Chapter 191 – Scolding
"What? Those things are all scams. What did you do?"
"We thought so too but Ben's like that now."
She pointed at him and Halle turned to take a better look. She saw he was still the same as before, expressionless and unmoving.
"This is a joke, right?"
She came to him and stirred him a few times. Now was the critical part for Benjamin. He had to wait until she did something that the girls didn't try before to "wake up" and act as if that was the trigger to get him out of hypnosis. When he didn't react to what she did, Halle looked worried. She couldn't go too hard on him since he was a boy - and a total darling, at that - so she turned toward the girls again, a big frown on her face.
"Whose app was that?"
"M-mine."
"Kiana, you little..."
"Sorry, Mom, it was just for fun!"
"For fun? What did you do to him that he'd get... like this?"
"N-nothing."
"You three are not getting out of this so easily. What are you waiting for, Kiana? Look into the app's instructions and tell me how to wake him up!"
She hastily obeyed her and checked the app for some time.
"They say you should first try to snap your fingers. If that doesn't work, clap your hands. And if that still doesn't work, throw a bit of water at him. The last options are to put him on a chair and make it fall from the back or... to give him a big slap."
As she talked, Halle tried things in real-time. He didn't react to the finger snapping and hand clapping, forcing her to fetch some water. When she threw some at his face, he finally took the opportunity to react.
"...Ah! Y-you girls..."
"Are you alright, Ben?"
"Yes, I'm fine."
"Do you remember what happened?"
"Yes."
The three girls started to tremble. They were doomed now.
"What did they do to you?"
"They... didn't do much. They just kept whispering, um, dirty things in my ears and laughed at my reaction."
The four females looked surprised, with the three girls not believing he actually covered for them. Halle continued to interrogate him.
"Is that all? Are you sure?"
"Yes."
She now seemed relieved because she imagined much worse. She sent a look at the bulge in his pants and looked back at him.
"I see."
That didn't mean she would let the three girls off, though.
"You three, farm work today with me. And apologize to Ben. Kiana, no allowance for three months."
"No way! Mom, anything but that, please!"
"I told you not to do anything stupid and look at you now. Let's go, I'll work you three hard today."
She made the three whimpering girls apologize to Benjamin, took them with her, and exited the room. She kept the scolding and punishment light for her nieces since she didn't want to interfere with Clare's way of educating them too much. Their family was different from their cousins because allowances were a thing, perhaps because there were only two children. This was also where the ten dollars for the application came from and not getting an allowance for three months was a very big deal for Kiana. Weren't three months close to an eternity? She wouldn't be able to do anything for that long, making her despair. The only saving grace was that Benjamin didn't reveal the truth or else she didn't know how bad the punishment would have gotten.
As for Halle, she was satisfied with the appropriate judgment. Cutting children's allowances when they did something bad was like killing two birds with one stone. They hated very much not receiving any money for the duration of the punishment and she could save that much for that period. Since kids' thought processes were very centered on themselves, they always missed that second fact. Allowance money wasn't that small of an amount for modest families like theirs, who only had a single income source to provide for everyone.
Now alone in the room, Benjamin took care of his hard-on. After that, he wasn't sure what to do. He didn't know when Ray would be done on his side. He didn't want to send him a message and disturb him in case he was doing something important. This was still the countryside and there wasn't much to do by going to the neighboring town. All the good things were in the bigger city. However, he didn't want to go by himself and let Ray find him gone when he would be back. In the end, he decided to go see the girls working hard.
He headed to the farm building and saw they were already all wearing working clothes. Halle took the opportunity of having three slaves to make them do the hard work, carrying heavy bags of insect meat from the farm to the warehouse. She kept an eye on them to check if they were working correctly and went for the more delicate work. Insect farming consisted of five different steps. There was the actual growth period, where insect larvae were put into a container with some feed for them to become adults. When it was time to harvest them, they would first go through water cleaning and storage at low temperatures to remove biomass and excretions. Then, they went through an inactivation stage, to inactive enzymes and microbes on them. The fourth phase was heat treatment, to kill bacteria, and the final step was to dry them for better conservation.
Since she had some available labor force today, she focused on insects finishing the last step, putting them into the heavy bags that the girls would then transport to the warehouse. The three of them were working reluctantly but still did their part, transporting loads that were close to a third of their weight, suffering breathlessly in silence. Benjamin sat in a corner and cheered on them, making them frown even more. Chloe even started pouting but, no matter how unhappy they were, they couldn't say anything to him. Not only did he cover for them just before, he could always change his mind if they displeased him. If that ever happened, that would really be the end for them.