67. The End of Peace
67. The End of Peace
The Cheerful School Trip Incident.
The Counter-Intelligence Department called it "Puppet Duchess's Karamzin Project," but after the incident I dubbed the Cheerful School Trip, our daily lives were...
remarkably unchanged.
There was the minor issue that a few Political Science Department students had gone missing after the school trip, but all in all, there were no major problems.
This was where the Puppet Duchess’s true capabilities became clear.
While everyone ran around cleaning up after the incident, she left no trace of herself anywhere.
On land, eyewitness accounts poured in saying that she had skipped the shipboard party and remained at the lodging. On the ship, meanwhile, the evidence showed only that the nobles had gotten high together and killed one another.
In the end, without the Counter-Intelligence Department even needing to attempt a cover-up, the investigation concluded that the nobles had held a drug party that escalated into an onboard massacre.
More terrifying still, as if the public itself were being controlled, everyone accepted that conclusion without even proposing a conspiracy theory—read: the truth.
When I asked if she was also manipulating public sentiment with puppet magic, she replied:
"It isn't magic. My public image, the circumstances of the incident, my alibi and the evidence—if you align all of these well, anyone can do it. Yes. Let's just call it a sort of public opinion manipulation."
No, but that is magic.
If manipulating the opinions of tens of thousands of people at will wasn’t hypnotic magic, what was?
People could not even imagine connecting Pia to the shipboard massacre.
Instead, as if enchanted, people condemned the drug-addled nobles and viewed Pia as a pitiful princess who had been controlled by them all along.
Her popularity approached that of Britain’s Princess Diana, with newspapers full of people genuinely weeping, “How hard must things have been for the Princess all this time?”
Still, thanks to her abilities, we were able to return to our daily lives without any trouble.
*
Now, daily life aside, if you were to ask whether our relationships were entirely unchanged—that was not the case.
"Allen. Would you like to have lunch together today?"
"Huh? What are you doing here?"
"I transferred departments!"
"Uh... Welcome?"
Having rooted out all her followers, she moved freely, as if there was nothing left to hold her back.
She had renounced her own succession rights and joined the imperial prince's faction, then switched her major from Political Science to the Hero Department.
Her specialization was, of all things, hand-to-hand combat.
"Wasn’t your specialization magic, not hand-to-hand combat?"
"How about this?"
She demonstrated a dance-like martial art.
Looking closely, she was attaching threads to her own body to move it.
The drawback, however, was that because she had to move her fingers along with her body, she could only use kicks rather than punches.
'Then taekwondo or capoeira...'
No, that's not the issue here.
"Can you just change your field like that?"
"Do you know what my career path is?"
"Uh... well?"
"Heh. Don't worry. I have a plan, you know. This is also a choice for my dream. Surely you don't think... the Puppet Duchess would have no plan?"
"Huh? No, I don't. Definitely not."
And with that, she joined our classroom.
Aside from Diane putting up a fuss about having to repeat a grade once Pia joined, everyday life remained peaceful.
*
As usual, when classes ended, we headed to the studio.
Only this time, Pia came along.
I had no plans to use her as an actress yet, but an archmage might come in handy someday, so I'd secured her in advance.
When I offered the contract, Pia accepted it in exchange for adding one clause.
- Allen shall teach Pia how to act.
At first, I was puzzled by that clause too.
What acting could the Puppet Duchess, who places everything on the board and controls it, possibly need?
But my puzzlement could only be resolved once I stood her in front of a camera.
"Aah. I’m Cele↘stia→. I look forward to working with yo↘u."
It was awkward.
Even an ordinary customer reciting “two all-beef patties on a sesame-seed bun—” at a burger joint would look more natural on camera than Pia’s acting.
The acting itself was excellent. Her immersion into a given situation was certainly persuasive.
But her acting was meant to deceive the person right in front of her, not intended for an audience on the other side of a camera.
This was a common problem for people standing before a camera for the first time.
When ordinary people received a script, they immersed themselves in the situation and performed while imagining, “If it were me, this is how I would act.”
But acting needed to be more exaggerated, more cringeworthy, and more impactful than that.
If an actor was told to deliver a line seriously and angrily, it wasn’t enough merely to feel angry in their own way. They had to grind their teeth, rasp their voice, and exaggerate enough that anyone watching could tell they were furious. Only then would it look natural on camera.
But going too far became overacting, so the actor had to find the right balance.
"Now this is my area of expertise."
And this was a problem Ceres and Kylie had gone through as well.
Since Diane was already an actress, she hadn't particularly needed my help, but when these two first arrived, it was... a little serious.
When I looked at them, they averted their eyes, as if sensing what I was thinking.
There was a reason I’d described Pia as awkward but those two as serious cases.
- I am→ Cele→stia! From He→tairo A→cademy—
- NG, NG! Did you come here for a reading recital?!
- I’m Isis. Leave right now and I will not attack you.
- Breathe! Breathe!
Even now, when I think about it, the fact that these kids improved this much is a miracle. A miracle.
So this time, I decided to coach Pia one-on-one as well.
"Hold on. I object."
Diane, having seen that clause, suddenly interrupted in the middle of the contract and pressed Pia.
"What seems to be the problem?"
"You're deliberately flirting with Allen, aren't you? You've done it all this time, so what guarantee is there that you won't do it again now?"
While Pia faltered at Diane's point, I stepped forward and defended her.
"Pia is serious about this."
"How am I supposed to believe that?"
"Leon vouched for her."
I wasn’t a fool. When I heard Pia’s acting was awkward, I suspected she might’ve been playing coy, so I made her perform the scene again and again.
But no matter how many times she tried, Pia’s awkward acting remained unchanged.
Leon resolved the doubt that hadn’t gone away when he came to the set.
- Pfft—do that one, that one. <The game is over. From now on, it’s my time.> Pffthahaha!
Leon picked out one of the lines Pia had been trying again and again and mercilessly mocked her for it.
And in response, Pia...
- Die. Trash.
With a voice thick with killing intent, Leon was hung from the ceiling.
Diane fell silent when I told her what had happened.
Perhaps, as a younger sister with an older brother herself, she had promptly understood Pia's sincerity.
"You believe me now, right?"
When I pointed at Leon, still hanging from the ceiling cackling away, Diane no longer raised any objections to the contract terms.
.
.
.
Meanwhile, from a corner of the set, the Parma siblings' conversation could still be heard.
"There it is—my dopamine. Hurry up and do it. You were good at flirting with him, weren’t you? Come on."
"I'm really going to kill you today."
Pia’s declaration sent the imperial prince spinning like he was in a centrifuge.
Yet his laughter didn’t stop even while he spun, so it looked as though Pia was losing that exchange.
'Looks like Leon's been under a lot of stress from paperwork lately.'
The treatment of an imperial prince seemed a little rough, but what did it matter?
He was enjoying it.
"Pfft! The game is over, and from now on—it’s my time!"
"I said stop it!"
Listening to the screams of the Parma siblings, I gazed up at the set's ceiling.
Today, too, Bon Voyage Studio was at peace.
It was autumn.
*
Several days passed from then.
The birds flew far away, and the flowers withered.
On a day like this, an actor like me had to...
"Hoo, hoo..."
work out.
With a Blessing, I could adjust my physique to some extent, but it was only an optical illusion, and even that had its limits.
Moreover, unlike John, who had worn suits, Riv wore a bodysuit that showed every curve, so physique management was even more crucial.
In the training room beneath the club room, I breathed raggedly, one leg extended forward while bending the other knee.
As I bent one knee, my torso rose and fell while my thigh muscles swelled as if they were about to burst.
I did that dozens of times, then switched legs and repeated the same number to complete one set.
While I was repeating several sets like that, the training room door suddenly flew open.
"Boss! About Riv, who's coming out this time, I'd like to discuss... uh... was I interrupting?"
"..."
I did not want to waste breath answering Nicol, so I finished the set before replying.
"Hoo. You came by out of nowhere, so I figured something had happened. What’s up?"
"It’s a big deal... but I’m not sure whether to call it serious or pointless..."
"Tell me what it is first."
"We’ve heard back from the Necromancy School about our order. They say there are two possible versions for Riv’s right prosthetic arm."
"A prosthetic arm is a major matter. It changes the genre. Let's see the designs."
Nicol spread out the rough designs in the training room and explained.
"One is a soul-steel prosthetic arm based on a Death Knight, and the other is a muscular prosthetic arm based on a giant zombie."
"Tch. Just hearing that, I'm a little torn... What kind of monster is the Riv you've envisioned?"
"If I had to define him, a cold soldier like a Siberian winter? He literally has the image of a living weapon, right?"
"Then... it's decided."
I selected the Death Knight-based steel prosthetic arm and went back to bodybuilding.
"Oh. And don't forget to make mechanical sounds whenever the prosthetic moves!"
The time remaining until John—no, Riv's appearance in Magical Mari.
One day.