Life is unfair.
Some are born lowly slaves, while some are born noble aristocrats.
Watching Lady Rosette whip her right before her eyes, Rina thought exactly that.
Thwack, thwack, thwack!
Red lines were drawn repeatedly across Rina's palms.
Now she couldn't even tell where she had been struck first.
*It hurts… but I can't cry. If I cry, I'll be punished even more severely.*
Meanwhile, Rosette glared at Rina, still huffing as if her anger hadn't subsided.
"You wretched slave girl. Do you still not repent your mistake?"
"But my lady… I truly haven't done anything wrong."
Rina protested to Rosette in a trembling voice.
Rosette de Orpen.
The youngest daughter of Count Orpen's family, nobles of the Empire.
Rosette despised Rina, who received Count Orpen's favor.
At Rina's protest, Rosette's golden hair trembled violently.
Rosette roughly grabbed the kneeling Rina's hair and yanked it upward.
A handful of Rina's red hair was pulled up.
"Agh!"
"That attitude of yours is impudence."
Rosette scrunched up her face and glared at Rina with pitch-black eyes.
"A house slave must kneel if the master commands it and grovel if told to grovel, yet you talk back until the very end."
Rosette spat coldly before striking Rina's cheek with all her might.
Smack!
With a short, sharp sound, Rina's head snapped to the side.
Her cheek burned, and the tears she had held back finally streamed down.
**Gano (House Slave)**
Slaves who perform household chores.
Existences no different from furniture, who must show absolute obedience to the master and his family.
Rina was a house slave of Count Orpen.
That is, the lowest of the low slaves.
But Rina believed that even if she was a slave, her heart was exactly the same as a noble's.
And so, unable to endure the surging injustice in her heart, Rina finally opened her mouth.
"What exactly have I done for you to hate me so?"
In that instant, Rosette's expression twisted even more viciously.
"Your impudence pierces the heavens. This lady shall properly educate you today!"
Rosette raised her hand again.
At that sight, Rina's eyes squeezed shut.
But this time, the pain did not continue.
When she cautiously opened one eye, Rosette's personal house slaves were holding her back.
"My lady, if you hit her more, we won't be able to hide it from the master."
"That's right. Teaching that stupid girl a lesson is fine, but if you hit her more than this, you'll be the one to get scolded, my lady."
"Y-you…!"
Rosette gnashed her teeth.
"To think that this lady, the second daughter of Count Orpen's family, must watch the temper of a house slave born of a filthy whore slave. How truly absurd."
**Changno (Whore Slave)**
Slaves who specialize in selling their bodies at brothels and such.
At the insult to her mother, Rina choked up but could not refute it.
Because it was an undeniable truth.
Rosette seemed displeased with Rina's gaze.
She scrunched her face up tightly and roughly released Rina's hair.
Rina's body was thrown to the floor.
"Get lost. And if you act so arrogantly again relying solely on your face, next time I truly won't let it slide."
"…Understood, my lady."
Rina looked a complete mess as she left the room as if driven out.
Her hair was completely disheveled,
and her house slave uniform was wrinkled everywhere from rolling on the floor.
Rina was coming of age this year and was so young that her coming-of-age ceremony was still next week.
In other words, she was at an age where someone might approach her with pity.
But no such thing happened.
The other female house slaves of the mansion merely whispered after seeing Rina's state.
Not a single person reached out to help.
"Oh my, isn't that Rina? Looks like Lady Rosette broke her again. Serves her right."
"The master dotes on Rina too much, so Lady Rosette is probably disciplining her in his stead."
"Born of a filthy whore slave—guess her inherited lowly nature really doesn't go anywhere."
Obvious ostracism.
Rina knew very well why they were ostracizing her.
*It must be jealousy.*
Fiery red hair as vivid as flames and blue eyes like ocean jewels.
A delicate, embroidered beauty upon her small, refined face.
A vivacious figure like the flesh of a ripe fruit.
Men lost themselves at Rina's appearance at least once, and women sent her at least one envious glance.
Even Rina herself, though embarrassed, was aware that her appearance was beautiful.
Moreover, Rina was receiving the favor of Count Orpen, the head of this household and a lecher.
He never made her do hard labor,
allowed her to receive a simple education in reading and writing,
and sometimes took her outside the mansion to show her the world.
Special treatment that was excessive for a slave.
It was such excessive favor that at one point, rumors had circulated that Rina was Count Orpen's illegitimate child.
In reality, it was not uncommon for nobles to bring in illegitimate children born from slaves as slaves, only to later free them and take them in as retainers.
But Rina had never once harbored such expectations.
Because Count Orpen's eyes were not those of a father looking at his daughter.
Rina knew that gaze very well.
Because she had seen it to the point of sickness at the brothel when she was young.
It was that filthy gaze with which customers scanned her scantily-clad mother.
Rina was certain that if the Church had not defined fornication with a young slave who had not undergone the coming-of-age ceremony as a grave sin, she would have already been violated by the Count.
*But now the shield called the coming-of-age ceremony doesn't have much time left.*
Before she knew it, Rina had walked to a secluded corner of the garden behind the mansion.
It was her cherished spot that she sought whenever she wanted to rest alone.
A place good for curling up away from people's eyes, where neither sunlight nor gazes reached well.
Sitting down there, Rina hugged her knees.
Once she underwent the coming-of-age ceremony next week, nothing would remain to protect her.
Then Rina would be nothing more than an official toilet, even guaranteed by the Church.
When that time came, the Count would surely lay his hands on Rina's body.
It might not end with just the Count.
There were more than one or two men in this mansion who looked at her with eyes full of dark lust.
From the young masters of the family to the male retainers, and even the male house slaves, they couldn't hide their sticky leers when they looked at her.
"Filthy."
Rina muttered, wrapping her arms around herself.
Though Rina had unwittingly reaped benefits from men's attention since she was young,
she had an instinctive revulsion toward men's lust.
Because her mother, who had been a whore slave, had died due to men's twisted sexual desires.
Rina's mother had been selling her body to a perverted noble and accidentally died from having her neck squeezed too hard.
Even though it happened when she was young, Rina could never forget that memory.
Her mother's corpse, unable to even close her eyes with bright red handprints on her neck.
Even now, whenever she closed her eyes, that corpse flickered before her.
What was crueler was what happened after her mother died.
The customer was a noble's son, and Rina's mother was just a somewhat known whore slave.
In the end, the brothel keeper had no choice but to cover up the incident for a small amount of compensation.
That day, Rina realized for the first time.
That there were walls in this world that could not be overcome no matter how much one struggled.
*If mother and I had been nobles… no, even commoners, this wouldn't have happened.*
She had once dreamed of avenging her mother.
She had also vowed to somehow change her status someday.
But such vows gradually wore away as she grew older and came to understand reality.
And next week, she would be placed in a situation no different from her mother's.
A toy for men, that is, a sex slave.
"A sex slave… how terrible."
The screams mixed with moans of senior sex slaves that rang out from the Count's room every day seemed to show Rina the future that awaited her.
What was even more horrifying were the perverted sex toys placed inside the Count's room.
Every time she cleaned the Count's room, Rina would have nightmares of being violated by those toys.
Today too, Rina had to clean the new dildo the Count had purchased—one that expanded from the inside.
"Ugh… the worst."
Rina shook her head, trying her hardest to shake off the memories she didn't want to recall.
"I wish I had been born a noble like Lady Rosette."
Rosette was the same age as Rina.
But the only thing they had in common was their age.
One was a noble, the other a slave.
The gap between them was like heaven and earth.
Just as Rosette hated Rina, believing she had stolen her father's affection, Rina also envied Rosette.
A noble surname, an illustrious name, a status where she didn't have to give her body away carelessly.
Everything Rosette possessed was something Rina could never have.
"Why am I a slave? My mother was a whore slave, and I don't even know who my father is… why was I born like this?"
Rina buried her head in her knees and trembled.
"I hate this world, and I hate this fate!"
A cruel world where everything was decided by status the moment one was born.
Rina cursed the fate that had made her born a slave in this place.
And at that moment.
"You resent your fate?"
At the sudden cute and soft voice, Rina flinched and raised her head.
"Do you want to change this miserable fate of being born a slave?"
There, a young lady dressed as neatly as a noble was looking down at Rina.
She looked about the same age as Rina, but somehow exuded a strangely mature air.
"W-who are you?"
The young lady giggled at Rina's words.
And spoke softly.
"A devil."
The devil spoke arrogantly, looking down at Rina.
"I am the devil Pureupureu who shall save you. Nice to meet you, cute little kitty."