The Cursed People (1)
This country is not normal.
No—normal does not even enter into it. The place is crammed with people one can scarcely believe are people at all.
That was the impression left on me after I witnessed Chief Minister Blane's grand conscription. In other words, I had come to realize that the continent's misunderstanding of the Mertians, who make up most of the Vartia Kingdom's population, might not have been a misunderstanding at all.
"……."
The king's office stood empty. There, pressing a hand to my brow and breathing out a sigh, I let everything I had long dismissed as the continent's misconceptions flicker through my mind.
A land set immediately beside the Demon Realm, from which every sort of monster poured without end. For ages the nations of the continent—the Holy See among them—had pointed at the Vartia Kingdom, named its people the descendants of demons, and feared them.
"Thinking about it, it never made any sense."
By any ordinary reckoning, the whole thing was strange. What good could possibly come of making an enemy of the nation that guarded the mouth of the Demon Realm? To write it off as a mere matter of religion was difficult, when the advantages of leaving the Vartia Kingdom standing were so plain.
"And there are plenty of countries on the continent that don't worship the Prime God."
But after I had seen the underside of this country today, my thinking changed. They do not believe we are guarding the entrance to the Demon Realm. No—it seemed far more likely that they considered this country itself a part of the Demon Realm. The proof was that they kept raising Crusade after Crusade, even after failing several times already.
"Haa……."
The moment I thought of what the Vartia Kingdom truly was, my head began to ache. Looking back, there had been plenty of signs that something was wrong, long before now. I had simply written them off as the crude administration of a medieval realm and ignored them.
Yes. This country is not normal.
Fielding an army larger than the population, a single chief minister accomplishing the impossible, identical faces walking the streets in numbers—none of it was normal, no matter how one looked at it. Even a nation of forty thousand holding off the Crusades again and again was something that ought to have been impossible.
"And some of them really weren't people. They were anomalies."
Even now, anomalies great and small are breaking out all across the Vartia Kingdom, and what that fact means is obvious. Beings that are not human are mixed in among the people of this country—the very existences the Holy See calls the descendants of demons, and truly fears.
—Anomalies.
In other words, the blood-kin of Satan are walking these streets.
"……."
Having looked the truth of the Vartia Kingdom square in the face, I drummed my fingers against the desk in a tangle of feelings.
Tok. Todok.
I had only a moment to wonder what I was supposed to do with this country from here on.
Kiiik.
Before long the door opened, and His ailing Majesty came in.
"Ah, Your Majesty……."
"Did I not tell you to call me Father?"
"Yes, Father."
Sick and aged, and yet a man who looked perfectly capable of lacing a three-wood seven hundred yards, he came over to the desk where I sat. Then, looking down at me with eyes still sharp, he asked:
"So. How does it feel, having governed the country?"
How it felt to govern this country—that is, he was asking for my impressions of serving as acting king of the Vartia Kingdom.
Huu—.
At that question I let out sigh after sigh and gave him the honest answer.
"To be frank… it was harder than I thought. Unbelievable things keep happening, one after another……."
"……."
"And seeing that everyone treats it as nothing out of the ordinary… I started to wonder if I was the strange one."
The bizarre reactions of the ministers in the great hall. Their excessive trust in Chief Minister Blane. And, on top of all that, the uncanny way this country itself lived and breathed. As I sighed, turning over the memories of the past few days, His Majesty spoke with the face of a father one could rely on.
"A country is simply too vast a thing for any one person to understand in full."
"……Father."
"But what truly matters is not whether you have understood them all."
His Majesty's eyes looked down at me, and I looked up in turn at the king's grave, clear-eyed face. Our gazes met. And there, setting a golden key upon my desk, he said:
A single sentence from his mouth, and that single sentence drove cleanly into my chest.
"You mean……."
"What parent casts a child aside simply because the child is lacking? A king, of all people, must be father and mother to every soul in the realm."
"……."
"To hold even those you do not understand against your heart, and to seek a future together with them—that is a king's duty."
It was only the second time in my life I had seen His Majesty so earnest. Receiving that gaze—solemn beyond measure, the gaze of a king—I quietly took up the key he had offered.
"……Father."
On my first day seated as acting king, I had thought the man before me unfit to be a king. But perhaps I had been wrong. The one truly lacking in qualification was myself.
"I understand. If that is your will, Father, I'll do my very best."
"Good, my son. This father believes in you."
Tok. Tok.
His hand patted my shoulder. It felt so warm that, without meaning to, I let a faint smile touch my lips.
"……."
Yes. Giving up at the sight of a crooked country did not suit my temper. Turning even that crookedness into the force that carried us forward—that was my role.
Seuk—.
Holding the lesson His Majesty had spoken close to my chest, I confirmed the feel of the key clenched in my hand.
"So what is this key, exactly?"
A key steeped in gold. From it—an aura anything but ordinary—there came a feeling strangely mystical. As I looked at it, His Majesty opened his mouth and explained its use.
"It is a key that may be used anywhere, and yet a key that may reach nowhere at all."
"Pardon?"
"They say it shows a certain place to one who is qualified."
A key that could be turned in any keyhole without trouble. In other words, an object of the sort that gives rise to anomalies.
"Have you seen for yourself what sort of place appears?"
"For the record, I reached nowhere. It is a thing passed down through the royal house for a long time, but it seems I lacked the qualification."
"……."
"Perhaps only a very few among the kings before us were ever able to reach that place."
According to His Majesty, it was not a key just anyone could use. Even the man before my eyes had never confirmed what it truly was.
"So it's possible nothing will happen at all?"
"That is also possible."
Perhaps nothing would appear. Hearing that, I quietly looked down at the key.
Even the things I cannot understand, he said, are part of this country.
A special place that appears when the key is turned. Beyond it, might I find something I needed? Holding that expectation, I turned my eyes to His Majesty.
"Thank you. I'll put this key to good use."
"……."
"……Father?"
Right after that, I found His Majesty wearing the face of a man who still had something to say. I thought we had already said everything either of us wanted to say. What could he possibly have left that would put that look on his face? I couldn't make sense of it.
"Do you… have something more you want to say?"
I asked him outright, and His Majesty answered with words every bit as frank.
"So. When am I allowed to go see the duchess?"
"……Pardon?"
Hearing that, I realized that everything up to this moment had been foreshadowing for this single line. Unbelievable. To think the conclusion waiting at the end of so moving a conversation would be His Majesty's unshakable taste for married women. Before my stunned self, he pressed on with a sermon that was, in its own way, entirely serious.
"For the record, my son. A royal, as a matter of course, is expected to bring home a charming noblewoman."
"……."
"The royals who lead the kingdom are forbidden to marry the people of Vartia, you see."
But hearing what followed, I realized I had misunderstood him. The reason the custom of marriage by abduction had continued in this country for so long—that reason came from his own mouth.
"Even so, taking as queen a woman one cannot even be sure is human… that is a little much, is it not……."
"Ah……."
All this time I had misunderstood the custom of carrying off noblewomen as something born of the Mertians' twisted tastes. But His Majesty's words were telling me it was not so simple. Marriage by abduction was a means of keeping the blood of nobles and royals from mixing with anomalies—a method, in other words, of preserving human purity.
"Ah, Father… and I didn't even know……!"
I was ashamed to have misunderstood my father these past few days. Of course. How could a paragon who loved his people this much possess so base a taste? Having grasped that shocking truth, I stared blankly at His Majesty, and once more his solemn voice rang out.
"So may I go see the duchess, or not?"
"……."
It seemed it had not been a misunderstanding after all.
Oh, for— Your Majesty. Please, show a little restraint.
The next morning.
I rose with a sense of mission, as father and mother to all the people, and found a familiar face standing at my bedside. A face that looked even more steeped in duty than my own was looking down at me.
"……."
A face eminently suited to representing this country. Which is to say, Chief Minister Blane was waiting for me with a suspicious parchment in hand.
"Your Highness. A fine morning to you."
"……."
"Might you, by any chance, be considering enlistment in the royal army?"
I quietly regarded Blane as he recommended I enlist. No matter how many times I thought it over—
This one was no person. He was an anomaly, without a doubt.