A Sweet Market Date with Erina
That was when it happened.
"Luciel!!! Luciel Gathergold!!!"
Around the time we reached the four-way crossing at the heart of Greenhill's market, a voice came bellowing my name—so loud it was practically a scream.
None other than the owner of Plenty Meat Butchery, my regular butcher.
"Wh-who is that?!"
Erina took one look at him, took fright, and hid behind the horse.
It was a perfectly understandable reaction. To anyone who didn't know him, the man looked like some hulking bandit charging over to strangle me over an old grudge.
Ah. Here it comes. Another round of apologies over that business with Erina—the attempted rape. How many times does this make now?
And with the injured party herself standing right here today, it's going to be quite the circus.
I'd planned to hurry past the butchery for exactly this reason, but the moment he spotted me he seized my hand and, wrenching his bristly face into the most pitiful expression it could manage, launched into his apology.
"Please forgive my boy's wrongdoing, would you? Henson's been living honest ever since that day—truly reflecting on himself, he has."
"Yes, yes... it's quite all right."
I'd honestly lost count of how many times we'd done this. One or two apologies would have been plenty, but every single time I passed his shop, he would collar me and say the same thing. And then came the follow-up.
'Ah, what am I doing! I have something prepared as a token of my apology! Don't go anywhere—just wait a moment!'
With that he would dash inside, sweep up an armful of every cut of meat stored within, and thrust it into my arms without so much as asking my opinion. Thanks to this routine, the refrigerator back at my place was about to burst at the seams.
The first time, I'd accepted gratefully. Now it was simply a problem to dispose of. Even staff meals couldn't be meat, meat, and more meat every single day—and I couldn't exactly hand the surplus out to beggars or the neighborhood dogs either. If someone saw that and gossip spread, it might look like I was flinging a man's sincere gesture back in his face.
The butcher's gaze soon slid over to Erina beside me. Then his face went ashen.
"D-don't tell me this is...?!"
"Yes. It is."
"AAAAH! I am so, so sorry! Please forgive my son's mistake!!"
Erina looked utterly lost. She'd gathered that this was an apology over what happened that day, but with no idea how she was supposed to respond, she could only glance at me helplessly.
"Ah! What am I doing, standing here! I've prepared something today as well, by way of apology! And Luciel, my friend—you've even brought your horse out with you. Well then, that works out splendidly. I have plenty to send home with you! Please, don't go anywhere, just a moment!"
See? Right on schedule.
"Henson!!"
His son must have been inside, because the butcher roared for him. After some shuffling about in the back of the shop, father and son emerged, each cradling a massive slab of meat—an armful apiece. They had to weigh a good few dozen pounds at least.
I raised my voice. This was going too far.
"No! Absolutely not! Isn't that your selling stock for the day?! If we take this, it becomes a burden on us!"
"This is nothing at all. Meat I can get my hands on any time. But what that lady endured that day..."
The butcher had no way of knowing whether Erina was my wife, my sweetheart, or just a friend, so he'd simply settled for "that lady."
"You've already apologized more than amply for your son's actions. And truth be told, it was thanks to Henson making the right call that day that we avoided a far worse disaster."
"Henson, what are you doing, boy! This is the woman who came to harm because of you two! Apologize at once!"
The moment Henson's eyes fell on Erina, the color drained from his face.
"I'm truly sorry. Please forgive me."
He dropped to his knees right there on the ground before her and bowed his head. Cradling a slab of meat nearly the size of his own torso the whole while, it somehow looked as if we were the ones meting out his sentence.
Erina helped him back to his feet, smooth and unhesitating.
"I accept your apology. It ended without anything serious happening, and it's all in the past—I'll forget it from here on. You don't need to feel sorry anymore."
The meat. Please, say something about the meat too.
When I flicked my eyes meaningfully at the slabs, Erina picked up the thread.
"We've received more than enough of your contrition, so please—don't add gifts on top of it."
"Still..."
"Your sincerity alone is more than enough."
With the injured party herself saying nothing more was needed, the butcher could hardly press further. Even so, father and son still wore faces clouded with lingering guilt.
"Hmm. Well then, if you insist, sir..."
"Yes?"
"There's something I tried here once that I found delicious... I'd like to treat my staff to it as well..."
"What would that be?!"
"So this is griffin meat... My first time trying it. It's wonderfully rich and nutty."
"Right?"
Chewing on strips of griffin jerky, Erina and I made our way out of the market's center. Four bags in all, counting the ones set aside for Humson and Goth for later—that would do nicely.
"Why is he so eager to give us things? That startled me a little, earlier."
"You know why he goes that far?"
"Well... he must feel that sorry about what his son did?"
"That's part of it, but a town this small runs on a strong sense of community."
"Community...?"
"In a little place like this, take two steps down the road and you run into someone you know. Word travels fast—big matters and trivial ones alike. Bad news travels fastest of all. The whole shopkeeping community of Greenhill has probably known about what happened in that barn at the outlying house since the day it happened."
"Th-that much?"
They'd known my name, my age, even whether I was married, since my street-stall days. Privacy here was a concept that barely existed.
At some point you just make peace with it, or it eats you alive.
"...Do you suppose they know I'm your slave?"
"Not yet, I'd say. For now they're only guessing at what we are to each other. When the time is right, I'll tell them myself."
"...And how will you put it?"
Erina gazed up at me, bright with expectation.
Hm... that one's hard to answer just now.
"...Lu-Luciel Gathergold?"
And right on cue, someone else called out to me. Perfect timing for cutting that conversation short.
"Yes?"
"It is you, isn't it? Luciel Gathergold. You run the general goods shop on the edge of the shopping district."
"That's right. And you are?"
A gaunt man, all long limbs and long face. His outfit was anything but ordinary. Despite his age, he was dressed to the nines in a colorful green ensemble stuffed with shoulder pads—the height of current fashion, the sort of thing only the young were wearing these days—and the whole effect gave off the air of some designer or specialist.
Have I met this man somewhere before? Who was it...?
"I run... the clothing shop 'Big Button' just up ahead. I'm a tailor, you see. We met once, at the guild's New Year's gathering early this year."
"Oh... ah..."
Big Button Clothing Store... Right. Of course. This man too.
"I heard tell of the misdeed my son Will committed in days past. I've been searching for any chance to come see you, but the opportunity never... No! The truth is I should have come to you that very day, but I couldn't find the courage, and so..."
The rims of the man's eyes reddened further and further. Then fat tears came dropping down, one after another.
"I'm truly... sorry. I hid behind being busy with work and never even gave you a proper apology! Sob—!"
"....."
"I raised my son wrong. The fault is mine... I knew he'd taken up with a rotten sort, knew the things he did were growing crooked, and still I did nothing... Sob!"
There was no acting in it. This was genuine remorse, no mistake about it.
But unlike the butcher, who had delivered his apologies again and again, this man hadn't spoken a single word of contrition until today. Perhaps because of that, the words I forgive you simply refused to leave my mouth.
"....."
"Boss..."
Erina lightly clutched my collar—worried, perhaps, that I kept saying nothing while the man wept through his apology.
All right. This is enough.
"...Very well. What your son and his friends committed was a crime, plain and simple. If you acknowledge that and offer your contrition, we will accept it."
"Thank you—thank you, truly!"
"And Will? Did he and his friend receive a proper punishment?"
"Yes. I thrashed him within an inch of his life. That too was my responsibility, for never having laid a hand on the boy all those years. By any chance—is the lady beside you the one from that day, the..."
"Yes. She's the one who was harmed."
At that, the tailor's face crumpled into an even deeper wreck. He shed another round of tears straight onto the ground and wept until Erina told him it was all right, that she forgave him; then, having gathered himself somewhat, he ushered us toward his shop.
"It's a shabby little clothing shop, hardly worth the look... but if you'd allow it, I should like to convey my apology in some form or another. Please, come inside."
Just as I expected.
Time to receive something again. Though this time, it actually worked out rather well. Erina's entire everyday wardrobe consisted of the one dress she was wearing; she needed spares against laundry days.
But leaping at a freebie with open arms would be graceless.
"There's really no need to go to such lengths."
"There is every need! I know my shop is humble, but I beg you—let the both of you have at least one new outfit fitted before you leave. Two or three spares apiece would delight me all the more!"
Done.
"You put me in a difficult position, sir..."
"I beg of you."
"Very well. We'll accept your sincerity."
"Thank you—thank you so very much!"
"Oh."
"Wow."
Sandwiched between large shops on either side, Big Button had looked tiny from the street, but inside it ran surprisingly deep. Scarecrow mannequins stood on either side of the entrance dressed in men's and women's garments of every description; the displays near the front carried the pricier, trend-setting pieces, while the everyday wear—edging toward work clothes—was sorted neatly by color the deeper in you went.
"Anything you like is yours. We don't carry the sort of expensive garments nobles wear, but we have a wide range of comfortable everyday pieces—long-sleeved, short-sleeved, three-quarter sleeves, and so on. A good variety of linen robes and tunics as well. In leather, our cowhide, lambskin, and horsehide goods sell particularly well. And if you step further back, you'll find workwear suited to ranch labor, field work, and jobs around horses."
"Everything here feels so modest and practical."
Erina looked around the shop and said it with a beaming smile.
"Thank you kindly. Of course, we do carry pieces suited to the latest fashions as well. You're both still young—there's no harm in dressing up to your hearts' content."
You certainly look the part, anyway.
Feels like a shop devoted entirely to everyday wear.
There wasn't a stitch of velvet or silk in sight, none of the expensive fabrics. I didn't buy garments of that caliber in this town either—I sourced them from the upscale clothiers in Stonefield. Naturally, most of those lived as honored guests in my closet, brought out only once every month or two for the slave auctions.
Since I already had plenty of business wear for running the shop and casual clothes for outings, I'd been about to tell Erina—whose wardrobe was frankly pitiful—to pick out two outfits with my share folded in. Truth be told, she owned more panties, bras, and sexy maid costumes than actual daily clothes, so something passable for everyday use was exactly what she needed.
But then, deep in the back of the shop, a single thick garment in dark brown, hung alone on a mannequin, caught my eye.
"You carry gambesons too?"
"We do. Light armor, quilted from many layers of cotton packed tight and firm. The town guards come looking for them now and then—their supply runs short, so I keep some on hand for when they need to buy out of pocket in a hurry. A piece like this counts as clothing, so a clothier like myself stocks it."
It was quilted in a diamond lattice—broadly the shape of the old padded liners we wore under our winter coats in the Korean army.
For patrols inside the town, Greenhill's guards generally preferred gear this light.
"Can it actually stop a blade?"
"Glancing blows, mostly—so long as it isn't a full-force thrust or cut taken square on. That said, one should never lean too heavily on armor. Battle always holds its variables."
"I suppose it does."
Decided.
Honestly, I'd always assumed a man like me had no business wearing such a thing—a merchant, not an adventurer or a soldier. But the situation was changing. My standing was shifting, in Greenhill and in Stonefield with its slave market alike, and there wasn't a merchant around who didn't know that, for all my frugal act, my purse ran considerably deeper than the average trader's.
I couldn't go on staking my personal safety, whole and entire, on privately hired guards contracted for specific days.
Until now I'd carried, at most, a few self-defense tools—the bare minimum to guard my own skin. That was still the case even now.
From here on, though, I needed to be able to protect my own body single-handedly—and, if it came to it, face a whole pack of bandits at once.
That truth had lodged itself bone-deep, and over the past month I'd overhauled my preparations on exactly that front. I'd issued Erina and Goth their own instructions for defending the shop and staying alive in an emergency, and put them through a few defensive drills.
The two new firearms and the ammunition I'd recently decided to purchase were part and parcel of that same plan.
"I'll take this one, then."
"The gambeson? It will be rather warm for the season, I'd think."
"Yes. This thickness should serve admirably against the winter, too."
Looking quite taken aback, the tailor helped me into the gambeson. Just as he'd warned, the cotton packed dense inside made it fairly heavy and stifling. If this counted as light armor, I honestly began to doubt how knights ever walked around in mail or full plate.
Isn't this a little over the top?
Only after committing did the thought occur to me. Comfort aside, a mere shopkeeper—not a soldier—strolling through town in a thing like this was going to draw odd looks from every passerby. Nothing that would cause real trouble, mind, but it was roughly akin to a civilian walking through downtown Seoul in full military uniform. There were no reservist drills here to make it look normal.
Still. With emergencies in mind, a man ought to own at least one.
"Erina? Tried anything on? How's it looking?"
Still strapped into the gambeson, I turned my attention to Erina.
She'd been favoring the modest dresses in cream and white since earlier. She seemed to want clothes that didn't bare the chest—ones that wouldn't catch men's stares.
The problem was that both dresses were cut so tight across the bust they looked ready to burst at the seams. But picking the loose cuts that only plump matrons with two or three children could fill left her waist swimming in slack, demanding a needless belt on top.
In the end, Erina had no choice but to settle, same as always, for a top with a deep-plunging neckline.
The plunging styles were the only ones cut slim through the waist that could still fit a bust as generous as hers.
Granted, they probably bared a touch more of her breasts than the average woman's wardrobe did.
As long as the nipples stayed covered, a sliver of areola showing was fine. It'd pass.
Really, to anyone watching, Erina probably looked like she had an exhibitionism problem.
"Master...."
From inside the tiny one-person fitting room in the corner of the shop came Erina's voice, calling to me in a troubled tone.
"What is it? Doesn't that one fit your chest either?"
"No, it's not that..."
I glanced briefly at the tailor. Catching the gist, he murmured something about seeing to an errand of his own and tactfully withdrew.
"Coming in."
I drew back the curtain and stepped into the fitting room—and immediately understood what predicament Erina had landed in.
The lower portion of the new dress Erina had tried on—in other words, the part stretched over her hips—was damp with a dark wet stain.
"What do I do? It's a brand-new dress, and I've stained it. I thought I'd washed it all out..."
What is this? What's gotten on it?
I lifted the hem of the dress she was wearing to inspect it.
Oh no.
The white semen I'd pumped inside Erina earlier was still in her, and mixed with creek water it had soaked right through into the new dress.
And yet...
"You... weren't wearing any panties?"
"There was still something sticky and damp down there, and it felt gross and stuffy, so... And then the cool breeze came up under my skirt and it felt so nice... I thought walking would let it dry..."
Erina hung her head deep, her face crumpling like a child about to cry.
Honestly...
She really does love letting that pussy of hers air out.