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Chapter 09
“……Why, why?”
Perhaps sensing my intense stare, Matthias blinked rapidly.
Ah—maybe it was a bit much.
“It’s just that you’re handsome…… Sorry. That was kind of rude.”
Other things aside, Matthias came from the red-light district. A place where people hear the worst kinds of remarks about their looks. I meant it kindly, but it might still have upset him.
‘Ugh, I should just keep quiet.’
Helping him like this was probably hard enough already. I didn’t want to dig up painful memories for no reason.
But at my words, Matthias shook his head.
“No. It’s not bad.”
“Not bad? You mean you’re not offended?”
“Yeah.”
Only from you.
Matthias murmured something, but I didn’t quite catch it. I smiled faintly and picked up the quill.
“Still, tell me if it bothers you. I said this from the start—I won’t do anything you dislike.”
“Yeah.”
Matthias answered hesitantly, his shoulders hunched.
Still, now that his hair was cut, I could see his expression, and it was easy to tell he wasn’t upset.
Ahem! Feeling secretly relieved, I cleared my throat and continued.
“Okay, so we’re here right now.”
I pointed the pen tip at the center of Fifth Street.
“And Tenth Street, the one you mentioned, is around here.”
I slid downward and tapped the area near Tenth Street. Even on the map, it looked pretty far away.
‘That’s strange.’
After a moment of thought, I asked Matthias,
“But if you were on Tenth Street, how did you get all the way here? It’s quite a distance.”
“Cargo… wagon.”
“A cargo wagon?”
When I guessed, thankfully he nodded.
“Yeah.”
“Why were you coming here?”
“To sell… ah.”
“Sell?”
What? I was about to ask when an unpleasant possibility flashed through my mind.
No way……
“They were trying to sell you?”
“Yeah. Again.”
Matthias moved his lips awkwardly.
“Not just me.”
Other people.
“They came together.”
Tied up in one place.
“And then…”
That’s what they called us.
Lowering his trembling gaze, Matthias added quietly.
I waited a beat before asking,
“……Called you what?”
“Auction items.”
“!”
For a moment, I thought I’d misheard.
There was only one kind of place where people could be called auction items.
Then Matthias, watching my reaction, bit his lower lip.
“They said they’d sell us for a high price.”
In a week.
“To high-ranking people.”
I silently bit my own lip.
‘This is bad.’
It feels like I’ve stepped into something huge.
“You let one get away?”
At the same time.
Xavier clenched his teeth, unable to even lift his head under that razor-sharp gaze. His body trembled instinctively, sensing mortal danger.
Not long after—
Wham—!
His stomach was struck hard, and his body slammed into the wall.
“Hurk…!”
Xavier clutched his abdomen and gasped involuntarily. He’d been hit square in the solar plexus, and for a moment he couldn’t breathe.
The man clicked his tongue, looking down at Xavier’s trembling form with contempt.
“Useless trash! Of all things, you let a top-grade item escape? I told you to keep special watch on the high-quality ones—didn’t I?”
“I—I did—”
Xavier answered with difficulty, barely regaining his senses.
The man twisted his lips into a crooked smile.
“You did? And this is how you handle things?!”
“Ghk!”
The kicks continued. Once the punishment started, it didn’t stop until the man was satisfied. After venting his anger for a while, he ran a hand through his bangs.
“I’ll give you three days. Find them, no matter what.”
Alive or dead.
“If they’re not breathing, we can just stuff them and sell them.”
The man nudged Xavier’s chin with the tip of his shoe. The face that had been full of arrogance twisted painfully.
“You clean up the messes you make.”
The corners of his mouth slowly lifted.
“If you’re an adult, act like one.”
‘This is more serious than I thought.’
Slaves. Auctions. High-ranking people.
Every word is dangerous.
I twirled the pen absently, lost in thought.
‘Did something like this happen around this time?’
Ugh. No matter how hard I thought, nothing clear came to mind.
Well—if I really had to pick something, there was one episode: a high-ranking noble getting a divorce.
It was the storyline where Benjamin, a fallen noble, first made contact with the upper aristocracy.
‘Ugh, but I can’t remember the details.’
If only I’d re-read the series recently. Regret came too late.
But even if I had read it closely, there wasn’t much I could use in this situation.
The gold mine Benjamin discovered years later couldn’t be obtained now, and at best I might try to build connections ahead of time with places that would later become huge successes.
Even that would require family prestige. In our current, crumbling state, even a small investment would be difficult.
‘Still, that divorce episode felt pretty impactful.’
I had a vague idea why.
In Rutherford, divorce among nobles wasn’t easy. That applied to both men and women.
Maintaining one’s household was considered a noble’s duty, so divorce was seen as abandoning that duty.
Unless a spouse committed a truly serious crime, the imperial family wouldn’t grant permission for a divorce.
‘I heard that here, a divorce only goes through with the emperor’s seal.’
Yet in the original story, one noblewoman fulfilled all the conditions and succeeded in divorcing.
And I remembered that Benjamin had helped her quite a lot at the time.
Thanks to that, he was able to secure stable investments and attract reputable talent.
‘Could this be related to the slave auction?’
It was the most plausible guess.
Holding an auction in a country where slavery was illegal—that alone was a grave crime.
And the “high-ranking people” Matthias mentioned likely referred to high nobles.
On top of that, this storyline involved a high-ranking noble getting divorced.
‘If the reason was a slave auction…’
Then one of the nobles participating in the auction might be tied to this episode.
I hastily wrote down every name I could remember.
Scanning through the list, I muttered without realizing it,
“Lady Odilon.”
One of the empire’s major nobles.
The emperor’s cousin, and a prominent figure in high society.
Josephine Odilon.
“Ugh.”
I tapped the desk and frowned.
“This is really bad……”
To be honest, Lady Odilon isn’t exactly someone I’m fond of. Or rather—there’s a bit of a gap between her and the Renesti family.
Lady Odilon of high society. Even I, who’d only been possessed for a year, had heard that name before.
When I was young, she was once mentioned as a possible match for my fiancé’s family……
In other words, someone who almost became my mother-in-law.
‘Of course, that’s all in the past.’
Renesti was once famous for its pottery business. At its peak, it could rival even the wealthiest families.
Maybe because of that, before Xavier ruined everything, the Renesti family had nearly formed ties with such a prestigious house.
But after learning the truth about Renesti’s situation, Lady Odilon hastily called off the engagement—and cut ties completely.
Honestly, when you think about it—
‘She had damn good foresight.’
