64. A Beaming School Trip
64. A Beaming School Trip
The Escort Train.
Finding out they liked Riv's debut scene that much actually put me in a good mood just listening to it.
While I was frantically giving Pia’s followers the full Riv-debut-scene experience, the door behind me flew open with a bang.
And whoever had opened it placed a hand on my shoulder, as if to stop me.
"What happened?"
Thinking it might be reinforcements coming to rescue the followers, I blindly swung an elbow, and the person at the door blocked it.
At the sensation of cold metal against my skin, I looked back and found Pia's guard, Zeke, standing there.
"Ah. That was you? My bad."
He clearly hadn't been beside Pia just moments ago, but the question of where he'd come from didn't even occur to me.
Over the past six months, the guy had popped up out of nowhere so often that I'd just grown to accept it.
Zeke released the elbow he'd been holding and pointed outside the train.
Off in that direction, Pia, who had been sitting on a picnic mat drinking tea, noticed me and waved.
"Oh. You finished?"
Nod nod.
The heavy visor bobbed up and down.
Zeke couldn’t speak.
Whether he was incapable or simply didn't want to, I couldn't say, but over the past six months he hadn't produced anything resembling a voice, not even a groan.
So he always communicated through body language—and maybe as a trade-off, his pantomime was so good that communicating was no problem.
"Think you could help me move these guys?"
Nod nod.
While I had been distracted talking to Zeke, I knocked out the followers crawling between his legs and hoisted them together with the rest of the followers still sprawled inside the train.
Zeke slung the sprawled group of followers over both his shoulders and headed with me toward where Pia was.
"Does it make sense to lose your mind after being revived only twenty times?"
"..."
"Ah, sorry. Guess you can't exactly move your hands right now."
Spouting idle nonsense, I piled them up beside the track.
Zeke took his place behind Pia without a word, and as I plopped down in front of her, she naturally poured me a cup of tea.
"Thank you."
It just so happened that after causing a ruckus inside the train, my throat was parched.
Only after I'd wet my throat with tea and caught my breath did Pia open her mouth.
"Please don't overdo it."
"Overdo it? Come on. If I used a word like 'overdo it' against kids, I'd have to turn in my Hero badge."
"Fufu. I misspoke."
Once I had emptied my teacup, I dusted myself off and stood up before those bastards could regain consciousness.
That was because letting Pia’s followers see the two of us acting close for no reason would make things politically difficult for her.
Before leaving, I didn’t forget to give Pia one last reminder.
"I'm gonna head out, but if these bastards ask you to join some kind of party, don't go along with it. And if any of them cross the line later, tell me. Got it?"
"Yes. Thank you for worrying about me."
"And what did I tell you to do if any guy harasses you?"
"You said to attack the vital points first."
"Good. Excellent."
Some might wonder if it was really okay to say that kind of thing to a girl, but she was a friend's little sister, so I couldn't help worrying.
If I had a little sister of my own, I'd have said the same thing.
After finishing that final warning, I made my way out of the filming location.
Getting farther from the set, I grumbled under my breath.
'Ugh... I really don't want to go report in.'
It was time to get back to work.
========
Pia kept smiling serenely in the direction Allen had gone until he vanished beyond the horizon.
And once he was gone over the horizon and even his presence could no longer be sensed, her expression hardened into stone.
She turned away from the direction Allen had disappeared and said to Zeke,
"Zeke. Good work."
He nodded.
At those words, Zeke melted.
Zeke, having dissolved into a mercury-like metal, vanished into Pia's subspace.
Pia stored the picnic mat inside as well, and looked down upon the pile of her followers that Allen had stacked up.
"..."
Zeke watched the backs of the students being dragged away with a deeply somber gaze.
Then, to pass the tedious time, she wove threads of magical energy and pulled dolls from her subspace.
With her right hand she strung the doll of a black-haired, black-eyed boy, and with her left hand the doll of a golden-haired, crimson-eyed girl, and began to put on a puppet show all by herself.
- Isn't a knight who protects his princess exactly a man's romantic ideal?
Recalling the deliberately deepened voice of a man who still retained a hint of boyishness, she let out a soft giggle.
As she worked her fingers, the girl doll's head came to rest upon the boy doll's thigh.
Watching the scene with a calm gaze, Pia wore a serene smile.
That serene smile lasted until Talus, the scion of a marquis family, regained consciousness.
*
It was several hours after Allen had disappeared that Pia's followers came back to their senses.
The first to regain consciousness was Talulla... no, Talus, the highest-ranking scion among them.
Some of that was thanks to the training expected of a noble, but it was also because he had been the first one knocked unconscious.
Having offered what resistance he could with his rather decent training immediately after being dragged off by Allen, it had backfired on him and earned him Allen's concentrated attention—which was the cause.
Of course, the first person knocked out could never know he had been first, and Talus had no way to understand the truth.
"You weaklings. You call yourselves nobles and still haven’t woken up? What troublesome lower-ranking nobles. Blood will tell."
Given that he was doing this right in front of the Princess, it didn't take a genius to figure out what Talus thought of Pia.
Once again, however, Pia pretended not to notice his discourtesy.
Up until now, the insolence of a Marquis's son had been a matter of complete indifference to her—
This time, it was because any rancher became infinitely generous toward a pig just before it was hauled off to slaughter.
Amid Talus's belated attempts to salvage his pride and the sycophantic flattery of his junkie friends, she composedly checked over the next schedule.
And then, as she always did, she put on a flawlessly clear and innocent smile and asked them in a naïve tone.
"There was a shipboard party planned after this tour, wasn't there? I'm really looking forward to it!"
"The vessel has been prepared at the harbor in advance, so Your Highness need only come in person."
"Would it be all right if I brought my guards along too?"
"Er... It is a small merchant vessel, so we did not quite prepare berths for those people... Instead, our family has made ready its own guards, so you needn't worry."
"Very well. Shall we go, then?"
Pia stood at the front of the group and headed toward the harbor.
The crowd that followed behind her stared at her back as she led the way, sneering at what an innocent woman she was.
With her back turned to her followers, Pia wiped the expression from her face.
It was truly a lovely group to behold.
*
Time passed again, and evening arrived.
A smile appeared on Talus’s face as he looked around at the group of nobles.
By the time the party was in full swing, the evening’s guest of honor rose from the seat of honor.
Wearing a seductive black dress and with her radiant golden hair tied back, the Princess walked to the center of the banquet hall holding a wine glass in one hand.
At her side, the son of the Marquis family who hosted the party escorted her as her partner.
Whenever the men's gazes swerved toward the two massive mountain ranges that moved in cadence with her stride, their own partners duly punished them.
Talus watched the men being reprimanded by their partners and basked in a despicable sense of superiority.
'Once this night is over...!'
Harboring such dark thoughts, he escorted the Princess.
In this manner, Pia recited the toast under the crowd's attention.
She delivered the declaration that the Marquis had prepared for her, word for word: that this party was for the sake of their bonds, and that the moment they drank from this glass they would all be in the same boat.
Like a well-crafted doll, she moved according to the Marquis's orders, right up through the final toast.
And when her crimson glass was raised high into the air, countless wine glasses glittered, reflecting the lights.
Finishing the toast, Pia brought the glass to her lips—
and let the wine glass fall.
"!!!!"
"How amusing. How could they be so identical? If they’re this identical, I think it’s safe to say you weren’t even trying to hide it, don’t you?"
"Wh-What exactly do you mean, Your Highness?"
When Talus asked, Pia stripped the smile from her face and stated flatly.
"Did you truly think that Duke Karamzin's household had me and the Prince eat that soup?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about..."
"Of course you wouldn't. I am not speaking to you, after all—I am speaking to the Marquis."
Pia was not looking at Talus.
She was looking past him at Marquis Vandel.
At her suddenly altered attitude, Marquis Vandel also wiped the expression from his own face and countered.
"How did you know?"
"Did I not tell you? I knew because drugs had been placed in both the soup and the wine. Had I drunk the soup, I would have become addicted then; had I drunk this wine as well, I would have developed severe dependence. In only two meals, you would have obtained a convenient puppet to serve as a foothold for rebellion.
"It was such a simple scheme that it was easy to understand."
"That is not what I asked—"
"How did I know what was in the wine, you mean? Especially since it was no ordinary narcotic, but one supplied by the cultists of temptation and deception?"
As her calm pronouncements continued, Marquis Vandel could not entirely hide his agitation.
Just how much did the Princess know; and before that, was the Princess standing before him even the Princess herself?
Was she an agent disguised with an avatar? A knight sent by the Emperor? Or a guardian spirit of the imperial household that had possessed her body?
While countless thoughts gripped the Marquis's mind, the answer that came from Pia's mouth was something that far surpassed his expectations—no,
it was the worst possible case that the Marquis had never wanted to contemplate.
"But of course. It's because I arranged this entire board. And you all moved across that board exactly according to the script."
"Do you think I would believe such a ridiculous joke?"
"I understand. People always react that way when confronted with something they do not wish to acknowledge. Everyone who has ever faced me has done the very same."
Pia let down her hair and began to arrange the locks beside her face.
And as she touched her fingertip to the corner of her eye, a deep crimson magical energy, like that of wine, settled into the blue eyes that had resembled a clear sky.
A halo of light enveloped her, and her splendid dress transformed into a formal suit.
Wearing a suit coat over a dress shirt, she gave a seductive smile, leaving the nobles unable to grasp what was happening.
As the confused nobles murmured, she raised a finger, shushed them, and silenced the room.
An unknown oppressive pressure dominated the party hall, and no one there could move.
In the midst of that total silence, only her gemlike voice echoed within.
"Have you truly never once thought it strange?
"Why did the Emperor, who cherished the Princess, allow you to toy with her?
"How could a princess taught statecraft be this much of an airhead?
"How could your conspiracy have proceeded this smoothly without anyone interfering?"
She summoned a chessboard in midair and toppled a bishop.
Everything had been for one reason.
"Is it not about time you stopped playing dumb, members of the Cult of Pleasure?"
No sooner had she finished speaking than the nobles’ faces went rigid.
The clichéd exchange of "Since when?" did not take place.
By now, they had each believed they were moving the other across their own boards, and now that the results had been revealed, her board was clearly the larger one—so it was more correct to say, probably, from the very beginning.
Instead, they asked how she had known they would come here.
To which she—
"There was no way you would pass up one of the few chances the Prince and I had to leave the palace. So I assumed that if I made a spectacular spectacle of myself, you would take the bait."
At her words, one of the nobles muttered.
"Then all along... putting that scene into Magical Mari, even calling John here—was all of that part of your plan...?!"
"...Yes."
Her slightly delayed answer made the nobles tilt their heads, but she feigned composure.
Though in truth, the one feigning composure was desperately struggling to hide a cold sweat.
'I didn't know it would turn out like that either, you know.'
Inciting the fanatical fan club to separate Nikolai from Allen, then spurring on his rampage—all of that had gone according to plan.
Because if there was anyone still paying attention to her and Leon while the entire world's attention was fixed on Allen, those people would be the enemy.
But that operation of using Allen as a filter—the moment it had sifted them out for the first time—had immediately started swerving in a bizarre direction.
Who could ever have imagined that he, of all people, would smash two trains into each other and cause a landslide in the very Duchy where this entire operation was unfolding?
So, with the feeling of telling him to stay put for the operation period—half exile, really—she had told him to turn the train wreckage into a tourist attraction, but he had focused all the attention right back on the Duchy.
On top of that, when recent reports indicated that the fan club they had been using was moving strangely, the operation was pushed forward in a hurry before the cultists could flee.
Pia stopped her thoughts from wandering and refocused on the nobles—no, on the group that now had to be called cultists and traitors.
At her gesture, Zeke appeared from the empty air.
While Zeke stood as though guarding her, she introduced herself with a bow that could only be called exemplary.
"Allow me to introduce myself once more. I am the Weaver of Threads, Pia Parma. A girl whom the world calls the Puppet Duchess."