Chapter 218
The closer winter drew, the more the unemployed came to wander the streets.
It was not only that the jobless multiplied. Shops were closing their doors as well. Follow the chain of cause and effect, and the matter was simple: a shop shut, and the people it had employed became the unemployed.
The days grew colder by the day, and there was less and less to eat, less and less with which to keep a body warm.
The students of the Royal Academy scarcely knew it. They did not know until midwinter came, and the season for preparing for final examinations arrived with it.
Then something happened that they could no longer fail to notice. A crowd of protesters came to the gates of the Royal Academy.
The army garrisoned around the royal capital scattered them almost at once, of course. Even so, it was incident enough for everyone to understand that something had gone wrong.
Perhaps that was why more people had grown sharp. Fights broke out that never would have in ordinary times, and blood was drawn more often than before.
I went on living through it without a thought in my head. I truly did not have to do anything at all. Even if the situation worsened until people were killing and being killed, it would profit me.
Most of the Harvesters had already found their footing, more or less. Their performance had never been poor to begin with. It was not merely that they had grown stronger and cleverer. They withstood environmental stress well, they almost never fell ill, and even a severed finger would grow back.
Yes.
This went beyond simply becoming strong. Even without magic, they had been improved to something like Human 2.0. I could not be entirely certain, but their resistance to disease was surely far greater as well. Even the Harvesters who had chosen not a better road, but the road of sinking into reality, were healthier than their work and their lives would suggest.
A crisis is not necessarily only a bad thing. Even if things kept deteriorating without end until a hellscape descended on this country, it would benefit me in the long run. Because I know that there, the Harvesters will hold the advantage.
Harvesters are built to survive.
If they have a fatal threat, it is racial prejudice. That alone is truly dangerous. Until Harvesters become the majority, they are threatened without cease. It happened in the first world as well, in the early days when they first began to spread. Purple hair and porcelain-white skin catch the eye — all too convenient for anyone who wants to hang a wicked frame on them and grind them underfoot.
The place where that slid into the worst possible outcome was the second world. There, the Harvesters were a symbol of evil. An enemy that had to be struck down.
There is a saying: an awl in a pocket is bound to poke through. It means that a person of real ability is bound to stand out. And so a bad image gathers easily. Even if it begins in jealousy, the ones living through this world are people, and there is nothing to be done about that.
But this world is good. The royal house has promoted them so very thoroughly. They fitted the Harvesters into the frame of good people, and that frame has actually seeped into society. So even when someone is not truly a person to be trusted, others look only at the appearance and decide they must be good.
In other words, the most dangerous weakness has been erased. A situation this perilous is, rather, an opportunity.
After an age terrible enough that great numbers of people die, a good age has always followed. Seats no one could climb to, because someone already occupied them — once those seats stand empty, opportunity appears. Those who could never have risen before begin to rise.
I will not go so far as to say that people can move toward a better world only once a great quantity of blood has been spilled. But if class mobility is to happen, this is the surest way.
Mountains of corpses. Seas of blood.
The capable climb by treading that mountain of the dead.
Yes. The Harvesters. The mere fact that they find it easy to survive in extremes like these is ability enough. I prefer it this way, if anything.
In this world, it is not the strong who survive. It is the survivors who are strong. Life itself has developed that way until now. Human history has run against that current, but in extreme circumstances the primitive law takes hold.
Once the Harvesters fill the gap left by that brief contraction, a bright age will come. They will flourish more widely, and spread farther still. Humanity's hair will turn purple, and its skin will turn white. All of Tisha's descendants inherited that form, after all.
I had wondered whether the law of use and disuse might apply, but the memories of Daegon and Yuanshi Tianzun flicker up to tell me that not everything is decided by genes alone. Among countless copies, the variation suited to the environment survives. That is the skeleton of it, they say, but it is not so simple. Living things, surprisingly, also pass on to the next generation information they learned while they lived.
Which means it is not strange that the children of my Harvesters are born already past the end of the contract. I do wonder whether the variation is truly that intense, but there is no way to know.
Anyway. I have no intention of moving in order to deal with this incident.
If someone cannot endure the suffering and comes looking for me in order to become a Harvester, then I will make one. But that is all. I will not do more than that. I cannot do more than that. Because I do not have the intelligence to solve a situation that worsens by degrees.
If I were clever, I would have stepped to the front, resolved this affair, won people's trust, founded a religion or a company, and gone on increasing the number of Harvesters.
Gaining someone's memories does not make you as intelligent as that someone was. If it did, then once a person finished their course of education they would already be better than the one who taught them. But there are far more people for whom that never happens. No matter how much they learn, plenty remain ignorant. And beyond merely failing to acquire knowledge, there are those who simply act foolishly.
I am one of them.
So I will move in a direction where the profit I can gain may be small, but I take no loss. I move carefully, because I am not someone who lives a short while and dies. I have no choice but to live for eternity. If your life is short, failure ends when you die. Unfortunately, I cannot die. I would have to repay that debt forever, still a failure.
So the way to live long is to hide only the most fatal parts, and live decently well. There is no need to be too wicked, and no need to be too good. Not especially noticeable — but sharing enough benefit with others that, when people choose someone they can bear to live beside, I am among those chosen.
That is my goal. The person they call a pushover.
I am fine being seen as a pushover. All I need is to obtain warmth.
Thinking that, I looked at the students gathered in the classroom after today's classes ended, instead of going home. Ordinarily this would have been the hour when they trickled away. But the protesters had occupied the main gate again, so the students who did not live in the dormitories were stuck in the classroom.
"Another protest? Can't they just round them all up and kill them?"
"That's what I'm saying. Why should we be locked in here because of commoners?"
"If they'd just hand me a weapon, I'd sweep the lot of them away."
The ones who usually leave the school grounds tend to come from the stronger houses. Born to that sort of family, some of them want to sweep away the people protesting in front of the school. No — that is the majority, if anything. Of course, they do not actually mean to kill anyone. It is closer to grumbling. Like the hour you ought to be heading home, except a protest has stopped the trains and you cannot get there.
The purpose of a protest is at least to create a chance to think about what has happened. In practice, it rarely works out that way.
"Belle's lodgings are right under her nose, and she still can't leave."
Polaris spoke to me.
"I don't mind waiting. What about you, Polaris?"
"Me? I hate it. But it's not like there's anything I can do, so I just wait."
"You aren't going to see your faction?"
At my question, Polaris let out a small sigh.
"I'd rather be here than get used as firepower for the upperclassmen wherever His Highness is."
Ah. There was that.
The Royal Academy has no way in or out but the main gate. So Sorindiges, too, has to leave through the main gate if he wants to go home after school. The Academy sits close to the royal castle, so there is no way it lacks a secret passage. But use one in a situation like this, and it stops being secret. So Sorindiges was still at the Royal Academy.
That the next king was here also meant there was work to be done — going and diligently forging connections. So something like a small banquet had been opened.
You would think only the girls who believed they might get somewhere with Sorindiges would be there. In reality, there were more boys. Because he was going to be their supreme superior at work someday, and it was good to make sure he remembered your face, wasn't it? The gathering became a place where people earnestly introduced their own abilities.
And when they met him there, it was not a matter of going alone to greet Sorindiges. You formed a group, and the center of that group had to bring them over and make the introduction. A kind of etiquette.
The reason I knew? Kanna was there. Her face wore a smile, but if you read the muscles that moved without her knowing, she was in considerable pain. Watching the other factions move, working out what they meant to say, sending people to tell them to keep their place in line — she was directing the traffic. She was terribly busy.
"Isn't it dangerous if you aren't there when there's work to do?"
"Work? Ah — no. Belle. At a sudden gathering like this, only the desperate ones go. Go for no good reason, and they may praise you to your face while marking you behind your back. Stay away, and they may ask what you were doing instead of coming — but they'll decide you know your place."
Polaris explained it with a bored expression. The infighting was fierce.
I glanced around. Among the students sitting quietly, a few classmates had been listening, and they nodded with the look of people who understood perfectly. For the record, the classroom was very quiet. There were not many of them, and with the day's schedule as good as gone, they were simply waiting.
The ones who lived in the dormitories, like Victoria, had already left for the day. And since quite a few students had moved into the dorms not long ago, there were not many left whose lodgings lay outside. Even if your room was inside, that did not mean you were necessarily resting in it. Freesia, a classmate, had gone looking for Kanna the moment class ended, and right now she was working hard under Kanna's orders.
It was already like this with only Sorindiges here. When Aurora entered next year, it would be even worse. When that time came, would the boys start dropping by on the off chance as well? It would be fun to watch.
Ah. That was right. I rose from my seat.
"Belle?"
"I'm going to go see Victoria."
"Hm? Why all of a sudden?"
"Victoria has night classes at the clockwork knight school tonight."
I do feel a certain attachment to a Harvester who earns me warmth so well.
"I'll go with her and come back."
"Ah, right. Victoria really does suffer of her own accord. How does anyone attend two schools... Yeah. Got it. See you tomorrow, then."
I said goodbye to Polaris, who waved, stepped outside, and turned my steps toward the dormitory where Victoria was. Today was going to be a very hard day for her, after all.