“It can’t be helped. Stay still, I’ll strip you down.”
The man rolled up his sleeves and looked Camellia’s body up and down.
A persistent and blatant gaze, as though sizing something up.
Overwhelmed by that stare, Camellia squeezed her eyes shut in terror.
Drip, drop.
Thick teardrops fell from Camellia’s eyes as she thought that the worst moment she had long dreaded was finally becoming reality.
“Hm…? You crying?”
The man flinched, seemingly flustered.
Camellia wrapped her arms around her trembling body and pleaded in a cracked voice.
“Please… don’t.”
“Hm?… No. You have to wash. There’s no way I can let you stay like that.”
“Just for today… please, I want to wash alone… *hic*.”
“Hmm, can you move your body by yourself? Fine then, wash yourself. Don’t just splash water over yourself—you have to scrub thoroughly, got it?”
***
A shabby corner of a house with cold wind blowing in. Yet there, warm water had been prepared to a degree that felt almost out of place.
Each time the hot water touched her wounds, it hurt as though a scream would burst out, yet Camellia desperately scrubbed her body.
“Don’t just splash water over yourself—you have to scrub thoroughly, got it?”
The blunt voice of the man who had purchased her echoed in her ears.
Having painfully witnessed, over the years, what fate awaited “disobedient merchandise” at the slave auction house, the option of washing half-heartedly did not exist for her.
The more she washed diligently, swallowing her screams, the more she felt like she was being completed into an exquisite dish that would whet that man’s appetite.
Shortly after,
the moment she carefully opened the bathroom door and stepped out, the man’s gaze stuck to her skin, thick and clinging.
Like a greedy explorer facing a legendary treasure, or a beast that had found its prey.
Camellia clutched the dry towel the man had left in front of the door and involuntarily stepped backward.
Seeing that, a slimy smile tugged at the man’s lips.
“Ooh… just washing up made you look so much better than before? You do have a lot of scars and wounds, but… if I spend some money….”
Then the man rose from his seat and strode over.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
Now it would begin. Having been washed and wiped clean, it was time for his twisted lust to be poured into her body.
Memories of her parents’ screams, the annihilation of her family, and the ensuing hellish torture chamber flashed by like a revolving lantern.
But contrary to my expectation, what touched my body was not a rough hand.
-Fluff
“…Huh?”
At the sensation that was unfamiliar yet familiar, she cautiously opened her eyes.
Before her eyes, rather than the man, lay a thick, worn blanket.
With an indifferent expression, the man pushed Camellia onto the bed with a light shove.
“Why are you standing there like an idiot? I’m dead tired from carrying you all the way here on my back today, so just get some sleep.”
“E-Excuse me….”
“What? You need something else? Ah, and no late-night snacks. I’ve run out of money… it’s bad for your health anyway.”
She stared up at the man blankly.
“Are you truly… not going to do anything?”
“What do you mean, not do anything? Don’t tell me… does a former noble young lady need a lullaby to fall asleep?”
“Ah… no.”
The man simply laid out a worn straw mat on the floor and lay down.
A master who gave the bed to his slave and slept on the hard floor himself.
‘Strange…’
Camellia’s mind was filled with confusion.
This was surely high-level torture. A cruel slave owner’s amusement—giving faint hope only to dash it into despair.
‘Yes, that must be it. Clean me up, put me in a warm bed…… and at the very moment I feel happiest…’
Thinking so sent chills down her spine again. But her body was far too honest, unlike her reason.
It was not a hard, cold iron-bar floor. It was not a cellar swarming with rats and a foul stench.
Though it was old and smelled of dust, from the blanket she felt a pleasant warmth mixed with the scent of sunlight and the man’s body heat. How long had it been since she last lay in a “human’s bed”?
Her body, made languid by the hot bath, could not resist the temptation of the cotton-stuffed bed and sank deep into it.
‘I mustn’t sleep…… I have to stay awake…’
But her eyelids were heavy as lead. The man’s regular breathing came from beside her.
Even while she thought of it as the breathing of a demon waiting to harm her, the sound was so strangely regular and peaceful that, paradoxically, she felt relieved.
The first comfort she had felt since the destruction of her family. Caught between the contradictory emotions of terror and relief, Camellia finally surrendered her consciousness.
***
The next day. Camellia lay in a shabby bed, gazing out the window with vacant eyes.
“Ah, Hyung-nim! I told you, just trust me one more time! This time I really brought back something that’ll be a jackpot!”
“You rotten bastard! You spouted the same crap last time, borrowed my money, and got cleaned out by a scammer!”
“This time it’s real. The goose that lays golden eggs really exists!!”
“Golden eggs my ass! Stop talking nonsense and hand over the ten silver coins you borrowed last time, you crazy bastard!”
Crash, bang!
Along with rough cursing, the sound of someone being kicked and tumbling about rang out.
Lying in bed and overhearing all of this, Camellia’s pupils trembled.
‘The goose that lays… golden eggs?’
Shouts and scuffling from beyond the window.
The man who had bought her for a mere single silver coin, Nasus.
From early morning like that, he had been going around to acquaintances and merchants, borrowing money like a beggar.
At first, she had resigned herself, thinking she would be abused the moment she opened her eyes.
But he had procured a recovery potion from somewhere and treated her festering wounds, and provided a worn but warm place to sleep.
The problem was that he was funding all of it by going into debt to others.
In that moment, a terrible puzzle clicked into place in Camellia’s head.
‘That’s right… that man really is a black magician.’
She had heard ominous rumors since long ago. A terrible tale of cruel black magicians cutting open living people to create bizarre demonic beasts.
It was clear that he intended to use her, who carried the bloodline of a traitor, as a sacrifice—cutting open her belly and casting magic to remodel her into a “terrifying chimera that lays golden eggs”!
‘Because if the sacrifice dies quickly, he can’t conduct that terrible magical experiment!’
“Haa… haa….”
Camellia gasped for breath, seized by extreme terror.
Enduring the gaze of a madman who looked at her every day, smacking his lips and muttering, “Just a bit more fattening up and it’ll be perfect,” was a hell that destroyed a person longer and more deeply than torture.
-Slam
Then the door burst open violently, and Nasus came in huffing, one cheek swollen red. It seemed he had been slapped and thrown out while trying to borrow money.
“Argh, you uncivilized ants. Kicking away without recognizing the value of this perfect investment product? You’ll be pounding the ground with regret later, but it’ll be too late.”
The man grumbled as he approached the bed.
In his hands were steaming soup and a recovery potion that looked expensive at a glance.
“Now, it’s mealtime. How long are you going to wither away like that, dropping the product value? Hurry up and eat so you can skyrocket. I’m pouring my blood money into this.”
The man rattled off incomprehensible black magician jargon (?), carefully pushing the soup tray toward her lap.
“Why aren’t you eating? Still don’t have the strength to hold a spoon by yourself? Tsk, here, open wide~.”
The man eventually scooped up a heaping spoonful of meat chunks and brought it to Camellia’s lips.
Camellia stared at the spoon with trembling eyes, then spotted another small bowl beside the man and cautiously opened her mouth.
“Um… it seems the bowls have been switched…?”
“Hm? What do you mean?”
Before her, the slave, was a soup filled with chunks of meat. Before the man, her master, was a watery gruel with a few shriveled carrot bits floating in it.
It was a sight that Camellia’s common sense simply could not comprehend.
“Why… is there only meat in my soup?”
At Camellia’s cautious question, a bitter look flickered across the face of the man holding out the spoon.
“Well… the budget is a bit tight. I could only buy enough meat for one person.”
The man scratched the back of his head and smiled awkwardly.
“It’ll be meager, but grit your teeth and eat up.”
A slave receiving meat yielded by her master, who was eating watery gruel. Faced with this bizarre and nonsensical situation, Camellia’s reason completely shattered.
Once again, the only hypothesis that came to mind to resolve this nonsensical situation was that “that man is a black magician trying to fatten up his sacrifice.”
Before she knew it, the spoon in the man’s hand had come right up to her nose.
The steaming aroma of the soup would normally have made her salivate, but to her now, it felt like a terrible poison.
‘I have to eat. If I refuse, I don’t know what terrible thing will happen.’
Camellia barely parted her trembling lips.
She felt as though she would vomit at any moment, but survival instinct forcibly moved her jaw.
Gulp.
One bite. Another bite.
Each time she swallowed the soup with tears in her eyes, a mad delight settled in the man’s gaze as he looked down at her.
“Good girl. You’re eating well. Our penny stock, grow up quick. You need to put on flesh nice and sturdy.”
“….”
A blind obsession of going into debt to feed and keep alive a sacrifice, even while suffering the humiliation of being slapped and kicked out. A terrible madness to the point of yielding even the meat that should have entered his own mouth to the sacrifice.
Staring up at the man with trembling eyes, Camellia left behind a desperate final testament in her heart.
‘Father, Mother… I’m sorry. It seems I, who barely survived, am soon to become… a terrible goose demon beast.’