Forbidden Love? (2)
Forbidden Love? (2)
I liked the character Lottie too. She wasn't a romanceable character, but that was because whenever Jake and Lottie appeared together, they usually did a comedy routine like that. It wasn't laugh-out-loud hilarious, but it was heartwarming.
"So, what kind of information shall I give you?"
The remark about speaking with me alone probably hadn't been serious to begin with. He'd just thought he'd try teasing me since Lottie was right there.
Even when he'd first spoken to me, he was probably just repeating what Lottie had blurted out in irritation.
He was basically an expressionless character who hid his feelings, but that didn't mean he was a character without feelings. He'd simply grown accustomed to holding everything in from childhood.
Jake felt sorry for that Lottie.
"What kind of information can you give me?"
"Hmm."
At my question, Jake fell into thought for a moment before speaking.
"For instance, the fact that it's hot even at this time of year, since it's down south?"
Because it bordered a desert.
The empire occupied most of the western end of the continent, and it had colonized the northern regions of the Southern Continent that stretched out beneath it.
The house that had been most proactive during the early invasion of the Southern Continent was Lindbergh. Back when the Imperial Diet didn't exist yet, they'd recruited pirates, made them into subordinates, invaded, and then spent about a century absorbing the occupied territory into their own domain.
As a result, the Lindbergh domain was split into upper and lower halves with a sea between them.
The northern domain, across the sea, was a peaceful place with nothing much to boast about. Since it was a duchy, it was enormously vast, but that was all—no remarkable specialty goods came from it.
Most of the Lindbergh family's money came from the domain on the Southern Continent. Not only did they occupy every fertile part of the northern Southern Continent, but trade revenue from the colonies beyond the desert further south made up most of the Lindbergh family's income.
The money they earned by leasing out the naval bases they'd built up in droves before private armies were abolished directly to the Imperial Army would have been quite lucrative, too.
And like the Winterfield family, they also still operated private troops to some degree on the grounds that their territory bordered a frontier.
"I suppose it wouldn't matter if you played on the beach, would it? Swimsuits have been trending in the domain lately."
"......."
Listening to Jake speak to me, Lottie's expression became that of someone holding something back.
If you went strictly by 'historical accuracy,' swimsuits from the early 20th century were practically baggy garments. Especially women's swimsuits would have been even more so.
But...... what sort of world-building was this world? It was the world-building of a Japanese game company standing at the forefront of otaku subculture.
Naturally, the swimsuits didn't look much different from the swimsuits in the world I'd lived in.
Though, at a point where bunny girls were walking around casinos, worrying about that sort of thing was already absurd.
"And, well...... I could tell you about local specialties and such, but honestly, it's not all that related to what we'll be doing there, is it?"
"That's true."
Even if Jake did know important secrets of the domain, he wasn't the kind of character whose mouth was so loose that he'd go around loudly broadcasting them.
"Still, that's a relief~ Still, it means we'll be able to stay warm for a few days, doesn't it? I was in a warm place during the break and then came to a cold one, so it was hard to adjust."
"A sudden change in temperature can make you ill. On the contrary, Young Master, you ought to worry about your health. After all, you're making the round trip twice this month alone."
"Don't worry, Lottie. I'm tougher than I look. And if we're tallying things up that way, shouldn't you, Lottie, with a woman's constitution, be the one more concerned?"
"I am......."
I had to force down a bitter smile as I watched Lottie start to say something, then close her mouth with an air of 'what's the point.'
*
Since most other domains didn't require crossing a vast ocean, there wouldn't have been a major problem even if each class went separately, but the Lindbergh domain was different.
There was nothing in particular to learn by going to the northern Lindbergh domain, so the Field Practicum destination was naturally the southern Lindbergh domain.
The Southern Continent colonies were an extraordinarily important place even by imperial standards. The very reason the empire could be an 'empire' was those countless colonies.
Many people considered the Aetherna Empire to have been completed at the moment it had occupied all of the colonies and the emperor had declared, 'I am the Emperor of Two Continents.'
Well, even before that, since the time of the founding emperor Fangriffon, they'd already been boldly adding 'Empire' after the continent's name. Still, compared to calling a single country an empire, asserting the title 'empire' while possessing genuine imperialistic features was probably easier for other nations to accept.
The reason the empire could be an empire in the truest sense.
That was exactly why the academy sent its students here at least once.
On top of that, since the academy occasionally included foreign students, how excellent an opportunity was it to show off the empire's prestige?
Sending them aboard an airship rather than a boat was probably simultaneously for practical reasons and to display the empire's status.
"The empire maintains that all these vast seas are its territorial waters."
"Because imperial territory lies both above and below them."
Alice answered Charlotte's remark.
Strictly speaking, the entire sea could not be territorial waters according to agreed-upon international law.
However, by applying that law to every single island and reef it had seized along the way, the empire was effectively claiming a maritime zone about half the size of the Mediterranean as its territorial waters.
Since the empire's naval power was overwhelming, there was no nation in a position to dispute it separately. For a country that floated battleships in the sky, could it not float them on the sea?
"Belbur is on the northern part of the continent anyway, so it barely even uses these southern seas."
"...... There's talk that the prices of goods arriving from across this sea are excessively inflated."
"That's not because the empire treats the sea as its territorial waters. It's more because the Lindbergh family skims off a lot. In fact, because of that, sourcing the same goods from the imperial mainland doesn't make much difference compared to foreign goods. And if you really want something, you can just trade with the Kingdom of Iberia, can't you?"
Perhaps because criticism of a country she might one day inherit had come up, Alice responded a little sharply.
Even in the face of that reaction from Alice, Charlotte didn't seem particularly intimidated. It made sense. Before they were a princess and an imperial princess, they were already friends.
"The Kingdom of Iberia has almost no colonies on the Southern Continent. It's only been twenty years since they unified, hasn't it? In the meantime, the empire seized all the best land on the Southern Continent."
"That's the fault of those people who spent centuries divided and fighting each other."
.......
Hm.
These were topics I'd almost never heard discussed in the original work. I knew them as setting lore, of course, but the characters had never talked about them. Even when politics came up, it was usually about direct conflicts between the Empire and the Kingdom.
It made sense. In terms of the setting, these two characters each belonged to a period when 20th-century imperialism and nationalism were just beginning to spread in earnest. Their pride in their own countries was at a peak of inflation, and that pride was naturally grounded in their occupied colonies and the sheer might of their nations.
Well, that would all come crashing down soon enough anyway.
I turned my gaze and glanced toward Lottie.
The entire first year of Rondarium Academy was aboard the airship, but the ones who came out to this scenic observation deck were mostly the noble students.
Because once the noble students claimed the good spots first, the commoner students mostly couldn't bring themselves to come up, even if it made them uncomfortable.
But among them, there was one student who thoroughly stood out.
No, rather than the student standing out, perhaps it would be more accurate to say the gazes around that student looking at her stood out.
It was Lottie.
Lottie, standing beside Jake.
Jake probably hadn't dragged her along by force. No matter how mischievous Jake was, he disliked others looking down on Lottie. Because she was the girl he liked.
The fact that Lottie was here was likely her own will.
She was probably standing there using the excuse that she was 'attending the young master as his maid.'
When, in reality, she simply wanted to be together with him.
In the single moment I turned my eyes toward Lottie, our gazes met. She smoothly redirected her eyes back out the window, but she'd clearly been bothered by the conversation on this side.
And no wonder. Lottie was a person from the colonies, after all.
She'd effectively been raised in the Lindbergh domain as a person of Lindbergh, but she was a character who'd been openly discriminated against because of her appearance. The content of a conversation between two people casually discussing the cause of that discrimination must have bothered her.
But anger or resentment didn't show on her face.
It was closer to resignation, perhaps.
A character of mixed imperial blood, someone who belonged to neither one side nor the other.
A character who became fodder for aristocratic gossip both before she started dating Jake and even after they became lovers.
"......."
I hadn't paid it much mind at first, but now that I'd felt that reality on my skin in that moment, it seemed far more pitiful than when I'd seen it in the game.