Prison Freedom - 6
The Crown Prince’s antics left even an elder who had lived more than a hundred years speechless. Still, seeing the Demon Duke’s reaction put my mind at ease. Honestly, I had been seriously wondering whether personalities like the Crown Prince’s were simply the average around here.
If that were true, I would become nothing more than a deranged civil servant thrashing about, unable to accept a perfectly reasonable disciplinary action. Not an object of pity—an object of contempt.
Not that black after all.
Thankfully, while the Empire was indeed a black country, it was not super black. The Crown Prince sat far below average as the owner of an exploding personality, and I was merely a pitiful victim. The Demon Duke had acknowledged it, so it was certain. Anyone who wanted to argue could come back after living two hundred years.
“What a unique method.”
A calm voice broke the silence. Perhaps because of her wealth of experience, the Demon Duke quickly sorted out her feelings—
Ah, no. Looking at the way her ears trembled, she was still dizzy from the shock.
“A method that will never be used again.”
I casually added the line for the still-confused Demon Duke.
It is extremely important not to implant false common sense into long-lived races. Just like the forward deployment of Tanian during the last Twilight Cult incident, if you allow a one-time variable to be mistaken for the latest trend among the kids these days, later generations suffer for it.
Workplace confinement is not a current trend. The Crown Prince is simply insane. This is the misdeed of a monster who became an abyss himself while fighting the abyss that is the Second Prince. This kind of lunacy must never be passed down to posterity.
“Well, the work I’ve been assigned is rather special, isn’t it? Perhaps that’s why His Highness made an unavoidable decision.”
Thinking positively, it was an unavoidable decision. Since it was a case of assaulting royalty, he had to put on a show of discipline; yet if he disciplined me properly, the person who kept the royals under control and surveillance would vanish.
Of course that was complete nonsense. If there had been no royals at all, the Crown Prince was the type who would have designated the Audit Department’s duty room as the confinement site. “From today, this is your home,” he would have said.
Still, I could not exactly burst into tears in front of the Demon Duke and wail, “That bastard is a total bastard!” Even if she was Mother Demon Duke, she might look at me with cold eyes if she saw that display.
“If so, that is fortunate, but…”
Unusually trailing off, the Demon Duke lowered her gaze a little, as if to say that if I thought that way, then fine.
No.
I do not think that way at all. Mother, I really hate that bastard.
An intense urge to curse surged up, but I crushed it with the force of reason.
When I floated the idea of heading back soon, the Demon Duke pressed a whole box of potions into my arms.
Both she and I knew perfectly well that I still had plenty of unconsumed potions left, but the official pretext for coming to see the Demon Duke had been to receive potions.
Next time I’ll come on my own.
I had dithered around for no good reason and only piled up luggage.
“Baby, wait just a moment.”
“Ah, yes.”
I tried to leave with the box in my arms and got caught. What, did she have more to give? Or was she going to draw blood after so long?
While I fretted over whether I ought to roll up a sleeve in advance, the Demon Duke threw a black cape over her shoulders.
Ah. She was going somewhere.
“It has been a long time since I went to the Academy.”
“Pardon?”
For a moment I doubted my ears. Why would the Demon Duke go to the Academy? Had the mental strain already ruined her hearing?
“There are no free mages right now. You cannot simply take a carriage back, can you?”
In other words, she would personally teleport me to the Academy.
Come to think of it, the Magic Tower had been unusually deserted today. It was a place that normally swarmed with mages, so that rarely happened. Even the occasional mages I spotted had been racing about breathlessly, clearly frantic.
Thinking about it, even the mages dispatched to the Academy had been summoned for something serious enough to yank them back. No need to mention the personnel inside the Magic Tower itself.
This fucking…
In the end it all circled back to the North again.
“I hope I am not troubling Your Excellency…”
“Do not mind it. It is not something that takes long.”
I carefully opened my mouth and was cut off at once. Yes, it did not take long. Counting pure round-trip time, five minutes at most.
But if you imagine riding an elevator alone with the company chairman, even fifty seconds is suffocating, never mind five minutes. No—this was less like sharing an elevator and more like accepting a ride in a car the chairman himself was driving.
Take it and suffer the burden; refuse and commit rudeness. Extreme binary choice.
“Thank you, Your Excellency.”
Naturally I chose the burden. My insides burning up was cheaper than upsetting a superior’s mood.
…Maybe I should learn teleportation myself. Being a magic swordsman did not sound so bad.
In truth, there were mages who could have taken the baby home. No matter how busy things became, personnel were always kept on standby for emergencies. If the Magic Tower—the crystallization of imperial magic—could not even provide a simple teleport, it would have been a disgrace without equal.
But I said there were none. Lying weighed on my conscience, yet if it meant I could remain a little longer with the baby, I could gladly endure it.
Unlike Lady Margeta, I lived apart from the baby, so I had to do at least this much. Last year there would have been no need. Still, now that I had come once like this, coming again would not be difficult.
Just as it was.
Leaving the regret behind and lifting my gaze, the Academy main building came into view.
Even after graduation I had visited the Academy several times—to advise the Magic Department teachers, or to attend the principal’s inauguration. The intervals had been considerable, yet the Academy always looked the same.
That was welcome. In my life I alone had always remained unchanged while everything around me shifted. After Father and Mother, who could have been my supports, left my side, solitude had been inevitable.
The Magic Tower has changed too.
The Academy was a legacy of the Apels era, so the Empire had never bothered to touch it. The Magic Tower, however, was the pride of the Empire, the crystallization of imperial magic. As magic advanced, the Tower changed with it. People even said that yesterday’s Magic Tower and today’s were different things.
It was regrettable but unavoidable. I understood, yet it was lonely. Whenever that feeling surged, I had often come to look at the Academy.
“Baby.”
“Yes, Your Excellency.”
Not anymore. I had found someone who would remain unchanged together with me.
I no longer needed to stay the same all alone. I no longer needed merely to watch everything change.
Now the baby, and that child Karl, would become like me.
“How pretty.”
Thinking that, why did the baby—who had already been so cute—look even prettier?
“It does seem well-made. I see it every day, so I wouldn’t really know.”
A slight smile formed at the baby’s reply. He probably thought I had been speaking of the main building. I had phrased it that way on purpose, yet it still made me laugh.
And I felt I would still like the baby even if I saw him every single day—whether for a hundred years or two hundred.
“Someday the baby will know too.”
How happy the existence of an unchanging companion truly is.
When the time came, I too would become such an existence for the baby.
“I too, after about a hundred years…”
The baby gazing at the main building hurriedly shut his mouth. Seeing him close it only belatedly, it seemed the words had not been intentional.
Still, a pang of sadness touched me. Even if it was true that my age exceeded a hundred, I did not want to hear that from the baby’s mouth.
Because elven blood flowed in me I thought differently from human years, yet the baby was only twenty-one now. Even when I soothed myself that it was fine, that I need not mind, thinking of the baby’s age made my heart ache.
It will be like that for life.
Even if the potions fulfilled their role, the baby would still be younger than I. That could not be changed even if the sky fell.
Then at least outwardly… should I make him look older than me?
I imagined the baby wearing a serious middle-aged appearance.
Not bad.
An agenda worth serious consideration.
The Demon Duke’s eyes as she returned to the Magic Tower were quite eerie—like a predator locking onto prey.
This crazy guy, why bring up the hundred-year talk at that exact timing? Couldn’t you have just said, “Your Excellency has lived long, so your eye for things has grown sharp!”
Still, I made it back.
It had been a long, long stretch since confirming yesterday that red blood, not blue, flowed through Ryutis.
I had spent an entire day waiting anxiously for a summons; the Crown Prince had handed down the insane judgment of workplace confinement; the First Section Chief had treated me to half-and-half wine; and I had dropped an age joke right in the Demon Duke’s face…
Had all of this really happened across only two days? Subjectively it felt closer to two weeks.
Damn it.
Even if I tried not to complain, I had no choice. Anyone who could stay positive with this kind of fate must already have attained enlightenment.
Sighing, I took out the communication orb. There were plenty of people who needed to hear how things had ended—the principal, Villar, Margeta.
Hmmmm.
“Karl? Have you returned?”
“Yes. I just got back.”
After weighing who to contact first, I chose Margeta. She worried far too much for me to call anyone else ahead of her.
“That’s a relief. I was so worried you might not be able to come back.”
A slight smile formed at the way she stroked her chest as she spoke. Contacting her first had been the right decision.
“As expected, His Highness the Crown Prince also understood that Karl had no choice. If it isn’t even real confinement, he only gave you discipline for show.”
“Ah.”
Five seconds later, Margeta also lost her words.
The Crown Prince’s antics remained undefeated—that dog of a man.
The once-in-a-lifetime big event of Academy confinement turned out to be more heartbreaking than expected.
Because of the frustration of being stuck only in the dormitory? I had experienced being stuck somewhere often enough in the Audit Department. Because of the anxiety that something might explode during confinement? That was an option I always carried with me.
“I heard you have to stay only in the dorm. I brought as many varieties as I could, so pick what you like and eat.”
“…Ah, yes. Thank you.”
My heart ached at the sight of Margeta, whose mouth smiled while her eyes brimmed with tears.
From the very first morning of confinement she had visited the dormitory carrying all sorts of food—truly every kind imaginable.
“I’ll come again tomorrow. Is there anything you need?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Is that so? If you need anything, tell me anytime.”
I could only nod blankly at those words.
This is prison food, isn’t it.
Food from the outside world delivered to a locked-up person… no matter how I turned it over, it was prison food.
I was under confinement. Not detention—just confinement.
Yet inside Margeta’s heart I already seemed to be sitting in a cold prison cell.
What am I supposed to do.
If I wrote just one more Disciplinary Report it would become real detention.
I was worried Margeta might faint when that day came.