Her Story
Honestly — and I mean this from the bottom of my heart — I thought I was beyond saving.
I had worked at the inn for a long time. Seven years, ever since my coming-of-age at eighteen, I had held a post there as an attendant. Before that I had hunted the wild monsters that roamed beyond the village, adding what I could to the family's keep — but when Father was badly hurt on a hunt, I had no choice but to find safer work. That work was the inn.
Mother was an ordinary human, so she couldn't enter the labyrinth, and my little brother was far too young to help support us. Above all, the man who should have been his teacher — Father — was laid up, broken, in bed.
In the end, I was the one who had to run. I was the one who earned the money, who sent the money, who had to move faster and work harder. I was the one who had to keep my family fed.
But I couldn't do that anymore.
I had seen countless slaves. Among the guests I could often pick out the ones who had come for those sorts of purposes. I never witnessed those scenes firsthand, but I saw the faces every time they came through — the masters bright or sly, and set against them, faces tight with fear, or hollow with despair.
To forget those faces, I watched the lovers instead. Faces lit with happiness as they held each other's eyes. Faces that forgot I was standing right in front of them, so lost in a world of two that nothing else existed.
But even those illusions shattered, now and then. A man stringing along several women at once. A woman stepping out on a lover who was sitting in plain sight.
Watching all of that, I closed the door to my heart a little more each day. Any number of men had come after me, drawn by my face, but I drove them off with a few sharp words — and sometimes I had to use rougher methods than that.
Pyotr, the Guard Captain, knew my circumstances well and stepped in to help from time to time. Most of it, though, I had to cut through on my own.
This time, I couldn't carry it alone anymore.
Someone had nearly died. A man who knew nothing — a man who had lost his memories — had believed every word I said, gone out, and come back soaked in blood.
When I heard that, my heart dropped through the floor.
I wanted to apologize to him, but too many things were still left for me to do. And by the time those things were finished, I had become the thing I had always feared: a slave who could be used however someone pleased, and who would not be able to resist even once. I could lock my heart as tight as I liked. My body would still be soiled, over and over.
I still remember the looks that followed me on the road to the City Official Slave Market. The way those eyes locked onto me. The wet, clinging hunger that dragged over my skin.
From behind curtains. From inside carriages. From beneath the shadows cast by parasols.
My ears, curseably sharp, delivered every last whisper. I wanted to block them out and couldn't. I wanted to shake them off and couldn't. I hated all of it. I resented myself. I hated the girl who had let a single gold coin blind her.
There, I was taught the basic etiquette and conduct a slave was expected to have. Amusingly enough, it was so little different from my ordinary work that the lessons ended early. More than that, I had already let go of everything by then. I felt no resistance to the training at all.
I had fallen too far to accomplish anything, anyway. So I fixed my mind on a single purpose. Three silver coins. If I could have just that — just that, it would be enough. If it was money enough for my family to eat their fill and sleep in peace, I could close my eyes and accept whatever came. I told myself I could forget what became of my body, so long as I could still receive their letters. That would be enough.
But I didn't want to.
But I had to.
I was told a buyer was coming. I don't know how long I cried when I heard that. I thought I had steeled myself for all of it. I hadn't. I couldn't lie to myself. I spent a wretched night weeping in silence.
The next day, I met my buyer. And I sank into despair.
Was it karma? The man I met was the one I had nearly gotten killed. The wounds were gone from his body, but the darkness in his face only wound me tighter.
What would he do to me? Beat me? Torture me? Make me pay with my body? Or put me through things worse than any of that? I was terrified. My thoughts tangled into a wreck. My chest hurt.
But he didn't do any of those things.
I rose quietly in the dark room and looked at the chair where he sat. His head was dipping dangerously forward in his sleep. I lifted him with both hands, as gently as I could, and laid him on the bed.
I slipped in quietly beside him.
He is a good person. He really is.
He told me I didn't have to do any of the things I had been dreading, and he had terms written into the contract for my sake. More than anything, he said I didn't have to remain a slave. He sat me down in a seat no different from his own, and he served me food finer than I had ever dreamed of tasting.
I heard him say he would send those three silver coins to my family if they needed them — on the condition, of course, that I help with his dungeon exploration and with the life ahead of us. The work he wanted to give me was so much more ordinary than anything I had prepared myself for.
He didn't have much gold left. He told me he had spent 1,200,000 Dicat on me, and that 100,000 remained. It was a great deal of money for someone who had lost his memories, but...
"The inheritance left to me by the person who took me in after I lost my memories, and the... the money I received for killing a wanted man — that's how much I had. I was lucky. The story... I'll tell you the story tomorrow. Or maybe the day after? For now, just rest. You must be tired."
He had definitely said something like that.
And yet he had spent that precious money for no other reason than this: he wanted me free of an impossible situation.
His hand dropped, soft as a falling leaf, in front of my face. Perhaps because he had fallen asleep somewhere uncomfortable — he was stirring, squirming a little in his sleep.
I gently laid my own hand over his. His palm held a warmth so snug I could scarcely believe it.
I remembered that hand on my ears. The gentle heat and the care with which he had tucked them into my hood — and the dazed look on his face, as if he couldn't tear his eyes away.
The worried look he had worn through every conversation. The way his cheeks would flush when he glanced at my face. The head he kept turning aside, the hands that kept twitching. A man so honest in every reaction that I found myself worried for him instead.
I lifted his hand, carefully, and set it against my cheek. I even brought my nose close and breathed him in.
It felt so warm I could have melted.
A tingling prickled through my chest. Even so, I couldn't let his touch go. I pressed my face a little harder into his palm, and more of that warmth came flooding in.
His hand was rough, nothing like mine, and strangely, impossibly warm. It drew me in with a pull I couldn't name. Why? Why was it this warm? Neither the blanket covering me nor the pillow beneath my head was as warm as his hand.
"Mmm... so soft..."
My body locked. My thoughts froze solid. If he saw me like this, what would he think? A pervert? A loose woman? Whatever the answer, it wouldn't be anything good.
But before long, the caress of that hand against my cheek slowly melted my thoughts away.
"Hehe..."
A foolish little laugh slipped out of me, and as his hand drifted softly over my cheek my ears kept fluttering, over and over. My face burned. A persistent tingling climbed from my cheek to my ears, to my chest, through my whole body — something endless was tickling me from the inside out.
And still, the only things I did were bury my face deeper into his hand, and, with my other hand, barely manage to hold down my thrashing ears so they wouldn't strike him.
The ticklish feeling was nice. The vacant little laugh he spilled in his sleep slid into my ears and turned my head into a wreck. I like this. So soft. Even if they were only the senseless murmurs of a man talking in his dreams, his words just kept making a fool of me.
Why? This was the first day I had ever spent with him. Was it all right to open my heart so easily?
I— what am I even saying? Open my heart? My body— wait. My body? Hold on—
I yanked my face away from his hand in a panic. That was— that was absurd. From the very first day, already my hand, my cheek, freely against that hand, that, that... Had some kind of magic been cast on me? Why? Why couldn't I pull my eyes off that hand?
I barely managed to turn a head that refused to turn, to put his face... I couldn't turn my back on him. Why wouldn't my body budge. Why.
"Nnngh... the soft thing... it's gone..."
A rustling came from behind me, and with it the sound of his voice, restless and uneasy. Wait — if he woke up now, wouldn't that be a problem...? If he woke, he would ask why he was sleeping in the bed... and I could hardly tell him I had come over and nuzzled my cheek into his hand. But I absolutely couldn't lie to him, either...
Right. That's all it is. It can't be helped. He can't wake up. If he wakes, it'll be a problem. So I'm lending him my cheek. Yes. There's no other meaning.
Ah, it really... it really is such a warm hand. The rain making such a racket in my ears, the unease I couldn't shake — why is it, I wonder. When he strokes me...