Chapter 119
Aurora froze like stone at the sight before her.
Women were packed so tightly behind the iron bars that there wasn't even room to put a foot down.
There were middle-aged women, girls who weren't yet adults, and even small children in their mothers' arms.
They weren't the noble ladies Aurora was looking for. They were all commoners.
Old, tattered clothes.
Faces stained by not being able to wash properly.
Shoulders hunched in fear.
They trembled as if frightened whenever footsteps drew near.
“What are you staring at?”
Bran, who had been walking ahead, said irritably.
“Those people....”
“You don't need to worry about them. They're low-grade goods from a different class than you.”
“Low-grade goods...?”
“You've probably figured it out by now, haven't you? Where you've come to.”
Once you're in here, there's no way out.
Seeing no need to hide it any longer, Bran began speaking freely.
“Nobles like you are high-grade goods. Those without a house to their name and plain-looking ones are low-grade goods.”
The women in the iron cage were the ones he gestured toward when he called them low-grade goods.
They were not words you should ever say to another human being.
Someone's mother.
Someone's daughter.
Someone's family.
It was belittling all of those lives.
Aurora looked inside the cage. Her eyes met those of the woman holding a child in her arms.
A resigned expression.
She didn't even ask for help.
As if she had already learned that saying those words was useless.
“...”
That gaze stabbed Aurora in the chest.
At first, she thought it was a missing young lady case.
Noble young ladies who had disappeared after imitating her novel.
She had thought it would be over once she found them and safely sent them home.
But it wasn't.
There had been victims here long before. It was only because the noble young ladies had disappeared that high society had finally started making a fuss.
Someone had vanished even before then.
Someone had been sold.
Someone had been forgotten without even leaving behind a name.
Because they had no house.
Because there was no one to speak for them.
Because it wouldn't matter much if they disappeared.
At the thought of the women who had been sold, Aurora's hand tightened before she knew it.
Her nails pressed into her soft skin.
She didn't even feel pain.
Suppressed anger leaked out. Her fists trembled.
“Keep going. Your friends are waiting.”
Aurora kept staring at the women stubbornly before she was shoved along.
Soon, they stopped in front of the same kind of iron cage. There were women inside as well.
Only, there were far fewer than before. The atmosphere they gave off was strangely different.
They were clearly dressed as commoners, yet they didn't look like commoners at all.
They were the missing young ladies.
-Creeeak.
The guard opened the barred door.
“Go in.”
Aurora stepped into the cell.
The young ladies paid her no attention at all, whether she came in or not.
They all sat with their heads buried in their knees, silent as mice.
They were in the same state as the commoner women she'd seen earlier.
Aurora approached the frightened young ladies. She bent down to their eye level.
It looked as if they had already been crying for a long time; their eyes were all swollen, and tear tracks they hadn't been able to wipe away had dried on their faces.
Aurora steadied her trembling voice and forced herself to speak calmly.
“Is everyone all right?”
The youngest young lady nearby flinched at the words.
At first, as if she thought another victim had been brought in, a look of deep pity filled her eyes.
But the moment she recognized Aurora's face.
“...Huh?”
The young lady's eyes widened in shock.
She had never exchanged a word with Aurora. At most, she had seen her once from afar.
Yet the brilliance she radiated was impossible to forget.
“Y-Your Highness...?”
Even if her clothes were plain, she knew at a glance who stood before her.
“Is it really Your Highness?”
“Yes, it is.”
“How did Your Highness get here...?”
At the unusual tone of the conversation, the young ladies who had been keeping their heads down one by one lifted them.
Shock flickered in their lifeless eyes as well.
“Your Highness?”
“That can't be...!”
“This person is the Princess...?”
None of them seemed to believe it.
They occasionally brought in noble daughters from prestigious houses, but they had never dreamed the princess herself would be brought here.
“Could it be that you were captured too, Your Highness?”
“I came to rescue you all.”
At those words, color flooded the young ladies' faces all at once.
“I knew it was you, Your Highness. I believed in you! Is the knight order waiting outside?”
“No. The knight order would have stood out too much, so I couldn't bring them.”
“Then the knight commander came, at least?”
“No. I slipped out secretly, so no one in the imperial family knows I'm here.”
Not the knight order either.
Not even a small elite team.
The princess came undercover, and no one in the imperial family knows?
“Then who on earth...”
“I came with a slave.”
“...Huh? Who?”
“My slave.”
The young ladies blinked.
“A slave...?”
“You came here with nothing but one slave, without any guards?”
“Yes.”
“A slave... The Princess... relying on just one slave... and to the stronghold of a human-trafficking ring...”
One young lady murmured blankly, then her eyes slowly rolled back.
Unable to endure the momentary dizziness, she collapsed on the spot.
“Young Lady Roselia!”
She'd finally thought they might escape this hellish place, but hope had slipped by like a midsummer night's dream.
“What's all this commotion?”
A cold voice rang out.
It wasn't even shouted loudly.
And yet the young ladies' murmuring subsided as if someone had splashed cold water over them.
As if they had been conditioned to fear him.
“Sir Murdock, you're here.”
The guards bowed to the approaching man.
Aurora turned and looked at the man standing before the iron bars.
Lean build.
Hair slicked back neatly.
The rings on every finger glittered in the torchlight.
‘This man...’
Before they came underground, when Leon was interrogating Kardin.
The moment he tried to confess, another member of the organization clearly said this.
If he told the truth, Murdock would kill them all.
In other words, this man called Murdock was the mastermind behind this kidnapping case involving the young ladies, and the boss of the organization.
Murdock's and Aurora's gazes met. His cold eyes, as though appraising merchandise, widened for a moment.
“...That's an unfamiliar piece of merchandise. Who is she?”
“She just came in.”
“Which house is she from?”
“I was just about to check.”
“I see.”
Murdock approached Aurora.
“What's your name?”
“I'm Laura.”
“Laura again, huh. I don't know how many Lauras there are in the world.”
Murdock sounded fed up.
Because there were already plenty of young ladies using the name Laura to imitate Aurora from the novel.
“Which house are you from?”
“Why do you need to know?”
The air around them froze instantly.
Bran's eyes widened.
The young ladies in the cell sucked in their breath.
There was no one here who spoke back to Murdock like that.
At least not among those who had entered this underground and survived in one piece.
Murdock looked at Aurora for a moment.
“You've still got spirit.”
This was also a familiar reaction, one he saw often in other young ladies.
“The young ladies who are captured for the first time all act proud. Do you know who I am? My father won't let this slide. If you let me go now, I'll spare your life.”
“...”
“They think that's a threat, but to me it just sounds like a frightened puppy barking.”
A few of the young ladies lowered their heads.
When they were first dragged here, they had said similar things too, but all they got in return was ridicule.
After that day, they realized it.
Their house would be no shield here.
“Your house protected you outside.”
“...”
“But it's different in here. A house isn't a place you return to; it's a rating chart used to price you.”
Aurora's gaze turned ice-cold.
“So speak. Which house's daughter are you? If you're from a prestigious house, your treatment will improve a little. High-grade goods have to be handled like high-grade goods if you want a high price.”
“And if I'm not?”
“If we can get a ransom out of you, we keep you. If not, we dispose of you. Still, don't worry. With looks like yours, you'll sell for a high price to foreign nobles.”
Aurora bit her lip hard.
“Then... what about the people I saw on the way here?”
“On your way here?”
“The people in the other cage.”
Murdock turned his head toward the corridor.
“Ah, the low-grade goods?”
Aurora's fingertips twitched.
“Do I really need to know where the low-grade goods go—ones with no one to look for them, no house to pay their ransom, and only mouths to feed if they're kept too long?”
It was such a callous answer.
So callous that Aurora couldn't possibly bear it.
“They're someone's family too.”
Emotion seeped into her voice.
“Some are mothers. Some are children. There's even a child who still can't walk properly.”
“So?”
Murdock didn't waver in the slightest.
“I can't run a business by checking every little circumstance. Once they come here, they're all the same. The only difference is value.”
Aurora bit down harder on her lip.
Calling people objects.
Pricing them.
Selling them without a second thought.
“...You really don't see people as people, do you?”
Murdock lazily lifted one corner of his mouth.
“You've finally understood. Everything here is merchandise. No matter what kind of life they lived outside, in the end they're goods brought in to be sold.”
The instant those words ended.
Something inside Aurora snapped.
“In <The Princess Hides Her Status>, Princess Aurora would reveal her identity at moments like this and turn the situation around.”
Reading it had been thrilling.
Her hidden identity was revealed.
The villains were shocked.
The oppressed regained hope.
But after experiencing it herself, she understood.
It wasn't a cool scene.
It wasn't a cathartic one either.
It was simply that she couldn't hold back any longer.
Because she didn't want to hear another disgusting word.
It was the rage that had risen to her throat, finally bursting out after she could no longer bear it.
“So I'll ask once more. Which house are you from?”
“...Balt.”
“I can't hear you. Speak up.”
Aurora slowly lifted her head.
Bloodshot veins stood out in her blue irises.
Because of an emotion she'd never felt before, a fierce aura settled in her eyes.
“Aurora Argenvalt. That's my name.”
A brief silence.
Murdock blinked blankly, as if his mind had stopped. Then he shook his head with a sigh.
“Not only are you imitating the princess from a novel, you're even impersonating the real princess. You really are a flower-brained young lady.”
As if she were no longer worth his time, he turned his back.
Aurora spoke to his back.
“They are citizens of the Empire. People I, as the princess, am supposed to protect. I won't let someone like you treat them like objects.”
“She's not in her right mind. Tie her up so she doesn't run wild, and make sure she's moved tonight—”
“Leon.”
Abruptly.
Murdock's words were cut off.
The young ladies too.
The guards too.
Murdock too.
Everyone looked at Aurora.
“That's an order.”
Aurora met every one of those gazes head-on, and began muttering as if someone were standing right beside her.
“First. Do not let anyone captured here be hurt any further.”
Murdock's brow furrowed at the incomprehensible muttering.
“She's more mentally broken than I thought. At this rate, even good looks won't be enough to make you valuable. Should I inject her with something...”
“Second.”
Aurora cut Murdock off once more. She glared at him sharply, eyes fixed straight on him.
“Do not let anyone here escape. In the name of the imperial family, I'll make sure every last one of you pays for your crimes.”
Though he still wasn't visible, Aurora knew.
Even now, he was listening to her voice.
Her words were finished.
Nothing happened.
At least, that was how it looked to everyone.
They thought Aurora was scared and muttering to empty air.
“Ha.”
Murdock gave a laugh of disbelief, as if it was ridiculous.
“You're really going to keep acting until the very end? You thought saying that would turn this situation around?”
He took a step toward Aurora.
“Things like that only happen in novels.”
At that moment.
-Whoosh.
The torches along the corridor all flickered at once.
The flames flared violently as if struggling once, then the next instant fell silent as though cut by a blade.
Darkness shrouded the underground.
From within it, a voice could be heard.
“At your command.”