4

“Let’s eat something delicious, Lord Ains! The fish dishes you have been waiting for are right before your eyes.”

After Sophia said that to him, Ains switched his mood.

Before his eyes spread the lively bustle of fishermen, merchants, and tourists. In addition to the stronger scent of the tide than before, some kind of delicious smell was also drifting through the air.

The rows of large red-brick-style warehouses were a sight unique to the port city of Elias.

“That’s true. We came all this way, after all. We have to enjoy it properly.”

Saying that, Ains called out to one of the gatekeepers. He was asking where there was a restaurant around here with good fish dishes.

After the humbled gatekeeper told him about several restaurants, Ains reunited with Sophia and the others and entered Elias.

Although it was a smaller city than Kirk, as expected, the ground inside the city was paved with stone. Perhaps because heavy carts often came and went, there were stones cracked here and there, but not enough to cause any trouble.

With Ains in the lead, Sophia and Talidge walked side by side behind him.

Amid the many warehouses standing in rows, the three headed straight for the restaurant they had been told about.

Although it was not as crowded as Kirk, when walking through a crowd, shoulders naturally bumped into shoulders.

“Whoa!”

In the crowd, Ains, who had been walking while looking only ahead, ended up bumping into a short boy who had not entered his field of vision.

The boy who had run from the front hit right around Ains’s abdomen.

“Sorry, are you all right?”

Ains lowered his gaze and stroked the head of the boy, whose crown was the only thing he could see.

“…”

Without raising his gaze or saying anything, the boy ran off to the other side.

“Even if I didn’t see him, I did something bad to that boy.”

Ains muttered that while watching the boy disappear into the crowd.

“…Talidge.”

Beside Ains, Sophia called out quietly.

“Yeah, yeah. You really work people hard.”

Talidge started walking in the direction the boy had disappeared.

“It cannot be helped, Lord Ains. With a crowd like this, if you look down, you cannot see ahead, and if you look ahead, you cannot see below.”

“But the boy ran away too. I would have at least bought him some sweets. …Though not with my own money.”

She was referring to the money Sophia had been entrusted with by Captain Gaus of the Ains Domain.

Ains did not possess any coins from this era at all. For any payment, he paid through Sophia.

Gaus had intended to hand it over for Ains’s sake, but from Ains’s perspective as the one receiving it, he could not quite shake off his guilt and could not think of it as his own money.

“Come to think of it, where is Talidge? He walked off that way. Did something happen?”

“I wonder. In any case, let us head to the restaurant. Talidge should join us eventually.”

Thinking that was fine, Ains continued walking. Talidge was not a child either. Even if it was his first time in the city, he probably would not get lost, unlike Ains.

In a narrow back alley one street away from the crowd.

There was the boy who had bumped into Ains.

In that place where no sunlight reached at all, the boy pounded on a half-rotten door.

Since the sun did not reach the area and no wind passed through, damp air hung over it, and insects gathered in swarms.

“You did have a harvest, didn’t you?”

The door was flung open with such force that the boy was thrown backward and landed on his backside.

An elderly old woman appeared from inside, bent at the waist.

The old woman looked at the bag the boy was holding while sitting on the ground, then snorted.

“When you haven’t managed to get any food for two days, I guess you steal desperately enough.”

The old woman walked toward the boy and snatched away the bag he was holding.

With her wrinkled hands, she roughly opened the bag and checked inside.

“…What’s this? Is this all? Did you steal some brat’s pocket money?”

There were a certain number of coins inside, but all of them were low in value. As a total, it probably did not even amount to one gold coin.

“I thought you had stolen an unusually heavy pouch, and this is what it was? Even though I taught you so much… This is all you get.”

The old woman grabbed about five coins from inside and threw them at the feet of the boy, who had finally stood up.

Even so, to the boy, it seemed like a large sum, and he desperately gathered the scattered coins.

“You should be able to buy a loaf or two of bread.”

The old woman, who had been about to return inside the room, stopped walking.

The boy also raised his face and looked in the direction the old woman was looking.

Standing there was a giant man who was much taller and larger than they were.

“Ah, sorry to interrupt while things are getting exciting, but could you give that pouch back?”

The giant man—Talidge seemed to have watched the entire exchange between the old woman and the boy, and he looked at the old woman with an indescribable expression.

“What’s this? Are you the fool who had it stolen by this slow-witted brat?”

The old woman judged Talidge as all show and no substance, since despite his intimidating appearance, his pouch had been stolen by a boy.

“No, well, how do I put this? It belongs to my master.”

“It’s the same thing. Since you serve a foolish master, that means you’re a fool just like that master.”

“As for Ains being a fool, you’re completely right. I can’t argue with that.”

At Talidge, who shrugged, the old woman showed a look of disdain.

“Are you tourists? It was a good lesson, wasn’t it? This is the cost of that lesson.”

The old woman placed her hand on the door of the house and said, “Be careful next time. There are plenty of brats like this one around.”

“Do not give fish to the hungry, but teach them how to catch fish… was it? Looks like you’re the one who taught that brat how to fish.”

“The one who caught something was that brat. And the ones who got caught were you. At this point, are you planning to question whether it was good or evil?”

If they were the sort of people who would reflect on their actions just because they were admonished, then neither the old woman nor the boy would have continued doing such things.

“No, no. The one who gets stolen from is at fault. I agree with that too. I don’t have a hand to extend to fools who can’t protect themselves.”

However, Talidge continued.

“It looks like you taught him how to fish, but not what counts as a fish.”

“Hm?”

“There are people you can hook with a fishing line, and people you can’t. If you hook the wrong opponent, you’ll be dragged into the sea together with the rod and eaten alive instead. That’s why you need to teach him properly what counts as a fish.”