Where the Orphans Are

"Obaa-san, you're alright?" I murmured absentmindedly. My attention was divided between her more aggressive demeanour and the troubling Window that had just popped up in front of me. As I stood up, I leant against my left arm and pushed myself off the ground.

"Where is everyone?"

Obaa-san ignored my question and laughed incredulously. "Oyoiyoi, I see you're not a cripple anymore. What was the reward you got? A powerful healing item? What an absolute waste to use it on you."

Her last sentence didn't reach me, I was still overly anxious about the other orphans. "Where is everyone? Why is the orphanage in such a mess?"

"Really? That's all you think about after all this time? Oyoiyoi…" Obaa-san shook her head slightly in disbelief then laughed — almost maniacally, "how long do you think it's been since you went off on that stupid quest or whatever?"

I paused. As a matter of fact, the thought hadn't crossed my mind. It felt like I had only been away for a little bit, but I had no idea to make sure since I passed out in the solo dungeon a couple of times.

With a lot of uncertainty, I mumbled, "two…three days?"

Obaa-san's cackling caused me to flinch back. It was louder than before. "Two, three days he says. Wow."

She stepped into her room as she answered, "it's been over a month since you left all of them. And with nobody to help out with feeding and looking after them, I had no choice but to let them all get adopted into families."

"All of them?" I said quietly in disbelief.

She stepped forward again, and I backed away from her.

"All of them."

"But there were seven of us! Gorou had just been adopted, we never had families who wanted to adopt that often." I cried out.

"Who told you that?" Obaa-san grinned at me with a terrifying look of glee.

"What? You did, that's why —"

"Have you ever thought that maybe the clients weren't paying enough? Or maybe I had to make sure that nobody had any suspicion something else was going on?" Obaa-san interrupted, "it was working fine till that stupid bastard found out about it all somehow. Oyoiyoi it makes me so mad just thinking about it."

"You mean —?" I said slowly.

"You found the letters Kei sent, surely you're not too stupid to connect the dots." Obaa-san laughed.

My attention snapped back to my discovery, "you lied to me about Kei's letters!"

The anger started to rise inside my stomach, and for some reason my arm was starting to become hot at the same time.

Obaa-san clicked her tongue and rolled her eyes. "You have no idea how annoying Kei was to deal with before he turned eighteen and left for his Title Quest."

Obaa-san leant against the wall in a casual manner as my anger stirred at the bottom of my chest. "Did you ever notice that when Kei was around, there was a much lower…adoption rate with the kids in the orphanage?"

The anger subsided ever so slightly as I thought back through my now tainted memories. Obaa-san was right, almost nobody was adopted in the last two years that Kei had stayed before he left. I didn't notice until now, "you mean he had something to do with that?"

"Oyoiyoi did he ever? The small fry goons the clients sent was always chased away by that little shit of a kid. He had always been blessed in good stats by Paradigm, so he was able to leverage that into beating those weak assholes. He was quite a bit stronger than the average adult; did you know that? I would have made quite a small fortune if I had managed to sell him to the Ringmaster…" Obaa-san whistled a sad tune.

"The Ringmaster?" I absentmindedly repeated.

"He would have paid so much for someone with Kei's stat points. But the little shit snuck out while I was away from the orphanage, greeting the Ringmaster." Obaa-san sighed, and then her face shifted to anger.

"I was so embarrassed. It could have been the start of a new line of customers for me, but somehow Kei found out about it and left before I could sell him."

Obaa-san spat on the ground to her side, "I don't know how he found out, but curse that kid, he ran off before the Ringmaster got to the orphanage."

As she continued to speak ill of Kei, my focus started to wane. Her voice began to muffle as I started to dissociate away from the conversation. Obaa-san had no reason to lie, but I struggled to accept the truths that she said.

Without looking up, I asked her the only question my mind could muster.

"Are the other kids safe?"

The question surprised her and her cackling snapped me out of my apathy.

"You're kidding." She incredulously said.

I looked into her eyes and didn't see any semblance of the old woman who had looked after me after all these years. My apathy was slowly replaced by a wave of incomparable anger that I had never felt before.

"Is Gorou okay?" I started, my voice slightly terser than my first question, "Amana? Taido? Is Saito fine?"

Obaa-san's continued chuckle and head shake caused the anger to grow and grow within me.

"I don't know," she finally answered as she took steps toward me. Her voice was flat and unaffectionate, "and I don't really care. All that mattered to me was whether or not I could get a good price off of them."

Something snapped in me and I cried out in anguish and sadness. Little did I know, that at the very same time Obaa-san had tried to take a swing at me with the stick that rested against the wall of her room. She held the stick like a weapon, and I finally realised that the stick was actually a medium-length staff.

I didn't intend to shove her so hard, my body just felt like it had to move, to expend some of the energy that had been building up inside, but the force caused Obaa-san's swing to completely falter and she fell on the opposite side of the room from where I was.

She must have had to cut herself during the fall because in the dim light I could see the shine of blood that ran down the inner part of her arm.

The nimble movement that she made as she got up to a defensive fighting stance surprised me as it went against all the times I saw her asking for help from us orphans.

She noticed the look on my face and laughed cruelly, "ah, yes, you don't know anything yet. Were you expecting the old, feeble, useless woman you used to know?"

Obaa-san hopped from one leg to the other. She was very light on her feet and showcased a fraction of her agility. The agility that you wouldn't expect out of someone as old as her.

"Oyoiyoi, you probably think I'm just an old grandma in the middle of nowhere. But truth is, I'm not." Obaa-san chuckled heartily. "I guess there's no need to pretend anymore since you're the last loose end. It'll definitely be a hassle to set up a con like this somewhere else. But what can you do?"

The System confirmed the next words she said to me with a Window that was partially redacted behind an "UNDISCOVERED" banner.

"I'm Aoi Akagi, a child slave trader, and I'm twenty years younger than I pretend to be."

Straight away after finishing her statement, Obaa-san — Aoi — no, she lunged at me at a scary, unexpected speed.

Somehow, through a mixture of instinct and the help of my improved Agility stat, I managed to dodge her lunge. I could hear her surprise at my dodge as she mumbled something out of my range of hearing. She handled the staff formidably and spun it around her body in an intricate pattern that showed her mastery in handling it as a weapon.

"Scan user." She growled and clicked her tongue, "I see you've hidden your level and attributes, you cheeky bastard."

I froze. I never did that.

"So, you knew about me somehow and yet you still pretended like you knew nothing?" she yelled and lunged at me again, utilising her weapon to extend her reach.

As if my body reacted fully on instinct, I dodged my head away from the end of the staff that she pushed menacingly at me and slipped into her personal space.

From there, I managed to stick out my leg in front of her feet simultaneously as I grabbed her staff with my left hand while using the other to give her a firm shove in the back so that she would lose her balance.

A wet substance caused my grip on her weapon to slip but I managed to get her to stumble and fall down quite hard on the ground.

I realised that the wet substance was the blood from her earlier cut and attempted to wipe my hand but a Window popped up in front of me that caused me to pause.

"How the hell—?" she growled under her breath as she got herself back up on her feet quickly.

[ALERT!

BLOOD SACRIFICE VICTIM ACCEPTED!

BLOOD SACRIFICE STATUS TILL COMPLETION: 1% (+)]