Have you ever been to one of those boutiques run by a high-end fashion brand?
I have.
I got dragged along through what was officially called a young business owners’ association, but was really just a drinking club.
You tend to imagine those stores as being full of nothing but extremely aggressive designs aimed at people whose entire lives revolve around fashion, but surprisingly enough, they also carry some subdued pieces you could actually wear in everyday life.
You still can’t let your guard down, though.
You’ll think, Oh, they have normal shirts too, pick one up, and discover that every stripe in the fabric is actually made up of microscopic copies of the brand logo.
For men, they do at least have suits and coats.
I guess there really are people who want to dress head to toe in Brand X.
Even at work.
And since I was technically a working adult, I had them show me the suits.
Nope!
You know that folded-back section running from the collar of a jacket down across the chest?
That’s called the lapel.
And the width of those things was just completely lawless.
Some were absurdly narrow.
Others were absurdly wide.
Total freedom.
Yes, technically the shape was that of a suit.
But it was a suit while somehow also not being a suit.
And they’d casually charge five hundred thousand yen for one.
For five hundred thousand yen, you could get a fully bespoke suit made from genuinely good fabric!
Anyway, those were the kinds of things lining the racks.
So I asked the sales clerk directly.
“When exactly are you supposed to wear a suit like this... or whatever this is?”
The clerk was very slim—not in the sleazy host-club sort of way, more like one of those fashionable overseas idols you’d expect to see around Omotesando.
Which made sense, because we were actually in Omotesando.
He answered:
“Well... perhaps to a little party?”
A. Lit-tle. Par-ty.
Where are those being held?
Oh, after I took over the family business, I did have to attend politicians’ fundraising parties because of my position.
But those were very much not little parties.
They had perfected the old-fashioned style.
Industry receptions?
Landscaping is basically part of the construction industry.
Again: old-fashioned style perfected.
What about before I took over the family business?
I didn’t have time to go to parties.
Every day was quotas and cold calls.
So despite my complete lack of experience, I’m delighted to report that today I have finally been invited to one of those little parties.
The capital of the Kingdom of Santeneri is called Strois, and it’s broadly divided into the old city and the new district.
At the center of the old city stands a stone structure that looks like an impregnable fortress.
That is the principal castle of the Royal House of Leroy: Stour en Leroy.
Basically, Strois is a shortened form of the castle’s name.
Stour translates roughly as “castle.”
So it’s Leroy Castle.
Exactly what it sounds like.
As the centuries passed, though, Stour became too cramped, so the royal family built a palace in the new district just as that part of the city was beginning to develop.
Palais Lumiere.
It means the Palace of Light.
That’s where I live now.
If you actually visit Leroy Castle, it becomes painfully obvious what the king who named the new palace must have been thinking.
The place is over a thousand years old.
It’s basically just huge chunks of stone piled on top of each other.
Windows?
Sure, it has windows.
You know those narrow slits in prison doors that guards use to look in on inmates?
Like that.
So basically, it’s a cave.
If monsters started spawning inside it, I wouldn’t question it for a second.
Which is probably why its residents—the royal family of the time—wanted light so badly.
Glassmaking technology had just begun to develop when Palais Lumiere was built, so they used glass everywhere they possibly could.
And the interior is packed with chandeliers, candelabras, and every other light source imaginable, which means it stays surprisingly bright even at night.
It would be nice if that were the end of it, but apparently we have several other palaces too.
By that point, a “palace” no longer meant a defensive castle like in the old days.
It was just a giant mansion.
In other words, a vacation home.
Rich people today own a bunch of those too, right?
Santeneri has been one of the great powers of the continent for centuries, so back then, building another palace or two was apparently no big deal.
Not anymore, though.
We’re broke.
Anyway, a little over a century ago, one of those palaces was given as part of a princess of House Leroy’s dowry when she married into House Gaillure.
Since then, it has served as the Duke of Gaillure’s residence whenever he stays in Strois.
As for the size...
How should I describe it?
Maybe about the size of a medium-sized shopping mall.
And tonight, House Gaillure is holding a little party there.
There are around five hundred guests.
But it’s a little party.
I’m not even joking.
If this were a real evening function, I’m the king, so I’d have to do everything properly.
Crown on my head.
Sitting on a throne.
Being decorative.
Casual conversation?
Impossible.
There’d just be an endless line of people waiting to greet me.
Honestly, it’s torture.
So compared with that, an event like tonight—where I’m free to wander around the venue—is absolutely a little party.
Sure, there’s a live orchestra, and the noblewomen are wearing spectacular gowns, but this definitely qualifies as lit-tle.
Most of the people who gather around me are young nobles relatively close to me in age.
Unfortunately, I don’t have much to talk about with them.
Which makes sense.
These are the friends of the sharp-edged Grois from two months ago.
They’re all energetic.
Highly. Mo-ti-va-ted.
And loud.
So right around the time I was thinking that I’d like a few moments alone, along comes the perfect gentleman.
“Your Majesty, I am deeply honored that you have graced our humble gathering with your presence tonight.”
“Ah, Duke Gaillure. Thank you for inviting me. It’s a wonderful gathering. Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves.”
On the surface, anyway.
“You honor us. Incidentally, Your Majesty, have you spoken with the ladies over there?”
“Unfortunately not. As you can see, I’ve been trapped in a group of men.”
“What a waste. A picnic among men, when before you lies a meadow blooming with the noblest flowers in all Santeneri.”
Oh.
So Duke Gaillure talks like that sometimes.
“Quite right. I’ve had enough of male company for the moment. I ought to greet the ladies as well.”
“Then let us go.”
Duke Gaillure leads me toward a corner where, honestly, I was thinking I might be better off not going.
A little away from the center of the grand hall is a group of young noblewomen in dresses of every imaginable color.
Hmm...
It kind of reminds me of the bride’s friends at a wedding.
You know the scene.
The bride in her wedding dress, surrounded by all her friends chatting excitedly.
That.
Except here, there isn’t one woman in the center.
There are three.
One is someone we already know well:
Braune en Froisbourg, daughter of Marquis Froisbourg, Steward of the Royal House of Leroy and chancellor of the Kingdom of Santeneri.
She looks like Misawa from the Secretarial Department.
Then there’s the daughter of our distinguished gentleman here:
Lady Zofi en Gaillure.
She looks like Kobayashi from General Affairs when Kobayashi was in middle school.
And finally, another major figure.
Lady Mary en Barois, daughter of Count Barois.
This one takes some explaining.
First, there’s something fundamental you need to understand.
Our country has two armies.
One is the Army of the Kingdom of Santeneri.
The other is the Royal Guard.
Makes no sense, right?
I don’t really get it either.
Apparently, the Santeneri army belongs to the state, while the Royal Guard is “the army of the Royal House of Leroy.”
It isn’t merely a unit within the Kingdom of Santeneri assigned to protect the king.
It is genuinely a completely separate military organization.
Santeneri began as a federation of duchies.
House Leroy rose to prominence among them, brought the other lords under its authority, and unified the country.
The armies once maintained independently by those lords were gradually consolidated as the nobles became “court nobility”—in other words, government officials.
Today, those forces have become the Army of the Kingdom of Santeneri and are institutionally separate from the noble houses.
About the only trace of the old system is that individual regiments still bear the names of the former ducal houses.
Their pay comes directly from the national treasury.
Through all of that, the only house that continued to maintain a private army of its own was House Leroy.
Or maybe I’ve got the cause and effect backward.
After all, it was basically House Leroy’s army that forced all the other ducal houses into submission in the first place.
Of course, by the present day, most of House Leroy’s military forces have been absorbed into the Army of Santeneri.
Or rather, the Army of Santeneri was built around the old Leroy forces.
But House Leroy kept a portion of its troops directly under its own control.
That became the modern Royal Guard.
And when I say “a portion,” we’re still talking more than ten thousand soldiers.
They have barracks outside Strois, and their supreme commander is the head of House Leroy.
Meaning me.
I’m also technically at the top of the Army of Santeneri.
But in practice, there’s the Lord of the Army, the Steward, the various lords...
Moving the national army according to my personal wishes is almost impossible.
The Royal Guard is different.
It obeys only my orders.
In other words, it exists to suppress coups.
And suppress the populace.
And suppress the nobility.
The family that has commanded the Royal Guard for generations is House Barois.
And this young lady is their daughter.
Oh, and Barois and Leroy are easy to mix up, aren’t they?
Basically, it’s geographical.
House Leroy originally joined the ranks of the great lords when it gained control over the middle reaches of the Roi River in the northwestern part of the continent.
That’s around modern Strois.
A little downstream from Strois is a region called Barois.
The name is literally Ba-Roi.
Ba is a prefix in the Santeneri language meaning “lower” or “down.”
So Barois basically means “the lower part of the Roi River.”
Around nine hundred years ago, the founder of House Barois was installed there as a military count—which is basically a regional governor.
Apparently, House Barois has been responsible for commanding House Leroy’s guard forces ever since.
That’s some serious pedigree.
As for Mary herself...
We never had anyone like her at my company!
She’s the hard-charging career-woman type.
My company started as a landscaping shop founded by my grandfather and just happened to grow larger.
Inside, we were still basically a tiny family business.
We didn’t have women like that.
But I’ve met the type.
For example, when we took contracts to handle landscaping and grounds maintenance for shopping malls or condominium developments run by one of those giant corporate conglomerate developers, women like her would sometimes be the client-side point of contact.
Sharp.
Efficient.
Decisive.
Pretty gutsy.
Proud, too.
The type who looks good in a pantsuit.
Mary is wearing a dress tonight because of the occasion, but normally she wears a military uniform.
A Royal Guard uniform.
Santeneri is, you know, very heavy on the machismo.
Men work.
Women stay home.
That sort of thing.
Since I’d been conditioned by modern Japanese compliance standards, I was pretty terrified of making a mistake at first.
When I met Braune for the first time as king, I was nervous as hell.
The conversation kept dying.
I nearly asked, “What are your hobbies?”
Dangerous.
A superior prying into an employee’s private life can count as workplace harassment.
Incidentally, my company was the kind of tiny family business that did not have anything resembling a workplace-harassment consultation desk, so that probably would have been a direct route to the Labor Standards Inspection Office.
So instead, having no idea what to say, I asked something bizarre like, “Has anything interesting happened to you lately?”
Then the conversation somehow led to me handing her my pocket watch.
That was another cold-sweat moment.
If our hands had touched, that could have been sexual harassment.
Here come the labor inspectors.
Anyway, I was terrified of everything at first, but apparently Santeneri is much more relaxed about that sort of thing.
Which means, conversely, that Mary is socially unusual.
She’s a woman serving as a military commander.
Apparently, she assists her father, the Inspector General of the Royal Guard.
And, well...
She’s beautiful.
Or maybe “handsome” is the better word.
Braune is already fairly tall for a woman, and Mary is about two fists taller than her.
She’s basically as tall as I am.
Depending on her heels, she might beat me.
She has a slender build overall, but, well...
She’s also very obviously fem-i-nine.
Can’t be helped.
I’m a man.
Her blond hair is parted down the middle and cut to just below her shoulders.
A little longer than a bob, I guess.
Green eyes.
A sharp, focused gaze.
Her nose is straight and well defined too.
The overall impression is:
Yep. She looks competent.
She’s not the laid-back, “one of the guys” type.
There’s something about her that says she would absolutely not tolerate vulgarity.
Actually, there is no way I could make a dirty joke in front of Mary.
Absolutely impossible.
All right.
That finishes everyone’s introductions.
Nicely balanced, don’t you think?
House Froisbourg is the foremost of House Leroy’s hereditary retainers—the pillar supporting national government.
House Gaillure is the leading house among the formerly independent lords—and obscenely rich.
And House Barois may rank lower socially, but they’re my direct subordinates.
With their own instrument of violence attached.
The young ladies themselves are nicely varied too.
Braune is the dependable older-sister type.
Zofi is a middle-school girl sitting at the top of the school social hierarchy.
Mary is the hard-charging career woman.
Wonderful.
There are just a few minor problems.
I—rookie me—once fired Braune’s father.
Zofi’s father is applying an unbelievable amount of pressure.
Also, she’s young enough that certain ordinances start becoming relevant.
And Mary...
Well.
I get a very strong sense that she’s evaluating me.
Is this kid useful? If not, fire him.
Very multinational-corporation.
Oh, and one more thing.
It seems the three young ladies have all established extremely del-i-cate relationships with one another.
Well then.
Off I go.