[Interest (1)]
In the quiet, snow-covered North where nothing ever happened, a handsome prince with black hair and dark eyes appeared one day.
The prince said, "Hmm! There are many hungry people, so I must share my bread!"
For the first time in their lives, the people of the North ate their fill. Then, the prince said again, "Hmm! I must build homes for those who have nowhere to go!"
And so, villages popped up here and there. Finally, the prince said, "Hmm! I must protect the people of this land forever!"
The quiet, snow-covered North became a land where laughter never ceased.
Thud.
Aiden closed the picture book.
The quality of the book wasn't exactly high. Simple words, short sentences, and somewhat ridiculous illustrations. Of course, since it was a picture book for young children, it didn't necessarily need to be high-brow, so that wasn't the problem.
The problem was the content.
Aiden stared intensely at Roland, who was rolling his eyes and desperately trying to look like he didn't know anything. It was impossible for him not to feel the gaze, yet the way he buried his head in his desk to avoid it made Aiden let out a dry laugh.
“...So, you’ve already distributed this?”
“...It’s quite popular, though...”
When Aiden finally spoke, unable to hold back any longer, Roland muttered a reluctant reply. Kalisa and Jamie’s shoulders were shaking—it was a chaotic scene. They were clearly trying their best to hold back their laughter.
“Ha...”
A sigh escaped him naturally. He rubbed his face with his hands and looked at the cover of the book again.
[Aiden Blackwood]
The title of the book. In other words, his own name.
“...When did I become a prince?”
“That’s what we call poetic license, sir.”
“Shut it.”
“Yes, sir.”
Aiden had already known that the officials of the Education and Enlightenment Department were busy gathering stories to use as teaching materials for children. He had heard that while collecting oral traditions, they had met Lapisha, heard stories of the desert, and then, for some reason, decided to turn the biographies of heroes and great figures into fairy tales.
Honestly, he had vaguely assumed they would make one about him eventually. That’s how a class-based society worked. Even in the 21st century, where everyone was equal before the law, people were still categorized by money, popularity, or even petty job titles, and walking on eggshells around superiors was a daily occurrence. In a society where the class system was firmly entrenched, publishing a biography of the Lord (or in his case, the Acting Lord) was a natural progression.
I thought I could just correct it if they brought it to me.
Aiden had predicted his life story would be turned into a textbook, but he hadn't expected them to produce his so quickly and finish distributing it already. It was a result of his subordinates becoming accustomed to the "hurry-hurry" culture, and his own failure to fully grasp just how popular a "high-ranking figure" he had become among the Northern people.
The fairy tale Aiden Blackwood was a hit not only among the adults attending literacy classes but also among the residents who hadn't received any formal education. It had gone beyond adults who had learned to read passing it on to their children and neighbors; in some villages, the dispatched instructors were even holding public readings in the village squares.
Who would believe that all of this is voluntary?
If the "Baekdu bloodline" that ruled the northern part of the Korean Peninsula saw this, they’d probably jump in and ask to hold a seminar on how he managed to do it.
“Recall them.”
“It’s incredibly popular. Not just with the kids, but with the adults too... And honestly, it’s really well-made. The vocabulary and sentences are perfectly aligned with the curriculum of our basic literacy classes, and we even included numbers, so it’s popular in the arithmetic classes, too...”
“I said recall them.”
His decision was swift.
“First, I am not a prince.”
“I understand what you’re worried about. But this material is only used in literacy classes, so it’s not like it’s going outside...”
“It doesn’t matter right now because no one is paying attention to us. But do you think it will stay that way forever?”
The North would continue to grow. He would make sure of it. Eventually, the time would come when he would have to start playing the power game in earnest.
That’s when everything gets dug up.
No matter how much they claimed it was "poetic license," if he happened to offend the people living in the Imperial Palace, it would be a "heads will roll" ending. He had to prevent that.
Aiden had considered being a civil servant his true calling largely because of his safety-oriented mindset—he wanted to live a long, quiet life. He absolutely could not accept a situation where a guillotine might suddenly appear in his life.
“Change the title, just the title. And the name, too.”
“If we change the name, it’s no longer the Acting Lord’s biography!”
“You said it was a fairy tale just a moment ago.”
“That’s...”
“I’m not telling you not to write it at all. But let’s not give anyone a reason to pick a fight.”
“...Yes, sir.”
Roland looked a bit dejected. But when he thought about it calmly, Aiden was right. It had certainly been excessive. If it were any other time, he would have caught the issue himself.
— Oh, when the Acting Lord first arrived?
— It was late winter, or maybe early spring, with snow still piled high. He visited every single house to conduct the census himself, remember?
— Then, suddenly, the fur merchants who had always been ripping us off started buying at several times the price. Thanks to that, we fed our kids until their bellies were full without having to go through the spring famine. I cried every night.
— Then came the news that new villages were being incorporated into the North one after another.
— And then the village representatives who went to the hunting competition brought back the absurd news that a Myo-tribe village had been formed.
— I wonder what will happen next year. Haha.
— Whatever it is, if it’s something our Lord is doing, it must be good. Don’t you think?
Roland had been tracking Aiden’s footsteps since before he arrived in the North. Testimonies—or rather, confessions—poured out from the officials and residents. They all said different things, but they had one thing in common: the affection they couldn't hide, flowing from the base of their words.
No one had told them to do it, and no one was watching.
It wasn’t respect. It was definitely affection.
If someone asked which was better, respect or affection, it wouldn't be easy to choose. But if you limited the subject to a person in power or a leader, the ranking became quite simple.
Affection is incomparably harder to earn.
Leaders or those in power show that they are different from the common folk by displaying their innate thrones and crowns. Humans are vulnerable to what they see, so they bow their heads to the outward display of intimidation. And once the head is bowed, respect isn't hard to fake.
But what about affection?
The affection parents have for their children. The affection of lovers just starting out. The affection shared by friends who are like twins. Sometimes, the affection of fans for a star.
Affection is blind and irrational; you can’t create it just because you want to, nor does it appear just because you follow the steps someone else took.
Roland had witnessed someone receiving such an overflow of affection, and as a result, he had been swept up in it, failing to view the situation with his usual cold-headed logic.
“Second. Suddenly making bread, villages popping up out of nowhere—isn’t that a bit much? Either take it out entirely or write it more realistically. Change it to one of the two. This is, how should I put it? It’s excessive. Too much.”
Whether he knew it or not, the man receiving the affection of the entire North was just sighing and muttering incomprehensible things like, "It's not like the Great Leader throwing a pinecone and having it explode like a grenade, what is this?"
Roland almost burst out laughing at his superior’s reaction. He found it ironic that he was agonizing over realistic concerns in the most unrealistic way possible.
So, he decided to push back.
“How about we make it a pure fairy tale? If we don’t use the Acting Lord’s name but a fictional one, I don’t think anyone will complain about us using the word ‘prince.’”
He added that there were too many oral legends involving princes and princesses for anyone to accuse them of insulting the Imperial family.
“...Well, as long as you don’t use my name.”
Now that he thought about it, that sounded reasonable. Looking at the stories they had gathered for the textbooks, there were princesses living in mountains and princes who came from the sea.
A prince of a snowy land isn’t particularly different.
Aiden nodded after thinking it over.
“Change the name properly.”
That was just one final warning.
***
The fairy tale that had the title Aiden Blackwood had its title changed to The Prince of the Black Forest. Since it was obviously derived from Aiden’s surname, the Northern residents still called it "our Lord’s fairy tale," but the outward problem was settled for now.
The problem was what came next.
“Heroes of other regions and cultures.”
Organizing and teaching the stories of the desert heroes that Lapisha had mentioned.
Tap, tap, tap.
It was a habit of Aiden’s to tap his desk when he was deep in thought. At such times, all three of his adjutants would wait in silence.
Heroes of regions other than the Empire.
Aiden, who had been weighing various possibilities from a political engineering perspective, suddenly felt that the whole situation was futile. If even "The Great Leader uses the art of shrinking distance" could become a fairy tale just by changing the name, he wondered if he really needed to worry about this all by himself.
Biographies for kids always come divided into domestic and international versions, anyway.
So, he decided to keep it simple.
“Collect the stories. Heroes of other countries, other peoples. But the Empire comes first.”
“Then should we make an Imperial Hero Collection and an Other Hero Collection?”
“Yes. And you know that the Imperial one must have at least one more volume, right?”
“Of course!”
“Organize these stories and submit a report. I’m going to send it to the Central Government.”
“To the Central Government?”
“It’s a preemptive confession. That way, if someone says something later, I’ll have an excuse.”
We made these as part of resident education, and aren’t our Imperial heroes amazing? Oh, the Other Hero Collection? That’s nothing special, just to round things out. Collected a bit from here and there. Yes, yes. I thought it would be good to have a variety of stories for teaching the residents.
He could just send it with an excuse like that.
Aiden concluded it lightly. He truly had no idea what kind of repercussions this decision would cause. After all, Aiden had been born and raised in a typical middle-class Korean family, where world classics and world biography collections were a standard part of the interior decor.
***
“Teaching the residents by collecting heroic tales of other regions and peoples.”
A blonde man with a slightly weary expression looked at the document with eyes that seemed piqued by interest.
“It seems the North is trying to become self-sufficient.”
“It appears the Acting Lord who took office last year is carrying out various projects.”
“Why didn’t I know about this?”
“It’s still far from being of a scale that would concern you. The government seems to have checked the reports, but it didn’t seem important enough to reach your level.”
“Hmm.”
“More importantly, Count Biyoten, who declared his support for the Second Prince the other day, is the problem. The families under his command...”
The blonde man sitting in the seat of honor returned to his bored expression. As if it were his problem, yet not his problem at all.
The North, huh.
The word he hadn't expected kept lingering in his mind.