Prologue
From a distance, it is a comedy; up close, it is a tragedy.
It's a rather famous line, and one that has struck a personal chord with me these past few years. My life as a civil servant is exactly like that.
From afar, I must look like some thug swinging absolute state power around without restraint. Get a little closer, though, and I'm nothing but a pitiful middle manager—squeezed from above and shoved from below. It's true that an imperial civil servant's authority is formidable. But look around and you'll find those same civil servants scattered everywhere. Yeah. What a load of crap.
So what if your house is prestigious and your rank is high? Above you sit dukes and ministers and all the rest of them, planted firmly in the way. Even if ability, sheer luck, and connections somehow align and you claw your way to the very summit of the civil service, you still can't relax. Because above that summit sits the imperial family. And if you try to brush the imperial family aside? Congratulations—you've just booked a forced family reunion for three generations in the afterlife.
That is why life as a civil servant is so wretched. A superior who does nothing but grind you down. Peers competing for the next promotion. Subordinates rising with terrifying speed. In the middle of all that, handle your work well and you break even. Handle it poorly and you get the stuffing beaten out of you as a matter of course. Ah, it's terrifying. Truly terrifying!
"Director. His Excellency the Minister says that if you don't get your ass in there this instant, he'll kill you."
Even now. My direct superior, vicious to the marrow, doesn't so much as hesitate to threaten a poor, frail little civil servant like me.
"Tell him I feel deep responsibility for this incident and wish to resign."
"Didn't you use that line last time, sir? The inkwell nearly took my head off."
"Was that last time?"
I glanced out the window. The lashing wind and rain seemed to be putting my crumbling insides on full display. Strange—climate-control mages are supposed to be rare...
"Is he very angry?"
"Same as usual."
"So he's goddamn furious."
Sometimes it almost made me sad for him. With a temper like that, he was going to die young. At my muttered aside, the Deputy Director—who had been delivering the Minister's latest status report—silently nodded in agreement.
Right. Being the messenger is hard on you too.
"I'll head over. Call all the section chiefs."
"Please come back alive."
"Yeah."
Leaving the Deputy Director's send-off behind me, I dragged my heavy feet along. As a director, I wasn't exactly in a position where I had to come and go whenever someone snapped their fingers—except, of course, when the one doing the snapping was the Minister. Please, just let one of us retire soon. Him or me. I didn't care which.
"How the fuck do you even do your job?!"
"I'm sorry! I'm so sorry—aaargh!"
The moment I trudged into the Minister's office, the shouting hit me, and my head hit the floor on pure instinct. Today was the same as every other day.
Yeah. What a load of crap.