The Sins of the Father
My first meeting with Tokugawa Chiyoko had concluded with a preliminary business proposal. Bombarding her with too much information at once was never a wise move. Besides, I needed time to review today's conversation and map out our next strategic steps. Just like back in Korea, this was work best done in the dead of night, local time. Until then, I could easily kill time by wandering the streets of Tokyo, so there was no need to fret.
Returning to my hotel late at night, I sat down with Pavel to dissect the meeting before Delis got in touch.
"Do you truly believe that princess took her first steps into the magical path at the Shosoin? Who is to say she didn't have a mentor to perform her baptism?"
"It's a conjecture, as you say, but I'm almost certain of it. If I had to put a number on it, I'd say there's a ninety percent chance."
Such speculations are naturally colored by one's personal experiences. Pavel, having entered the magical world through a formal baptism, likely assumed the same for her. Of course, nothing is ever absolute unless confirmed directly by the person in question. Yet, the reason I felt so confident was simple: no other explanation made sense.
Granted, Tokugawa Chiyoko was an entirely new variable—someone I had never even heard of in my past life—so my deduction could be flawed. It was entirely possible that some powerful, unknown mage who had no qualms about performing baptisms was hiding somewhere in the Japanese archipelago. But considering Japan's unique political landscape, the idea of the Secretary-General receiving a baptism from such a mage was utterly laughable.
If there existed a mage skilled enough to perform a baptism—and generous enough to actually do it—they would, in all likelihood, be an old fossil who still clung to memories of the Empire's glory days. To those mages, the imperial family was the pinnacle of incompetence—the very fools who had ruined the Empire just as it was on the cusp of establishing the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. They wouldn't care that Japan had been hopelessly outmatched by the Allies in fuel, steel, and manpower. To those fanatics, such material deficits were things that should have been overcome through sheer spiritual fortitude. In their eyes, Hirohito's constant, weak-willed micromanagement was the sole reason their magical forces hadn't been deployed effectively where they were needed most.
It wasn't a perfect analogy, but it was similar to how the officers of the German Wehrmacht blamed their failures on the constant interference of a certain failed art student turned Führer. Since the country had already been turned upside down thanks to the Americans, the Emperor and the imperial family were supposed to remain purely symbolic figures, much like they had been during the Shogunate before the Meiji Restoration. Now that the Emperor's overreaching power had been forcefully corrected by the grace of a well-endowed "Little Boy" and a hypnotic "Fat Man," the idea of those old Japanese mages bestowing a baptism upon a member of the imperial family was absurd.
As if that would ever happen.
Even if they did, they certainly wouldn't have chosen a female member of a cadet branch who had absolutely no claim to the throne. If power had been their goal, they would have targeted Hirohito's direct lineage.
When you travel the world in search of artifacts, you inevitably end up learning about local political situations, whether you want to or not. Even though my body had changed, the memories of getting dragged into pointless conflicts and suffering for it remained vivid. As an outsider whose primary job was merely excavating and analyzing artifacts—and who had only become a high-level mage out of a desperate need for self-defense—knowing when to strike and when to retreat had become my greatest virtue.
To make matters worse, Tokugawa Chiyoko was not only a member of the imperial family—whom the mainstream mages quietly shunned—but she was also a communist, a group those old-guard mages utterly loathed. They hated royals, and they hated reds. There was no way in hell they would ever tolerate a red princess. Denied entry into the mages' inner circle, her awakening could only have been the result of some accidental exposure to an artifact. What other explanation could there be?
With a deduction built on such solid ground, there was no room left for doubt.
Pavel immediately moved on to his next question.
"That makes perfect sense. But... why did you go out of your way to share your personal history with her, my lady?"
"What do you mean?"
"You know, the part where you mentioned your homeland was crawling with reds. From the Secretary-General's perspective, that phrasing might have been somewhat offensive."
"Are you worried I made a poor choice of words, considering she's a communist herself?"
When I tilted my head and asked, he seemed to realize his slip and began to stammer.
"That's not what I meant... Of course, even if she is offended, there is very little she can do about it, but..."
"Drop it, Pavel. I know what you mean. No need to walk on eggshells around me, especially with a build like yours."
Pavel, who had been anxiously reading my expression, finally relaxed when he saw the faint smirk playing on my lips.
"Lady Bronska...?"
"Well, you're not entirely wrong. Even if we hold all the cards, a modicum of respect makes cooperation much smoother."
People work much more efficiently when they actually want to do the job rather than when they're forced into hard labor. That was a simple fact of life.
"Then why...?"
In a way, I had taken a similar approach in Korea. Despite practically terrorizing Ham Cheon-ho, I had ultimately guaranteed his position as CEO, promised him proxy voting rights in the battle for shares, and acted as his reliable backer. However, Tokugawa Chiyoko's case was slightly different. Sharing a sanitized version of my past wasn't just for show.
I replied, "I wanted to saddle her with a sense of debt."
"A sense of debt...?"
"To be more precise, I plan to expand the narrative beyond just myself."
All Tokugawa Chiyoko knew about us were the names Irene Bronska and Executive Director Choi. What could she possibly glean from a name like Szczecin-Oder Logistics? She would only ever see the front company information we had set up to mislead her. Now that I had subtly introduced my own background, it was Pavel's turn to step up and bridge the gap. There was no need to fabricate anything complex; simply bringing up Pavel's lineage would be more than enough. There was no better weapon to shake an imperial Japanese princess who fancied herself "enlightened."
After all, the quarter of Korean blood running through Pavel's veins was a direct consequence of Japanese imperialism. The migration of Koreans to Manchuria and the Maritime Province had exploded after Japan annexed the Korean Peninsula. And the reason Stalin had looked so unfavorably upon the Koreans—or rather, the Koryo-saram—who had migrated to the Far East was his paranoid suspicion that these refugees might turn around and sell Soviet secrets to Japan.
Honestly, the man was a hopeless, paranoid lunatic.
Then again, Stalin and paranoia were practically synonymous.
So, if one traced back the root cause, Japan was partially to blame for Pavel's grandparents being abruptly deported to Central Asia. In other words, the Japanese imperial family could not absolve themselves of that responsibility. The fact that Tokugawa Chiyoko hadn't even been born when those decisions were made was irrelevant. Did twenty-first-century Germans apologize to Jewish people because they were all card-carrying Nazis? No. It was because the sins of one's parents and grandparents could never be cleanly severed.
The Secretary-General was a woman who had joined the Communist Party simply because she couldn't bear to watch the working class groan under the weight of Japan's zaibatsu and keiretsu. Would this highly empathetic Red Princess, who practiced Mencius's concept of compassion more fervently than anyone, be able to turn a blind eye to the sins of imperialism?
Of course not.
Therefore, if we subtly slipped in Pavel's lineage as part of his personal history, we would saddle the Secretary-General with a heavy psychological debt without having to lift a finger. It was a debt of the heart—one that carried no contractual obligations or rights, yet paradoxically exerted an even tighter grip because of it.
Between the far-right imperialists who still clung to the nostalgia of a rampaging empire and the far-left communists in Sapporo loyal to the Soviet Union, positioning the Japan Communist Party as the mediator to balance the two was a decent plan. They might lean a bit to the left, but they were still infinitely better than the Soviet of Materialists I intended to tear down.
My call with Delis in the early hours of the morning followed a similar trajectory. We would gradually saddle them with these intangible debts of the heart, deepening the Japan Communist Party's reliance on our syndicate. Swept up in our gaslighting, they would keep accepting our aid until, before they knew it, they would reach a point where they couldn't possibly survive without my support.
"While these measures might seem like we are absorbing some losses initially..."
"We have to look at the long game, right? I know, I get it. And if you think so, Delis, you're probably right."
"I am grateful for your trust."
I shook my head in mock exasperation. "Please. I'm someone who once wore a dress and played the coquette for a fat pig of a man just to secure Northern Ireland and Ireland. Compared to back then, this is a walk in the park."
"..."
Perhaps recalling those days, a brief silence fell over the other end of the line.
"Pfft, no need to dwell on the past. So, what's next?"
"Ahem. Next... we believe it might be wise for you to make a show of force, Lady Yerina."
"To imprint upon them just how far ahead of them I am?"
It was a solid strategy. Loyalty is never free, so it would be wise to make them painfully aware of the vast gulf in our magical prowess. Just as much as worldly success, what mages craved above all else was a more advanced path of magic. No matter how much worldly values like wealth and fame had surged to the forefront, to any sane mage, expanding one's magical horizons was always the ultimate pursuit. Thus, from Tokugawa Chiyoko's perspective, I would be both a wealthy patron capable of funding the cash-strapped Japan Communist Party and a senior mage who could refine their crude magic. Not that I would blindly fund them to the point of draining my own syndicate's coffers, of course.
Delis spoke through the receiver. "Alternatively, you could take a step back and let Pavel take the stage."
"Pavel?"
"To be frank, he is overshadowed by your presence, but Pavel is quite a formidable mage in his own right, isn't he? Besides, he hasn't had many opportunities to show his worth lately."
That was true. He only paled in comparison because he stood next to a sun like me; objectively, Pavel was a brilliantly shining star in his own right. His immediate mastery of the magic bullet in Marseille, France, was proof enough. Learning an entirely unfamiliar spell in such a short span was a feat that no one else in our syndicate, not even the Equinox unit, could ever hope to replicate.
Indeed, ever since we raided the British Museum with the other subordinates, Pavel hadn't had many chances to take center stage. Of course, he had cleaned up the small fry at the casino in Marseille, and he had delivered the finishing blow when we faced the Materialist mage and things got dicey. But compared to the sheer volume of combat the rest of the security detail had seen, his field experience was relatively sparse. I had even brought the other Equinox members to Korea to give them real combat experience, yet I had somehow overlooked my closest subordinate.
I felt a sudden pang of realization.
Clearing my throat a couple of times to mask my slight embarrassment, I spoke up. "Ahem. Well, Pavel's opinion matters most here. What do you think?"
"I am ready whenever you wish, my lady. As I have said before, a tool's opinion does not matter to the master who wields it."
Well, while that was technically true, I always tried to consult my subordinates whenever possible. Not because I was a particularly kind person, but because squeezing them too hard would only breed resentment. Besides, dragging someone along against their will was a surefire way to kill their motivation.
"Is that so? Then we'll consider your deployment a given. We just need to decide when and where."
"Leave it to me. I will find a battlefield that yields the maximum efficiency."
Delis's voice, ringing clearly through the receiver, sounded remarkably cheerful. Lately, she seemed exceptionally enthusiastic about anything involving Pavel. I couldn't help but feel incredibly grateful for subordinates who threw themselves into their work with such passion, even without being ordered to.
And so, as the year-end atmosphere grew thicker, Delis intercepted an illegal firearms transaction attempt by low-level members of the Sumiyoshikai, a Yakuza syndicate. They were scheduled to make a deal in Yokohama with American mobsters who had come to Japan for a Christmas holiday.
The day after receiving the news from Delis, I paid another visit to the Secretary-General. When I casually let the information slip, the Red Princess's face twisted in a deep scowl.
"The Yakuza again..."
Judging by her reaction, they shared quite a history of bad blood. To the heavily right-wing Yakuza, the Communist Party must have been an absolute eyesore. Naturally, there was no love lost between them. It was likely for a similar reason that she had initially asked if Pavel was Zainichi Korean upon hearing his surname was Choi. Well... any such wariness seemed to have vanished after she learned that Pavel's tragic family history was a direct result of her country's bloated imperialism. In fact, she even seemed to harbor a trace of guilt.
"I'm just letting you know as a precaution. Who knows? They might bring those newly acquired guns straight to your doorstep."
"Tsk... How did things ever come to this..."
Seeing Tokugawa Chiyoko begin to spiral into anxiety, I clapped my hands together to break the tension.
"Now, now! There's really no need for you to worry, Secretary-General."
"What do you mean by that...?"
"Well, no need for a lengthy explanation. Just sit back and watch. You'll soon see exactly why I brought this up."