In this world, there is something called magic power.
More precisely, people believe there is.
No—people believed there was.
According to the Orthodox Faith, magic power is the power to make others obey.
People gain their place in the world according to how much magic power they possess. Those with greater magic power can command more people and attain higher status.
Kings and nobles naturally possess it, but as long as someone is a person, even free commoners possess a small amount of magic power. They can conduct business or cultivate fields because they have magic power.
Kings and nobles use their great magic power to command free commoners, while commoners use their smaller amounts of magic power to cooperate with one another. Since the amount of magic power among free commoners is largely equal, a reciprocal relationship emerges: sometimes one person obeys the other, and sometimes the roles are reversed.
Magic power is the total quantity of soul granted to a person by God.
That is why rank exists in the world, and why order arises.
Something like that.
I see.
The logic basically holds together.
Other than the fact that none of it can be proven.
Magic power is the power to make people obey.
So what does it actually mean to make someone obey?
Orthodox doctrine explains the mechanism like this.
Human beings are born with biological desires. Impulses toward survival and physical pleasure. Eating, drinking, sleeping, sex—that sort of thing.
And if those impulses are allowed to run wild without restraint, the world becomes a world of beasts.
The desires that bring about that world are called “bestial desires.”
A society cannot exist unless those bestial desires are restrained by some sort of force and people do things their instincts tell them they don’t want to do.
That force is magic power.
Suppose, for example, that I were a taxi driver in modern Japan.
I’ve worked all day and I’m exhausted. I just want to go home and sleep.
That would be bestial desire.
Then a customer shows up and says, “Take me to such-and-such place, please.”
I suppress my bestial desire and do something my instincts don’t want me to do.
Why?
Because I’ll get paid if I drive them there.
So basically, magic power is money.
It would be nice if it were that simple, but it’s a little more complicated.
This thing called magic power doesn’t just suppress the bestial desires of other people.
It also turns inward.
You could call it self-control.
Someone with a great deal of magic power can suppress their own bestial desires without relying on outside force.
That’s why they’re “noble.”
Ahh.
I see.
And this is where it gets clever.
What is the greatest bestial desire of all?
Probably the desire to stay alive.
But human society sometimes requires people to willingly go somewhere they absolutely, desperately do not want to go.
Somewhere they may actually die.
And I don’t mean that metaphorically.
War.
If your magic power is weak, your self-control loses to your bestial desires.
In other words, you run away.
And to stop someone from running away, you need an external force compelling them not to.
That is what the Orthodox Church calls “magic power as the power to compel others.”
So someone of high rank, like a general, has so much magic power that he can drive his subordinates into mortal danger.
Then why doesn’t the general run away?
Because he possesses enough magic power to suppress his own bestial desires.
And if even his own magic power isn’t enough to suppress them?
Then an outside source of magic power pushes him into the war as well.
Whose?
The king’s.
A king is not great because he is king.
He is king because he possesses the greatest magic power of all—enough to govern himself while suppressing the bestial desires of others.
The existence of nobles and commoners is defined through the same logic.
Apparently, in the distant past, there was even a class of “half-persons” who possessed no magic power whatsoever.
Slaves, I suppose.
Naturally, having lived in modern Japan, I can think of all sorts of objections.
Actually, even the people of this world mostly treat it as little more than a formality now.
Because nobody can prove that magic power “exists.”
Nobody gives off a rainbow aura.
Nobody shoots flames.
Nobody calls down lightning.
The whole theory was painstakingly constructed by the Orthodox Church in some ancient era when society had almost no order, as a way to stabilize it.
But this is the frightening part.
An idea that was taken for granted for more than a thousand years—perhaps far longer—leaves traces in the deepest layers of people’s minds.
Reason may reject it.
Emotion still gets pulled along.
Troublesome.
◆
The king’s body is sacred and inviolable.
That belief is still deeply rooted.
The king’s magic power is stored inside his body.
So if you cut part of him open, the magic power leaks out through the wound.
Imagine a plastic bag filled with a huge amount of water. If you cut a slit near the bottom, the water spills out.
Something like that.
And what happens if the king loses his magic power?
Social order can no longer be maintained.
In other words, the country collapses.
Everyone understands that this is basically a convenient fiction.
But the image remains embedded in people’s emotions.
The king’s body is sacred and inviolable.
And that inviolable body—
my body—
was injured.
Autumn was already in full swing, and I decided that I should get some sunlight for once, so I brought Mary out into the garden.
We walked along the usual path.
Every now and then, someone called out, “Good day, Your Majesty!”
Yeah.
Perfect picnic weather.
A woman came running toward us from across the lawn.
“Your Majesty Grois!”
She shouted as she ran.
That happens sometimes.
It’s a little like a fan charging toward a celebrity to ask for an autograph.
Not that anyone has ever actually asked me for an autograph.
Santeneri doesn’t have that custom in the first place.
She was a petite woman around thirty, wearing a high-quality black dress—or something resembling one.
Perhaps because the weather had begun turning cold, she had a stole draped over her shoulders.
She kept coming closer at a quick trot.
I assumed she would stop in a moment, kneel briefly on both knees to greet me, then rise and chat for a while.
That was the usual pattern.
But she didn’t stop.
And now both of my hands were clamped around the blade of the dagger the lady in front of me had thrust out.
Naturally, I had never experienced someone trying to stab me in Japan either.
I knew perfectly well that it was going to hurt, and I still grabbed the blade.
Imagine closing your hand around a kitchen knife.
Makes you go, Ugh, doesn’t it?
It hurts.
It hurts a lot.
But surprisingly, you can still function.
Oh, I’ve been stabbed.
Mary looks like a dog shaking itself dry after getting soaked.
Thoughts like that still crossed my mind.
I was strangely calm.
I could even feel the woman trembling through the dagger blade as she stood in front of me, legs shaking, still pushing it toward me.
Our eyes met.
Human eyes can open that wide?
So those expressions in horror movies aren’t exaggerated.
They’re actually pretty realistic.
Probably adrenaline.
The whole thing lasted only an instant, but it felt absurdly long.
“Do not make a scene. ...I am returning to my study. Summon the Steward.”
I said it quietly to the guards rushing toward me with blood drained from their faces, then handed the woman over.
Blood poured from my palms once I released the dagger.
I couldn’t move my hands properly.
“Mary, Mary. I’m sorry, but undo my large-cloth karul and wrap it around my hands. The bleeding won’t stop.”
Mary hurriedly untied the large cloth from around my neck.
She was right in front of me.
I could hear her breathing.
For a moment, I had the illusion that even her heartbeat was echoing around us.
There was no way I could actually hear it.
Her trembling traveled through the cloth as she wrapped it around my hands.
“Mary, calm yourself. It is merely a cut.”
She looked up.
Our eyes met.
Human eyes can open that wide?
◆
“What should we do, Steward?”
Marcel, Marquis Froisbourg and Steward, stood before my desk with an expression that could only be described as deathly pale.
His red hair was cut short. His cheeks were clean-shaven, with a mustache and beard left beneath his nose and on his chin.
He wasn’t physically imposing.
Just a perfectly ordinary-looking man in his fifties.
His gentle eyes reminded me of his daughter, Braune.
For a man of his position and wealth, there was nothing especially striking about him.
But I value his moderation and common sense tremendously.
“...Your Majesty, with the greatest respect...”
For a man who normally speaks in quiet but very clear terms, his voice sounded unusually weak.
I more or less knew what he wanted to say.
Actually, I wanted the same thing.
But it’s hard to say to the person who was attacked, isn’t it?
So I’ll say it myself.
“Steward, I do not mean to disregard you or the others, but I was personally the victim in this matter. I would therefore like to express a small opinion.”
Two other senior officials stood behind the Steward.
The Lord of the Interior.
And the Inspector General of the Royal Guard.
“An unfortunate accident occurred. It was a minor matter, and therefore requires no particular official response. That is my view.”
Fortunately, there had been few people in the gardens.
So we could probably act as though nothing had happened.
Even if servants or soldiers leaked information, we could keep it at the level of rumor.
If this had happened during an official event or a royal procession, there would have been no hiding it whatsoever.
In that sense, I almost felt grateful to the attacker for choosing such a convenient place to strike.
Incidentally, my hands hurt like hell.
The doctor stitched them up for the time being.
Thank goodness they at least have a rudimentary concept of disinfection here.
He washed them with water, poured distilled spirits over them, then stitched the wounds.
At the moment, both hands are completely wrapped in bandages.
“Your Majesty, forgive my disloyalty in saying so, but... we had intended to present precisely the same view.”
“That is good to hear. Steward. May I assume everyone here shares that assessment?”
“Attempted assassination of the king.”
The moment we defined it that way, everything became extremely troublesome.
Failing to prevent it in advance would be the police’s responsibility.
Failing to stop it at the scene would be the Royal Guard’s responsibility.
And both ultimately became the Steward’s responsibility.
At minimum, all three men would have to be dismissed.
And whatever happened to them would inevitably spread downward to their subordinates.
At the same time, problems would arise among the people.
The king’s body is sacred and inviolable.
And the king is the embodiment of the Kingdom of Santeneri itself.
Those ideas are still deeply rooted.
Not only Strois, but the entire country could fill with anger and excitement that had no rational outlet.
The fact that I had been harmed would become, in their minds, “The Kingdom of Santeneri has been harmed.”
And then—
“We, the people of Santeneri, have been harmed.”
Public sentiment was already unstable because of the reversal in foreign policy.
We would probably lose control of it.
Attacking the king constitutes high treason.
Actually, nothing else even qualifies.
And high treason does not end with something as mild as beheading.
It means bodily punishments like dismemberment and disembowelment—things that make me sick just imagining them.
Punishments like that had essentially ceased to be carried out in Santeneri.
The highest ordinary punishment is death by beheading.
That happens comparatively often, so the citizens are used to seeing it.
But high treason is something else entirely.
People would flood into the square to witness “the event of the century.”
An unstable society.
A bloody spectacle designed to excite the crowd.
An enormous mass of spectators.
Anything could happen.
I deliberately did not ask the Inspector General of the Royal Guard or the Lord of the Interior for their opinions.
Both men understood politics.
They should know that the best answer was exactly the one I had laid out.
But if they agreed with me openly, that would amount to arguing for their own self-preservation.
“Yes. We have discussed the matter with all concerned. And with that understood, I, Marcel, respectfully request that Your Majesty dismiss me from my office. At an appropriate time, the Lord of the Interior and Inspector General of the Royal Guard should also retire...”
“Marcel, you understand why I called this an ‘accident,’ do you not? I am not asking any of you to take responsibility in that fashion. If all of you disappear at once, what exactly am I supposed to do?”
I could hear how cold my own voice had become.
For the first time in quite a while since coming to this world, I was angry.
It had been a long time since I’d felt this kind of black emotion filling my entire body.
Both as an employee and later as company president, I saw a fair number of subordinates resign.
First, there were people who left in search of better pay or more fulfilling work.
I could come to terms with that somehow.
Honestly, it still felt a little like being abandoned, but if you asked whose fault it was, the answer was mine.
Then there were people who resigned because some sort of problem had occurred and they were the person in charge.
That was worse.
I could practically resent them for it.
The larger the problem, the angrier it made me.
Because that wasn’t taking responsibility.
It was merely abandoning it.
If they knowingly used resignation as an excuse because they wanted to escape the painful, lengthy process of actually solving the problem—that is, the responsibility itself—I could at least understand that.
The people I hated most were the ones who sincerely believed resignation was taking responsibility.
That was a form of self-deception.
“Your Majesty’s body is sacred and inviolable. We are incompetents who have harmed the Kingdom of Santeneri itself. We no longer possess the right to take part in government.”
“Marcel. Marcel. Then you are saying that all of you are incompetents—worthless men. In that case, your resignations are worthless as well, are they not? Yet you propose to offer those worthless things up and call it ‘taking responsibility.’ If you yourselves have no value, your departure cannot possibly compensate for this great problem. You would be worthless, after all.
“On the other hand, if you believe your existence has enough value to compensate for the damage caused by the problem, why are you refusing to fulfill your responsibility?
“I want an answer.”
Every one of them was a politician with far more experience than me.
They should understand the logic.
This was just a ritual.
Or so I thought.
The reply I received was completely unexpected.
“...Then, Your Majesty! Please impose an official punishment upon us. Though entrusted with duty as Steward of House Leroy, I have allowed matters to come to this. I beg you to grant me an official death.”
Death?
Grant him an official death?
What the hell did that mean?
The Steward was going to die because I got some cuts on my hands?
That was nothing but self-indulgence.
I couldn’t take it anymore.
My lips started trembling.
I couldn’t stop them.
“I see. So Marcel does not merely wish to inflict these tiny cuts upon me. He wishes to inflict real harm upon the Kingdom of Santeneri itself.
“Very well, then. Shall we do that?
“Steward. Lord of the Interior. Inspector General of the Royal Guard. After I give all of you death, what happens to this country?
“I am incompetent. All I can do is rely upon your abilities, and you tell me you will all vanish from this world!
“I cannot govern the country. I cannot stabilize the continent.
“Under the foolish Grois XIII, Santeneri will be destroyed!”
“No, it will not! Your Majesty calls yourself foolish, but there is no king anywhere on the continent who compares with Your Majesty in wisdom. We have spent many years in government and understand that better than anyone. We harbor not the slightest anxiety for Santeneri’s future while Your Majesty reigns over it. And there are any number of men who could replace us—”
I am the king.
Every movement of my body, every gesture of my hands, takes on meaning.
That is why I had avoided exaggerated behavior as much as possible.
A quiet voice.
A calm smile.
I had worked hard never to let either slip.
My job was to sit on the throne looking as though I had nothing to do.
But that ended here.
Every last one of these bastards was screwing with me.
I shot to my feet, furious, and shouted with every bit of anger in my gut.
“Fine! I understand! That is what Marcel wants, then!
“Die!
“All of you, die!
“Very well! Do that!
“Throw this broken country at me and take everything away when you go!
“Shall I kill Braune too?
“Shall I cut off Mary’s head as well?
“Will you take them from me?
“Don’t make me laugh!”
I was waving my hands around and shouting.
I couldn’t feel the pain anymore.
These people were trying to throw everything away and end the discussion.
They were adults.
They had families to protect.
Honor to protect.
If they were officially executed, their relatives and dependents would not escape unharmed.
There was virtually no crime other than high treason that could justify nobles as powerful as the Steward or the Lord of the Interior paying with their lives.
And the punishment for high treason called for the extermination of the offender’s entire family.
“You may all think dying is good enough for you! But I will not give up Braune or Mary!
“Which means I have no choice but to keep their fathers alive as well!
“And Clemens—you alone have no daughter, so only you die!
“I am an incompetent king. A contemptible fool who spares men who offer me their daughters and kills the ones who do not!
“Is that the disgrace you intend to place upon me?”
I barely understood what I was saying anymore.
The logic was absurd.
“Listen to me! Listen carefully!
“I command you again.
“This was an accident.
“You will handle it as such.
“Lord of the Interior, investigate the woman’s connections and report back to me.
“I will permit neither resignation nor suicide.
“The King of Santeneri commands it.
“And the Steward and Inspector General of the Royal Guard will send their daughters to serve at the Palace of Light, Palais Lumiere.
“As you can see, my hands are somewhat unreliable at present. I require assistance.
“Inspector General in particular—send Mary to me immediately.
“Immediately!”
Mary was clearly in danger.
She had been standing guard beside the king and had failed to prevent the attack.
Even if it was officially treated as an accident, there was no telling what might happen.
With her father in this state, it was entirely possible that the matter might be “resolved” privately as a family affair.
And above all—
there was a high chance she might kill herself.
“That is all. You may leave.
“Those are the king’s orders.
“I will see you all again at tomorrow’s meeting.”
◆
Once the temporary frenzy passed, the pain in my hands returned.
Yeah.
They hurt quite a lot.
I sank back into a soft chair and sipped at some strong distilled liquor.
I wanted to get drunk as quickly as possible.
I’m bad at sudden, unexpected events.
At first I was handling everything calmly enough, but then the Steward suddenly started talking about dying and I half-panicked.
Honestly, I hadn’t thought the situation was anywhere near that serious.
Call it an accident and close the case.
Investigate the attacker’s background and take precautions.
Done.
Judging by the state of the woman who tried to stab me, it didn’t seem like an organized attack anyway.
What the Steward said finally made me understand the way people here in Santeneri truly feel.
To them, “the king’s body is sacred and inviolable” is not some empty formality.
To harm the king’s body is to harm the Kingdom of Santeneri.
Until I understood that, I hadn’t really worried about Mary at all.
I’d mostly thought, Well, I made her witness something pretty splattery. I should comfort her next time we have tea.
That was about the extent of it.
But if I hadn’t realized the truth, things could have gone very badly.
Ordering Braune to serve here was entirely something I blurted out in the heat of the moment.
She’s practically a hostage to stop her father from resigning.
This doesn’t happen, does it?
Normally it’s the other way around.
The king is supposed to threaten the daughter using her father.
“For your father’s safety... you understand, don’t you?”
Something like that.
Mine is completely backwards.
“I have your daughter. Therefore, you will continue doing your job properly.”
The Lord of the Interior is fine.
He has work to do.
Interrogating the attacker, uncovering the full picture, things like that.
As long as he has that task, he’ll keep doing his job properly.
But the Steward and the Inspector General of the Royal Guard are another matter.
They certainly feel loyalty toward House Leroy, or perhaps toward the king personally.
But at the same time, they are veteran politicians with a fair amount in their pasts they would rather keep hidden, and I’m sure they have done some vicious things when necessary.
Maybe they even predicted how I would react.
But that would have been a terrible gamble.
If I’d simply said, “Fine, die,” that would have been the end of it.
There was no reason to gamble their lives on something that could otherwise be resolved peacefully.
The three of them must have discussed it beforehand.
When the Steward said he wanted to die, the other two weren’t shaken at all.
So what was their objective?
For a noble, extermination of the entire family is the worst possible outcome and absolutely must be avoided.
What did they want badly enough to weigh even that possibility against it?
Thinking about what comes next gives me a headache.
The professional politicians will be fine.
They know how to handle things.
They’re professionals.
For all I know, they’ve already calmed down and are thinking, Well, good thing nothing really happened.
I sincerely hope that’s the case.
Probably not.
The real problem is Mary and Braune.
Mary was both a witness and directly involved, so that goes without saying.
But Braune will hear everything that happened today from her father.
And so Mary, drowning in guilt, and Braune, burdened with obligation, are going to end up living here at the Palace of Light.
Worse, I shouted that they should “take care of me,” so they’ll probably take that literally and genuinely start looking after me.
My stomach hurts just thinking about it.
I’m a man too, so under normal circumstances, living together with two noblewomen might have been a little exciting.
But that would only be under normal circumstances.
I have absolutely no confidence in my ability to have a pleasant time living with two women carrying enormous emotional debts toward me.
◆
And finally.
My anger was unjustified.
I got angry at them for “having no sense of responsibility.”
I accused them of “throwing everything away.”
That was appalling hypocrisy.
They say people become furious when they are confronted with their own guilt.
They’re right.
I threw every responsibility I had away and jumped from my apartment building.
I hated being someone nobody needed.
I fled into alcohol and casually chose death.
The circumstances may have been different, but I had no right to scream at people who were trying to do the same thing.
After coming to another world, I was forced to watch the meaning of what I had done play out right in front of me.
Maybe I should have let that woman finish what she started.
The distilled liquor was supposed to be strong, but I wasn’t feeling it at all.
I’ll drink wine too.
And beer.
Then I’ll make myself unconscious.