Chapter 7

This world was rough and coarse, but when it came to clocks, the most advanced thing it had was a sundial, and life moved to a gentle rhythm, marked off by the sound of bells ringing four times a day in town.

At first, everything being so rough, and not being able to play games, made life painful, but once I got used to it, living here was not so bad.

My daily wages were almost entirely consumed by food and drink, and since there were no banks, I could hardly save cash; at first, endless day labor had stirred up anxiety about the future, but little by little, even that stopped bothering me. I had even gotten used to living in the corner of the company’s unloading yard.

When the sun rose, I worked, ate, drank at the tavern when night came, and slept.

Sometimes, when I remembered my literal near-death experience in my previous world, my heart made an awful sound along with a cold sweat, and I wondered whether I had once had dreams, whether I was letting this rare chance slip away, but that too was like an attack, and even the intervals between those attacks gradually grew longer.

I had even started remembering game development less and less.

More than anything, the surroundings were so idyllic that it was as if I had been anesthetized, and my heart only grew calmer.

To begin with, this world had such little social mobility that it seemed only natural for the child of a rich man to become rich, and for the child of a shoemaker to become a shoemaker, so there was absolutely no atmosphere of making one’s way in life and rising to success.

Even saving money was considered something only a fool would do.

It now felt like a distant past that I had once thought maybe I could make board games in this world too, and had looked into the prices of materials.

I no longer even woke up and searched for my smartphone, only to remember that, right, this was another world.

I had also quickly stopped imagining things like setting out on adventures because I was in another world, or dominating everything with modern knowledge.

At the moment, my only real hope was that I might like to travel a little someday.

The future I imagined had gradually shrunk to things no greater than what I should eat for dinner that day.

Well, maybe it was fine like this.

At least I had work, and I was not struggling to eat.

Even while carrying a vague sense of unease, I had been passing my days without major trouble, until one day.

“Gyaaaaah!”

A scream rang through the unloading yard.

“Vah… what is all this noise?”

Nodon, who had been napping at the accounting stand, stretched his neck and spoke irritably. The scream had come from the warehouse section next to the unloading yard.

Not to the extent of beastfolk, and not that striking once you were used to seeing Kengo, but the men hardened by unloading work hurried toward the warehouse in alarm.

Since Nodon did not even look like getting out of his chair, I went to see what had happened, and found that they were in the middle of steadily carrying out collapsed cargo from inside the warehouse.

“Damn it, it hurts, it hurts!”

The one shouting from beyond the crowd was the boy known for his agility. Even so, in this world he was fully considered an adult, and he was someone particularly skilled at working aboard rocking ships in the harbor. He was clutching his right leg, and from the knee down it was bent in an impossible direction.

And beside him lay another man, blood streaming from his head, completely motionless.

Apparently, it had been an accident caused by a cargo collapse.

“C-call an ambulance—”

As soon as I fumbled at the seat of my trousers, I suddenly realized.

There was no smartphone, and of course there was no such thing as an ambulance here.

“Hey, you’re a man, aren’t you?! Don’t cry!”

“But, ah, damn it… my leg! My leg!”

The boy with the broken leg let out a scream almost like rage and was carried out of the warehouse by another stevedore. They were probably taking him to a doctor, but the real problem was the person who no longer seemed to be breathing.

“How is he?”

“No good.”

I heard voices like that.

Part of it was the shock of seeing someone die for the first time, but in any case, I had to inform Nodon.

A man had died at the workplace, so we had to call the police too… no, wait, the police? As I ran to the accounting stand, I found Nodon snoring there.

I was dumbfounded, and because I knew he became terrifyingly ill-tempered if woken while sleeping, I reflexively found myself at a loss for words.

Even so, someone was dead, and there were injured people.

I approached Nodon and shook his shoulder.

“Nodon-sama, this is terrible, there’s been an accident!”

“Vah.”

Letting out a short groan painful even to hear, Nodon turned muddy eyes toward me and frowned.

“Huh…? What?”

“There’s been an accident. Someone has died—”

“Vaaah…”

Nodon stretched his neck to glance toward the warehouse, waved his hand as if brushing away a fly, and then closed his eyes again.

Was he still half asleep? I wondered, and said it once more.

“There’s been an accident! One person is badly injured, and one person has probably… died!”

Nodon did not open his eyes right away. He gave a loud sniff through his nose, then opened them with obvious annoyance.

“Died, you say? Nnngh… what about the injured one?”

“The injury is, well, a broken leg. From below the knee…”

“Hmph.”

Snorting through his nose, Nodon shifted in his chair like someone rolling over in bed.

“Pay him only half of today’s wages. And fill the hole he’s leaving right away. There should be any number of people who want unloading work.”

It was an instruction so matter-of-fact that it stunned me.

“As for the corpse, well, if he’s got no family, send him to the church.”

I was taken aback at the mention of a church, but then I remembered that the bell ringing four times a day belonged to the church.

“And while you’re delivering the corpse, slip the priest a couple of silver coins too. If he gets sent to the mines and somehow becomes a mage, we’ll have to collect our share.”

Saying that, Nodon closed his eyes. The mood coming off him made it abundantly clear that if I spoke to him again, I had better be prepared to get hit.

Maybe the reason no more words came out of me was because of the habits that had soaked into me while working under Nodon.

But for the most part, it was because I had finally realized just how terrifying this world really was.

When I turned from the accounting stand back toward the unloading yard, the corpse was being carried out.

No one paid it much attention, no one grieved, and work had already resumed. A large shipment of agricultural produce had arrived early that morning from nearby villages, and everyone was busy delivering it to taverns and street vendors all over town.

I had thought I understood lightly enough that this world did not yet even have the concept of human rights.

But this was what that really meant.

“Hey! Carry this first before the corpse! At this time of year it won’t rot that quickly anyway!”

A voice rang out across the unloading yard, and the two men carrying the corpse set down what had been their workmate in the corner of the yard without even seeming to hesitate. After lightly brushing off their hands, they started busily carrying baskets packed with dark, bitter-looking leafy vegetables.

The dead did not support their lives, but harvested vegetables did.

So the corpse lay there, neither mourned nor honored, off to the side of everyday life.

Here, human life was terrifyingly cheap.

That boy with the broken leg was no longer, in Nodon’s eyes, someone who could bring profit to the company. With no consolation or anything of the sort, he would simply be handed half his wages and cast aside.

That boy probably would not be able to work for at least the next month, but since his wages were almost entirely consumed by food and drink that very day, how was he supposed to survive while unable to work? There was no way unemployment insurance existed here, and I could not imagine Nodon having any intention of looking after him.

“Yorinobu-san.”

When someone called out to me, I flinched and turned to look, and it was a boy about the age of an upper elementary school student, one who commuted here from the church orphanage. He was diligent and literate, so he came to work in order to support the orphanage.

“The transaction confirmation.”

“Ah, right.”

Numbers had been written with a wooden pen on a wooden board coated with wax. It was a reusable memo board that could be used over and over if slightly heated by a candle. As I took the board, I kept glancing at the corpse, then returned to work as though fleeing from it.

An idyllic world?

What a ridiculous idea that had been.