Chapter 24

The woman nursing her inflamed cheek, her son clutching the guitar, gazing at her with hollow eyes. The warm feeling of the wooden interior clashed violently with the cold, heavy air that began to press down on my thin shoulders.

Lirr and I set down our cups untouched, watching the young lady and the café owner. What could have transpired between them for the young lady to strike the woman so fiercely?

“…Forgive me!”

Astonishingly, it was the café owner, staggering from the blow, who uttered those words. Her head hung low, like a penitent, bowing repeatedly at the waist.

“This week, without fail, I will have the rent ready! So please…”

“Because of you, do you know what my brother said to me? ‘A useless wretch who can’t even collect money properly from the rabble.’ Are you saying I should live with such humiliation because of your mistakes?”

“Forgive me! The price of flour has been so high lately that our earnings have been… sluggish. But the number of patrons visiting our café each week is steadily increasing, and word is spreading, so surely our business…”

*Smack!*

The café owner stumbled again, her cheek swelling, an even deeper red, from the fresh blow.

“The rent will be paid within the week…! Forgive me!”

Even as she reeled, the woman bowed, repeating the same words.

From what I gathered, it seemed the ones running the café were at fault. Failing to pay the rent on the agreed date was certainly a lapse as business owners. Of course, the punishment was violent, even barbaric, but…

“It’s not as if the rent being late is a recent thing, is it? Really, these commoners… words alone never teach them. Only pain and fear educate them, making them no different from beasts.”

The world I now found myself living in was a medieval fantasy, a world where the class system was alive and well.

No one would punish a noble for raising their hand to a commoner, not even a few times.

Even more so if the commoner had first committed a wrong, like ‘unpaid rent.’

“No, Miss…! What brings you here…”

“You too, come over here. What are you doing?”

The young lady spoke with an icy voice, looking at the cafe’s owner who had just rushed out from the kitchen.

Lirr, despite everything, seemed about to say something to the young lady for resorting to violence in front of the owner’s child, rising from her chair only to lose her courage and sit back down.

It seemed Lirr’s sense of ethics was a bit different from the average medieval person in this world. She was an elf who had spent almost her entire life isolated from society, interacting only with the mages of the magic tower and her teacher.

Since mages, being intellectuals, generally didn’t openly resort to violence or denigrate someone’s character based on their status… such barbaric behavior was both unfamiliar and unpleasant for her.

She repeatedly muttered ‘I can do it, I can do it’ in a small voice, as if casting a spell, and then slowly rose from her seat as if she truly had made up her mind.

And I, grasping her slender arm as she had finally steeled herself, pulled her back down to her seat.

“Though it’s a bit harsh, it’s clearly the shop’s fault for not paying rent on the agreed-upon date. On what grounds can we stop her?”

“…That’s true, but…”

Lirr couldn’t give a clear answer to my question.

One shouldn’t arbitrarily resort to violence.

Such a proposition only holds true when everyone is ‘equal.’

“…It’s difficult to watch, so let’s just have them settle it quickly and leave the shop. There’s nothing we can do.”

And though they must endure this humiliation now, this shop will soon escape these hardships.

The young dragon of Enker Plateau is dead, so wheat prices will soon stabilize, and the shop’s profits will increase, preventing future rent arrears.

Moreover, word-of-mouth is slowly spreading, and the number of customers visiting the shop is said to be increasing… they just need to grit their teeth for a moment and wait for this storm to pass.

There was no benefit to anyone, neither them nor us, to interfere in this when we aren’t even involved, stirring up trouble.

“Yes, Miss… what brings you here in person…”

* * *

_Smack!_

Young-ae greeted the cook, who rushed from the kitchen to the counter, with an identical slap.

“Forgive me, Young-ae. This week… no, I swear, by tomorrow I will have the rent prepared. Please, if you could show just a little mercy…”

His apron, dusted thick with coffee grounds and flour, marked the cook. Even after receiving such a sharp blow, his gaze remained steady as he pleaded with Young-ae.

“…”

And the young lady watched him, her eyes cold and devoid of warmth.

The owner of this shop was a man of towering height, easily surpassing six feet. His arms and chest held the solid mass of muscles, forged through countless hours of kneading dough and baking bread. His fingers were marked with burns and calluses.

Young-ae looked back and forth between her own reddened hand and the face of the large man before her. She clicked her tongue in irritation.

“It seems it didn’t hurt much?”

The cook felt a chill run down his spine, a sensation colder than even the heat radiating from the kitchen. Her tone was sharper than any he had heard before.

“N-no, Young-ae.”

The owner shook his head and bowed deeply.

Like any commoner, he would keep his head down and quietly grit his teeth, waiting for this storm to pass.

Watching this entire scene unfold, I couldn’t understand what exactly had angered Young-ae.

Was her pride wounded because he didn’t even falter after being struck? It was an absurd conjecture, and yet the only one I could muster.

“Hey! Come in!”

In the next instant, she called her guards, who had been waiting outside, into the shop.

Three hulking men, swords strapped to their waists, squeezed through the narrow doorway. They stood beside Young-ae, staring at the shop owner.

“Even if you lost a leg, it wouldn’t impede your work, would it?”

“…Pardon?”

The young lady’s chilling question prompted a flustered reply from the shopkeeper.

“I don’t like it. It’s as if I’m reduced to nothing. A commoner, at that; as if I could strike him down with a flick of the wrist.”

The young lady, annoyed, clicked her tongue, inspecting her hand reddened from the slap.

“Without a leg, next time you won’t be able to stand so insolently as you did just now.”

At her nod, the guards surged forward as one, dragging the shopkeeper from behind the counter and forcing him to the floor. One hooked his leg, while the other two pinned his shoulders and arms; they seemed to have done this before.

“Young Mistress, what is… Young Mistress! I’ll have the money ready by tomorrow… no, by this evening, I beg you, just give me one chance!”

The desperate voice hit the ceiling of the shop and crashed back down. The shopkeeper couldn’t even consider grappling with the hulking guards who threatened him with their sheer size.

All he could do was stare at the young lady, pleading and begging.

“You still don’t understand what you’ve done wrong. I’m not punishing you for being late with the rent. It’s for making me feel like I’m nothing. For mocking me. I should have all your limbs severed, but I’m letting you off easy with just one ankle, because you need to work to pay the rent, after all, no?”

The young lady was even more deranged than I had imagined.

“……”

In the silence that followed, the guards drew their blades and positioned them against the shopkeeper’s ankle. Despite the sudden turn of events, the shopkeeper clenched his fists and gritted his teeth.

But all he could do was accept the fate that had befallen him.

This was the medieval world. There was a reason Western historians called the Middle Ages the Dark Ages of humanity.

“At least, the place… could we change the location, at least!”

“No. It will be done here. Your family needs to see and learn. What happens when you break your promise to our family.”

With a cold smile, the young lady approached the son who was sitting in the corner of the shop, clutching a guitar.

The young boy, barely thirteen or fourteen, was teary-eyed, blaming himself for his powerlessness.

“…Close your eyes.”

Faced with the inevitable reality, the shopkeeper inhaled deeply and spoke to his son in a desperate voice.

Young-ae went to her son’s side, bringing a chair from the shop and settling beside the boy. She pressed close, looping an arm around his small shoulders.

“Close your eyes, and your good-for-nothing father will suffer worse than a mere severed ankle.”

The boy, hearing Young-ae’s whisper, must have felt as though a viper’s tongue had pierced his ear and was now rifling through his brain.

“Look closely. And understand this. You stupid beasts only learn when something is taken from you.”

The son, terrified, clutched the neck of the guitar with trembling hands.

“I don’t want to do this either, but what can I do when you commoners are so hopelessly dense? Hmm?”

Young-ae smoothed the boy’s bangs with slender fingers, all the while radiating a kindly smile, as his entire body shook.

“……”

Across from them, Lier revealed her emotions on her face with a rare lack of constraint.

The emotion she displayed now was a searing rage.

“It seems I cannot simply leave this place after witnessing all this, can I?”

I slowly rose from my seat, asking the question.

“……But I don’t know how.”

An unexpected answer tumbled from Lier’s lips.

She was hesitating.

Hesitating?

Hadn’t she just tried to intervene when a noble merely slapped a commoner’s cheek a few times? And now, when his father’s ankle was about to be severed before his very eyes, she hesitated?

“Why?”

“The distance between here and the castle is considerable. I cannot protect these people for the rest of their lives, and deploying elite soldiers here is out of the question. As Bean said, if we interfere, claiming to protect them, we might get through today. But what about tomorrow? And… the day after that?”

Indeed, if we helped them right now, we could certainly avert the immediate crisis. But from a long-term perspective, it could only invite a greater calamity.

A slap landed, yet she didn’t fall.

Those people, and the noble lady they served, the family that raised her, they were the kind to hack at a man’s ankles for reasons so flimsy they barely existed.

“Next time, perhaps, it won’t stop at just one leg. There might truly be instances where their lives are in danger…”

We were fleeting acquaintances, while they and the noble lady, they had to face each other constantly as they lived and did business here.

If we humiliated the lady and her guards now, a vengeance far beyond what a commoner could endure might befall them.

“So, you’re suggesting we just leave?”

“That’s not it! It’s just…I just don’t know what to do.”

Overpowering the guards now, shaming the noble lady, was merely a self-indulgent act.

A self-indulgent act that would bring a great calamity upon the family running this shop.

“Then, wait here for a moment.”

I rose from the table, offering Lir a faint smile.

She seemed a bit gloomy and introverted on the surface… but her core was far more resolute than I had imagined.

“I’ll go change the situation a bit.”

I slowly walked away from the sun-drenched window seat, weaving myself through the giants led by the lady.

The waist-sworded guards and the hulking shopkeeper wore dumbfounded expressions as I, a man with a paltry build, suddenly wedged myself between them.

“Hey, what’s your deal?”

“Don’t you have any sense? Can’t you see the atmosphere right now?”

Ignoring the words thrown my way, I walked straight to the counter.

“Check, please.”

“What are *you* doing?”

Offering the coin pouch to the woman behind the counter, her cheek swollen a ghastly blue, I heard a sharp voice cut through the air near my right ear.

“Could we get this done quickly? There’s a bug crawling around the café, quite ruining one’s appetite.”

I glanced at the young lady, a disbelieving mutter escaping my lips.

Her face twisted in an instant.

“…Hey. Was that meant for me, you think?”

“Wasn’t me.”

I answered, pointedly not meeting her gaze.

“Is this one taking me for a fool? Does he not realize who I am? I am Vinen Guernier, first daughter of the Guernier House! You think you can speak to me like this and get away with it?”

Originally, I had intended to simply add some coins to the table and quietly slip out of the shop.

After all, the fault lay initially with the shop, and the difference in station was significant… I didn’t want to waste my first day off getting involved in a squabble.

But this young lady had overstepped.

Even if they were at fault first, even if they were commoners, to order a man’s legs severed in front of his son…

Lir was an elf with an unyielding spirit, unable to ignore such a situation, and I still possessed a certain degree of common sense and ethics from my previous life.

“…Even if I said no, you’d still bark. If you weren’t going to believe me, why even ask?”

“What did you say, you little—?!”

“Things not even mentioned in the lore books, pretending to be nobles…”

I glared at the Guernier girl as she shouted, her face reddening, muttering under my breath.

I even added the touch of feigning to pick at my ear with my pinky, despite it not itching in the slightest.

And in the next moment, my vision turned upside down.