All of a sudden, the carriage jolted hard enough to rattle even the windows.
Jiro’s eyes snapped open. For a disorienting second he could not remember where he was, only that his cheek rested against something warm and soft, and that a low, steady heartbeat pulsed somewhere beneath the fabric his left cheek was pushed up against. He pushed himself upright too quickly and nearly knocked his forehead against the wooden wall of the carriage.
He instantly realised his head had been on Tsunade’s lap.
Heat flooded his face so fast it almost made him look like a blushing maiden. He scrambled back against the cushions, one hand already rising in apology.
Tsunade barely glanced at him. She was leaning toward the window, holding the curtain aside with two fingers, eyes narrowed at whatever was happening in the street.
“We’re near the main market,” she said, voice calm, as if a young man’s head on her thigh was the most ordinary thing in the world. “Too many vendors spilling into the road again. That’s why we stopped. Nothing to worry about.”
The simple reassurance settled something tight in Jiro’s chest even though he had not been particularly worried. He rubbed the back of his neck, still burning with embarrassment, and looked toward the half-open curtain.
She shifted just enough to make space for him. Jiro leaned in carefully, keeping as much distance as the narrow carriage allowed, and peered out.
The avenue had narrowed into a packed river of bodies and carts. Stalls spilled off the raised walkways and onto the cobblestones themselves; piles of fruit, bolts of bright cloth, cages of squawking birds- everything in this market seems to be a mess without proper organization. Farther along, a line of wooden poles had been driven into the ground. Chains glinted in the late afternoon light. People stood bound to those poles, wrists locked in iron, heads mostly bowed. Most of them wore rough, full-coverage clothing that left almost no skin visible, yet nothing could hide how thin some of them were. Ribs showed through their kimono-style loose clothing. Shoulders hunched under the gazes of the passerby people.
Among the line of the slaves, one handsome boy near the front of the line looked especially slight. His overly long clothes hung on him as if they belonged to someone larger. When a shift in the crowd made him lift his head, his eyes met Jiro’s for half a heartbeat.
Jiro looked away almost immediately.
Outside, Temple knights and city soldiers were already raising their voices, ordering the merchants to clear the road. A few vendors began packing with sullen haste. Others argued, waving their hands and pointing at their goods. The slave trader nearest the poles only tightened his grip on a short whip and shouted at his merchandise to stand straighter. When the largest of the knights finally lost patience and stepped toward the bound line with a heavy boot already lifting, Jiro moved.
He shoved the carriage door open and dropped into the street before Tsunade could stop him.
“Don’t you dare kick them.” He said.
The single sentence of his cut through the nearest argument. The knight’s boot hovered in the air. Heads turned. Jiro stood between the armored man and the skinny boy, heart hammering against his ribs, the fine travel clothes he had changed into on the train suddenly feeling too bright and too expensive for the dusty street.
“Why would you kick someone just to clear a road?” he asked that knight, voice tighter than he wanted. “Aren’t they also human? Why are you all treating them like this?” This story is hosted at NovelPing.
Tsunade was out of the carriage a second later. She stepped close enough that only he could hear the sharp, low whisper.
“Jiro-sama. Let the knight do his job.”
“Why?” He said it aloud, contrary to Tsunade’s whispering.
Her eyes flicked over the staring crowd, the cut of their own clothes, the Temple crest on her shoulder, and the way every nearby face had gone carefully blank seeing all of this on them. “Are you truly asking me that right now? Don’t you understand the situation we are in here, in the open?”
Jiro followed her gaze. Understanding arrived in his head. The expensive fabric of his coat, the polished boots, the way Tsunade’s armor caught the light- none of it belonged to ordinary travelers around him as far as he could see. They all stood out like fresh paint on old wood. He drew a slow breath and lowered his voice just enough to not let it carry over the market noise.
“I get it, Miss Tsunade. I may be from a backwater village, but I know the capital has slave traders who can openly buy and sell slaves. Just because I never saw any in Doldia doesn’t mean I don’t understand what a slave is. But that still doesn’t change anything. These people are blocking the road because their traders put them here. If someone needs kicking, kick the ones who treat human lives like stalls of fruit. How is that fair?”
A few of the better-dressed onlookers drifted backward when the last of his words were raised a little. Jiro actually intentionally raised his voice to let everyone here listen to that part. The slave traders nearest the poles suddenly tried to scramble as if they found urgent business elsewhere. One by one they began to melt into the crowd, heads down, already putting distance between themselves and the fine-clothed strangers who had just stepped out of a Temple carriage.
Jiro stood in the middle of the street with the late sun on his face and the skinny boy’s chains still glinting a few paces away, waiting to see what Tsunade would say next.
This was his test too at the same time, to see if she had enough humanity left in her to do what is right in front of her after hearing him say all of that right in her face.