How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom: Volume 1

by Dojyomaru

  If this was all someone saw of it, it would seem like a miracle.

  On the other hand, recovery magic couldn’t treat viruses and infections that the body’s natural ability to recover couldn’t. All people had to lessen the symptoms of those were medicine men and women who could brew herbal remedies. Furthermore, for the elderly, whose natural healing ability had declined, it wasn’t effective in treating external injuries, either.

  Once you know how something works, it might be easy to think, “Oh, that’s simple,” but most people in this country didn’t even know about microbes, let alone viruses. When people try to find answers to questions they don’t have the necessary knowledge to answer, they’re prone to finding answers that fall within what’s common sense to them.

  “Healing magic doesn’t work” would equate to “Even miracles can’t cure it,” and then turn into “It’s a devil’s curse.”

  People put together these sorts of formulas in their heads, then end up using bizarre occult goods in their attempts to treat the illness.

  “If you buy this pot, you’ll never get sick” actually worked as a sales pitch in this world, so it was nothing to laugh at. If you’re going to buy something like that, you might as well wrap a leek around your neck before you go to sleep instead.

  However, there were buds of hope. The two doctors I just mentioned. If I could have those two lead a reformation of medical practice in this country...

  “Hey, Souma, what are you mumbling to yourself for?” Liscia’s voice snapped me back to reality.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I got to thinking for a moment there.”

  “Geez... Okay, so what did you mean when you said you nationalized garbage disposal?”

  “Exactly what it sounds like,” I said. “Liscia, do you know how trash is generally disposed of in this country?”

  “Garbage is sorted into ‘burnable’ and ‘non-burnable,’ then burned or buried accordingly, right?”

  “Wow, you were able to answer that pretty easily,” I said.

  “Did you think I was ignorant of the peoples’ lives just because I’m royalty? Don’t insult me. I lived in the dorms when I went to military academy, I’ll have you know,” she said indignantly.

  I see. So she’s not as ignorant of the world as I thought...

  “But you’re still wrong.”

  “Huh?” she asked.

  “I said ‘generally,’ didn’t I? Your answer is still only representative of upper class thinking. It’s a world away from the common way of thinking.”

  “W-Well, what is the common way of thinking about it, then?” she asked.

  “Aisha, how do your people dispose of garbage in the God-Protected Forest?” I queried.

  “Hm? Garbage?” Aisha’s eyes went a little wide when I suddenly turned the conversation to her, but she was able to come up with an answer right away. “Let me think... We burn it.”

  “Is that all?” I asked.

  “That is all.”

  “That can’t be right! What do you do about the things that won’t burn?!” Liscia objected, but Aisha just stared blankly back at her.

  “Would you even throw out things that aren’t burnable to begin with?” Aisha asked.

  “Of course you would! What else would you do with broken tools?” Liscia demanded.

  “We fix them and keep using them.”

  “...Huh?”

  “We use kitchen waste as fertilizer. With pottery that is too broken to repair, we break it into fine pieces and scatter it over the ground. If metal tools break, we fix them so they can be used again. If they can’t be fixed, we sell them to a used metal dealer.” (A type of merchant who collects scrap metal.) “The only things we throw out are splintered wood and damaged leather armor, but... we burn those in our campfires.”

  This time, it was Liscia’s turn for wide-eyed surprise. I couldn’t help but laugh a little at their exchange.

  “Ha ha! Aisha’s got it right this time.”

  “Soumaaaa...” Liscia moaned.

  “Don’t let it get you down so much,” I said. “For the upper classes who have to keep up appearances, and for the military whose equipment can mean the difference between life and death, it’s probably best for them if the things they have are practically brand new. However, for ordinary households, that isn’t the case. Now, Aisha’s example takes it to an extreme, but people in the capital handle things in a similar fashion. The main difference would be that they burn their kitchen waste, too, I guess? Also, for oversized trash, like wooden furniture, they customarily gather it all in the main plaza once a year for burning, don’t they? So they’re the same in that they only have burnable trash.”

  In this world, there was nothing like plastic or styrofoam that needed special treatment before it could be reused. Most tools were made of iron, stone, soil (which includes glass and ceramic) or wood. They could reuse iron by melting it down, and if they just left stone lying around, it would blend in with the natural scenery around it. The one exception was artificial substances that were created by mages using magic (magic substances), but these were valuable in and of themselves, so they were almost never thrown away.

  As for things made of metal, they could be expensive, too, so the common people did everything within their power to repair them. Beating iron back into shape was easy, after all. When there was really nothing they could do, and it seemed cheaper to just buy a new one, they would sell it to a used metal dealer for small change. Used metal dealers collected this metal and melted it down, recasting it into other metal products.

  However, this was being done by individuals, so they didn’t have good facilities for it, or the ability to devote a large amount of time, so they could only produce low-quality metal as a result. All they did was melt it down and then let it harden, so impurities got mixed in in the process. As a result, low-quality metal ended up circulating in the country.

  This country was resource-poor. If low-quality metal was all that could be obtained locally, people would be forced to import high-quality metal from other countries. I wanted to limit that spending as much as possible. However, if I tried to tell the used metal dealers, who were acting as individuals, to reuse the metal in high-quality impurity-free metal, it wasn’t going to happen.

  “So, that’s why I’ve nationalized garbage disposal... Basically, I had the country take over handling it. Even if it’s difficult for an individual to do, when the state does it, we can afford to spend money on it, arrange for specialized facilities, and we can take the time to do it right, too. We can pull every last nail out of the wooden boards people throw out, then reuse the iron.”

  “That’s amazing and all... but what about the used metal dealers? Aren’t you stealing their jobs?”

  “Oh, that’s fine,” I said. “For that work, I’m retaining the used metal dealers as civil servants.”

  They were low-wage workers anyway. They paid a small amount to buy up scrap metal, then melted it all down to sell to the trade guilds wholesale. However, since they could only produce low-quality metal, their prices got haggled down to almost nothing, and they saw very little profit for themselves. As a matter of fact, used metal dealers were at the very bottom of this world’s hierarchy. Because they dealt in garbage, people looked down on them.

  “However, now that it’s a public sector undertaking, the cost of buying the metal will be footed by the country,” I said. “The items to be melted down can be recast as high-quality metal in good facilities provided by the country, and the country will negotiate with the trade guilds, so there’s no need to worry about their prices being haggled down to nothing. What’s more, they will be paid a monthly salary that’s equal to the average monthly income in this country. If you compare that to what they were making before, it’s probably a ten-fold increase, don’t you think?”

  “Well... I can’t see them complaining about that,” Liscia admitted.

  As a matter of fact, we hadn’t received a single complaint. Quite the
contrary: when the minister of state who had been given the garbage disposal portfolio had gone to survey the reprocessing facility, he had been greeted with tearful thanks by all of the workers.

  “But, if you aren’t careful, couldn’t that be more expensive than importing it from another country?” Liscia asked.

  In response to Liscia’s point, I nodded and said, “Yeah, kinda.”

  Elaborating, I added: “At this stage, we’re probably a little worse off doing it this way. However, money spent inside the country has a completely different meaning from money spent outside the country. If we spend money outside the country, that’s an outflow of capital, but if we spend it inside the country, it stimulates our own economy.”

  “Th-The economy again, huh...” For Liscia with her military background, it seemed she wasn’t as strong with this sort of topic. The military had its own bureaucracy, so officers probably only needed to think about maintaining supply lines.

  “Okay then, I’ll give you the military angle,” I said. “Let’s talk diplomacy. If we can conserve the resources in our country, other countries can’t use the resources we import from them as a card in their diplomacy. For instance, what would we do if the Principality of Amidonia, which has been eagerly eyeing our country, were to halt their export of iron to us?”

  “...We’d be in trouble,” Liscia said. “There’s no telling what demands they might present us with to reopen trade.”

  “That’s right. I did it with an eye to preventing that sort of situation, too.”

  I’m not going to name names, but in my world, there had been a country that used the rare resources they produced as a diplomatic tool to pressure other nations. Though, once a certain island country got serious, they found new import routes from other resource-rich countries, and they developed alternative technologies, which caused the other country’s rare resources to plummet in value.

  “If we can be frugal with our resources, that will limit the damage if another country halts its exports to us, and if we store the excess we have in peacetime, we can be prepared for that if it comes to it,” I explained.

  “I see,” Liscia said. “So even if it puts us in the red, there’s still meaning in nationalizing it.”

  Liscia was a quick learner when it came to military and diplomatic matters. She was probably the type whose ability or inability to learn a subject was a faithful reflection of her personal preferences.

  Incidentally, while we were talking about this stuff, Aisha announced, “Forget about that, I want to eat!”

  She looked ready to cry, like a dog that had been forced to wait for a long time.

  The singing cafe, Lorelei, stood on a sunny street corner. This was the place where Juna worked.

  When I had heard the words “singing cafe,” I’d imagined a place with a karaoke machine, where the customers could sing freely, but the singing cafes in this country were a place to enjoy your afternoon tea while listening to the loreleis sing. In the evenings, it stayed open and turned into a jazz bar. Were there places like this back in Japan, too?

  “You’re going to show your face in there, right?” Liscia asked. “Let’s hurry up and go in.”

  “I’m hungry...” Aisha moaned.

  With both of them urging me onward, we went through the door and into Lorelei.

  From the moment we entered the cafe, I could hear Juna singing. When I heard that voice, I went weak in the knees.

  Oh, right. I did teach her this song, didn’t I? I realized.

  That was Juna for you: she had mastered singing the English lyrics that even I wasn’t so good at.

  “Oh, what a wonderful singing voice. I really must hand it to Madam Juna,” Liscia said.

  “I don’t know what the words mean, but it’s a nice tune,” Aisha added.

  Aisha and Liscia both seemed deeply impressed. Well, of course they were. It was a good song.

  I had promised to teach Juna the songs of my world, but once I thought about it, I only knew old songs I’d learned because of Grandpa’s influence, and songs that had shown up in anime and tokusatsu, because I was into those. I was hesitant to go teaching her anime songs right off the bat, so I’d chosen this song, which was like an anime song, but not: Neil Sedaka’s “Better Days are Coming.”

  You might know it better as the song that Mami Ayukawa covered as Z — Toki wo Koete, the opening to the mecha anime Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam. Now, this is only my personal opinion, but I thought for ordinary music, Hiroko Yakushimaru, and for anime songs, Hiroko Moriguchi’s songs would suit Juna’s voice well. I wanted to hear “Tantei Monogatari” and “Mizu no Hoshi ni Ai wo Komete” with her voice.

  The cafe had a relaxing, retro-modern style to it. Sitting ourselves down at one of the tables, we listened to Juna sing for a while. A few minutes later, Juna finished her song and came over to us.

  “Why, Your...” she began.

  “Hello, Juna,” I said quickly. “You may not remember me, but I am Kazuya, the successor to a crêpe fabric merchant from Echigo!”

  In order to cut off Juna, I started talking a mile a minute. Being the smart, talented woman that she was, Juna recognized what was going on just from that. “Oh, yes, Kazuya. Right. It’s been so long. How is your father these days?”

  “Why, he’s too energetic for his own good. Just recently, Mother found out he was having affair. Now wasn’t that trouble.”

  “I see. Kazuya, do be careful about how you handle women yourself,” she said, going along with my story.

  I couldn’t very well have her bowing and calling me “Your Majesty” in a place like this with so many people watching, after all. I was supposed to be in disguise. Still, I had to be impressed with her ability to instantly ad-lib a response to my random nonsense. I definitely wanted her at the castle.

  “I’ll pay you five times what they pay you here, so will you come be my personal secretary?” I asked her.

  “I appreciate the offer, but I think this job where I can let the customers enjoy my songs is my calling, so I’ll have to decline.” She let me down lightly.

  Yep. Even the way she rejects me has class.

  “That’s a shame. But, they do say that rather than put wild flowers on display in your room, the flowers are more beautiful left blossoming in the fields.”

  “Oh, but if you love and adore them, not just put them on display, flowers will shine even in a vase,” she retorted.

  “I see. I must endeavor to be worthy of loving and adoring them, then.”

  “Yes, worthy enough to convince the flowers they want you to take them.”

  “Ha ha ha ha ha.”

  “Hee hee hee hee hee.”

  Juna and I laughed together.

  As she watched us, Liscia seemed slightly taken aback. “Somehow, when you two talk, it’s like you’re each probing the other’s intentions.”

  ...Or so she thought. You’re wrong, Liscia, I said silently. Most likely, this was Fig. 1: A younger brother who wants to act more mature than he is being gently chided by his big sister for it.

  ...I’ll bet that’s how it was. Even though we were practically the same age.

  “Slurrrrrp... Gelin udon truly is delicious, isn’t it?” Aisha said happily.

  We had decided to stay at Lorelei and have lunch there.

  Polishing off her gelin udon as fast as you would a bowl of wanko soba, Aisha shouted “Seconds, please!” thrusting the bowl out towards our waiter.

  A cafe isn’t the place to be eating like that, you know... I thought.

  “Still, gelin udon at a cafe...?” I wondered.

  “Did you not like it?”

  Juna looked worried, so I shook my head, saying, “Oh, no. I just thought it was odd to be slurping udon in a classy place like this.”

  “Ever since that broadcast, there have been a lot of people wanting to try it,” she explained. “Besides, we aren’t through the food crisis yet, so we’re grateful to have these sorts of inexpensive ingredients we can use.” />
  “I’m working on it, but... sorry I’m not doing well enough,” I said.

  “No, Your... Kazuya, I think you’re doing well.”

  When Juna gave me that gentle smile, it made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

  Kick! Kick!

  Okay, Liscia, stop kicking my shins under the table, please.

  “Don’t you think Souma treats Juna differently from how he treats everyone else?” Liscia asked.

  “Ahh, slurp... I had... slurp... noticed that, too,” Aisha agreed.

  “...Hey, I can’t help it,” I protested. “I get nervous when I’m talking to a beautiful, older girl. Also, Aisha, eat or talk. Pick one.”

  “Slurp.”

  What, you’re choosing to eat? I could have poked fun at her, but that comedy routine’s too overdone, so I just let it go.

  “...This after he told me I was beautiful, too,” Liscia said.

  “Actually, Liscia, I think you’re beautiful in a different way than Juna is, you know?” I said.

  “Wh-Why were you able to hear me?!” she exclaimed.

  Uh, if you don’t want to be heard, lower your volume a little, would you?

  ...Part of it was that I was strangely conscious of her because she’d let me use her lap as a pillow.

  “Y-You could have pretended not to hear,” she stammered.

  “Like I could let it go by,” I retorted. “I’m a healthy young man, so don’t say things that are going to make me so conscious of you so often.”

  “Oh, my, your faces are all red. You’re both so innocent.” Juna watched us bickering with a smile.

  Next to us, Aisha slurped her udon like she was pouting. “Slurp... Why does he notice the princess’s affections... Slurp... but mine get ignored...? Slurp. Ah, I’ll have another bowl, please.”

  “It may not be my place to say it... But perhaps he doesn’t take you seriously because you act like this?” Juna suggested.

  “Madam Juna?! What have I done wrong?!” Aisha exclaimed.

  “That appetite of yours. When I first saw you in the castle, you looked like a brave and dignified woman who was willing to address the king directly, but recently you’re just a disappointment who’s eating all the time.”