“For as long as they wear their collars, slaves are absolutely loyal,” San explained. “It is possible to put them to work, too, so I think this is normal.”
“Oh, I see.”
“More importantly… why do you go to the trouble of feeding your slaves well and giving them new clothing when you intend to let go of them, Master Ginger?” asked San.
I asked, “Clean things or dirty things, which do you think people will take better care of?”
“That would be… the clean things, I think…”
“Right. It’s the same idea here.”
It felt a little wrong to speak of people like things, but slaves were always treated like things. That being the case, I wanted to make them things that people would treat well. I was well aware of how hypocritical that was, but it was all I could do right now.
“Slaves that are clean, of good pallor, and well dressed appear more valuable,” I said. “I think it’ll help keep away the buyers who just want to use them as disposable labor.”
“Being able to sell the merchandise is the most important thing in business,” said San. “I am not sure if you have the right approach to this as a seller.”
“That’s why I told you I’m not cut out to be a slave trader, okay?”
“Aren’t you? I think you might make a surprisingly good slave trader.”
“That’s the exact opposite of what you were saying just a moment ago, you know?!”
“It is just the mindless prattle of a slave. Pay it no mind.” San smiled mischievously. Urkh, she was definitely messing with me. “If I have angered you, then use the whip…”
“I’m not going to hit you, okay?!”
“But, if you do it just once, you might awaken to something inside you?”
“I don’t want to awaken anything! You’re sure you’re not one of those perverts who gets off on being hit, right?”
“Perhaps that is just a question of who is whipping me?” she asked.
“Huh?! What’s that supposed to…”
“Hee hee. It was a joke.” San gave me a cheerful smile, then walked off briskly, leaving me in the dust.
For a moment, I stood there dumbfounded before I hurriedly collected my wits and followed after her.
It made you question who was the possession and who was the owner here…
— Some days later.
“Okay, everyone,” I said. “Let’s move on to the three times table. Three, go!”
“One three is three, two threes are six, three threes are nine…” At my instruction, the slaves began to sing out their three times table.
Next to them, another group of slaves were practicing their writing, using water to wet a slate. Paper and ink were expensive, so that was what we were using as a substitute.
I wanted to have them available, but… I really didn’t have that much financial leeway, after all…
“What are you doing this time?” San asked, sounding exasperated. She’d just returned from the errand I’d sent her on.
“Hm? I thought I’d teach everyone to write and do arithmetic,” I said.
“…Why?”
“I did some thinking. When it comes to tools, those with some added functionality are better taken care of, right? Well, what sort of added functionality can you give humans, I wondered, and the answer I came up with was, ‘Education, maybe?’”
The sad truth was, many people only thought of slaves as a cheap source of labor, meant to be used until they broke and then thrown away.
True, that was an extreme position, but it was also true that for ordinary slaves, hard manual labor was about the only use for them. Now, what about a slave that knew how to write and do arithmetic? If a slave could read, write, and do arithmetic, wouldn’t that make them too valuable to waste as disposable manual labor?
The fact of the matter was, those with such skills who fell to become slaves, they sold at a higher price, and they were used in a wider variety of ways than slaves that were only capable of manual labor. They served as shopkeepers, and were even sometimes hired as servants and secretaries to the nobility.
You might think, “Well, we should teach all slaves to read and write, then,” but that would be inefficient. It took time to educate slaves, which meant they’d cost that much more in upkeep. Besides, most of the people who visited slave traders were looking for manual laborers. There were a limited number who would buy educated slaves. If too many were available, they would go unsold, and if the slave trader became forced to sell them as cheaply as manual laborers, it would defeat the point. This was, ultimately, a business, after all.
Still, that wasn’t something that was a concern for me right now. I had no intention of continuing with this work.
Even if I had to pour some of the savings my grandpa had left me into it, I was fine with that so long as I could arrange for the people here to pass into the hands of as reasonably good buyers as I could manage. Even if I didn’t turn a profit, I would actively work to sell them to buyers I thought would be good, and once I had seen everyone off to their various fates, I would close up shop. I thought of it as a way of paying my respects to Grandpa.
“That’s how Grandpa taught me, and I’ve learned enough that I can teach the same to everyone,” I said. “Would you like me to teach you, too, San?”
“I will be fine without,” San said. “I came from a family of merchants, so I can read and do arithmetic.”
A family of merchants? How had she ended up a slave, then…?
“Um… Do you mind if I ask?” I ventured.
“It isn’t a terribly interesting story. The owner of a store who was swindled by others found himself needing to sell off one of his daughters in order to protect his store and family. That’s all there was to it.”
“What do you mean, that’s all…?”
“It is a common story,” said San. “The kind of misfortune… you could find anywhere.”
No matter how prosperous the country, no matter how good its governance and public order, the malice of people will never go away. No shortage of these things will happen. I just happened to be the one to fall into it, San’s cold eyes told me. It was as if she had given up on everything.
“Well, it is an ability I am lucky to have, so allow me to teach them with you,” San said.
“…Please do.”
It might be difficult for a slave, but I want San to have hope, too, I thought earnestly, watching her teaching a young slave boy to read.
Months later, my sales weren’t exactly booming. Or rather, I hadn’t sold a single one.
Ha ha ha… What to make of this…?
While I was sitting at the counter clutching my head, San brought out some tea for me and asked, “I believe there were customers. Why did you not sell to them?”
Yes, it was true, a number of customers had come saying they wanted to buy slaves. However, from what I’d seen in my interviews with them, none of them were the sorts I could ever bring myself to sell to.
“If I have confidence in one thing, it’s my ability to see through people,” I explained.
“They were not up to your standards, then, Master Ginger?”
“Every single one of them only looked at slaves as tools to be used and then thrown away,” I said. “No matter how gentlemanly they might have acted. It’s not that easy to hide the dirty parts of your heart, though.”
“Is that right…?” San asked.
“I did promise everyone I would find them trustworthy buyers, after all. I have to select them carefully.”
“If you keep saying that, you may find yourself in financial distress and eventually slavery yourself, you know?” San asked.