Chapter 7
That was because those children had no parents.
It was a better life than working under criminal organizations and getting thrown in prison, or living in old poorhouses that gave you just enough food to keep you from dying. This place gave them money, reasonable rest time, and didn’t whip them.
Come to think of it, Priscilla’s own life hadn’t been so different from their harsh reality.
She’d had parents, but they couldn’t fulfill their role as guardians. They’d tried to push their daughter into the master’s bedroom so they could eat more bread.
Children could throw tantrums about such realities, but they also knew how to adapt quickly. For those without power, the word “resistance” simply didn’t exist.
If Priscilla hadn’t happened to meet Captain Ross and escape the plantation, she would have given up any thoughts of running away too.
On her way back to the dormitory at sunset, she saw Antonio still playing by himself in the courtyard, he looked like someone who had long ago accepted his lot in life.
How long had he played alone like this? Repeating meaningless days of kicking a ball by himself, day after day?
Priscilla couldn’t just walk past him.
She approached the boy who was bouncing a worn, tattered ball and sat down beside him.
“Hello there, team leader,” she said with a slight smile, pretending to know him. Antonio’s face flushed bright red in surprise.
“I’m not the team leader! Don’t tease me.”
He seemed deflated from the scolding he’d gotten from Miriam that morning. Priscilla spoke even more affectionately and mischievously on purpose.
“Yes, team leader. Do you play here all day?”
“Well, Mom’s still working.”
“What about your friends?”
“My friends are working too!”
It was almost time for the factory workers to gather in the dormitory for dinner. Antonio said he didn’t join them since he wasn’t an employee. Instead, he’d eat the bread Miriam brought him.
Even so, not having to work was an incredibly luxurious thing.
Even if there wasn’t enough resources to send him to school or teach him during his free time.
“They do it because they don’t have moms and dads. I have a mom, so I don’t have to.”
“…”
“You’re really blessed.”
Priscilla decided to help Antonio with his ball game. She couldn’t make someone’s life better like Captain Ross had, but she could at least play with him.
The games continued well after sunset. Starting with simple throwing and catching, then moving to games where they tried to steal the ball from each other.
Antonio never once beat Priscilla, who could only catch the ball with her left hand. Frustrated, he jumped around and suggested they compete with their feet instead.
Priscilla never went easy on him. That way, he’d think he needed to get stronger in the future.
“Sister, why are you so light on your feet? You run like you have wings attached to them.”
By the time their ball games were finished, Antonio was calling Priscilla “sister.” He opened up remarkably quickly.
Priscilla told Antonio that while they were all living just to survive for now, didn’t he want to escape someday? Without another word, she backed up and took a running leap…
She climbed up a wall with one hand and in an instant grabbed onto the second-floor windowsill of the dormitory building. She pulled herself up with a flash and slipped right through her room window. Antonio’s eyes went wide.
“Whoa, what?! How do you do that? Are you using magic?!”
A moment later, Priscilla poked just her head out the window. She threw a book down to the boy in the courtyard who was gaping and begging her to tell him the secret too.
It was a book about adventure.
A dream-like story about a protagonist from humble origins who goes out into the wider world and gains both money and honor.
It was a gift for the first friend she’d made since coming to Arancel.
Antonio was delighted, but said he couldn’t read properly.
The child became busy studying letters from the next day onward, determined to read the book.
Moreover, when she told him he’d need to be strong to climb walls well, he even exercised by himself.
So for a while, he stopped wandering around the factory.
“Now that you’re cleaned up, you look quite presentable!”
Priscilla, with the grime washed away, impressed everyone. Beautiful young women are popular wherever they go. Even more so when they don’t smell and aren’t dirty.
There were about twenty women at Genuer Factory, most of them already married. They reacted with incomprehension, wondering why such a pretty maiden would work here.
If they had been born with such a face, they said, whether they had one arm, two arms, or even three, they would have somehow hooked a rich man. Some even lectured her with spittle flying, saying that even if they couldn’t manage marriage, they would have at least squeezed money out of someone.
It was such a realistic perspective that Priscilla had no rebuttal. She could only think that to others, she must seem like an unrealistic dreamer and a fool.
But if such a life had been possible for her, she wouldn’t have run away from the plantation in the first place, and she wouldn’t have risked her life working with the mercenary company. She would have become the plantation owner’s bedmate. Actually, even that would have been tremendous advancement for a slave.
Even though in this harsh world it was undoubtedly wise to use all of one’s assets to grasp wealth, loveless marriage strangely made her feel the terrifying sensation of being caught by the plantation owner and dragged back there.
Damn origins, damn inferiority complex. Living so stupidly, she’d ended up losing an arm.
Even when she forced herself to think this way, it wouldn’t change.
In the end, she was just a day laborer in Arancel, earning each day what she ate that day.
“Hey, stop bothering the girl and get to work! We can’t run a deficit! What face will we show Genuer when he returns! Looking at the books now, we’ll have to eat dirt for dinner!”
At Miriam’s shout, the women who had gathered around scattered in all directions.
Priscilla had an intuition that the factory’s situation was bad. The more generously the workers were treated and their lives respected, the less profit the owner made. Using old-fashioned machines instead of automated facilities also created an environment where productivity couldn’t increase.
Thinking back to the massive factory complex she’d passed on her way here, Genuer Textile Factory seemed even more unlikely to survive.
Priscilla asked Miriam:
“What happens if the factory can’t make money? Will it have to close?”
“We’re getting by just fine, so don’t worry about useless things. Why are you worrying about that anyway? And you, what’s with these clothes? You can’t walk around with strings dangling like this. They’ll get caught in the machines.”
Miriam’s expression wasn’t good as she tightly tied the waist strings of the work clothes. Up close, she was full of worry. Priscilla resolved that she absolutely had to do more than her share at this new job.
Saving money and finding a way to fix her arm were important, of course, but she couldn’t burden the already struggling factory by thinking only of that. She would have to become an excellent machine part, pedaling like riding a bicycle with both feet.
Endlessly. Perhaps until she forgot she was human…
“Ah! Those huge factories? Nobody works there. Not a single person works there. Strange, right? That’s why we call them ghost factories!”
A booming voice pierced her ears. Her excessive worrying was quickly interrupted.
“They’re factories built by Lamarian wizards that run only on coal and magic. They say it’s classified, so they don’t use a single person. There are cases of cargo wagons going in and out, but…”
She had breaks now and then, so the work wasn’t dehumanizing enough to make her feel like a machine.
“Are you saying those big factories all run on magic? That doesn’t seem possible…”
“Hard to believe, right? There are countless magical devices in the world, but I’ve never seen anything on that scale before.”
From her coworkers, Priscilla was able to learn about the identity of the massive factory complex that occupied central Arancel.
“There used to be a group that went around attacking factories, saying all machines had to be destroyed. When they broke into those factories back then, they saw that there were only mechanical dolls inside. Once rumors spread that wizards were guarding them, factories in Arancel stopped getting attacked after that. Lucky, isn’t it?”
