Because of nobles who thought like that, there had been commoners and slaves
who'd risen meteorically in a way that normally wouldn't have been possible. Right
after I'd told Maria that she should take the abolition of slavery in the Empire slowly
because it would be too major of a reform and would face resistance, had I just
caused the class system in my own country to collapse?
"I wonder if I can take advantage of this to make the abolition of slavery
something that exists only in name..." I murmured.
"Ah! Speakin' of slaves, that reminds me," Roroa said, clapping her hands. "Now,
this here's some information I received through Sebastian after he opened a second
location for The Silver Deer here in Parnam, but there's an unusual slave trader in
the city."
"An unusual slave trader?" I asked.
Roroa laughed mischievously. "I'm thinkin' they're the sort of person you'd like to
have workin' for you, Darlin'. Hee hee! How's about you and I go bumble around
town sometime, and we can meet up with them then?"
"Murgh... Would that not be a date?" Aisha complained, looking a bit upset. "No
fair."
Roroa waved her hand. "From what I've been hearin', all of you have had dates
with our Darlin' before. We're engaged to get hitched now, so I wanna have some
lovey-dovey time with my Darlin', too."
"I was only there as a bodyguard. He never took me on a date!" Aisha protested.
"Well, you can come along too then, Big Sister Ai," said Roroa. "We'll be needin' a
bodyguard anyway."
"In that case, I see no problem with it." Having been invited along, Aisha was
easily mollified.
Liscia and Juna both said, "We'll let Roroa have this one," so it was decided that
Roroa, Aisha, and I would go out into the town of Parnam together.
An unusual slave trader, huh? I was a little interested to find out what they were
like.
◇ ◇ ◇
I'm Ginger Camus, age 17. I'm from the Elfrieden Kingdom... Oh, I guess it's the
Kingdom of Friedonia now, huh. Anyway, I'm a slave trader in the capital of the
Kingdom of Friedonia.
...Yeah. I'm a slave trader.
Not exactly a respectable job, huh? It's people buying and selling people, after all.
Well, aside from the convict slaves, most of them were economic slaves who
couldn't afford to eat and didn't want to go hungry, or who had sold themselves
because they needed money; so, in a way, it could have been seen as a sort of welfare
system, but... it wasn't a job you could do without having thick skin.
Me? Mine was thin, you know? Like, paper thin, okay? I fought with stomach pain
every day.
Now, you might be wondering what a guy like me was doing as a slave trader. It
was because my grandpa who was also a slave trader had passed away. My parents
had already passed on, and my grandpa had raised me all by himself, and I'd literally
never found out what he did until after he'd died.
When the funeral had ended and I'd been sorting through his estate, that was
when I'd come across this store and the slaves he owned.
I can't do this! I had wanted to scream. Even if you leave all this to me, I have no
idea what to do about it!
I had thought of just selling them all off to other slave traders, then finding some
other business to make whatever meager living I could, but... when I actually looked
at the slaves who were property, I was wordless.
"Erm..."
I had gathered all of the slaves who were the merchandise in one place. There
were around twenty slaves of various races and genders ranging from children to
middle-aged lined up in front of me. They each wore a thin, crude outfit consisting of
a large piece of cloth with a hole in the middle for the head, and they looked at me
with fear and anxiety in their eyes. What were they so scared about?
"Don't you understand, Shopmaster?" One slave girl with a defiant look in her
eyes stepped forward.
She was maybe a little older than I was. She was a pretty beastman girl with
masculine features, triangular ears, and a thick, long, stripped tail. With the thin
clothes she had on, I could see she had a shapely figure, too.
"You're a mystic tanuki?" I asked.
"I'm a raccoon person," she said, glaring at me.
As a human, I couldn't tell the difference, but because the mystic tanukis and
raccoon people looked similar, they apparently hated being mistaken for the other
race.
"S-Sorry..." I said. "You are?"
"Pardon me. I am Sandria the slave."
"Okay. San, then," I said. "Nice to meet you."
"Huh? ...Er, right."
San took the hand I offered her, her eyes wide. I didn't know what she was so
surprised about, but it seemed like she could explain the dour mood here to me.
"San, why is everyone frightened?" I asked.
"Because your grandfather has passed away, Shopmaster," she said.
"Even though you're slaves, you're sad that Grandpa died?" I asked.
"That's because, compared to other slave traders, your grandfather treated his
slaves well."
According to San, the treatment of slaves differed from trader to trader.
Technically, because the system of economic slaves was in part a system of social
welfare to at least keep people from dying, violence and sexual abuse were
forbidden. (Though some slaves included the option of sex in order to sell
themselves for more than double the price.) However, when it came to how far those
rules were respected, or if they were respected at all, that depended largely on the
state of public order in the area and their owner's morals.
For instance, if a female slave was raped by her master, even if she lodged a
complaint over it, and even if that noble were punished, because that woman would
have no assets, she would ultimately just end up back at the slave trader waiting to
be purchased again. That being the case, the woman might think it better to silently
endure it. (Unless her life were in danger; that would be another matter entirely.)
In the case of male slaves, they were mostly purchased to be used as manual
labor. Even if they were worked until they collapsed, it would be difficult to prove
that that was a case of abuse.
In the world of slaves, that sort of darkness ran rampant. The slave traders
themselves also came in many shapes and sizes.
Some treated their slaves like animals, not feeding them decent food. They
permitted them to wear nothing more than their collars, and on cold nights, they
wouldn't give them even a scrap of cloth as a blanket. Even if their slaves fell sick,
they would let the sickness run its course. They had exclusive contracts with nobles
with certain proclivities, and no one knew what happened to the women they sent
them...
The list went on.
It seemed there were still a large number of slave traders with those sorts of dark
rumors swirling around them. It seemed the new king had been alarmed by the
current situation, and a number of them had been apprehended, but some were still
out there in the rural areas and in the dark places in the cities.
Compared to that, Grandpa had apparently treated his slaves well. They were
given clothes to wear, even if the clothes were shabby, and they were fed properly.
He didn't abuse them, and if they fell ill, he looked after them. He also didn't sell
them off to any overly strange customers. It seems he was a decent slave trader.
It seemed Grandpa hadn't wanted me to find out he was in this line of business,
but it wasn't that far away from the gentle image I'd had of my grandfather, so I was
honestly relieved.
"But from everything I've heard so far, you had no reason to like him, either, did
you?" I asked.
"What he did was good enough for us slaves," said San. "Because, at the very
least, we didn't have to worry about anything strange and untoward happening to
us. However, now, we can no longer be so sure of that."
"Huh?" I asked.
"Your grandfather said when he was alive that you were unlikely to take over this
business, Shopmaster. That this work would be too hard for his timid, much-tookind grandson."
Ah... So that was why he never told me, I thought. He probably kept it a secret
because he thought the knowledge would eat away at me.
San continued. "However, if you choose not to take over the business, we will all
be sold off to other slave traders. There is no trader who could afford to buy all of us
at once. We would all be split up. There are slaves among us who are married, or are
sisters, but there would be no consideration shown for that. In fact, there is no
guarantee that the slave traders who would receive us would be decent like your
grandfather was."
"That's..."
"Furthermore, there are those with young children among us. The present king,
His Majesty King Souma, has forbidden the ownership of slaves under the age of
twelve. As such, those children are not slaves, but if the buyers say they only want
the parents, those children will be left in an orphanage. This is why we are all sad for
the death of your grandfather."
That made sense. They weren't sad about Grandpa's death itself, but for the
situation it had left them all in... That was likely it.
I wasn't a slave. So I couldn't understand their suffering. Still, not being able to
envision a bright future for themselves was, probably, even harder than I'd
imagined.
While I was still at a loss for words, San handed me something.
It was a riding crop. While I was wondering why she would give me such a thing,
San turned her back to me and suddenly began to take off her clothes. Then, having
stripped down to only a single pair of underwear (her top was completely naked),
and covering her front with the clothes she had been wearing, she knelt as if in
penance. Her smooth back and fluffy tail were exposed to my eyes.
"Wait, San?! What are you doing?!" I shouted.
"I have spoken above my station as a slave. I want you to punish me."
"But why?!"
"Voicing an opinion to the shopmaster is something no slave should ever do," San
explained. "Even if you were to kill me, or torture me, or sell me to the worst kind of
owner for it, I would be in no position to complain. I do not want that. Once you have
whipped me in front of everyone, I beg you, please, forgive me."
"No, that's not..."
"It will be fine," San said. "That whip is of a special make. It causes intense pain
without wounding the place where it strikes. You will not be lowering my value as
merchandise."
"That's not what I'm talking about!" I threw the whip to the ground, walked
around in front of San, then crouched down to look her in the eye. "Are you some
kind of pervert that gets off on being hit, San?"
"...I don't think of myself as one, at least," she said.
"Then why did you say that when you knew you might get hit for it?"
When I asked that in as calm a tone as I could manage, San lowered her face. Her
bangs fell to cover her face, so I couldn't see her expression, but there were sobs as
she spoke.
"So that even if you do close this store... you might pay the slightest bit of concern
to our situations... At the very least, you might look for buyers who will let the
families... stay together..."
"Do you have family here, San?" I asked gently.
San shook her head.
She did that it even though she didn't have any herself...
I looked around at each of the slaves.
There was a woman who was squeezing her child to her breast, looking at me
with uncertainty.