851 C-3, Sun Month 2, Moon 29
One day, I woke up to the sound of arguing, but it wasn’t the usual bickering between my parents.
“What do you mean by ‘drought’?! We just bought all this livestock and helped with the equipment. We paid you in advance, and this is what we get?!” my father roared.
“You’re scamming us, aren’t you?” my mother snapped.
“We can’t control the weather, sir,” a man said. “There’s nothing we can do except pray to the Celestials for the drought to end. You’ve paid us for the season, so we’ll do our best, but—”
“I don’t want your ‘best.’ I want what I paid for! What am I supposed to tell our clients awaiting shipments?! All we have to show for this season is a growing pile of dead animals in the storehouse! What the hell am I supposed to do with that?!”
“I’m sorry, sir, but we’re just farmhands. We can’t do much in this drought. If things turn around, we’ll do everything we can to make up for the time lost, but—”
“What good does that do us?! Get out!” my mother shrieked, prompting the man to swiftly exit our house.
“Useless... All of them are useless! This has to be some kind of scheme to keep us down—to keep us from regaining our honor and wealth. I need action now! People are leaving the territory!”
“It doesn’t help that you’ve been raising the taxes.”
“What else am I supposed to do?! If one family leaves the territory, that’s one less source of tax revenue and more that I have to pay the kingdom out of my own pocket.”
“It’s only making more people leave,” my mother sighed.
“Then what’s your bright idea?! That I do nothing while we’re slowly choked into the humiliation of losing both our title and land? No. I won’t go down like that.”
“I hope you come up with a plan soon, then. I don’t want the storehouse to stink from all the dead farm animals anymore.”
“Let me think...”
It felt like they were going to continue with their arguing for a little while, so I decided to leave and go find Soreya. I got excited just thinking about what kind of fun we’d have today. I passed by my parents and headed toward the door. Usually, they’d ignore me, but this time, my father’s eyes followed me.
“Wait,” he said, grabbing me by the shoulder.
My mother looked at him with confusion. “What? You’re going to sell him or something? Doubt he’ll fetch much.”
“No... Selling him would be shortsighted. What we need is a constant revenue stream. Boy,” he said, turning to me, “what do you know about the Blade Saint?” An eerie smile crept across his face.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Pick it back up!” my father screamed at me.
I lay on the ground, clutching my side where he’d kicked me.
“Worthless...” my mother scoffed. “Your great idea is working out amazingly,” she said sarcastically.
“Shut up! It’d work if he wasn’t so weak!” Then, he turned back to me. “I said pick it back up!”
“Maybe your training is the problem. It’s not like you know your way around a sword,” my mother said leisurely.
“No. It’s his basics. He needs to toughen up. And you know what? I know exactly what he needs to do to achieve that.”
In the next moment, my father grabbed the sword off the ground and then me by the scruff of my neck, dragging me all the way from the house to the storehouse. The closer we got, the more potent the smell of our rotten livestock corpses became. It took me everything I had to fight my stomach’s threat of returning my breakfast to me.
“Why are we here?” I asked nervously.
He glared at me before tossing me inside, and then the sword next to me.
“W-Wait!” I screamed, scurrying toward the door as he slammed it closed. “P-Please! Please let me out!” I begged amid the indescribable stench of decomposition and the almost deafening buzz of the flies in its midst.
“Shut up! Make yourself useful and kill those flies with that sword. If you use anything besides that sword to kill them, I’ll lock you in here longer.”
“Please! Let me out! I can’t—I can’t breathe!” A violent wave of nausea was becoming much more of a promise than a threat with each passing second.
“You’ll get out once I say you can.”
“Please! Father! I’ll do anything! Pl—” But my words were interrupted by a warm burst of chunky, acidic liquid that splattered onto the ground from my mouth.
“The more you beg, the longer you’ll be in there for. If you want to get out, start swinging that sword! Don’t test me!”
“Father! Please! Please!” I desperately banged on the door.
I heard the sound of a lock clicking, sending my spirits lower than they’d already been.
“I’ll be back tomorrow morning. That should be enough to teach you a lesson. Maybe you’ll come out better for it too.”
Tomorrow morning? But it’s only late morning now. “No! Please! Please!” I wailed.
But all I heard was his retreating footsteps, which were quickly drowned out by the overwhelming buzz of the flies around me.