Nothing Goes Smoothly — 13
I go back to my lodgings, rest as if nothing at all had happened, and the day turns over.
Today, once again, a class that matters very little to me is underway, and I simply watch it. Unlike a person, I have no need to worry about grades, and no need to labor for the sake of knowledge. If I need any of it, I can always just make a Harvester, can't I?
Even as I sit through the lesson, I look out at the world through a Harvester's eyes.
The Purple Twilight Society of Berne City. It is an organization made so that people might survive the disaster that struck the city. It began by accident, through the second Harvester I created, but after the incident it made a proper name for itself as a charity, and the royal house put money into it. Not officially, of course. Even the people at the office have no clear proof of where the money came from.
There is, however, a Harvester who caught on to the source of the funds. I know because I listened in on what that Harvester said. And once the support was cut off, those who felt they had taken a loss closed ranks.
Of course, not every Harvester means to stir up trouble inside the Purple Twilight Society. They are only a very small few. But a loud minority can sometimes come to seem as if it speaks for the many, and once it looks like the majority, people are swept up in the current and join. It will certainly grow into a large fight.
Even now, in fact, someone has gathered a crowd in front of the office and is working them up. They shout that the office siphoned off the money, and that it must be handed over. The office side sets out a tidy account of where the money went, but the man screams that it is a lie. The one doing the screaming probably knows it is the truth.
But the truth does not matter here. By his own measure he has been wronged, and the will to claw that loss back, somehow, is stronger.
Selfish. And that is a good thing.
Whatever becomes of anyone else can wait. First you have to see to your own survival. Any living thing ought to do as much. That is why self-sacrifice has value. If everyone did it, where would the value be? I like a world like that — a world in which sacrificing oneself for someone else is a noble act. Which is to say, a world overflowing with selfish people.
And true to a world full of selfish people, they act selfishly. Just now a selfish few push into the office, overturn the tables, and kick the chairs to splinters. The air turns ugly. Words become a fight; they seize one another by the collar and shout.
But they do not take it all the way. The one who had been raging, in particular, stops the moment the people around him try to hold him back. At a glance it looks as if he listened and stopped. I know better. He stopped on purpose. Being pulled out of it is part of the plan.
Because they have experience. Looking through their memories, it began at the place where they used to work, when their wages went unpaid. To collect them, they took the money along the line between legal and illegal — but they watched the one who had stood at the very front, the one who stuck his neck out, get hauled off by the police. They took the method they had learned and turned it to abuse.
Midway through a job they demand extra pay on one pretext or another, and if it is refused they stop work, or they gather people, take up tools, and storm the place that owes them. That is how they extract still more money. Only the one who steps to the front is always someone else.
People like that became Harvesters.
A Harvester, to put it crudely, only raises one's stats. It does not touch anything else. Which means a villain remains a villain. It is not that no one ever changes. There are people who can be mended and put to use. But that is one in a hundred. One in a thousand, at most. Put another way, nine-tenths and more stay as they are, or grow more vicious still. So even if I do nothing, they give me warmth of their own accord.
Those nine-tenths are the Harvesters I am watching.
Right now they are walking away, laughing, boasting of how frightening they looked. Keep this up, they say, and others will join in, and when that time comes they can pin the whole thing on them and simply take the money. Hearing laughter so full of desire, I feel good too.
I do hope they get to do exactly what they wish.
Meanwhile, the Harvesters I gained in the Brightsin district are in much the same state. Does anything change for a person from the slums just because their body has been made clean? The first day passes, they realize that not a single thing about their reality has changed, and they go back to the same work. Filthy work, spending their bodies without a thought. And because they have grown stronger, they slip easily into violence.
Among them, there are some who try to change. Here and there I see people writing it down all over the place, as if to test whether the knowledge I have been letting flow into them has truly taken hold. I may have put in a little too much. As if possessed, they write on walls, on floors, on objects, on anything at all, without distinction. Those around them say they have finally gone mad. Anyone would think so.
I cannot tell whether they are truly understanding it, or whether I ought to reduce the volume of memory. When I sent Yasle's memories before, I remembered the amount and put in just that much. But seeing this happen, are a human being's memories different from the memories of something that is not human? I will keep watching. If they go completely mad, I should cut the capacity down a little.
Set that aside, and everything is flowing along smoothly. Strife will break out in Berne City before long, and in Brightsin those who carry the techniques of Daegon and Yuanshi Tianzun are growing.
I have been looking over the Harvesters so intently that the morning classes end before I know it, and it is lunchtime.
"Belle, I'm exhausted..."
The moment she sits down, Victoria starts to whine. Yesterday, around the time I went to the royal castle, she went to the Clockwork Knight school and sat through a separate class. She does not go every day, only once every few days, but it seems to wear on her considerably.
"Does it?"
"There's just so much to do. Even getting to the Clockwork Knight school takes time."
Saying so, she begins on the food set before her. Grain and vegetables, meat, fruit — a meal rich in every way. Above all, from the sheer quantity of spice worked into it, I can tell this is a good school. Back when I lived with Soo, even salt was precious.
"So, are you going to give it up?"
"No. It's hard compared to before, not something I can't do. But hard is still hard. Belle, sympathize with me!"
She says this while happily cutting her meat and eating it with relish.
"I met the king yesterday."
"Right. I'll stop asking for sympathy. Let's drop this."
The moment I speak, the dining hall goes suddenly quiet. No one looks our way, and yet it falls still as if every ear had turned toward us, and Victoria kills the subject in a hurry. A lack of interest would be the strange thing. So I let the details pass, and decide to tell her only what she needs to know.
"Then I'll say only what I have to pass on to you."
"To me?"
"I'm getting a guard. We'll have to get along."
At the word guard, she looks at me, puzzled.
"Why?"
"It seems that going to a district called Brightsin a little while ago was the problem."
Strictly speaking, it is less a guard than a watch kept on me. Not simple surveillance, either. It would be more accurate to call them an overseer, assigned to keep me under control. They could have guarded me without ever telling me. That they are attaching someone this openly is probably because they need a person to carry their side's words to me. And there is the matter of the witch, as well.
"I don't know when the guard will come, but once they do, I'll hardly have any time alone, will I?"
I say it while glancing around. If there is anyone who means to do something to me, the look carries a meaning: do not be too late.
"Whoa, you're getting a guard. The papers are still going on today about the miracle worker, the apostle of God, so I guess it isn't that strange."
Victoria nods.
"So who's getting stuck on you? A man? A woman? Are they old? Will it be a knight?"
And with that, she takes an interest in whoever the guard will turn out to be.
"I don't know either. I was only told that someone would come, so I'll find out when they do."
"If they're your guard, I'll see them at school too, so I can look then. No, seriously, what even is this. Talk like this was supposed to belong to some other world, not mine. It's honestly weird."
If one must put it plainly, Victoria is of the citizen class, and the students at this school are of the noble class, so it is not strange for her to think so. The bourgeoisie attend as well, of course — the children of the newly rich, to speak crudely. Here, newly rich means an awkward outsider who holds land and capital but has never been admitted into the habitus of nobility. As a rule, they try to climb higher by drawing in a bloodline and letting themselves be absorbed.
Victoria has no capital, and there is a chance she was not brought here for her ability, either. They may well have taken her as a hostage, in order to make use of me. At first I thought it was because she had been such an enormous help in saving Berne City. But if that were so, the other Harvesters ought to be here too. Plenty of people became Harvesters there, awakened to supernatural powers, and did more than Victoria to settle the incident. Nor was there any lack of children around her age. So her being here is as good as an accident.
"Adapt."
"You know, sometimes you're really harsh."
I shrug. I am not speaking all that cruelly, but words ought to be taken from the listener's side. If I need to, I should make mine a little gentler.
After that we finish the rest of lunch in idle talk. Even calling it talk is generous; nearly all of it is Victoria, going on by herself. Perhaps because it has been this way since I stayed at her house, she does not find it strange either.
So we eat, rest a little, and then come the afternoon classes. When they end and the teacher leaves the room, I am about to head home when someone approaches me.
Long hair, a deep black, and a sharp-faced girl with ears like a dog's standing up above her head. A Shekal. I do not know her name. They told me nothing except that she belongs to the Shekal family.
"Lord Siodor is calling for you. Follow me."
The same as ever. Stiff, sharp speech. I see nothing like hatred aimed at me, so this is simply the temperament she was born with. A murmur rises as the others look at me and the Shekal.
"What do we do?"
Victoria eases up behind me and asks.
"Go on ahead."
I answer her, then look at the Shekal, a full head taller than I am.
"Let's go."
She nods, turns at once, and takes the lead. Set the last time beside this one, and she is very much a hunting hound.
The same as before. From the central hall, straight along the left, then a right-angle turn and straight on again, to the room at the very innermost end. The Shekal brings me as far as the door and stops, and I go inside.