Intervention and a Proposal
Sylvia upended her document bag over my office desk.
Blank checks from the Imperial Central Bank and contracts bearing the seals of every major trading house came cascading down in a rustling mountain of paper.
"Hah... hah..."
Sylvia braced herself against the desk, dragging in ragged breaths.
"The moment that trailer went out yesterday, the great merchant lords who saw the community traffic with their own eyes completely lost their minds. They showed up in the station lobby waving blank checks, brawling over who could get their products on screen for even ten seconds around the broadcast."
"Oh? An actual brawl?"
"The fat ones put up a decent fight, actually."
"That must've been a sight."
"Anyway, I took that chaos, jacked up the per-second rate, and ran an auction. The result..."
Sylvia tapped the contract sitting on top with a trembling hand.
"The funds that just hit our station vault blow past the Imperial Household's entire annual budget. Director. We... we now have more money than anyone in the Empire. No—anyone on the entire continent!!"
Sylvia's lips convulsed into a bizarre, twitching smile.
This girl really does love money.
I stroked my chin, looking over the fortune piled on the desk with deep satisfaction.
This was the power of a platform monopoly.
When you held a medium capable of focusing ninety percent of the Empire's eyes on a single point, money printing itself was simply the natural order of things.
"Good work, Sylvia. With cash pouring in like this, what should we do next?"
Sylvia pushed up her glasses and asked blankly.
"W-well? We could invest a little more in Signal House, and return the rest to the national treasury for imperial infrastructure reconstruction. That would be the reasonable..."
I snapped my fingers, cutting her off cold.
"First things first—don't ask, don't argue. Just throw 300% performance bonuses at every last employee!"
"What? But the treasury..."
"Let the national economy run on the nation's dime. This is money IBS earned, pure and simple. Stuff cash in the mouths of the mages who've been wringing mana out of themselves all night, and the staff working themselves to death. That's how you get them to grind their bones for the next project."
Granted, we were a public broadcaster—but the ad revenue was ours, fair and square.
"I understand that, but... the next project? What are you talking about? Already? The first episode of Imperial Men and Women hasn't even finished airing!"
"You have to plan ahead. What's the point of sitting on a mountain of rotting money? Reinvest it now and make the pie bigger."
I stood from my chair and walked to the window. Beyond the transparent glass, the capital spread out at a glance, and a burning hunger to create surged up from my chest. We'd started with variety. Next, we needed a grander narrative, a bigger world. The kind of content I used to put on with every meal back on Earth—the kind that smacked countless viewers upside the head without a shred of mercy.
"Triple the staff. Send audition notices to every last theater actor, bard, and jester on the continent. Get in touch with the novelists too!"
"D-Director. Don't tell me..."
I turned around and slammed my second project proposal onto the desk in front of Sylvia with a bang.
Written across it were these words:
Sylvia flipped through the proposal, then looked up with startled eyes.
"Th-this is...!!"
I curled the corner of my mouth into a grin.
"This time, we're making a drama."
"A d-drama? The thing where actors come out and perform? The whole country's already in an uproar over a single variety trailer, and now you want to put on a production too? Just what is going on inside your head..."
"Unlike that reality show, a drama needs thorough planning and a long shoot. Even starting now is cutting it close. Gather people immediately and get the next project..."
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Just as I was about to launch into a full lecture, the director's office door shuddered as if it were about to come off its hinges. It was less a polite knock than someone beating the door down in a panic.
"Who is it?"
I muttered, frowning, when the door burst open and a junior station employee came flying in, pale as a sheet. The employee, gasping for air, nearly collapsed to the floor as they shouted.
"Y-Y-Y-Your Highness the Princess has arrived!!"
The office went dead silent. Sylvia's eyes met mine in the air between us.
I pressed a hand to my forehead and let out a deep sigh.
"Ah, shit... what's she doing here now."
"You cannot refer to Her Highness as 'she'!!"
Greta von Klaus.
The woman who had yielded the throne to her younger brother Theus and pretended to step back, but who in truth was a creature of venom, gripping the Empire's real power from the shadows. Even I, the Chancellor, found her an extremely difficult and exhausting opponent. And besides... my relationship with her was... no. I didn't want to think about that right now.
Her coming to this honey pot of a broadcasting station of her own accord could not possibly be for an ordinary reason.
Before I could even gather my thoughts, Princess Greta, dressed in an elegant gown, stepped into the director's office with graceful strides.
Click—
The clear sound of her heels rang through the room.
"May the Goddess's blessing be with you. His Excellency the Chancellor has been so busy he couldn't spare even a single message, so I decided to come in person."
Her blue eyes swept the room, lingered briefly on my desk, then returned to me.
"It's been some time, Your Highness. Had you sent word in advance, I would have visited the Imperial Palace myself."
I erased the look of annoyance as best I could and bowed my head politely.
"My patience isn't quite long enough to sit around waiting for a letter. Chancellor Ian, I've been rather curious what you've been occupying yourself with... and it seems you've been up to something quite entertaining."
Greta sat on the reception sofa, crossing her legs, and snapped her fan open with a crisp flick.
"I watched that noisy little 'trailer' of yours yesterday. And I spent the night watching the reactions on that anonymous square you built—the Forest of the Empire."
Her lips drew a smooth, elegant curve.
"Signal House? Locking the Empire's finest young men and women in one place and making them pair off. Vulgar in the extreme... and yet I couldn't take my eyes off it. So I came myself."
"I'm honored that Your Highness has taken an interest, as the producer. So—what brings you all the way to this humble place?"
At my direct pitch, Greta folded her fan, her eyes gleaming with interest.
"...Excuse me?"
"I mean I intend to appear on Imperial Men and Women."
Ah, my head.
I drew a firm line, fighting the headache boiling up behind my eyes.
"That's not possible."
"And why not? What if I put up a generous sponsorship?"
"As you just saw, we're drowning in money. And more importantly, it's a balance issue. The gender ratio is already set at six-to-six. If Your Highness drops in now, the entire ecosystem gets wrecked."
"Isn't it more fun when a predator crashes the stage halfway through and stirs things up?"
This woman didn't even know what variety entertainment was, and yet she'd nailed the essence of stimulation perfectly. Even so, I couldn't just shove a sitting princess in among ordinary people.
"Your Highness. The six-to-six picture is perfect as it is. The narrative is rolling along beautifully. A mid-season insertion is wrong no matter how I look at it. I'd have to rewrite the scenario. That means chaos for the broadcast."
"So it's not that you don't want me on the show?"
"I'm stating the facts as they are."
A tense standoff stretched between us. Watching Greta's blue eyes grow cold, I quickly found a compromise. She looked like she did as she pleased, but she was a woman whose calculations ran fast. Give her a justification and she would step back.
"Instead."
I paused a beat, then continued.
"Season 1 of Imperial Men and Women stays as it is. But when we produce Season 2, I'll bring Your Highness in as the top priority. We'll build the cast around your personality from the start, and I'll guarantee a full identity wash and an alias."
Greta's eyebrow twitched. The words "Season 2" seemed to hold considerable appeal.
"Season 2. And not as a princess, but under a different identity? That does sound interesting."
"Of course. You have my word."
"Very well. You had better keep that promise."
She tapped her chin with her fan and nodded. But this was Greta. She wasn't going to walk away that easily.
"I'll postpone appearing. But it would be rather disappointing if I left no trace of myself at all."
"What do you mean by that?"
"There's no law that says I can't involve myself in such a splendid enterprise conducted in the Imperial Family's name, is there? I would also like to invest."
Greta sank deep into the sofa's backrest.
"Broadcasting... after watching it for a while, this is power. I cannot simply leave this absolute authority in the Chancellor's hands alone. Of course, I know you are not that sort of man... but was it not you yourself who always spoke of checks on power?"
Damn it. My own words were coming back to bite me.
"Variety is just variety. I have no intention of using it as a political tool."
"Is that so? Right now everyone is watching out of novelty, but the sharp-eyed opportunists won't leave this alone. Of course, I trust in your abilities. You could cut them all down and protect the station."
I looked into the princess's eyes.
Tsk.
"You're talking about when I'm not around."
"Heh heh heh. Precisely. You're a busy man. You have to run not just the station but the Empire, and there are still plenty of remnants of the Demon Realm left on the continent. Being alone is truly exhausting, isn't it?"
"So you're saying you'll protect the station when I'm gone?"
"Of course. In the long run, this broadcasting thing looks like a very useful tool."
I had no grounds to refuse. Founding the station had been a national project to begin with. I was just using it personally to make variety shows right now, but the news still aired more than anything else—reports on how the Empire was doing. On weekends, live viewership for the news still hit seventy percent, after all.
Hah... I'd known this day would come eventually, but I couldn't help the bitterness.
"Don't misunderstand. This is not about seizing the station and swinging it about. My highest priorities are Theus, and the Empire."
She smiled a meaningful little smile.
"Well, all right. So is there a position you have in mind?"
The station wasn't a modern corporation anyway. I couldn't just hand out shares. As a state broadcaster, ownership naturally belonged to the Empire, and the best I could offer the princess was a plausible title.
"Special Advisor... that should suffice."
I nodded.
"Then I'll have it arranged."
"Wonderful. I'm in a rather good mood—this conversation went so well."
Princess Greta grinned and rose from her seat, looking satisfied.
"Then, as Special Advisor, might I make my first 'proposal'?"
She said proposal, but it was as good as an order. I nodded. If she wanted to give the Season 1 contestants of Imperial Men and Women some inconvenient missions or tasks, that would be fine.
"Go ahead."
But my prediction was completely off.
"You called it a drama, did you? That thing on the desk?"
I froze.
Damn it.... She'd barged in so suddenly I hadn't had time to put the proposal away.
What do I do? If the princess starts meddling in the drama's production, I might not get the picture I want.... No—should I be more worried about her using it politically?
That was exactly what I was thinking when—
"I'm more interested in that drama than in Imperial Men and Women... what do you say...? That 'acting' thing. It looked rather fun."
What?
I asked in a flustered voice.
"Excuse me? What... what are you saying right now..."
Then Greta looked at me with gleaming, interested eyes and said it again.