Anyway, the Day Passes - 5
I felt someone gently stroking my hair. The touch was full of affection, and so carefully considerate that my eyes drifted open of their own accord.
"Karl, are you awake?"
Mar's face came into view, smiling softly.
I blinked blankly at the beautiful sight that greeted me the moment my eyes opened. It was a lovely view, but why was I like this? I had clearly been sitting on the sofa, yet somehow I was lying down and looking up at Mar.
When I simply stared without a word, Mar let out a quiet laugh and spoke.
"You were asleep, so I laid you down for a bit. Sleeping lying down is better than sleeping sitting up, isn't it?"
Ah.
Only after hearing that did I recover the missing piece of my memory. Outside it was freezing winter weather, but the Academy was thoroughly warm. This was a place where students of high birth or exceptional talent burned with academic passion; it would have been stranger if the heating had been inadequate.
And this room, of all places, was the Student Council president's office—and the place where a duke's youngest daughter stayed. The temperature was perfect, neither lacking nor excessive, which was why I had dozed off without realizing it.
Once I grasped the situation, my senses finally came fully online.
Soft.
Supreme happiness traveled up the back of my head, which was resting on Mar's thigh. I was using the most perfect pillow in the entire world. I was always in its debt, yet it felt new every time.
That was why, while watching Mar continue to stroke my hair, I unthinkingly rolled my body a full one hundred eighty degrees.
"Ka-Karl?!"
I heard Mar's flustered voice, but I held my new position with unyielding firmness. The sensation was far too warm and soft to yield it to the mere back of my head.
"Just let me stay like this for a moment."
Mar, who had been at a loss, eventually gave up and started stroking my hair again. Of course I got scolded a little after I finally sat up.
Even so, I had no regrets. There is no happiness without a price, after all.
Or so I choose to believe.
There had been a small commotion, but before long Mar was smiling as she steeped tea for me, saying I ought to drink something warm since I had just woken up.
The consideration was so warm I nearly teared up. I did not regret the one-hundred-eighty-degree incident, but I did feel a twinge of remorse for having momentarily embarrassed such a gentle lover—
She gets embarrassed all the time anyway.
Come to think of it, whenever I initiated somewhat bold physical affection, Mar always showed happiness and shyness at the same time. To free her from embarrassment would mean cutting off physical affection entirely.
For Mar, that would be the crueler fate. I would simply have to keep diligently embarrassing her from now on.
"Ah, Karl."
"Hm?"
The moment the thought crossed my mind, Mar opened her mouth and made me flinch. For a second I wondered whether she had read my mind.
"The officers will be here soon. I told them there was no need to rush and that they should eat lunch at a leisurely pace before gathering."
Fortunately it was ordinary information, not mind-reading.
"Is that so? Then I should start getting ready."
Pushing aside the strange sense of relief, I drew a name card from my coat.
The "officers" Mar meant were the Student Council officers—in other words, it was time to meet the fresh young sprouts who would walk the path of civil service after receiving my letters of recommendation. Last year's officers had also taken my recommendations and found employment, so these would be the second cohort.
Five this year.
The slightly disappointing part was that the Student Council had one fewer officer than last year.
Originally the officers consisted of the president, vice president, general affairs, treasurer, secretary, head of discipline, and head of public relations—seven in total. The vice president was always a second-year, so setting that aside left six, and this year's president was Mar. Since Mar had no need to become a civil servant, that left five officers who would need my recommendations.
It was a shame that the number of sprouts who would devote themselves to the Imperial Family, the Empire, and my peaceful future had decreased, but it was fine. Having five was still better than having none at all.
Hmm.
While I forced myself to think positively and signed the name cards, another thought suddenly occurred to me.
Do I really have to send them into the administration?
Did these precious gems I had discovered necessarily have to go into the central administration?
Of course, the more people who flowed into the Inspectorate Ministry, the more comfortable my own life would become. But the Inspectorate Ministry was practically the retired Emperor's final imperial command; multiple departments had been consolidated into it, and the Emperor himself was personally pouring manpower and budget into it. I had no need to push any harder there.
Rather than a department that would receive imperial support even if I left it alone, wouldn't it make more sense to invest talent in a place I had to build personally?
Even if I gathered a hundred people, they still wouldn't let me retire.
Back when the Emperor was still the Crown Prince, he had once provocatively said that if I gathered a hundred talented people he would consider my retirement.
Anyone could tell it was teasing, but at the time I had been so desperate to retire that I clung to that mockery with hope. If I actually gathered a hundred and the Crown Prince granted my retirement, wonderful; if not, I would still end up with a hundred passionate new recruits, so it would be a win either way—
Retirement, my ass.
Even that desperation had died by now. Godfather of the Crown Princess, first Minister of the Inspectorate Ministry, faction leader of the Northern faction, and trusted retainer who had personally met the Dragon Lord.
Even if I marched in with a hundred legions instead of a hundred people, my resignation letter would be torn up right in front of my face. I was certain of it.
...
After a moment of hesitation I pulled out another set of name cards from my coat.
Still, I could not forcibly rewrite the futures of children who had dreamed of becoming civil servants, so I would at least give them the option.
I took several deep breaths, trying to calm my racing heart. My fingers still trembled faintly, so I had not completely erased the tension, but I could not delay any longer.
Beyond this door waited the Chief of the Audit Department—no, the Minister of the Inspectorate Ministry. The man who had shown us consideration so that Olivia and I would never go hungry, and who was now about to bestow a grace that would change our entire lives.
So, after one final deep breath, I knocked on the door of the president's office.
"Margeta, it's me. The other officers are with me."
I knew the Minister was inside, but I did not mention him. Officially we had been summoned by the Student Council president, not by the Minister.
"Come in."
The reply that came back, however, was the Minister's voice, and I felt the other officers behind me flinch at the sound.
It was a strange thing. The Minister was neither cold nor cruel. If anything, my experience so far suggested he leaned toward kindness—yet somehow every word he spoke carried a weight that pressed down on us, perhaps because of his titles.
It wouldn't have been this bad last year.
I found myself recalling the first time I had met the Minister the previous year. Even then he had been Chief of the Audit Department, a man no one could ignore, but in a single year the post of chief had become a ministership, he had accumulated multiple titles of nobility, and he had even become the godfather of Her Highness the Crown Princess, who would one day be Empress.
Suddenly I envied last year's seniors. They had seen the Minister when he was still only a department chief, not this terrifyingly evolved version.
No—I didn't even need to go back to last year. The Minister in the first semester had been fine enough.
"W-we're coming in!"
I barely suppressed the thought and carefully opened the door.
...I should have gone for treasurer instead of general affairs.
No sooner had I pushed the thought down than another one slithered up.
Aside from the president and vice president, the head of general affairs was the leading officer, and never had I resented the position more than today. If I had been any other officer I would have entered the president's office as one of the group rather than as the representative.
Once we were seated, Her Ladyship the duke's daughter herself poured us tea. Inside the Academy we were classmates, so we called her Margeta, but the moment we graduated she would become someone we would not even dare look at directly—and she was serving us with such gracious hospitality.
That alone was enough to make me feel as though I might die of a heart attack, yet the Minister's next words attacked my heart in several more ways.
"Having watched you all closely, I am well aware of your abilities. I also know that it would be a waste to open only a single future for you."
With those words the Minister handed each officer name cards bearing his signature.
Two of them, no less.
"One is a letter of recommendation written in my capacity as the designated Minister of the Inspectorate Ministry. If you take it to the administration or any other institution, they will find you a suitable post. Personally I would prefer you come to the Inspectorate Ministry, but that is your choice—go wherever you wish."
We already knew that much. Last year, the seniors who had received this name card from the Minister when he was still only Chief of the Audit Department had danced around the Student Council room as if it were a ballroom, even showing off the recommendations to us juniors.
We had not particularly wanted to watch, but the ball had gone on so long that we ended up seeing it anyway.
"And the other is a letter of recommendation written as a great lord—or rather, it would be more accurate to call it a letter of invitation."
At the word "invitation" I glanced down at the name card. It was not signed Karl Crassius of Tailglehen, Minister of the Inspectorate Ministry, but Karl Crassius of Tailglehen, Count of Tailglehen.
"I am a bureaucrat of the administration and, at the same time, a great lord. As a bureaucrat I have a duty to devote myself to the Imperial Family and the Empire, but as a great lord I also have a duty to care for His Majesty's subjects."
The moment those words ended, the officers stared hard at the name cards clutched in both hands. Everyone here was sharp and quick-witted; they seemed to have already grasped what the Minister was saying.
Of course I had as well. It would have been stranger not to understand his true intent after hearing that.
"The County of Tailglehen has three hundred years of Crassius history piled up and lacks for nothing, but Wiridia has only just been elevated from a direct imperial territory to a county, so it is still lacking in many ways."
Even so, the Minister kindly explained it for us.
If we chose to follow him as a great lord, we would head not to the capital-region County of Tailglehen but to northern Wiridia.
We would work not in the prosperous capital region but in a somewhat desolate frontier.
Yet precisely because it was lacking and newly born—it was a golden land overflowing with opportunity.
Wiridia.
I swallowed without meaning to. Rumors about Wiridia had spread not only among commoners like me but among the noble students as well.
More precisely, rumors about Viscount Kiseele, steward of the County of Wiridia.
A land of opportunity.
A place that had overnight elevated a chief local magistrate—someone who held a surname yet occupied a position too ambiguous to truly call noble—to the rank of viscount. A place where countless posts and titles still sat vacant.
I... I could...
My hands began to tremble again. But this time the trembling was different from before.
Greed had taken root. If it had been something I could never dare aim for, I would not even have dreamed of it—but this I could aim for. The Minister had shown hope even to someone like me.
If, if I could catch the Minister's eye, if I could satisfy him...
Then I, and my younger siblings as well...
Could we live as nobles...?
Could we live with full stomachs and warm houses?
Three of the five chose Wiridia over the Inspectorate Ministry.
And considering that the head of discipline among the officers was better suited to the military than to administrative civil service, effectively only one person had chosen the central administration. Even that one friend came from a family based near the capital and simply wanted capital life.
I was satisfied. Setting aside the one who clearly needed a different path, every last one of them had come to Wiridia.
I might actually get to catch my breath.
After sending off the officers—who kept bowing their waists and, in the more extreme cases, even shed tears of gratitude—I let out a long sigh.
I had secured an exceptional talent in the form of a steward, yet Wiridia was still a place screaming from manpower shortages. In that situation, three young people with actual administrative experience—small-scale though it might be—were being injected into the territory? It ought to have at least a mildly positive effect on the steward's lifespan.
"Congratulations, Karl. The territory will develop even further."
Mar must have been thinking the same thing; she offered her congratulations with a soft smile.
"It's the territory my children will inherit, so of course it has to develop."
When I answered with a small grin, Mar's smile only grew deeper.
My future son or daughter, are you watching? This father of yours is working this hard for your sake.
So please, just become a peaceful freeloader.
Please.