by Dojyomaru
“I slipped out all the time, of course. Ditching my bodyguards.”
“Haha! I figured.”
“...I feel bad about it now, okay? Now that I have children of my own, I know how my mother and all the rest must have felt.”
“Whoa, the tomboy princess is sounding all mature now,” Souma said, giving Liscia a little poke.
“Oh, stop teasing me.”
There was a warm air around the newlywed new parents. Tomoe had been bracing herself for a more harsh opinion, so she almost felt a little deflated by it.
“Well, the best part of being a kid is the time you’ll spend with friends, after all.” Souma shuffled to the side a little, creating a space between him and Liscia, and beckoned for Tomoe to come over.
Tomoe sat herself snugly between them, with Souma and Kazuha on one side, and Liscia and Cian on the other. Now sandwiched by the royals, Souma and Liscia both patted Tomoe on the head.
“Though it was for your protection, we did force you to become a member of the royal family. That’s why I don’t want to make you feel too constrained by being royalty.”
“I always hated it when things were too rigid and formal, so I don’t want to force that on you, either, Tomoe.”
“Big Brother, Big Sister...” Tomoe squinted, feeling a little tingle in her eyes, and...
“Dahh.”
“Ahh.”
Imitating Souma and Liscia, Cian and Kazuha started touching Tomoe’s head, too. Though there was no blood relation between them, there was a familial scene unfolding here.
“Okay. I’m going to permit you to go out with friends,” Souma said, patting Tomoe’s head with a grin.
“Really?! Big Brother!”
“I really do think spending time with your friends is important... There’s two conditions, though.”
“Conditions...?”
“Yeah. First, I’ll be sending a unit from the Black Cats to protect you, so you’ll have to accept that. I’ll tell them to watch from the shadows while you’re in the capital so they don’t inconvenience you. But if you decide you want to go outside the capital with your friends, they’ll be protecting you openly, not in the shadows. Well, think of them as bodyguards. I’m sure Inugami can handle it.”
“Yeah... That seems like a reasonable call. It’ll be reassuring for us to know someone is by her side, too,” Liscia said with satisfaction as she made Cian clap his hands.
Tomoe nodded in agreement. “I understand. So, what is the other condition?”
“That you don’t try to ditch your guards. The more active you become, the more you resemble your ‘Big Sister,’ so I’m a bit worried about that.”
Souma shot a cold glance in Liscia’s direction, which she blatantly looked away from. That exchange between the two of them made Tomoe chuckle.
“I understand. I’ll absolutely abide by those conditions.”
“Okay. Well, I can tell from the way you came to talk about it with us that you’re understanding, Tomoe. Those conditions are merely added insurance. I want you to enjoy your time with your friends without worrying too much about it.”
“Hold on, Souma. You say that like I’m not understanding?”
“It’s a fact, isn’t it? Once you set your mind on something, you don’t budge, now do you?”
“...What’d you say to me?” Liscia glared at Souma.
“...What’d you say to me?” Souma glared back.
Invisible sparks flew over Tomoe’s head. Because Souma and Liscia were so close, they occasionally had these little fights. Still, they always passed quickly, and the two would make up in no time. No one wanted to get in the middle of a marital spat, and that included Tomoe.
As she was fretting over what to do...
““Fwah...! #$%&ahh!”” Cian and Kazuha started wailing. Souma and Liscia hurried to soothe them.
“Ohh! Look, Kazuha. It’s Mr. Bear.”
“Don’t cry, Cian. There, there.”
Their desperate attempts to soothe the babies managed to get them down to just sniffling. Tomoe stood up, put her hands on her hips, and told them, “Geez, the scary looks on your faces made Cian and Kazuha cry! Big Brother, Big Sister! Try to get along, for the children’s sake!”
““Right. I’m sorry.””
The royal couple bowed their heads to a twelve-year-old girl. What would the people have thought?
Once they had apologized to one another, “Oh!” Souma seemed to remember something and pulled an item out of his pocket. He then offered the thin object to Tomoe. It appeared to be some sort of wooden token.
The words written on it were...
“Rent-a-Cycle? ...What is this?”
“If you’re going to the castle town, you’ll need to get around, won’t you? You can ask the merchant girl you met how to use it. She probably knows.”
“Okay. Thank you,” Tomoe said, sticking the wooden token under her arm.
For now, she had permission to go play in the castle town.
Tomoe couldn’t wait to tell everyone.
◇ ◇ ◇
The next day. When everyone had gathered at the school, Tomoe’s friends were glad to hear she had been given permission, conditional though it was, to visit the castle town.
Then, when Tomoe pulled out the wooden token...
“A Rent-a-Cycle token?!” Lucy raised her voice in surprise.
“You know what it is, Lu?”
“Do I know? The whole capital’s talkin’ about it!”
“They are?”
That’s when Lucy banged her hands down on the desk, and leaned in closer.
“It’s easier to show you than explain it... No, it’s even faster to have you experience it yourself! You’ve got the token, so how about we all go after school?”
“S-Sure...”
It seemed what they’d be doing after school was already decided.
After school that day.
“So, we’ve come to Rent-a-Cycle! Please clap!”
“““Yaaaay!”””
“...Why are you all so high-strung?” Yuriga said, exasperated by the way Lucy looked like she was ready to play a fanfare, and how Tomoe, Ichiha, and Velza were so willing to go along with her.
After school, the five kids had set out with the wooden token Souma had given Tomoe in hand, and stood in front of a business whose sign simply said “Rent-a-Cycle.” Naturally, the Black Cats were watching them from the shadows, but anyone else watching would only have seen five children getting along.
“This is... Rent-a-Cycle,” Tomoe mumbled as she looked at the shop.
The business was not on the shopping street, but on a main road. Looking at it from the outside, it was plain to see what kind of place it was... There were several of the same thing lined up out front.
Lucy pointed to one of them with a grin. “That’s right. Rent-a-Cycle rents out these here tricycles.”
“Tricycles... Ah, they do have three wheels, yes,” Velza said as she stared at one of the tricycles.
As per the name, Rent-a-Cycle was a business that rented out cycles, these three-wheeled tricycles in particular. Naturally, these weren’t the kind a child might ride, with the pedals attached directly to the wheels. These had a proper chain, and the two wheels in the rear turned as it went around.
“Wheels, a seat... and a basket in back. It looks like this is a vehicle, huh. Could it be that spinning the things down here makes the wheels go around?”
“Ohh, ya got it!” Lucy clapped, impressed that Ichiha had managed to discern the function of the thing from its form. “If ya sit in the seat and pedal, I hear it’ll go forward. You put stuff in the basket, and it makes carryin’ it easy, even if ya don’t have a horse. His Majesty Souma’s the one who invented it, y’know?”
“...Yeah. I sort of guessed,” Tomoe said with a slightly troubled smile.
Off-the-wall ideas like this generally came from either Souma or Genia. If it were Genia, it’d be even more crazy, so she assumed that,
because this still showed some semblance of common sense, it must have been Souma’s idea. Tomoe had come to understand how her big brother was over the past two years.
I can just imagine the look on Big Sister’s face when he came up with this. As Tomoe thought that, she looked to the castle where the two of them were.
◇ ◇ ◇
Meanwhile.
“Go, go, Darlin’!”
“Right, right...”
In the courtyard of the castle Tomoe was looking at, Souma was pedaling a cycle with Roroa sitting behind him. Instead of a tricycle, like they used at the Rent-a-Cycle, they were riding a more standard mountain bike.
“I’m seein’ everythin’ from a higher vantage point, and the speed is refreshin’,” Roroa said, having fun behind him.
She was standing on bars that came out of either side of the rear wheel, and had her hands on Souma’s shoulders for balance. If a police officer saw them, they’d have received a warning for this behavior, but there were no such laws governing bicycles in this world yet, so give them a break.
“Mweheheh, Darlin’.”
Roroa took her hands off his shoulders, wrapped them around his neck, and pushed herself up against his back. The impact made the bike wobble a bit, but Souma managed to keep his balance.
“Hey, that’s dangerous.”
“I was just thinkin’. I can play all the tricks I want on ya right now.”
“If I go down, you’re going down, too. Behave.”
“Don’t be like that. The truth is, you’re enjoyin’ this, aren’t ya, Darlin’? The way you can feel my breasts on your back.” Roroa snickered, but her cheeks were just a bit red. Even she must have found that line a bit embarrassing.
Souma couldn’t see her face because he was driving, but having lived with her so long, he could pick up on it from the way she was laughing.
That’s why Souma started feeling a bit mischievous himself.
“They are touching me, yeah. Just a little, though.”
“Unyah?!” That direct response made Roroa’s face turn bright red. “Wh-What’re you sayin’, Darlin’! You idiot! You pervert!”
“This coming from the person who touched me...”
“I’m not pressin’ them against you, I wanted to get you flustered.”
“That’s a novel comeback.”
It wasn’t that old, “I’m making them touch you,” line.
When they finished one lap of the larger-than-you-might-expect courtyard flirting like that, Liscia was waiting at the central terrace with a look of exasperation on her face.
“Souma’s gone and made something weird again...”
“It’s a fascinating vehicle, though...”
Beside Liscia was Souma’s personal trainer and sounding board, the old commander Owen.
“Hmm, I think riding with someone will help increase muscle mass in the thigh area. How does ten laps with me riding in the back sound as part of your daily training menu?”
“Riding double with you, Owen?! Give me a break...” Souma groaned. Riding double with an old macho man was nothing but a punishment.
“Whew, that was fun, Darlin’,” Roroa said cheerily as she hopped off the bike.
Liscia looked at the bike Souma was riding and said, “Still, it’s strange. How does it stay upright when there’s only one wheel in front and back?”
“It’ll be a long explanation, okay? First, let’s start with the gyroscopic effect...”
“Ahh, if it’s going to take that long, I don’t need it. I doubt I’d understand anyway.”
When Liscia smiled wryly, scratching her cheek, Souma let out a sigh.
“...Well, just assume anyone can ride one with practice. In fact, using the technique my grandfather taught me, every member of the Hiryuu’s crew learned to ride a bike. Do you want to try it later, Liscia?”
“Hmm. What’s the technique?”
“First, you use really shallow, short strokes to...”
Souma taught Liscia and the others his grandfather’s technique for riding a bike.
In fact, Roroa learned to ride the bike using this technique (Liscia declined), but because there was no guarantee of safety, they decided to put off doing it in public for now.
When she had heard the full explanation, Liscia cocked her head to the side as she touched the bicycle. “So, why did you make this thing?”
“I received a report that there was a lot of trouble moving around our carrier, the Hiryuu. Given that we already carry wyverns, there really wasn’t space left for mounts like horses, too. That’s why I thought bicycles would be a faster, easier way to get around than walking.”
Now that they had access to a rubber-like material, we were able to make tires. Souma remembered how bicycles were put together, and if he gave Genia and the other researchers a rough outline, he figured they could have a bicycle developed in no time. But it wasn’t that easy.
“I never expected making the chain and gears to be so difficult...”
Not once did it cross his mind while riding a bike in his former world, but it was an incredible feat of engineering to make the chain and gears mesh perfectly. The technology was already established, and there was no room for improving it, so not even a genius idea from Genia was going to solve things. In the end, hard work was the only option available to them.
“I asked Kuu to get Taru to help us, and we somehow managed to get to a finished product, but it ended up being incredibly expensive. I had to give up on spreading the technology far and wide.”
“Th-This thing was that expensive?” Liscia asked in shock.
“Nyahaha, almost as much as one of the royal family’s ornamental carriages,” Roroa told Liscia with a wry smile, making her eyes go wide.
“You... can’t mass produce them then, huh.”
“Right? I wanted them to be available to the common folk who can’t afford horses one day, but this is out of their reach. Still, I can’t see the nobles and knights buying them, either. The nobles would never think to pedal a vehicle on their own, and the knights generally have horses of their own. Basically, there’s no demand for it.”
The only place to ride a bike in this world was inside the cities, where the roads were paved. There were roads outside the city too, of course, but in a world full of dangerous monsters, it would be unsafe to keep your hands occupied riding a bike.
Souma had said himself that no matter how excellent a policy or system might be, if it was out of step with the times, it wouldn’t be accepted. That applied to inventions, too. It might have been too soon for this country to have bicycles.
“Huh? But there’s a Rent-a-Cycle business in town, right? Doesn’t that place deal in cycles?”
“Hm? Ohh. I talked with Roroa about how we could use the bicycle, and...”
“I said, if they can’t buy one, why not lend them out?” Roroa said, looking slightly smug.
This was Roroa’s proposal:
Because cycles were expensive, they were unsuited to individual ownership, but they were attractive as a means of transportation that didn’t require mounted beasts. Even if the range of movement was limited to within the city, there were merchants who had used carts for transporting their loads all this time. By renting them out to such people at low prices, the development costs could be recouped, and at the same time, it would ease the flow of goods.
“We decided on mainly usin’ tricycles, which the merchants can ride without trainin’, and to rent them for cheaper than it’d take to keep a horse fed.”
“Yeah. With a one-per-store limit. If they intend to use them for other purposes, the cost goes up, by the way. Because I mainly want them to be for commercial use... But still, between making numbered plates for them as a preventative measure against theft, and having the guards watch closely to ensure they weren’t taken out of the city, there was a lot of annoying work that had to be done.”
Souma slumped his shoulders, having been unable to get a return that was worth the upfron
t costs in labor. There was no guarantee that every idea he had would end up working out, and things often played out in ways he didn’t expect.
Roroa gave Souma a slap on the back and said, “We’re just gettin’ started. I hear Rent-a-Cycle’s doin’ pretty good business. Apparently it’s a real hit with the guys in the shippin’ business. They don’t get much speed when they’re loaded up with luggage, but they can go through the back alleys. The old ladies who run restaurants were sayin’ it’s made stockin’ up on ingredients from the market way easier, too.”
“...Yeah, I guess it’s good that we’re getting even a little use out of them.”
If they’re not completely useless, the effort wasn’t entirely in vain, thought Souma. Like Roroa said, things were just getting started.
“Why not try spending the income from Rent-a-Cycle on cycle production? We may have a real ‘cyclical industry’ on our hands here... Heh.” Souma intended it as a joke to lighten the mood, but...
Roroa followed up, “Well, duh, they’re dealing in cycles.”
“What are you stating the obvious for?” Liscia groaned.
These times when the joke doesn’t work in their language can be real tough...
Souma slumped his shoulders again.
◇ ◇ ◇
As for what was happening with the five children who had come to Rent-a-Cycle down in castle town...
“Whoa, the wind feels great,” Tomoe said as the background scenery streamed past her faster than usual. She was currently on the back of a tricycle being pedaled by Ichiha, sitting on the luggage rack with the basket removed.
Thanks to the token she had received from Souma, it allowed them to borrow this tricycle for a single day. Primarily, Rent-a-Cycle lent to commercial users for a limited time, so to borrow it for personal use would typically cost a fair bit of money.
“Heehee, keep going, Ichiha.” Tomoe cheered Ichiha on as he pedaled.
“Y-Yes.”
There was a limit of two cycles that could be loaned out for personal use, so they ended up splitting riders for today. One was being ridden by Tomoe and Ichiha (the driver), and the other by Yuriga (the driver), with Lucy and Velza struggling to fit on it together. As such, Yuriga’s pedals felt heavy.