After a moment of blankness, Raham hurriedly supported her wobbling form. Though Carlie waved her hand as if it were nothing, the person who had just spanked a woman barely half his size so thoroughly couldn’t let her go.

Following her into the workroom, various parchments were trampled underfoot. Unable to avoid stepping on them, he tried to step on as few as possible while Carlie skillfully avoided the parchments and went to her desk.

From the various strange substances laid out on the desk, she selected a yellow, viscous liquid and poured it into a bottle containing a green liquid. Raham couldn’t comprehend how that resulted in a pink color, but that was indeed the outcome.

When Carlie applied that pink liquid to her b*ttocks, the deep handprints disappeared without a trace.

Seeing him gaping, Carlie gave him an eye-smile.

“Surprised?”

He was. The recovery reagent said to be difficult to price was probably what he had just witnessed.

Raham firmly understood why this house didn’t need other treasures or ornaments. He noted carefully that if he were to grab something and run, this is what he should take.

‘Do I just mix those two together? How much should I mix, and where should I put it?’

The desk was covered with open glass bottles without lids.

“I know it’s fascinating, but don’t touch anything here. Understood? If you make a mistake, it will explode.”

Having been memorizing the liquid to avoid confusing it with similar substances, Raham responded belatedly.

“Explode?”

“Yes, explode.”

He wanted to find lids for a different reason now. He couldn’t understand why these explosives weren’t safely stored but scattered around haphazardly.

Then again, Carlie had always been an eccentric whom Raham couldn’t understand in any sense. He gave up trying to understand her without regret and focused on his own gain.

“You promised to buy me lamb skewers tomorrow, Master.”

“Three of them is enough?”

Three at once? Even while thinking this, Raham didn’t miss his opportunity.

“You should buy me five.”

“Expensive, aren’t you? But fine.”

Raham thought that occasionally spanking his master’s b*ttocks might not be so bad after all.

The next day, Carlie truly bought him five lamb skewers.

The five skewers—longer and more generous than expected—changed Raham’s assessment of Carlie from “untrustworthy pervert” to “pervert with strange tastes but plenty to extract from when living together.”

⁕⁕⁕

One day, as the taste of lamb skewers was gradually fading from Raham’s memory, Carlie finally emerged from her workroom where she had been spending increasingly more time, barely showing her face twice a day.

“Raham. Draw some bath water for me.”

The pattern felt somehow familiar.

Leaving Carlie sitting at the table peeling an orange with her disheveled appearance, he drew water from the well and carried it to the bathtub.

Usually, she never interfered as long as he did his work properly (or not), provided meals on time, and prepared water for washing. These were agreeable conditions for living together.

In fact, Raham was quite pleased with this environment. He could eat quality food seven or so times a day whenever he felt like it, and didn’t have to do hard physical labor. For a slave, these conditions couldn’t be better. He even had his own room with proper bedding.

However, this house was too small for an active person like Raham.

Though being a porter, mercenary, guard, and doing odd jobs had never been his choice, he had always worked outdoors. It was true that slaves and servant boys who worked indoors in warm, albeit cramped, spaces had seemed comfortable to him.

But now, stuck in this small house, he felt like he was going crazy with restlessness. He thought it would be better if he could at least chop firewood or carry some loads.

Whoosh—

The bathtub filled with water. Raham wiped sweat from his forehead and pulled the lever that activated the spell.

The bathtub that produced warm water from time to time was Raham’s second favorite thing in this house after the abundant food. He never tired of watching the spectacle of the spell circle turning red as it heated the water.

“Master.”

Carlie approached with her haggard face, casually removing her clothes. With each step she took toward the bathroom, articles of clothing fell to the floor.

Raham gathered the clothing strewn like stepping stones and placed them in the laundry basket. Sometimes he found himself pathetic doing this, but the abundant meals always silenced any complaints.

Additionally, Carlie’s complete lack of interest in whatever Raham did contributed to his satisfaction with this life.

He cleaned just enough to consider it adequate, and for laundry, he simply swirled clothes in the hot water from the tub with expensive detergent before hanging them to dry. Some clothes had shrunk somehow, but since their owner didn’t notice, it wasn’t his concern.

While thinking about it, he carefully hid the clothes he had bundled together to use as rags. Then, returning to the bathtub, he found Carlie already nodding off.

Is this what it feels like to raise a child who can’t earn a living?

In his life, he had never met someone with such poor survival skills as her. Even children would be carrying dishes in a restaurant by age seven. Well, since all the food he ate was based on Carlie’s money, he couldn’t complain.

Raham scrubbed Carlie’s back vigorously.

Only after he had thoroughly washed her did Carlie open her eyes. Usually, she would fall asleep when the sun rose and wake up when it was high in the sky with dark circles under her eyes, but after just sleeping in the bathtub, she looked refreshed.

‘Come to think of it, should I ventilate that room too?’

Though he was too afraid to enter because something might explode, he thought it would be fortunate if blue mold hadn’t grown in that gloomy corner.

“Well then.”

“……”

Carlie headed to the living room with a satisfied face. She grabbed a cushion and lifted the hem of the robe she had put on, and Raham hesitated for form’s sake.

“Are we doing this again?”

“Of course.”

Carlie calmly replied and lay down on her stomach on the cushion. Her face looked pale as she looked up expectantly, but Raham didn’t comply this time, thinking of his own interests.

“Is it the same as last time, where you enjoy yourself and I get what I want?”

“Of course.”

At her ready answer, Raham pulled up a chair and sat in front of her.

Before starting, after tapping the cushion several times to agree on the intensity, she added:

“This time I won’t tell you when to stop. Instead, when I say I did wrong, stop then. Before that, don’t stop no matter what I say.”

“‘I did wrong’…… you say?”

A master to a slave?

Raham’s eyes turned sinister. When slaves said such things to masters, they were usually desperate, but this woman was using it for play.

Should I just kill her?

But she wasn’t asking him to beg, and he couldn’t throw away this bed and table just because she would say she did wrong. Having always lived a life of physical labor, Raham struggled with the higher-dimensional problem of mental stress.

Carlie didn’t care about this either.

“Yes. And try to play along a bit.”

Play along? What did that even mean?

Carlie didn’t explain further. Raham raised his hand with a sour expression.

Having seen how quickly her reddened b*ttocks had turned white again last time, he felt no trace of guilt. Knowing how she would sob as if in terrible pain but immediately look satisfied afterward, he knew it wasn’t necessary.

As he struck her b*ttocks like before, Carlie again made sounds that were strange to hear.

“Ugh, ah!”

“……”

Slap!

“Hng, ah, it hurts……”

“……”

Raham continuously struck her b*ttocks while trying not to show his true feelings. He deliberately thought of other things.

Going out. Going out. Lamb skewers. Lamb skewers.

He hadn’t decided what to ask for yet. He would try for permission to go outside first, and if that failed, lamb skewers or… strawberries might be nice.

While Carlie had been buried in her workroom rarely showing herself, a peddler passed by the window every day. His wheeled cart sparkled with various fruits, among which the red strawberries looked especially delicious. They were a precious fruit he had never tasted in his life.

Slap!

“Ack! Hng, it hurts……”

Strawberries. Strawberries. Strawberries.

Faint veins stood out on the neck of the woman moaning in pain. Her throat constantly moved as if swallowing tears. Her white face, drenched in cold sweat, was flushed, and her narrowed eyes were smeared with grayish-white eyelashes and tears.

Frowning, Raham emptied his mind and chanted to himself.

Strawberries. Strawberries. Strawberries.

Slap!

Perhaps his desire to finish quickly affected his hand, because Carlie opened her eyes with a gasp. Her blue-gray eyes, glistening with tears, shot a reproachful look at Raham.

“Too hard……”

“……I’m sorry.”

What a picky pervert, asking to be spanked.