Why Have You Forsaken Me?

Calm down. The last ray of hope is still alive…!

It had come out of nowhere, but from Artraia’s perspective the idea was worth a second look. After all, unlike the present, there had once been a past so hostile that the Empire stood at war with every neighboring power at once—and the architects of that past had been none other than the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under the Predecessor Emperor.

And for the Foreign Ministry, the tragedy was that they had never been given a chance to prove they had reformed. Normalizing relations with other nations and building genuine friendships had, to put it bluntly, been handled almost entirely by me and the Executive Ministry; the Foreign Ministry simply had little left to do. Meanwhile the corruption that had been piling up for years kept exploding into the open. The final blow came when I exposed the previous Foreign Minister as the head of a foreign spy network, and the whole department detonated.

After Artraia’s furious purge, the survivors were gathered up and a new Foreign Minister was appointed. He did his best to rebuild the shattered overseas human-intelligence networks… but the poor man seemed crushed by the weight of the situation. He tried something strictly forbidden in every nation—brain modification to boost his intelligence—only for the procedure to go wrong and leave him dumber than before, forcing his immediate dismissal. “Total disaster” was too mild a phrase for the current state of the Holy Sevelian Empire’s Foreign Ministry.

And that was not even the half of it. Diplomats kept getting caught taking bribes. A long-retired former high official tried to use noble information networks to install his useless son in a senior Foreign Ministry post—and got caught. When he was exposed he staged a suicide spectacle, wailing,

“I have failed to repay His Majesty’s grace! What use is this old man’s life?!”

“You’re insane.”

Even Artraia, whose Personality Pocket made her practically a living saint, could not simply stand by and watch that kind of circus. Still… did it really have to come to this?

“…So with this reorganization, the Foreign Ministry and the Executive Ministry will be merged into a new Foreign Executive Ministry…”

And why, of all things, merge the Executive Ministry—which was essentially a shadow organization—with the Foreign Ministry, the most public-facing department imaginable?

“This does not sit well with me, Riel.”

“One silver lining, at least—the minister of the new Foreign Executive Ministry hasn’t been decided yet, yeah.”

A blessing in disguise if ever there was one.

“And about the part you’re fretting over, Minister—I heard a new Foreign Minister has already been appointed, yeah?”

“Oh… a new minister? Do we know who?”

“Nope. Just that someone’s been chosen. No official announcement yet, so even I don’t know, yeah.”

At Riel’s words, short simulations of possible futures began spinning wildly through my head.

Come to think of it… isn’t this actually a perfect chance to step out of the hot seat while still getting everything done?

I hit pause again so I could think it through carefully, and hope for the future began to kindle.

The Executive Ministry has always lived in the shadows. And now, in this climate, a brand-new Foreign Minister…

Looked at one way, wasn’t this simply a setup to install that new Foreign Minister as the head of the freshly minted Foreign Executive Ministry?

Artraia, I always believed in you.

Of course it might be nothing more than my hope circuits overheating, but it still sounded pretty plausible.

No need to advertise to other nations that our diplomatic corps is a complete dumpster fire, and we still get to keep using the Executive Ministry’s proven track record. Perfect.

Naturally it would depend on who the new Foreign Minister was and how much experience they brought.

Maybe I’ll still handle the actual work while they mediate the inevitable clashes between the old Foreign Ministry staff and the Executive Ministry people…

The moment that thought landed, a sigh escaped me of its own accord.

In that case my workload just doubles.

Still, no matter ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠how I turned it over, I could not see myself becoming the public face of the new Foreign Executive Ministry. Even if the last year or two had forcibly turned me into a public commodity whose name and face were plastered all over ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the media, at my core I was still a creature of the shadows.

And honestly, if they were going to smash two ministries together, a little advance warning to the people in charge would have been nice. At least then I could have prepared myself mentally.

Not that I can just desert the Empire…

Technically desertion was always an option. The main quest’s victory condition was “the Holy Sevelian Empire wins,” not “Arto wins.” As long as I remained in this world, no matter where I ran I would still have to look at Sevelian banners and work for Sevelian victory.

So this is what they mean by “there is no paradise at the end of the road you flee down.”

I spent a long while wallowing in every delusional fantasy my overheated hope circuits could cook up. When I finally regained my senses I released the pause and prepared to resume the conversation.

Wait—what were we talking about again?

Of course, right before unpausing I completely forgot what I had been saying, so I had to pause again just to re-read the last few lines… but we will politely ignore that little fumble.

“A new minister, huh…”

After I finished summarizing—briefly—the thoughts I had organized while thrashing around in pause-space, I took a long drink of water to soothe a throat dried out by my monologue. Riel nodded along, agreeing with my assessment.

“You’re right, Minister. Most of the public doesn’t even know what the Executive Ministry does, yeah.”

As a minister I hated to admit it, but her words were absolute truth.

That makes two of us.

I had been Minister of the Executive Ministry for years now, and I still had only the foggiest idea what the organization actually was. Of course part of the problem was that the Executive Ministry itself had always been an inherently vague creature. Successive emperors had created it as something like a personal guard that was not allowed to act as openly as a real personal guard. Every time a new emperor took the throne the department’s structure and areas of responsibility were rewritten from scratch—a recurring catastrophe. By the time I inherited it, the place had become something close to a genuine all-purpose tool.

Sometimes it handled diplomacy and spy networks in place of the Foreign Ministry. Sometimes it audited other government departments. Sometimes it acted like a domestic intelligence service ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠hunting internal spies. Its ranks were filled with civil servants, a pack of lunatic special-forces operators, and assorted other weirdos. And the minister himself kept getting drafted to put down rebellions or shipped off to foreign countries to settle the Predecessor Emperor’s gambling debts. From the top of the chain to the bottom, the entire organization radiated a complete lack of fundamental identity.

“Mm. You’re right, Riel.”

“You were quiet for so long I figured even you had nothing left to say about the Executive Ministry’s actual state of affairs, yeah.”

“…Yeah.”

“Same here, yeah.”

Somehow the two top people in the Executive Ministry (the vice-minister was a slave, after all) had been reduced to sitting around and complaining about our lot in life. The world truly was a mysterious place.

After wallowing a while longer I finally calmed down enough to sink into my private sofa and ask,

“By the way, when’s the official reorganization announcement?”

“Uh… next week, yeah.”

“…That’s soon.”

The answer yanked me upright out of the cushions before I even realized I was moving.

“Even if things go the way I expect, the amount of prep work we have to do right now is still a mountain.”

“Maybe this time it’ll go relatively smoothly, yeah?”

“…Maybe.”

Ding♪

The moment I started to agree with her, the familiar cheap alarm tone rang out, the world automatically paused, and a brand-new event window materialized in front of my eyes.

And of course it shoved a pair of utterly vague, completely useless choices in my face.