The room fell silent.
Yamato shifted to the top of his bed, resting against the wooden frame. His eyes never left his mother.
Concern, curiosity, too many questions.
Esther wasn't looking at him anymore, her eyes were fixed somewhere beyond the room... beyond the walls.
As though she were staring into another time, another life.
Yamato finally broke the silence. "Mom... is there anything I'm missing?"
PHEW!
Esther let out a long sigh before meeting his eyes. "Baby," she said softly, folding her hands on her lap. "I'll try to explain everything..."
She paused.
"...from my beginning."
Yamato leaned forward without realizing it. He nodded.
Every word already felt heavy before she had even spoken it.
"I was told my mother died giving birth to me."
A faint smile appeared on her lips, not from happiness, from acceptance.
"And my father..."
"...died months before that."
"I never saw either of them."
"I was alone before I even opened my eyes."
Her voice trembled, only slightly. But Yamato noticed.
His chest tightened. He had never seen this side of his mother before and he never wanted to.
She swallowed before continuing.
"My uncle... took me in."
---
FORTY-ONE YEARS AGO.
Long before villages had proper names... long before they were connected by roads...
There was a small settlement hidden deep within Kehi. It wasn't considered a separate village.
It simply lived under Kehi's name.
Kehi itself prospered because of one thing... it's closeness to the sea.
Its markets stretched across the shoreline, attracting merchants from every direction. Trade never slept there.
Coins changed hands from sunrise until nightfall.
Among everyone who lived within Kehi... One name stood above the rest.
Mr. Hogbark. The richest man in the region.
His mansion towered above every other home.
While everyone else built with wood and clay... Hogbark's entire residence was forged from polished iron.
The only iron-built house in all of ROKYE. That alone spoke louder than wealth ever could.
His fortune wasn't inherited. It was earned, or perhaps... Taught.
Hogbark originally came from the continent of LOUNGE, where business was treated almost like warfare.
Deals, negotiations, manipulation, profit. He mastered every side of it.
Both legal... and illegal.
His elder brother, Mr. Termi, Esther's father, never possessed the same gift.
Though the two were Irish twins, their paths separated early. Both had been born through what the people of LOUNGE called a Wealth Bargain.
A form of payment where children, slaves, valuables themselves became settlement of debt.
All of Hogbark's siblings had been payments.
But Hogbark... He had been the final payment, the complete settlement.
The debtor carried the young boy everywhere. Business meetings, trades, negotiations, smuggling routes, market games, legal methods, illegal methods.
Hogbark watched, learned, remembered.
By the time he earned his freedom... business had already become second nature.
Years later... He built an empire.
Within his mansion lived his two children.
Grish. A cheerful six-year-old girl.
And Gabana. A playful four-year-old boy.
Neither shared the same mother.
Different women had given birth to them, hoping blood ties would one day grant them a share of Hogbark's fortune.
Only one remained and his children.
Long before either child had been born...
Esther already lived inside the mansion. Not as a slave, never as a slave. She worked as an employee.
Nine years passed before Grish entered the world.
Like Esther... Grish never had the chance to know her mother. Perhaps that was why Esther cared so deeply for her.
She became more than a caretaker, she became a mother figure, she played with her, protected her, corrected her when she was wrong, praised her when she was right.
Grish adored her.
Despite growing up in unimaginable wealth... she remained kind.
Disciplined, humble. Something many rich children never became.
Two years later... Gabana was born.
Unlike before... Hogbark truly loved Gabana's mother.
He married her.
For a while... life continued peacefully.
The mansion was filled with laughter. Meals were shared, work continued, nothing seemed out of place.
Until... Gabana's mother began revealing who she truly was.
She had grown up as what people called... A trench kid.
Someone whose hunger wasn't for food... but attention. She wanted eyes on herself, praise, importance.
Everything had to revolve around her.
At first... She simply watched.
Then she noticed something she couldn't tolerate.
Hogbark treated Esther with warmth, with trust.
Almost... Like his own daughter.
Because Hogbark never revealed Esther's true identity as his niece...
His wife believed Esther was nothing more than an ordinary house employee.
Someone beneath her, someone she could control, someone she could break.
And her plans... went frighteningly smooth.
By then... Esther had already turned fifteen.
Years of honest work had allowed her to build respectable wealth within Hogbark's household.
Enough that an average man would envy her savings.
Then... Opportunity arrived.
Hogbark left on a business trip for one week.
The moment he disappeared... everything began.
Gabana's mother approached Esther in secret. She wanted part of Esther's wages. Money she could easily have received from Hogbark himself.
Yet, for reasons no one understood... she wanted Esther's.
Perhaps greed, perhaps pride, perhaps something darker.
But Esther refused, every day, every night. For the entire week, she stood her ground.
Not once did she surrender a single coin.
That refusal only fed Gabana's mother's greed. Each rejection made her colder, crueler, more determined.
When demanding failed... She chose another path.
She planted poison. Not in Esther... but inside Gabana.
The little boy obeyed every instruction his mother gave. His playful nature slowly twisted into mischief, mockery, disrespect, hostility.
All directed toward Esther.
Esther ignored it. She continued working, believing it would eventually pass, but it didn't.
Days became weeks, weeks became months.
The resentment only grew. Then... Gabana's mother succeeded where Esther never imagined she could.
She reached Grish, slowly, patiently, carefully. She filled the young girl's heart with doubt. One lie after another.
Until Grish finally stood beside her instead.
That... Broke Esther's heart, not because they argued, but because Grish had been her closest friend.
Her cousin, her little playmate.
Again and again, Esther tried to explain, again and again, Grish refused to believe her.
The distance between them only widened. Arguments became common inside the mansion.
Disputes followed.
Hogbark settled them. Again and again and again.
But life had its own cruel truth.
Sometimes... a woman could convince a man...
Long before the man realized he had already begun believing her.
One year passed.
Esther turned sixteen.
By then, Gabana's mother had already made up her mind. "She has enough money to start her own life."
That was the reason she gave, the excuse. But it wasn't the truth. Something far greater was moving behind the scenes.
Far from Hogbark's mansion, another name had begun spreading throughout Kehi.
A young businessman, a rising merchant. A man whose success threatened even Hogbark's position.
Mr. Mazin.
Like Hogbark, Mazin had also been born through a Wealth Bargain.
Business flowed through his veins. Every decision was calculated, every coin had a purpose.
His company was growing rapidly.
Market after market... Trade after trade... His influence expanded until people began comparing him to Hogbark himself.
Gabana's mother saw an opportunity.
Without Hogbark's knowledge... she secretly arranged a meeting with Mazin. Her proposal was simple.
She would sell Esther... along with her remarkable talent for finance and business management.
In return... Mazin would slow the expansion of his company.
Mazin accepted immediately, not because he needed another servant... but because he recognized value.
Esther was worth far more than the price attached to her.
The deal was struck.
Exactly as Gabana's mother had planned. Soon afterward... Mazin paid a formal visit to Hogbark.
Not as an enemy, but as a grateful businessman.
He openly thanked Hogbark's wife for her "support."
He even revealed that her contribution was the reason he had chosen to stop expanding his business.
The words sounded sincere, respectful, generous.
To Hogbark... It appeared his wife had done something noble.
How could any successful husband question his wife after receiving such public gratitude?
The deception was perfect. Without realizing it... Hogbark had already been blinded.
Mazin, however... had his own problems. Strange ones, brilliant ones, ridiculous ones.
He had convinced himself that marriage was nothing more than a distraction.
Women... In his eyes... Only slowed business.
Gabana's mother's actions had only strengthened that belief.
So instead of marrying... he visited whore houses whenever desire overtook him. His business headquarters stood in the larger, bustling side of Kehi, not the hidden community where Hogbark lived.
His own residence was another masterpiece. Built entirely from polished wood beneath a carefully crafted clay roof.
Like Hogbark's mansion... It was one of a kind throughout ROKYE.
Esther was sold. The price... Four hundred and fifty thousand Flicks.
Yet everyone who understood business knew the truth. Her personal net worth was nearly...
Seven million, eight hundred and ninety thousand Flicks. Enough wealth for an average man to live comfortably for nearly two years without lifting a finger.
The moment ownership changed... Everything changed.
Every coin she possessed... now belonged to Mazin. She was no longer an employee. She became... a slave.
Not by the way she was treated, but by law. Even so... Mazin still placed her within his business. She managed finances alongside the other workers.
Some had been born into slavery, others had been purchased, just like her.
Days turned into weeks, weeks into months. Life settled into routine. It wasn't the life she wanted.
But... It wasn't unbearable either.No one starved, no one was whipped. Everyone worked, everyone ate.
They were slaves by title...
Yet treated much like employees. It was... Enough.
Then one day... Rumours spread across Kehi.
One of the women from a whore house was pregnant. The father...
Mr. Mazin.
The news shocked everyone. It would become his first child.
Unlike countless other wealthy men... Mazin refused abortion, he never intended to marry the woman, nor did he seek any relationship with her.
Instead... He paid generously for her silence, kept her hidden and waited for the child to be born.
That child... would one day become known throughout the world as...
Ozaki. The world strongest.
As always... Esther found herself unable to ignore children who had no parents or only one.
Perhaps because she saw herself in them. Perhaps because loneliness recognized loneliness.
She cared for the boy, fed him, guided him, protected him, loved him.
For an entire year... She became the closest thing Ozaki ever had to a mother.
Life continued peacefully. Until another piece of news arrived.
This one... Changed everything.
A terrible tragedy had occurred in the small community. The richest man in Kehi...
Had been murdered, not by strangers, not by thieves. But by a young man consumed by revenge.
He slaughtered... his entire family, anyone connected to them, even the families of witnesses to the killings.
No one was spared. Among the dead...
Were Mr. Hogbark, his wife, Grish, Gabana and two other families caught within the massacre.
Gone. Every one of them.
The young man responsible... would later become known as...
Kaku. The only survivor from his bloodline... his nephew.
A boy who would one day become known as... Ichiha.
When the news reached Esther... She couldn't speak.
The memories came flooding back, her uncle. The man who had taken her in, the little girl who once followed her everywhere, the little boy who had once laughed beside her.
Despite everything that had happened... despite being sold away... She had never stopped loving them.
Now... they were gone. Forever.
She cried, silently, alone, but there was nothing she could do.
Because legally... She no longer belonged to Hogbark.
When he sold her, every official record linking Esther to his household had been erased through magic.
To the people of Kehi... she had never existed there. No one came looking for her. No one even knew she should be mourning.
Life continued, and so did Esther working beneath Mr. Mazin.
---
Yamato's room slowly came back into focus. The silence that followed Esther's story lingered between them.
Neither of them spoke.
The morning breeze drifted through the broken opening in the roof, gently stirring the curtains.
Yamato remained seated on the bed, his eyes stayed fixed on his mother. Everything he had just heard continued settling inside him.
The wealth, the betrayal, the slavery, the massacre.
It all felt too heavy, too unreal.
Slowly, he reached out and rested a hand on Esther's shoulder.
He wanted to be sure hat she was here, that she was no longer trapped in those memories.
Esther looked up at him and smiled faintly. "What is it, Yamato?"
He hesitated, his lips parted before closing again. Then he finally spoke.
"I..." He scratched the back of his head. "...is it the same Ozaki we know today?"
"Or... another kid who might've changed his name?"
Esther couldn't help but giggle, the question was so unexpected that it briefly lifted the weight in the room.
"How would you describe your Master Ozaki?"
Yamato leaned back, thinking. "He's tall, talks less, feels too much, loves holding back."
"He could be a women's favourite just from the way he walks and carries himself and..."
"...he has brown hair."
Esther rested a finger against her chin, comparing the image in her mind with the little boy she had once cared for. "Mazin was tall..."
"So it wouldn't be surprising if Ozaki inherited his height."
A gentle smile crossed her face. "I taught him to speak less... to think before acting... to understand how others feel."
She looked toward the window. "Those parts sound exactly like him."
Then she paused.
"The brown hair..."
She hummed softly. "Magic can sometimes change a person's hair colour."
"It depends on how powerful that magic is."
Yamato lowered his eyes.
There was no longer any doubt, the child from his mother's story... the lonely boy she had cared for...
The son of Mr. Mazin... was the very same Ozaki who stood today as the strongest man in the world.
His own master. He slowly let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. "So..."
"It really is him."
Esther nodded. "It is."
Silence settled over the room once more, only this time... It felt different.
Not empty, reflective.
His father's words, his mother's past, Ozaki's childhood.
Somehow... Everything was beginning to connect. Yet the picture still wasn't complete.
He looked back at Esther.
"...Your story isn't finished."
She smiled, a quiet smile, one touched by both sorrow and gratitude.
"No."