Translator: yAmi
Even though it was the height of summer, she was freezing.
In the corner of a large mansion, in an even smaller corner of a small room, she hugged her knees together as she tried to hold her breath. She had to stay out of sight until she had work to do or he called her. That was her place.
She was a slave.
She was not a slave from birth. Before she was shackled to a collar, she was a commoner, the daughter of a craftsman in a local city. She ran out of luck when her father ruined himself by getting into a drinking addiction, and then borrowed money to provide for the family. Before long, the debt ballooned, and her mother ran away. Her father, whose nerves had been frayed by moonshine, sold her in exchange for a month's worth of liquor. She remembered being more relieved to be away from her father, who used to beat and kick her when he was drunk, than she was miserable to be a slave.
She was somewhat fortunate, one could say. The slavers did not sell her cheaply. Perhaps it was because she was a woman with not bad looks. If she had been a little more beautiful, she would have been groomed for night work. On the other hand, if she had been a little less good-looking, she would have been thrown into the harsh workplace as one of those readily available labour slaves. For better or for worse. With such an evaluation, she was sold as a slave to perform menial tasks at the residence of a noble.
It was a young count who bought her.
"I have no particular expectations for you."
Do a job that anyone can do, and do it properly.
The buyer, with an annoyed expression on his face that didn't match his handsome features, spat out. As he had mentioned, she was not going to be made to spend the night with him, nor was she going to be subjected to an exceptionally cruel punishment. The work she was given was really nothing more than just chores, and aside from it being numerous and dirty, it was not much of a hardship. She was not worried about the scornful stares of the household members. She had grown familiar to them from the time she was kept in a cage in the slave market or when she was avoided as the daughter of a drunkard and debtor. Nobody raised their hand against her. The slaves were the property of their owners, and if they broke or damaged them without permission, it would hurt the Count's honour.
Once she thought of herself as a dog or something, it was way better to be the slave of a noble. The quality of the food she received were the same or sometimes even better than when she was a commoner. Since these were leftovers, it showed that the diet of a noble was beyond the imagination of a commoner.
As long as she did her routine work day in and day out, she was able to get a decent meal. As long as she could endure the maids and their insults, she didn't have to deal with the violence from her father. Boring and gloomy, but peaceful. She was grateful to her master for allowing her to spend her days like this.
But one day...
"......Damn it!"
When she went to clean up after the guests who left, her master was in a rage, throwing the tea utensils. The corner of the eye was flaring up, his white face had turned reddish-black, and he was stomping his feet. This was the first time she had ever seen such ferocity unleashed on an inanimate object.
"Aa?"
A short scream escaped her lips.
She remembered her life together with her father, which was even worse than being a slave. He went on drunken rampages, smashing everything from household goods to work tools, and when there was nothing left to smash, he would beat her. Her memories, painted in the gray of poverty and the vivid colours of pain, came back to her in that instant.
The fears of the trauma made her stiffen.
"What's with your eyes......?"
A voice like a snarling beast. It was only when she heard it that she realised that her master was looking at her.
Her master's scrutinising gaze, eyes bloodshot with anger, made her bite her tongue.
"Uh, um, uh"
Her feet had chosen to retreat quickly on their own. But she moved ridiculously slowly. Rather than being weak on her knees, her limbs were stiffening up. Still, she tried to force herself backwards, and she fell on her butt.
Her vision slowly became distorted. She was so terrified that she even started to cry.
No, it wasn't just fear. It was more than that. She was sad.
Her master, who had not been kind to her, but who at least had given her peace, was now as fierce as her father. She felt as if she had been betrayed.
Fear, sadness, and a little bit of condemnation. Her master's face twisted even more as he was gazed at with such a mixture of emotions.
"Don't look at me like that!"
In response to his magic infused orders, her collar sent pain to her body. Her eyelids closed in obedience to the collar, and a reddish-black darkness covered her vision.
This was the first time she had been subjected to the magic of the collar by her master.
And this was the first time she understood.
The true horrors of being a slave, of having all your freedom taken away with one word from the master.
"No, please don't, Master!"
With her eyes blinded, she laid on the floor, begging for forgiveness. She knew from experience what would happen next if she didn't receive forgiveness.
"Shut up, shut up!"
It turned out the way she expected. He grabbed her by the hair and pulled her up, before she felt a hot lump on her cheek.
She was hit.
Before she could recognise the pain, she cowered from the shock. She collapsed on the floor and the man climbed on top of her.
"Why must I hear that voice now! Why do I have to see that face now too!"
He continued landing blows on her while saying something incomprehensible. The punches were relentlessly directed at her face, her face, and her face again. There was nothing she could do. Just like when she was a child, she had to accept the abuse from her drunken father.
(A-am I going to...... die like this?)
Completely shrouded in darkness because she lost her vision, such fears passed through her distant consciousness.
She felt a burning sensation all over her face, and even though she was lying on the floor, she felt a floating sensation as if she had been thrown into the air. She couldn't feel any more pain or shock. Was this the end of the world? She thought.
But it wasn’t.
The man had simply stopped hitting her and changed his way of aggression.
"Please.....don’t... there......?"
A hand was placed on her clothes. A hot, unnatural tension was pressed against her stomach. She knew what he was going to do to her, despite being unable to see.
"No, don't—"
The screeching sound of tearing garments cut her voice off.
His tyranny changed in form, but grew more intense.
He split open her unraveled body as if he were ripping open a piece of raw wood. Her buttocks were stretched as if he was whipping a horse. He bit into the soft parts of her skin as if he were going to devour her alive. The hands on her limbs and neck were too forceful to be called an embrace.
It was the deed of an animal that used all authority and violence to engage in depravity.
Even the remnants of human dignity that she had maintained despite being reduced to slavery were swept away in the storm.
An ordinary woman would even be made to feel that she had to die afterwards.
But she didn't.
"Uu......ugh......guh......!"
Sobs leaked out between ragged breaths. It wasn't hers. She didn't even have the energy to cry.
The crying belonged to her master.
"Why...... why do I have to deal with...... all these things—!"
Before she knew it, the order from her master was released. She opened her swollen eyelids in wonder.
He wasn't a noble, a slave master, or a scumbag who was attacking a woman. What emerged in her fuzzy vision was a man burying his face in the woman's chest and letting out tears, like a child clinging to its mother.
"Save me, Mother......! Everyone, nobody can help me. My dad is dead. He, Tullius, will ruin everything......! No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. ......!"
Then he would whine and cry.
His brother, who had the abnormal habit of slaughtering slaves, had caused great damage to the family name. Her master drove him to the backcountry, but now he had created a new spark. His dead father had been cold and uncomprehending in his hard work. And yet, he was incompetent as the head of the family and not competent enough to correct his brother who was a cancer in the family. He was treated coldly by the people around him due to rumours he wasn’t aware of. He felt the pressure of taking over a family whose reputation has been severely damaged and undermined.
And above all, he was simply scared. His own brother, a bloody, cold-blooded animal that he didn’t know what he was going to do.
He said that he was unbearably scared and disgusted by the fact that the one person in this world that he disliked more than anything else in the world existed as his blood brother.
It was a rambling monologue with no context, and the timeline of it was a mess, but it was certainly his true thoughts.
"............"
She listened in silence. No, sometimes she even made vague gestures. It was not the kind of behaviour one would expect from a victim in the midst of being abused. It would have been more normal for her to reject him and express her resentment. However, at that time, it seemed natural to her to do so.
