, and take out loans to work...]