No Secret Can Stay Hidden (3)
A soft rustle.
Levi turned her back and slipped out of her clothes. Lee Han flinched. It was not the sudden undressing that startled him. It was what lay across her back.
"Can you see it?"
"...A tattoo. Noble young ladies these days are getting bold."
"Heh. You know that isn't what this is."
"Ahem."
He forced the cough. It was a wordless plea that she need not say the rest. She was resolute anyway.
"It's a slave brand. A vicious one."
The cruel truth left her without a tremor.
"......"
"I don't have parents, Master. Not in any sense of the word. I'm an orphan."
She dressed again, piece by piece, and Lee Han gave a bitter smile.
"You could have just said it. What possessed you to strip and make a production of it?"
"Better to show a thing once than explain it a few hundred times. You say that all the time, Master."
"...Damn honor student."
"I'll take that as a compliment."
Levi was unusually fluent today. She could not remember ever speaking this cleanly before another person, without hesitation or a tremor in her voice. She had always been cowed. But before the man who had already laid every secret of his own bare, she felt she could do the same, hiding nothing.
So she pressed on, more boldly still.
"I'm a slave. About five years ago, I was sold to House Folt."
She exposed the greatest weakness she possessed, and her greatest secret with it.
"......"
He only listened. His gaze stayed quiet, as if her being a slave hardly mattered at all. He was not looking at Levi as a slave. Only as a disciple. Only as a girl.
Something surged up in her throat.
...Hah. Honestly, this man.
He could not have been kinder.
Anyone else would have been horrified, or felt betrayed. ...He's a better teacher than I could ever deserve.
Levi swallowed the surge again. She could cry after she had finished bringing every hidden thing into the light. It would not be too late then.
"...I'm not from Pendragon. I'm from Britannia. Not that origin means much, when you're a slave."
She had been a war orphan from the beginning. Britannia had spent ages picking fights—with the empire, and with Pendragon as well—and starting war after war. Perhaps because of that, war orphans there were more common than sewer rats, and Levi was simply one more child who had lost her parents somewhere along the way.
Then a slave caravan caught her. Such caravans were said to be mostly forbidden, yet it was an open secret that they still existed. So even her kidnapping, even her becoming a slave, was no uniquely cruel misfortune. That was simply how life went for most children who had neither parents nor power.
"I don't know whether it was fortunate, but for an orphan I was pretty, and even my hair was a rare color, the kind nobles have. Because of that they classed me as top-grade, and I was given quite an education. People who wanted high-grade slaves, the merchant said, were not merely numerous. They were overflowing."
Whether it was misfortune or luck, she was beautiful. A beautiful woman had demand—so the slave merchant told her—and he taught her to write, and taught her the etiquette of nobles. Her aptitude for learning was not bad. Once he realized she was clever as well, his delight only grew.
I can sell her for even more!
That was the line he repeated to her until it became a habit.
"It didn't make me happy in the slightest."
And then, while she was still being trained as a high-grade slave, war broke out between Pendragon and Britannia. The merchant had the rotten luck to be caught in it, and he died. Misfortune for him, of course. For her, it could only be called luck. She had gained a chance to run.
But of all things—
"I never knew. I never imagined that being a high-grade slave would be what ruined me."
The true name of the slave brand carved into her back.
That was the nature of the mark. The slave merchant had sought out an Illegal Mage and had it carved into her with his own hands. It was a kind of sorcery, a curse like a nightmare that no ordinary means could ever erase. The merchant's own effort, meant to keep a high-grade slave from running. In the end she passed into the hands of another merchant, one who had swallowed the dead man's organization.
And that merchant—
"Sold me into Pendragon. It was wartime, so he sold off everything that could be turned into coin. I went cheap, too."
Ten silver coins. That was the price of her body.
"And the place I was sold to..."
"House Folt, was it."
"...Yes."
"Where did bastards like that even get the money to buy you?"
"I imagine they borrowed it. Only a guess, but it would have been an investment. That man meant, from the very beginning, to sell me on again."
"From today, you are our daughter. Levi Folt—I grant you this name. Haha!"
The day she was sold there, House Folt gave her a name and a surname and took her in as one of their own. Her—nothing but a slave. Levi was moved. Ah, a day like this had finally come for her too. The miraculous luck of fairy tales had found even her. She was truly, truly glad.
But.
"Why—why are you growing so slowly? Grow faster, damn it!"
Reynol Folt had not made a slave his daughter for any other reason. He meant to sell her. To marry her off to a great noble, or to some wealthy trading house. Yes. He had bought her because he saw investment value when he looked at her.
House Folt. The house was hopeless beyond words. Still dreaming of rising again as a knightly house, they raised the daughter who would be their heir with care—while preparing a sacrifice to marry off and squeeze for coin. A house that would never try another way, never try to recover through effort. Hopeless. Nothing short of a clan of lingering ghosts.
Facing their madness and their incompetence, Levi wanted to run. Left as she was, her fate was obvious. She watched for a chance to flee, or a chance to report them. And yet—
"You'd do well not to even dream of running."
Because of the brand—the Brand of Obedience—she could do nothing. She was a bound existence. She could not defy her master's commands. The commands laid upon her came down to three.
One. She could not tell another soul that she was a slave.
Two. She could not do anything that would bring harm to House Folt.
Three. She had to remain obedient to the people of House Folt.
Those commands were seared into her like a stigma. And so—
"No matter how disgusting they are, I have no choice but to obey them."
The guildsman who had toyed with him the day before. When that man threatened her with the mother and the younger sister, the reason she had turned suddenly cooperative was not some grudging affection, nor was it because the mother and daughter had treated her kindly.
"I have to be obedient to that mother and daughter, too."
A curse, plain and simple. Freedom did not exist in her life. Only a suppressed, hideous existence seemed to cling to her side, always. Hideously so.
"...And yet, ironically, I... I wanted them to acknowledge me as family. It was the first time I'd ever had anything like a family, so I... I really, truly tried my best."
Effort. The effort Lee Han had called blind. Through that effort she had wanted to prove herself. If she worked, if she truly gave everything, wouldn't they acknowledge her someday? If she achieved something worthy of the house, if she produced results, then maybe—!
"Maybe they would accept me as family. I think I dreamed that kind of fantasy. A truly childish girl's fantasy."
"......"
"Hehe. I'm really foolish and stupid, aren't I?"
She asked it of him, then squeezed her eyes shut, certain his face had already hardened in disgust at her foolishness. Even hearing whatever answer he might give frightened her—
"—No. If anything, I'm so proud of you that I want to hold you and tell you you've suffered."
"You suffered. Truly... you suffered."
He only offered her the same gentle gaze as always. It was not pity. It was genuine pride. All she could feel was how admirable he found her, for having endured that hard time.
"...Ah."
Levi went blank. All her life she had lived on edge, forever wondering what reaction would come if she revealed her secret, whether someone might despise her. And now someone who accepted her exactly as she was stood before her eyes, and Levi's whole body trembled.
"Well, being held by an old man like me probably isn't pleasant. You can write it off as nonsense, if you want..."
She crashed into him.
"......"
"...Hnngh."
"...Yeah. Cry. I'll lend you my arms for as long as you need."
"Hnngh—waaaaaah!"
"Yeah. Crying means doing it this loud. That's how you get it out of your chest. Course it is."
Levi had thrown herself into his arms with all the strength she had. And in the same moment, she hated him. Why had he appeared only now? When she needed him—when she had needed him so badly—why hadn't she met a person like this?
Nineteen years of pain and exhaustion. At last she had met family who knew how to cherish her in earnest, and Levi wept bitterly. Not quietly, as she had the day before, but in a great voice. Truly, bitterly, she wept.
"...It's all right. It's all right."
Lee Han carefully patted her back. Warmly.