“…W-why?”
Perhaps feeling my intense stare, Matthias blinked rapidly.
Ah, was I making him uncomfortable?
“It’s just that you’re handsome… sorry. That might be rude to say.”
I didn’t know about other things, but Matthias came from the entertainment district. That was the kind of place where he must have heard the worst remarks about his appearance.
I meant it kindly, but it could still upset him.
Hmmm, maybe I should just stay quiet.
He was already helping me this much. I didn’t want to dig up unpleasant memories for no reason.
But at my words, Matthias shook his head.
“No. Not bad.”
“Not bad? You mean it doesn’t bother you?”
“Yes.”
Only to you.
Matthias muttered something under his breath. I didn’t catch it, so I just smiled and picked up my pen.
“Still, tell me if it bothers you. Like I said before, I’m not going to make you do anything you hate.”
“Yes.”
With his shoulders still tightly hunched, Matthias answered hesitantly.
But after cutting his hair, I could actually see his expression, so it was easy to tell he wasn’t upset.
Phew. Secretly relieved, I cleared my throat and continued.
“So, we’re here right now.”
I pointed to the center of Fifth Street with the pen tip.
“And the 10th district you mentioned is around here.”
I moved my pen downward and tapped the area near 10th Street. Looking at the map, the distance really was quite large.
That’s strange.
After thinking for a moment, I asked Matthias,
“But if you were in the 10th district, how did you get all the way here? It must’ve been far.”
“Cargo… carriage.”
“You came by cargo cart?”
I guessed loosely, and thankfully he answered yes.
“Yes.”
“Why were you brought here?”
“Sold…”
“Sold?”
I was about to ask what he meant when a thought I didn’t want to believe suddenly came to mind.
No way…
“You mean they were trying to sell you off?”
“Yes. Others too.”
Matthias moved his mouth awkwardly.
“Not me.”
Other people.
“Came. Together.”
Locked up in one place.
“And then…”
He looked down and added in a trembling voice.
“They called us that.”
I paused before asking,
“…Called you what?”
“Auction goods.”
“!”
For a second, I thought I’d misheard.
There was only one place where people could be called auction goods.
At that moment, Matthias, who had been watching my reaction, bit his lower lip.
“Sold them… for a high price.”
“To the people… above.”
I bit my lip silently.
This feels like…
I may have stumbled onto something huge.
“You lost one?”
At the same time.
Xavier could not even lift his head under that icy glare. His teeth chattered, and his body shook instinctively, sensing the threat to his life.
And not long after—
Thud—!
His stomach was kicked so hard that his body slammed into the wall.
“Gah…!”
Xavier clutched his stomach without meaning to, gasping for air. He had been struck in the solar plexus, and for a moment he couldn’t breathe.
The man looked down at him with contempt and clicked his tongue.
“Useless. You lost one, and of all things, a top-grade one? Didn’t I tell you to handle the high-value ones separately?”
“I, I did—”
Xavier, barely recovering, answered with difficulty.
The man’s mouth curled into a crooked smile.
“You did? And this is how you handled it?!”
“Urgh!”
A kick followed.
Once the punishment started, it did not end until the man was satisfied. After venting his anger for a long while, the man swept his hair back.
“I’m giving you three days. Find them no matter what.”
Alive or dead.
“If they’re not breathing, just turn them into a specimen and sell them.”
The man tapped Xavier’s chin with the toe of his shoe. The face that had once been full of arrogance twisted in pain.
“You break something, you clean up the mess.”
The man’s lips slowly lifted.
“If you’re an adult, act like one.”
This situation is worse than I thought.
Slaves, auctions, people “above.”
Every single word sounded dangerous.
I spun my pen around as I sank into thought.
What event happened around this point?
Hmm… but no matter how hard I tried to think, nothing came to mind.
No, there was one thing. An episode where one of the high nobles got divorced.
It was also the story where Benjamin, who had been a fallen noble at the time, first made contact with a high-ranking aristocrat.
Ugh, but I can’t remember the details.
If I had known, I should have reread the series recently. Regret came rushing in too late.
Still, even if I had read it carefully again, there wasn’t much in the setting I could use right now.
The gold mine Benjamin would find years later was impossible to obtain at this point. At best, I could try to establish a connection with the places that would become major business opportunities later on.
But even that would require family influence. In my current state, with the house collapsing, even a small investment was difficult.
The divorce episode was pretty memorable, though.
I could vaguely guess why.
In Rutherford, nobles could not divorce freely. That applied to both men and women.
Maintaining the household was also considered a noble duty, so divorce was seen as abandoning that duty.
As a result, unless the spouse had committed a serious crime, the imperial family would not approve a divorce.
Here, divorce only became valid if the emperor’s seal was attached.
But in the original story, one noble lady fulfilled all the conditions and managed to divorce.
And if I remembered correctly, Benjamin had helped her quite a bit at the time.
Thanks to that, he was able to secure stable investment opportunities and recruit reputable talent.
Could this be related to the slave auction?
That was the most likely possibility.
An auction in a country where slavery was illegal?
That alone was a serious crime. And the “people above” Matthias mentioned probably referred to high-ranking nobles.
Besides, this episode involved a noble divorce.
If the reason was a slave auction…
Then one of the nobles participating in the auction might be connected to this event.
I quickly wrote down every name I could remember on a sheet of paper.
As I stared over the list of names I had scribbled down at random, I muttered without thinking,
“Lady Odilon.”
One of the empire’s major nobles.
The emperor’s cousin, and a highly respected lady in high society.
Josephine Odilon.
Hmm.
I tapped the desk lightly and narrowed my brows.
“This is getting serious…”
To be honest, Lady Odilon wasn’t exactly someone I was fond of. Or rather, there was a bit of a gap between her and the Renesti family.
Lady Odilon of high society. I had heard her name even after only one year of possessing this body.
When I was young, there had once been talk of her becoming my fiancée. In other words, the woman who almost became my mother-in-law.
Though that was in the past, of course.
The Renesti family had once been famous for its ceramics business. When the business was at its peak, it supposedly held its own even against the wealthiest families.
Maybe that was why. Before the family collapsed in Xavier’s hands, the prosperous Renestis had nearly tied themselves to such a powerful house.
But after Lady Odilon learned the truth about the family’s inner affairs, she quickly withdrew the engagement and cut ties with Renesti on the spot.
Come to think of it…
That was some seriously sharp judgment.