We Could Use Some Fresh Air Too - 2
Once I drove the image of my mortifying aunt out of my nephew’s head, I was finally able to think straight again.
Why Cenes, of all places?
More accurately, I was now capable of rational denial of reality—but that was close enough.
Either way, I was thoroughly confused. Leaving the Wise Duke’s personal brand of embarrassment aside, the fact that the school trip destination had shifted from the Boyar Duchy to the Cenes Duchy was anything but normal. Some might argue that going to the same place two years in a row would have been stranger, but the Academy’s school-trip tradition existed in the first place because of the Golden Duke.
He had invited Academy students to the resort he built on his territory purely as a promotional stunt. That was the origin of the whole thing. The idea that a man that obsessed with money would use such a massive advertising opportunity only once and then graciously hand it over to someone else? Absolutely not. He yielded because the other party was a duke? This was the same Golden Duke who would charge headlong into the Imperial Family itself the moment money was involved. Please.
If it were any other duchy, maybe…
And Cenes was already famous as a tourist destination. From the Golden Duke’s perspective, surrendering the school-trip venue to Cenes would only strengthen a competitor’s position. No lord—Golden Duke or otherwise—would have any reason to make that concession.
“How unexpected. It seems the resort must be fully booked this year.”
I muttered the thought aloud, and Margeta, still reading through the documents, let out a soft sound of realization.
“Karl, you were right.”
“Pardon?”
“The resort we stayed at last year has been designated an Imperial Official Tourist Site.”
In that instant every suspicion vanished. A brand-new Imperial Official Tourist Site—the first in nearly a decade. The resort itself would be overflowing, and every nearby inn would be bursting at the seams. In that kind of saturation there was no need to drag Academy students in on top of everything else.
…An Official Tourist Site.
The existence of such a system in this era felt odd, but we had already gone far too deep into this world’s logic to start poking holes over something like that.
And if the Golden Duke had received the gift of “Official Tourist Site” status from the Imperial Family in exchange for giving up the school trip, then the Academy’s journey to Cenes was the Imperial Family’s will. I no longer needed to read the Golden Duke’s intentions—I needed to read the Imperial Family’s.
“We were lucky, weren’t we? Boyar was already famous as a tourist region, and now it has an Imperial Official Tourist Site as well. It’ll be packed for years to come.”
“Yes, it will. It’s fortunate we got to see it last year before the crowds.”
I returned Margeta’s gentle smile and set the matter aside.
Questioning the Imperial Family’s will was an excellent way to make one’s life unnecessarily complicated. Mine was already tangled enough; any further knots and I might as well bite my tongue and die.
Just drop it.
Besides, it wasn’t as though I had no idea what was going on.
“I’m especially concerned about the honored guests. Life in the Empire is still unfamiliar to them; I worry they might wander off alone.”
That had been the Emperor’s casual remark during the New Year’s Audience banquet he had invited me to. His Majesty currently suspected that the trio of foreign royals attending the Academy might be acting as spies. Under those circumstances, sending students twice to Boyar—one of the Empire’s duchies and the very heart of commerce, shipping, and naval power—would have been distinctly unwelcome. If they had to be sent somewhere, better somewhere completely different. That was surely His Majesty’s feeling.
It was a little sad watching an aging, ailing man worry over nothing, but I certainly lacked the courage to defend the subjects of his suspicion to his face while he was in a state of perfectly reasonable caution.
Honestly, the fault lay with those royal brats for enrolling in another country’s Academy in the first place. The Emperor was blameless.
Within a few days the news that this year’s school trip would be to Cenes had spread. There was no reason to hide it, so of course it did.
“Cenes is in the west, right? I’ve never been!”
Luise was delighted at the prospect of a brand-new destination.
“Ah… Cenes…”
Erich, on the other hand, looked as though his soul was leaving his body at the thought of having to go all the way to the Wise Duke’s domain.
Unfortunately, Erich was another of the people the Wise Duke had tormented without mercy. No—he had suffered even worse than I had. Thanks to the shield of being the current Audit Department Chief, I could at least minimize her contact. Erich had no such protection; he simply had to take every call.
“Skipping isn’t an option, is it?”
“If you want to see your communication orb lit up for the entire duration of the trip, go right ahead.”
I politely translated the real message—If you don’t come, the Wise Duke will stare at your face for twenty-four hours straight—and Erich squeezed his eyes shut.
The moment she heard one of her nephews was absent, she would probably screech at the top of her lungs and immediately pull out a communication orb. It sounded insane, but the Wise Duke was more than capable of it. Never underestimate a heavy drinker even the Emperor had given up on.
“What’s wrong? Cenes has plenty of tourist attractions, doesn’t it? Bad memories?”
“I’ve got some… less-than-pleasant memories with the lord of the place.”
Later, noticing Erich’s deathly expression, opened his mouth only to look even more confused by the answer.
“Her Grace the Wise Duke is our aunt. Erich happens to resemble our uncle a fair bit, so he received… an excessive amount of her affection.”
“Ah.”
I supplied the explanation and Later nodded in understanding. From his reaction I could tell he had already packed several layers of implication into the word “affection,” but for Erich’s dignity I kept quiet.
Yes—I would never tell a soul how little Erich, still a tiny child, had once been subjected to a full cheek-kissing assault from the Wise Duke. From what I heard he had cried and wailed the entire time…
“Oh? I had no idea you were connected to a ducal house. Impressive!”
Ryutis chose that moment to sound astonished. Coming from a prince, the praise felt more like teasing than anything, yet given his personality it was probably sincere. Besides, even among Imperial nobles there were people who still didn’t know Erich and I were the Wise Duke’s nephews. A foreigner would know even less.
It is a rather roundabout connection, after all.
Between the Wise Duke and House Crassius lay House Aras as a stepping stone. Even a single intervening family was enough to confuse people, and on top of that our uncle had taken the Wise Duke’s surname upon becoming a son-in-law while our mother’s surname had also changed to Crassius. Unless you looked carefully, the link was easy to miss.
Of course the high-ranking nobles and bureaucrats who dealt with me regularly could hardly fail to know.
“I’ve never gone around introducing myself as her nephew.”
“Haha! Not riding on your family’s prestige—that’s admirable!”
“…Yeah. Thanks…”
While Ryutis laughed heartily, Erich muttered something vaguely bitter.
I knew exactly why Erich hid the fact that he was the Wise Duke’s nephew.
An aunt too embarrassing to claim in public.
Even I, a transmigrator, felt that way; how much worse must it be for the actual blood relative? The name card “relative of the Wise Duke” had a way of making you watch your drinking even when no one was looking.
Fortunately Sera noticed and carefully approached to give Erich a gentle pat on the back. Ryutis, looking thoroughly pleased, discreetly vacated the space.
That bastard…
Every time I saw how sharp his romantic instincts were with other people’s relationships, frustration and pity hit me at the same time. If you ever find your own match, just keep doing exactly what you’re doing now.
“Um, Brother.”
“Hm?”
While I was busy wishing Ryutis good fortune in love, Luise quietly spoke up.
“Do you know what Cenes is famous for? There isn’t a pamphlet this year.”
“Ah, the pamphlet.”
I nodded without thinking; it was only natural.
Last year’s pamphlet had existed solely because a certain duke had been desperate to squeeze out every last coin. Under normal circumstances there would be none. Who in their right mind prints and distributes pamphlets just because the Academy is coming on a school trip? Only the Golden Duke was that far gone.
“I know a few things. Cenes is a tourist region in its own right.”
Besides, both Boyar and Cenes had plenty of famous spots you could find without any pamphlet.
“First of all, it’s famous as a granary.”
The Cenes Duchy possessed the greatest grain-producing region not only in the Empire but on the entire continent; you could see rice paddies and fields stretching to the horizon. There was even a saying that a bad harvest in Cenes would produce famine victims across the whole continent, so the scale needed no further description. Whether that was true for the entire continent I couldn’t say, but the Empire’s food production absolutely depended on Cenes.
“On the coast there’s a crashed aerial battleship—”
Then there was the former aerial battleship that sat somewhere between eyesore and landmark. One of the old Apels emperors must have been drunk on romantic notions, because Apels once fielded a mobile fleet that floated through the sky. Romance, of course, is just another word for inefficiency; the ships disappeared one by one under maintenance costs, and the last remaining vessel was deployed in the war against Kpelleofen only to crash from lack of fuel. Complete idiots.
The reason they still preserved the wreck was simple: it stood as a perfect cautionary example of the pinnacle of inefficiency and the ugliness of Apels.
“There’s also the Non-Human Sanctuary.”
Finally, a protected zone for non-human races rarely found in other countries. It was the only place where the bloodlines of races nearly driven to extinction under Apels rule still clung to existence, and a symbolic site that allowed the Emperor of the Kpelleofen Empire to style himself a friend of the non-human races.
…Now that I said it out loud, the list felt more like a collection of administrative districts than tourist attractions. Occupational hazard of a civil servant’s perspective, I supposed.
Even so, something in that bureaucratic lineup clearly sparked Luise’s interest; her eyes lit up.
“The Non-Human Sanctuary?”
“Yeah. Elves, dwarves, merfolk, beastmen… every kind of non-human you can think of.”
It was the sort of place where merfolk lived in the front sea, elves in the neighboring forest, and dwarves in the mountain behind. Look carefully enough and you might even find a dragon; the pure romance of territory management novels still breathed there. If the Wise Duke ever raised a hundred thousand knights or a million private soldiers, it would become a perfect territory-management story.
At any rate, the idea of different races living together with humans had clearly kindled Luise’s curiosity; she listened to my explanation with a bright expression. Then something seemed to occur to her and she casually glanced to the side.
Ah.
Following her gaze, I found the Demon Duke quietly twitching her ears. Apparently curiosity had infected the master as thoroughly as the disciple.
From the Demon Duke’s perspective the Non-Human Sanctuary must have been genuinely fascinating. Outside of her mother, it would be her first chance to meet her own kind.
She never had the opportunity to go.
Before becoming a duke her mother was still alive, so there had been no need to seek out other elves; after becoming a duke she had been buried in work and had no time.
…We absolutely have to take her.
The thought made my nose sting. An elf who had grown up her entire life without ever knowing her own people—that was just tragic.