I Became a Slave
Survival instinct.
In a world of the strong devouring the weak—where being eaten at any moment would hardly be strange—it is the instinct that helps the weak survive without dying at the hands of the strong.
When survival instinct is triggered, concentration on one’s surroundings becomes extraordinarily sharp, and memory and comprehension are said to improve dramatically for a short while.
This survival instinct is not limited to creatures living in the wild. Humans possess it as well.
It has helped humanity endure countless life-or-death crises throughout history, and even now it lets us feel anxiety and fear so that we can avoid all manner of threats.
Anyway.
Why does it feel like that instinct is kicking in right now…?
“Unni… where did you go…?”
Lily stared at me with deeply sunken eyes.
My gut was screaming.
If I didn’t answer properly right now, something truly dangerous was about to come for me.
“Li… Lily… that’s…”
I tried to explain myself at once to the girl who was hugging me so tightly I could barely breathe.
B-but… how am I supposed to explain this…?
The truth was that Athena had kidnapped me and forced her mana into me until I couldn’t refuse her anymore.
But in exchange for becoming her slave, I’d gotten a promise that she would protect Lily and Dania unni, so it was fine!
…No. That wouldn’t work.
It was the unvarnished truth without a single lie, yet something inside my head was grabbing me by the collar and warning me that I absolutely must not say it like that.
“S-so, um…”
While I hesitated, unable to get the words out—
“Hera.”
“Dania unni…!”
Dania’s voice calling my name felt like a hand of salvation descending from the heavens.
If it was Dania, maybe she could calm Lily down.
I looked at her with eyes that begged for help—
“Where did you go?”
“Hic.”
She was gazing at me with a gentle smile.
Her expression was smiling, yes, but an indescribable chill lurked inside that smile.
S-scary…!
Cold sweat ran down my back.
Two pairs of eyes were pressing me to produce an answer this instant.
As I fumbled and stammered with eyes that shook as if an earthquake were rolling through me, Lily began to coil her arms around me even tighter.
“……Unni?”
“Euk…”
Li… Lily’s this strong…?
No matter how hard I pushed, Lily didn’t budge an inch.
I felt like prey wrapped in the coils of a snake.
“That’s enough.”
But something formless yanked Lily and me in opposite directions, tearing us apart.
Lily was pulled toward Dania.
And I—
Fwump—
“I don’t like it when people put their hands on my property without permission.”
—went flying straight into Athena’s arms and was caught against her chest.
“A… Athena…”
“Those people? The ones you said were like family.”
“Mm-hm…”
When I nodded, Athena turned her gaze toward Lily and Dania.
She snorted at Lily, then looked at Dania and—
“……”
—lifted one eyebrow as if something about her was thoroughly displeasing, staring fixedly at her.
More precisely, at her chest.
“Not a fan…”
Leaving Athena muttering whatever that was, I turned my head toward where Lily had been flung, worried she might have been hurt.
Her expression was anything but ordinary.
Li… Lily?
Why are your eyes like that…
“……Did you just call Unni an object?”
Lily growled the words at Athena.
She was glaring at her with a face that looked ready to kill someone.
Sensing disaster if this continued, I tried to explain to Lily at once.
“Lily! That’s not— mmph!!”
Athena clapped a hand over my mouth, cutting off any further words.
Then, wearing a faintly wicked smile, she looked at Lily.
“Yeah. My property. So don’t go clinging to her however you please from now on, okay?”
“You…”
Lily was radiating killing intent so thick it wouldn’t have been strange if she lunged at Athena that very second.
No, Lily.
You mustn’t touch Athena.
In the novel, Athena was the kind of character who wiped out every force that opposed her—monsters, demons, humans, it didn’t matter.
She was friendly toward me, but she wouldn’t be toward Lily.
If Lily charged her, she would get badly hurt. That much was certain.
I peeled Athena’s hand off my mouth and shouted toward Lily.
“Lily, it’s a misunderstanding!!”
“…A misunderstanding?”
At my words, Lily froze in an instant.
She looked at me as if she needed more of an explanation.
“Y-yeah…! Athena and I are close, so… she was just teasing!”
“You’re close…?”
I shot Athena a desperate look that screamed please play along.
She let out a short, incredulous laugh and spoke.
“Well, we are the kind of pair that’ll never be able to leave each other’s side for the rest of our lives.”
But Athena’s answer only stoked Lily’s anger further.
“Who do you think you are to Unni… Unni promised she’d stay with me forever.”
“Hmm… Hera. Why don’t you tell her? What kind of relationship we have.”
Then Athena leaned in and whispered against my ear in a tiny voice.
“Promises are meant to be kept, right?”
Promise?
What promise?
Don’t tell me.
“It’s not just the two of us here right now, is it?”
“A-are you insane? This is not the time for that!”
The condition Athena had set in exchange for guaranteeing Lily and Dania’s safety.
The promise that, whenever even a single other person was around, I would use honorifics and call her Master.
Even so, this situation was a little much, wasn’t it?
I was already swamped just trying to explain what had happened. If I casually brought up a master-servant contract on top of that, I didn’t think I could handle the fallout.
But Athena was firm.
“You’re the one who asked first, Hera. If this is how you’re going to be, I have no intention of keeping my end either.”
“Euk… but right now…!”
“Unni…”
Lily’s voice, so sunken it almost sounded hollow.
“What are the two of you talking about like that…?”
“Lily…”
When I hesitated to answer, Athena gave my back a light shove along with a single line.
“If you want to protect them, keep the promise.”
As I stumbled forward, Lily came to me without a second’s hesitation and tightly clasped both of my hands.
I stared blankly into her eyes, which were brimming with some sticky, overwhelming emotion.
For the past several months, I had spent an enormous amount of time with Lily.
Aside from sleeping hours, half of every day had been spent hunting monsters together with her.
And in the remaining time, I had shared warm moments with her and Dania.
Maybe that was why Lily always tried to stick close to my side and had come to rely on me so much.
The fact that a girl who used to follow only Dania around would lean on me like this meant she had accepted me as family deep in her heart.
Tears prickled faintly at the corners of my eyes.
A family that warmly took me in.
A relationship I had desperately longed for for so long.
Before I transmigrated, I had been an office worker.
An ordinary salaryman trapped in the endless cycle of going to work and coming home.
The only thing that greeted me when I finished company work and returned home was an empty, desolate space with no one in it.
My life, without a single person I could call family, had been unbearably lonely and bleak.
But now it was different.
Lily, who always greeted me with a bright smile, and Dania, who welcomed me with a warm one.
For the past half year I had lived here receiving more love from them than I deserved.
They were the ones who had filled my lonely heart, and I was endlessly grateful to them.
Right.
This was for their happiness.
If we went to the Empire, they would be able to live far more affluent lives than they did now.
Lily would be able to make all sorts of friends in the Empire too.
Having lost her parents when she was young and grown up short on human warmth, friends were something she desperately needed.
Right now the only people by her side were me and Dania.
But if she made new friends in the Empire, it would help her a great deal.
Even if I ended up separated from them, it didn’t matter. As long as we were in the same Empire, I would be able to visit them a few times whenever I felt like it.
I squeezed Lily’s hands and spoke to her.
“Lily. Let’s go to the Empire.”
“The… Empire…?”
Lily looked utterly flustered by my words.
“Yeah… Lady Athena has agreed to help us.”
“……”
“If we accept her help, we’ll be able to move to the Empire…! Then—”
“Just like that?”
“Huh…?”
Lily fixed me with a sharp look as she spoke.
“There’s no way she’d just help us for free.”
Lily was right.
Just as nothing in this world came free,
there was no such thing as goodwill without a price.
Lily knew that, which was why she had said it.
I decided to tell her the truth.
“……I agreed to work at her mansion.”
At my words, Lily’s expression hardened in an instant.
And without so much as a heartbeat of hesitation, she rejected my proposal.
“I don’t need it.”
She squeezed my hands hard enough to hurt and shook her head violently.
“Lily. If we go to the Empire, you can make new frien—”
“I said I don’t need it!!!!”
I flinched at her scream and stepped back.
It was the first time.
The first time she had ever screamed at me so sharply.
As I stared blankly at Lily, she looked back at me with ragged breaths and cloudy eyes.
“We don’t have to go to some Empire. Stay here with me, Unni.”
“B-but…”
“You said it yourself. That you wanted to see me after I graduated from the Academy. That you’d wait here with me.”
It felt unfamiliar.
The Lily who had always given me nothing but warm smiles.
But the girl standing before my eyes wore an empty expression, as if she had already lived through the entire world.
“Have you been lying to me this whole time?”
Watching her slowly approach me made my body flinch for no reason.
With every step she took closer, my shoulders locked up rigid,
and when our eyes met, some dense, unidentifiable emotion poured into me.
“Of course not, Lily!”
“Then why!!”
Before I knew it she was right in front of me, and she seized both of my arms as if she would never let go.
“Why are you trying to get away from me.”
When I looked carefully into her eyes,
I saw that the rims were flushed red, as if she had been holding back tears the entire time.
A lump rose in my throat.
…I don’t want to leave either.
I didn’t want to be separated from Dania and Lily either.
Mornings that began with them had given me the energy to face each day with strength,
and the everyday life I had spent with them had planted irreplaceable memories in me.
How could I possibly want to leave people like that?
If my heart had its way, I would have wanted to run away with them to some place no one could ever find.
But I couldn’t.
The mana she had planted inside me.
It would never let me go free in any pure sense of the word.
Had Lily’s tears infected me?
Or had the feelings I had been hiding—the ones that didn’t want to leave them—finally burst out?
“Stay here with us forever.”
Tears began to well in my eyes as well.
“Hic… Lily… I’m sorry…”
Once they started, the tears showed no intention of stopping.
“I… I want that too… but the truth is… I…”
I dropped to my knees, hugged Lily tightly, and spoke through my sobs.
“I… I… became her…”
“……Unni?”
“Sl… slave… I became a slave…”
“……What?”
And with that, the last light remaining in Lily’s eyes went out.