Bang! I woke up with a dull pain.

Rude opened his bleary eyes and looked up.

A wooden stick that had just struck his head, held by a guard with a face full of discontent. That’s probably what he would see.

“Pretending to see when your eyes are fucked. You really are a bastard through and through.”

Ah. Having just woken up, my throat felt choked.

My eyes started to sting, perhaps from the tyranny that irritated me as soon as I opened them.

…No, actually this was because I hadn’t slept well.

Rude consciously tried not to fumble around the blurry edges of his vision as he opened his mouth.

“That’s a bit harsh, on such a fine morning. The blind ears are hurt to hear it…”

“Shut up and get up. It’d be better for you to move on your own before I drag you out by the collar.”

“Is it that you don’t have the strength to lift me?”

Bang! The wooden stick fell again with a curse.

Ah…, what a nasty temper. Rude let out a sneer without flinching and slowly stretched out his crumpled body.

His innately tall build and broad back, the muscles he had built to survive, rippled elastically.

As he stood up fully, an overwhelming presence spread instantly.

In the blink of an eye, a shadow covered him from head to toe. The guard standing beneath it bit his lip, trying hard not to be intimidated.

“So, where am I going?”

The guard grabbed the iron chain without answering and hurried his steps.

Seeing that irritated look, Rude had a strange feeling.

He had thought that today would surely be the day he was going to die. Was that not the case?

Given the guard’s temperament, so eager to kill him, if this was the path to getting his head chopped off, a sneering laugh should have come by now.

His mouth should have been split in a grin of joy.

But the guard did not do that.

Rather, he couldn’t hide his very displeased appearance. So where exactly was this path heading?

“Where are you taking that bastard… Ha! There he is. Stop right there! Bring him to me!”

A gravelly voice stopped them as they were climbing stairs and walking down a corridor.

Recognizing the owner of the voice immediately, Rude let out a vicious curse.

Unfortunately, the startled guard dragged Rude over there as he was told.

“I said I’ll buy this bastard, I’ll pay right now! Come on, tell me. How much should I give?”

“Look, this is troublesome. I’ve told you several times already, this item has already been sold.”

“So how much? Whatever it sold for, I’ll pay double!”

Rude glared with his hazy eyes at the hand that grabbed his arm and greedily kneaded it.

If only he had a knife in his hand, he would have slit that throat in an instant, with killing intent to spare.

“No, who on earth would buy this blind bastard? The talk of him being sold must be a lie, right?”

How shameless of you, the very one who made those eyes unable to see.

This perverted old man was a wealthy merchant desperate to make Rude his night servant slave.

He was said to have amassed quite a fortune through maritime trade, but the problem was that he not only had the ability to make money, but also the ability to be shameless.

How strong his obsession was.

He had pestered Rude, who was living as a fighter in gambling dens, wanting to have him, being rejected each time, until he finally resorted to using a poison to blind him.

He figured that if Rude went blind, he could no longer fight in the arena.

Thanks to that, Rude was now in this state.

His vision was getting blurrier by the day, and he had become a useless man who couldn’t even earn money, confined to a small room.

Moreover, he had a record of nearly killing several managers a few days ago for hitting his head, making his situation even more difficult to deal with.

The vicious pessimists ruling the underground would immediately turn someone in this situation into a corpse and burn it.

So Rude thought that would happen to him too… Wait.

“…Did you say sold?”

Rude muttered out loud without realizing it.

Unless his ears had gone bad along with his eyes, that’s definitely what it sounded like. That I’m a sold item.

Regardless of what the blind man was muttering, the argument between the old man and the merchant reached its peak.

Irritated by the perverted merchant’s misconduct, the merchant threw out a shout-like statement.

“2 million geon!”

“W-What?”

“That item was sold for 2 million geon. So as you said, if you pay double, 4 million geon, I’ll hand it over to you without complaint.”

“Wh-What is this… Who on earth would pay such an enormous sum for a guy like that?”

That’s what I’m saying. Who would pay such a sum unless they were crazy? Rude’s head tilted up slightly in agreement.

The merchant, feeling he had finally gained the upper hand in the argument, became arrogant again. The merchant asked once more.

“What will you do? Will you pay?”

Even for a successful merchant, he didn’t have the ability to pay the price of an entire castle.

Pushing aside the pervert merchant who had backed down in shock, the guard threw Rude into some carriage.

With his whole body tightly bound, he traveled for a while and arrived somewhere. He was carried like an object and then put down on a soft blanket.

“Hmm. This looks quite serious indeed.”

…What situation is this now? A different old man’s hand suddenly lifted Rude’s chin.

Having eaten nothing for days, he didn’t have the strength to push it away physically.

Rude reflexively tried to exert force, but soon gave up, thinking “whatever happens, happens” and relaxed.

“Do you see this red spot here? At this level, he must have been taking drugs for a very long time. It seems he’s lived a very rough life, hasn’t he?”

That’s right. I’ve lived a rough life. Though not by my own will, it’s also true that I’ve taken drugs for a long time. Are you a fortune teller rather than a doctor?

At that moment, another presence that had only been faintly detectable grew closer.

Somehow, the walking gait was not unfamiliar. A woman, and judging by the sound alone, proper and elegant, so a noble…

“Will treatment be possible in the near future?”

…This voice. I’ve definitely heard it before.

−What is your name?

Just yesterday, the woman in front of the iron bars who suddenly asked for his name. That woman who had stopped and stared at him for quite a while.

−It’s not something a noble lady like you would know. Just call me whatever you like.

−Perhaps you don’t have a name?

−My, I didn’t mean to erase a perfectly good name. That’s too much.

To think I’d see the woman who left after such a brief, meaningless conversation again like this…. At the same time, one fact became clear.

That this woman was the one who had bought Rude for that insane amount of money.

It seems his crumpled appearance in that iron cage that day must have been very appealing to her.

“Hmm… With symptoms this severe, treatment will be a little, no, extremely difficult.”

“The amount used for treatment doesn’t matter, regardless of how much it is.”

“Hmm. If that’s the case, I’ll try my best to cure him even if I have to grind my body to dust.”

The old doctor answered with a noticeably brighter tone and then withdrew, saying he would organize the necessary medicinal ingredients.

Now only Rude and the woman remained in this space. Just the two of them.

“Should I take off my pants or something?”

Rude fiddled with his waistband as if he was about to undo it right away.

Of course, his true intentions were different. If she really asked him to do such a thing, he planned to just pretend and then try to strangle her when he got the chance.

“…No. I didn’t bring you here for that kind of purpose.”

“Really? If not for ‘that’ purpose, for what purpose did you spend 2 million geon to buy someone like me?”

The woman was silent for a moment, then answered in her characteristically elegant and monotonous tone.

“You are not an object, so I didn’t spend money to buy you.”

As if stating a very obvious principle. She continued speaking like that.

“What I paid 2 million geon for was the right to take you out of that place.”

You are a person, so you can’t be bought or sold. So I bought the right.

It was the kind of words he had never heard even once in his life, growing up as an orphan abandoned in the back alleys.

A slow, tingling sensation crept in, as if someone had hit his head with an enormously large hammer.

“Rude.”

As soon as his name was called, every hair on his body stood on end.

Crazy bastard. Rude gritted his teeth and clenched his fists. Of all things, her voice was damnably to his taste.

“I’m sorry. I have a purpose, so I bought the rights entangled with you. I can’t let you go until that purpose is achieved.”

Her voice, which spoke clearly with emphasis, was full of apology.

A person who truly feels sorry while saying they’re sorry. Again, a type he had never seen before.

To Rude, this woman was too unfamiliar, too novel, and also surprising.

“Is that purpose to use my body for treatment?”

“No.”

The answer to the question he managed to ask after barely regaining his senses was a firm denial.

Rude turned his gaze towards where the woman was, lifting his head.

It was slightly unnatural, but unless one knew from the beginning that he was blind, it would not be easy to recognize this level of awkwardness.

“I cannot reveal my purpose. But even setting that issue aside, it would be better to quit the drugs.”

“Who doesn’t know that? I’ve been taking drugs for so long I can’t even remember when I started. A noble body like yours wouldn’t know the hardship of quitting drugs since you’ve never taken them, but for someone like me, it’s not only difficult to quit but I don’t want to quit either.”

Rude deliberately responded sarcastically and fiercely.

He was uncomfortable with the woman who absorbed everything he said like a soft cushion.

He wanted to see her treat him roughly by irritating her somehow.

Like others had done. Like everyone in his world had done until now.

However, the woman countered his fierceness gently without even the slightest hesitation.

“Of course I think it will be difficult. But try. It’s harming your body, isn’t it?”

Ridiculously, he was at a loss for words again.

Because the concerned words he was encountering for the first time were so sweet. Because that gaze he couldn’t even see was unbearably ticklish. Heat rose to the top of his head.

Seeing him become docile, having lost his words to an unbelievable degree, the woman easily laid him down on the bed and pulled the blanket up to cover his chest.

She seemed to have noticed his eyelids starting to grow heavy from fatigue at some point.

“…Will you come here again?”

Rude grabbed the woman’s wrist abruptly.

It was an action he took thinking she would shake off the hand of a dirty and lowly man right away. Most people would have.

But this time too, the woman was an exception. Without pulling away her grabbed arm, the woman said:

“If my presence is unwelcome to you, I won’t come anymore.”

Unwelcome… That only applies to that perverted old man or the arena guys.

The tension dissipates and strength leaves his body, as the end point of the day he thought he would die turns out to be here.

Feeling his blurry vision narrowing more and more, Rude retorted sarcastically until the very end.

“It’s not welcome, but… you have to get your money’s worth. So come anyway.”

His eyes closed smoothly. The strength left the hand holding onto the woman and it fell with a thud. Even until then, the woman stayed.

That uncomfortable warmth was so sweet that Rude, for the first time in his life, threw his whole mind into a deep sleep.