"Iver, someone's coming."
Suddenly, Viennes, standing on Iver's shoulder, spoke up in warning. "No hostility."
Her voice was as soft as a whisper while telling a bedtime story. The crow lightly pecked at the hair by Iver's temple, making him raise a hand and smooth the itchy strands.
"Are they here to see me?"
Iver asked casually.
Though he asked the question, he already trusted Viennes's warning.
So Iver raised a hand and tightened his collar, shifted his necktie aside, and wrapped his coat more securely around himself, slightly covering the fresh bloodstains at his collar.
The smell of blood in the air probably could not be dispelled. Still, remaining clean was a form of courtesy when receiving guests.
As for who would come looking for him—there were very few people who could know Iver had come to Lloyd's at this hour, have the nerve to seek him out, bear no hostility, and know that he had stopped on the seventeenth floor to treat his wounds.
If the scope was narrowed further to people whose footsteps Iver could not hear, then there was only one person.
Thus, when someone lightly knocked on the office door from outside, Iver immediately said, "Come in, Ms. Gray-Green."
The person who opened the door was a woman who looked utterly ordinary, whether in her clothing or her appearance.
She looked like a housewife one might see by the roadside. She appeared to be in her forties, with a slightly hunched back. Her brown, chestnut-colored hair was curly, somewhat coarse, and split at the ends, while her murky gray-green eyes resembled those of a wolf.
The woman looked quite gentle, even somewhat timid. When she entered the office, both hands unconsciously tugged at her hem—as helpless as a simple farmer suddenly summoned to the school