Episode 16
“Please calm down; we came here to help you.”
When the woman dropped to her knees and sobbed loudly, the gazes of passersby converged upon us. Feeling as though we had become bad people, I quickly dropped to my knees as well and clasped her hands.
Her hands, with thick knuckles and rough, worn-down fingerprints, resembled my dad’s.
“We came to find out properly what happened and investigate.”
“R-Really?”
The woman rubbed at her reddened eyes continuously.
“Yes, so instead of crying, spend that time searching your memory. About what happened after the day you found that gem.”
At Aidan’s words, her trembling lips opened.
“Nothing special happened, truly… As you know, people like us live the exact same day every day. When the sun rises, we wake up and go to the river, and I clean the fish my husband caught to go and sell them.”
Working when the sun rises, resting when the sun sets. Among commoners, that was a natural principle, after all.
“It was the same on that day, too. These days, during this season, a truly large amount of fish is caught in the Seg River. Because it’s the spawning season, they’re full of eggs… At any rate, my husband caught a fish that day, but its belly was strange somewhere. At first, we thought it was full of eggs, but unlike fish with eggs, it wasn’t plump, but lumpy with something…”
The woman continued speaking, drawing shapes in the air with her hands
“Just in case, we cut the belly open, and inside was a red gem about this size. Even to my husband and me, who had never seen a gem even from afar, it was pretty enough that we thought this was no ordinary gem. It was sparkling, but the color was subtle… My husband went excitedly to the local jeweler.”
There was only one jeweler in this village, but because it was a place that usually supplied gems to the local lord’s family as well, it was said to be a large jewelry shop unfitting for the scale of a small village.
“He said it wasn’t a gem. But then he said he would buy it anyway. Saying that although it was a mineral he was seeing for the first time, it was pretty enough to look like a gem, so it held value. My husband and I hesitated. It held even more true because the price he offered, while saying it wasn’t a gem, was quite high.”
The owner of the jewelry shop said he would buy that object—which he claimed was a simple mineral, not even a real gem—for a whopping 100,000 gold.
It was certainly suspicious.
No matter how valuable a mineral it might be, he didn’t even know exactly what it was. Offering a price of 100,000 gold was certainly not typical.
“Honestly, my hands trembled violently. Because even if we sold fish for the rest of our lives, we would never be able to touch that kind of money. So suspicion arose, wondering if it might actually be an extremely precious gem, and he was doing that to offer a lowered price.”
The wife wanted to sell it immediately upon hearing that amount, but her husband, the fisherman, thought differently.
“So he said he would think about it and came out, intending to try going to a jewelry shop in another village over the weekend. If you go just a little ways out from here, it’s the Wis region, and even just going there, there are plenty of jewelry shops, after all.”
“Why didn’t he go immediately?”
“Because he has to work on weekdays, of course.”
The woman tilted her head as if asking why he was questioning something so obvious.
“Taking even a single day off work was something we couldn’t even think of. We also wondered if people nearby might think it strange. There’s a spot where my husband always fishes, and he could lose that spot, after all.”
Unlike farmers who farm after receiving a portion of their own land or the local lord’s land, rivers and seas do not belong to oneself.
In fishing, there is what you call a ‘prime spot’ where fish are caught well. It was said he moved diligently every time in order to occupy that prime spot.
“It was the day before the weekend. In truth, because we had lived only in this village all our lives, we didn’t even know which jewelry shop in another village was famous. So my husband asked an acquaintance in the village. A person who runs a large orchard and supplies fruit to fruit shops in Wis… At any rate, whether he heard that story or not, the jewelry shop owner came looking for us.”
When they returned home after finishing work like usual, the jeweler was waiting in front of the house, she said.
“He said if we decided right now, he would give us 200,000 gold. Saying that 200,000 gold was even more expensive than a real ruby. When my husband hesitated, he said if we came after the weekend passed, he would trade at the original 100,000 gold.”
Fearing that if he went to another jewelry shop and it was appraised below 200,000 gold, it would be a loss, the husband ultimately decided to make the trade.
“When my husband agreed, he gave us 50,000 gold on the spot, calling it a down payment. Saying he was afraid our minds might change, since 50,000 gold was all the money he brought right now. Instead, we wrote a contract. Saying after the weekend passed, we would exchange it for the remaining difference of 150,000 gold.”
The woman rummaged around and pulled out the contract. Scanning it quickly, there were no particularly strange clauses.
“My husband and I were happy that day. Because a huge fortune of 200,000 gold had suddenly come to us. We fell asleep sharing happy conversations about what we would do with that money in the future. But…”
Tears welled up in the woman’s eyes once more.
“Even if it’s the weekend, for us, just like on weekdays, our eyes open when the sun rises. But on that day, perhaps because we were excited, we woke up even earlier than usual. Since it didn’t seem like we’d fall back asleep anyway, I was going to prepare breakfast, but someone was in the kitchen.”
The woman rubbed both her arms as if feeling goosebumps even now just thinking about it.
“At first, I thought I wasn’t fully awake. But it wasn’t that. From the start, it was a person who had entered with full intent, their face covered with a black mask, and stepping forward strode by strode, they gagged my mouth. I was so scared I passed out right on the spot.”
When she opened her eyes, the house was a mess, and the mineral hidden safely in the kitchen cupboard had vanished.
“And the jeweler reported your husband for failure to fulfill the contract, then.”
In the end, the fisherman was locked up in the dungeon and was currently waiting for his upcoming trial.
“Could you not have just returned the down payment you received in advance and canceled the contract as if it never happened?”
“We tried to do that too. Saying since being robbed couldn’t be helped, we would return it. Fortunately, we hadn’t spent a single penny of the money!”
The woman replied while sniffling.
“We didn’t know there was such a clause at the very bottom of the contract.”
“It was written very small indeed.”
At Aidan’s words, I re-examined the contract held in his hand.
At the very bottom, in truly tiny print, it was written: ‘If the contract is canceled due to the seller’s fault or change of mind, the seller must immediately pay ten times the received down payment as a penalty.’
“Suddenly telling us to pay back 500,000 gold, sob. By what means could commoners like us ever raise that kind of money?”
In the end, that was how the fisherman was taken away.
“It’s certainly strange. Whom did you inform that you had such a mineral in your house?”
“As for people we informed… The jeweler and the orchard owner are all. Other than that, we kept our mouths shut too. It wasn’t a story to go blabbering recklessly about anywhere, was it?”
“What about the possibility that those two said something somewhere?”
“Mm, there probably isn’t any. Both are tight-lipped people.”
The woman seemed certain. However, Aidan and I quietly exchanged glances. He seemed to share the same thought as me.
Inwardly, I swallowed a bitter sigh. There is no such thing as unconditional trust in this world. No matter how tight-lipped a person might be, if a grand profit is right before their eyes, isn’t a human’s heart something that becomes lighter than a feather in an instant?
Even more so when the jeweler came looking for them right after they asked the orchard owner about jewelry shops.
For now, Aidan and I left the house under the pretense of investigating.
“Where do we search for the core now? All the clues have vanished.”
“No, that probably isn’t a core.”
Shaking my head, I spoke.
“The groove in the place where the core was kept was half the size of my pinky finger at most. However, the size that woman drew with her fingers was much larger than that.”
“Still, wouldn’t you never know?”
Aidan’s words were correct, too. Because people usually tend to exaggerate when recalling memories.
“That’s true. Still, since we never know, we have to investigate. So let’s go here first.”
I spoke, pointing at the map.
