FTFOW Chapter 1 - Let Me Read the Newspaper

“Boy, you really are an odd one, aren’t you?”, the bearded peddler let out a perplexed sigh, “On the frontier, children usually love toys.”

While his main peddles were medicines and other urgent commodities, the peddler also sold dolls, monocles, and other toys. Their light weight made them a good side-job, and they could usually sell for a decent profit. In the poor villages, few could afford them, but those few would usually earn him his money back.

The boy in front of him was one of those few. He had dark hair, blue eyes, and a lovely face; he seemed well-groomed, which was no surprise since he was the son of the village chief.

But the problem was: he wasn’t even looking at the toys.

Kiko village was not particularly prosperous. It was located at the north-eastern frontier of Athria, which dominated the eastern part of the continent, and had a population of about seventy households. It was covered by the Heavenly Border (mountain) Range. The village farmers mainly cultivated Mekong and Sierra wheat, and some also bred horses, which were quite in-demand as warhorses.

“Look here at this one, it’s three horses that line up when comb—”

But the peddler’s explanation was cut off by a sigh. The boy was clearly bored; his instincts as a peddler realized this.

“Well, there is something I want...”

The boy took out a parchment roll from the peddler’s luggage. It was a newspaper published in the royal capital that covered major recent events; a solid product with a regular consumer base.

“I know I can’t afford to buy it, but if I could just read it here it would be fine.”

“It’s sealed, though. That’s the publishers unique way of tying i—”

The boy snickered.

“This isn’t your first peddle. You should know how to re-tie a knot, no?”

Without waiting for a rebut, the boy untied the knot from the parchment with practiced hands. The way he mumbled as he perused the paper stunned the peddler. The boy hadn’t even hit puberty yet.

“Thank you very much.”, done, the boy handed the peddler the parchment, knot, and a white copper coin: the normal price for reading the newspaper in the countryside. This further stunned the peddler, as he hadn’t told him the price yet.

After regaining his senses, the peddler followed after the boy. He found him with a group of children in ragged clothes. Following a little further, he found the boy leading the children towards the base of a large tree. The tree was painted black at its face.

The child grabbed a small wooden chair, white ink, some rags and sat down. The realization finally dawned upon the peddler: this was a classroom. But he was still confused; the war had only just ended. Bandits and refugees littered the countryside. The poor couldn’t even afford an education at the royal capital. How could they afford it here?

At this point, the children noticed the peddler.

“Look! There’s an extra visitor!”

But the peddler was still caught up in thought. Perhaps this was a fairy tale?, he thought. At that point, everything clicked. His vision of children transformed into fairies. As the fairies swarmed him, he opened his hand and—

—it was a misunderstanding.

The child grabbed the coin off his hand, the same white copper coin he had paid for the newspaper, and gave him a seat. The merchant realized this was no fairy tale, it was a cold-hard classroom.

The children probably got the lessons for free, but the price he’d paid was extremely economical for the lessons taught. In a normal tutorship or classroom, students would be taught to read scripture, but here, the readings were far more... profane.

“You can do it. You can do it,” the boy read out.

“You can do it. You can do it,” the children repeated.

“If you can’t do it today, try again tomorrow,” he continued.

“If you can’t do it today, try again tomorrow,” the children once more repeated.

“Good. Now write this down: if you want a sibling, go to bed early.”

“Teacher, why should I go to bed early?”, a child asked.

But the boy merely winked. The peddler was horrified, he’d never heard a child the boy’s age say something so scandalous.

Arithmetic was rare in educational settings. More established commercial families, like merchants, taught advanced arithmetic to their children, but commoners would at most know counting.

“Ugh! Okay... I’ll sell my Mekong wheat at the Moon Merchant Association then buy fish at the River Merchant and clothes at the Flower Merchant!”, a child frustratedly shouted.

“Have your neighbors grade your results.”, the boy calmly replied.

After the lessons were over, the boy even took extra questions. A few children had surrounded the boy at the base of the tree, and the peddler politely waited for them to leave.

“You sure have a lot of free time on your hands,” the boy remarked as the merchant approached.

“Well, I just had to talk to you after seeing your wealth of knowledge. Are you perhaps the son of a merchant family?”

“No. My father was a farmer by-birth, as was my mother.”

“...Really?”, the merchant asked in-spite of himself. He knew that no merchant family would linger at a poor border town like this one, but still had to ask.

During the past 50 years, the Kingdom had suffered from unremitting warfare against Eberia. Athria was so inferior that it put up little resistance as the Eberians flooded the north, south, and center of the country. Some people chose to flee the country, while others fled to border towns further away from the invasion like this one.

The war was long over, but it was possible that a merchant family remained here, though he’d never heard of one. But that was irrelevant.

“No wait, I’d meant to ask you how you learned arithmetic.”

The boy sighed, “Why are you wasting your time here, old man? The country’s busy with reconstruction, this is your chance to profit.”

The youth’s harsh tone made the man cringe. The man peered into the boy’s eyes, but retracted his gaze soon after. His gaze was far too strong for the man to bear. He’d never encountered such a man before, nor had he heard of one. Or wait, the gaze reminded of one man, though, a man he’d only seen once, as far-fetched as that sounds. The man was not one fondly spoken of.

After all, Solomon had murdered the hero blessed by the church. He was a bloodthirsty madman, no, a bloodthirsty demon who took pleasure in killing with his blade, friend or foe alike. That was Solomon.

When he was still young, the peddler had met Solomon at the camp of a volunteer army. A soldier was manhandling a merchant who accused him of not paying all the funds necessary when Solomon intervened. He immediately dismissed the soldier, and made it up to the merchant.

“Boy, what’s your name?” the merchant steeled himself and asked.

"Marco”, the boy replied.