Off to Fetch My Slave
Right away, Henson launched into his excuses.
"We only followed her because we could tell she wasn't from around here — we were curious, that's all! It's not every day you see a young woman riding out of town alone on horseback!"
"I know."
"We had no ill intentions at first, I swear!"
"But then you saw what she looked like, and the ill intentions turned up. Am I right?"
"Th... that's... how is any man supposed to look at a body like that and just hold back!"
The bastard was trying the old deflection gambit. If it were you, could you look at a woman built like that and hold back? If you could, you're not even a man! She's YOUR woman, and you couldn't even protect what's yours — you let her wander around outside, so this is on you!
Needless to say, that argument wouldn't have bought him a grain of rice back in my world. But here, women's rights sat only a notch above a cow's or a horse's, which was exactly why a fool like this could dress his nonsense up as an excuse. And this was a backwater where a genuinely beautiful woman was a rarity to begin with.
"So if you can't hold back, that makes it fine to put your hands on another man's woman and rape her — is that how it works, you lot?"
"That's... we are truly, deeply sorry!"
Henson bowed his head and pressed both palms together in apology. In a world modeled on medieval Europe rather than the East, that particular gesture was one you almost never saw unless the apology was genuine.
Fine. So you're sorry. I folded up my three-section staff. At least you know when to apologize, Henson. Just now, you saved your friends.
It was a small comfort to think that the butcher, for all that earning a living had kept him busy, hadn't simply let his son rot after all.
"I'll go right now, Rex! Hyaaahhh! Huh?!"
Will — apparently having finally settled on a usable weapon — came charging with a small, rusted hand axe he'd scavenged from somewhere. But he sensed the shift in the air a beat too late and promptly hurled the axe away. To begin with, this anchovy of a boy had never had any real intention of fighting.
Things could have turned ugly if he'd committed a moment sooner. Not that I'd have gone down easily to that sad little axe — but blunt weapons and blades are different kinds of fights, and if he'd truly meant to use it, it might have escalated to the point where I'd have to pull my pistol. Killing or maiming a fellow villager — not a bandit — would have made things very complicated for me too. Let's just count it a blessing that it ended here.
"So. Henson's the butcher's son. Whose boy are you?"
"Ah... I'm..."
In the span of a breath, Will had been demoted to a delinquent schoolboy getting lectured by a cranky old man. Not knowing what to do with himself, he stood rooted to the spot, stiffly at attention, eyes cast down.
"...My father does tailoring at the Greenhill market. He runs a clothing shop."
"Ah, 'Big Button' — the clothing shop. Across from the inn, right?"
"Yes....."
"And this one?" I pointed the tip of my foot at Rex, still unconscious and groaning in pain.
"...My father runs the smithy."
"Wait — Smith? Your father's name isn't Smith, by any chance?"
"Yes......"
"This one really is a lost cause. His father hammers iron day and night, sparks in his face, breaking his back at the forge — and this is what the son does!"
I felt a pang of betrayal on Smith's behalf, honestly. The man ran the most diligent smithy in town — always met his deadlines, even on the smallest orders, always delivered work of the same dependable quality. The shop was even called Greenhill Smith's Smithy. It was the largest forge in Greenhill, with the most hands. More than that, though —
Being able to hang a sign bearing both the town's name and your own is never an easy thing. Especially in this world, the right to put the local placename on your signboard takes more than good merchandise. It is the highest honor a shop can earn, granted only to a business that every citizen of the region has acknowledged — the kind of institution people treat the way we treat Cheonan's famous walnut pastries, or the original pig's-trotter house in Jangchung-dong.
Even my general store hadn't officially earned the title of "Greenhill's General Store." Outsiders simply called it that because it was convenient, nothing more.
And yet the son of that man — a boy useless at the forge — was out running wild with his friends, trying to rape a poor woman who had no strength at all, whose only assets were a pretty face, a fine figure, and large breasts?!
The curmudgeonly old-man instinct I'd barely put down rose up again. I wanted to wake him on the spot and beat some sense into him, but there was something more urgent. Haah... where the hell has Erina gone this time?
"You three need a proper thrashing from your fathers."
"Could you please go easy on us...? If word gets out, our family's shop could be ruined..."
"We're begging you. And we never really touched the slave. Not properly."
"Odd. From what I saw, you were groping her all over the place?"
"That was..."
Out of words, the two of them sank to their knees and started groveling in earnest. Somehow I got the feeling Rex had come around as well, but standing up now would be both humiliating and strategically unwise, so he seemed to be playing dead.
I could have dragged them back to town and shamed each of them personally, but I didn't see the point. Because just then — oh. The perfect punishment for these boys had just occurred to me.
"From this moment, you go straight home and report what happened here to your fathers — yourselves, with your own mouths. Then you accept whatever punishment each household sees fit to give."
"Aw, damn..."
"'Aw, damn'?"
"No, sir! We'll tell them everything!"
"I'll be paying a visit to each of your family's shops before long. And if your parents turn out to have no idea what happened—"
"They won't! We'll tell them exactly as it was and take what's coming to us!"
"You there — the smithy's son. You heard me, didn't you?"
"......"
"Didn't you?"
I tapped his shoulder with the tip of my foot. Only then — apparently finding it too much work to stay 'unconscious' — he groaned and slowly pushed himself up, then dropped to his knees with what strength he had left.
"Yesss... I did wrong..."
Little punk. Some pride left in him after all — the words came out in a crawl, barely audible.
"Then get the hell out of my sight!"
They bolted. The instant my permission landed, the three of them hoisted Rex up between them as if they'd been waiting for exactly that and, moving as one clamoring mass, vanished quickly beyond the outbuilding. Meanwhile, I gathered up Erina's scattered belongings one by one — or rather, the things that had been mine.
So everything got torn after all.
My silk hoodie, now reduced to rags, I left where it lay. The unboxing knife had apparently never even gotten a proper swing — it lay near the mouth of the yard. As I picked up the coins scattered across the ground, a thought flashed through my mind.
She definitely picked up the matches earlier. Why on earth?
She was naked with nothing to her name — not even a single silver — and she'd gone out of her way to grab the matches?
At the very least, Erina seemed to know how matches were used. In that desperate moment, with the very real risk of being caught all over again, she had stopped, peered into the yard, and gathered them up. There had to be a special reason. Was making fire so easily really that wondrous to her?
Wait until she sees me flick a lighter. Her eyes are going to fall out of her head.
For now, I searched along the outer fence of the outbuilding. Not much time had passed. She'd hurt her leg, too — she couldn't have gone far.
Walk all the way to the city? Naked, clutching a box of matches, a slave brand burned into her lower belly, those enormous breasts of hers bouncing free the whole way? It could never happen. Even if she somehow made it, she could see exactly what her fate would be at the end of that road.
Had I really been that frightening? I was clearly missing something in the humanity department. When we ran into those bandits yesterday, I should at least have shivered where she could see it. And I'd killed far too naturally. Even by my own assessment, I looked like a man who had done this kind of killing many times before.
I was still chewing on that when I heard labored breathing from somewhere close by.
"Mmph..."
?!
As expected, it came from nowhere far from the outbuilding at all — no, from right against it. The outer wall, the crumbled corner of the stone fence, somewhere in the tangle of wildly overgrown brush. Erina's voice, thick with lament.
"Why won't it work! WHY!"
Damping my footsteps, I peered through the brush. Erina, stark naked, was drawing matches out of the box one at a time and striking them with everything she had. The matches were soaked clean through — they must have taken a dunking in that puddle in the yard.
"This worked before! I know it did!?"
...
"Damn it... why is this happening to me?!"
"...They won't light because they're soaked."
"Eeek!!"
Erina whipped around in shock and tumbled right over the brush. The ground beyond it sloped gently, and the sight of her naked body rolling head over heels down the incline was exactly like watching a great white hunk of meat careening downhill.
"What were you going to do with the fire, exactly?"
Having rolled to a stop, Erina scrambled upright and backed away. I looked her over quickly — fortunately, the bleeding from her ankle seemed to have nearly stopped.
"Still afraid of me?"
"D-don't come any closer!"
Erina straightened and thrust the matches out toward me — matchsticks in one hand, the box in the other — brandishing them at me like they were some catastrophic bomb. Come one step closer and I'll set it off. Something like that, apparently.
It was, frankly, a little adorable.
I'd been holding myself in check this entire time, but resisting instinct in front of a woman this alluring was genuinely hard work. I'd known she was beautiful from the first moment — but I hadn't counted on this kind of guileless charm. Well, I suppose it's only natural she couldn't operate something from my world properly.
"They don't work once they're wet. They only catch fire when they're dry."
"Ah...? Ah! Aaahhh!!"
So THAT was it! — her whole face said. Understanding at last, Erina crumpled to the ground, hugged her drawn-up knees, and abruptly burst into tears like a little girl. She seemed convinced that her one chance to change her fate had just come to nothing, right here, and for nothing.
"...Did you kill all of them?"
"......"
Erina asked between sobs. She wanted to know whether I'd shot those men dead with my gun, same as yesterday.
So she was afraid of me after all...
The moment suspicion hardened into certainty.
"Then why not just kill me too, right now? You could use that strange wand from yesterday and finish me in a single spell!"
"..."
I didn't answer right away.
I'd never properly dated a woman in my life — but long years in sales had given me abundant practice with female customers' complaints. I'd learned that when a customer is caught in a storm of emotion, the smarter move is to stay quiet and let her pour out everything she needs to say, rather than open your mouth carelessly. Even when not a word of it is logical or true. Refunds, exchanges, compensation — those matters could wait until the first wave of the storm had broken and passed.
"About... about yesterday."
Still, I couldn't just listen forever. I knew it must look as though I held human lives cheap, and this misunderstanding had to be cleared up here and now.
"If I hadn't killed that man, every one of us would be dead."
"Right? Of course. Come to think of it, you wouldn't kill me right away, would you. You paid good money for me. You'd want to use me to the full first — get your money's worth. This body has to earn it back for you!"
"?"
"How am I? Is my body good enough? It was too dark to see me properly last night, wasn't it! Well? It's a fine view, isn't it! Does this body look serviceable to you? If you pass it around from man to man, my three gold will be paid off in no time — with plenty left over!"
This girl... she's sliding further and further off the rails. Is she all right?
Had terror so completely seized her body that her mind simply gave way? Right now, she looked to be in the same abandoned, give-up-everything state as she'd been on the auction block yesterday. I could see those hollow, emptied eyes from that night. With a few spoonfuls of defiance stirred in.
"Go on! If you're going to rape me, then do it right now!"
And then Erina abruptly flopped down onto the bare ground and spread her legs wide open in front of me. It happened in the space of a breath, before I could say a single word.
"Hurry up! I'm going to be handed around to countless men anyway — so if it has to happen, I want my first time to be taken by the master who paid money for me!"
"Um... could we maybe look at each other's faces first, and have a serious talk?"
It was my first sight of Erina's sex.
Not a single wisp of fine hair — her mound was bare and clean as a shorn hill. The outer lips that had been pressed so firmly shut until now had parted, revealing the deep pink of her hymen within. And below it, a small anus caked filthy with sand and mud.
So the slave merchant hadn't been running a scam after all. A beautiful young female slave, face and figure both flawless — and one whose hymen was there in plain view, unmistakably intact. A rare, rare premium. On top of it all, Erina carried the uniqueness of elven blood. Setting aside any talk of market value, the sight of this girl's sex made the fact that I had won her at auction feel, all over again, almost staggering.
At the same time, my own cock was beginning to lift its head despite me. No heterosexual man alive could look at this and not react — it was simple biology.
Trouble.
Because as things stood, I was about to hold a heartfelt conversation with her spread-open pussy.
Nothing for it, then. I'd simply have to pretend this was Erina's face, and talk to it.
Erina held her position flat on the ground, so I sat down on the bare earth as well. She kept her legs open the whole while, which left me no choice but to address her exposed sex directly.
"I understand why you're terrified. But yesterday and today were things that couldn't be helped. And today, I didn't kill anyone."
"Don't lie to me! You look like a man who's done it plenty of times! Someone killing for the first time wouldn't have the composure to go picking things off corpses!"
So that's what had been weighing on her. Maybe I shouldn't have looted the bodies. My greed for money simply runs hotter than my lust, you see... Honestly? Loose loot lying on the ground is harder for me to resist than a woman lying spread-legged on it...
In any case, trying to explain right now that I came from another world — that the people here simply didn't feel entirely real to me — seemed like a stretch too far.
"It's... because I'm a merchant. To a merchant, money is life itself. Call it what a sword and shield are to a soldier."
I glossed over it. As expected, it didn't land; Erina didn't appear to be listening at all. Worn out from crying, she was gulping down air, her lower belly rising and falling in slow waves. With every breath she drew, her sex and her anus clenched tight and slackened again in the very same rhythm.
I hesitated a moment, then went on.
"I'll stake every coin I own on this promise: I have no intention of using you as a sex slave. I won't resell you to a brothel, and I will never take money from anyone to make you sell your body."
"...Really?"
Her cautious voice drifted to me from beyond the splayed legs, the rising and falling belly, and the two round swellings of her breasts.
"I never intended to. Not from the very start."
"Then... what will you use me for?"
She couldn't make sense of it. Frankly, even now, I could simply bind her with rope or shackles and drag her back by force. A master sitting down on the roadside, patiently untangling a slave's feelings — it must have looked absurd to her.
"The thing is... the truth is, I don't buy slaves to work them to the bone. As you've seen — I set them free. I buy them so they can live new lives as free people."
"Another lie! Who on earth does something that idiotic, with money rotting in his purse? That's a fool's errand!"
Erina lifted her head and shouted — and at last, our eyes met. Her legs were still open, though, so I had to carry on the conversation taking in her face, her breasts, her sex, and her anus all at once, like a frame torn straight out of a pornographic film. Keeping my composure had just become considerably harder than it was a minute ago.
"That's right. It's idiotic. Foolish. It's why I can't save money, why I can't build up capital to expand the business. But in my position, I believe it's something I have to do."
"Why? What drives you to go that far?!"
Erina pressed on without pausing for breath. I deliberated a moment, sighed, and spoke.
"Because I know how it feels."
"..."
"To plunge in a single instant to the very bottom of rock bottom — unable to stand back up, unable to return to who you were. That lostness. That despair."
It felt like a game of truth or dare. To lay my heart as bare as I could, I chose every word with double and triple care.
"When no one would help me — when I had nothing to eat, nothing to wear, nowhere to sleep, and was left utterly alone — a few people helped me. Strangers, in a land not my own. They helped me without asking a single thing in return."
"..."
"And back then, I made a vow. If a miracle happened and I ever earned enough to live properly in this land, I would help people in the same position I'd been in — no conditions, no strings."
Erina's eyes instantly brimmed over. Had she read the truth in me? I hadn't expected to say any of this out loud here, either.
These were words I had never even told Greengote, my secretary and the store's manager. (To him, I'd only spun a story about old debts run up before opening the shop, and this being my way of paying them down.)
That was the real reason I kept swallowing losses, spending time and money to buy slaves and set them free.
"How... how could you... in a world this wretched and this filthy... how could you keep a heart like that... hahk... uhhk..."
For a long while, Erina simply looked at me while the tears streamed down without pause. She didn't blink even once, as though she were trying to read everything inside my head. And as if her body would never run dry, the tears kept gushing from her eyes — down her cheeks to her chin, along her neck, between her breasts, all the way down to her navel.
Then, at some point, she spoke quietly.
"All right. I'll believe you. I'm sorry I ran off on my own, Master Luciel. And thank you. For saving me twice."
"Don't mention it."
"From this moment, for the rest of my life, I will serve Luciel as my master. Please — take in this imperfect woman, and keep me."
"All right... I will. Thank you for saying that."
"...Ah!"
Reality apparently catching up to her late, Erina hurriedly drew her legs together and sat up, covering her breasts with both arms. There was no need for it in front of me — but she likely did it because she believed that baring a slave's lowly body to her master was a breach of etiquette.
I reached to take off the tunic I wore over my clothes, to give to her. But the moment she realized that undressing me would leave my own chest bare — I had rushed out in a hurry, after all — Erina shook her head firmly.
"I could never dare to wear my master's clothes."
"You plan to walk back to town naked, then?"
"Gladly, if that is my master's wish."
...Huh?
The about-face was frighteningly fast.
One way or another, I made it back to the store with Erina in tow.
On the way, I asked her this and that, but I didn't get many answers — exhaustion had won out, and she'd fallen asleep with her head resting against my back.
Still, I did learn that her full name was Erina Seraphina, and that it had been her father who was the elf — a father she had barely ever seen, her life lived among humans, with her mother and no one else.
Figures. The fluent human speech, the very human reactions — no wonder she'd never given off much of an elven air.
I could not ride into Greenhill with Erina on the horse's back wearing not a single thread, still caked in sand and mud. It wasn't the small hours — far too many eyes were out at this hour.
So before entering Greenhill, I left the horse and Erina waiting a short distance off, stopped by one of the nearby houses, and begged a favor of a lady who was a regular at my store: I borrowed one of the women's garments drying on her line and dressed Erina in it. Later, I ran the borrowed dress through the washer — dryer cycle and all — in my studio back home, and returned it with a few copper coins folded in.
As for the horse Erina had been riding — the one with the broken leg — I asked Guard Captain Neilson to see to it separately. When I told him I wouldn't be claiming the horse's price, he heaped praise on me — As expected of Sir Luciel! Sir Luciel! — and gladly took the task off my hands.
Back at the store, I washed Erina down again and treated her wounds. Then we ate together — a late breakfast that was nearly lunch.
Which meant the shop's doors stayed shut until well into the afternoon, and Greengote relayed to me that a few customers had voiced their disappointment about it.
"Couldn't be helped."
"Will you not be opening for the night trade either, sir?"
"Night trade is still on."
Before Greengote could even read out the schedule, I was already unrolling the day's plan I'd been carrying in my head. By day, our general store does business with the people of Greenhill. But around six in the evening, as the sun sinks, we close the doors. And once true night falls, we begin receiving our secret customers from other regions.
One visitor a day. Two at most. But the money they spend in a single visit runs double what I take from dozens of daytime customers. In truth, those few are the ones who keep this store fed.
Greengote listened, gave the ballpoint pen I'd given him a deft twirl, and neatened up the checklist.
"And... what is to become of her, sir?"
"Who?"
"The slave, sir. Miss Erina."
"Well..."
I stretched in a long yawn and looked out the window. Erina sat on the bench I'd set up by the shop entrance in her new dress, staring blankly into space. The cartoon-printed bandage I'd put on her ankle seemed to fascinate her; every so often she stretched her leg out, holding her ankle up to the warm sunlight for a closer look.
Greengote hates anything vague or undefined. So do I — but his dislike of it borders on the pathological. Since this morning, he had been waiting for me to settle exactly what my relationship with this woman was.
"For now, she'll be staying here."
"As a guest, sir? Or as one of the household?"
"Closer to one of the household, for the time being. Probably."
"Then there is no further need for her to entertain you as she did yesterday?"
"That's right. We'll start her off with the cleaning. When she's ready, I'll teach her to cook, and how to use the tools, and how to work the electronics..."
Scribble, scribble.
What are you writing all that down for? You can just teach her whatever you know yourself.
"Then Miss Erina is to be our housekeeper?"
"Hmm... for the time being, I suppose so. And, look..."
I paused to think it over. Anyone in my position would think the same way, but the truth was that I now wanted to keep Erina by my side, somehow or other. That didn't mean I wanted to take her for a wife.
Marriage leads to children, and once the children come, a man starts dreaming of a settled life. In this world, a man of thirty like me was already an overripe old bachelor — but it didn't matter. With money and standing, a man could marry as many times as he pleased, however old he was. This was, after all, a land where a man could wed several women without a shred of guilt — where polygamy was simply the natural order of things.
In any case, I had no intention of spending my whole life shut up inside this little village as a general merchant, peddling novelties, conveniences, and sweets.
I have a dream. I have a grand dream for this land.
"...I'm thinking of hiring her as a shop clerk."
"Miss Erina, sir?"
"Daytime shifts only, to start. Once she's competent, I'll have her assist me at night as well."
"Hoo. I see..."
A flicker of worry crossed Greengote's face. Goblins, as a race, are hard to read — their coarse skin and texture swallow up expression. Greengote, who rarely betrayed his feelings at the best of times, was worse still. Only because I had spent so many days at his side could I tell that he was worried now.
"What's the matter? We needed a clerk. I can't stand at that counter forever. I've been traveling more and more lately — and it's not as if a goblin can wait on customers."
"Of course, sir. As ever, I will devote myself to managing our inventory and our sales."
That's the spirit.
However fluent his human speech, a goblin was still a goblin. So whenever I was away and a customer came calling, Greengote would not set foot in the shop — he would simply call through the door: 'The owner will be back shortly! Browse as you please!' Most of our customers lived and died without ever learning that the voice they'd bargained with belonged to a goblin.
If Erina could help with the storefront, things would get a great deal easier.
"I know you're worried whether that girl can handle the work."
"No, sir. I am worried whether I can teach her well enough."
"You won't be teaching her alone."
I turned my head toward the storage room, where Erina slept in the gap of the half-open door. Everything she'd been through had drained her utterly; she was sleeping like the dead.
For now, let's give her time to grow used to this place.
"Sh-shall I lock the storage room door, sir?"
Greengote asked when I went on staring at the cracked-open door.
"No. No need."
My answer was short.