169 - Mirshe's Future
"Tina?"
Leonardo's troubled voice came from above my head. Well, if I clung to him all day long, even Leonardo would find it troublesome, I suppose. Since he had apparently decided to become my big brother, it would be fine if he was troubled a bit more.
"Didn't I say no more carrying once you turned ten?"
His point that I wasn't supposed to be sitting on his lap anymore wasn't wrong. Having turned ten, I'd declared I would change my various behaviors, but the matter with Teo must have been quite a shock, because before I knew it I was clinging tightly to Leonardo. A complete regression. Hermine had overlooked it for a few days, but when this state continued for over a week, she started scolding me. If I didn't get over it soon, I'd be getting a proper lecture.
...I know I need to get over it too, you know.
Teo's situation was his family's problem, and he was already gone from the city. Even if I cried to Leonardo about it, it wasn't something he could fix.
...I know that, but still... people really get bought and sold.
I couldn't easily accept it, and I couldn't get over it either.
...Alright, let's think positively.
Thanks to sticking close to him for a while, I felt like Leonardo and I had reconciled a little. I still couldn't bring myself to call him by his nickname 'Leo' like before, or address him like a lady with 'Big Brother Leonardo,' but the awkward feeling had faded a bit. I was still uncertain about the distance between us, but it wasn't as bad as right after our reconciliation.
"How's Mirshe?"
"She's not doing well. She still comes to class properly, but sometimes her cheek is swollen, and her stomach growls during lessons."
Her stomach growling during class had happened before too. Considering Mirshe's home situation, I'd thought she might be skipping lunch sometimes, so I hadn't said anything. But now it was different. Before, I thought it was because she was attending afternoon classes, but during summer she came to morning classes. It was possible Mirshe wasn't being given breakfast. I didn't want to think about the swollen cheek either, but I could imagine.
"Is Mirshe-chan going to be sold too...?"
The anxiety slipped out of my mouth, and my eyes grew hot. For now it was just imagination, but I couldn't completely deny the possibility. That family had already sold one child, Teo.
"Can't you do something?"
Feeling anxious, I looked up at Leonardo. I was implicitly asking him to save Mirshe, but Leonardo's response wasn't favorable.
"I'm not Mirshe's guardian, you know. There's nothing I can do."
He continued, saying he couldn't very well go and buy Mirshe himself. If Leonardo bought Mirshe, from a different perspective, it would be no different from Teo being sold. Mirshe's family would get money from selling their child, and even if the purpose was protection, Mirshe would end up with the emotional wound of being sold by her parents.
"Can't you stop them from selling her?"
"I told you before, didn't I? In this country, until about twenty years ago, human trafficking was forbidden. However, while that alone isn't the only reason..."
About twenty years ago, a reborn person with memories of a Japanese person was born in Mey Village. The reborn person, sold abroad by a village chief who didn't know their value, was an incredibly valuable existence in this country where Saint Yuuta Hiraga's research materials remained as national treasures. For the nation, it must have been a regret they couldn't lament enough. If human sales had been managed by the state, they wouldn't have let a reborn Japanese person who might have revived Saint Yuuta Hiraga's secret arts be sold off to a foreign country. From that regret, under state management, human sales came to be permitted in this country as well. If you're going to sell someone, consider selling to the state first.
"...Even if the state recognizes it, normally it's not something you can buy and sell so easily."
The Sedovara Church, which governs law and order, does work similar to a municipal office in Japan. The Sedovara Church manages family registries, and whenever someone is bought or sold, a permit and documents issued by the church are required. Sales were permitted as a preventive measure born from regret over letting a reborn person go abroad, but the king of this country probably didn't truly want to recognize human sales. To ensure that human trafficking happened as little as possible, the Sedovara Church was supposed to provide various consultations. Even Teo's sale should have been stopped once by the Sedovara Church.
"If it was a debt small enough to be repaid by selling Teo, the Sedovara Church would almost certainly stop it. They'd say that with that amount, you could manage things or work properly and pay it back."
However, people like Teo's mother, who harbored a strange inferiority complex toward those who could read and write, sometimes ignored all these persuasions. They'd listen to the church member's persuasion with a solemn face, then once they got the documents and permits, it was their win, having had no intention of listening from the start.
"Teo's parents... took the easy way out."
Rather than working hard to pay back the debt, they only thought of selling their child to get through the crisis. They didn't think about the feelings of the child who was sold, nor the child who wasn't.
"They were probably sold for quite a low price."
There was no way Mirshe's mother, who couldn't read or write, could understand the contents of the documents. The standard price for selling a child to the state should have been written there, but she didn't understand. They should have also been told the contents orally, but she probably tuned it out just like the persuasion to reconsider. Since this system was created with the purpose of having people sell to the state first, the purchase price was set high. In exchange, the document review was strict, and except in cases of genuine hardship, the purchase itself wouldn't go through. The essence of the human sales permitted by the then-king Ethelbert was to first provide compassionate counseling so that people could live without having to sell anyone. Those sold would also be freed eventually if they worked in proportion to the amount paid.
But if sold outside the state, for example to slave traders coming from neighboring countries, this didn't apply. Since they could take the person out of the country as merchandise with just a permit, those who had no intention of escaping hardship through effort chose this easier option. That was the case with Teo. The price was lower than what the state would pay, but it was welcomed by people who found the church members' persuasion and counseling annoying. And those sold outside the state would never be freed.
"I hope Mirshe-chan will be okay..."
"When Mirshe becomes an adult, she could become independent and leave home, or even come sell herself to the fortress, but for now it's impossible."
Mirshe, who had just turned eight, had no right to decide things for herself. Everything depended on her guardian's discretion.
"...Leonardo-san, if the reborn person from Mey Village had been alive, would you have bought them?"
Suddenly curious, I asked. When I first heard this story, I was afraid and immediately rejected the idea of human trafficking, but if Leonardo bought someone, I thought it would be treated the same as the state buying them. There would still be the matter of being made to work, but it felt a little different from the miserable slave life I'd imagined.
"It's pointless to think about it now, but... it depends on the person. The village chief did put in a purchase request for the reborn person from Mey Village, but unless the village chief was their guardian, he had no authority to sell them."
Leonardo said that if it really was a reborn Japanese person, to have them work willingly, they would need to choose of their own volition. He'd explained what came after before. Even if you tortured or threatened someone to read Japanese, it would be useless if they lied. Especially with medicine recipes, even a small mistake could make them deadly poison. There was no guarantee that the reborn person wouldn't deliberately misread the Japanese they were forced to read. To avoid that, they had no choice but to ask for cooperation of their own free will.
"...Well, in the end, I probably would have persuaded and bought them anyway."
Because the village chief knew selling to the state would get a higher price, he contacted the state this time, but if the state backed down just because the reborn person themselves refused the purchase, the village chief seeking money would have chosen to sell the reborn person abroad again, Leonardo said.
...That village chief would probably do something like that.
After all, he was the kind of person who would arbitrarily sell someone else's child. If the state wouldn't buy, he'd think of selling elsewhere even at a lower price.
"If you had bought the reborn person, what would have happened?"
"Well... I heard they were a child, so they would have been sent to the capital, adopted into the Staff Peerage household or somewhere, and eventually become a civil servant or something."
"Huh? They wouldn't be put in prison?"
"I said we need them to work in good spirits, didn't I? It's a relationship of buying and selling, but we need to build a good relationship."
They'd probably have guards, but it wouldn't be imprisonment or jail life. If they wished, they could even move to the capital with their parents and live in a detached palace, apparently.
"...So, a pretty good life?"
At least, there was a possibility of a cleaner, better life than staying in Mey Village. It was supposed to be a story about the miserable situation of buying and selling, but the reborn person seemed like they could surprisingly have a good life. When I stared at Leonardo's face in surprise, he gave a wry smile.
"Every year, a few fakes appear seeking that good life."
Most of them are people educated enough to know the value of a reborn person, which seems to be a headache.
"...What happens to the fakes?"
"Since they're lying to the state, they're tried for normal fraud."
While half-listening to Leonardo's account of what happened to the fakes he knew of, I mustered some courage to ask. It was something I'd thought about just a little, once.
"...If I were a reborn person, like Alfred-sama said, what would happen?"
"I'd be called back to the capital."
"Eh?"
An unexpected answer came out, and I blinked involuntarily. The face of Leonardo, who I was looking up at, had dead eyes, as if it was something he didn't even want to imagine.
"Tina, which would you prefer, staying with me, or being assigned a new family from now?"
"I want Leonardo-san."
I could answer that without hesitation. Having a stranger as family now was worse than having Leonardo, even if he was somewhat unreliable. Leonardo, who had been chosen without a moment's pause, smiled, looking a little pleased.
"If Tina were a reborn Japanese person, to avoid stressing her as much as possible, I wouldn't want to change her current environment. However, Grenore is a city bordering the frontier. The talk would come up of sending you to the capital to prevent you from being kidnapped and taken abroad."
Between Grenore city, which faces the border, and the capital, which is far from the border, the risk of being taken abroad through kidnapping would drop significantly. It would also take days to escape abroad, increasing the chance of being found and rescued.
"I can't be separated from Tina. So to protect Tina, I would be sent back to the capital."
Since Leonardo had no house in the capital, they would probably be given a detached palace and assigned guards, he said. So it seemed they wouldn't end up in the kind of awful situation I'd imagined when I heard 'human trafficking.'
"...If you're worried about Mirshe, you should look after her, Tina."
"I am looking after her, you know?"
As if to end the unpleasant topic, the conversation returned to Mirshe, and I furrowed my brow at being told to look after her. I'd been looking after Mirshe all along. It was because I was worried that I was consulting him about it. What more could I do?
"Not just looking after her... for example, walking her home after class might have some effect."
"Just walking her home would have an effect?"
I wondered if that would really do anything, but since Leonardo said so, I decided to listen. According to Leonardo, since my guardian was the lord of the fortress, having my eyes on her might serve as some deterrence. It was only a small, 'consoling' deterrence. As things stood, there was nothing else to be done.