[Twi]

Originally Posted by Kinematics

He did say that. (I checked some of the earlier chapters when I was trying to work out some mechanical details of the world.) And the impression I got was that he told himself this in order to convince himself that it was OK to buy a slave. That is, morally, he felt it was wrong, but realistically he knew he had no other reasonable options. He could accept purchasing Raphtalia as a slave if he could pretend it was actually Myne, because he had enough hate for Myne to overcome any distaste he had for slavery. That bit of self-delusion only lasted as long as it took for him to realize Raphtalia needed food (so about a 15 minute walk, in the anime).

For more visual storytelling, in the anime, you'll note that every time Naofumi was saying cruel or mean things to Raphtalia (such as the rabbit fight), he always kept his face turned away from her. In fact, even when the camera faced him, his face was in shadow, so not even the audience could see him directly. It's a facade that he knows he can't keep up. He's not good at lying.

Hmm... I suppose it could be seen in that light. Fair enough.