I am Triela, an orphan. My best friend was sold yesterday.
To be honest, saying that she was sold wasnt correct. A certain rchant subsidized the operating funds for this orphanage, and this orphanage was operated with the intent to sell off children with good skills.
My best friend, who was taken yesterday, had a skill that would be useful for the rchant. As a result, she was taken to the rchants place.
There were so children who were taken in the past. The older sisters who took very good care of us and the older brothers who were very helpful None of them ca back.
At that ti, I unexpectedly t an older brother who left the orphanage because he couldnt learn any useful skill by the ti he was 13 years old and beca an adventurer.
That older brother was 18 years old at that ti. One day, he happened to et a child of the sa age who was taken to the rchant from the orphanage. The story I heard from him at that ti was tragic.
All of the children who were taken were bound by slavery magic and contract magic and they were treated like slaves. Boys would be given the minimum necessities of life and got assaulted on a daily basis to vent the other workers stress. Girls would be treated as a plaything. Even so, in order not to lose the childrens useful skills, they prevented them from dying.
Because that boy told the older brother about his cruel situation, he was severely punished in front of him. That older brother couldnt bear to see it and imdiately ran away.
Does my best friend have to suffer that?
Falling into despair, my eyes turned dark. The other children who were listening to him beca sad. The atmosphere of the orphanage imdiately darkened.
It was obviously illegal to force the children to beco a slave. Right after we heard the story, we directly appealed to the director. But it was useless. It seed like the director knew how the rchant treated the children who had already been taken. He had reported this matter to the administration a lot of tis and tried to make them do sothing about this. But the investor rchant always managed to get away from punishnt. No matter how many tis the director had bowed his head and begged the rchant to stop this, nothing has changed.
On the contrary, the rchant would cut back his funds on the orphanage when he found out about the directors reporting him, making the children in the orphanage had to eat less than usual. I recalled that there were tis when the amount of their food lessened. I was convinced that this was the reason. After that, we stopped doing anything.
There were many small children here. I shouldnt involve them.
Ren was a mysterious child.
Even though she was in the sa age as , her tone was polite and calm. Sotis, she surprised everyone by doing so crazy things. When we went to the forest to search for sothing to eat, she picked up more edible wild plants than anyone else. But coincidently, she was surprisingly weak and lacked physical strength.
She always had a blank face. When I thought that she was walking right behind , she would suddenly put her finger on her chin while muttering sothing and scratched her head. After that, she would stand still for a while before doing sothing strange again.
She also said a lot of an things. She didnt go easy on the boys who made a ss by doing stupid things. Her polite tone made the damage even greater.
On the other hand, she was very caring and the younger children liked her very much. Although she didnt seem to be aware, the number of children who wanted to get pampered by Ren was extrely high.
Rens high competitive rate wasnt only limited to the small children, she was also being targeted by almost all the boys in the orphanage. But Ren despised rough boys the most and didnt want to deal with them at all.
And speaking about the competitive rate, she was also targeted by the children outside the orphanage as well. The boys wanted to beco closer to her and the girls wanted to beco her friends, which was kind of bizarre.
It was Cain, the boss of the children in the orphanage, who protected Ren.
Cain kicked all of the guys who tried to do sothing towards Ren. Thanks to that, he also beca the boss of the children in the town.
I believed that Ren also trusted Cain. At least in the beginning. Yes, Cain and Ren were actually close friends when they were very young.
It changed when Cain started to think of Ren as a girl. To hide his embarrassnt, he started to act coldly towards her, but he gradually raised his hand to Ren and even started using violence until she cried.
By the ti I noticed sothing was strange, it was already too late. Cain constantly made Ren cry and Ren extrely disliked Cain.
I warned Cain a lot of tis, but nothing improved. If there was only one salvation, it would have been how Cain imdiately stopped the other boys with brute force when they tried to bully Ren.
Eventually, Cains bullying on Ren escalated to the point that Cain took away Rens als. He gave her als to the younger children, but I couldnt bear to see how Ren cried because she was hungry. Maricle, Rens close friends, and I would share our als with her.
As those days went on, Ren started looking at Cain as if she was looking at stones in the roadside or insect corpse.
However, while relentlessly bullying Ren this much, Cain still thought that Ren liked him for so reason. He even planned to take Ren with him out of town to beco an adventurer and get married by the ti he was 13 years old. I didnt understand his mind at all.
The girls hated him because he was really stupid at those parts but when he did sothing while using his head, everyone was surprised how he could do amazing things calmly. Yet when he didnt think of anything, he was so stupid that I felt annoyed watching him. That was Cain.
There were tis when I thought it would be good if he could behave himself since he was handso, but since he wouldnt fix himself no matter how many tis I scolded him, I had already given up.
A few days after Ren was taken and the atmosphere of the orphanage turned gloomy, everyone beca even sadder.
It seed like Rens carriage was attacked by bandits and they fell off a cliff. As far as the soldiers who went to the bottom of the cliff had confird, there was no survivor. The corpses had been eaten by the demons and ended up in a horrible state. Even if soone was alive, going into the forest under the cliff was too dangerous since there were many brutal monsters and beasts inside. The soldiers gave up and returned back.
The rchant who funded this orphanage was weirdly stingy regarding this matter. He always used the route crossing the mountain to transport the children. That route was the shortcut, but it was dangerous because bandits might appear there. Taking a safe route ans detouring the forest and tripled the cost of the travel. It seed like he really hated the cost.
The sa thing happened several tis in the past. A child taken from here died on the way because of an accident. Since the situation didnt improve at all, that rchant probably saw the worth of our life as the sa as the travel cost. But I never expected that Ren would face the sa end
Then the atmosphere of the orphanage beca even gloomier and heavier.
Ren was too dull to notice this, but she was idolized by everyone. I was so sad that Ren died, but after thinking about it, it might have been better for her to die rather than being treated as a plaything. Considering the story I heard from the older brother who ca back before, I couldnt say that staying alive in that hell was better.
While comforting the gloomy children with that thought, I noticed that Cain was thinking about sothing.
A few days after that, Cain called out to discuss sothing.
Cain told that he would take around a year to prepare and leave this orphanage to go to the royal capital and beco an adventurer. It seed that he thought about a lot of things after Rens incident.
The mbers Cain would take along were Boman and Ryuu, who were always acting stupid with Cain, and Maricle. Four people in total.
Will you co with us as well? Plus, it wont be good if those three stay like that, right?
It seed like he already saw through who I would bring along if I decided to go with him. Those three were Ricorice, Kuro, and Arle. Other than , they were all especially close to Ren.
After hearing the news of Rens death, they were so sad that I couldnt even bear to see them. I tried to cheer them up, but I was at a loss since I didnt have any idea how to do it. But this might be a good opportunity, If the environnt changed, sothing might change. They might recover once we moved.
Yeah, Im going. Ill take those three with .
I think those kids wouldnt refuse.
Then its decided.
Then the next day, we had started preparing. The four boys began practising how to fight by swinging woods while doing small chores and saving coins.
Like Cain, we trained our physical fitness and studied herbs while doing so chores.
Yeah. Ricorice and the others chose to co along. It seed like they wanted to change their environnt, just as I thought.
March, around a year after the news of Rens death. Already prepared, we left the orphanage and set out to the royal capital.
After arriving in the royal capital, we had continuous hardships. Every day, we were struggling to feed ourselves. Ricorice and the others were busy working every day that they didnt have ti to be sad.
While all of us were working hard together like this, we would have a reunion with our best friend who we thought was dead. But thats another story.
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