Does the Red Princess Dream of a Canary? (1)
Chiyoko Tokugawa fell silent for a moment after hearing my question, her expression still carrying that faint, distant quality.
A brief pause followed. The hesitation was unmistakable — she was weighing whether she could trust me with the truth.
But the conclusion was already written. Setting aside the fact that I was her greatest patron, how many people in the world could a princess confide in like this?
If I dared to judge, Chiyoko Tokugawa — who had resolved to leave the imperial palace and wage a lonely struggle — had not a single person in the world with whom she could share her true self.
She had no brothers or sisters. And how could she possibly hint at subversive thoughts to the so-called "elders" of the imperial household?
Yet it made no sense to say she could pour her heart out to the high-ranking officials of the Japanese Communist Party after joining them either.
Chiyoko's worldview, formed since childhood, inevitably included the imperial family's story. But even if they were ideological comrades, she could not possibly lay bare the inner workings of the palace to "commoners" who knew nothing of imperial etiquette.
Calling them commoners wasn't meant as a classist expression, per se. If the story concerned only herself, Chiyoko might have been willing to tell the truth. But the princess's tale inevitably involved other members of the imperial household — and she could not speak of matters tied to other royals.
But if the person was not even Japanese, from a country with no connection to her at all, the situation might be different. Sometimes someone with no relation whatsoever is more comfortable to confide in than someone ambiguously close.
It felt a bit strange for me to say this after personally killing nearly three hundred people, but appearances could be deceiving — outwardly, I was just a delicate-looking girl. There was no reason for her to harbor hostility toward me, and among the people Chiyoko knew, I was the one most likely to listen neutrally.
So Chiyoko broke her silence and spoke to me.
"…A few weeks ago, someone came to see me from the Imperial Household Agency."
"The Imperial Household Agency, I see."
"Yes. They know I'm not coming back, but they still send people periodically."
For the Imperial Household Agency — the government body handling imperial affairs — the existence of the Red Princess wandering outside their control would be anything but welcome.
Under imperial regulations, there was only one way for a royal to leave the Agency's control: a woman marrying and taking a husband's surname.
Once a royal woman acquired a commoner's surname through marriage, she could no longer remain within the palace.
"I can guess roughly why they send people."
"That's true. From the perspective of the Imperial Household Agency and the imperial family, I must be a real thorn in their side."
But Chiyoko's case was not like a marriage. She had unilaterally declared her separation from the imperial family and was using her maternal surname as a sort of common name.
To be honest, royals had neither the right to vote nor the right to be elected — they were required to maintain strict political neutrality. From the Agency's standpoint, a bratty princess who had no electoral rights yet was recklessly active in the illegal underground organization known as the Japanese Communist Party was bound to be infuriating.
Even if she drew a line and claimed disassociation, the mere fact of her activities inevitably spawned bizarre rumors that the Japanese imperial family was tacitly supporting communism.
Of course, since this was unprecedented, all sorts of administrative procedures were still being handled in a rough, improvised manner. Japan was a country deeply rooted in manuals, and while Imperial Household Agency officials passed responsibility to one another and stalled, Chiyoko's departure from the palace had already become a reality.
I slipped onto the sofa and gestured for the princess to take the seat across from me.
"So? I can predict the answer, but go on."
"Just as you expected, my answer has been the same for the past year. I told them I had no intention whatsoever of returning to a life stamped out by a mold, one without even freedom."
"As I thought."
Truthfully, life as a royal demanded far more in terms of what you had to uphold than what you got to enjoy. With no real rights granted, the regulations to observe were as numerous as mountains.
But what the princess said next was something I had never anticipated.
"After hearing my answer, they said something like, 'We know it sounds somewhat disloyal, but what could communists possibly have that's so appealing that you'd let them kill your parents?'"
Now that she mentioned it, Chiyoko's past was anything but ordinary.
"Miss Bronska, you've done your background check on me, so you know, right? How my parents died, at least."
I knew. Her parents had been caught in a terrorist attack by a southbound spy sent from Hokkaido and had lost their lives.
I nodded silently, signaling the princess to continue.
The method of the terrorist attack had been an aircraft hijacking. A plane bound from Tokyo to San Francisco was hijacked over the Pacific near the Kamchatka Peninsula, and its nose was turned toward Sapporo.
Generally, the outcome of aircraft hijackings by small terrorist groups converged on one of two possibilities: a safe return, or an explosion in mid-air.
The term "safe return" applied even when terrorists landed at a nearby airport, released the passengers, and achieved whatever goal they wanted — money or otherwise. The logic went: even though negotiations with the terrorists led to their achieving their objectives, the passengers had returned safely, hadn't they?
But if the terrorist group had backing from a state, the story was entirely different. Groups fitting this category generally included North Korea, the Ezo Soviet, Iran, or Palestine — all of which possessed internationally recognized territory and airports that the victim country could not unilaterally rush into.
Therefore, when the backing came from such states, one additional possibility emerged: being taken to their territory and held hostage for life.
If the hostages were royals of the ten-thousand-generation bloodline and their spouses, their value as hostages would skyrocket.
Chiyoko Tokugawa spoke.
"To the terrorists, my parents must have been hostages of truly exceptional value."
"At the time, Emperor Shōwa was still alive, so my father was technically the third-cousin of the emperor."
The current Emperor Akihito and Princess Chiyoko were fifth cousins — meaning Akihito's father, Emperor Shōwa Hirohito, and Chiyoko's father were third cousins. The closer the degree of relation, the more special the connection to the emperor. And considering the victim couple were socially prominent figures, this made it all the more significant.
The princess across from me then spoke with a hint of mockery.
"I still can't tell if this bloodline is truly worth that much, but at least the public perceived it that way."
"What matters isn't whether it's actually true, but what people believe."
"The passengers on that flight that day probably knew very well that my parents shouldn't be taken to Ezo."
"…Especially given the uncertainty of what demands those scoundrels might make while threatening the hostages' safety."
Chiyoko's use of the word "scoundrels" for Ezo carried raw, unfiltered hostility. And understandably so — not all communists were of the same breed.
As I had mentioned before, the Ezo Soviet — a Soviet puppet satellite state — and the Japanese Communist Party approached communism in vastly different ways. The former viewed communism merely as a tool for one-party dictatorship. Think of it as somewhere between North Korea and China.
Was North Korea ever a proper communist state? In the original timeline, as now, the personality cult that had mutated into Juche ideology was hard to consider a genuine ideology.
In contrast, the Japanese Communist Party was the faction that approached communism ideologically. In the eyes of Marx and Lenin, these were the more "pure-blooded" communists.
"That's precisely why the passengers would have united in preparing for the worst, even if it meant their own destruction."
The princess's deduction was accurate. I had verified the situation from multiple angles through various channels, and the passengers' resolve had indeed been firm.
This applied to Chiyoko's parents as well — they had set aside their special status as royals and stood in solidarity with the other passengers.
Faced with the fierce resistance of passengers and crew, compounded by the captain and co-pilot's non-cooperation, the Ezo terrorists ultimately chose to blow up the plane and perish together.
From the criminals' perspective, failing to take a royal hostage was regrettable, but the fact that a royal had died screaming over the Pacific was sufficient to shock the entire nation.
"…I was only nine years old at the time. My parents had said they'd be going to America for a short while, but when the promised time passed, they never returned — only the adults were busy running around."
"I knew nothing back then, so I could only cry sadly."
"As my body and mind began to grow a little, I came to hate the communists who murdered my parents more than anything."
That was normal. When the person closest to you in the world suddenly disappears, the direction the arrow of anger points is almost predetermined.
"The childish anger of my youth gradually faded with time. But that emptiness transformed into a question: 'What exactly is communism that my parents had to die for?'"
"…Your thinking matured considerably in that direction."
For a moment, I thought the princess before me was remarkably like me. The fact that we had both lost our parents to communists was too similar.
"It was around that time that I began to seriously engage with that subversive ideology. The deeper I dug, the more I realized that what Ezo was advocating was a twisted ideology far removed from theory."
Now I was beginning to understand — why Chiyoko Tokugawa had walked the path she was on now.
I furrowed my brow slightly and asked.
"…The people in Sapporo are walking such a wrong path that you decided to correct it yourself."
"It's a bit of an ambitious dream, isn't it? I jumped out of my cage and recklessly joined the Japanese Communist Party, but there's hardly any sign things are improving."
"At least a generous patron has appeared this year."
"That was the most fortunate thing. At least I can do something without worrying about money."
It seemed my sense of similarity was no illusion after all. Whether Yerina Bronska or Chiyoko Tokugawa, we both wanted to strangle the murderer who had taken away our closest person.
The only difference was that I wanted to turn Moscow into a sea of fire, while the princess across from me wanted to uproot the breed walking the path of samurai betrayal. For me, that was a genuine blessing — if I could achieve my goal, the princess who had just escaped her cage would achieve hers as well.