"Oh, I'm looking forward to this."
Without realizing it, my tongue flicked out to lick my lips. Being careful not to let my emotions show too readily, I steadily nodded along to Jack's rambling. He was completely wasted by now. He kept repeating the same lines over and over. Which, honestly, made agreeing with him hardly any effort at all.
"There she is! The fairy is fast asleep. Hardly even worth calling a slave. Hey, you lot! You've been guarding the treasure well, haven't you?"
The place Jack took me to had a rather large carriage parked in front. Two mercenaries were busy playing cards in front of the carriage. They gave Jack a curt nod without so much as looking up — the attitude of people who'd been working through the night and couldn't be bothered with whoever had just shown up. They didn't even glance away from their cards.
"Yeah, sure. Damn it. One pair."
"It's two pair. You lose, you idiot fool. Pay up."
I almost let out a snicker. What a pair of shameless bastards. "Damn it," "pay up" — every word they'd thrown at Jack was deliberately phrased so he wouldn't understand they were insulting him. True to form for a drunk, Jack couldn't even tell they were mocking him.
"She might be sleeping. Haha. Take your time opening it."
He opened the carriage door.
A woman was sitting in the corner of the carriage. It was too dark to make out her face. "Oops," Jack hurried off to grab a torch. The torch cast a lurid red glow across the interior. Whether the sound of the door had woken her or not, the woman was staring straight at us.
She was a girl with a delicate jawline. Maybe around seventeen. She gave Jack a brief once-over before shifting her gaze right past him to me. "Stared" really was the right word for it.
A person's gaze usually carries layers of meaning layered on top of one another. The merchant earlier that day had looked at me too, but that was a look meant to ridicule. Jack meeting my eyes had the intention of currying favor woven into it. Simply looking at someone to find out what's going on, or to confirm something that entered one's line of sight, is surprisingly rare. Something like a wildcat's gaze, perhaps.
Wanting to mock someone, wanting to gain someone's favor — those sorts of desires inevitably frost over a glance. There are only two cases where a look is purely about seeing. Either you're like a beast, devoid of desires like mockery or goodwill. Or you're so complete in yourself that you don't need to seek out those things from others. This girl's gaze had already left a strong impression on me.
"This one is nobility. Laura de Farnese! A genuine duke's daughter. Well, she *was*, to be precise. Are you familiar with the Chrysanthemum War? She was the second heir of House Farnese, who led the Hydrangea faction in that conflict. Haha. A truly exalted personage. No — she *was*…"
Jack was prattling away beside me the whole time. During all of that, the girl and I kept our eyes locked. Somehow it felt like I'd be losing if I looked away now. That's right. The girl was, though I had no idea in what sense, testing me.
*'Cheeky.'*
There was no particular reason to refuse a test. I don't know what high-and-mighty standards you're working with, but go ahead and judge me however you like. I'll be determining whether you're a Hero or not by my own criteria too.
*'Status Window.'*
*Ding* — a holographic display flickered into view. Because the Affinity was low, only minimal information was shown.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Name] [Stamina] [Attack] [Defense]
- Laura 6 15 7
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Hmm...
Honestly, disappointing. She's far stronger than a Rank F adventurer, but that's about it. If I had to grade her, she'd fall somewhere between Rank E and Rank D. Even granting that it's impressive for a teenage girl to have that much combat power, she's someone who'll go on to become an anti-hero. Was it too much to hope that all her combat stats would at least be double digits?
*'She wasn't someone who was extraordinary from the start — she grew through trials and hardship...'*
Laura was an NPC famous for her tragic personal history. Born as the daughter of a great noble, she fell to the status of a sex slave, spending ten years stained with gang rape before turning her life around through fiendish schemes and betrayal. If she was the type to grow rather than a genius, then the significance of recruiting her now dropped considerably. I could feel the anticipation that had filled my chest rapidly cooling.
Then the girl spoke.
"What does that look mean?"
I was still lost in thought and couldn't respond right away. It took me a few seconds to even realize she had spoken. She had stopped asking and was simply gazing at me.
"Pardon?"
"I asked about the meaning of your gaze. It's the first time I've been on the receiving end of such a look."
The girl twisted a lock of hair by her ear with her right hand. Ah — Laura always does that when she's deep in thought. She did it in the game, too. I marveled somewhat at the fidelity of this world and asked in return. Perhaps because she talked down to me so naturally, I found myself using a deferential tone without even realizing it.
"What was it about my gaze?"
"At first, you looked at me with a face full of expectation. That didn't bother me in the slightest — I've had no shortage of people who held expectations of me. But your expression changed almost immediately. As though your expectations had been betrayed. As though I'd failed to live up to them."
"Heh."
A faint spark of anticipation flickered to life in my voice. It felt like an ember I thought had long died, somehow managing to survive after all. I offered my apologies to Jack.
"Truly a product worth boasting about, Jack."
"Right? Haha. Isn't she gorgeous? I've never seen such a beautiful woman."
"My interest is piqued. I'd like to have a brief word with the slave, just the two of us. It won't take long. I'm quite curious to appraise just how much value your prized product truly holds. Would you mind?"
Jack agreed readily. I stepped into the carriage and closed the door behind me. The girl had been staring blankly in my direction the entire time.
I sat down across from her.
"Lady Farnese. It seems your master judges you solely by your appearance."
"Call me by my name, not my family name. My house has already fallen."
Oh ho. And she doesn't cling to her family name, either. She must have lived her whole life as a proud noblewoman of the highest rank, yet she refuses to be shackled by the empty glories of the past and instead looks toward the present. My expectations kept growing.
'Indeed. Even if she's the type who grows over time, you can tell a promising tree from its first sprout.'
Had my own mentality not been extraordinary from the start, I never would have risen from sex slave to iron-blooded regent.
The girl continued speaking.
"Furthermore, it is incorrect to call that man my master."
"How so? You are a slave, and he is a slave merchant."
"That man's role is merely to transport me somewhere. I'll be sold to someone else."
"That logic is flawed. Regardless of what may happen in the future, right now you are Jack's slave. Even if you were sold to someone else, you might be sold yet again to another, might you not?"
"You're right. How long someone owns me can never determine whether they are my master."
I asked, my mood lifting with pleasure.
"Then what must one do to become your master?"
"Nothing."
The girl declared this in the same nonchalant tone one might use to remark that today's weather was cold.
"For fifteen years, I was Lady Farnese of the Farnese house. Does that mean my life is defined by the word Farnese? No. For the past half year, I have been Jack's slave. Does that mean my life is defined by the words Jack's slave? No. For the next several decades, I will be someone's slave. But that someone will not become the master of my life. To whom I belong, whose slave I become—in the grand scheme of things, those are nothing more than accidents."
The corners of my lips curled upward.
"……Then what isn't an accident?"
"Death!"
The girl smiled thinly as well.
"The sole fact that I will die someday is, for me, an absolute and inevitable truth. Even if my life were to be determined by someone else, death—death alone is wholly my own. Who can die in my place? Can I die in place of another? No. Everyone dies. Everyone dies their own death."
"……."
Laura de Farnese. I was recalling how she had died. A woman who scoffed at the Hero's offer of surrender and leapt from the city walls without a shred of hesitation. Had she been thinking the same thing back then, too? That of all things she could concede, death was the one she would never surrender.
A quiet emotion settled over me. It was the feeling that arises when you come face to face with a human who has actually lived out their convictions. She probably thought I was the one who had come to purchase her. Indirectly, she had just declared that even if I bought her, she would never submit.
A woman so radiant I, who had never once lived by my own convictions, could only marvel.
«Acting skill activates.»
«The Lucky Dice slips from your hand! The probability that the other party will doubt your claim is reduced 'slightly.'»
But I was Acting.
"Laura. That is a remarkably impressive philosophy. If you follow that logic, then not just you—nobody would have a master, would they? Nobles, kings, the Pope—in the end they are all mortals bound beneath death, no different from commoners, are they not?"
"That is so."
The girl tilted her head, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Affirming that had been extraordinarily dangerous. Insulting the nobility, high treason, blasphemy—committing even one of those carried a death sentence of dismemberment, and she had just committed three at once. Now I understood why the second heir to a duchy had nonetheless fallen into ruin. She was probably the heir in name only, shunned by the rest of the family. In this era, her way of thinking was far too dangerous.
"But you are saying that no one can become the master of a life. In other words, whether it is a life of struggling through hardship, or a life extinguished on impulse through meaningless suicide—it makes no difference in the end. Hm."
I put on an expression of genuine curiosity.
"Well, I do have just one question… why don't you kill yourself right now?"
The girl's face hardened.
"……."
"……."
Time passed in silence. In the dim carriage, we glared at each other by the moonlight seeping through the windows. Outside, Jack could be heard drunkenly rambling at the mercenaries. In that moment, Laura parted her lips and drew in a sharp breath.
Oh no, that won't do.
I quickly jammed my finger into her mouth.
"Mmph!—mmph!"
Pain shot through my finger. Laura had bitten down with her teeth. She had clenched her jaw hard enough that she'd been prepared to actually sever her tongue. She bit so hard that blood trickled from my finger. If I hadn't anticipated the situation and protected her tongue with my index finger, things could have gotten serious.
"You hesitated before biting. Didn't you? You deliberated for several minutes."
"……."
The girl looked up at me with venom-filled eyes. Blood from my finger welled onto her lips. Droplets ran along her jawline and dripped down.
"Several minutes of deliberation—that's the part your philosophy can't explain. I personally call it the will to live. What keeps me alive in this godforsaken world without dropping dead right away is, fittingly enough, something equally godforsaken."
"……."
"Laura. I like you. Sell yourself to me."
I smiled.
"Just to be sure, since interviews are important. Hmm—do you, perhaps, personally harbor any hatred toward demons or anything like that?"
The venom in Laura's eyes dimmed, replaced by bewilderment.