How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom: Volume 3

by Dojyomaru

  “You knew this would happen?!” Aisha exclaimed. “In that case, wouldn’t it have been better not to let her sing?”

  “...Well, just watch,” I said. “I’m going to turn her plans around on her.”

  While I was saying that, Margarita finished her song. As soon as she finished singing, Margarita sat herself down on the spot.

  When we walked over to her, she said, “I’ve shown you the pride of the Amidonian people. Now, lop off my head.”

  She sat up straight. As I thought, she had come prepared for this. Being cut down here was probably part of her plan. In fact, if I laid a hand on Margarita here, this entire broadcast would be a wasted effort.

  That’s why I smiled, and said, “Why? I thought you sang well.”

  Perhaps because it wasn’t the expected response, Margarita’s eyes went wide.

  I felt bad doing this to her when she’d had such strong resolve, but I wasn’t about to go along with her plans.

  “You have a good voice, one that would work well for R&B, maybe,” I said. “I have lots of songs I’d like to hear in your voice. I’m sure the people feel the same way.”

  When I said that in an off-handed manner, Margarita glared at me. “...I sang the Amidonian national anthem, you realize. If you let this outrage stand, people will question your authority as the King of Elfrieden.”

  “Don’t call it an outrage yourself... and so what?” I asked. “There’s no law in Elfrieden saying you can’t sing another country’s national anthem. This isn’t Amidonia.”

  I looked away from Margarita, turning towards the Jewel Voice Broadcast jewel and saying, “What makes for a good country? It’s not a simple question to answer. However, if nothing else, I think a country that lets its people sing freely is a good one. If a country lets you sing happy songs, sad songs, love songs, local songs, foreign songs, military songs, and anti-war songs freely, I think that’s the mark of a good country.”

  Then, reaching out towards the jewel with my right hand, I asked, “What do you, the viewers, think?”

  ◇　◇　◇

  There was a tower on the west side of Van Castle.

  That moss-covered tower with its bizarre and imposing presence was home to a jail, and it was used to confine criminals of high status (nobility, knights, and higher). While it was a jail for those of high status, it wasn’t a luxury suite by any means. Inside it was a typical dingy jail.

  Under Amidonian rule, it had primarily been political prisoners who’d been confined in this tower. Those people who were said to have plotted to overthrow the state, or to oppose the direction of the country.

  While they may have been said to have done those things, whether they actually had was another matter. Sometimes these sorts of political crimes were used to take down a political rival.

  Underground there was a torture chamber used to extract confessions. It seems that the nobles who were falsely accused would be forced to confess there, then sent to the execution block along with their families. If you approached this tower at night, you could hear the moaning of the prisoners who were being tortured during the day, so at some point it had come to be known as the Moaning Tower.

  In one of the jail cells of the Moaning Tower, Liscia and Carla were sitting on the floor looking at one another across a set of iron bars. Carla, who was being kept as a hostage against the Air Force, was currently imprisoned in this tower.

  Liscia had brought in a simple Jewel Voice Broadcast receiver, and she was watching Souma’s program with Carla. They had taken it for a simple entertainment program at first, but when that Amidonian general had suddenly appeared, the two of them had realized Souma’s true aim.

  “Had he calculated that that female general would use the broadcast to stir up patriotism...” Carla wondered.

  “...so he showed off the freedom and magnanimity that would allow him to accept that patriotism?” Liscia finished.

  The two of them sighed in admiration.

  Liscia traced the edge of the simple receiver with her finger. “Souma taught the people of Amidonia that in Elfrieden people are free to sing whatever songs they want. No, it’s not just songs. Music, literature, paintings, sculptures... He showed that every form of artistic self-expression is allowed.”

  “Self-expression, huh...” Carla said. “I can’t think of anything the principality hates more.”

  In a militaristic state like the Principality of Amidonia, it was easier to rule if the people were all the same. That way they could gain the support of the people just by calling for the downfall of Elfrieden. If they allowed for a diverse political discourse, people might start suggesting, “We should make peace with Elfrieden, trade with them, and coexist.” That was the most frightening idea for the members of the princely house, so anyone who espoused those sorts of ideas was thoroughly suppressed.

  However, with their defeat in the war and the death of Gaius VIII, the princely house had lost their authority. Souma had chosen a time like this to make his broadcast, teaching the people of the principality about the existence of something called “freedom of expression.”

  They could sing whatever songs they wanted to, draw whatever pictures they wanted to, and write whatever stories they wanted to.

  He had shown the people of Van that the people restricting them from doing those things were already gone.

  “From here on... even if their crown prince, Julius, manages to regain power, I doubt he can rule like they did before,” said Liscia. “The people of Van have now tasted the bliss of expressing themselves. If he wants to take that from them, he’ll have to crack down on it.”

  “If he does that, he’ll only alienate his people more... huh.” Carla sighed, resting her back against the bars. “I think I finally get what Souma meant when he said, ‘There’s only work for a king before and after the war.’ For him... he’s still fighting right now.”

  “Fighting...” Liscia murmured. “I see, so that’s why Souma chose Aisha as his partner.” Liscia let out a sigh, leaning back against the bars. The two of them were now back-to-back with the bars in between them. “I’m happy that he doesn’t want me to get hurt, but I get a little jealous. I’d like him to rely on me more...”

  “Ha ha ha...” Carla laughed. “It just shows how much he cares for you.”

  “Does it?”

  “It does,” Carla assured her. “When he was whining to me on the battlefield, he said he couldn’t let you and the others hear him like that. Grandmother once said that the more a man cares about someone, the more prideful he is around them.”

  “Y-You think...? Oh, wait, Carla, he was whining to you?” Liscia asked.

  “It’s because I mean nothing to him, I’ll bet. I did oppose him, after all.”

  “Carla, Souma is...!”

  When Liscia turned around and looked at Carla’s face, she was at a loss for words. Her expression showed none of her usual defiance; it was lonely somehow, with an air of peaceful resignation.

  “I know, Liscia,” said Carla. “On the battlefield, he forced me to see the weight he’s carrying on his shoulders. He’s no phony. He’s a splendid king. You and King Albert were right in your judgment of him. We were the ones who lacked your clarity of vision.”

  “Huh?!” Liscia exclaimed. “If you’ve figured that out, then...”

  “It’s why I can’t let you intercede on my behalf.”

  Liscia stood up and slammed on the bars. “Carla! Do you have any idea what Duchess Walter and I are going through to...”

  “No,” said Carla. “That’s not it, Liscia.” She shook her head silently. Then, folding her hands on her lap, she forced herself to say, “We made a mistake. That’s why I don’t want to cause any more trouble for you. If you try to help us survive, you’ll be putting Souma in a bind. He’s already pushing himself too hard to be king, so I don’t want to increase the burden on him anymore.”

  “Carla...” Liscia looked as if she were in pain.

  Carla smiled weakly. �
��I don’t want to be a burden on you and the one you love any longer.”

  ◇　◇　◇

  “Now then, everyone, I think we’ll have this person here close out the program for us,” I said. “Here’s the number one singer, the Prima Lorelei, Juna Doma!”

  Having finished with the lead-in to the last song, I moved off-stage to somewhere the jewel wouldn’t pick me up. When I got there, I found Margarita kneeling and Aisha looking at her with a grim look on her face.

  “...King of Elfrieden,” snarled Margarita. “Did you know what I was going to do?” She looked extremely frustrated as I approached.

  “Yeah, kinda,” I said. “Someone tried the same thing in the world I came from.”

  Although that had been in a movie. It was an old musical, but my grandpa had loved it, so I had seen it a bunch of times.

  Margarita hung her head. “I see... If someone has tried it before, it’s little wonder I failed.”

  I placed a hand on Margarita’s shoulder. “Despite being from the Amidonian military, you didn’t rely on brute force, and you had a wonderful singing voice. How about it? Why not try becoming a singer in our country for real? An R&B singer, maybe.”

  “...You put me to shame with such kind words for a defeated soldier,” she said bitterly. “I’m not sure what this... arr and bee is, but given I have failed as a soldier, perhaps that would be fine.”

  “Yeah, we can never have too many singers,” I said. “You’d be more than welcome.”

  A troubled smile formed on Margarita’s tough-looking face. “...Let me think about it.”

  ◇　◇　◇

  Margarita Wonder was hesitant at this point, but not long afterwards, she did make her debut as an R&B singer from Amidonia. Her powerful singing with that husky voice of hers mostly found support with middle-aged people.

  Furthermore, with the larger-than-life personality she had cultivated on the battlefield, and the courage to rival any man’s, she took over hosting the program, eventually becoming a mainstay of the kingdom’s entertainment industry.

  Regardless, the curtain now fell on the highly-eventful first broadcast of the music program.

  Intermission 1: Lord Ishizuka

  “Okay... on to the next document,” I said.

  Whether I was in the royal capital, Parnam, or the princely capital, Van, my work as king was always the same. I stayed in the governmental affairs office, poring over the documents Hakuya had prepared for me and signing off on them. Especially now, with the occupation of Van having begun so recently, my workload had increased.

  Letting several days worth of work accumulate so that I could produce that music program hadn’t helped. Even as I worked day and night, using my Living Poltergeists to their fullest, the number of stacks of paper in front of me refused to decrease. In the end, I had ended up installing a bed in the governmental affairs office of Van, too, so that I could get back to work as soon as I woke up.

  So, today, like every day, I had sat myself down at the desk the moment I got out of bed, and I was staring down a pile of papers as the morning sunlight streamed into the office.

  “Isn’t it about time you got your own room?” Liscia asked from her position beside me, sounding a little exasperated. She had been helping me. “This castle has a lot of rooms.”

  “I’m buried in work from dawn to dusk,” I said. “There’s not much point in having a room if I only go back there to sleep. Honestly... just when things had finally settled down in the kingdom, I ended up creating more work for myself by occupying Van. It’s like, to hell with the Labor Standards Act.”

  “What kind of nonsense are you even talking about?” Liscia asked. “Come on, here’s the next document.”

  “Yeah... Wait, this again?”

  When I looked over the document she passed me, I slumped my shoulders.

  It said, “The people of Van want to hold an outdoor music concert in the plaza. Is it okay for us to permit that?” I had already processed several similar petitions just today.

  They were for concerts, plays, art exhibitions, calligraphy exhibitions, and circuses, among other things. It seemed that, after seeing that broadcast, the people of Van had awakened to the idea of expressing themselves through the arts. Yes, it was truly...

  “A renaissaaaance,” I said, stretching out the word.

  “...What’s up? That came out of nowhere,” Liscia said.

  “...Nothing.”

  Liscia looked at me kind of funny.

  Yeah, if I was going to make her laugh by saying the word funny, I was probably going to have to introduce it to the local language first, I thought.

  While the original Renaissance had come as a revival of Greek and Roman humanism as the influence of the Christian church had declined, this one would be a cultural revival that came from people celebrating the arts after being freed from militarism.

  “But, still... I know fall is the season for art, but this awakening is way too sudden,” I commented.

  To be honest, I’d have preferred not being swamped with an endless stream of requests for art and culture events. This city was technically under occupation, after all. If the events drew large crowds, it was possible that conspirators could gather there or they could be targeted by terrorists. I wished they’d put themselves in my shoes, as the guy who had to check thoroughly to make sure that wasn’t happening.

  When she saw me holding my head in my hands, Liscia gave a wry smile. “You can’t blame them, really. It just means your broadcast had that much impact, right? It seems like this sort of stuff has been being suppressed pretty heavily up until now.”

  “...I’ll bet,” I said. “I doubt a militarist state would let them express themselves.”

  Burning books for being slightly critical of the ruling regime, jailing people for singing songs that called for peace, publicly executing the head of a theater troupe for putting on a play that satirized the government... I thought. They’d probably have done all of that without a second thought. This excitement I’m seeing is probably the recoil from that.

  “Though, thanks to that, my workload increases,” I said glumly.

  “No grumbling,” said Liscia. “It’s better than them opposing us.”

  “Well, yes, but... Maybe I’ll set up a bureau to handle events,” I said, inspiration striking. “If I put Margarita in charge of it, I could have her handle everything to do with entertainment.”

  “That’s fine with me, but... you do the paperwork for it.”

  “Oof...”

  It looked like, struggle as I might, my workload wasn’t going to decrease.

  Well, I’m the king, so I guess there’s no helping that, huh.

  I worked into the afternoon, and just as I was feeling hungry and was saying to Liscia that we should break for lunch, the Minister for the Food Crisis, Poncho Ishizuka Panacotta, entered the room.

  Poncho walked over to stand before me, his round belly shaking as he did, then gave a tense salute. “U-Um, Your Majesty, I was hoping I could have a moment of your time, yes.”

  He was clearly anxious. He might not have looked impressive at the moment, but Poncho here had been instrumental in solving the food crisis, and he was a man I had hand-picked to work at my side, so he was a respected figure in the country.

  That’s why I wish he’d get used to standing in front of me already... I thought.

  “Is something the matter?” I asked.

  “Y-Yes! There is something I wanted to show you, sire, yes,” Poncho said, pulling something out of the bag he was carrying and placing it on the office desk.

  “You wanted to show us... a flower?” Liscia, who was watching us, said in confusion.

  Poncho had pulled out a single flower. It looked similar to a lily. However, it had a toxic-looking combination of pink, yellow, and brown petals.

  If this were a mushroom, that’d be a clear warning not to eat it, I thought.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Y-Yes! This i
s a flower called a ‘beguiling lily,’ yes.”

  “Oh, okay, I know what a lily is,” I said. “But what’s so beguiling about it?”

  “This flower’s pollen has a powerful hallucinogenic effect,” he explained. “It induces anyone who inhales it into a state similar to sleepwalking. It primarily grows in the mountains. Long ago, there was an incident where an army division inhaled it while marching. They fell off a cliff fleeing from enemies that didn’t even exist and were wiped out as a result.”

  “Scary!” I exclaimed. Is it like a non-controlled drug, or something like that? “Wait, don’t bring that stuff in here!”

  “I-It’s fine,” said Poncho. “I’ve already removed the pollen, yes.”

  “...Really? Well, as long as you’re sure it’s safe,” I said.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “Besides, the pollen from one or two won’t have any effect. If you try to approach a field where hundreds of them are growing, though, even covering your nose and mouth with a cloth won’t help... Yes.”

  Well, yeah, short of wearing an air filtration mask, I doubt you can block out all of the pollen, I thought. I’ve never had to deal with it myself, but the people with pollen allergies look like they have a hard time even with a mask on.

  “So, you wanted to show me this flower?” I prompted.

  “No, the flower is merely a something of a bonus, sire. What I wanted you to see was this.” With those words, Poncho pulled out a small roundish object. This one was... a vegetable, perhaps? It was white, round, and lumpy, like scallion bulbs or cloves of garlic densely clumped together into something like a pine cone.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Th-This is a beguiling lily rootstalk, yes.”

  “The rootstalk...” I murmured. “Oh, lily root, huh!”